Halfway point shows successes and challenges
June 2008 marked the halfway point for the MDG undertaking and the UN released a progress report. In the report, Sha Zukang, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, called the elaborate and intensive push, “a global collective effort that is unsurpassed in 50 years of development experience.”
Specifically, Sha Zukang reported:
- the overarching goal of reducing absolute poverty by half is within reach for the world as a whole
- in all but two regions, primary school enrolment is at least 90 percent
- the gender parity index in primary education is 95 percent or higher in six of the 10 regions, including the most populous ones
- deaths from measles fell from over 750,000 in 2000 to less than 250,000 in 2006, and about 80 percent of children in developing countries now receive a measles vaccination
- the number of deaths from AIDS fell from 2.2 million in 2005 to 2.0 million in 2007, and the number of people newly infected declined from 3.0 million in 2001 to 2.7 million in 2007
- malaria prevention is expanding, with widespread increases in insecticide-treated net use among children under five in sub-Saharan Africa: in 16 out of 20 countries, use of such nets has at least tripled since around 2000
- the incidence of tuberculosis is expected to be halted and begin to decline before the target date of 2015
- some 1.6 billion people have gained access to safe drinking water since 1990
- the use of ozone-depleting substances has been almost eliminated and this has contributed to the effort to reduce global warming
- the share of developing countries’ export earnings devoted to servicing external debt fell from 12.5 percent in 2000 to 6.6 percent in 2006, allowing them to allocate more resources to reducing poverty
- the private sector has increased the availability of some critical essential drugs and rapidly spread mobile phone technology throughout the developing world (page 4)
Sha Zukang was quick to point out that there was bad news to go along with the good, “Alongside the successes are an array of goals and targets that are likely to be missed unless additional, strengthened or corrective action is taken urgently:
- the proportion of people in sub-Saharan Africa living on less than $1 per day is unlikely to be reduced by the target of one-half
- about one quarter of all children in developing countries are considered to be underweight and are at risk of having a future blighted by the long term effects of undernourishment
- of the 113 countries that failed to achieve gender parity in both primary and secondary school enrolment by the target date of 2005, only 18 are likely to achieve the goal by 2015
- almost two thirds of employed women in the developing world are in vulnerable jobs as own-account or unpaid family workers
- in one third of developing countries, women account for less than 10 percent of parliamentarians
- more than 500,000 prospective mothers in developing countries die annually in childbirth or of complications from pregnancy
- some 2.5 billion people, almost half the developing world’s population, live without improved sanitation
- more than one third of the growing urban population in developing countries live in slum conditions
- carbon dioxide emissions have continued to increase, despite the international timetable for addressing the problem
- developed countries’ foreign aid expenditures declined for the second consecutive year in 2007 and risk falling short of the commitments made in 2005
- international trade negotiations are years behind schedule and any outcome seems likely to fall far short of the initial high hopes for a development-oriented outcome.” (page 4)
The report included an easy to understand chart which analyzed general progress by region. |
