Millennium Development Goals
"How can we expect to reach the MDGs (...) without making progress in areas such as education, hunger, health, water, sanitation and gender equality? Cities and local authorities have a critical role to play in all of these areas. Ultimately it is in the streets of our cities and towns that the value of what's decided here will be tested. It is there, in the daily lives of our citizens, in their safety and security, in their prosperity and sense of opportunity, that our progress will be most visible. While our Goals are global, they can most effectively be achieved through action at local level." (UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to local government leaders, September 2005)
Since 2000, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have provided a set of objectives and targets, agreed by the whole international community.
Local government delivers basic services on the ground, and can therefore make a huge difference in each locality in harnessing efforts and resources towards meeting the goals. International twinnings and partnerships for development can therefore draw inspiration from the MDGs, and base their actions on tackling one or more of these Goals.
The Millennium Campaign works to raise awareness and stimulate action in support of the MDGs, including with civil society and local governments.
The Goals, and some of the main targets, are:
Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
- Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day
- Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people
- Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
- Ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
- Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015
Goal 4: Reduce child mortality
- Reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five
Goal 5: Improve maternal health
- Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
- Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS
- Halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases
Goal 7: 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
- Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020
Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development
- Address the special needs of the least developed countries
With the financial assistance of the European Union.
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