The Millennium Development Goals
The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015 – form a blueprint agreed to by all the world’s countries and all the world’s leading development institutions. They have galvanized unprecedented efforts to meet the needs of the world’s poorest.
Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. 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 one dollar a day, and 852 million are hungry.
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Achieve universal primary education. The target is for all children to be able to complete primary school. Currently 121 million school-aged children do not go to school.
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Promote gender
equality and empower women. The goal is for equal numbers of girls and
boys to go to primary and secondary school preferably by 2005 and go on
to higher education by 2015. Currently 60 percent of the children out
of school are girls.
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Reduce child mortality. The aim is to reduce the number of children who die before their fifth birthday by two-thirds by 2015. Currently 11 million children die of preventable diseases every year.
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Improve maternal health. The target is to reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters. Currently about 500,000 mothers die each year of birth-related complications.
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Combat HIV/AIDS,
malaria, and other diseases. The goal is to reverse the spread of these
diseases by 2015. Currently each year 3 million persons die of AIDS,
nearly 2 million of tuberculosis, and one million of malaria.
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Ensure
environmental sustainability. The aims are to make drinking water
safer, improve the lives of 100 million slum dwellers, reverse the loss
of environmental resources. Currently 1.1 billion people lack access to
a source of water reasonably protected from contamination; 2.6 billion
lack access to basic sanitation.
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Develop a global partnership for development. This goal addresses a range of issues in which the developed countries play a particular role in inhibiting poverty or facilitating poverty reduction. Currently rich countries on average give 0.25 percent of their gross national income to development assistance. The goal is to increase this to 0.7 percent.
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