Global Initiatives to Eradicate Poverty: The Millenium Development Goals

Poverty indicators are not produced solely for the sake of providing information. As mentioned above, their goal is to provide a foundation for decision-making and actions to fight poverty. The indicators presented in the previous pages have been developed by international organisations such as the UN or the World Bank in order to elaborate poverty reduction strategies at international level. These strategies serve as guidelines for various agencies of the UN, as well as for national governments and NGOs.

One of the most important current global cooperation initiatives to reduce poverty is the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) that were approved by the UN in September 2000 and recorded in the Millennium Declaration. The eight MDGs are part of a global development strategy to promote poverty reduction, education, maternal health, gender equality; to combat child mortality, AIDS, malaria and other diseases; to ensure environmental sustainability; and to make a commitment to the right to development for everyone. The declaration calls for a halving of the number of people living on less than one dollar a day by the year 2015. This effort also involves finding solutions to hunger, malnutrition, disease, and gender inequality and promoting the empowerment of women and a basic education for everyone.

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
Goal 4: Reduce child mortality
Goal 5: Improve maternal health
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development

Do the Millenium Development Goals tackle with all aspects of poverty?

Take a look at the following websites to identify the main specific objectives for each of the 8 MDG.
The first link provides you with details on the content of each MDG.
The second link shows you an online atlas of the achievement of the 8 MDG.
Look at the available maps for each goal:

Millenium Goals

Millennium Goals Atlas

Which indicators are the proposed maps for each goal based on?
Why do these specific indicators seem relevant to measure the achievement of each goal?

How the MDG were negotiated and why

At the Millennium Summit in September 2000, the largest gathering of world leaders in history adopted the UN Millennium Declaration, committing their nations to a global partnership to reduce poverty, improve health and promote peace, human rights, gender equality and environmental sustainability. Soon afterwards, world leaders met again at the March 2002 International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico, establishing a landmark framework for global development partnership in which developed and developing countries agreed to take joint action for poverty reduction. Later that same year, UN member states gathered at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, where they reaffirmed the Goals as the world's time-bound development targets, namely to cut world poverty by half in the coming decade.

Source: (UN Millennium Project 2005)

Switzerland and the MDGs

Switzerland participated in the UN Millennium Summit in 2000 although it only fully joined United Nations in 2002. Thereby Switzerland committed itself to work towards the achievement of the eight Millennium Development Goals. However, the traditional orientation of Swiss Official Development Assistance (ODA) has focused on poverty alleviation and the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) even before the MDGs were formulated. Maybe due to this history, MDG-1 is still receiving the biggest share of financial support by the ODA. (For further details on how the financial aid is divided on the eight MDGs, have a look at Figure 2 in the article in the right hand column.)

Swiss Government is aware of the challenges to the achievement of the MDGs which are for example economic crisis, the impact of climate change or the fact that there is a lack of responsibility by governments in developing countries. Nevertheless there are also ongoing political debates within Switzerland about the struggles to spend the promised 0.7% of the GNP on the ODA. On the one hand there are the left orientated parties which are optimistic about the aid and on the other hand there are the right orientated parties which are more sceptical about any bilateral and multilateral agreements. (Read the article in the right hand column to learn more about the implementation of the MDGs in Switzerland.)

Millennium Development Goal 1 (Poverty Reduction) and the Swiss Debate on Development Assistance [440KB]

The Millennium Development Goals and the Global (Northern) Poverty Debate [467KB]