The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) look unlikely to be fulfilled. Current rates of progress in improving incomes, health and education across the world are too slow. Under-investment in basic social services by national governments and inadequate support from the international agencies has hampered advancements. New research examines what needs to be done to meet the MDG aspirations.

Research from the United Nations Development Programme analysed the progress made towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. It examined the targets on reducing poverty; providing basic education; reducing child mortality and malnutrition; curbing HIV/AIDS; reducing maternal mortality and increasing access to safe water. The researcher argues that the MDGs are all feasible and affordable but governments and international bodies need to spend more money if they are to be achieved.

Only two goals are on track so far: that of halving the proportion of people struggling to survive on less than $1 per day and halving the proportion of people without access to safe water between 1990 and 2015. However, their progress is plagued by measurement problems because tools used to estimate global poverty levels are not accurate. In addition to this, the progress towards the goal for water may not be sustainable as many countries face acute water shortages. At the global level, most targets for hunger, health, education and gender equality witnessed only about half the progress they should have seen during the 1990s to reach their agreed goalposts by 2015. For HIV/AIDS there has been no progress at all.

An analysis of the progress towards the Goals shows:

• Predictions that the global income poverty will be halved by 2015 are unreliable: decreases in poverty levels in a large and densely populated country such as China and India seem to have slowed down already.
• Despite the narrowing of the gender gap in school enrolments, overall enrolment ratios have not shown any remarkable improvement for more than a decade: about 120 million boys and girls did not enter primary education in the year 2000 – joining the ranks of 1 billion adults who are illiterate.
• A stagnation in immunisation coverage and gender biases, in addition to other preventable causes such as diarrhoea, malaria, malnutrition, etc. have meant that progress in reducing death rates amongst children under 5 years of age, has slowed down.
• Lack of awareness and education combined with poverty has severely restricted any progress on achieving the targets for AIDS: worldwide it is number 4 in the league of major killers.
• About one woman every minute dies of causes related to pregnancy and childbirth: the global target to reduce this by three-quarters by 2015 is nowhere near to being achieved as availability of skilled health personnel continues to be a problem.

As a tendency for top-down approaches continues to dictate policies of several countries, the poor are being left out of national progress. Rising inequalities within countries get hidden within indicators of ‘average’ progress. Child mortality is affected by wide income disparities. In Zimbabwe a decline in average child mortality masks the rise in number of deaths of children amongst the poorest families. If the hundreds of millions of people who still struggle for basic existence have to benefit from unprecedented global prosperity, donors and national governments have to:

• improve access to good quality basic social services, mobilise extra resources for this or make technological break-throughs
• acknowledge an implication of this - that developing countries have to increase social spending from the current levels of 12 per cent to at least 20 per cent of their national budgets
• realise that official development assistance - which is currently a third of the agreed target of 0.7 percent of the combined gross national income of developed nations – is insufficient
• recognise that debt-servicing takes between one-third and one-half of the national budgets of developing countries thereby taking away money that could have potentially been used for developmental activities
• accelerate the implementation of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative by speeding the debt relief process and overcoming the problem of declining commodity prices
• ensure that any assessment of progress on the MDGs goes beyond averages and examines them by gender, geographical location, socio-economic profile and ethnicity so as to design well-informed reforms and implement better interventions.

The Millennium Development Goals are not on track to being fulfilled. There is no economic reason why this should be the case. Committed leadership, stronger partnerships, extra money and deeper participation by the poor can bring the world back on track before it is too late.

Source(s):
‘Are the Millennium Development Goals feasible?’ by Jan Vandemoortle, in Richard Black and Howard White (eds.)  Targeting Development: Critical Perspectives on the Millennium Development Goals London: Routledge, 2004 Full document.
“The MDGS and pro-poor policies: can external partners make a difference?” by Jan Vandemoortle, March 2004. Full document.

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id21 Research Highlight: 12 July 2004

Further Information:
Jan Vandemoortele
Principal Adviser and Group Leader,
UNDP Poverty Group, Bureau for Development Policy,
One United Nations Plaza,
New York, NY 10017
USA

Tel: +1 212 906 5051
Fax: +1 212 906 5313
Contact the contributor: jan.vandemoortele@undp.org

UNDP Poverty Group

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Millenium Development Goals