Are the MDGs priority in development strategies and aid programmes?

There is much doubt whether the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will be realised but why is this? This paper asks whether the structure of national development programmes and aid strategies are undermining MDG priorities and targets.

The authors analysed 22 developing countries’ Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) along with the policy frameworks of 21 bilateral programmes, and principally considered:

• which of the MDG priorities were reflected in the PRSPs?
• were the PRSP quantitative targets in line with the ambition of the MDGs?
• how was the PRSP using the MDGs? As a normative framework of broad priorities; as benchmarks in an evaluative framework; or as targets in a planning framework?

The paper’s findings/recommendations include:

• economic growth for income poverty reduction and social sector investments (education, health and water) are important priorities in most of the PRSPs; decent work, hunger and nutrition, the environment and access to technology tend to be neglected
  
• PRSPs were almost silent on the ethical values that are fundamental to the Millennium Declaration and the UN Development Agenda: equality, human dignity and freedom, and other human rights principles
  
• PRSPs emphasise governance as an important means of achieving the MDGs, but they focus mostly on economic governance rather than on democratic (participatory and equitable)
  processes. Since the key motivation for the MDGs was to promote a more inclusive globalisation through participatory processes, the PRSPs are undercutting their core policy purpose
  
• local adaptation is an essential part of the ownership of the MDGs. But most PRSPs use global
  goals/targets in the education, health, and water and sanitation sectors without significant local adaptation
  
• much of the donor country support effort has gone to costing on the basis of global targets, rather than on the basis of locally adapted targets. Costing on the basis of global targets is useful for resource mobilisation and evaluation, but not for resource allocation