About the Millennium Development Goals
Where do the Goals come from?
What are the Goals?
Why are the Goals important?
Can we reach the Goals?
Where do the Goals come from?
At the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000, all member countries, including Canada, signed a Millennium Declaration committing to do their part to reduce extreme poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women by 2015. The idea of uniting to improve global human conditions is nothing new, but the Millennium Declaration was the first time developing and developed countries of the UN committed to meeting a set of goals with measurable, time-bound targets.
Goals 1 to 7 call on governments in developing countries to channel resources towards these objectives, and to ensure the rule of law and good governance. Goal 8 calls on wealthy countries like Canada to recognize that meeting the Goals can only be achieved through a global partnership comprising of more and better aid, debt relief or cancellation and more just trade rules.
What are the Goals?
Most of the facts and figures below are taken from the 2007 Millennium Development Goals Report. To dowload it, click here.
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Goal 1: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Goal 2: achieve universal primary education
Goal 3: promote gender equality and empower women
Goal 4: reduce child mortality
Goal 5: improve maternal health
Goal 6: combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Goal 7: ensure environmental sustainability
Goal 8: develop a global partnership for development
Why are the Goals important?
The Millennium Development Goals represent a historic pact shared by developed and developing countries alike. Important commitments have been made during the summits and conferences of the 1990s, but they were never synthesized in a single set of goals adopted at such high political level of the United Nations. Broken into measurable targets and indicators, the Goals also allow us to track progress and require that countries report on their policies and programs to attain them.
The Goals are also important for the future of humanity because they simultaneously aim to promote human rights, peace, and security.
The Goals and human rights
"Extreme poverty is the most serious form of human rights violation in the world. And the elimination of poverty is not an act of charity, but a basic entitlement: a human right". -Mary Robinson, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
The Millennium Development Goals and human rights are clearly complementary and reinforcing. In fact, each Goal has corresponding human rights to the extend that any progress on one Goal means that we are that much closer to securing human rights. The Goals support human rights in that they have mobilized huge resources that are helping promote crucial human rights like health and access to education. Similarly, the Goals also provide benchmarks against which progress or failures to secure human rights can be tracked and actions taken to change the situation.
Looking at the Goals from a human rights angle helps us understand the root causes of poverty such as discrimination and powerlessness. The human rights approach reminds us that any programme or services delivered to achieve the Goals must empower people to take part in their own development.
Most importantly, human rights and the wide range of international treaties that were adopted to protect them can lend legal power to the Millennium Development Goals. The Goals have significant political standing, but, unlike human rights commitments, they are not legally binding on countries. By showing a clear link between the Goals and human rights, human rights treaties can be used as a tool to hold governments accountable to the Goals. Take Goal 1, for instance, which aims to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. By signing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, countries agreed that everyone has the right to an adequate standard of living (Article 25). This means that extreme poverty is a violation of a person’s fundamental human rights.
How the Millennium Development Goal commitments were used to realise Human Rights
On 13 December 2006, the Supreme Court of India passed an order requiring the allocation of state and central government funding for supplementary nutrition for children, pregnant women, nursing mothers and adolescent girls. In passing this order, the Supreme Court repeatedly referred to a report highlighting the low probability of India meeting the Millennium Goal on hunger, and specifically to the low likelihood of halving the share of underweight children and halving the proportion of the population below a minimum consumption level.
Text from United Nations Millennium Campaign's "Human Rights and the Millennium Development Goals: Interdependent Commitments".
The Goals and global peace
The Goals are also essential to global peace and security. Gross inequalities between countries and citizens of the same country create instability which could in part explain armed conflicts and forced migration. Meeting the Goals would free people from dehumanizing conditions and promote peace.
Can we reach the Goals?
Yes, because they are affordable. Developed countries have more wealth than ever before. While governments spent $900 billion dollars on military in 2003 alone, a number of leading experts agree that the Goals can be achieved with $195 billion of aid each year.
Yes, because they are measurable. Each Goal contains specific targets that are measurable by statistics.
Yes, because they are integrated in countries' Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. Countries that receive international assistance must report on how they have invested in the Goals.
Yes, because we are all working together. This unprecedented pact combines the power of all the world's states and civil societies – in Canada, there’s over 31 million of us, including half a million post-secondary students!
However, we will not reach the Goals without committed political leadership. Governments have to keep the commitments they made in 2000. In Canada, this means more and better aid, debt cancellation and trade justice.
