The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight international development goals that 192 United Nations member states and at least 23international organizations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015. They include reducing extreme poverty, reducing child mortality rates, fighting disease epidemics such as AIDS, and developing a global partnership for development.
Goals
Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
Goal 4: Reduce child mortality
Goal 5: Improve maternal health
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development
ProgressControversy Over Funding of 0.7% of GNP
However, there has been disagreement from the US, and other nations, over the Monterrey Consensus that urged "developed countries that have not done so to make concrete efforts towards the target of 0.7 per cent of gross national product (GNP) as ODA to developing countries."
Support for the 0.7% Target
Challenges to the 0.7% Target
In 2001, recognizing the need to assist impoverished nations more aggressively, UN member states adopted the targets. The MDGs aim to spur development by improving social and economic conditions in the world's poorest countries.
They derive from earlier international development targets , and were officially established at the Millennium Summit in 2000, where all world leaders present adopted the United Nations Millennium Declaration, from which the eight goals were promoted.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were developed out of the eight chapters of the United Nations Millennium Declaration, signed in September 2000. There are eight goals with 21 targets,[3] and a series of measurable indicators for each target.
Indicators
Some of the indicators listed below are monitored separately for the least developed countries (LDCs), Africa, landlocked developing countries and small island developing States.
Progress towards reaching the goals has been uneven. Some countries have achieved many of the goals, while others are not on track to realize any. The major countries that have been achieving their goals include China (whose poverty population has reduced from 452 million to 278 million) and India due to clear internal and external factors of population and economic development. However, areas needing the most reduction, such as the Sub-Saharan Africa regions have yet to make any drastic changes in improving their quality of life. In the same time as China, the Sub-Saharan Africa reduced their poverty about one percent, and are at a major risk of not meeting the MDGs by 2015. Fundamental issues will determine whether or not the MDGs are achieved, namely gender, the divide between the humanitarian and development agendas and economic growth, according to the Overseas Development Institute.
To accelerate progress towards the MDGs, the G-8 Finance Ministers met in London in June 2005 (in preparation for the G-8 Gleneagles Summit in July) and reached an agreement to provide enough funds to the World Bank, the IMF, and the African Development Bank (ADB) to cancel an additional $40–55 billion debt owed by members of the HIPC. This would allow impoverished countries to re-channel the resources saved from the forgiven debt to social programs for improving health and education and for alleviating poverty.
Backed by G-8 funding, the World Bank, the IMF, and the ADB each endorsed the Gleaneagles plan and implemented the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative ("MDRI") to effectuate the debt cancellations. The MDRI supplements HIPC by providing each country that reaches the HIPC completion point 100% forgiveness of its multilateral debt. Countries that previously reached the decision point became eligible for full debt forgiveness once their lending agency confirmed that the countries had continued to maintain the reforms implemented during HIPC status. Other countries that subsequently reach the completion point automatically receive full forgiveness of their multilateral debt under MDRI.
While the World Bank and ADB limit MDRI to countries that complete the HIPC program, the IMF's MDRI eligibility criteria are slightly less restrictive so as to comply with the IMF's unique "uniform treatment" requirement. Instead of limiting eligibility to HIPC countries, any country with annual per capita income of $380 or less qualifies for MDRI debt cancellation. The IMF adopted the $380 threshold because it closely approximates the countries eligible for HIPC.
Yet, as we head towards 2015 increasing global uncertainties, such as the economic crisis and climate change, have led to an opportunity to rethink the MDG approach to development policy. According to the 'In Focus' Policy Brief from the Institute of Development Studies, the ‘After 2015' debate is about questioning the value of an MDG-type, target-based approach to international development, about progress so far on poverty reduction, about looking to an uncertain future and exploring what kind of system is needed after the MDG deadline has passed.
Over the past 35 years, the members of the UN have repeatedly made a "commit[ment] 0.7% of rich-countries' gross national product (GNP) to Official Development Assistance." Over the past 35 years, the members of the UN have repeatedly made a "commit[ment] 0.7% of rich-countries' gross national product (GNP) to Official Development Assistance."
The text of the commitment was:
"Each economically advanced country will progressively increase its official development assistance to the developing countries and will exert its best efforts to reach a minimum net amount of 0.7 percent of its gross national product at market prices by the middle of the decade."
The UN "believe[s] that donors should commit to reaching the long-standing target of 0.7 percent of GNP by 2015".The European Union has recently reaffirmed its commitment to the 0.7% aid targets. The EU External Relations council says that, as of May 2005, "four out of the five countries, which exceed the UN target for ODA of 0.7%, of GNI are member states of the European Union."Many organizations are working to bring U.S. political attention to the Millennium Development Goals. In 2007, The Borgen Project worked with Sen. Barack Obama on the Global Poverty Act, a bill requiring the White House to develop a strategy for achieving the goals. As of 2009, the bill has not passed, but Barack Obama has since been elected President.
However, many OECD nations, including key members such as the United States, are not progressing towards their promise of giving 0.7% of their GNP towards poverty reduction by the target year of 2015. Some nations' contributions have been criticized as falling far short of 0.7%.
John Bolton argues that the U.S. never agreed in Monterrey to spending 0.7% of GDP on development assistance. Indeed, Washington has consistently opposed setting specific foreign-aid targets since the U.N. General Assembly first endorsed the 0.7% goal in 1970.
The Australian Government has committed to providing 0.5% of GNI in International Development Assistance by 2015-2016, without noting the long-standing 0.7% goal.