Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
At the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000 world leaders adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The intent was to set clear targets for reducing poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women by 2015. As noted on the MDG web site, the eight Millennium Development Goals constitute an ambitious agenda to significantly improve the human condition by 2015. The Goals set targets for reducing poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women. For each Goal a set of Targets and Indicators have been defined and are used to track the progress in meeting the Goals, learn more.
Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger |
|
| Target 1 | Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day |
| Target 2 | Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger |
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education |
|
| Target 3 | Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling |
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women |
|
| Target 4 | Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and to all levels of education no later than 2015 |
Goal 4: Reduce child mortality |
|
| Target 5 | Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate |
Goal 5: Improve maternal health |
|
| Target 6 | Reduce by three-quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio |
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases |
|
| Target 7 | Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS |
| Target 8 | Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases |
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability |
|
| Target 9 | Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources |
| Target 10 | Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation |
| Target 11 | By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers |
| Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development | |
| Target 12 | Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system [Includes a commitment to good governance, development, and poverty reduction – both nationally and internationally] |
| Target 13 | Address the Special Needs of the Least Developed Countries [Includes: tariff and quota free access for LDC exports; enhanced programme of debt relief for HIPC and cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous ODA for countries committed to poverty reduction] |
| Target 14 | Address the Special Needs of landlocked countries and small island developing States (through the Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States and the outcome of the 22nd special session of the General Assembly) |
| Target 15 | Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term |
| Target 16 | In co-operation with developing countries, develop and implement strategies for decent and productive work for youth |
| Target 17 | In co-operation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable, essential drugs in developing countries |
| Target 18 | In co-operation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications |