MILLENIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
INTRODUCTION
On the 55th General Assembly
of the United Nations (Millenium
Assembly), which took place in
September 2000 in New York, the
member countries agreed upon a
mandatory catalogue of steps and
a tough deadline: The Millenium
Development Goals. On Septem-
ber 18th they were passed by the
189 member countries.
The catalogue contains 47 single
goals which are to be achieved
by 2015. They are divided into 8
categories, including poverty &
hunger, education, environment
and gender parity among others.
A goal is successfully achieved
Brazil Germany Rwanda China when the correlating indicator
reached a certain value.
Canada United Kingdom Eritrea Cambodia
United States Russia India Japan
It‘s only four and a half years to You will see well-known but sho-
2015 - a very short amount of cking facts about education on
time for such far reaching political the next page, followed by some
actions. Even if corruption, reli- statistics concerning demography.
gious fundamentalism and other Flip pages and you will gain an
obstacles are not considered. Eit- insight into the environmental /
her way, time is running out and ecological progress. We will close
that‘s why we wanted to give you with the current situation of com-
a summary of the progress made munication technology.
until now, the current situation
and how much further it is to
achieve the goals.
Unfortunately the specific va-
lues of the indicators seem to be
known only to the United Nations.
We asked the German Federal
Ministry for Economic Coopera-
tion and Development, but they
were unable to help us. We picked
6 developed and 6 developing
/ least developed countries and
focused on comparing the current
situation instead.
 PRIMARY EDUCATION DROPOUT
USA CAN GBR DEU RUS JPN USA CAN GBR DEU RUS JPN 100 % BRA RWA ERI IND KHM CHN BRA RWA ERI IND KHM CHN 100 %

* * * *
75 % 75%

50 % 50 %

25 % 25 %

0% 0%

100 % The number of children in primary
school age who are not attending
Primary school enrollment school has decreased by 33 million
Persistence to last grade
of primary
since 1999. However, 72 million
children worldwide were not in
se children are living in sub-Saha-
ran Africa, followed by 18 millions
out-of-school children in South
Asia. These numbers are worriso-
me because they have an impact
instance, the education level of prevention and increases the pro-
mothers is correlating directly with bability of a decent employment.
the child mortality rate and the
nutrition quality of her children.
The literacy level of their parents

* No data available
school (2007). Almost half of the- on other development goals. For has a positive effect on HIV/AIDS
 FOCUS ON DEMOGRAPHY
41 37

20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20

10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10

20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20

10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10

20 20 20 20

10 10 10 10

20
A B 20 It is widely known that mothers younger. There is no single reason, during pregnancy. In addition con- of HIV/AIDS and the birth rate. The Please note that the seventh gra-
C D
10 10 living in developing countries give as mentioned on the pages before traceptive use is four times higher higher death rate is also caused phic represents the average value
birth to more children than in the development goals influence among women with a secondary by the insufficient medical infra- of the six countries on the page.
A female population
developed countries. The same each other. Women in the richest education compared to those structure (which implicates hardly
B male population
C births per 1000 people per year applies on the other end, more households are 1.7 times more li- without any education. This has available skilled health personnel)
D deaths per 1000 people per year people die and those who do are kely to visit a skilled health worker (as said) an impact on the spread and missing money to change it.
 ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY
CO2 emissions
They are highest in
developed countries.
9.37 Energy use
Because Japan has
no natural ressources
CO2 emissions
In Brazil drive about
24 times more 1.87
4,56
0.12
Energy use
In Rwanda, only 4 to 5 % of
its population have access to the
*
9.77
10.97 it has to import 84 % natural gas cars than national power grid.
of its energy needs. in Germany.

Improved water source Land covered with forest

Improved water source
About 70 % of water withdrawn
worldwide is for agricultural needs.
About 1.2 billion people worldwide Around 13 million hectares of
Land covered with forest
do not have access to an improved forest are cut down every year.
Trees convert carbon dioxide into
source of water. That‘s almost half of United Kingdom.
oxygen. The forest itself is an
important habitat for many plants,
animals and fungi.

6 tons CO2 per 10 % of population

6 with access to improved Developed industry and moto- would emit 25 billion metric tons Maybe you wonder why Japan But Japan has many mountains as
capita and year
water source rized individual transport cause of carbon dioxide, which is al- has such a big amount of forest, well. The forest on them wasn‘t
Energy use 60 % of country are developed countries to lead when most as much as the whole world especially when compared to the cut off because industry and cities
compared to forest speaking of carbon dioxide emis- in 2007 (about 27 billion metric other developed countries. Most do not pay off in this kind of regi-
Russia
sions. Assume every Chinese lived tons). people first think of Tokyo and ons.
like the average American: China other overpopulated megacities.
 FACTS ABOUT COMMUNICATION
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10 Internet users per 100 people
10 telephone lines per 100 people
10 SIM cards per 100 people
Knowledge and information are
the greatest good in our society,
networks are now more impor-
tant than ever in the history of
mankind. Advanced communica-
tion technology helps us to build
and maintain such networks as
well as gaining knowledge and
information. One doesn‘t have to
be a rocket scientist to conclude
that countries with less developed
communication infrastructure are
in disadvantage. This fact is called
the Digital Divide. It causes coun-
tries to drop behind not only eco-
nomically but also socially (e.g. be-
cause access to independent news
and information is much harder or
almost impossible). People in con-
cerned countries rely on mobile
phones to compensate this deficit
because building IT infrastructure
is time-consuming and expensive.
Several NPOs that are trying to
help, for example the OLPC (One
Laptop Per Child Project). They
manufacture low-budget laptops
(199 $) so countries can buy one
for every child in school.
SUMMARY
As explained in the introduction
only the United Nations know
the specific indicator values to be
reached and as a result how far
countries are away from their very
ambitious goals. It is likely that the
majority will not be achieved any-
way. According to the MDG annu-
al report 2009 the future is bright
when speaking of drinking water,
but there are other targets to be
fulfilled by 2015 e.g. stopping and
SOURCES
MDG annual report 2009
http://www.un.org/millennium-
goals/pdf/MDG_Report_2009_
ENG.pdf
Praktikum Medieninformatik 2010 | Nikolaus Piccolotto, Sven Jordan
reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS,
malaria and other severe deseases.
Some people criticize the wording
of the goals: The target indicator
values are formulated in relation
to data from the nineties and hard
to reach. This could implicate gre-
at, but still not considered impro-
vements because they just don‘t
meet the requirements. Further-
more these requirements are not
fair at all: Raising the literacy rate
MDG annual report 2010
http://www.un.org/millennium-
goals/pdf/MDG%20Report%20
2010%20En%20r15%20
-low%20res%2020100615%20-.
pdf
is much easier for countries that
already have an education system.
Assuming that the majority of the
goals will not be achieved we will
just have to wait and see what‘s
happening after 2015. Particu-
larly considering the fact that in
„Hopenhagen“ 2009 the member
countries agreed upon agreeing
later...
Gender Statistics Databank
http://databank.worldbank.org
MDG Databank
http://databank.worldbank.org