To what extent have the Millennium Development Goals been a success Essay

To what extent have the Millennium Development Goals been a success - Essay Example Goal 1: Extreme poverty and hunger should be eradicated. The goal will be achieved by reducing the number of people earning less than $1 per day to one half by 2015. It also emphasizes on reduction of the number of people suffering from poverty to one half by the same date. Goal 2: Every child on earth, male or female, should be able to primary education by 2015. Goal 3: To eradicate gender disparity, it will be ensured that men and women have equal access to education facilities at all levels. Goal 4: Mortality rate of children under five should be reduced by two third of the present value. Goal 5: Proper medical care should be provided to women to ensure three quarters reduction in maternal mortality rate by 2015. Reproductive health care should be made universally available. Goal 6: Spread of Malaria and HIV/AIDS should be reversed by 2015. Goal 7: Programs should be initiated for sustainable development without the adverse effects on environment. Safe drinking water should be mad e available to more people with the water deficient population reduced to one half by 2015. Goal 8: A partnership should be developed between rich and poor countries to achieve the MDGs. It defines the mechanism of how the poorer countries will be able to achieve these goals with the financial and technical support of developed countries. The content of these goals is derived from the United Nations Development Conferences held after the inception of United Nations Development Program in 1965. Millennium Development Goals – Successes and Short Comings: The overall progress towards the MDGs is very different in different countries and regions around the globe. Most of the developing countries have limited their focus towards the first goal with a very limited or no focus towards environmental and health aspirations of MDGs. It is observed by different analysts that so far the targets set by MDGs are not met on an international scale. However, success of individual countries or regions can be observed which shall be discussed in the following lines with reference to each of the eight goals. 1. The first goal has been the primary focus of most of the governments in developing countries for reasons both political and financial. China and Vietnam for example have reduced their population earning less than $1 per day from more than 35% to less than 14% of the total population. Considerable progress on the goal has been made in South Asian countries particularly India where ration of population living below poverty line has been reduced from 37.5% to 26.1%. Very little progress was however observed in the countries of Latin America and Middle East. For most of the European countries goal 1 was not a challenge as the average income of their population was well above $1 per day. 2. As in the case of first goal discussed above, the progress towards the ‘education for all’ target of UN was different for different countries. UN task forces note that un der developed countries such as Bolivia and Cameron have allocated greater proportions of annual budget to the development in health and education sector. For the most European and Central Asian countries, it is anticipated that they will be able to achieve the targets set in goal 2 by 2015. However, serious setbacks have been faced in many of the African countries such as Mozambique and Tanzania where primary school enrollment has decreased over the past few years. 3. Since the announcement of Millennium Declaration, women