Perspective

United Nations’ goal promises to change world

You are reading this because you believe in a better world. So do I.

Kofi Annan, Secretary-General to the United Nations

United Nations’ Millennium Developmental Goals * Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. * Achieve universal primary education. * Promote gender equality and empower women. * Reduce child mortality. * Improve maternal health. * Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases. * Ensure environmental sustainability. * Develop a global partnership for development.

Today, it is fully within our power to eradicate poverty and hunger. We can provide education to all, and stop the spread of AIDS and other deadly diseases. We have the resources and the know-how to achieve these and other (United Nations) Millennium Development Goals, all by the year 2015.

How, then, are the Millennium Development Goals different from other bold pledges that became broken promises over the past 50 years? I would say they are different in five ways.

First:  Rich countries have accepted for the first time their share of responsibility to support the efforts of poor countries through more and better aid, debt cancellation, and fairer trade. And developing countries have accepted their share, through improved governance and better use of resources.

Second: The goals are people-centered, time-bound, and measurable. A classic complaint about development aid is that resources tend to be wasted by corruption and mismanagement, and that we have no way to track progress and ensure accountability. Now, we have a set of clear, measurable indicators, focused on basic human needs. We have clear benchmarks of progress—or the lack of it—both globally and on a country-by-country basis.

Third:  The goals have unprecedented political support. The eight goals were drawn from the Millennium Declaration, which was endorsed by all member states of the United Nations in 2000. Never before have such concrete goals been formally endorsed by rich and poor countries alike. Never before have the UN, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and all the other main arms of the international system come together behind the same set of development objectives—and stood ready to be held accountable for achieving them.

Fourth: The goals have unprecedented popular support. They represent a set of simple but powerful objectives that every man and woman in the street can easily understand and support.

Fifth—and most important: The Millennium Development Goals are achievable. They are certainly challenging, but they are also technically feasible. They are not just wishful thinking.

We can reach them—but only if everyone, rich and poor alike, does his or her part.

We need poor countries to improve their governance and build up their human resources.

And we need rich countries to give more aid, and make it more effective. We need them to offer more debt relief and trade opportunities and to end the scandal of unfair competition in agricultural trade, which denies poor-country farmers their best chance to earn a decent living.

Every day we don’t act, real people suffer. If the goals are not met, we will all be poorer, and less secure.

Ultimately, it is you—the concerned citizens of our world—who must hold your leaders accountable. They promised to be true partners for development. Your voices can hold them to those pledges.

For more information on the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, visit www.un.org/millenniumgoals/.