Update on millennium development goals

Now that world leaders have met to reconsider the Millennium Development Goals, we need to ask ourselves – where to from here?  What do the goals really mean? Most of the millennium goals are about children. For UNICEF then, how do people put pressure on politicians to actually do something about the goals?

Most of the millennium development goals are actually about children – about reducing poverty and child mortality, ensuring more children get a good basic education school and have access to clean water and sanitation.

The goals are mostly about the basic rights and expectations that most of us grow up with – but which millions of children still don’t have.

The goals were developed back in 2000 – and their end point is 2015.

Some controversy: Most of the controversial issues on which member states struggled to reach consensus over the past months revolved around financing for development, ODA, national ownership, or debated concepts like green economy, human security or foreign occupation.

The core of the declaration remains focused on the actual goals themselves - education, child health, maternal health, water and sanitation, PMTCT (preventing of mother to child transmission of HIV) hunger, etc.

UNICEF was able to influence the text of the Declaration on several aspects – we’ve summarised the massive 31 page document below.

The document, while noting uneven progress from the first decade, lays down an action agenda for achieving the MDGs by 2015.

Some notable messages are:

* There are still inequalities between and within countries: The Declaration emphases the Member States' deep concern with persistent inequalities between and within countries, between town and country and the need to address equality, through effective social policies, tackling inequalities, root causes and disparities, removing barriers to equitable access to services - and promoting comprehensive systems of social protection.

* Financing the goals is a key:  A relatively small amount of money can make a huge difference to children in developing countries. So a slight increase in Government aid budgets will translate through to lives saved.
Interconnectedness and the need to ensure linkages between the MDGs: “

* Everything connects to everything else” – for example – the children of mothers who have completed schooling are much less likely to die before the age of five. So education is power and a lifesaving force.

* Progress has been uneven on reducing hunger and malnutrition; gender equality; basic sanitation and maternal health.

Successes and approaches that should be scaled up include:

• Adopting measures to benefit the poor and address social and economic inequalities

•  Universal access to public and social services

• Full participation, especially for the poor and disadvantaged

•  Promoting and protecting all human rights

•  Enhanced opportunities for women and girls

•  Investing in women and child health; north-south cooperation.

• Move towards gender equality and equal access of women and girls to education, basic services, health care and economic opportunities. This includes reducing women and girls' burden of domestic activities, afford the opportunity for girls to attend school.

• Combat all forms of violence and oppression against women and girls.

• There is also a need to improve statistics and data collection, partly through the use of new technologies, to better measure progress.

Funding

Adequate quality and quantity of funding (predictable, effective, efficient) for UN operational activities.

Social protection

* Promote comprehensive systems of social protection that provide universal access to essential social services, consistent with national priorities and circumstances, by establishing a minimum level of social security and health care for all.

• Promoting universal access to social services and providing social protection floors can make an important contribution to consolidating and achieving further development gains. Social protection systems that address and reduce inequality and social exclusion are essential for protecting the gains towards the achievement of the MDGs.

Child protection

 *Take appropriate steps to assist one another in eliminating the worst forms of child labour, strengthening child protection systems and combating the trafficking in children  - through enhanced international cooperation and assistance, including support for social and economic development, poverty eradication programmes and universal education.

• Take action to achieve obligations and commitments of State parties to the Convention on the Rights of the Child

Education

* Remove barriers to provide equitable educational and learning opportunities for all children (abolishing fees; providing school meals and ensuring that schools have separate sanitation facilities for boys and girls.

• Address the root causes of the inequalities, disparities and diverse forms of exclusion and discrimination affecting children, particularly out-of-school children. 

• Methods include by enhancing children’s enrolment, retention, participation and achievements, by developing an inclusive education systems and practices, and defining targeted, proactive strategies, policies and programmes.

•  Primary education is a fundamental element of the response to and preparedness for humanitarian emergencies.

* Finance national education systems.

Health

* Realize the values and principles of primary health care, including equity. Member states will commit to redouble their efforts to reduce maternal and child mortality and improve the health of women and children, including through strengthening national health systems, efforts to combat HIV/AIDS, improved nutrition and access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.

* Ensure a continuum from prevention to care to rehabilitation, with a focus on the poor, especially in rural and remote areas.
Improving quality and effectiveness of health-care services delivery through coordinated approaches and integration of relevant services in sectors like water and sanitation; national data collection; integrated management of childhood illnesses, particularly actions to address and prevent the main causes of child mortality, inter alia, pneumonia, diarrhoea, malaria and malnutrition.

* Improve child nutrition through an integrated package of essential interventions and services; Fight against pneumonia and diarrhoea through the greater use of proven highly effective preventive and treatment measures, as well as new tools, like affordable and effective new vaccines

Public hygiene

* Critical impact of increasing access to safe drinking water, sanitation coverage and hygienic care, including hand-washing with soap, on reducing the death rate among children.

* Providing, on an urgent basis, extended and sustainable coverage and improved quality of services to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

* Address reproductive, maternal and child health, including newborn health, through the provision of family planning, prenatal care, skilled attendance at birth, emergency obstetric and newborn care and methods for the prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases and infections, such as HIV. 

* Strengthen health systems to provide accessible and affordable integrated health-care services - including community-based preventive and clinical care.

* Address the interlinked root causes of maternal mortality and morbidity, such as poverty, malnutrition, harmful practices, the lack of accessible and appropriate health-care services, information and education and gender inequality - paying particular attention to eliminating all forms of violence against women and girls.

* Behavioural and social and structural interventions and empowerment of women and adolescent girls to protect themselves from being infected by HIV. 

Health education and literacy, including among young people, in order improve awareness about health and, also to reduce harmful practices which significantly inhibit women’s and children’s access to health-care services.

* Ensure respect for human rights, promote gender equality and the empowerment of women as essential means of addressing the health of women and girls - and address the stigmatization of people living with or affected by HIV and AIDS

Increased sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation; close the ‘sanitation gap’ and increase the coverage of basic sanitation especially for the poor. 

* The next Special General Assembly event in 2013 will re- assess progress on MDGs.

Background info