The world is too round to sit silently in the corner

"The Millennium Development Goals were adopted five years ago by all the world's Governments as a blueprint for building a better world in the 21st century." Kofi Annan

The eight MDGs are:

1. Eradicate extreme povery and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development

The MDGs represent a global partnership that has grown from the commitments and targets established at the world summits of the 1990s. Responding to the world's main development challenges and to the calls of civil society, the MDGs promote poverty reduction, education, maternal health, gender equality, and aim at combating child mortality, AIDS and other diseases.

Set for the year 2015, the MDGs are an agreed set of goals that can be achieved if all actors work together and do their part. Poor countries have pledged to govern better, and invest in their people through health care and education. Rich countries have pledged to support them, through aid, debt relief, and fairer trade.

How is UNDP helping?

UNDP is working with a wide range of partners to help create coalitions for change to support the goals at global, regional and national levels, to benchmark progress towards them, and to help countries to build the institutional capacity, policies and programmes needed to achieve the MDGs.

Guided by the UN Core Strategy, UNDP's work on the MDGs focuses on coordinating global and local efforts that:

• Campaign and mobilise for the MDGs through advocacy;
• Share the best strategies for meeting the MDGs in terms of innovative practices, policy and institutional reforms, means of policy implementation, and evaluation of financing options;
• Monitor and report progress towards the MDGs; and
• Support governments in tailoring the MDGs to local circumstances and challenges.

Further Reading

• UNDPs Millennium Development Goals
• MDG Targets and Indicators