MDGs
Achieving the MDGs: The fundamentals
Are the fundamental needs of people being met in the process of achieving the MDGs?
Authors:
A. Shepherd
Publisher:
Overseas Development Institute, London, 2008
This paper makes the case that attending to fundamental issues such as social exclusion and gender inequity is crucial to the effort to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The challenge is to inspire the public and professionals alike to step up efforts - not by focusing solely on the goals themselves, but, rather, by broadening the perspective through linking the MDGs to leading global development debates. The paper highlights several examples to show that many targets will definitely be missed, such as, MDG 7, and the target of halving the proportion of people without proper sanitation by 2015. However, between 1990 and 2006, the proportion of people worldwide without improved sanitation decreased by only 8 percentage points; at this rate, the world will miss the target by over 700 million people. For the author, analysis of indicators of poor progress like this one highlights the need to explicitly attend to social protection, and for their access to the health, education and other services that are critical for national economic, as well as social, development
In this context, it is key to 'focus on the fundamentals', specifically:
- to develop a broad consensus on the power of gender equity to achieve several of the existing goals and develop a set of [United Nations] UN-blessed good practices in monitoring progress, leading to a set of potential interventions."
- to frame humanitarian work within the MDGs leading to a stronger focus on education and its medium-term potential for empowerment, health, economic productivity and positive institutional development
- to monitor economic growth, a key fundamental at national level, but linked strongly to the national MDG discourse.
In conclusion, the paper explores the perceptive of the MDGs as a "northern" project, arguing that it is crucial to recognise and work in harmony with the "southern" preoccupation with economic growth. Furthermore, international aid is not enough, for "the necessary public expenditures will only be made consistently over long periods of time if they are underpinned by a social compact between state and citizen, in which tax revenues are used to achieve public policy objectives. If countries get the fundamentals right, the MDGs will follow..."
