After months of difficult negotiations, the UN Member States have reached agreement, and today - on the last day of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Review Summit in New York - they will adopt a Declaration (the “Outcome Document”) on the MDGs. The Declaration gives an overview of the progress towards the Goals, some of it uneven, and sets out an action agenda to achieve each of the MDGs by 2015.
Member States struggled to reach consensus on financing for development, Official Development Assistance (ODA) and MDG 8 (A global partnership for development). They also debated concepts such as the green economy and human security. Nevertheless the core of the Declaration, entitled Keeping the promise: United to achieve the Millennium Development Goals remains focused on the actual goals themselves - education, child health, maternal health, water and sanitation, prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV, poverty, and hunger. UNICEF UK is particularly pleased the Declaration mentions action to realise children’s rights, increased access to safe drinking water and sanitation, and the importance of tackling inequalities and promoting equity.
The current draft document begins with an overview recount of some of the successes and uneven progress achieved in the past years, and then lays down the way forward - an action agenda for achieving the MDGs by 2015 - going into an MDG-by-MDG recount of what the Member States commit themselves to doing in order to achieve that particular goal.
Messages in the Outcome Document include, among others:
- The need to address inequalities between and within countries
- The MDGs are achievable
- The interconnectedness and the need to ensure linkages between the MDGs
- Progress is uneven on hunger and malnutrition, gender equality, basic sanitation and maternal health.
- The need and benefit of strengthening statistical capacity and data collection, including through the use of new technologies
- Gender quality and equal access of women and girls to education, basic services, health care and economic opportunities.
- Increased sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation; close the sanitation gap and increase the coverage of basic sanitation especially for the poor.
Last week, UNICEF UK, along with other development organisations, presented Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg with 1.3 million signed petitions in support of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) before he departed for New York.
Among them were over 5,000 signatures from UNICEF UK campaigners who took our campaign action calling on Mr Clegg to prioritise water and sanitation for the most vulnerable children at the meeting.
