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In September 2000 at
the United Nations Millennium Summit, 189 governments reaffirmed
their commitments to fulfil a collective responsibility for sustainable
development and poverty eradication by the year 2015. They adopted
the Millennium Declaration, which listed eight Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs):
1. Eradicate extreme
poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal
primary education
3. Promote gender equality
and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria
and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental
sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership
for development.
The first seven goals
include measures of human development in poor countries. Each goal
has one or more targets, and several quantifiable indicators measure
each target. The key elements of goal 8 pledge financial support
and policy changes in debt relief, trade and economic governance
to assist poor countries' domestic efforts to meet the first seven
goals.
Socialist International
Women welcomes the endorsement of the Millennium Declaration by
189 head of states in 2000, but regrets that four years later rich
countries have failed to follow through convincingly on their initial
commitment. This failure was underscored by the UNDP Human Development
Report 2003, which showed that under current conditions the Millennium
Development Goals would be missed in nearly 60 countries, especially
the poorest ones in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Andes and Central Asia.
The target for goal N¼
1 ÔHalving the proportion of people living on less than one dollar
a day and those who suffer from hunger by the year 2015', will on
current rate of progress in Sub-Saharan Africa not be met in 2015,
but in 2150, 135 years too late.
The target for goal
N¼ 2, ÔEnsuring that by 2015, children everywhere, will be able
to complete a full course of primary schooling', will not be met
in Sub-Saharan Africa on the current rate of progress. The promise
of Ôuniversal primary education' will be delivered not in 2015 but
in 2130, 115 years too late. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the burden of
outstanding debt is more than the countries spend on health care
and education combined.
While all the MDGs are
critically important, ÔgenderÕ cross cuts all the MDGs and gender
equality is crucial for the implementation of the Millennium Declaration.
Education for women and girls - while a goal in itself - also contributes
to achieving the goals of reducing child mortality, relieving hunger
and poverty, and combating HIV/AIDS and other diseases. Expanding
women's access to and command over income and productive resources
contributes to poverty reduction and reduction in child mortality.
Women are instrumental in protecting the environment and ensuring
effective use of natural resources including water, soil and trees.
Socialist International
Women therefore:
states that promoting
and protecting human rights as well as building democracy are fundamental
prerequisites in eradicating poverty;
states that the
Millennium Development Goals will remain hollow words if development
policies do not shift from Ôgender blind' to Ôgender responsive';
underlines that
gender should become the Ôdefault' mechanism for donors, governments
and communities in reaching the MDGs;
calls on governments
to re-establish the Millennium Development Goals as the core objective
of international development policy;
urges the richest
countries to make concrete efforts towards the target of 0.7 per
cent of GDP for official development assistance (ODA) if the poorest
countries draw up their anti-poverty programmes to open up trade
and investment and tackle corruption;
urges the IMF
and the World Bank to help raise the needed increase in financial
resources in order to reach the MDGs;
reiterates that
highly indebted countries need special consideration for debt cancellation
from international institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank;
underlines that
the international community and the international agencies need
a clear framework upon which to base policies, programmes and development
assistance for achieving the MDGs;
demands that
the gender dimension is mainstreamed in the GovernmentsÕ National
Reports on the Millennium Development Goals.
In conclusion, Socialist
International Women calls on all member parties of the Socialist
International in the North to put pressure on national parliaments
to help finance the MDGs, to monitor the commitments made by donor
governments and to hold them accountable. In the same way all member
parties of the Socialist International in the South have to fulfil
their part through good policies and transparent governance.
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