Human Rights Facts (13): Millennium Development Goals

I’ve mentioned the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) before. This post gives some more data.

The United Nations agreed the 8 MDGs in 2000, to be reached in 2015. Now, half-way to that deadline, there is progress, but not all regions in the world are doing equally well. However, even in the poorest region – sub-Saharan Africa – some progress has been made.

GOAL 1: ERADICATE EXTREME POVERTY

One of the targets in this goal is to halve the number of people living on less than $1 a day:

There has been substantial progress on this target. Another, related target under this first goal is to halve the number of people suffering from hunger:

On the sub-target of the number of children who are underweight, there has been progress but much more can be done.

See also these posts on the topic of poverty and famine.

GOAL 2: ACHIEVE UNIVERSAL PRIMARY EDUCATION

Target: By 2015, all children to be able to complete a course of primary schooling:

Good progress here, but these data on enrollment do not say anything about the quality of education or the regularity of attendance.

See also this post on literacy and this one on child labor.

GOAL 3: PROMOTE GENDER EQUALITY AND EMPOWER WOMEN

This goal is more vague and less easily measured. One target is the elimination of gender disparity in primary and secondary education no later than 2015. One way to measure this target is to count how many women have secure and paid employment in areas other than agriculture:

See also this post on gender discrimination.

GOAL 4: REDUCE CHILD MORTALITY

Target: Between 1990 and 2015, reduce the under-five mortality rate by two-thirds:

Some progress again, but there are still more than 10 million children who die annually before their fifth birthday, mostly from preventable causes. And a long way away from the target.

See also this post on infant mortality.

GOAL 5: IMPROVE MATERNAL HEALTH

Target: Reduce the maternal mortality rate by three-quarters between 1990 and 2015. Maternal mortality rates remain unacceptably high across the developing world. In sub-Saharan Africa, a woman’s risk of dying from complications during childbirth is 1 in 16, compared with 1 in 3,800 in the developed world. More than half a million women die during pregnancy or childbirth every year, and many millions suffer from inadequately treated complications.

See also this post on maternal mortality.

GOAL 6: COMBAT HIV/AIDS, MALARIA AND OTHER DISEASES

Target: Have halted and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/Aids:

The number of infections seems to be leveling off, but the number of people dying from aids isn’t.

See also this post on aids.

GOAL 7: ENSURE ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

Also difficult to measure. One of the targets is to halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without access to drinking water and basic sanitation:

GOAL 8: DEVELOP A GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP FOR DEVELOPMENT

The total amount of international development aid is now more than $100 billion a year.

This is the progress that has been made:

(source)

See also this post on development aid.

Related Articles

• Factbox: Progress in the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (reuters.com)
• “UN Millennium Development Goals Summit Tackles PHE” and related posts (newsecuritybeat.blogspot.com)
• The millennium development goals need progressive UK leadership | Juanita During (guardian.co.uk)
• Millennium Development Goals summit opens at UN (cbc.ca)
• Meeting the Millennium Development Goals – can we do it? (leftfootforward.org)
• John W. McArthur: Our Pledges for the Millennium Development Goals (huffingtonpost.com)
• Top 5 Millennium Development Goal success stories (csmonitor.com)