In this issue, we focus on MDG 8 as the foundational goal, creating the conditions for achieving MDGs 1 to 7. While developing countries are called upon to improve governance to ensure that development initiatives reach those groups that would benefit most, the donor nations in the developed world are asked to make broad policy commitments to enable access to resources for development.
There is no doubt that Latin America is on track to meeting its commitment to halve the 1990 extreme poverty rate by the 2015 target deadline. The most recent estimates by the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) show that some 14 million Latin Americans escaped from poverty in 2006 and another 10 million are no longer destitute.
As the world marks the midpoint between the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000 and the target date for their achievement in 2015, an assessment of the Arab region's progress on these is both timely and essential.
Progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the Asian and Pacific region is uneven. We achieved success in some, but faltered in others. Even in areas of success, in-country and intra-country disparities persist. The pace of progress is too slow.
Poverty reduction is the greatest challenge facing humanity today. An ideological commitment to reduce or eradicate this phenomenon should be contemplated as part and parcel of social moral responsibility and shared human values across countries and generations. Failure to do so will have unprecedented repercussions on human development.
The midpoint to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) -- the time-bound and quantified targets, agreed by world leaders at the 2000 Millennium Summit, for improving the human condition and ensuring gender equality and environmental sustainability -- was reached in September 2007.
Across the Arab region, progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) has been uneven. Arab countries with higher income per capita stand with better prospects for achieving the Goals than their low-income counterparts.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) constitute a shared vision of global partnership based on mutual accountability. Developing countries have the primary responsibility for achieving these Goals.
We live in an age of wonders. From nano-surgery to space stations, networking sites to solar cells, Internet start-ups to smart capital, the world is a more connected, attractive and safe place than was dreamed possible, even fifty years ago.
At the UN Millennium Summit in 2000, the international community declared it would spare no effort to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which included halving global poverty, getting all the world's children into school, reducing infant and maternal mortality, and providing clean water and sanitation.
When world leaders vowed at the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000 to spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty, they recognized that special measures would be required for the weakest members of the international community to achieve this goal.
