The Millennium Development Goals are eight goals that 189 United Nations member states have agreed to try to achieve by the year 2015.

The Millennium Development Goals were officially established at the Millennium Summit in 2000, where 189 world leaders adopted the United Nations Millennium Declaration, from which the eight-goal action plan, the 'Millennium Development Goals', was particularly promoted.

Contents 1 Goals 1.1 Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger 1.2 Achieve universal primary education 1.3 Promote gender equality and empower women 1.4 Reduce child mortality 1.5 Improve maternal health 1.6 Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases 1.7 Ensure environmental sustainability 1.8 Develop a global partnership for development 2 Progress reports 3 UN MDG Summit 2010 3.1 The MDG Summit covered in the News 4 See Also 5 External links 5.1 MDG1 Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger 5.2 MDG 3 Promote gender equality and empower women 5.3 MDGs as a whole 5.4 Progress and regional reports about gender equality and MDGs

Goals

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were developed out of the eight chapters of the United Nations Millennium Declaration, signed in September 2000. The eight goals and 21 targets include:

Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

• Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day.
• Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people.
• Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.

Achieve universal primary education

• Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary education/primary schooling.
• See Net Intake Rate and Net Enrollment Ratio (NER).

Promote gender equality and empower women

• Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015.
• Indicators for goal 3:
  3.1 - Ratio of girls to boys in primary, secondary and tertiary education (UNESCO)
  3.2 - Ratio of literate women to men, 15-24 years old (UNESCO)
  3.3 -Share of women in wage employment in the non-agricultural sector (ILO)
  3.4 - Proportion of seats held by women in national parliament
• More on MDG3

Reduce child mortality

• Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate.

Improve maternal health

• Reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the Maternal death/maternal mortality ratio.
• Achieve, by 2015, universal access to reproductive health.
• Video update by UNFPA  on maternal mortality data:

Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases

• Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS.
• Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it.
• Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.

Ensure environmental sustainability

• Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources.
• Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss.
• Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation (for more information see the entry on water supply).
• By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum-dwellers.

Develop a global partnership for development

• Develop further an open trading and financial system that is rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory. Includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction—nationally and internationally.
• Address the special needs of the least developed countries. This includes tariff and quota free access for their exports; enhanced programme of debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries; and cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous official development assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction.
• Address the special needs of landlocked and small island developing States.
• Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term.
• In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries.
• In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications

Progress reports

The UNDP works in many countries and provides progress reports of how far or close countries are to attaining the 8 MDGs. Here is an example of the Progress Chart as provided by the UNDP.

For a listing of all UNDP country websites and information on their concurrent MDG progress, please follow this link.

UN MDG Summit 2010

With only five years left until the 2015 deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called on world leaders to attend a summit in New York on 20-22 September to accelerate progress towards the MDGs.

Click here for more information.

The MDG Summit covered in the News

Source: the Community Portal Special Focus - MDG Summit 2010

• IRIN 24.09.2010: MDGs: Focus switches to inequality
• Reuters 22.09.2010: U.N. chief to launch women, children health drive
• UNIFEM 20.09.2010: Presenting Data, UNIFEM Calls for Gender Justice and Ending Discrimination against Women for Achievement of the Millennium Development Goals
• AWID 20.09.2010: WIDE Statement: "Millennium Development Goals Review Summit: Keeping the promise to ensure women’s rights and gender justice"
• IPS 20.09.2010: Gender Justice Key to MDG Progress
• OECD insights 20.09.2010 : Millennium Development Goals: A job well done?
• IRIN 17.09.2010: GLOBAL: Women hold key to MDGs but …
• Guardian.co.uk 17.09.2010: Child marriage: our commitment to ending it
• Eldis -Blog 17.09.2010: Gender and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
• Huffington Post 15.09.2010: The Clock is Ticking
• AWID 15.09.2010: Press Release: WACC: News media, Gender equality and the MDGs: Preview from the GMMP 2010 report
• IDS 14.09.2010: World leaders meeting at UN MDG Summit must agree new direction*English.new.ch 14.09.2010 : UN chief to launch new strategy for women's, children's health
• AllAfrica.com 14.09.2010 : UN Secretary-General Announces Plan to Launch a Global Strategy for Women's and Children's Health at Summit 
• Msn News 14.09.2010: MDG Summit to focus on women and child health
• Guardian.co.uk (blog) 14.09.2010: The coalition will cut maternal deaths by 2015
• IPS 13.09.2010: Women, Children Top U.N.'s Anti-Poverty Agenda 
• UN News Center 13.09.2010: Anti-poverty goals are ambitious but doable, Ban stresses ahead of MDG summit
• End Poverty 2015 Millenium Campaign 09.09.2010 : Five years left
• IPS 08.09.2010: U.N. Climate Body Urged to Take Lead in Gender Focus
• The Medical News 07.09.2010: Ahead of U.N. MDG Summit, media outlets examine various aspects of goals
• IRIN 07.09.2010: GLOBAL: Banging a drum for the MDG summit
• International Alert 29.08.2010: Moving beyond the Millennium Development Goals
• AWID 20.08.2010:WIDE-Opens-a-new-Campaigner Justice Beyond the MDGs! WIDE Opens a new Campaign
• Read more : MDG Summit on 20-22 September 2010 in New York
  

See Also

• Secondary Education in Sub-Saharan Africa
• Statistics:School Enrolment
• Statistics:Education
• Statistics:Literacy Rates
• UNESCO
• UNESCO Institute for Statistics
• Education for All
• Girls' Education
• Access to Education
• GID Variables: School Enrolment
• GID Variables: Literacy Rates
• GID Variables: Political Empowerment
• Maternal Mortality
• AIDS
• Adolescent Birth Rate
• Share of women in wage employment in the non-agricultural sector
• Under-Five Mortality Rate
• Information Guide for Arab Millenium Development Goal Reports
• Access to Water and Sanitation
• Access to land
• Primary Completion Rates
• Primary Education in Sub-Saharan Africa
• Net Intake Rate
• Net Enrollment Ratio (NER)

External links

MDG1 Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger

• FAO: Global hunger declining, but still unacceptably high
• FAO: 925 million in chronic hunger worldwide
• FAO: video on hunger figures for 2010

MDG 3 Promote gender equality and empower women

• Online Discussion on Finding New Ways to Empower Women

MDGs as a whole

• http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Host.aspx?Content=Products/ProgressReports.htm Progress report report 2008 launched on 2008-09-11
• http://www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.htm  United Nations Millennium Declaration
• http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals  The Millennium Goals (UN Site)
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/in_depth/millennium_development_goals/html/default.stm  BBC Summary 2005 of UN Millennium Goals
• http://esl.jrc.it/dc/mdg_unsd/index.htm  Millennium Development Goals Indicators: MDG Dashboard (downloadable database)
• http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg  UN Stats Division - MDGs
• http://www.developmentgoals.org  - World Bank
• UNDP Country Program listing

Progress and regional reports about gender equality and MDGs

• UN Millennium Project 2005. Taking Action: Achieving Gender Equality and Empowering Women. Task Force on Education and Gender Equality.
  There are many practical steps that can be taken to reduce inequalities based on gender, which hinder the potential to reduce poverty and achieve high levels of well-being in societies around the world. Those detailed in Taking Action include strengthening opportunities, increasing access, investing in infrastructure, guaranteeing rights, eliminating inequality in employment, increasing women's representation in government and reducing violence against girls and women.
  http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/reports/tf_gender.htm  (EN) 

• WOMENWATCH 
  http://www.un.org/womenwatch/directory/millennium_development_goals_10381.htm (EN)
  with links to documents in Arabic | Chinese | English | French | Russian | Spanish 

• WEDO Women's Empowerment, Gender Equality and the Millennium Development Goals (2004)
  http://www.wedo.org/library.aspx?ResourceID=5  (EN)

• ECLAC/CEPAL, Millennium Development Goals 2006: a look at Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, 2007 http://www.eclac.cl/mdg/goal_3_en.html  (EN)
• ECLAC/CEPAL , Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio. Informe 2006: una mirada a la igualdad entre los sexos y la autonomía de la mujer en ALC, 2007 http://www.eclac.org/mdg/obj_3_es.html  (ES)
• Information Guide for Arab Millennium Development Goal Reports 2008-09-14
• Progress of the World's Women 2008/2009