MILLENNIUM DECLARATION
The Millennium Declaration & its MDGs has seized the imaginations of politicians and pop-stars alike. The MDGs trip from the lips of the worlds’ leaders from Blair to Brown to Bono, and have become a mantra for many development professionals and economists, including celebrity economist, Jeffrey Sachs. It can be said that the MDGs have the virtues and the vices of simplicity. They oversimplify the development process but in so doing make action more appealing & achievements more likely both to development donors and development recipients alike.
The Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals were the outcome of the Millennium Summit of September 2000 when world leaders met at the United Nations in New York. 192 countries and 23 international organisations signed up to these goals. The Millennium Declaration outlines the central concerns of the global community – peace, security, development, environmental sustainability, human rights and democracy – and sets out a set of mutually reinforcing goals for social development.
The 8 Millennium Development Goals are themselves based upon the major goals and targets agreed upon at the UN Conferences of the 1990s when there was indeed a veritable epidemic of global development summitry, and constitute an ambitious agenda for reducing poverty and improving lives world-wide.
The MDGs
Goal 1. Eradication of extreme poverty and hunger
Target for 2015: halve the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day, and those who suffer from hunger.
Goal 2. Achieve Universal Primary Education
Target for 2015: ensure that all boys and girls complete primary school.
Goal 3. Promote gender equality and empower women
Targets for 2005 and 2015: eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015
Goal 4. Reduce child mortality
Target for 2015: Reduce by two thirds the mortality rate amongst children under five.
Goal 5. Improve maternal health
Target for 2015: Reduce by three-quarters the ratio of women dying in childbirth
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDs, malaria and other diseases
Target for 2015: Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS and the incidence of malaria and other major diseases
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
Targets: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources. By 2015, reduce by half the proportion of people with access to safe drinking water. By 2020, achieve significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.
Goal 8. Develop a global partnership for development with targets for aid trade and debt relief
Targets: Develop further an open trading and financial system that includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction – nationally and internationally. Address the least developed countries’ special needs, and the special needs of landlocked and small island developing states. Deal comprehensively with developing countries’ debt problems. Develop decent and productive work for youth. In co-operation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries. In co-operation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies – especially information and communications technologies.
In general people working on gender and women’s rights have been somewhat less thrilled by the MDGs considering that gender issues are allocated to a separate goal which could militate against ‘mainstreaming’ although in principle unlike the other MDGs, Goal 3 is not specific to any particular sector or issue, since…in principle again… gender equality and women’s rights underpin all the other goals. The reverse is also true, as the achievement of Goal 3 depends on progress made on each of the other goals. The implication is clear – while accurate reporting against Goal 3 is critical, tracking gender gaps and inequalities against each of the other targets and indicators is no less important.
The original indicators for achievement against Goal 3… as other goals…. appear somewhat simplistic, & indeed they have been adapted and changed since their birth both by the global development community and at individual country level. The original indicators against Goal 3 were stated as follows:
The ratio of boys to girls in primary, secondary and tertiary education
The ratio of literate women to men aged 15-24
The share of women in wage employment in the non-agricultural sector
The proportion of seats held by women in parliament
Countries have refined this original list to include other dimensions of particular concern, such as violence against women, or removal of gender bias in inheritance and nationality law.
Further reading:
The End of Poverty
by Jeffrey Sachs (Foreword by Bono) Penguin Press 2003
all you need to know at millenniumgoals.
Amongst these are the World Summit for Children (1990), the World Conference on Education for All (1990) , the International Conference on Human Rights (1993), the International Conference on Population and Development (1994), the Fourth World Conference on Women (1995), the World Summit for Social Development (WSSD)