UN: PUTTING DEVELOPMENT GOALS BACK ON TRACK by KHALIL HAMDANI: 27/01/08 (MaximsNews Network)

UNITED NATIONS - / MaximsNews Network / - 27 January 2008 - Countries need to redouble efforts to get back on track towards the 2015 development goal for reducing acute poverty, which was set at the Millennium Summit in 2000.

“We commit to work to make 2008 a turning point in the fight against poverty,” said a joint statement signed by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, President of Nigeria Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, Queen Rania of Jordan, rock star Bono and corporate executives Bill Gates of Microsoft and John Chambers of Cisco. “2008 is a critical year. If we don’t begin to get back on track we will fail.”

The MDG Call to Action was signed at the Davos World Economic Forum by 19 countries and 21 companies, and endorsed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aim to reduce by half the number of poor people (who live on less than a dollar a day), to promote gender equality and to improve the provision of food, water, sanitation, health and education, all by the year 2015.

Countries are half way there in time but not in effort. A redoubled effort is needed to get back on track: school enrollment has improved – there are now 41 million more children in school – but this enrollment rate needs to double in order to attain universal primary education by 2015.

The MDG Call to Action proposes new 2010 milestones:  “75 million more people lifted out of extreme poverty in Africa; 25 million more children in school; 4 million more children’s lives saved; 35 million more births need to be attended by skilled health personnel between now and 2010; and 70 million more people given improved access to water.”

Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole is not on track although a number of individual countries are making good progress on some goals:  Botswana, Cape Verde, Ghana, Lesotho, Mauritius, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda.

Sub-Saharan Africa last year recorded the strongest growth and the lowest inflation in more than thirty years, creating an environment for the private sector and foreign investment to play a greater role if infrastructure bottlenecks are lifted; hence, the importance of the G-8 Gleneagles commitment to double aid to Africa by 2010, and the Aid-for-Trade initiative.

The MDG Call to Action was first proposed by Prime Minister Gordon Brown in July 2007, and intended as a collective effort:  "We've thought too much of the Millennium Development Goals as something that governments have got to do between governments." He continued: "I think we should see this is a collective endeavor, I think we should summon up all the energies of the private sector, of the NGOs, of faith groups as well as of governments."

The initiative has the support of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who established the MDG Africa Steering Group in September 2007, involving the major multilateral and inter-governmental organizations in Africa, to improve aid delivery.

The MDG Call to Action includes a forthcoming meeting of the private sector in London in May 2008 to consider new measures to help attain the MDGs.

The initiative will culminate in a stakeholder meeting at the UN in September 2008, at the MDG midpoint, to review progress and accelerate action. “We know we will only succeed if governments, the private sector, faith groups, civil society and NGOs work together,” said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other signatories of the MDG Call to Action.

Labels: United Nations, U.N. Khalil Hamdani, Economic Development, MDGs

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