Millennium Development Goals
What Are the Millennium Development Goals?
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.
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.
Although many developing countries have come a long way in their efforts toward universal education, it currently does not look as though this goal will be achieved by 2015. It will require immediate action and a strong, international effort to ensure access to primary education in all parts of the world.
Currently, around 72 million children still do not go to primary school, and 57 percent of them are girls. Indeed, significant gaps in school enrollment still exist between children in urban and rural areas, and between boys and girls.
Sources:
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/goals.html
http://www.undp.org/mdg/goal2.shtml