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What exactly are the Millennium Development Goals? How close are we to reaching them? How much extra funding is needed?
These are some of the questions which this page will help you to answer. It will also feature information regarding the progress being made towards achieving some of these key targets.
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The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
The 8 MDGs come from the Millennium Declaration signed by 189 countries, including 147 Heads of State, in September 2000 and have a target date of 2015.
| Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger |
| Achieve universal primary education |
| Promote gender equality and empower women |
| Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases |
| Ensure environmental sustainability |
| Develop a global partnership for development |
For further information visit the UN website
The reason why these targets are needed is clear from the following statistics:
Africa remains the only continent in the world that has grown poorer in the last 25 years.
About one in two people in sub-Saharan Africa survive on less than a dollar a day
Nearly 25 million Africans were living with HIV/AIDS in 2006
Over 40 million children in Africa do not get the opportunity to go to school
Over a third of the entire population of sub-Saharan Africa is under-nourished
Two-thirds of the world’s poorest people live in Asia and 800 million people there live on less than a dollar a day
Seven out of 10 of these poorest people are women.
Statistics from DfID website
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Update on the MDGs from Gordon Brown, speaking at the UN on 31st July 2007
"We did not make the commitment to the Millennium Development Goals only for us to be remembered as the generation that betrayed promises rather than honoured them."
The numbers of children out of school has fallen from 100 million to 77 million.
34 countries are now on track to meet the infant mortality goal.
44 countries now on track to meet the poverty goal.
47 countries now on track to meet the education goal.
But while there have been some successes, the story in other areas, particularly in regards to health infrastructure is much more bleak.
Malawi, population 12 million has just 250 doctors - one doctor for 50,000 people. And just 3800 nurses.
Mozambique, population 20 million, just 500 doctors and 4000 nurses.
Tanzania, population 38 million, just 800 doctors and 3600 nurses.
But more needs to be done: "this development emergency needs emergency action," said Brown.
Following his speech Brown announced that 12 world leaders, including all the G7 countries and 20 top businessmen and women have signed a new commitment to meet this development emergency and agreed on a meeting to be held in 2008 to report on progress against the MDGs.
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Development aid from OECD countries in 2006
The 22 member countries of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC), the world’s major donors, provided US$103.9 billion in aid in 2006, down by 5.1% from 2005.
This figure includes US$ 19.2 billion of debt relief, notably exceptional relief to Iraq and Nigeria. Excluding debt relief, other forms of aid fell by 1.8%.
The UK aid figures for 2006 have been released by the Department for International Development (DfID). They show that UK aid in 2006 is estimated at £6,851 million, representing an increase of £928 million on the 2005 figure of £5,923 million. UK ODA represents 0.52% of GNI in 2006, up from 0.47% in 2005. UK ODA excluding debt relief in 2006 is estimated at £4.96 billion. UK ODA excluding debt relief as a proportion of GNI is 0.38% in 2006, compared to 0.32% in 2005.
www.dfid.gov.uk
Sixteen of the DAC’s 22 member countries met the 2006 targets for ODA that they set at the 2002 Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development.
The US$103.9 billion of aid in 2006 represents 0.30% of DAC members’ combined Gross National Income. In real terms this is the first fall in ODA since 1997, though the level is still the highest recorded with the exception of 2005.
Aid to sub-Saharan Africa, excluding debt relief, was static in 2006, leaving a challenge to meet the Gleneagles G8 summit commitment to double aid to Africa by 2010.
The UK is committed to the United Nations target of spending 0.7% of GDP on aid.
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Millennium Developments Goals update
In 2009, we have passed the mid-way point for the achievement of the UN Millennium Development Goals, set out in 2000 with 2015 as the target date. So far, there has been a flurry of analysis to assess the progress to date.
The UN’s own MDG Report 2008, indicates that the progress is mixed. Where some improvement is notable, much more needs to be done at a much faster pace.
Some successes…
Thanks to improvements in prevention programs, the number of people newly infected with HIV declined from 3 million in 2001 to 2.7 million in 2007. And with the expansion of antiretroviral treatment services, the number of people who die from AIDS has started to decline, from 2.2 million in 2005 to 2.0 million in 2007.
Progress has been made in getting more children into school in the developing world.
In all but two regions, primary school enrolment is at least 90%
The proportion of children under five who are undernourished declined from 33% in 1990 to 26%in 2006.
Deaths from measles fell from over 750,000 in 2000 to less than 250,000 in 2006, and about 80 per cent of children in developing countries now receive a measles vaccine.
On the other hand…
Developed countries’ foreign aid expenditures declined for the second consecutive year in 2007 and risk falling short of the commitments made in 2005; At current exchange rates, official development assistance (ODA) continued to drop from an all time high of $107.1 billion in 2005, to $104.4 billion in 2006 and $103.7 billion in 2007.
Over half a million women still die each year from treatable and preventable complications of pregnancy and childbirth. The odds that a woman will die from these causes in sub-Saharan Africa are 1 in 22 over the course of her lifetime, compared to 1 in 7,300 in the developed world.
Carbon dioxide emissions have continued to increase, despite the international timetable for addressing the problem.
The proportion of people in sub-Saharan Africa living on less than $1 per day is unlikely to be reduced by the target of one-half;
[The above is extracted from UN MDG Report 2008]
The urgency of fulfilling our MDG commitments is clear for all to see. 30,000 children die every single day from treatable and preventable diseases. The MDGs are only part of the solution, but a solution that we cannot fail to meet.
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