Overview

The historic United Nations conferences and summits held in the 1990s and 2000s generated an unprecedented global consensus on a shared vision of development. That broad-based framework in turn laid the groundwork for the Millennium Summit, at which a series of challenging time-bound goals and targets were adopted. They were later collated as Millennium Development Goals, which have succeeded in galvanizing an exceptional momentum to meet the needs of the world’s poorest.

While the Millennium Development Goals provide a compelling platform to address those needs, they must be pursued as part of a larger development agenda that encompasses the wider dimensions of human development. The larger development agenda must equally address issues that require long-term approaches, such as, the differential impact of globalization, inequalities among and within countries, greater participation of developing countries in global economic governance, and the question of interlinkages between development and conflict. Those issues were addressed in depth at the United Nations summits and conferences, which provide a broad-based consensus to pursue the full scope of the United Nations Development Agenda. The agenda cuts across a vast array of interlinked issues ranging from gender equality, social integration, health, employment, education, the environment and population to human rights, finance and governance.

The achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and the implementation of the broader development agenda are closely interlinked. They will be ensured by effectively integrating the implementation of the conference outcomes with the Millennium Development Goals by focusing on issues that are closely linked with the Goals that cut across the conference outcomes.

United Nations Development Agenda: Development for All (pdf file, 1MB and 95 pages.)

Download the comprehensive report recently submitted to the 2005 ECOSOC on the follow-up of the conferences and summits, which provides a full picture of the UN Development Agenda (E/2005/56)

Fact Sheet and Chart on Follow-up Mechanisms to UN Summits and Conference