Millennium Development Goals and post-2015 Development Agenda

Overview

The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015 – form a blueprint agreed to by all the world’s countries and all the world’s leading development institutions. They have galvanized unprecedented efforts to meet the needs of the world’s poorest. For examples of what ECOSOC and the rest of the UN system are doing to advance the MDGS, click on the panel in the upper-right hand corner.

Post-2015 Development Agenda

In the outcome document of the 2010 MDG Summit, Member States requested the Secretary-General to initiate annual reporting on the activities, consultations and analytical work that needs to take place to inform the inter-governmental debate on the post-2015 UN development agenda.

In this vein, the Secretary-General has established a UN System Task Team on the Post-2015 UN Development Agenda.  The Task Team is led jointly by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and has been requested to lead system-wide preparations for the post-2015 UN development agenda with support from all UN agencies and in consultation with relevant stakeholders.

As the Secretary-General indicated in his first annual report on this subject, work on the post-2015 agenda should be grounded in a critical evaluation of how the MDGs have worked as a framework, identifying what has worked well and areas for improvement, especially in response to current development challenges. In this context, the UN System Task Team is evaluating the experience with the MDG framework, in terms of both contents and processes; reviewing recent development trends; and drawing out the implications for the formulation of a post-2015 UN development agenda.

The work of the Task Team will inform that of a High-level Panel of Eminent Persons that the Secretary-General intends to appoint to advise him on the post-2015 UN development agenda. The Panel will be announced after the conclusion of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in June 2012. The reports of the Panel and the Secretary-General will support the ongoing deliberations on the post-2015 development framework.

The report of the High-Level Panel and the Secretary-General’s own assessment will then be conveyed to Member States and form the basis of the intergovernmental negotiations on a post-2015 framework.

Further reading…

UN Partners on MDGs