The Millennium Development Goals

What are the Millennium Development Goals?

At the Millennium Summit in 2000, the Member States of the United Nations agreed on eight goals, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that call for national action, and international cooperation, to provide access to food, education, healthcare and economic opportunities for children, women and men everywhere. In 2005, world leaders gathered at UN Headquarters in New York for the General Assembly High-Level Summit, at which they spoke about the progress they had made nationally in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. United Nations Member States have vowed to work together to reduce poverty and eliminate hunger in developing countries, and to achieve the targets set out in the MDGs by 2015.

What is the UN doing about fighting poverty?

In the Millennium Declaration, world leaders resolved to halve, by 2015, the number of people living on less than $1 a day, and also set targets in the ght against poverty and disease. Secretary-General Ko Annan proposed specic actions that rich countries should take: 1. Grant free access to their markets for goods produced in poorer countries: Many developing countries are forced to rely on exporting unprocessed agricultural products to earn income overseas. At the same time, world market prices for fuel and for manufactured and processed goods have risen. Furthermore, many developed countries have imposed steep trade restrictions on agricultural products from developing countries, making it almost impossible for them to sell their goods. 2. Write off foreign debts: Over the last few years, there has been a worldwide movement pressing for the cancellation of the debts that poor countries owe to their creditorsdeveloped country Governments, commercial banks, and multilateral international lending institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund launched a programme in 1996 known as the Debt Initiative for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC), to help the worlds poorest countries with crippling debts. By October 2007, there were 32 countries receiving debt relief. As a result, the money that might have been used to repay their huge debts could instead be used for health, education and other social services. 3. Grant more generous development assistance: Overcoming poverty requires global efforts. In 1980, the industrialized countries pledged at the General Assembly to devote 0.7 per cent of their gross national products (GNP) to ofcial development assistance. To date, only ve countries Denmark, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden have consistently provided 0.7 per cent of their GNP as development assistance to poor countries.

The Millennium Development Goals 

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