Our aspirations must become achievements: from the Millennium Summit to 2015.

• Author: Halonen, Tarja
• Position: The Millennium Development Goals: Towards 2015

In March 2000, then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan published his report, 'We the Peoples': The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century, listing the major challenges in the world. The report presented an action plan that included halving the relative amount of people living in extreme poverty by 2015, guaranteeing basic education to all children and reducing HIV-infection rates by 25 per cent by 2010. The key message of the Secretary-General's Millennium Report was that the welfare of the world's people is our shared responsibility. In an interdependent world, no nation is an island and people's fortunes are interlinked. The current situation, in which the majority of the global population lives in poverty while the minority lives in abundance, is not only wrong; in the long run, it is unsustainable.

Freedom from want and freedom from fear are fundamental rights that we must fulfil together. Mr. Annan's report and the issues related to it were addressed in depth at the Millennium Summit of September 2000 in New York. This historic meeting was jointly presided by Namibia and Finland, and I had the honour of acting as co-chair together with President Sam Nujoma of Namibia. The Summit offered a unique opportunity to find ways to respond to the global challenges and elaborate ideas on achieving a fairer world. For Finland and the European Union (EU), it was important to be able to agree on ambitious, concrete and achievable goals that would give direction to the whole United Nations system in maintaining peace and security and in supporting Member States' development efforts in a globalized world. The EU underlined the need for placing poverty eradication at the centre of development efforts. Along with the responsibility of each country for its own development, international economic assistance would be required.

Member States acknowledged in the Millennium Declaration that globalization offers great opportunities, but that its benefits were unevenly shared and its costs unequally distributed among and within countries. A challenge was set to make globalization a positive force for all the peoples of the world. The Summit also drew attention to the need for greater civil society participation in solving international problems and making the United Nations a functioning multilateral system. The views and visions of civil society on the role of the Organization in the new century were presented to the Summit by the Millennium Forum, which...