UN Millennium Development Goals e-learning materials

Background to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals

In September 2000, 147 heads of State and Government and 189 nations in total signed up to the United Nations Millennium Declaration (PDF 63KB) . The Declaration calls for halving by the year 2015, the number of people who live on less than one dollar a day. This effort also involves finding solutions to hunger, malnutrition and disease, promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women, guaranteeing a basic education for everyone, and supporting the Agenda 21 principles of sustainable development. Direct support from the richer countries, in the form of aid, trade, debt relief and investment is to be provided to help the developing countries. The objective of the Declaration is to promote "a comprehensive approach and a coordinated strategy, tackling many problems simultaneously across a broad front."

Photo by: rogiro, Creative Commons, Flickr

This vision for the future involves: a world with less poverty, hunger and disease, greater survival prospects for mothers and their infants, better educated children, equal opportunities for women, and a healthier environment, a world in which developed and developing countries worked in partnership for the betterment of all.

From this vision emerged the eight Millennium Development Goals, which provide a framework for development planning for countries around the world, and time-bound targets by which progress toward the commitment made in the year 2000 can be measured. International and national statistical experts selected relevant indicators to be used to assess progress over the period from 1990 to 2015, when targets are expected to be met - see Road Map towards the Implementation of the United Nations Millennium Declaration (PDF 450KB).

Read on for details of the UN MDG Goals, Targets and Indicators.