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The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight goals with measurable targets and clear
deadlines for improving the lives of the world's poorest people. To meet these goals and
eradicate poverty, leaders of 189 countries signed the historic millennium declaration at the
United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000. At that time, eight goals that range from providing
universal primary education to avoiding child and maternal mortality were set with a target
achievement date of 2015.
The MDG-F contributed directly and indirectly to the achievement of the Millennium
Development Goals, with the main driver behind its work being the eradication of extreme
poverty. The Fund adopted an inclusive and comprehensive approach to the MDGs, embracing
the discourse on climate change as it relates to poverty while incorporating other program
areas that are recognized as prerequisites and/or mechanisms for MDG achievement. Our
approach was guided by the Millennium Declaration and its emphasis on development as a
right, with targeted attention directed towards traditionally marginalized groups such as ethnic
minorities, indigenous groups and women.
The MDGs have mobilized government and business leaders to donate tens of billions of dollars
to life-saving tools, such as antiretroviral drugs and modern mosquito nets. The goals have
promoted cooperation among public, private, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs),
providing a common language and bringing together disparate actors. In his 2008 address to
the UN General Assembly, the philanthropist Bill Gates called the goals “the best idea for
focusing the world on fighting global poverty that I have ever seen.”
As of 2013, progress towards the goals was uneven. Some countries achieved many goals,
while others were not on track to realize any. A UN conference in September 2010 reviewed
progress to date and adopted a global plan to achieve the eight goals by their target date. New
commitments targeted women's and children's health, and new initiatives in the worldwide
battle against poverty, hunger and disease.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were developed as a roadmap for the
implementation of the Millennium Declaration. Based on the values and principles agreed upon
by Member States in the 2010 Millennium Summit, the MDGs have served as a global
framework for collective action to reduce poverty and improve the lives of poor people. Across
eight clear goals, the MDGs include 21 time bound targets to measure progress in poverty
reduction and hunger as well as improvements in health, education, living conditions,
environmental sustainability and gender equality.
Significant progress has been made across all goals and millions of lives have been improved
due to concerted global, regional, national and local efforts. Yet, much more is needed in many
areas. Continued progress towards the MDGs in the remaining time is essential in order to
provide a solid foundation for the post-2015 development agenda. The UN Department of
Economic and Social Affairs is actively involved in measuring progress towards the MDGs and
assists in monitoring and accountability.
More info, the United Nations Millennium Development Goals were 8 goals that all 189 UN
Member States have agreed to try to achieve by the year 2015. The United Nations Millennium
Declaration, signed in September 2000, committed world leaders to combat poverty, hunger,
disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women. The MDGs
were derived from this Declaration, and had specific targets and indicators. The MDGs have
been superseded by the Sustainable Development Goals, a set of 17 integrated and indivisible
goals that build on the achievements of the MDGs but are broader, deeper and far more
ambitious in scope.
The MDGs focused on ending extreme poverty, hunger, and preventable disease, and were the
most important global development goals in the United Nations’ history. The SDGs will continue
the fight against extreme poverty, but will add the challenges of ensuring more equitable
development and environmental sustainability, especially the key goal of curbing the dangers
of human-induced climate change.
Why do goals matter? No one has ever put the case for goal-based success better than John F.
Kennedy did 50 years ago. In one of the greatest speeches of the modern US presidency,
delivered in June 1963, Kennedy said: “By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem
more manageable and less remote, we can help all people to see it, to draw hope from it and to
move irresistibly towards it.”
Setting goals is important for many reasons. First, they are essential for social mobilization. The
world needs to be oriented in one direction to fight poverty or to help achieve sustainable
development, but it is very hard in our noisy, disparate, divided, crowded, congested,
distracted, and often overwhelmed world to mount a consistent effort to achieve any of our
common purposes. Adopting global goals helps individuals, organizations, and governments
worldwide to agree on the direction – essentially, to focus on what really matters for our future.
A second function of goals is to create peer pressure. With the adoption of the MDGs, political
leaders were publicly and privately questioned on the steps they were taking to end extreme
poverty.
A third way that goals matter is to spur epistemic communities – networks of expertise,
knowledge, and practice – into action around sustainable-development challenges. When bold
goals are set, those communities of knowledge and practice come together to recommend
practical pathways to achieve results.
4. What impact have the Millennium Development Goals had, and what
should follow them after they expire?
These are the impacts that the Millennium Development Goals had.
MDG 1: The number of people living on less than $1.25 a day has been reduced from 1.9
billion in 1990 to 836 million in 2015, although the target of halving the proportion of people
suffering from hunger was narrowly missed.
MDG 2: Primary school enrolment figures have shown an impressive rise, but the goal of
achieving universal primary education has just been missed, with the net enrolment rate
increasing from 83% in 2000 to 91% this year.
MDG 3: About two-thirds of developing countries have achieved gender parity in primary
education.
MDG 4: The child mortality rate has reduced by more than half over the past 25 years – falling
from 90 to 43 deaths per 1,000 live births – but it has failed to meet the MDG target of a drop
of two-thirds.
MDG 5: The global maternal mortality ratio has fallen by nearly half – short of the two-thirds
reduction the MDGs aimed for.
MDG 6: The target of halting and beginning to reverse the spread of HIV/Aids by 2015 has not
been met, although the number of new HIV infections fell by around 40% between 2000 and
2013.
MDG 7: Some 2.6 billion people have gained access to improved drinking water since 1990, so
the target of halving the proportion of people without access to improved sources of water was
achieved in 2010 – five years ahead of schedule. However, 663 million people across the world
still do not have access to improved drinking water.
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MDG 8: Between 2000 and 2014, overseas development assistance from rich nations to
developing countries increased by 66% in real terms, and in 2013 reached the record figure of
$134.8.
Therefore, over 193 world leaders have decided to convene in the UN agree upon a new set of
17 Global Goals to be adopted by the international community and completed by 2030. These
new goals look to accomplish three primary objectives: the eradication of poverty, fighting
inequality and injustice, and fixing climate change. These goals have been referred to as the
Sustainable Development Goals and they have received a lot of attention. Check out this
video posted on the globalgoals.org website:
b. HEALTHY FOUNDATION
The public sector rates the SDG number 3 concerning health and well-being, highest on
both dimensions: good for business and good for society. Our survey respondents
particularly see healthy people as a determining factor for keeping public health
expenditures down and ensuring long-term societal sustainability.
Health as an economic and social foundation for society is challenging. Governments
everywhere are struggling to manage the rapidly increasing costs of health care,
projected to rise 5.2 percent a year between 2014 and 2018 at a global level. This
increase is partly driven by the health needs of aging populations, growing populations,
and the rising prevalence of chronic diseases. In low and medium HDI countries
diseases once thought to be challenges for affluent countries alone, such as
cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes and other non-communicable diseases
(NCDs), have emerged as the leading cause of death and disability.