Recent gains in millennium development

goal 1 have seen the number of hungry

people in the world decrease to fewer
than 1 billion, though the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations believes that this number is still
unacceptably high.

Millennium Development Goal 1 has

three targets:

1. To halve the proportion of people whose daily income is less than $1.25
2. To achieve full and productive employment, as well as decent work for
all, including young people and women
3. To halve the proportion of individuals suffering from hunger in the
period between 1990 and 2015.

Pioneering efforts have led to profound achievements including:

 A considerable reduction in extreme poverty over the last 25 years. In

1990, nearly 50 percent of the population in developing nations lived on
less than $1.25 a day. As of 2015, that proportion has dropped to 14
percent.
 The number of people living in extreme poverty worldwide has reduced
by more than 50 percent. In 1990, 1.9 billion people were said to be
living in extreme poverty, compared to 836 million in 2015. Most
progress was seen in the new millennium.
 The number of living on more than $4 a day – those in the working
middle class – has nearly tripled between 1991 and 2015. In 1991, this
group made only 18 percent of the population, and rose to 50 percent in
2015.
 The proportion of undernourished people in the developing world has
dropped by almost 50 percent since 1990; from 23.3 percent in 1990 –
’92 to 12.9 percent in 2014 – ’16.
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 There is only one target for millennium
development goal 2:

1. To ensure that children

universally – including both boys and
girls – will be able to complete a full
course of primary education by 2015.

The Food and Agricultural Organization

of the UN claims that nearly 57 million
primary school age children are not able
to attend school; 80 percent of whom live
in rural areas. This has made the urban-
rural knowledge and education divide today’s main obstacle to achieving
global primary education by 2015.

The fact that rural children are highly affected by hunger and malnutrition has
also seriously affected their learning ability. As such, food security and
primary education should be addressed at the same time to give rural people
the capacity to feed themselves and overcome hunger, poverty, and illiteracy.
Social protection brings together all efforts for education and food security
towards increased effectiveness.
Some of the achievements of MDG 2 include:

 An increase in the primary school net enrolment in the developing

world from 83 percent in 2000 to 91 percent in 2015.
 Nearly 50 percent decrease in the number of out-of-school children or
primary school age globally, from 100 million in 2000 to around 57
million in 2015
 Remarkable improvement in primary education in Sub-Saharan Africa
since the establishment of the MDGs. The net enrolment rate increased
from 8 percent in the period between 1990 and 2000 to 20 percent in
the period between 2000 and 2015.
 Global increase in the literacy rate among youth aged 15 – 24 from 83
percent in 1990 to 91 percent in 2015. At the same time, the gap
between men and women has lessened.
 There was only one target
under millennium development goal 3:

 To eliminate gender disparity in

primary and secondary education by
2005, and in all levels of education by
2015.

It is important to promote the total and

equitable participation of both men and
women in efforts aimed at improving
poverty reduction, food security, and
sustainability of rural development.
Without gender equality and the economic and social improvement for rural
women, food security cannot be achieved.

Some of the achievements of MDG 3 include:

 An increase in the number of girls in school in 2015 compared to 2000.

The developing world as a whole has achieved the goal of eliminating
gender disparity in all levels of education, including primary, secondary,
and tertiary.
 In Southern Asia, the number of girls enrolled in primary school was 74
for every 100 boys in 1990. By 2015, there were 103 girls enrolled for
every 100 boys.
 The proportion of women in vulnerable employment compared to total
female employment has reduced by 13 percent in the period between
1991 and 2015, compared to a 9 percent decrease for men.
 Significant gains in women’s parliamentary representation in nearly 90
percent of 174 countries for which data has been available in the past
two decades. At the very least, the average proportion of women in
parliament has increased by nearly 100 percent during the last 20 years,
yet this still translates to one woman for every five men.
 The Millennium Development Goal 4
has only one target:

To reduce the under-five

mortality rate by two-thirds in the
period between 1990 and 2015.

Under nutrition is estimated to contribute

to more than 33 percent of all deaths in
children under five. So, efforts to improve
household food security and nutrition
have increased the chances of children
growing to adulthood.

In this regard, FAO programmes, in combination with efforts by the Renewed

Efforts against Child Hunger and Under nutrition (REACH) and WHO, WFP,
and UNICEF have helped communities and households secure access to
nutritionally adequate diets to minimize child under nutrition. Efforts include
the provision of training materials, community-centered initiatives, training
programmes for local and national staff, nutrition education programmes, and
promotion of forums on community nutrition and household food security.
Improving complementary feeding for babies, or giving foods in addition to
breast milk, has led to significant reduction in the child mortality caused by
under nutrition.
Some of the achievements of MDG 4 include:

 A decrease in worldwide rate of mortality in children under-five by over

50 percent, reducing from 90 to 43 deaths per 1,000 live births between
1990 and 2015.
 A global drop in the number of children under-five deaths from 12.7
million in 1990 to nearly 6 million in 2015, despite the population
growth in developing regions.
 Three-fold increase in the rate of reduction of under-five mortality since
the early 1990s.
 In sub-Saharan Africa, the annual rate of reduction of under-five
mortality was more than five times between 2005 and 2013 compared
to between 1990 and 1995
 The measles vaccination helped prevent almost 15.6 million deaths
between 2000 and 2013, translating to a 67 percent decline in the
number of cases of measles reported globally.
 Nearly 84 percent of children across the globe received at least one dose
of measles containing vaccine in 2013 – a 73 percent increase since
2000
 Hunger and malnutrition were observed
to increase the incidence and fatality rate
of the conditions that contribute to nearly
80 percent of maternal deaths.
In this regard, millennium development
goal 5 has two targets:

1. To reduce the maternal mortality

ratio by 75 percent
2. To achieve universal access to
reproductive health

Improving maternal health is critical to

saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of women who die due to
complication from pregnancy and childbirth each year. Over 90 percent of
these deaths could be prevented if women in developing regions had access to
sufficient diets, basic literacy and health services, and safe water and
sanitation facilities during pregnancy and childbirth.

Some of the achievements of MDG 5 include:

 A 45 percent reduction in the maternity mortality ratio worldwide since

1990, though most of the reduction occurred since 2000
 A 64 percent reduction in maternal mortality ratio in Southern Asia
between 1990 and 2013, and 49 percent in sub-Saharan Africa
 A 12 percent increase in the number of births assisted by skilled health
personnel globally in 2014 compared to 1990 – 59 percent to 71
percent.
 An increase in the proportion of pregnant women receiving four or
more antenatal visits in North Africa from 50 percent in 1990 to 89
percent in 2014.
 Increase in contraceptive prevalence among women 15 – 49 years old –
whether married or in some other union – from 55 to 64 percent
between 1990 and 2015.
 HIV, malaria, and other diseases directly
and indirectly impact food and nutrition
security, rural development, and
agricultural productivity. At the same
time, malnutrition and food and nutrition
insecurity can increase vulnerability to
disease.
In this regard, Millennium Development
Goal 6 has three targets:

1. To halt by 2015 and have started

to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS
2. To achieve global access to
treatment for HIV/AIDS for those who need it by 2010
3. To have ceased and started reversal of the incidence of malaria and
other major diseases by 2015

Some of the achievements of MDG 6 include:

 40 percent reduction in new HIV infections from 3.5 million cases in

2000 to 2.1 million cases in 2013
 A massive increase in the number of people living with HIV receiving
anti-retroviral therapy (ART) globally, from 800,000 in 2003 to 13.6
million in 2014. ART have helped avoid over 7.6 million deaths from
AIDS between 1995 and 2013.
 Averting over 6.2 million deaths associated with malaria between 2000
and 2015, mostly of children under five years in sub-Saharan Africa. The
universal malaria incidence rate has also reduced by an estimated 37
percent, and the mortality rate by 58 percent.
 The delivery of over 900 million insecticide-treated mosquito nets to
malaria-endemic countries in sub-Saharan Africa between 2004 and
2014.
 Tuberculosis prevention, diagnosis, and treatment interventions
conducted between 2000 and 2013 saved an estimated 37 million lives.
The TB mortality rate reduced by 45 percent between 1990 and 2013,
while prevalence rate fell by 41 percent within the same time period.
 It is critical that the natural resources
base and ecosystems are managed
sustainably to ensure that people’s food
requirements and other social, economic,
and environmental needs are sufficiently
met. Climate change, conflicts over access
to resources, and increased water scarcity
all pose a threat to not only
environmental sustainability but also
food security.
As such, millennium development goal
7 has 4 targets:

1. To integrate the principles of sustainable development into every

nation’s policies and programmes, and also reverse the depletion
of environmental resources
2. To reduce biodiversity loss and achieve a substantial reduction in
the rate of loss by 2010
3. To halve the proportion of the universal population without
sustainable access to clean and safe drinking water and basic
sanitation by 2015.
4. To achieve substantial improvement in the lives of a minimum of
100 million slum dwellers by 2020.

An estimated 30 percent of total land area on the planet is forested. An

estimated 1.6 billion people depend on forests directly for their livelihoods,
plus they provide other benefits enjoyed by all, including clean air and water.
Forests also provide a habitat for millions of plants and animals, as well as
catchment for 75 percent of the world’s fresh water. They help in the
adaptation to and mitigation of climate change, though they are under threat
from deforestation.
Hunger and poverty tend to compel the disadvantaged to over-exploit
resources on which their livelihoods depend. Policies, institutions, and
strategies for protecting, conserving, and enhancing natural resources should
be strengthened to deliver an enabling environment, and be based on the
specific resource challenged faced in a given location.
Some of the achievements of MDG 7 include:
 The virtual elimination of ozone-depleting substances since 1990.
Consequently, the ozone layer is expected to recover by around the
middle of the century
 Substantial increase in marine and terrestrial protected areas in many
areas since 1990. In Caribbean and Latin America, coverage of
terrestrial protected areas increased from 8.8 percent in 1990 to 23.4
percent in 2014.
 The number of people using improved drinking water sources has
increased from 76 percent in 1990 to 91 percent in 2015.
 2.6 billion People have gained access to better drinking water since
1990. Of these, 1.9 billion have access to piped drinking water on
premises, with 58 percent of the global population enjoying this level of
service in 2015.
 147 nations in the world have fulfilled the drinking water target; 95
nations have achieved the sanitation target; and 77 nations have met
both.
 2.1 billion People in the universe have gained access to improved
sanitation. At the same time, the proportion of people practicing open
defecation has reduced by nearly 50 percent since 1990.
 A reduction in the proportion of urban population in developing nations
living in slums from 39.4 to 29.7 percent in the period between 2000
and 2014.
 Millennium development goal 8 has 6
targets that seek to develop global
partnership for development, namely:

 To further develop an open,

predictable, rule-based, non-
discriminatory trading and economic
system
 To address the special needs of the
least developed countries
 To address the special needs of
small island developing States and
landlocked developing countries
 To deal exhaustively with the debt problems of developing nations
 To provide access to affordable essential drugs in the developing world
– in collaboration with pharmaceutical companies
 To avail benefits of new technologies, especially information and
communications, in collaboration with the private sector

Some of the achievements of MDG 8 include:

 A 66 percent increase in official development assistance from developed

nations in real terms in the period 2000 to 2014, reaching $135.2 billion
 In 2014, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and
Luxembourg continued to exceed the UN official development
assistance target of 0.7 percent of gross national income
 Imports from developing to developed countries admitted duty-free
increased from 65 percent in 2000 to 79 percent in 2014
 The proportion of external debt service to export revenue in the
developing world reduced from 12 to 3 percent between 2000 and
2013.
 95 percent of the global population is covered by a mobile cellular signal
as of 2015
 The number of mobile-cellular subscription has grown by nearly tenfold
in the last 15 years, from 738 million to over 7 billion between 2000 and
2015
 Internet penetration has increased from about 6 percent of the global
population to 43 percent between 2000 and 2015. Consequently, 3.2
 billion people are now linked to an international network of content and
applications.

Review of MDG 8 Targets

There was a decline in aid flows towards the end of the twentieth century,
though this was reversed early in the new millennium, net official
development assistance (ODA) from member countries of the Development
Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD) increased by 66 percent between 2000 and 2014,
reaching a peak of $135.2 billion in 2013.
Between 2013 and 2014,

 ODA in the form of net aid for core bilateral projects and programmes
remained unchanged at 60 percent of the total value
 Humanitarian aid increased by 22 percent, from $11 billion to $13
billion
 Debt relief grants dropped by 87 percent from $3.6 billion to $476
million