Questions and answers on the Millennium Development Goals
1. What are the Millennium Development Goals?
The Millennium Development Goals – or MDGs – are a framework of eight goals for tackling the different dimensions of global poverty, which were agreed by all the world’s countries and development institutions in 2000. They are arguably the most broadly supported, comprehensive and specific development goals the world has ever agreed upon. The eight goals provide concrete, numerical benchmarks for progress on poverty, hunger, maternal and child mortality, disease, inadequate shelter, gender inequality, environmental degradation and global partnerships. These goals are supposed to be reached by 2015.
2. Does CAFOD support the MDGs?
CAFOD supports the Millennium Development Goals and urges the international community to pull out all the stops to meet them by 2015. Whilst we acknowledge some important criticisms of the goals – for example, the suggestion that they have focused on the symptoms and not the structural causes of poverty – we believe they have been a very positive influence overall. The goals may not be perfect, and efforts to achieve them may not always have worked, but having the targets has been enormously important. The MDGs have provided an unprecedented tool to co-ordinate, measure and improve efforts for global development – and helped transform the lives of millions of people in the developing world.
3. What progress has been made towards meeting the MDGs?
There have been advances as well as set-backs in progress towards the MDGs. Some goals look likely to be achieved by 2015 whilst others remain off-track, and there are significant differences between different countries and regions. For example, overall poverty has fallen globally, but this is largely due to strong economic growth in Asia – particularly China. War, drought and the economic crisis have meant that millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa have actually become even poorer. Goals on hunger and nutrition, education, child and maternal health are significantly off-track. However, there has been encouraging progress in other areas. Since the MDGs were agreed, the number of people with access to treatment for AIDS has increased from just 100,000 to over four million. Insecticide-treated bed nets and better access to medicines has led to a dramatic reduction in deaths from malaria in many countries. Five of the world’s regions have nearly achieved the target of universal primary education. The United Nations recently published a review of progress on the MDGs: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/mdg/Resources/Static/Products/Progress2010/MDG_Report_2010_En.pdf .
4. What are CAFOD’s partners saying about the MDGs?
CAFOD’s partners have many different points of view regarding the MDGs, but 92 per cent say that the framework as a whole has been a good thing. Our partners praise the initiative for improving awareness of development issues, spurring commitment from governments and turning the fight against poverty into a global movement. As Regina Salvador-Antequisa, director of EcoWEB in the Phillipines said, the MDGs “unified the development aims of the whole world”. Linus A Mayembe, Director of DACHEP in Tanzania, said the framework “targeted the most forgotten areas of development”. There are concerns, however, that efforts to achieve the goals have not been successful, and some important issues have been neglected. Donato Ochan Hakim, Executive Director of SSOPO in Sudan, said “the MDGs were based on the assumption that every country had the same conditions and issues”. Many of our partners have suggested that the MDG framework needs to take better account of country contexts.
5. What is preventing the MDGs from being achieved?
In order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals we need to address a range of complex problems. Violent conflict, the economic crisis and environmental change combine with issues of governance and power to present enormous challenges to global efforts in reaching the goals. The world has changed significantly since the goals were originally agreed, becoming more unstable and unpredictable, with the consequences of climate change already making themselves felt on the developing world. In these circumstances, it is more important than ever that the world redoubles its commitment to development, and shows grit and determination to fight global poverty.
6. Does CAFOD endorse “Stand-up”?
We support the aims of the Stand Up campaign but given our existing campaigns focus on our Act on Poverty campaign and preparations for the Big Climate Connection constituency-based lobby of MPs on Climate Change in November, we will not be asking our network of campaigners and Diocesan offices to roll out the action.
7. Has Britain kept its promises on the MDGs so far? And what does it need to do next?
The UK’s Department for International Development has placed the MDGs at the heart of their work over the last ten years, using the goals as an organizing framework for their activities. Britain has delivered on their aid commitments where many other countries have not. The UK is currently on-track to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on aid by 2013, and have almost entirely delivered the funds pledged at Gleneagles to ‘Make Poverty History’. Aid spending, however, is only one element of what it takes to tackle global poverty and injustice. The UK government needs to ensure that all of its international policies – including trade, foreign policy and defence – are consistent with efforts to achieve the MDGs.
8. What does CAFOD hope for the UN MDG Review Summit in September?
Standing alongside other UK NGOs, we have called on David Cameron to demonstrate the UK’s political commitment to international development at the UN MDG Review Summit in September. World leaders need to: - Agree an ambitious and universal MDGs rescue plan, with clear political and financial commitments including national plans and timetables to achieve the MDG targets. - Address inter-linkages between all eight MDGs by focusing on cross-cutting issues such as human rights, gender equality and environmental sustainability. - Address goals which are off-track, although not at the expense of other MDGs. - Prioritise women’s rights and maternal health; focus on the 30 low income countries that are furthest off-track.
9. What will come after the MDGs?
There is as yet no plan for what will happen in 2015 when the Millennium Development Goals run out. It took over ten years for the original MDGs to be agreed, and time is slipping away to agree what will happen next. CAFOD has an overwhelming mandate from our partners to advocate for another internationally agreed global framework for development to replace the MDGs after 2015. With over 95 per cent of partners supporting a new global framework, the challenge is now to learn the lessons from the original MDG process, and build a new agreement that will inspire a better world for the future. With the Institute for Development Studies, CAFOD is currently leading the first major international consultation with civil society in developing countries, to gather perspectives from our partners on what should come after the MDGs. This work will be published in January 2011.
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