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Millennium Development Goals at Midpoint: Where do we stand and where do we need to go?
September 2008
François Bourguignon, Agnès Bénassy-Quéré, Stefan Dercon, Antonio Estache, Jan Willem Gunning, Ravi Kanbur, Stephan Klasen, Simon Maxwell, Jean-Philippe Platteau, Amedeo Spadaro
European Commission (EC)
Introduction
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the expression of the strong commitment to universal development and poverty eradication made by the International Community in the UN Millennium Declaration in September 2000. They offer a set of concrete targets that can be used to assess the integrity of the political commitment made through the Declaration. Their coverage is quite wide and includes halving world poverty and hunger by 2015, as well as reaching universal primary education, reducing under-5 and maternal mortality by two thirds, and halving the number of people without access to safe drinking water (see Box 1). At the same time, the Declaration called for a new partnership between the developed and the developing countries, determined “to create an environment – at the national and global levels alike – which is conducive to development and the elimination of poverty.” It entailed clear obligations for the developed countries as they were expected to ease market access, lessen the debt burden, channel financial resources and provide development assistance to the developing world, which, in turn, had to improve governance and conduct effective development policies.
A year and a half later, the International conference on ‘Financing for Development’, held in Monterrey (Mexico) reiterated the need for such a partnership. With respect to Official Development Assistance (ODA) in particular, it established a compact between developed and developing countries, by which the former would increase both the volume of aid and its quality – through better co-ordination – while the latter would strive to make aid more effective – through improved governance and development management. At the same time, the arrangement insisted on the need for development strategies to be fully owned by developing countries. In both the Millennium and the Monterrey Declarations, the focus was on low-income countries, with particular emphasis on those in Sub-Saharan Africa.
These commitments have since been reiterated on many occasions including by the European Council in June 2008. Since the Gleneagles summit, the G8 has also repeatedly pledged ambitious levels of aid to help achieve the MDGs and it reinforced its commitment again in Hokkaido in July 2008. In addition, the UN Secretary General has convened a High Level Event which will take place in New York in September 2008.
Nevertheless, in spite of their recurring political endorsement, the MDGs have been subject to a wide range of criticism.1 Indeed, there has been much debate about the conceptual and methodological underpinnings of the MDGs and their predecessors, the International Development Targets. We are fully aware of these questions, which have been addressed in a more technical companion report to the present paper.2
Notwithstanding the issues raised by the MDGs, they have played an essential political role in mobilising the support for development assistance at a time when aid disbursements were on a downward trend in many key OECD countries. Because of this potential mobilising role, the MDGs continue to enjoy strong support among many development actors. As the global economy is entering a slow down, it seems essential to make the most of this mobilising role. Some development actors have gone even further by suggesting more goals be added to the existing list.
At this crucial juncture, it is therefore very important to take stock of what has been achieved by the MDGs so far and to propose corrections that may be needed to ensure the commitments made at the Millennium Declaration are delivered. Such an endeavour is all the more justified given that we now stand at midpoint between the MDGs’ launch and the agreed deadline.
Footnotes:
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The initial high profile criticism was launched by the Centre for Global Development researchers in the US and includes various important notes on the topic. See http://www.cgdev.org/section/topics/mdg
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Bourguignon et al. (2008)
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