Slow Progress On World Development Goals
Progress on attaining the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which seek to tackle poverty, hunger and other social ills by 2015, remains slow but countries are realizing the importance of the life-and-death targets and increasingly know what needs to be done to attain them, the UN adviser on the project said today, sounding a note of optimism.
However Jeffrey Sachs, the Secretary-Generalís Special Adviser on the MDGs, said he was under no illusion that while talk about the goals by donor countries or organizations was welcome, it means little unless concrete action is taken to back up their words.
The MDGs were agreed by world leaders at the UNís Millennium Summit in 2000. They cover eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability and fostering a global partnership for development.
Unless the world makes fundamental changes to its approach to epidemics such as poverty, hunger, and disease, the world will not achieve the Millennium Development Goals. When analyzed under recognition of growing threats such as the depleting oil supply and increasing global militarization & violence, the slow progress on the MD Goals implies a more grim future. Hopefully, the world will soon make radical changes to its behavior towards its socioeconomic problems, and greatly accelerate progress on the MDGs.
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