Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
The United Nations Millennium Development Goals are eight goals that all 191 UN member states have agreed to try to achieve by the year 2015. The United Nations Millennium Declaration, signed in September 2000 commits world leaders to combat poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women. The MDGs are derived from this Declaration, and all have specific targets and indicators.
The Eight Millennium Development Goals are:
MDG 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger - Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day
MDG 2: To achieve universal primary education - Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling
MDG 3: To promote gender equality and empower women - Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education by no later than 2015
MDG 4: To reduce child mortality - Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate
MDG 5: To improve maternal health - Reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio
MDG 6: To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases - Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it
MDG 7: To ensure environmental sustainability - Halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation
MDG 8: To develop a global partnership for development - Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system
The MDGs are inter-dependent; all the MDG influence health, and health influences all the MDGs. For example, better health enables children to learn and adults to earn. Gender equality is essential to the achievement of better health. Reducing poverty, hunger and environmental degradation positively influences, but also depends on, better health.
Further Information:
1. United Nations Millennium Declaration