Reviewing the Millennium Development Goals: Part One

This is Part One of a two-part series. In Part Two we look at how the MDGs relate to Australia.

(Transcript from World News Australia Radio)

In less than three years, the world will reach a deadline for reaching an ambitious set of targets aimed at improving living standards in developing countries.

It seems certain that less than half of the targets will be met.

Discussions have already begun on what should replace them, with some criticising the current goals as being unrealistic.

The eight United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, were set at a special summit of world leaders in 2000.

One MDG is the elimination of extreme poverty and hunger.

Another is to ensure that every child in the world receives at least a primary-level education.

The MDGs also aim to reduce child mortality rates, and deaths from preventable diseases.

A UN report issued last year described progress towards achieving the goals as uneven, with significant improvements in parts of the world, but little change in others.

Annmarie O'Keeffe is with the Sydney-based international policy research group, the Lowy Institute.

She says it's not surprising that MDG progress has been varied.

"The problem with the Millennium Development Goals is that they are attempting to put everybody in the same playing field, and that's very difficult when you have countries that still have enormous development challenges ahead of them, side-by-side with developing countries that have become middle-income countries. It's very difficult to then say yes they've been successful or no they haven't. It's a mixed scorecard."

Former President of Peru, Doctor Alejandro Toledo, believes that despite the achievements that have been made, the core issues the goals are attempting to address remain unchanged.

"We have walked a long path, great accomplishment has taken place but we have to be honest to admit there is still a long way to go. There is no time for complacency and there is no space for over-optimism. We have learned some lessons. Economic growth is a means and not an end. We need to grow in order to distribute better the benefits of economic growth beginning with the poorest of the poorest. Poverty reduction, inequality reduction, human rights, freedom of the press, independence of power, accountability, are the issues that we are dealing with."

Lynne Benson is head of International Development Programs with the Australian branch of the aid group, Save the Children.

She says the MDGs have helped to ensure introduction of some programs in developing countries that may not otherwise have been implemented.

But she's hoping the new goals that replace the MDGs will focus more on the quality of programs.

"One of the current Millennium Development Goals was that all children should access education, and we've worked on that and we've really increased the number of children who have managed to get into school. However what we're learning is that the quality of the education that they receive is really not good enough in many places. For example, in Ghana there were school completion rates of 81 per cent of girls finishing primary school but only 19 per cent of them could read a very simple basic passage. In the new goals we actually want all children to be able to get a great education, not just to be a bum on a seat in a school."

Jack De Groot is CEO of the Australian arm of the Catholic aid group, Caritas.

He sees some of the MDGs as not being ambitious enough.

"I think the Millennium Development Goals have been a tremendous system of accountability, but they didn't set the bar high enough. We used to see nearly 30 thousand children die each day of extreme poverty in the year 2005. Now we see a figure of around 22 to 23 thousand. Those seven thousand lives saved each day are a testament to the impact of the goals and what internationally agreed commitments can achieve, but it needs more rigour. So the challenges of poverty we have met to a degree in the last 15 years. But we need new agreements and new architecture that meet the new challenges of our era."

Dr Richard Denniss is executive director of the public policy group, the Australia Institute.

He says what comes next should be less focused on numerical goals.

"I just think we need to have new goals that are appropriate for where we're currently at. The fact that we didn't achieve all of the goals doesn't mean that we couldn't do with some new ones. But I think in setting the goals we have to be very clear: are we solving the problems or are we just trying to address some of the symptoms? But ultimately it's the people we're trying to help that should be front of mind, not a number on a piece of paper."

Some aid groups are advocating a new set of development goals with another 15-year target.

However, Lynne Benson from Save the Children thinks 2030 as the new target year would be unrealistic.

"If you think of a tough place like Afghanistan, in Oruzgan where we work the literacy rate for women is 0.3 per cent. When you're starting from such a low ground it takes a lot more than 10 or 15 years to change, and achieve complete change, complete success for those people."

Economic development expert with the UN, Shamshad Akhtar, says post-2015 frameworks will need to pay closer attention to the progress of individual nations.

And she says it's too simplistic to argue just for the alleviation of poverty.

"The next generation of development goals should focus on outcomes, and they have to recognise sector inter-dependence and inter-linkages rather than merely defining standalone indicators to measure progress. So it's not that easy to say that we just target poverty and we would solve the problem."

Annmarie O'Keeffe from the Lowy Institute agrees.

She believes the new goals set by UN members will be a hybrid of the existing MDGs.

"I think what replaces the Millennium Development Goals post-2015 is probably going to be a compromise because there's a greater degree of multiplicity of the actors discussing this whole issue than there was in the late 1990s. Some people think it should be the "Millennium Development Goals plus", that you look at what the goals are at the moment, perhaps keep most of them if not all of them, but have them in a way that responds more to the different regional and even country differences as well."

The Millennium Development Goals officially expire at the end of 2015.