Millennium development goals (M.D.Gs): suggestions to transform this big dream into a reality

The M.D.G.’s is possibly the most visionary deal that most people have never heard of. In the run-up to the 21st century, a grand global bargain was negotiated at a series of summit meetings and then signed in 2000. The United Nations’ “Millennium Declaration” pledged to “ensure that globalization becomes a positive force for all the world’s people,” especially the most marginalized in developing countries. It wasn’t a promise of rich nations to poor ones; it was a pact, a partnership, in which each side would meet obligations to its own citizens and to one another.

The 2000 gathering was different, though, because signatories agreed to specific goals on a specific timeline: cutting hunger and poverty in half, giving all girls and boys a basic education, reducing infant and maternal mortality by two-thirds and three-quarters respectively, and reversing the spread of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. The target is set for 2015.

So where are we now, 10 years on, with some “first-world” economies looking as if they could go bang, and some second- and third-level economies looking as if they could be propping us up?
Based on the data on the ground, is that in many places it is going better than you would think. Tens of millions more kids are in school thanks to debt cancellation. Millions of lives have been saved through the battle against preventable disease, thanks especially to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Apart from fallout from the market meltdown, economic growth in Africa has been gathering pace — over 5 percent per year in the decade ending in 2009. Poverty declined by 1 percent a year from 1999 to 2005. The gains made by countries like Ghana show the progress the Millennium Goals have helped create.

However, there are serious headwinds: 64 million people have been thrown back into poverty because of the financial crises, and 150 million are hungry because of the food crisis. Moreover, extending the metaphor, there are storms on the horizon: the poor will be worst hit first by climate change.

Therefore, there should be no Champagne toasts at this year’s summit meeting. The 10th birthday of our millennium is, or ought to be, a purposeful affair, a redoubling of efforts. After all, there is only five years before 2015, only five years to make all that Second Avenue gridlock worth it.

Some suggestions for improvement

Primarily, it is advisable to expand and give more resources to projects that work. For example the Global Fund. Energetic, efficient and effective, the fund saves a staggering 4,000 lives a day. Even a Wall Streeter would have to admit, that’s some return on investment. Its work needs to be fully financed. This would help end the absurdity of death by mosquito, and the preventable calamity of 1,000 babies being born every day with H.I.V., passed to them by their mothers.

Moreover, it is a known fact that corruption is deadly than the deadliest of disease, a cancer that eats at the foundation of good governance even as the foundation is being built. Multinational mineral and oil companies want oil, bauxite, diamonds, uranium etc. and governments of poor countries rich in these resources; want to sell these products to them. All well and good. Except the way it too often happens, as democracy campaigners in these countries point out, is not at all good. Some of these companies knowingly participate in a system of backhanders and bribery that ends up cheating the host nation and turning what should be a resource blessing into a kind of curse. Energy companies trading on American, British, and European Union as well as G-go exchanges should therefore reveal every payment they make to government officials. If money changes hands, it will happen in the open. When transparency is away, corrupt officials will stage their show. According to the African entrepreneur Mo Ibrahim, who has emerged as one of the most important voices on the continent, transparency could do more to transform Africa than even debt cancellation has. Measures like this one should be central to any renewed Millennium Development Goal strategy.

Finally, Transparency should dominate when it comes to the question of who is doing what toward which goal and to what effect. We have to know where we are to know how far we have left to go. Right now, it is near impossible to keep track. In the M.D.G. World, one encounters only a dizzying array of vague financing and policy commitments on critical issues, from maternal mortality to agricultural development. You come across a load of bureau-babble that too often is used to hide double counting, or mask double standards. What we need is an independent unit — made up of people from governments, the private sector and civil society — to track pledges and progress, not just on aid but also on trade, governance, investment. It is essential for the credibility of the United Nations, the M.D.G.’s, and all who work toward them.