Stuart Corner
Monday, 05 November 2007 11:15
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
The United Nations, Google and Cisco have joined forces to launch a web site that tracks progress achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but suppose there is more good news than bad to report, or nobody bothers to view it.
The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were adopted in September 2000 by the largest-ever gathering of world leaders who adopted the Millennium Declaration. The Declaration, endorsed by 189 countries, was then translated into a roadmap setting out goals to be reached by 2015. It represents commitments by all countries to reduce poverty and hunger, and to tackle ill-health, gender inequality, lack of education, lack of access to clean water and environmental degradation.
The MDGs are framed as a compact, which recognises both the efforts that must be undertaken by developing countries, and the contribution that developed countries can make through trade, development assistance, debt relief, access to essential medicines and technology transfer.
The goals are extremely ambitious and to date progress on many of them has been slow. For example, goal one is to halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $US1 a day and to halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. Goal 2 is to ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.
The BBC reported earlier this year that "war, drought and economic stagnation in sub-Saharan Africa have caused millions of people to become even poorer. Food production has not increased, and shortages have been exacerbated by growing populations." Even the press release announcing the site said: "Although almost eight years have passed since the MDGs were first introduced, today just short of one billion people live on less than one dollar a day, every year six million children die from malnutrition before their fifth birthday, and in deeply impoverished nations less than half of the children are in primary school and fewer than 20 percent go to secondary school."
