Millennium Development Goals

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are a collection of eight fundamental goals established at the Millennium Summit in September 2000 in order to address the issues of reducing extreme poverty throughout the world within a given time period of 15 years. Every United Nations (UN) member state at the time of the declaration (representing 189 countries) committed to contributing in order to achieve each of the goals outlined in a framework known as the UN Millennium Declaration by 2015. Each of the 8 goals has specific targets (a total of 21) and indicators (a total of 60) to measure whether these goals have been met.

The goals outlined in the UN Millennium Declaration are as follows:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and other diseases
7. Ensure Environmental Sustainability
8. Global Partnership for development

In addition to the 189 UN member states, several international organizations also committed to facilitate the carrying out of these goals including the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

History

UN Millennium Summit

The MDGs were created in 2000 at “The Millennium Summit” at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City. It was the largest meeting of world leaders in history and lasted three days.

Goals

Each of the 8 goals have corresponding targets (a total of 18) to specify what the goal signifies and indicators (a total of 60) to concretely measure what will determine whether or not these goals have been met.

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

• The first target of this goal is to “Halve, between 19990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day.”
• The second target of this goal is to “Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.”

2. Achieve universal primary education

• The third target is to “Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.”

3. Promote gender equality and empower women

• The fourth target is to “Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015.”

4. Reduce child mortality

• The firth target is to “Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate.”

5. Improve maternal health

• The sixth target is to “Reduce by three-quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio.”

6. Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and other diseases

• The seventh target is to “Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS.”
• The eighth target is to “have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases”

7. Ensure Environmental Sustainability

• The ninth target is to “Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and program and reverse the loss of environmental resources.”
• The tenth target is to “Halve, by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.”
• The eleventh target is to “Have achieved by 2020 a significant improvement in he lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.”

8. Global Partnership for development

• The twelfth target is to “develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, nondiscriminatory trading and financial system.”
• The thirteenth target is to “Address the special needs of the Least Developed Countries.”
• The fourteenth target is to “Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term.”

Progress

Disparities in Progress

It is very clear that developed regions have been able to more successfully meet each of these goals in comparison to developing regions that are struggling to keep up. Since these goals are ‘global’ in nature, the regional disparity is veiled by the progress of developed regions.

How Progress is Tracked

The progress of each of the eight millennium goals are measured according to indicators (a total of 60) that correspond to each goal. The data is calculated according to the “Inter-agency and Expert Group (IAEG) on MDG Indicators” which is a counterpart of the UN Statistics Division. Each indicator has an individual agency designated as an official provider for data collection and analysis. For example, Target 1 (“Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day) has 3 indicators all of which are assigned to and determined by the World Bank: 1) The proportion of the population living on less than $1 per day, 2) The poverty gap ratio [incidence x depth of poverty] and 3) The share of poorest 1/5 in national consumption.

Official data used by the international agencies is mainly drawn from official government statistics. National data that is unavailable to the individual agencies are estimated using specific methodologies approved by the United Nations Statistics Division. The estimated data is indicated by different colour codes and are accompanied by a detailed description of how the data was generated.

The Millennium Development Goals Report 2014

The most recent MDG Report of 2014 outlines each of the goals and their corresponding progress as well as areas that need further improvement. From this report it is evident that there are disproportionate regional outcomes. Major success in areas such as education and reducing absolute poverty have been prevalent; however, progress continues to be geographically uneven in particular with underdeveloped countries falling far behind in levels of success compared to developed countries. Outlined below are some of the key areas of progress and areas requiring more attention for each MDG.

Goal One - Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

• Even though 1.2 billion people worldwide continue to live in extreme poverty, the MDG target of reducing the population of individuals living on less than $1.25 per a day by 50% was met 5 years ahead of the suggested timeframe. Extreme poverty rates dropped to 22% by 2010 thereby reducing the number by 700 million people.
• While this achievement is triumphant on a global level, the progress in the reduction of poverty on a regional level is quite uneven. In 2010 two thirds of the 1.2 billion people living in extreme poverty came from 5 countries (India, China, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and the Democratic Republic of Congo), while the remaining one third came from other countries. India alone was home to one third of the world’s 1.2 billion extreme poor living on less than $1.25 per a day.

Goal Two - Achieve Universal Primary Education

• The goal of achieving universal primary education has experienced substantial progress given that in developing regions, 90% of children are attending primary school. Progress in ensuring universal primary education has slowed down considerably since the start of the decade. This is can be fundamentally accounted for due to the decline in donor aid towards education which fell from $6.2 billion in 2010 to $5.8 billion in 2011. Furthermore, low-income countries had a relative decrease in aid to basic education between 2002-2011 while middle-income countries had a relative increase.

Goal Three - Promote gender equality and empower women

• While it was “preferable” to eradicate the gender gap in primary and secondary education by 2005, substantial progress was made by 2012 where the gender gap in primary education was closed among almost all developing regions. The gender disparity of primary education within regions is present namely in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as Bangladesh and Nepal (where enrollment of girls is greater than boys).
• The participation of women in the political sphere has steadily improved and women are playing an increasingly prominent role in “hard” political positions in areas such as Defense, Foreign Affairs and the Environment. Only five governing administrations have no women in parliament as of the start of 2014.

Goal Four - Reduce child mortality

• The target to reduce the mortality rate for children under the age of five by two thirds has been significantly progressive in that it has dropped from 90 to 48 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2012. While the target it is not yet met, it is relevant to note that between 2005 and 2012 the annual rate of reduction occurred over three times faster than the former years.
• This progress is evidently globally uneven given that four out of five child deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia. These are the only two regions that have not reduced their child mortality rate by 50%.This continued high rate of child mortality is largely caused by preventable diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhoea, and malaria most of which occur during the neonatal period (the first 4 weeks of a child’s life). This information suggests that greater investment in maternal health care needs to be addressed.

Goal Five - Improve Maternal Health

• Improvements to maternal health care are lagging behind in progress considerably. This is inexcusable considering that maternal death is highly preventable. So far, the maternal mortality ratio has dropped 45%, but this is short from the goal of reducing it by 75%. Sub-Saharan Africa had the highest maternal mortality ratio by far with 510 deaths per 100,000 live births followed by Southern Asia, Oceania and the Caribbean with 190 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. Furthermore, while the use of contraceptives have doubled, largely due to improved access, from 13% to 26% in developing regions, demands for family planning have not yet been met.

Goal Six - Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and other diseases

• The regions of Southern and Central Africa saw dramatic declines in HIV infections of about 50%; however, a record high number of individuals living with HIV infections was reached in 2012. In 2012, each day almost 600 children died from AIDS-related incidences. More and more lives have been saved due to new HIV-treatment guidelines by the World Health Organization which presses for immediate treatment of certain groups of infected individuals including HIV positive pregnant women and children under the age of five. Consequently, this increased the proportion of individuals who qualify for life-saving antiretroviral therapy (ART).

Goal Seven - Ensure Environmental Stability

• Since 1990, an additional 2.3 billion people are now able to access drinking water; however 748 million people continue to access water from an unimproved source such as rivers and ponds. Safe drinking water is not easily accessible in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa and requires long traveling distances, so while it is available to them it may not always be utilized. Disparity in geographical location is an evident disparity as 70% of people without access to improved water and sanitation are living in rural areas.
• The MDG target of improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers has been successfully achieved; however, the number of slum dwellers continues to grow, in part, due to the rapid spread of urbanization. Regional disparity is evident in that the urban population living in slum conditions in sub-Saharan Africa is 62% in compassion to the next highest in Southern Asia at 35%.

Goal Eight - Global Partnership for development

• In 2013, after two years of falling quantities, Official Development Assistance (ODA) from the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) reached its highest level increasing by 6.1% from 2012. The majority of countries that are DAC members continue to meet or exceed their target of 0.7% gross national income contribution.
• The target to deal with debt in developing countries has progressed since 2000, but it now remains steady at 3.1% - approximately the same level since 2008. The burden of external debt impacts the value of the country as well as the susceptibility to economic shocks. Of the 39 eligible countries for debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, 36 have achieved their “decision point” and have had their debt payments reduced by $57.3 billion and the 35 that have achieved their “completion point” will receive full debt relief.

Critiques

Unrealistic and Vague

It has been contended that these goals were rather unrealistic in their prospects for improvement as they are “too ambitious” for developing regions and not ambitious enough for developed regions. In other words, many of the goals were very easily attainable for some regions while other regions have persistently struggled to meet them. This is largely because, the regional and national-specific starting points varied quite widely. For example, in 1990 56% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s population was living on less than $1.25 per a day. To half this would be to reduce it by 28%. In contrast, Latin America’s population living on less than $1.25 per a day was only 10%, which means they would only need to reduce it by 5%. Furthermore, the goals themselves are quite vague in that they don’t consider how nations should go about achieving these goals. It is wrong to label countries that do not meet the specific MDG targets as ‘failures’ since many of them have made positive progress. Labeling countries in this way may weaken or stigmatize existing governments who have made strong attempts for improvement.

Colonial History

All-encompassing worldwide goals are unrealistic in the sense that they fail to consider the individual needs of particular nations and regions. The MDG’s fail to take into account the historical, cultural, political, social, and economic conditions that are specific to a region. Rather, it is assumed that all regions - no matter their cultural, political, social, or economic circumstances- are capable of achieving these goals based on a western perspective of development. It is important to consider the historical experience of a nation in order to effectively assign relevant and contextually-specific goals for various regions and nations. For example, in Sub-Saharan Africa, the legacy of the colonial experience continues to be of considerable significance particularly in the area of attitudes and policies of social security and governance. This is because the development of social welfare systems during the colonial period was relatively slow (most emerging after World War Two) and social inclusion was limited in the sense that most poor people living in rural areas were excluded from social welfare benefits provided by the colonial powers.Consequently, this intra regional disparity continued into the post-colonial period in which the government has been resistant in successfully providing adequate social welfare for the impoverished citizens of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Post 2015 Development Agenda

It is widely debated whether or not these goals will be achieved or not by the end of 2015. So far three out of the eight goals have been met ahead of schedule. It is evident that these objectives have been more successful in some ways than in others given that some targets have already been met ahead of schedule while others are still far behind. Nonetheless, overall vast progress and improvements have been seen across all of the outlined goals. Given the extreme regional disparities success in developed countries has masked the lack of success within developing countries. This is something that the Post-2015 Development agenda should address.