What are the Millennium Development Goals?
In September 2000, the largest-ever gathering of world leaders welcomed the new millennium by adopting the Millennium Declaration. The Declaration, endorsed by 189 countries, was then translated into a roadmap setting out goals to be reached by 2015.
The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) build on agreements made at UN conferences in the 1990s and represent commitments by all countries to reduce poverty and hunger, and to tackle ill-health, gender inequality, lack of education, lack of access to clean water and environmental degradation.
The MDGs are framed as a compact, which recognizes both the efforts that must be undertaken by developing countries, and the contribution that developed countries can make through trade, development assistance, debt relief, access to essential medicines and technology transfer.
The Millennium Development Goals
- Eradicate extreme poverty & hunger
- Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day
- Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people
- Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger
- Achieve universal primary education
- Ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling
- Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015
- Reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five
- Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio
- Achieve universal access to reproductive health
- Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS
- Achieve universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it by 2010
- Halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases
- Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs; reverse loss of environmental resources
- Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving a significant reduction in the rate of loss by 2010
- Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation
- Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020
- Develop further an open trading and financial system that is rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory, includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction— nationally and internationally
- Address the least developed countries' special needs. This includes tariff- and quota-free access for their exports; enhanced debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries; cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous official development assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction
- Address the special needs of landlocked and small island developing states
- Deal comprehensively with developing countries' debt problems through national and international measures to make debt sustainable in the long term
- Develop decent and productive work for youth in cooperation with developing countries
- In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries
- In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies— especially information and communications technologies
What is the MDG Monitor?
The MDG Monitor [1] shows how countries are progressing in their efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. With the 2015 target date fast approaching, it is more important than ever to understand where the goals are on track, and where additional efforts and support are needed, both globally and at the country level.
The MDG Monitor is designed as a tool for policymakers, development practitioners, journalists, students and others to:
TRACK progress through interactive maps [2] and country-specific profiles [3]