The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are a set of eight time-bound, concrete and specific targets aimed at significantly reducing, if not decisively eradicating poverty, by the year 2015:

1. Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger;
2. Achieving universal primary education;
3. Promoting gender equality and empowering women;
4. Reducing child mortality;
5. Improving maternal health;
6. Combating HIV /AIDS, malaria and other diseases;
7. Ensuring environmental sustainability; and,
8. Developing global partnerships for development.

Global Commitment to the Millennium Development Goals
In September 2000, one hundred and eighty-nine UN member-countries -- rich and poor alike -- reaffirmed their commitment to peace and security, good governance, and attention to the most vulnerable with the adoption of the Millennium Declaration.

Containing commitments to achieve the eight MDGs and the specific targets under them by 2015, the Millennium Declaration reflects the vision of entire nations, working together with international and country-based organizations, to wipe out poverty and the worst forms of human deprivation, and lay the foundations for sustainable human development by the year 2015.

The overarching need is to ensure that the MDGs are integrated into and given top priority in each committed country's development planning efforts: with efficient monitoring, localization, and advocacy systems put in place; crucial financing secured; multisectoral support mobilized; and an enabling environment created with an MDG-responsive policy framework and legislation.

Philippine Commitment to the Millennium Development Goals
Since the Philippines first resolved to adopt the MDGs, it has made encouraging strides, particularly towards the attainment of targets on reducing extreme poverty; child mortality; the incidence of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria; on improving gender equality in education; and improving households' adequate dietary intake as well as access to safe drinking water.

Underpinning these gains are two facts. First, the MDGs have been tightly integrated into the Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP) 2004-2010, thus allowing government strategies, policies and action plans to simultaneously address national and MDG targets. Second, the government has continually closely monitored its own rate of progress in MDG indicators, and used this information to fine-tune its planning and implementation, especially to ensure effective implementation at the local level.

Nevertheless, serious challenges and threats remain with regard to targets on maternal health, access to reproductive health services, nutrition, primary education, and environmental sustainability. And glaring disparities across regions persist, as do severe funding constraints.

The overall probability of attaining the targets remains high, though dependent largely on the confluence of several factors, among them: scaling up of current efforts on all target areas; more efficient synchronization and allocation of available limited resources, including mobilization of additional resources; and stronger advocacy for and enhanced capability to implement the MDGs at the local level.

Goal 1: Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger
Target 1: Halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty between 1990 and 2015
Target 2: Halve the proportion of population below the minimum level of dietary energy consumption and halve the proportion of underweight children under five years old

Goal 2: Achieving universal primary education
Target 3: Achieve universal access to primary education by 2015

Goal 3: Promoting gender equality and empowering women
Target 4: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015

Goal 4: Reducing child mortality
Target 5: Reduce children under-five mortality rate by two-thirds by 2015

Goal 5: Improving maternal health
Target 6: Reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015 the maternal mortality ratio
Target 7: Increase access to reproductive health services to 60 percent by 2010 and 80 percent by 2015

Goal 6: Combating HIV /AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Target 8: Halt and reverse the spread of HIV and AIDS by 2015
Target 9: Halt and reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases by 2015

Goal 7: Ensuring environmental sustainability
Target 10: Implement national strategies for sustainable development by 2005, to reverse loss of environmental resources by 2015
Target 11: Halve the proportion of people with no access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation or those who cannot afford it by 2015
Target 12: Achieve a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020

Goal 8: Developing global partnerships for development
Target 13: Develop further an open, rule-based predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system; include a commitment to good governance, development, and poverty reduction, both nationally and internationally
Target 14: Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debts sustainable in the long run
Target 15: Provide access to affordable essential drugs, in cooperation with pharmaceutical industries

UNDP supports MDG-based national development strategies
The UN System is helping countries improve their capacity to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). To support this effort, UNDP and the Millennium Project have designed a comprehensive set of services to support MDG-based national development strategies. These services focus on three pillars:

MDG-based diagnostics and investment planning (technical and financial assistance needed to achieve the MDGs over the long term); Widening policy options and choices (sectoral and cross-sectoral policy reforms and frameworks needed to accelerate growth with equity and promote long-term human development); and Strengthening national capacity (enable effective service delivery at the national and local levels).

Millennium Project
The Millennium Project was commissioned by the United Nations Secretary-General in 2002, aims at proposing the best strategies for meeting the MDGs and at developing a concrete action plan for the world to reverse the grinding poverty, hunger and disease affecting billions of people.

Headed by Professor Jeffrey Sachs, the Millennium Project is an independent advisory body and presented its final recommendations, Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals to the Secretary-General in January 2005.

The bulk of the Project’s work has been carried out by 10 thematic Task Forces comprising a total of more than 250 experts from around the world including: researchers and scientists; policymakers; representatives of NGOs, UN agencies, the World Bank, IMF and the private sector. Since their establishment, the Task Forces have conducted extensive research within their fields of expertise to produce recommendations for meeting the Millennium Development Goals. The ongoing work of the Project is led by a secretariat housed at UNDP headquarters in New York.

Partnerships
Partnerships are particularly important for UNDP's work and for achieving the MDGs. The eighth MDG, "To develop a global partnership for development," explicitly calls for partnerships, which are essential at all levels-local, national, global-for the attainment of the other seven goals and the values and actions set out in the Millennium Declaration.

UNDP's partners include governments, other UN agencies, international financial institutions, bilateral agencies, the private sector and civil society. Across countries and regions, UNDP as the UN's global development network, uses its global presence to bring together partners from many different backgrounds to share expertise, launch joint ventures and develop long-term solutions.

Did you know?

If worldwide trends continue through 2015, the reduction in mortality among children under five will be about one quarter, far from the target of a two thirds reduction.

Global progress
Are we on track to meet the MDGs by 2015?
So far there are significant advances together with important set-backs. Every region faces particular challenges but has the opportunity to work together in order to achieve the MDGs. Although there is a long way to go, we know that the goals are achievable with global political support, strong partnerships and coordinated efforts. We also know that if some trends persist, some of the goals will be very difficult to reach.

Progress so far:
Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty & hunger
Global poverty rates are falling, led by Asia. But millions more people have sunk deep into poverty in sub- Saharan Africa, where the poor are getting poorer.

Progress has been made against hunger, but slow growth of agricultural output and expanding populations have led to setbacks in some regions. Since 1990, millions more people are chronically hungry in sub- Saharan Africa and in Southern Asia, where half the children under age 5 are malnourished.

Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
Five developing regions are approaching universal enrolment. But in sub-Saharan Africa, fewer than two thirds of children are enrolled in primary school.

Other regions, including Southern Asia and Oceania, also have a long way to go. In these regions and elsewhere, increased enrolment must be accompanied by efforts to ensure that all children remain in school and receive a high-quality education.

Goal 3: Promote gender equality & empower women
The gender gap is closing — albeit slowly — in primary school enrolment in the developing world. This is a first step towards easing long-standing inequalities between women and men. In almost all developing regions, women represent a smaller share of wage earners than men and are often relegated to insecure and poorly paid jobs.

Though progress is being made, women still lack equal representation at the highest levels of government, holding only 16 per cent of parliamentary seats worldwide.

Goal 4: Reduce child mortality
Death rates in children under age 5 are dropping. But not fast enough. Eleven million children a year — 30,000 a day — die from preventable or treatable causes. Most of these lives could be saved by expanding existing programmes that promote simple, low-cost solutions.

Goal 5: Improve maternal health
More than half a million women die each year during pregnancy or childbirth. Twenty times that number suffer serious injury or disability. Some progress has been made in reducing maternal deaths in developing regions, but not in the countries where giving birth is most risky.

Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria & other diseases
AIDS has become the leading cause of premature death in sub-Saharan Africa and the fourth largest killer worldwide. In the European countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and parts of Asia, HIV is spreading at an alarming rate. Though new drug treatments prolong life, there is no cure for AIDS, and prevention efforts must be intensified in every region of the world if the target is to be reached.

Malaria and tuberculosis together kill nearly as many people each year as AIDS, and represent a severe drain on national economies. Ninety per cent of malaria deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, where prevention and treatment efforts are being scaled up. Tuberculosis is on the rise, partly as a result of HIV/AIDS, though a new international protocol to detect and treat the disease is showing promise.

Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
Most countries have committed to the principles of sustainable development. But this has not resulted in sufficient progress to reverse the loss of the world’s environmental resources. Achieving the goal will require greater attention to the plight of the poor, whose day-to-day subsistence is often directly linked to the natural resources around them, and an unprecedented level of global cooperation. Action to prevent further deterioration of the ozone layer shows that progress is possible.

Access to safe drinking water has increased, but half the developing world still lack toilets or other forms of basic sanitation. Nearly 1 billion people live in urban slums because the growth of the urban population is outpacing improvements in housing and the availability of productive jobs.

Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development
The United Nations Millennium Declaration represents a global social compact: developing countries will do more to ensure their own development, and developed countries will support them through aid, debt relief and better opportunities for trade. Progress in each of these areas has already begun to yield results. But developed countries have fallen short of targets they have set for themselves.

To achieve the Millennium Development Goals, increased aid and debt relief must be accompanied by further opening of trade, accelerated transfer of technology and improved employment opportunities for the growing ranks of young people in the developing world.

***For more info, visit: http://www.undp.org.ph