Secretary-General calls on leaders to attend
Millennium Development Goals summit next September
“We must not fail the billions who look to the international community to fulfill the promise of the Millennium Declaration for a better world. Let us meet in September to keep the promise.”
With only five years left until the 2015 deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called on world leaders to attend a summit in New York on 20-22 September 2010 to boost progress towards the MDGs.
Read the Secretary-General's report, "Keeping the Promise", which serves as the basis for Member States' deliberations on an action-oriented outcome document for the Summit. It identifies successes and gaps, and lays out an agenda for 2010-2015. "Our world possesses the knowledge and resources to achieve the MDGs," Mr. Ban says in the report. Falling short of the Goals "would be an unacceptable failure, moral and practical."
What's Going On?
General Assembly Informal Sessions on the MDGs
To prepare delegations for the negotiations on the MDG Summit outcome document scheduled to begin in mid-April, the General Assembly is holding five informal interactive sessions providing participants with the latest information and best practices on the MDGs and related challenges as presented by the UN system, governments, academia, civil society, and the private sector. Read the statements and presentations made by senior UN officials at the first session, on 8 March.
Preparations for the September Summit kick off
On 4 March, the UN General Assembly President kicked off Government consultations in preparation for the September Summit on the Millennium Development Goals. "The task before us is to reach consensus on the ways and means that will allow all of us to achieve the MDGs by 2015," President Ali Treki said. "The poor cannot wait. We must not use the economic crisis, the food crisis or other setbacks as an excuse for failing to live up to our commitments," Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro told the meeting.
"... Haiti's plight is a reminder of our wider responsibilities. A decade ago, the international community began a new century by agreeing to act to eliminate extreme poverty by 2015. Great strides have been made toward some of these ambitious "millennium goals," variously targeting core sources of global poverty and obstacles to development -- from maternal health and education to managing infectious disease. Yet progress in other critical areas lags badly. We are very far from delivering on our promises of a better future for the world's poor."
MDG Gap Task Force Report 2009:
Although development assistance rose to record levels in 2008, donors are falling short by $35 billion per year on the 2005 pledge on annual aid flows made by the Group of Eight in Gleneagles, and by $20 billion a year on aid to Africa, according to the 2009 Report of the MDG Gap Task Force. The Task Force brings together more than 20 UN agencies, the IMF, World Bank, WTO and OECD to track progress on the development partnership called for in the eighth Millennium Development Goal. | Press Release |
Fact Sheet
The Millennium Development Goals Report 2009:
More than halfway to the 2015 deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), major advances in the fight against poverty and hunger have begun to slow or even reverse as a result of the global economic and food crises, a progress report by the United Nations has found. The assessment, launched by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in Geneva, warns that, despite many successes, overall progress has been too slow for most of the targets to be met by 2015.
