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Douglas Alexander

A Global Partnership for Development: The United Kingdom Is Committed to Playing Its Part

At the Ãå±±½ûµØMillennium Summit in 2000, the international community declared it would spare no effort to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which included halving global poverty, getting all the world's children into school, reducing infant and maternal mortality, and providing clean water and sanitation.

José Luis Machinea

The MDGs in Latin America and the Caribbean: Employment Remains a Challenge for Poverty Reduction

There is no doubt that Latin America is on track to meeting its commitment to halve the 1990 extreme poverty rate by the 2015 target deadline. The most recent estimates by the Ãå±±½ûµØEconomic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) show that some 14 million Latin Americans escaped from poverty in 2006 and another 10 million are no longer destitute.

Santiago Fernández de Córdoba

Trade and the MDGs: How Trade Can Help Developing Countries Eradicate Poverty

Developing countries depend on national and global economic growth to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. In this regard, international trade is recognized as a powerful instrument to stimulate economic progress and alleviate poverty.

Patricia R. Francis

Trading an End to Poverty: Bridging the MDG Implementation Gaps Through Trade

We live in an age of wonders. From nano-surgery to space stations, networking sites to solar cells, Internet start-ups to smart capital, the world is a more connected, attractive and safe place than was dreamed possible, even fifty years ago.

Anna Tibaijuka

Supporting Towns and Cities to Achieve the MDGs – Improving the Lives of Slum Dwellers

It has been eight years since world leaders made a commitment to eradicate extreme poverty through the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These Goals are aimed at achieving universal primary education, empowering women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, fighting HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensuring environmental sustainability, and forging a new partnership for development.

Peter Piot

Combatting AIDS: What More Needs to Be Done?

The first disease to be the subject of debates in the United Nations, both in the Security Council and the General Assembly special sessions, AIDS is one of the top ten leading causes of death worldwide.

Tarja Halonen

Our Aspirations Must Become Achievements: From the Millennium Summit to 2015

In March 2000, then Ãå±±½ûµØSecretary-General Kofi Annan published his report, 'We the Peoples': The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century, listing the major challenges in the world.

Ann Cotton

The Importance of Educating Girls and Women – The Fight Against Poverty in African Rural Communities

The Millennium Declaration, adopted by world leaders in 2000, set ambitious goals and targets to be achieved by 2015. At the end of 2007, just past the midpoint of this process, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) seem almost as elusive as they were in 20001.

Edward W. Scott, Jr.

The Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria : Past Progress and Hope for the Future

Each year, 2.5 million people become infected with HIV, 8 million contract tuberculosis (TB), and between 300 million and 500 million fall ill from malaria. Together, these diseases kill more than 5 million people per year, the equivalent of a full 747 airplane crashing every 44 minutes1.

Glenn Denning

Agriculture Leads to the MDGs: Rural Development in Africa

Agricultural productivity improvements have been a major driving force of social and economic change in human societies for millennia. The traditional production of crops and livestock fulfilled household requirements for food, fiber, fuel, medicine and other essential consumables.

Rumishael Shoo

Reducing Child Mortality – The Challenges in Africa

In 1960, Africa contributed to approximately 14 per cent of the global child mortality burden. Today, sub-Saharan Africa alone accounts for almost 50 per cent of child mortality, although it constitutes only 11 per cent of the world population. If Millennium Development Goal 4 -- reduce child mortality by two thirds -- is to be achieved, Africa has the challenge of accelerating the narrowing of this gap.

Joanne Sandler

Gender Equality Is Key to Achieving the MDGs: Women and Girls Are Central to Development

One of nine children growing up from a small town in an African country, Meaza was told: Oh, you're so smart and have so much potential, it's too bad you're not a boy. But her mother, who was illiterate, believed her children deserved better. When I think of my mother, I think about how women are prevented from reaching their potential, she says.

Tigest Ketsela

Reproductive Health in the African Region. What Has Been Done to Improve the Situation?

Africa accounts for about one tenth of the world's population and 20 per cent of global births; yet, nearly half of the mothers who die during pregnancy and childbirth are from this region. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that poor reproductive health accounts for up to 18 per cent of the global burden of disease, and 32 per cent of the total burden of disease for women of reproductive age.

Peter Jackson

A Prehistory of the Millennium Development Goals: Four Decades of Struggle for Development in the United Nations

When the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Millennium Declaration in 2000, the goals and targets it set in the section on development ultimately became known as the Millennium Development Goals.

Noeleen Heyzer

Promoting Gender Equality in Muslim Contexts – Women's Voices Must Not Be Silenced

A question that is sometimes posed is whether women in Muslim contexts are entitled to equal rights. Are their culture and religion opposed to women having equal rights? To answer this, let us recognize the fact that nearly all the countries with Muslim majorities are signatories to international agreements advancing women's rights.