Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty
The first United Nations Millennium Development Goals seeks to “Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty.”
Progress varies across regions. While poverty decreased in Asia due primarily to economic successes, little progress was made in the most worrisome region, sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, poverty is present in every country and society all across the globe, even in a first world country such as the United States. In 2005, for example, 1.5 million people lived on US$ 1.25 or less a day, according to the United Nations.
Goal 1 has three main targets. The first is to halve between 1990 and 2015 the number of people whose income is less than one dollar a day. According to the United Nations, this target remains within reach for the world as a whole, but in most regions an unprecedented effort will be needed to reach this target.
The second target seeks to achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people. The United Nations believes that full employment remains a distant possibility, and even though employment levels have somewhat remained stable since 1997, many continue to live on one dollar a day or less.
Lastly, the third target looks to halve between 1990 and 2015, the number of people suffering from hunger. Statistics show that about 10 million people die every year of hunger and hunger-related diseases. To make matters worse, the United Nations and other institutions are especially concerned about achieving this target due to the recent worldwide increase in food prices. It is estimated that the rise in food prices may push 100 million people deeper into poverty. Though the proportion of undernourished children under 5 has declined since 1990, the number of underweight children in developing countries still exceeds 140 million. With such examples, the United Nations finds that progress on reducing hunger is insufficient to achieving the target, and urgent interventions are needed.
The United Nations believes that there is still much work to be done in order to achieve the first goal. Some challenges include ensuring social safety nets to minimize the consequences on the poor of the global economic recession and higher food prices, increasing emergency food aid, assisting developing countries in transforming subsistence agriculture in order to achieve sustainable productivity and promoting equitable access to economic resources and decent work.
Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education
Across the world, inequalities in access to education prevent children from completing primary schooling. Currently, 75 million children of schooling age are not in school. Thirty-eight million of these children live in sub-Saharan Africa, where the primary school enrollment rate is 71 percent, according to the most recent Goal Two fact sheet released by the United Nations in September 2008. Many of these children are girls from poor or rural regions. A quarter of children in rural areas of developing nations are not in school, compared to just 16 percent of children in urban areas. Many schools in developing countries lack proper sanitation facilities, which discourages girls from attending.
The United Nations believes that education is essential for children to reach their potential and for nations to develop. The second Millennium Development Goal is to achieve universal primary education. Specifically, the goal’s target is to ensure that by 2015, boys and girls everywhere will be able to complete a full course of primary education.
So far, the UN has seen some success. In Haiti, a $70,000 donation provided supplies for 4.300 impoverished students in 33 schools across the country. Ghana abolished school fees that had prevented poverty-stricken children from attending and saw an increase of 1.2 million enrolled students between 2004 and 2005, according to the UN’s Millennium Development Goal Monitor Web site for Goal Two. This success has been echoed in several other African countries, including Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda. Unfortunately, as enrollment increases, so do funding challenges.
Since Goal 2 was announced, there has been a significant increase in education aid for low-income countries, from $1.6 billion in 1999 to $5 billion in 2006. However, this is still well below the $11 billion required annually to make universal primary education a reality by 2015. If this continues, the UN predicts that 58 of the 86 countries that currently lack universal education will not reach the goal by 2015.
Achieving universal primary education goes beyond simply improving enrollment. UN hopes to improve the attendance rate as well as the quality of education to provide children with basic literacy and numeracy skills. UN believes that everyone deserves the opportunity to make a better life for him or herself, and that education is fundamental to this empowerment. Achieving universal education is a vital step in accomplishing many of the other Millennium Development Goals.
Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
In almost every region of the world, the opportunity for women and girls to learn and to achieve in a male-dominant society is slowly becoming a reality. Some countries are finally beginning to promote girls’ education. According to the United Nations, girls’ enrollment in primary education increased more than boys in all developing regions between 2000 and 2006. As a result, two out of three countries have achieved gender parity at this level. Also, women have more access to employment now than ever before and held 18 percent of the parliamentary seats worldwide in 2008. One success story can be found in Rwanda where a new constitution called for at least 30 percent of Rwanda’s parliamentary seats to be held by women. After the country’s first ever free and fair election, women constitute almost 50 percent in the Rwandan Chamber of Deputies and 35 percent in the Senate, the highest percentage of women parliamentarians in the world, according to the UN’s Millennium Development Goal Monitor.
However, it is still discouraging to report that the Goal 3 target of eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education by 2005 and in all levels of education no later than 2015 is not on course to be achieved by most developing nations. A UN fact sheet dated from September 2008 reports that girls still account for 55 percent of the “out-of-school” population. There are still significant gender disparities in many regions, such as sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania and Western Asia. One hundred and thirteen countries failed to achieve gender parity in primary and secondary school enrollment by 2005 and, of those, only 18 are likely to achieve the goal by 2015. The UN says that often this is because of a depleted water supply and lack of proper sanitation. For example, women and girls in many parts of the world are forced to spend long time daily fetching water and children, especially girls, and they often do not attend school because their schools lack decent and private sanitation facilities. Many efforts such as the change to Rwanda’s constitution and a $19 million contribution from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to boost productivity and income of women farmers in Faso, Mali, and Senegal (the three least developed countries in Africa) have been successful and should be commended, but the UN recognizes that global cooperation is needed to effectively empower women worldwide.
Goal 4: Reduce Child Mortality
Despite progress in recent years, the deaths of children under 5 years from preventable causes remain unacceptably high. UN Millennium Development Goal 4 aims to reduce the under-5 mortality rate for children by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015.
A child born in a developing country is over 13 times more likely to die within the first 5 years of life than a child born in an industrialized country, according to the United Nations. The highest child mortality rates in the world exist in sub-Saharan Africa. This region in Africa accounts for more than half the deaths in the developing world. There are also extremely high rates child mortality rates in Southern Asia.
The leading causes of childhood deaths – pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria and measles – are easily prevented through simple improvements in basic health services and proven interventions, such as oral re-hydration therapy, insecticide-treated mosquito nets and vaccinations. Under-nutrition is estimated to be an underlying cause in more than one third of all deaths in children under 5. Families in poor and rural areas of developing countries lack the basic medical education to correlate nutrition and health. Thirty-seven percent of under-5 deaths occur in the first month of life, and simple neonatal and maternal care could save countless newborns around the world.
In past years, measles was the leading cause of child mortality, and recent administrations of measles vaccinations in sub-Saharan Africa have been successful, with measles deaths falling by more than 91 percent. A single dose campaign—one in which volunteers arrive and administer one vaccination shot—is not effective in preventing future generations’ measles outbreaks. Some of these vaccinations require booster shots, which require periodic dosage campaigns in which organizations return every few years to administer vaccinations and shots. The UN is adamant about changing these statistics. Their goal is to ensure that measles mortality is reduced by above 90 percent by 2010, compared to 2006’s 80 percent rate.
Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health
Maternal mortality is still extremely high in the developing world. Because of this, Goal 5 aims to reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio by 2015, a daunting task. This part of the goal focuses on the proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel. According to the UN, this is the area of least progress among all of the MDGs. Goal 5 also aims to achieve universal access to reproductive health. The UN MDG Monitor explains that this target involves the consideration of the contraceptive prevalence rate, the adolescent birth rate and an unmet need for family planning. While most maternal deaths can be prevented, in Africa and South Asia, complications during pregnancy and childbirth remain the most frequent cause of death for women. In some countries the number is actually increasing.
The UN reports, however, that there has been some success in various regions of sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Arab States with the Campaign to End Fistula. Fistula is a childbirth injury, where a ruptured birth canal can leave women incontinent. Governments and the private-sector have donated to the cause. As a result, nine out of 10 fistulas can be successfully repaired in these regions.
These targets can be achieved through several ways. Developing countries need more funding to strengthen health systems. Trained workers will also be needed to achieve this goal—not only for quality childbirth services, but also to provide other obstetric needs. There must be access to timely services and adequate facilities. Additionally, access to contraception must be increased, as well as sexual and reproductive health counseling. Child marriage should be avoided to prevent young women’s pregnancy.
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases
The United Nations set to combat the deadly diseases HIV, AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in the Millennium goals. Collectively, these diseases claim the lives of six million every year.
Everyday, 7,500 people get HIV and 5,500 die of AIDS, according to the Millennium Development Goals Report. The disease affects mostly those in sub-Saharan Africa. The UN set the Millennium goal to achieve universal access to treatment for HIV and AIDS for all those who need it by next year. While the numbers of people newly infected by HIV and dying from AIDS are declining, the number of women with HIV is increasing. More women than men are currently living with HIV. In 2005, only 11 percent of pregnant women in low- and middle-income countries who were HIV-positive were receiving services to prevent the transmission of the virus to their newborns. In 2005, 15 million children had lost one or both parents to AIDS, 80 percent of them in sub-Saharan Africa. It is predicted that there will be up to 20 million orphans of parents with AIDS next year. Care of orphans is an enormous social problem, which will only get worse as more parents die of AIDS.
The next disease the UN seeks to combat is malaria, a disease spread by parasites in tropical and subtropical regions. There are 515 million cases of malaria each year, killing between one and three million of mostly young children in sub-Saharan Africa.
A vaccine for the disease has recently been discovered and is expected to be available by 2012. Parasites have developed a resistance to many of the treatments for malaria and few drugs exist to treat the disease where needed. African countries have increased prevention techniques of mosquito nets, insect repellants, spraying insecticides inside houses and draining standing water where mosquitoes lay their eggs. Recorded malaria cases and deaths went down 70 percent from 2000 to 2006. But where malaria is endemic, the burden of malaria is often highest and mosquito nets coverage lowest. Billions are needed to provide the medicines to fight malaria worldwide.
The UN is also making efforts to control tuberculosis, which is spread through the air when people with the disease cough, sneeze or spit. Vaccines and treatment are available, but treatment is difficult, and antibiotic resistance is a growing problem. One third of the world’s current population has some sort of tuberculosis, and someone is infected every second. These are mostly latent infections, however, with one out of every 10 cases progressing to active disease. The number of new tuberculosis cases is rising, with the majority of cases in sub-Saharan Africa and the Asian regions. In 2006, more than 14 million were infected with tuberculosis and two million died from the disease.
Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability
By Corey Erb
In order to ensure environmental sustainability, the UN has proposed four targets. First, nations must integrate sustainable development principles into their policies and contain greenhouse emissions and limit ozone-depleting substances. The second requires a significant reduction of the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010, with implies in regulating land and marine area conservation, slow deforestation and ensuring that fisheries are sustainable in order to reduce the number of species threatened with extinction. The third target is to cut in half by 2015 the number of people living without sustainable access to drinking water and basic sanitation. Currently around 1 billion people worldwide live without such necessities. Finally, to achieve this goal, by 2020 there must be significant improvement in at least 100 million slum dwellers through “simple, low-cost interventions,” according to the Millennium Development Goals Report 2008.
Some efforts have worked, though several targets still need further attention. Since the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which placed an international ban on most chlorofluorocarbons, was passed, over 96 percent of ozone-depleting substances have been phased out. In 2007, governments agreed to move the final phase-out date for hydrochlorofluorocarbons up 10 years, according to the UN’s Goal 7 fact sheet. But according to the UN, more global participation is required in order to reduce human impact on the ozone layer.
This Goal is also concerned with other significant issues. Over 1.6 billion people have gained access to safe drinking water since 1990, but around half of the world’s population still faces a water scarcity. Sanitation has improved, but still almost a quarter of the developing world’s population is without improved sanitation. Fisheries are facing the worst situation as the rate of overexploited and depleted fish stocks has increased over the last 20 years, not decreased as hoped. Also, the number of species threatened with extinction has increased.
These problems require immediate attention though progress has been slowed by recent worldwide economic problems.
Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development
It is worth noting that within the context of the last MDG, there is a tradeoff between the nations that help develop the poorest countries and those poor countries themselves. In order to build a global partnership for development by 2015, the developing countries must take responsibility in achieving the first seven goals. This does not mean that developed countries can sit back and hope this happens, but instead they must do their part by providing resources, such as financial aid for clearing international debt. Other targets include loosening restrictions on trade, canceling bilateral debt, and developing landlocked countries.
In turn, the poorest countries will receive aid first, but they must be willing to govern their land and citizens fairly.
This goal also discusses providing work for youths, supplying affordable pharmaceuticals, and developing necessary technologies including the Internet.
In recent years, Goal 8 has taken shape and there are success stories to prove it. The Yemen government came to the UN looking for an MDG evaluation. In conjunction with several international agencies, the UN and Yemen created a full program of support. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the International Labor Organization (ILO) worked on economic growth; the UNDP on environmental issues, decentralizing the government and gender issues; the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Women’s Health Organization (WHO) worked on health and population; and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP) helped create food security. Yemen is now using this full assessment to create specific targets and priorities in the hopes of accomplishing the MDGs.
According to the Millennium Development Goal’s Monitor, “along with a public investment plan supported by UNDP, the assessment also became the basis for a council-sponsored donor conference in late 2006 that raised almost US$5 billion for Yemen’s national development strategy.”
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