More than one billion people - one-sixth of the world's population - live each day under the weight of extreme poverty. While income poverty is part of the problem, the dimensions of human poverty are much greater. Pandemic disease, widespread conflict, environmental degradation, chronic hunger, and a lack of access to education are all both causes and effects of human poverty. In order to meet the challenge of addressing global poverty in all its dimensions, 189 nations in 2000 created the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of eight quantifiable targets designed to cut poverty in half by the year 2015. The MDGs envision rich and poor nations working together in partnership to combat poverty.
The MDGs break down into these 8 goals:
- Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
- Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
- Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
- Goal 4: Reduce child mortality
- Goal 5: Improve maternal health
- Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
- Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
- Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development
The MDGs:
- synthesise, in a single package, many of the most important commitments made separately at the international conferences and summits of the 1990s;
- recognise explicitly the interdependence between growth, poverty reduction and sustainable development;
- acknowledge that development rests on the foundations of democratic governance, the rule of law, respect for human rights and peace and security;
- are based on time-bound and measurable targets accompanied by indicators for monitoring progress; and
- bring together, in the eighth Goal, the responsibilities of developing countries with those of developed countries, founded on a global partnership endorsed at the International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico in March 2002, and again at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development in August 2002.
THE EPISCOPAL GENERAL CONVENTION RESOLUTIONS RELATED TO THE MDGs
The 74th General Convention adopted Resolution D 006 supporting the Millennium Development Goals. That resolution also calls upon the United States to contribute 0.7% of its budget to international aid, and calls upon all diocese and parishes to contribute at least 0.7% of their budgets to support programs that foster economic development in the world's poorest countries.
The Anglican Communion as a whole also supports the MDGs. The June 2005 meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC-13) passed a resolution endorsing the MDGs, building on the initiatives of the 1998 Lambeth Conference of bishops endorsing 0.7% giving and broad international debt relief.
Despite the extraordinary promise of the MDGs, progress has been slow, and most of the world's poorest regions are destined to fall far short of meeting the MDGs unless significantly increased resources from the world's rich nations are made available.
For more information about the Millennium Goals and how you, your organization or church can become involved and helping cut extreme poverty in half, please visit:
- The U.S. Millennium Campaign at http://www.endpoverty2015.org/
- The UN Development Programme's MDG pages at http://www.undp.org/mdg/
- Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation at http://www.e4gr.org/about/egr.html
- Episcopal Public Policy Network at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/3654_71627_ENG_HTM.htm
- One.org at http://www.one.org/us/issues/. One a is grassroots campaign and advocacy organization backed by more than 2 million people who are committed to the fight against extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa. Cofounded by Bono and other campaigners, ONE is nonpartisan and works closely with African policy makers and activists.