UN Millennium Development Goals e-learning materials

Guide to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals

• A billion people worldwide survive on less than a dollar a day, in sub-saharan Africa it is nearly 50% of the population.
• Nearly 15% of the worlds population suffers from hunger, with 30% of the population under-nourished in SS Africa and 20% in South Asia.
• 10% of children in SS Africa will die before they reach their first birthday.
• If you are a pregnant woman in Sub Saharan Africa there is nearly a 10% chance that you will die in child birth, whilst in Southern Asia there is a 60% chance that you will have to go through childbirth without any assistance from a skilled health care professional.

These are just some of the reasons for the conception of the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

There are many sources of information about the UN MDGs. This guide is intended to bring together each of those resources in order to explore all the information available.

The following pages detail how the UN MDGs came about, provides a comprehensive list of the goals, targets and indicators explaining how these relate to each other, identifies the sources of the data and illustrates how progress made towards these goals is measured.

Learning objectives for the 'Guide to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals' section

• Understand the origins of the UN MDGs
• Be aware of each of the goals, targets and indicators and understand how these relate to each other.
• Learn about the concepts, definitions, implementation and sources of data for the 48 official MDG indicators .
• Understand how progress toward the MDGs is measured.