Produced by: United Nations Development Programme (2008)
The half-way stage of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has been reached. The international community now only has seven short years to realise the MDGs' eight development goals, and with it its commitment to drastically reduce poverty; provide far greater access to health and education; and, amongst other objectives, enhance job security and 'guarantee' livelihoods.
To illustrate the progress made and the work needed to be done, the UN has produced this paper. There are a number of successes to detail, including:
- the overarching goal of reducing absolute poverty by half is within reach for the world as a whole
- the gender parity index in primary education is 95 per cent or higher in six of the 10 regions, including the most populous ones
- deaths from measles fell from over 750,000 in 2000 to less than 250,000 in 2006, and about 80 per cent of children in developing countries now receive a measles vaccine
- the share of developing countries' export earnings devoted to servicing external debt fell from 12.5 per cent in 2000 to 6.6 per cent in 2006, allowing them to allocate more resources to reducing poverty.
However there are a number of areas which require urgent attention, including:
- the proportion of people in sub-Saharan Africa living on less than $1 per day is unlikely to be reduced by the target of one-half
- about one quarter of all children in developing countries are considered to be underweight and are at risk of having a future blighted by the longterm effects of undernourishment
- in one third of developing countries, women account for less than 10 per cent of parliamentarians
- developed countries' foreign aid expenditures declined for the second consecutive year in 2007 and risk falling short of the commitments made in 2005.
Available online at: http://www.eldis.org/cf/rdr/?
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