• Display

an Eldis Resource

This paper reviews the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) process, drawing some recommendations to feed into the debate concerning what will take their place in 2015 when it comes to an end.

The author notes that creating the MDGs was a process that was led by rich countries, with comparatively little involvement of the lower and middle income countries. Likewise, the merging of the international development goals (IDGs) and MDGs was undertaken mainly between rich countries and the UN. In this sense, the author indicates that rich countries needed ambitious goals for their image and legitimacy, while developing countries were more interested in national goals.

The paper points out the following findings:

• concerning the progress in meeting the MDGs, some clear successes are visible, notably the reduction of extreme poverty and also the improvement in primary school enrolments
• similarly, the target of halting and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS is likely to be met
• however, several areas have shown only weak improvements and even the successes are qualified
• progress has been highly geographically uneven, with global progress masking regional slippage, and regional progress masking deterioration in individual countries
• actually, the impact of MDGs can be measured by its generated increase in quantity of development finance being provided by the donor countries, as was implicit in the goal
  

The paper concludes that the opportunity created by the millennium moment, to mobilise countries and people against poverty has been lost. The MDGs have made a difference but they have not transformed the process of international cooperation in the ways that their proponents had hoped.

• Full text of document
• Publisher details
• Send to a friend