UN Chronicle | Current Trends: We're Falling Short, Kofi Annan Warns World

Current Trends: We're Falling Short, Kofi Annan Warns World

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Our Millennium Summit cover, Issue 3, 2000. UN Photo.

Presenting his first annual progress report on implementing the Millennium Declaration, the Secretary-General warned that the world was falling short in meeting the agreed objectives and said that prospects for reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on current trends were "decidedly mixed", with marked differences between and within regions. Insufficient progress was being made in meeting the broader objectives on issues such as human rights, democracy and good governance, conflict resolution and the special needs of Africa. Without progress on a much broader front, "the ringing words of the Declaration will serve only as grim reminders of the human needs neglected and promises unmet" .

The Secretary-General is initiating a millennium campaign to make the commitments better known throughout the world and to ensure that they are the focus of global action. The UN system will work with national governments, civil society, international financial institutions and other partners to produce a series of regular national reports—complementing his annual global reports on the Millennium Declaration—to measure and monitor progress towards achieving the MDGs on a country-by-country basis. "Our hope is that, in this age of democracy, annual reporting will force action", he said. A dozen pilot country reports have already been completed. The aim is to have every developing and transition country produce a progress report by the end of 2004, with regular reports thereafter. These reports are already being successfully used to identify challenges and opportunities for real results on the ground, working with civil society, government officials and other partners, including the private sector.

Mr. Annan appointed Eveline Herfkens, former Minister for Development Cooperation of the Netherlands, to act as his Executive Coordinator for the Millennium Development Goals Campaign. (Ms. Herfkens' article "Global Alliances and Multilateral Policy", in the UN Chronicle, Issue 3, 2000).

The overall campaign will be supported by research from a new initiative—the Millennium Project—that will mobilize networks of scholars from developing and developed countries to work, with experts from across the United Nations system around the MDGs. This global effort is intended to stimulate fresh thinking on the policies countries will need to meet their goals and on ways to finance and carry out those policies. The United Nations plans to mount another initiative—Working with Partners—to help developing countries improve their statistical capacity, so that they can both prepare and make good use of accurate reports. A report prepared last year for the Secretary-General by a panel headed by former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo estimated that meeting the MDGs would cost an additional $50 billion in annual aid. This year, at the Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development, the United States pledged to increase aid—spending by 50 per cent, or $5 billion a year, and the European Union promised an additional $7 billion a year as its first step toward meeting the target of 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product for development assistance. Efforts to achieve the Goals have been further boosted by additional targets agreed and initiatives launched at the Johannesburg Summit, including to halve the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation to match the Millennium target of halving the proportion of those without access to clean water.

There has been some progress towards meeting the MDGs, but in most places it is too slow. Net primary school enrolment has risen from 80 to 84 per cent over the past decade and the proportion of people getting inadequate nutrition fell from 20 to 17 per cent over the same period, but both trends need to be accelerated. The proportion of people living on less than $1 a day has fallen from 29 to 23 per cent in the last ten years, although that masks significant regional differences. In that period, East Asia has seen the proportion drop from 28 to 14 per cent, while in South Asia, where nearly half the world's very poor still live, the drop is from 44 to 37 per cent—and in Africa the drop has only been from 48 to 47 per cent.

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