The importance of the MDGs: the United Nations leadership in development.

• Author: Migiro, Asha-Rose
• Position: The Millennium Development Goals: Towards 2015

The Millennium Development Goals are the international community's most broadly shared, comprehensive and focused framework for reducing poverty. Drawn from the Millennium Declaration, adopted and agreed to by all Governments in 2000, the MDGs represent the commitments of United Nations Member States to reduce extreme poverty and its many manifestations: hunger, disease, gender inequality, lack of education and access to basic infrastructure, and environmental degradation.

The MDGs set quantitative objectives to be achieved by 2015. They also drive international development policy by spelling out the responsibilities of rich countries to support poor countries through aid, debt relief and improved market access. The Goals confirmed the importance of the United Nations, with its unique legitimacy and convening power, as the multilateral body best placed to build global coalitions and political action to address global problems. At the Millennium Summit in 2000, the International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey in 2002, the UN World Summit in 2005 and other international events, world leaders pledged to establish national policies and strategies needed, and to provide the resources necessary to achieve the Goals. The MDG agenda has become a uniting and organizing principle for the work of the entire international system in the area of development--a testament to the universal buy-in into the Goals. The MDGs also provide a rationale for the United Nations family to work together more coherently and effectively, so as to give countries the support they need to achieve the Goals.

The stakes are high. If the MDGs are implemented in time in all parts of the globe, 500 million fewer people will be living in extreme poverty and some 300 million fewer will go hungry, while 30 million fewer children will die before their fifth birthday. In addition, about 350 million more people will have access to safe drinking water and a further 650 million more to sanitation. Real economic and social opportunities will open up on an unprecedented scale.

There is good news, including in sub-Saharan Africa, where the biggest challenges remain. Countries are demonstrating that rapid and large-scale progress is possible when Government leadership, policies and strategies for scaling up public investments are combined with financial and technical support from the international community. Malawi has raised agricultural productivity; primary school...