Millennium Development Goals

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were a set of eight international development goals that all 191 United Nations member states and at least 22 international organizations committed to achieve by the year 2015. Established following the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in 2000, the MDGs aimed to encourage development by improving social and economic conditions in the world's poorest countries.

Goals

The MDGs focused on various dimensions of poverty and development. They included:

1. Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty: Halve the proportion of people living on less than $1.25 a day and those who suffer from hunger.
2. Achieve Universal Primary Education: Ensure that children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.
3. Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women: 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: Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate.
5. Improve Maternal Health: Reduce by three-quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio.
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and Other Diseases: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other major diseases.
7. Ensure Environmental Sustainability: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs; reverse loss of environmental resources.
8. Develop a Global Partnership for Development: Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system.

Achievements and Challenges

By the end of 2015, significant progress had been made towards reaching these goals. For example, the global poverty rate was cut in half five years ahead of the 2015 deadline. However, achievements were uneven across goals and regions. The goals related to health, such as reducing child mortality and improving maternal health, faced significant challenges and did not see as much progress as hoped.

Post-2015 Development Agenda

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 global goals, succeeded the MDGs. The SDGs build on the achievements of the MDGs and aim to go further, addressing the root causes of poverty and offering a more comprehensive agenda for development.

Criticism

The MDGs have been criticized for being too narrow in scope and for not focusing on the deeper causes of poverty. Critics also argue that the goals did not adequately address environmental sustainability or the need for structural changes in global economic policies.

See Also

• Sustainable Development Goals
• United Nations Development Programme
• Poverty Reduction

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  Flag of the United Nations

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  Millennium Development Goals at UN Headquarters

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  Extreme Poverty 1981-2008

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  Geena Davis at the podium