A Break from the Past

In September 2000, the largest-ever gathering of world leaders adopted the United Nations Millennium Declaration. The cornerstone of the Millennium Declaration is a global agenda of eight development goals, known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), for cutting world poverty in half by 2015. The MDGs have been described as “the most broadly supported, comprehensive, and specific poverty reduction targets the world has ever established” and the “fulcrum” on which international development policy pivots (UN Millennium Project 2005:2-4).

In many ways, the MDGs represent an innovative approach to ending poverty worldwide. They constitute a break with business-as-usual in the formulation of international development policy and the delivery of development aid. The MDGs address extreme poverty in many dimensions, including hunger, disease, and lack of adequate shelter, while also committing nations to take action to promote gender equality, education, and environmental sustainability. (See Table 1.) The Goals condense and refocus the as-yet-unrealized anti-poverty commitments of the past several decades into an action-oriented agenda.

Perhaps the most important contribution of the MDGs is their infusion of accountability into the global campaign against poverty. The establishment of quantified, time-bound targets and measurable indicators creates a benchmark for tracking progress in reaching the Goals. The requirement for countries to produce periodic MDG progress reports introduces a modicum of transparency that has been conspicuously absent from many international processes.

If these innovative aspects of the MDGs propel them to ultimate success by 2015, the world will look quite different than it might otherwise have looked, given the disappointing development trajectory of the 1990s. Reaching the MDGs and their associated development targets would mean lifting 500 million of the world’s people out of extreme poverty, liberating 300 million from the suffering of hunger, and providing 350 million additional people with a reliable, sustainable source of safe drinking water (UN Millennium Project 2005:1).

How is the world faring with efforts to attain the MDGs? The results so far have been mixed. In early 2005, the findings of several monitoring studies were published as part of a fiveyear stock-taking of MDG progress. These reports generally portray a spotty track record that differs by global region and across the various Goals. With respect to halving income poverty (MDG-1), one study noted that East Asia had already achieved the Goal, and South Asia is on target, but in Sub- Saharan Africa, most countries are in danger of falling far short (IMF and World Bank 2005:2). Another report concluded that much of the sub-Saharan region—faced with continuing hunger and malnourishment as well as high levels of child and maternal mortality—is seriously off track for reaching most of the Goals. Even in Asia, where progress has been most rapid, hundreds of millions of people still live in extreme poverty. Other global regions—such as Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East, and the transitional economies of the former Soviet Union—have mixed records, with slow or no progress on some of the Goals (UN Millennium Project 2005:15). (See Figure 1.)