Home : About MDG Portal : About SDNP : Contact Us

Global Millennium Development Goals Campaign

The Global Call to Action against Poverty is a world-wide alliance committed to forcing world leaders to live up to their promises, and to make a breakthrough on poverty in 2005.

A global campaign is needed to bridge the gap between the simple messages needed for advocacy (e.g. the number living on less than a $1 a day) and poverty's more complex reality. For 'goals on paper' to become a practical reality for millions of people, public attention and public action need to be sharply focused on poverty reduction and human development.

The purpose of the campaign is to keep the eyes and actions of the world focused on the Millennium Development Goals. In developed countries, the campaign will focus on making the case for aid and for urgent debt relief, based on clear evidence of results; ensuring that aid is allocated to sectors and services relevant to the Millennium Development Goals; and opening markets more widely to developing countries, especially the least developed countries.

In developing countries, the campaign will focus on mobilising domestic resources, prioritising budget expenditure on the Millennium Development Goals, and strengthening human rights, democracy and good governance as specified in the Millennium Declaration. Each of these objectives must be pursued in ways sensitive to country context and target groups. It will be is absolutely critical for campaign activities to be tailored to country-specific circumstances. ·

A 'continuous campaign' running all the way to 2015 will help transform the political and intellectual debate at the national and global levels and make the Millennium Development Goals a high priority; create business plans, deeply grounded in evidence, on how to achieve the goals; build informed constituencies for more spending on health and education, by demonstrating the enormous returns from such spending; and focus on equity and human rights as part and parcel of the Millennium Development Goals.

Although efforts may start with simple slogans like ending $1-a-day poverty, if the campaign is to be sustained and change the political debate and hence public policy priorities, it must, like Rowntree did in the early 20th century United Kingdom, get deep into the facts and findings, and generate academic, public policy and political debate around the Millennium Development Goals. If successful, it will quickly grow out of its early simplicity, and demonstrate to the world the amazing things that can be accomplished if we put our minds and hearts to it.