Reflecting On The MDGs

December 31, 2015, will mark the end of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and governments worldwide have already reported significant improvements for many of the Goals. 

Adopted in September 2000, the MDGs commit world leaders to eight measurable goals designed to halve extreme poverty and make human development a top priority for all countries.  These time-bound targets have had the world galvanized unprecedented efforts to halt the spread of HIV/AIDS, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health and achieve universal primary education by 2015.

It is safe to say the world has made massive strides towards reaching the MDGs. The target to halve the number of people living in extreme poverty has already been reached. In the current context, the number of people in extreme poverty has declined by an estimated 130 million, according to the 2014 MDGs report. It may be recalled that in 1990, almost half of the population in developing regions lived on less than $1.25 a day. It took global effort to drop that rate to 22 percent, reducing the number of people living in extreme poverty by 700 million. China, for instance, has reduced its number of extreme poor by 81 percent —meaning that an additional half a billion people now live on more than $1.25 per day.

There has also been marked improvement in primary education. Ninety percent of children in developing regions now enjoy primary education, and disparities between boys and girls in enrollment have narrowed, as recorded by the UN its 2014 MDGs report. Pakistan is the only nation “that is certain not to achieve this goal by 2015” .

The likelihood of a child dying before age five has been nearly cut in half over the last two decades. That means about 17,000 children are saved every day. Annie Malknecht, in an article published by the Center for American Progress, named Niger as the only African country to have achieved the highest absolute reduction [in child mortality rate]. The average reduction in child deaths for sub-Saharan Africa is 22 percent, which Niger exceeds. Also, having a mother with primary education reduces child death rates by almost half in the Philippines and around one third in Bolivia, according to UNESCO . At the same time, maternal mortality ratio dropped by “45 percent between 1990 and 2013, from 380 to 210 deaths per 100,000 live births”. However, maternal death still demands more attention.

Conversely, there still exist huge disparities across and within countries. As noted by the Millennium Project, food insecurity is prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa, coupled with a rise in extreme poverty, stunningly high child and maternal death. Asia is the region with the fastest progress, but even there, hundreds of millions of people remain in extreme poverty, and even fast-growing countries fail to achieve some of the non-income Goals. Other regions have mixed records, notably Latin America, the transition economies, and the Middle East and North Africa, often with slow or no progress on some of the Goals and persistent inequalities undermining progress on others, as revealed by the Millennium Project.

In spite of these notable shortfalls for most of the MDGs, tremendous progress has been made. The MDGs have been extremely significant and the most effective anti-poverty, anti-maternal and child mortality push in history. Today, the lives of millions of people have been improved and targets have already been met on reducing poverty, increasing access to safe water, improving the lives of slum dwellers and achieving gender parity in primary education. Also, hunger continues to decline.