Millennium Development Goals

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The official logos of the Millennium Development Goals.

The Millennium Development Goals ( English title: Millennium Development Goals, MDG) of the United Nations were eight development goals for 2015, which in 2000 by a working group of representatives of the United Nations, the World Bank , the IMF and the Development Committee Development Assistance Committee of the OECD have been formulated. They were derived from the Millennium Declaration , which was adopted by the United Nations during the so-called Millennium Summit .

At the end of September 2015, the MDGs were supplemented by the 17 global goals for sustainable development (SDGs) unanimously adopted by the 193 current member states of the UN at the 2015 World Summit for Sustainable Development in New York : According to them, under other things, poverty and hunger will have disappeared worldwide by 2030.

Millennium Summit

The Millennium Development Goals are a United Nations initiative .

The 55th General Assembly of the United Nations , which took place from September 6th to 8th, 2000 in New York , is called the Millennium Summit ( English Millennium Assembly ) . At what was the largest gathering of heads of state and government to date, the participants agreed on a catalog of measures with specific targets and timelines and the overarching goal of halving poverty in the world by 2015: the Millennium Development Goals. A political inventory by the United Nations listed the following facts:

  • At the time of the inventory, over a billion people were living in extreme poverty - that is, one in five people had less than the equivalent of one US dollar ( purchasing power parity ) a day to earn a living .
  • More than 700 million people were starving and malnourished .
  • More than 115 million children of primary school age had no opportunity for education; that is, they could neither read nor write .
  • Over a billion people were denied access to clean drinking water , and more than two billion had no way of using sanitary facilities . These people hardly had a chance to participate in social, economic and political processes.

Millennium Declaration

On September 9, 2000, 189 member states of the United Nations adopted the Millennium Declaration, a catalog of fundamental, binding objectives for all member states. Poverty reduction, peacekeeping and environmental protection were confirmed as the most important goals of the international community. The main focus here was on the fight against extreme poverty: Poverty was no longer understood solely as income poverty, but more broadly as a lack of opportunities and opportunities.

Rich as well as poor countries pledged to drastically reduce poverty and to achieve goals such as respect for human dignity , equality , democracy , ecological sustainability and peace.

Compared to previous decades of development , the goals are more comprehensive, more specific and, for the most part, have a clear time horizon. It should also be mentioned that never before have governments, companies, international organizations, but also civil society so unanimously committed to a goal and have agreed that the spread of poverty must be stopped.

The primary goal was to secure the global future, for which four programmatic fields of action were defined:

  • Peace, security and disarmament
  • Development and Poverty Reduction
  • Protection of the common environment
  • Human rights, democracy and good governance

The goals in detail

Plaque with the United Nations Millennium Development Goals at the UN headquarters in New York
  1. Combating extreme poverty and hunger
    • Halve the proportion of people living on less than the equivalent of one US dollar a day between 1990 and 2015.
    • Halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger between 1990 and 2014.
    • Achieve full employment in decent work for everyone, including women and young people.
  2. Primary education for everyone
    • By 2015, ensure that children around the world, girls and boys alike, complete a full primary education.
  3. Gender equality / empowerment of women
    • Eliminate the gender gap in primary and secondary education, if possible by 2005 and at all levels of education by 2015 at the latest.
  4. Lowering child mortality
    • Between 1991 and 2015, child mortality among children under five was reduced by two thirds (from 10.6 percent to 3.5 percent).
  5. Improving maternal health care
    • Between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality rate decreased by three quarters.
    • Achieve universal access to reproductive health by 2015.
  6. Fight against HIV / AIDS , malaria and other serious diseases
    • By 2015, halt the spread of HIV / AIDS and reverse the trend.
    • Achieve global access to medical care for all HIV / AIDS infected people who need it by 2010.
    • By 2015, halt the spread of malaria and other serious diseases and reverse the trend.
  7. Ecological sustainability
    • Embed the principles of sustainable development in the policies and programs of the individual states and curb the destruction of environmental resources.
    • Reduce the loss of biodiversity , achieve a significant reduction in the rate of loss by 2010.
    • By 2015, halve the proportion of people without permanent, secure access to hygienic drinking water (from 65 percent to 32 percent).
    • A significant improvement in the living conditions of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.
  8. Build a global partnership for development
    • Make further progress in developing an open, rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory trade and financial system. This includes the commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction - both nationally and internationally.
    • Taking into account the special needs of the least developed countries . This includes the dismantling of trade barriers, debt relief and debt relief, and special financial support for countries that are actively trying to reduce poverty.
    • Address the special needs of landlocked and small island developing countries.
    • Comprehensive efforts at national and international level to solve the debt problems of developing countries.
    • Working with developing countries to develop and implement strategies to create decent and meaningful jobs for young people.
    • Working with pharmaceutical companies to ensure access to essential medicines at affordable prices in developing countries.
    • Working with the private sector to ensure that developing countries can take advantage of new technologies, particularly information and communication technologies.

Measurability

In order to make the achievement of these goals measurable, the authors of the declaration defined 18 sub-items and 48 indicators as well as 1990 as the base year and 2015 as the target year. So it is possible to observe the achievement of the goals - and to demand them. The evaluation required for this brings with it different challenges for the individual goals.

The collection of the statistical data necessary for the evaluation is coordinated by the UN statistical department UNSD .

Goals 1 to 7 hold the developing countries responsible: They must use their financial resources for the poor, fight corruption , promote equality and democratic processes. Goal 8 obliges the industrialized countries to use their economic position of power for equal rights for all countries. That means: more money for better quality development aid , effective debt relief , support for governments that fight poverty, and the dismantling of trade barriers .

Millennium Campaign

Kofi Annan - 7th Secretary General of the United Nations and initiator of the Millennium Campaign

To review and implement the goals, the then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan initiated the United Nations Millennium Campaign in 2002, which aims to mobilize citizens in various nations for the Millennium Development Goals and thus put public pressure on politics to implement them to keep the goals as high as possible.

"With you we are many" was the motto of the German campaign to meet the goals of the Millennium Summit and used Benno Fürmann and David Garrett .

Millennium Summit 2010

At the start of the 65th UN General Assembly, a Millennium Summit took place in New York from September 20-22, 2010, at which an interim balance sheet was drawn up on the implementation of the development goals ten years after their adoption. Around 140 heads of state and government took part in what is also known as the "World Poverty Conference".

At the start of the summit, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for increased efforts to combat global poverty. There has been noticeable progress in the implementation of the development goals, which, however, are still fragile in many countries. A joint report by the United Nations and the OECD identified significant progress in the areas of governance, peace and security, primary education and the reduction of extreme poverty. In particular, securing access to drinking water and sanitary facilities as well as combating child mortality still posed major challenges for the global community.

Results 2015

The following table shows the results that were highlighted in the 2015 report of the United Nations and that can be presented as comparative figures (1990/2015).

No. target Measurand 1990 2015
1. Combating extreme poverty and hunger Extreme poverty rate in developing countries 47% 14%
Worldwide number of people living in extreme poverty 1,962
million		 836
million
2. Primary education for everyone Number of primary school children worldwide who are out of school 100 million 47 million
Net enrollment rate in primary school in sub-Saharan Africa 52% 80%
3. gender equality Education participation rate in primary schools in South Asia (girls: boys) 75: 100 103: 100
4th Lowering child mortality Worldwide newborn mortality rate (deaths per 1,000 live births) 90 43
Worldwide number of deaths of children under the age of five 12.7
million		 6
million
Global vaccination of children against measles (at least one dose of live measles vaccine, 2013) 73% 84%
5. Improving maternal health care Worldwide maternal mortality rate (deaths per 100,000 live births) 380 210
Worldwide share of professionally supervised deliveries 59% 71%
6th Fight against HIV / AIDS, malaria and other serious diseases Number of new HIV infections 3.5
million		 2.1
million
HIV-infected people receiving antiretroviral treatment 0.8
million		 13.6
million
7th environmental sustainability Access to improved drinking water supplies 76% 91%
Proportion of urban population living in slums in developing regions 39.4% 29.7%
8th. Build a global partnership for development Official Development Aid (in USD) 81
billion		 135
billion
Percent of the world's population using the Internet  6% 43%

Source: United Nations, 2015 report

criticism

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Critics particularly criticize the first main goal (reducing the proportion of people with less than one dollar daily income) that such monetization makes the poverty problem economically understandable, but at the same time it pushes the subsistence economy out of sight, which is widespread in the countries mentioned and often make survival or a decent life possible in the first place.

In addition, the following points in particular are criticized:

  • There would be a lack of concrete employment goals, political participation rights or institutional reforms of the development partnership.
  • The goals are overambitious and unrealistic.
  • Some targets disadvantaged Africa in relative terms. For example, halving poverty in countries with fewer poor people is relatively easy. A universal higher education, however, is more difficult, the further one is from this goal. Progress that Africa is making could be masked because it is not doing well enough against the MDGs.
  • The Millennium Declaration would dictate goals from industrialized countries to developing countries. Developing countries would be deprived of the right to set the goals they see fit.
  • In some countries, gender equality could not be achieved due to religious influences.
  • The aid could help strengthen traditional elites who have no interest in creating the conditions for further development.
  • The goals are not aimed at growth and productivity, it will only contain the worst effects of poverty.
  • Some of the goals were seen as a step backwards in the conceptual discussion, especially with regard to the responsibility of the partner countries and the need for good governance. This is only mentioned in a sub-goal of Goal 8, although earlier versions mentioned human rights, democracy and good governance as well as peace, security and disarmament as basic goals; The lack of involvement of civil society groups in the development of the UN Millennium Declaration and the MDGs was also lamented.
  • Poverty is only understood as income poverty; Therefore, the proposed solutions would only concentrate on reducing poverty at the monetary level: Structural questions such as the unequal distribution of wealth, land ownership and political power in the countries of the South as well as the global economic framework and the effects of globalized financial and commodity markets remained under-exposed in the programs . The same applies to ecological aspects, especially the consequences of climate change.

Finishing of data and goals

Thomas Pogge , director of the Global Justice Program at Yale University , criticized the fact that many Millennium Development Goals could only be achieved because the goals themselves or their definition were “embellished”: “At the World Food Summit in 1996, the governments wanted the number of hungry people by Halve 2015. At the Millennium Summit in 2000, their share of the world population was only supposed to be halved, later the base year was also brought forward from 2000 to 1990. In 2012, the FAO also changed the method of calculating the number of hungry people. With all these tricks it was possible to turn a steadily growing trend into a steadily declining one. "

Depending on which method is used to calculate malnutrition, different results are obtained: According to media reports, based on the method that has been in force since 2012, one comes to the result of an almost continuous decrease in malnutrition in the 25 years of 1990 and 2015, with the exception of a comparably small increase in the period from 2002 to 2004. If, on the other hand, the method valid until 2012 is used, the result is, on the contrary, an increase for these 25 years and for 2009 a maximum value never before reached.

Globalization researcher Franz Josef Radermacher described it as a scandal that the poverty line of 1.25 dollars was not adjusted over 25 years, although the world economy grew massively during this period.

SDGs replace Millennium Development Goals

At its summit in New York on September 25, 2015, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development adopted the 2030 Agenda with its 17 new sustainable development goals (SDG). A 30-person working group made up of representatives from the UN member states drew up the proposals. The Future Charter initiative of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation has been running since April 2014 to develop the German contribution to the SDGs.

See also

literature

Web links

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  1. ↑ Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In: sustainabledevelopment.un.org
  2. ↑ Interview with Klaus Milke ( Germanwatch ): "Learned a little from the past". In: Deutschlandfunk.de , September 26, 2015
  3. ↑ Jule Reimer in conversation with Britta Fecke: Sealed, contaminated, quilted. In: Deutschlandfunk.de , Environment and Consumers , October 28, 2013, accessed on December 17, 2013
  4. ^ United Nations Millennium Declaration. GTZ. background
  5. ↑ UN : Archived copy ( memento of the original from August 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.un-kampagne.de
  6. ↑ Millennium Development Goals: More data for good deeds. In: FAZ , September 14, 2010.
  7. ↑ Report about the campaign. In: Horizont.net
  8. ↑ Combating poverty: UN summit takes stock. In: Die Presse , September 20, 2010.
  9. ↑ Ban Ki Moon reminds rich countries at UNO summits. In: SF Tagesschau , September 20, 2010.
  10. ↑ Combating poverty: still a long way to go. In: Oberösterreichische Nachrichten , September 21, 2010.
  11. ↑ a b Report 2015. United Nations, accessed on March 28, 2018 . Section “Overview”, p. 4 ff.
  12. ^ William Easterly (2007): How the Millennium Development Goals are unfair to Africa ( PDF ).
  13. ↑ Frederike Tschampa: Human rights in development cooperation . In: Ulla Selchow, Franz-Josef Hutter (Hrsg.): Human rights and development cooperation. Claim and Reality. Wiesbaden 2004, p. 46 f.
  14. ↑ Gräfe, C. (2015): Successes can be traced back to cosmetic mathematics. Interview with Thomas Pogge. In: Die Zeit Online , June 3, 2015
  15. ↑ a b Anna Behrend: UN Sustainability Goals: The computing tricks of the do-gooders. In: Spiegel online. June 16, 2016, accessed March 28, 2018 .
  16. ↑ Participation in the future charter. In: Zukunftscharta.de , accessed July 2014.