Millennium Development Goals
The Millennium Development Goals are a set of eight commitments the world's countries have agreed to achieve by the year 2015. They aim at eliminating poverty, providing education for all, combating infectuous diseases, and developing global partnerships. This is an effort of the international community to bring all the nations mutually up to a higher standard of living.
The Goals:
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
*Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a 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 woman
*Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferaably
by 2005, and at all levels by 2015
4. Reduce child mortality
*Reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five
5. Improve maternal health
*Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio
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 programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources
*Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe
drinking water
*Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020
8. Develop a global partnership for development
*Develop further an open trading and financial system that is rule-based, predictable
and non-discriminatory, includes a commitment to good governance, development
and poverty reduction— nationally and internationally
*Address the least developed countries' special needs. This includes tariff- and
quota-free access for their exports; enhanced debt relief for heavily indebted poor
countries; cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous official development
assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction
*Address the special needs of landlocked and small island developing States
*Deal comprehensively with developing countries' debt problems through national and
international measures to make debt sustainable in the long term
*In cooperation with the developing countries, develop decentand productive work
for youth
*In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential
drugs in developing countries
*In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new
technologies— especially information and communications
Outcomes:
Millennium Development Goals Report 2005 (*.pdf)
Related Links:
UN Millennium Development Goals site
Secretary General's "In Larger Freedom" Speech Contents
Secretary General's Statement to the General Assembly (March 2005)
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