What are Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)?

What are MDGs?

 

In 2000, 189 United Nations Member States (including PNG) adopted the Millennium Declaration during the UN Millennium Summit. Since then, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have become a universal framework for development and a means for development countries and their development partners to work together in pursuit of a shared future for all.

 

The eight MDGs break down into 21 quantifiable targets that are measured by 60 indicators.

 

The following are the Global MDGs:

• Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

• Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education

• Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women

• Goal 4: Reduce child mortality

• Goal 5: Improve maternal health

• Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

• Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability

• Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development

The Global MDGs:

• synthesise, in a single package, many of the most important commitments mad separately at the international conferences and summits of the 1990s;

• recognise explicitly the interdependence between growth, poverty reduction and sustainable development;

• acknowledge that development rests on the foundations of democratic governance, the rule of law, respect for human rights and peace and security;

• are based on time-bound and measurable targets accompanied by indicators for monitoring progress; and

• bring together, in the eighth Goal, the responsibilities of developing countries with those of developed countries, founded on a global partnership endorsed at the International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico in March 2002, and again at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development in August 2002.

• According to PNG’s Medium Term Development Strategy (MTDS) 2005-2010, the following are the National Goals and targets tailored from the global MDGs.

PNG MDGs:

 

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger:

• Decrease the proportion of people below the poverty line by 10 percent by 2015, using the 1996 national average figure of 20 percent below the lower poverty line as the benchmark figure

• By 2015, increase by 10 percent the total amount of agriculture commercially produced and by 34 percent the amount of subsistence agriculture production

2. Achieve universal primary education:

• Achieve a gross enrolment rate of 85 percent at the primary level by 2015

• Achieve a Chohort Retention Rate of 70 percent at the primary level by 2015

• Achieve an (indirectly measured) Youth Literacy Rate of 70 percent by 2015

3. Promote gender equality and empower women:

• Eliminate gender disparity at the primary and lower secondary level by 2015, and at the upper secondary level and above by 2030

4. Reduce child mortality:

• Reduce the Infant Mortality Rate to 44 per thousand by 2015

• Reduce the Under Five Mortality Rate to 72 per thousand by 2015

5. Improve maternal health:

• Decrease the Maternal Mortality Rate to 274 per 100,000 live births by 2015

6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases:

• Have controlled by 2015, and stabilised by 2020, the spread of HIV/AIDS

• Have controlled by 2015, and either stablised or reversed the incidence of pneumonia, malaria and other major diseases by 2020

7. Ensure environmental sustainability:

• Implement the principles of sustainable development through sector specific programs by 2010 and no later than 2015

• By 2020, increase commercial use of land and natural resources through impoevements in environmentally friendly technologies and methos of production

• Increase to 60 percent the number of households with access to safe water by 2010 and to at least 86 percent by 2020 (as per definition from DOH)

• By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of disadvantaged and vulnerable groups in urban areas