Millennium Development Goals

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The Millennium Development Goals are eight goals that 192 United Nations member states have agreed to try to achieve by the year 2015.

Goals

The United Nations Millennium Declaration, signed in September 2000, commits the states to:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
   • Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than one U.S. dollar a day.
   • Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
   • Increase the amount of food for those who suffer from hunger.
2. Achieve universal primary education
   • Ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling.
   • Increased enrollment must be accompanied by efforts to ensure that all children remain in school and receive a high-quality education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
   • Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015.
4. Reduce child mortality
   • Reduce the mortality rate among children under five by two thirds.
5. Improve maternal health
   • Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio.
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
   • Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS.
   • Halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
   • Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources.
   • Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.
   • Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020.
8. Develop a global partnership for development
   • Develop further an open trading and financial system that is rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory. Includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction—nationally and internationally.
   • Address the least developed countries’ special needs. This includes tariff- and quota-free access for their exports; enhanced debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries; cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous official development assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction.
   • Address the special needs of landlocked and small island developing States.
   • Deal comprehensively with developing countries' debt problems through national and international measures to make debt sustainable in the long term.
   • In cooperation with the developing countries, develop decent and productive work for youth.
   • In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries.

News

See separate article - Millennium Development Goals news

Diary international

• July 7 2007 MDG Mid-term - half-time since governments around the world committed to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000. Global Call to Action Against Poverty

Random facts

• "Women wrk 67% world's wrking hrs yet earn only 10% world's income" Source: UN Millennium Campaign
• Women produce 1/2 of the world's food yet own less than 1% of the world's property

Quotes

"So the environment is not a luxury, not a Gucci accessory bag or a fancy silk tie affordable only when all other issues have been resolved.

It is the oxygen breathing life into all the Goals. It is the red ribbon running around our common aspirations for a healthier, more stable and just world."
Klaus Toepfer, UNEP Executive Director, commenting on assessment of the 2015 Millennium Development Goals, prior to the 2005 World Summit.

Related topics

• United Nations Millennium Campaign
• Global connections

External links

• www.MDGmonitor.org, tracks worldwide progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. Launched November 1 2007.
• The Millennium Goals
• "Are We Making Poverty History?" - OneWorld.net's Perspectives Magazine, August/September 2005
• BBC Summary 2005 of UN Millennium Goals
• Millennium Development Goals Indicators: MDG Dashboard (downloadable database)
• UN Stats Division - MDGs
• www.developmentgoals.org
• Development Gateway Special Report: Aid Harmonization:What Will It Take to Meet the MDGs?
• International Food Policy Research Institute, Annual Report Essay:Agriculture, food security, nutrition and the Millennium Development Goals
• No more Broken Promises? - A plain language guide to the MDGs
• What are the Millennium Development Goals?, Introduction to the MDG written for laypersons.