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 8: Develop a global partnership for development

A global partnership for development with multiple objectives. The deal makes it clear that it is the primary responsibility of poor countries to work towards achieving the first seven goals. For this to be achieved, however, it is absolutely critical that rich countries deliver on their end of the bargain with increased and more effective aid, debt relief and fairer trade rules well in advance of 2015.

1) develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system;
2) address the special needs of the least developed countries;
3) deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries;
4) in cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries;
5) in cooperation with the private sector, make available benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications
.

In our world today, the proportion of the national budgets that donor countries allocate to development aid (foreign aid) is falling, despite renewed commitments to increase it.
Only Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden have reached or exceeded the United Nations target of 0.7% of gross national income (GNI) for development aid.
As of early 2007 members of the WTO had still not establish a program to improve the prospects of developing countries on the global marketplace, despite promises made in that regard during the Doha rounds of negotiations in 2001.

Sources:
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/goals.html
http://www.undp.org/mdg/goal8.shtml

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