The millenium development goals

By Alexander Carpenter

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

   • Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than one U.S. dollar a day.
   • Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
   • Increase the amount of food for those who suffer from hunger.

2. Achieve universal primary education

   • Ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling.
   • Increased enrollment must be accompanied by efforts to ensure that
     all children remain in school and receive a high-quality education

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 the mortality rate among children under five by two thirds.

5. Improve maternal health

   • Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio.

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.

7. Ensure environmental sustainability

   • Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources.
   • Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access
     to safe drinking water (for more information see the entry on water supply).
   • Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020.

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 least developed countries’ special needs. This includes tariff- and quota-free access for their exports; enhanced debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries; 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 developing countries’ debt problems
     through national and international measures to make debt sustainable in
     the long term.
   • In cooperation with the developing countries, develop decent and productive work for youth.
   • In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries.