Review the 8 Millennium Development Goals and suggest some improvements to the goals. As of this year, how would you list the Millennium Development Goals? Would the list from 1 to 8 stay the same, be switched around, or would some of the goals change completely? Be sure to include your rationale.
In 2000, the UN signed the United Nations Millennium Declaration that set 8 development goals to achieve by the year 2015. To measure their progress towards these goals, 1990’s indicators were used. The 8 Millennium Goals mainly covered problems of poverty, health, education, and the environment (World Health Organization, 2018).
As soon as the period of this declaration dates from 2000 to 2015, I would not like to change the goals’ sequence – to me, it looks quite logical for those years. However, I would split these broad goals into several smaller ones – this would make it possible to measure the real progress, instead of mixing several indicators together. For example, let’s look at the first goal: “eradicate extreme poverty and hunger” (The World Bank, n.d.). This goal could be divided into two different ones, such as “eradicate poverty” and “eradicate hunger”. Such division would give us a clear picture of the situation, and it would be more difficult to make the UN reports over-positive because it would be impossible to make them look better while paying more attention to some winning points and ignoring less successful ones. The third goal – “promote gender equality and empower women” (The World Bank, n.d.), could be divided into “promote gender equality” and “reduce inequalities” for the very same reasons I mentioned above. The seventh goal – “Ensure environmental sustainability” (The World Bank, n.d.) – is too broad, and should be divided into several smaller ones. For example, “combat climate change”, “consume responsibly”, “use sustainable energy”, “protect ecosystems”, and many others.
Probably, United Nations realized that, therefore in 2015 this organization adopted a new Agenda for Sustainable Development, which will take place from 2015 to 2030. It consists of 17 goals, that are very detailed and cover all modern issues our world faces. And even though in 2015, the UN had no idea about COVID-19, they covered this issue in such a goal as “good health and well-being”. In total, there are 169 goals, and so far in 7 years, 3163 events with 6036 actions took place (United Nations, n.d.).
References
The World Bank. (n.d.). THE 8 MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS. Retrieved from https://www5.worldbank.org/mdgs/
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (n.d.). Sustainable Development. The 17 goals. Retrieved from https://sdgs.un.org/goals
World Health Organization. (February 19, 2018). Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Retrieved from https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/millennium-development-goals-(mdgs)