What are the Millenium Development Goals?
The Millennium Development Goals, are a set of realistic and achievable targets adopted by the UN in 2000. They aim to lift around 500 million people out of poverty by the year 2015. By signing up to these goals, governments of the world have committed themselves to working collaboratively towards a better future for us all. If this happens, fewer women will die in childbirth, fewer people will die from treatable diseases, many more boys and girls will go to school and the lives of millions of people will improve dramatically.
- End Hunger & Extreme Poverty: Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day and achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people. Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger
- Achieve universal primary education: all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling
- Promote gender equality and empower women: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015
- Reduce child mortality: Reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five
- Improve maternal health: Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio and achieve, by 2015, universal access to reproductive health
- Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases: Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS and reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases
- Ensure environmental sustainability: Integrate sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources. Reduce biodiversity loss, increase access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020
- Develop a Global Partnership for Development: Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system. Address the special needs of the least developed countries and deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries.
“Passing the midpoint to the 2015 deadline for the Millennium Development Goals, we face a development emergency. Millions of people are still trapped in structural poverty and go hungry every day. As we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, let us remember that development should not be a privilege of the few, but a right for all.”
Ban Ki-Moon
United Nations Secretary General
Click here for more information about the MDGs on the campaign website.
