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What Can One Person Do? - The MDGs
In
2000, all the member states of the United Nations pledged to achieve
eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
They said, "We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women, and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are now subjected." Around the world, tens of thousands of people have demonstrated, prayed and lobbied to make sure these aspirations turn into reality.
The goals, and where we are so far, are described below.
(1) Eradicate extreme hunger and poverty. Specifically, the aim is by 2015 to reduce by half the proportion of people whose income in 1990 amounted to less than one dollar a day, and reduce by half the proportion of people who were hungry.
Currently 1.1
billion people live on less than $1 a day and 852 million are hungry.
(2) Achieve universal primary education. The target is for all
children, girls and boys alike, to be able to complete primary
school.
Currently 121
million school-aged children do not go to school.
(3) Promote gender equality and empower women. The goal is for
equal numbers of girls and boys to go to primary and secondary school by
2005 and go on to higher education by 2015.
Currently 60% of the children out of school are girls.
(4) Reduce child mortality. The aim is to reduce the rate of
children who die before their fifth birthday by two-thirds by 2015.
Currently 11
million children die of preventable diseases every year.
(5) Improve maternal health. The target is to reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters.
Currently around 500,000 mothers die each year of birth-related complications.
(6) Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases. The goal is to
reverse the spread of these dread diseases by 2015.
Currently,
each year 3 million persons die of AIDS, nearly 2 million of
tuberculosis, and 1 million
of malaria.
(7) Ensure environmental sustainability. The aims are to make
drinking water safer and improve the lives of 100 million slum dwellers,
and reverse the loss of environmental resources.
Currently 1.1 billion people lack access to a reliable source of water that is reasonably protected from contamination; 2.6 lack access to basic sanitation.
(8) Develop a global partnership for development. The goal
addresses a range of issues in which the developed countries play a
particular role in inhibiting or facilitating poverty reduction. These
include:
-
ongoing debt relief and measures to make debt sustainable in the long term
-
trade and financial systems that promote good governance and poverty reduction
-
increasing the amount of good overseas development assistance to least developed countries to 0.7% of rich countries and 0.15% of less developed countries’ gross national income.
-
access to affordable essential drugs, such as antiretrovirals
-
special attention to the needs of landlocked countries and small island states
-
strategies for decent and productive work for youth
-
the sharing of information and communications technology
On average rich countries currently give 0.25% of their gross national income to development assistance; the goal is to increase this to 0.7%, of which over 0.5% goes to the MDGs.