MDGs not on course - time for urgent action!

Marking the half-way point between the adoption of the Millennium Declaration in 2000 and the deadline of 2015 for the achievement of eight Millennium Development Goals, several thousand people gathered in Bern, Switzerland on July 7th 2007 to demand an increase in Swiss overseas development aid. Mary Robinson spoke at the event.

I was pleased to join civil society organizations and government officials at a large public gathering in the Swiss capital city of Berne on 7/7/2007 to mark the half-way point to the 2015 date for achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

The Berne event - "0.7% - Together Against Poverty" - highlighted one critical dimension of the strategy needed to achieve the goals set by world leaders in 2000: rich nations need to do their part by meeting internationally agreed development assistance targets. It was heartening to see such a large gathering of Swiss civil society organizations and ordinary people urging their government to raise the Swiss level of official development assistance to meet the 0.7% target.

The MDGs provided a hopeful indication of how international cooperation could unfold in the early part of the 21st century. World leaders acknowledged a shared responsibility for the fate of our planet and its citizens and committed to working collectively to halve those in extreme poverty and hunger and achieve universal primary education for boys and girls by 2015. In the 2000 UN Millennium Declaration they agreed to promote gender equality and empowerment of women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases and ensure environmental sustainability.

Where do we stand half way to 2015 in living up to those commitments?

A new stock taking report [21 pages, 883kb] by the UN paints a decidedly mixed picture. It shows that significant strides have been made in some countries while in other places, like sub-Saharan Africa, no country is on track to meet the goals of halving extreme poverty, ensuring universal primary education or stemming the AIDS pandemic by 2015. This is tragic and unacceptable because we know what works and what kinds of actions are needed to make faster and more equitable progress.

The experience of the past seven years tells us that where political will exists there can be positive results. Even some of the poorest countries like Rwanda, Mozambique and Bangladesh are on track to achieve many of the MDGs, precisely because there is political will and responsible donor support. But we also need to look beyond the numbers.

On a recent trip to Ghana, where I had the honor to address government, donor, international agency and civil society representatives, there was a sense of achievement that MDG 1 concerning poverty reduction would be reached ahead of the 2015 target. But political will to tackle other goals lags behind. Ghana is challenged by increasing inequalities between different areas of the country, and is still not moving fast enough to promote women's equality.

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