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Paul Hunt

Poverty, Malaria and the Right to Health : Exploring the Connections

Malaria is an extremely serious human rights issue. Six out of eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) cannot be achieved without tackling this disease. It is both a cause and a consequence of poverty. Its impact is especially ferocious on the poorest: those least able to afford preventive measures and medical treatment.

Juan Somavía

Promoting the MDGs: The Role of Employment and Decent Work

The 2000 Ãå±±½ûµØMillennium Declaration, from which the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) emerged, focuses on development and poverty eradication, through peace and security, human rights, democracy and good governance. It identifies the fundamental values of freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for nature and shared responsibility.

Rita Luthra

Improving Maternal Health Through Education: Safe Motherhood Is a Necessity

Education improves health, while health improves learning potential. Education and health complement, enhance and support each other; together, they serve as the foundation for a better world. To be able to read, write and calculate has been acknowledged as a human right.

Sushrut Desai

Gender Disparity in Primary Education: The Experience in India

The primary education system in India suffers from numerous shortcomings, not the least being a dire lack of the financial resources required to set up a nationwide network of schools. Traditionally, the sector has been characterized by poor infrastructure, underpaid teaching staff, disillusioned parents and an unmotivated student population.

Quazi Monirul Islam

Making Pregnancy Safer in Least Developed Countries The Challenge of Delivering Available Services

The international community came together 20 years ago in Nairobi, Kenya, to launch the Safe Motherhood Initiative and highlight the most striking inequity in public health. This global initiative was developed to generate political will, identify effective interventions and mobilize resources that would rectify a horrifying injustice.

Jacques Diouf

Food Security and the Challenge of the MDGs: The Road Ahead

In their solemn Millennium Declaration of 2000, world leaders committed themselves to spare no effort to halve, by 2015, the proportion of the world's people who suffer from poverty and hunger. Just seven years remain for us to meet that momentous challenge.

Margaret Chan

Health and the MDGs: The Challenges Ahead

In 2000, the international community endorsed the Millennium Declaration, which sets out an historic commitment to eradicate extreme poverty and improve the health of the world's poorest people by 2015.

Barbara Frost

Water and Sanitation: The Silent Emergency

In December 2006, the Ãå±±½ûµØGeneral Assembly declared 2008 as the International Year of Sanitation. The intention was to raise awareness of the importance of sanitation and encourage Governments, partners and communities to embrace the need for urgent action to reduce the number of people living without this basic service.

Elizabeth Lwanga

Achieving the MDGs in Africa: A Race Against Time

African leaders, like other leaders from the developing world, with the support of the international community, embarked on a marathon race in 2000. Singularly and collectively, they entered a race against poverty, underdevelopment and deprivation by adopting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as the framework agenda for development.

Sha Zukang

Devising a Shared Global Strategy for the MDGs: Building on Successes Towards 2015

Seven years on and halfway towards 2015 -- the deadline set for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals -- success is still possible. The MDGs, which set quantitative benchmarks to halve extreme poverty in all its forms, are achievable if countries implement national development strategies and receive adequate support from the international community.

Margaret Simwanza Sitta

Towards Universal Primary Education: The Experience of Tanzania

The Government of the United Republic of Tanzania recognizes the central role of education in achieving the overall development goal of improving the quality of life for its citizens. It considers the provision of quality universal primary education for all the most reliable way of building a sustainable future for the country.

Asha-Rose Migiro

The Importance of the MDGs: The United Nations Leadership in Development

The Millennium Development Goals are the international community's most broadly shared, comprehensive and focused framework for reducing poverty.

Francisco Songane

Keep the Promise for Mothers and Children: An Agenda to Improve Maternal and Child Health

Despite the concerted efforts of many players, global progress in child survival has slowed compared to the advances of previous decades. Maternal mortality -- deaths of women in pregnancy and childbirth -- remains at almost the same level as 20 years ago.

Thoraya Ahmed Obaid

Breaking the Cycle of Poverty in Achieving the MDGs: Investing in Reproductive Health and Rights

A bold and ambitious agenda was set forth in the Millennium Development Goals to raise the quality of life of all individuals and promote human development. The MDGs represent our collective aspirations for a better life and provide a minimum road map on how to get there.

Ann M. Veneman

Education Is Key to Reducing Child Mortality: The Link Between Maternal Health and Education

In 2006, for the first time in recent history, the total number of annual deaths among children under the age of five fell below 10 million, to 9.7 million. This represents a 60-per-cent drop in the rate of child mortality since 1960.