Yesterday, in an address to the General Assembly, United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon called upon the Member States of the UN to strive to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The MDGs are a set of 8 pillars that form the backbone of the UN’s plan for poor and developing countries. They are: (1) Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; (2) Achieve universal primary education; (3) Promote gender equality and empower women; (4) Reduce child mortality; (5) Improve maternal health; (6) Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; (7) Ensure environmental sustainability; (8) Develop a Global Partnership for Development.
The title of Ban’s speech was “Keeping the Promise: A Forward-Looking Review to Promote an Agreed Action Agenda to Achieve the MDGs by 2015.” He emphasized the shared responsibility for meeting the goals by governments, civil society and international organizations, and expressed his deep regret at the adverse effect the global economic recession and recovery have had on foreign aid funding and economic development.
In the past decade since the first Millennium Summit in 2000, when the goals were first encapsulated, there have been mixed results. Africa has succeeded in improving universal primary education and eradicating measles for the most part; this has been reflected in the fall of child mortality from 12.5 million in 1990 to roughly 9 million in 2008. The average school enrollment rate is now at 74% in Africa—in some countries, the number of school-going girls is greater than the figure for boys, showing immense improvements in improving gender equality and empowerment girls/women.
However, maternal health remains a great challenge, as does post-conflict rebuilding and lifting the more than 1 billion people living on less than a $1.25 a day onto the “first rung” of the ladder of development—to use terminology originated by Columbia University Economist and advisor to Ban Ki-Moon on the MDGs.
There have been great successes, Ban summed up, but they have been witnessed in tandem with great failures. Going forward, the “agenda should be specific, practical, and results-oriented, with concrete steps and timelines.”
Planning is well underway for the United Nations High-Level Plenary Meeting on the Millennium Development Goals that will take place in New York in late September. The purpose of the conference will be to redouble efforts at achieving the 2015 target date for the MDGS. Some of the most important themes for global child welfare to be discussed at the meeting’s round tables include: Addressing the challenge of poverty, hunger and gender equality (Round Table 1), Meeting the goals of health and education (Round Table 2), and Addressing the special needs of the most vulnerable (Round Table 3).
In other news, Ban also appointed a new Executive Director of UNICEF yesterday at his monthly press conference. American diplomat and Georgetown University Professor Anthony Lake will take over for Ann Veneman, who announced earlier this year that she would not continue as the chief of the UN’s agency for children when her term expires at the end of April. Ban commended Veneman on her work during her years with UNICEF, thanking her for her “immense dedication, energy and determination to improve the lives of children around the world.”