In 2000 all 191 member countries of the United Nations – including Australia - committed to eight targets to halve poverty by 2015. This unprecedented global plan is a crucial step towards making poverty history. However with less than a decade to go until 2015 progress is too slow. Urgent action must be taken by nations if they are to fulfil their promise to achieve the MDGs.

The Australian Government should:

• Adopt the MDGs as a framework for Australia’s aid program
• Provide an annual progress report to Parliament on Australia’s efforts to achieve the MDGs
• Provide financial assistance necessary to meet the MDGs – specifically cancel debt repayments that impair government spending towards meeting the MDGs in indebted countries; and significantly increase the level of aid investment through the provision of funding directed at achieving the MDGs, for example basic health and education programs.

What are the Millennium Development Goals?

Since agreeing to make the Millennium Development Goals a key framework for international action and cooperation to reduce poverty, much progress has been made. However, despite the gains, no region in the world is on-track to achieve all of the Goals, and some regions are off-track on many of them. There has been some progress in Sub-Saharan Africa, but the region as a whole will not achieve any of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 on current progress. Our own region (Asia and the Pacific), where most of Australia’s aid is focused also faces serious challenges on several of the Goals. New resources and new commitment are required if the world is to achieve the Goals it set in 2000, and deliver on the promise made to the world’s poor in the Millennium Declaration:

We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanising conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected.

• 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

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Is the world on track to meet the MDGs by 2015?

The world is making progress toward achieving the MDGs but it is uneven and too slow. Urgent action is needed to get the global plan back on track. While the plan has galvanized an unprecedented global effort to meet the needs of the world’s poorest, the majority of developing countries will only reach the MDGs only if they get substantial support from outside.

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

Target 1: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day

Target 2: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger

Progress and Prospects

It’s entirely likely that the world will achieve this goal at an aggregate level, with 135 million people having been lifted above the $1 per day level between 1999 and 2004. This advance is being driven largely by economic growth and poverty reduction efforts in China and India. Progress in these two countries, with such large populations, however, hides the fact that many countries will not achieve the Goal. In Sub-Saharan Africa, though the proportion of people living on less than $1 a day fell by around 4% over the same period, the absolute number of people living in poverty remains the same, around 300 million people.

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Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education

Target 3: Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.

Progress and Prospects

Thanks to additional aid and debt cancellation for many countries, since 2000 over 34 million extra children in developing countries are able now to attend and complete primary school. For example, after school fees were abolished, enrolment rose from 3.4 million to 5.7 million students in Uganda (1996), from 1.5 to 3 million in Tanzania (2002) and from 5.9 to 7.2 million in Kenya. This Goal is entirely achievable.

However, after abolishing school fees, Kenya was unable to hire the additional 60,000 required teachers because of an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which restricted public spending and froze teacher numbers at 1990 levels. And while the world’s first global compact to fully fund the education sector plans of developing countries (known as the Education For All Fast Track Initiative) was launched in 2002, it faces a three-year funding shortfall of around $1 billion for the 31 countries whose education sector plans have been endorsed.

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Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women

Target 4: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015

Progress and Prospects

Most regions have shown progress on this Goal, with South Asia lifting the enrolment rate from 69 girls for every 100 boys in 1990 to 87 girls for every 100 boys in 2005. Development and poverty reduction plans at all levels (national, donor, multilateral) are all recognising the importance of gender equity. However, the target for gender parity in primary and secondary education was missed in 94 countries, and if business as usual is followed, then 2015 will still not see gender parity in education.

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Goal 4: Reduce child mortality

Target 5: Reduce by two thirds, between 1900 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate

Prospects and Progress

Sadly, progress towards this goal lags behind all others, and no region is likely to achieve the Goal on current progress. In fact, only 32 of 147 countries are on-track to cut child mortality by two thirds. This year, around 10 million children will die, primarily from preventable and curable diseases. The total number of under-five deaths is dropping each year, but too slowly.

There are a number of low-cost and effective interventions that would have a dramatic impact on child mortality rates, particularly the provision of oral rehydration therapy to treat diarrhoeal diseases, insecticide-treated bednets to prevent malaria, basic antibiotics and immunization, and the strong promotion of breastfeeding. A Lancet study estimated that if these interventions were scaled-up and targeted on the most needy populations, this could reduce child mortality by almost two thirds. There has been some important efforts to increase these interventions, but more work is needed.

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Goal 5: Improve maternal health

Target 6: Reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio

Prospects and Progress

Around 500,000 women in developing countries die each year from complications in pregnancy and childbirth. And for every woman who dies, there are approximately 20 more who are seriously injured or disabled. Most regions saw an increase in the number of women receiving assistance in childbirth from a skilled assistant (nurse, doctor or midwife), The proportion of assisted births in South-East Asia rose from 34% in 1990 to 64% in 2003. However, there was very little progress in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Progress is certainly possible. Bangladesh and Sri Lanka reduced maternal mortality ratios through increased use of midwives and community health workers, as well as improved infrastructure, such as transport to clinics. And in only eight years, Egypt was able to cut the maternal mortality in half, through a comprehensive boost to quality of medical care and community support for women in pregnancy and childbirth.

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

Target 7: Have halved by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS

Target 8: Halve halved by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases

Prospects and Progress

There has been increased donor focus on HIV, and to some extent malaria and other diseases, as well as major new multilateral initiatives such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, which by 2007 had committed $7.6 billion to fight these diseases in 136 countries. This renewed focus has brought tuberculosis infection rates down in all regions (though it still causes 2 million deaths each year). It has also led to a tenfold increase in distribution of insecticide-treated mosquito nets between 2000 and 2005 in Africa (where 95% of malaria deaths occur).

Much more needs to be done, though, particularly to fight HIV. HIV prevalence rates rose in every region through to 2006, except for Sub-Saharan Africa, where, tragically, AIDS deaths roughly matched the number of new infections. And although the number of AIDS patients in developing countries receiving anti-retroviral treatment increased from around 240,000 in 2001 to over 2 million by the end of 2006, this still represents only a quarter of patients who needed treatment.

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Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability

Target 9: Integrate principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources

Target 10: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation

Target 11: By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers

Prospects and Progress

Despite the critical importance of water and sanitation, for improving public health, productivity, and even education, official development assistance (ODA) directed to water and sanitation dropped substantially between the mid-1990s and 2002, and funding in these critical areas has still not returned to 2000 levels. Total donor commitment to water and sanitation in 2005 was around $7 billion, less than 1/3 of the estimated $23 billion required in order to achieve the water and sanitation target. And the UN estimates that without new action, the number of slum dwellers will double, from 1 billion to 2 billion people, by 2030.

Environmental sustainability, and indeed all of the goals, is also threatened by the continuing rise of greenhouse gas emissions, and the current and projected impact of global warming.

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Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development

Target 12: Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory lending and financial system

Target 13: Address the special needs of the least developed countries

Target 14: Address the special needs of landlocked developing countries and small island developing States

Target 15: Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries

Target 16: In cooperation with developing countries, develop and implement strategies for decent and productive work for youth

Target 17: In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries

Target 18: In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications

Prospects and Progress

Although flows of aid have increased since 2002, and there has been much greater emphasis on coordinating and harmonising aid among donors, total aid is still well short of the amount required to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Debt cancellation has also formed the bulk of the increase in aid, which while important and welcome, does not necessarily deliver new finance for development. In addition, the collapse of the “Doha Development Round” of World Trade Organisation negotiations, has left many of the injustices in the global trade system in place.

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What can Australia do?

If we’re to meet the MDGs by 2015 rich countries such as Australia must play a crucial role by giving more and better aid, insisting on fair trade and cancelling the massive debts of poor countries.

Make Poverty History is calling for the Australian Government to integrate the MDGs into its aid program, as the UK and Sweden have started to do. Right now the Australian aid program has too much emphasis on law and justice and too little focus on poverty reduction. The Government should concentrate on more and better aid for basic education, health and HIV/AIDS programs, fair trade as well as debt relief.

The Government can also provide the financial assistance necessary to meet the MDGs – specifically cancelling debt repayments that impair government spending towards meeting the MDGs in indebted countries; and significantly increase the level of aid investment through the provision of funding directed at achieving the MDGs, for example basic health and education programs.

If the world achieves the MDGs at least 500 million people would be lifted out of poverty.

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What can you do?

Join Us and urge our leaders to honour their commitments to the Millennium Development Goals and help make poverty history.

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Related Links

Resources from Make Poverty History members:

Caritas Australia – follow the Power Points and Movies link to download a presentation on the MDGs

Plan International – "Our future; our say. Children demand action on the Millennium Development Goals"

World Vision – "How are the neighbours? The Millennium Development Goals & our region"

Additional resources from other organizations:

Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP)

UN Millennium Development Goals

Millennium Campaign

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