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Millennium Development Goals

In September, 2000, 189 nations, including the United States, affirmed a set of international development goals in the United Nations Millennium Declaration. These have come to be known as the Millennium Development Goals. They reflect an understanding of the devastation caused by global hunger and poverty, and aim for a world that is free of such misery. They are achievable. Most of them are very specific, and the UN has indicators by which progress can be monitored.

Many countries have made significant strides in fighting poverty despite major obstacles, such as scant resources. Few additional resources, however, have been contributed since the goals were adopted. If additional new funding is not put forth, at the current rate, none of the Millennium Development Goals will be met by their target dates.

By 2015, all UN member states pledged to:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
   
   • Reduce by half the proportion of people who live on less than one dollar a day.
   • Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
     
     
2. Achieve universal primary education
   
   • Ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling.
     
     
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
   • Eliminate the gender discrepancy in primary and secondary education by increasing opportunities for girls to attend school preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015.
     
     
4. Reduce child mortality
   • Reduce by two-thirds the percentage of children who die before age five.
     
     
5. Improve maternal health
   • Reduce by three-quarters the percentage of women who die in pregnancy and childbirth.
     
     
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
   • Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS.
   • Halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.
     
     
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
   • Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources. Sustainable development means reducing hunger and poverty in environmentally sound ways, by: meeting basic human needs, expanding economic opportunities, protecting and enhancing the environment, and promoting democratic participation.
   • Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.
   • Achieve significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020.
     
     
8. Develop a global partnership for development
   • Reform the trading system (i.e., the World Trade Organization) and the financial system (e.g., private capital flows and international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund) so that poor countries can more easily sell their products to developed countries at fair prices and obtain the financial resources needed to create stable, growing economies that lift people out of poverty.
   • Focus special attention on how to help the poorest countries mobilize the resources needed to reduce hunger and poverty and become self-reliant.
   • Focus special attention on how landlocked and small island developing countries can promote economic development and poverty reduction.
   • Make an all-out effort to resolve the problem of unpayable debt for the world’s poorest countries.
   • Develop decent and productive work for youth.
   • Provide access to affordable, essential drugs in developing countries.
   • Make available the benefits of new technologies.

The National Council of Churches USA recently released Eradicating Poverty: A Christian Study Guide on the Millennium Development Goals. This six-session study guide offers progress updates on the MDGs, reflections, discussion questions and action steps on holding the United States accountable to meeting the goals. Learn more or download the book from their website.