Background to the Millennium Development Goals
In 2000, world leaders agreed the UN Millennium Declaration, which signalled a growing recognition that, for the United Nations to be able to fulfil its objectives in maintaining peace and security and protecting human rights, poverty and inequality needed to be eradicated.

But the core achievement of the Millennium Declaration was its formal articulation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - eight time-bound objectives which range from halving world poverty to cutting child mortality, achieving universal primary education and ensuring environmental sustainability. The MDGs have served to provide a universal blueprint for international development efforts and a common yardstick for measuring progress.

The Goals have also served to underline how different development objectives are intertwined with others. Falling short on gender equality, for example, will frustrate the universalisation of primary education. Similarly, wiping out child mortality will remain out of reach in the absence of effective measures to ensure safe access to clean water.

World leaders agreed to achieve the MDGs by 2015. We are now nearing the halfway point, and progress has been mixed, with successes in, for instance, East Asia undermined by loss of ground in sub-Saharan Africa . Insufficient resources, poor governance, corruption and inefficient international trade policies have all played a part in hampering success. For an analysis of what is holding us back, see ‘Investing in Developmen', the 2004 report by renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs.

For the most up-to-date assessment of how far the world has come to achieve the MDGs and how far it has to go, see ‘Millennium Development Goals Report 2007', compiled by a group of over 20 UN bodies and a number of other relevant external actors.

Click here to read the 2006 progress report.

UNA-UK's work
All of the MDGs are vital. Neglect of any one will compromise the achievement of the Goals as a whole. UNA-UK has chosen to focus on MDGs 7 and 8 because it is here that there is most scope for impact by UNA members and individual members of the British public.

Within efforts to reach MDG 7 (ensure environmental sustainability), UNA-UK is emphasising action to meet the challenge of climate change. It supports I Count and is a member of the Stop Climate Chaos coalition, a civil society movement seeking to mobilise pubic pressure in support of immediate and comprehensive political action to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Within efforts to reach MDG 8 (develop a global partnership for development), UNA-UK is emphasising poverty reduction through increased aid, more debt cancellation and trade justice. It is a member of The World Can't Wait: Your Voice Against Poverty, the coalition born out of Make Poverty History, the irrepressible anti-poverty coalition which dominated headlines in 2005.