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Goals and Indicators

UNDP, in collaboration with national governments, is coordinating reporting by countries on progress towards the UN Millennium Development Goals. The framework for reporting includes eight goals -- based on the UN Millennium Declaration. For each goal there is one or more specific target, along with specific social, economic and environmental indicators used to track progress towards the goals.

The eight goals represent a partnership between the developed countries and the developing countries determined, as the Millennium Declaration states, "to create an environment-at the national and global levels alike-which is conducive to development and the elimination of poverty."

Support for reporting at the country level includes close consultation by UNDP with partners in the UN Development Group, other UN partners, the World Bank, IMF and OECD and regional groupings and experts. The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs is coordinating reporting on progress towards the goals at the global level.

Monitoring progress is easier for some targets than for others and good quality data for some indicators are not yet available for many countries. This underscores the need to assist countries in building national capacity in compiling vital data.

The global challenge: Goals and targets

The Millennium Development Goals are an ambitious agenda for reducing poverty and improving lives that world leaders agreed on at the Millennium Summit in September 2000. For each goal one or more targets have been set, most for 2015, using 1990 as a benchmark:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

Target for 2015 : Halve the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day and those who suffer from hunger.

More than a billion people still live on less than US$1 a day: sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and parts of Europe and Central Asia are falling short of the poverty target.

2. Achieve universal primary education

Target for 2015 : Ensure that all boys and girls complete primary school.

As many as 113 million children do not attend school, but the target is within reach. India, for example, should have 95 percent of its children in school by 2005.

3. Promote gender equality and empower women

Targets for 2005 and 2015 : Eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015.

Two-thirds of illiterates are women, and the rate of employment among women is two-thirds that of men. The proportion of seats in parliaments held by women is increasing, reaching about one third in Argentina, Mozambique and South Africa.

4. Reduce child mortality

Target for 2015 : Reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five

Every year nearly 11 million young children die before their fifth birthday, mainly from preventable illnesses, but that number is down from 15 million in 1980.

5. Improve maternal health

Target for 2015 : Reduce by three-quarters the ratio of women dying in childbirth.

In the developing world, the risk of dying in childbirth is one in 48, but virtually all countries now have safe motherhood programmes.

6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

Target for 2015 : Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS and the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.

Forty million people are living with HIV, including five million newly infected in 2001. Countries like Brazil, Senegal, Thailand and Uganda have shown that the spread of HIV can be stemmed.

7. Ensure environmental sustainability

Targets :

• Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources.
   
• By 2015, reduce by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water.
   
• By 2020 achieve significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.

More than one billion people lack access to safe drinking water and more than two billion lack sanitation. During the 1990s, however, nearly one billion people gained access to safe water and the same number to sanitation.

8. Develop a global partnership for development

Targets :

• Develop further an open trading and financial system that includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction – nationally and internationally
   
• Address the least developed countries’ special needs, and the special needs of landlocked and small island developing States
   
• Deal comprehensively with developing countries’ debt problems
   
• Develop decent and productive work for youth
   
• In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries
   
• In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies – especially information and communications technologies.

Many developing countries spend more on debt service than on social services. New aid commitments made in the first half of 2002 could mean an additional $12 billion per year by 2006.