Millennium Development Goals Essay

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The Millennium  Development  Goals are  outcome based  international development  targets  that  were agreed  at  the  United  Nations  Millennium  Summit in New York in September  2000. Eight Millennium Development Goals are defined. These goals incorporate 18 more precisely defined targets with a total of 48 indicators.  Development targets were set out initially by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1996, following previous attempts to set out aims and objectives for the promotion of economic growth and basic needs between the 1970s and the 1980s, and the definition of the aim of sustainable  development  in the 1990s incorporating environmental concerns  next to the aim of poverty reduction. The agreed set of targets was set out in the Road Map Towards the Implementation of the United Nations Millennium Goals in 2001.

The Millennium Development Goals define the objectives of development policy based on the desired outcome.  They act as a measurable  set of objectives against  which the  performance  of the  international community  and individual nations  in their development  efforts can be measured.  It is also argued that accepted development goals and targets ascertain international responsibility  and establish a common purpose for the international community.

The first seven Millennium Development Goals are the following:

  1. Eradication of extreme hunger and poverty. This goal contains two targets: first to halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than a dollar a day, and second, to halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
  2. Achievement of universal  primary  education. The target here is to ensure that by 2015 all children will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.
  3. Promotion of gender equality  and  empowerment  of women.  The fourth  target  related  to this goal is to eliminate gender disparity in primary  and  secondary  education  preferably  by 2005 and to all levels of education no later than 2015.
  4. Reduction of child mortality.  The target  is to reduce  by two-thirds,  between 1980 and 2015, the  under-five  mortality  rate  with  the  indicators of the under-five mortality rate itself and to increase the proportion of one-year-old children being immunized against measles.
  5. Improvement of maternal health. This goal has the target to reduce by three-quarters, between 1980 and  2015, the  maternal  mortality  ratio. This is to be measured  by the maternal  mortality ratio  and  proportion of births  attended  by skilled health personnel.
  6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases. One target is to have halted by 2015, and begun to reverse, the spread of HIV/AIDS that is indicated by the HIV prevalence among 15-to-24year-old pregnant women, contraceptive  prevalence rate, and the number of children orphaned by HIV/AIDS. Another  target is to have halted by 2015, and begun to reverse, the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.
  7. Ensuring environmental sustainability. This goal integrates the principles of sustainable development into country  policies and programs  as a target and is to reverse the loss of environmental resources. The proportion of land area covered by forest, land area protected  to maintain  biological diversity, GDP per unit of energy use as an energy efficiency measure, and carbon dioxide emissions per capita are utilized as indicators. Furthermore, this incorporates the target of halving, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water, as well as the target of having achieved, by 2020, a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million  slum-dwellers.  The proportion of people with access to improved  sanitation  and the proportion of people with access to secure tenure acts as a means of measurability.

Many of these indicators  linked to the first seven Millenium Development Goals are accessible via the World Bank Atlas of the Millennium Goals. The eighth goal is the Development  of a Global Partnership  for Development.  This goal encompasses  seven further targets. It is aimed at developing an open, rule-based, predictable,   nondiscriminatory  trading   and  financial system with a commitment to good governance, development,  and  poverty  reduction—both nationally and internationally. It addresses the special needs of the least developed countries (LDCs) and includes tariff and  quota-free  access  for  LDC exports,  an enhanced program of debt relief for heavily indebted countries, and cancellation of official bilateral debt as well as more generous official development assistance (ODA) for countries committed to poverty reduction. It addresses  the  special needs  of landlocked  countries and small island developing countries,  whereby a comprehensive  consideration is given to the  debt problems  of developing  countries  with  the  aim  of making debt sustainable in the long term.

In  cooperation   with  pharmaceutical companies, the provision of access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries is aimed at, as well as making available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communication, in cooperation with the private sector. This broad goal uses indicators that focus on ODA, the target for which is 0.7 percent  of a developed country’s gross income, the allocation of ODA to social services, transport, and environmental areas. Another  category of indicators  focuses on market  access, whereby  a calculated  proportion of exports is admitted  with no tariffs or quotas, with a particular  focus on agricultural  products.  A further set of indicators aims to measure the achievement of debt sustainability.

Bibliography:   

  1. Richard Black and Howard White, Targeting Development: Critical Perspectives on the Millennium Development Goals (Routledge,  2006);
  2. Jane Nelson and Dave Prescott, Business and the Millennium Development Goals: A Framework for Action (Prince of Wales International  Business Leaders  Forum,  2003);
  3. Organisation for Economic  Co-operation  and  Development,  Shaping  the 21st Century: The Contribution of Development Cooperation (1996);
  4. Mark Sundberg, Millennium Development Goals: Confronting the Challenges of Gender Equality and Fragile  States  (World  Bank, 2007);
  5. UN Chronicle,  “The MDGs: Are We on Track?” UN Chronicle (v.44/4, 2007);
  6. United Nations,  Claiming the  Millennium Development Goals: A Human  Rights Approach (United Nations, 2008);
  7. United Nations, United Nations Development Programme, and Asian Development Bank, The Millennium Development Goals: Progress in Asia and the Pacific 2007 (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, 2007);
  8. United Nations, United Nations Millennium Declaration, Document  A/RES/55/2,  2000, www.un.org/ millennium (cited March 2009).

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