The Millennium Development Goals

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight ambitious goals, from poverty eradication to environmental sustainability, which 192 United Nations member states have agreed to try to achieve by the year 2015.
The MDGs are:

• Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger;
• Achieve universal primary education;
• Promote gender equality and empower women;
• Reduce child mortality;
• Improve maternal health;
• Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases;
• Ensure environmental sustainability;
• Develop a global partnership for development.

The MDGs were officially established at the Millennium Summit in 2000, where 189 world leaders adopted the United Nations Millennium Declaration, which served as the impetus for the MDGs.

Since then-- along with increasing difficulties with implementing these goals-- a strong public debate has emerged on aid efficiency. Does aid work? Will more aid work? What are alternatives? What are the conditions for aid efficiency?

In large part, answers to these questions can be divided in two schools. Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs’s proponents call for a “Big Push” in official development assistance. Major increases in foreign aid, they say, could have huge benefits for the world's poor. Proponents include the UN, billionaires Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and George Soros, superstars Bono and Angelina Jolie, and many of the world's highest profile politicians. Jeffrey Sachs’s Big Push is detailed in his 2005 book, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time.

Yet, in his 2006 book, The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, former World Bank economist and New York University professor, William Easterly, argues that development aid over the past 50 years has not and cannot work, in part because the aid agencies try to do too much with their colossal plans. They often address goals important to the donors rather than the recipients. Also, aid groups are responsible to uninterested rich country publics, not aid recipients, so they are not likely to be punished if they fail. As a result, projects are rarely designed to incorporate feedback on what works and what does not. Additionally, the impact their aid programs have on recipient countries is limited as it is not controlled by donors and is too often subject to corruption.

What is needed, Easterly says, is more accountability and good governance. Recipient countries should prove that they would spend aid on development prior to receiving the money. Free market solutions should also more vigorously be promoted. Indeed, the most dramatic reductions in poverty in the last few generations have been in India and China. These economic successes had little to do with development aid.

The MDGs and UN development efforts reflect the Big Push approach (Jeffrey Sachs is the top economist involved in the MDGs and is Special Adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon). Meanwhile, the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a bilateral development fund created in January 2004 by the Bush administration, illustrates Easterly’s position. Relying on negotiations between the U.S. and individual nations, the program emphasizes good economic policies, such as free markets and low corruption, in recipient countries.

The strategy and policies of the UN for implementation of the MDGs is driven by the UNDG Action Plan on the Development Outcome of the 2005 World Summit: A Plan on the Millennium Declaration, MDGs, and other International Development Goals, 2006-2008.

The Plan lays down the objectives and steps of UN actions to implement the MDGs. They include food security, promotion of a human rights-based approach, and managing conflict risks. To help ensure that the MDGs will be reached by 2015, the Plan’s objectives cover a large variety of actors (such as local governments and advocacy groups, international organizations, business, UN Agencies) and policy areas (such as private sector development, communications, environment, conflict prevention).

Originally, the United Nations Millennium Project, of which Jeffrey Sachs was director from 2001 to 2006, was responsible for the implementation of the MDGs. In 2005, the UN Millennium Project published its final report: “Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals.”

In 2006, the UN MDG Support replaced the UN Millennium Project. One of the key activities of the MDG Support is to encourage and monitor MDG-based national development strategies through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

As part of a UNDG Policy Network, UN Country Teams (UNCTs) advise, advocate, and assist governments in preparing and implementing their development and poverty reductions strategies. The UN provides UNCT with the MDG Toolkit, a collection of training materials on implementing the MDGs. The emphasis is on explaining and applying the concepts, building skills and encouraging attitudes that support collaboration among development partners.

The UNDG Policy Network for the implementation of the MDGs includes other such UN aid agencies as the World Health Organization, which, in 2005, issued a report on the pursuit of health-related MDGs. In this context, the aim of the World Health Organization’s High-Level Forum (HLF) on the Health Millennium Development Goals is to provide an opportunity for candid dialogue between senior policy makers and identify opportunities for accelerating action on the health-related MDGs.

The HLF is coordinated by a small secretariat provided by the WHO and the World Bank. Forum participants include ministers and senior officials from developing countries as well as heads of bilateral and multilateral agencies, foundations, regional organizations and global partnerships.

Since 2003, the HLF has held annual meetings, which have produced outcome documents relating to the pursuit of the health-related MDGs.

As international agencies aspire to a global governance agenda, concerns about measuring success and accountability for results have arisen. In this regard, the global pursuit of the MDGs is a significant challenge. The UN Inter-Agency and Expert Group (IAEG) on MDG Indicators includes various Departments within the United Nations Secretariat, a number of UN agencies from within the United Nations system and outside, various government agencies and national statisticians, and other organizations concerned with the development of MDG data at the national and international levels including donors and expert advisers.

IAEG, which is housed within the Statistics Division of UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, is responsible for the preparation of data and analysis to monitor progress towards the MDGs. The Group also reviews and defines methodologies and technical issues in relation to the indicators, produces guidelines, and helps define priorities and strategies to support countries in data collection, analysis and reporting on MDGs.

IAEG published its most recent annual analysis of the status of the MDGs in the form of the 2007 Millennium Development Goals Report.

Of course, the success of the MDGs depends in large part on the existence of good governance at the national level in developing countries. Along these lines, at the 7th Global Forum on Reinventing Government held in Vienna, Austria in 2007, DESA presented its report “Governance for the Millennium Development Goals: Core Issues and Good Practices.”

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