Millennium Development Goals

The Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs for short, represent a consensus among the nations of the world on concrete steps that must be taken to reduce global poverty and related ills and injustices. The time frame for meeting the goals was set at fifteen years, beginning in 2000.

The Millennium Development Goals are a set of benchmarks established because they are realistic and attainable, and they are critical measures of real change that can improve people's lives.

The Millennium Development Goals focus on eight key areas:

	Poverty and hungers		Education
	Gender equality		Child mortality
	Maternal health		Combat diseases
	Environmental sustainability		Global partnership

These are the areas that need work. The MDGs set out measurable goals and steps to attain them.

"We will have time to reach the Millennium Development Goals—worldwide and in most, or even all, individual countries—but only if we break with business as usual. We cannot win overnight. Success will require sustained action across the entire decade between now and the deadline."

These are the words of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. But the 2006 United Nations report summarizing progress towards meeting the goals shows that they are in critical danger of not being met. Essentially, nations are failing to make meeting the MDGs a priority in their budgeting and planning. The report shows that we have almost nothing to show for the first six years of work towards these goals (actually, 1990 is the baseline for most measurements, so it's even worse than that!).

It's hard to imagine that once again the rhetoric of heads of state is nothing more than grandstanding. The millions of people living in poverty and misery around the world will know they cannot rely on them to keep their word.

Canada is as guilty as any other state in letting a historic opportunity to make real change slip by. It is time for Canadians to let our leaders know that when we committed to the MDGs, we made a promise that we demand to see kept.