Millennium Development Goals

Over the past year, since I first learned about the Millennium Development Goals in May 2006, I have become both excited and inspired by the possibilities the goals make possible, and also discouraged that so little is being done in North America to promote them and actually reach them. So I've included the goals and their targets below, and will follow with various posts about the individual goals/targets and things we can all do to make it all happen.

~Chris


The Millennium Development Goals are 8 goals which the UN Member States committed in 2000 to complete by 2015, in order to promote sustainable development. Each goal has specific, measurable targets that progress can be measured by:

1 - Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Targets: To halve both the number of people worldwide who have to live on less than 1 US dollar a day and the proportion of people who suffer from chronic hunger.

2 - Achieve universal primary education
Targets: For all children, girls and boys alike, to have the opportunity to complete a full course of primary education by 2015.

3 - Promote gender equality and empower women
Targets: To eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education by no later than 2015.

4 - Reduce child mortality
Targets: To reduce by two-thirds the mortality rate for children under the age of 5.

5 - Improve maternal health
Targets: To decrease the maternal mortality ratio by two thirds by 2015.

6 - Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
Targets:· Halt and reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015;
· Halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.

7 - Ensure environmental sustainability
Targets:
· 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
Targets:
· 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
· In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies—especially information and communications technologies.