MDGs: Can you do anything?

Newsweek's David Miliband said "Power is spreading as never before, but so are the problems. We must tackle the causes of poverty as well as its symptoms. One in six people in the world now lives on less than $1 a day. Despite the global economic boom, inequality is growing. This is not only morally offensive but dangerous. It fuels the resentment on which extremists thrive. Leaders, including the United States, must strive to meet the Millennium Development Goals and conclude a new global trade deal."

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were developed out of the eight chapters of the United Nations Millennium Declaration, signed in September 2000. The eight goals and 21 targets include

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
   • Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day.
   • Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people.
   • Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
2. Achieve universal primary education
   • Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
   • Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015.
4. Reduce child mortality
   • Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate.
5. Improve maternal health
   • Reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio.
   • Achieve, by 2015, universal access to reproductive health.
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
   • Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS.
   • Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it.
   • Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.
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.
   • Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation (for more information see the entry on water supply).
   • By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum-dwellers.
8. Develop a global partnership for development
   • Develop further an open trading and financial system that is rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory. Includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction—nationally and internationally.
   • Address the special needs of the least developed countries. This includes tariff and quota free access for their exports; enhanced programme of debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries; and cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous official development assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction.
   • Address the special needs of landlocked and small island developing States.
   • Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term.
   • In cooperation with developing countries, develop and implement strategies for decent and productive work for youth.
   • In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries.
   • In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications.

Can you personally do anything about any of these?

Should you?