[afro-nets] The Millennium Development Goals Report 2006

General afro-nets
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The Millennium Development Goals Report 2006
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The Millennium Development Goals Report 2006

United Nations, New York - July 2006
Available online as PDF file [32p] at:
http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Resources/Static/Products/Progress2006/MDGReport2006.pdf

"....This report is based on a master set of data that has been compiled by an Inter-Agency and Expert Group on MDG Indicators led by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, in response to the wishes of the General Assembly for periodic assessment of progress towards the MDGs. The Group comprises representatives of the international organizations whose activities include the preparation of one or more of the series of statistical indicators that were identified as appropriate for monitoring progress towards the MDGs.

Goals and Targets: http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/goals/goals02.htm

Goal 1 Eradicate extreme poverty & hunger
Goal 2 Achieve universal primary education
Goal 3 Promote gender equality and empower women
Goal 4 Reduce child mortality
Goal 5 Improve maternal health
Goal 6 Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria & other diseases
Goal 7 Ensure environmental sustainability
Goal 8 Develop a global partnership for development

The Millennium Development Goals were derived from the United Nations Millennium Declaration, adopted by 189 nations in 2000. Most of the goals and targets were set to be achieved by the year 2015 on the basis of the global situation during the 1990s. It was during that decade that a number of global conferences had taken place and the main objectives of the development agenda had been defined. The baseline for the assessment of progress is therefore 1990 for most of the MDG targets. For most of the indicators, 2004 is the last year for which comprehensive data are available...."

MDGs 2006 Progress Chart
http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Resources/Static/Products/Progress2006/MDGProgressChart2006.pdf

The chart shows progress up to June 2006, drawing on the latest information from all countries of the world and from the UN family of operational agencies. UN Statistics Division / DESA, 2006

Most of the targets set for progress on the Millennium Development Goals are benchmarked for the period 1990 to 2015 - promising clear and measurable improvement on standards prevailing in 1990 by the end of 2015. The chart shows progress up to June 2006, drawing on the latest information from all countries of the world and from the UN family of operational agencies.

--
Claudio Schuftan
mailto:claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn

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The Millennium Development Goals Report 2006 (2)
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Dear Colleagues

Thank you, Claudio for alerting me to the MDG Goals Report for 2006.

For anyone with an interest in seeing success in Africa, the overview is a disaster. This is, of course, not news.

I have considered the MDG approach to relief and development something of a fiasco from the start. As someone who has done management information design for most of my career, a process that looks out 15 years is likely to accomplish little unless it is complemented by serious short term action plans that really do reflect the longer term goals, and there is strong focus on these short term actions and their results. But that was never the case with the MDG process. Bill Easterly from NYU describes the situation very well in his book "The White Man's Burden" ... a good book with a rotten title.

This MDG Goals Report for 2006 highlights the terrible lack of
progress in Sub Sahara Africa (SSA). 11 items in the "no progress, or a deterioration or reversal" and 7 items in the "target is not expected to be met by 2015 if prevailing trends persist. None better than that.

In contrast East Asia has 3 items in the "target already met", 6 items in the "target is expected to be met ..." and just 3 in the "no progress or a deterioration or reversal".

Southeastern Asia is almost as good: 2 items in the "target already met" group, 7 items in the "target is expected to be met ..." group and just 2 items in the "no progress or a deterioration or reversal" group.

Leadership in the international relief and development sector (RDS) should be drawing some lessons from this ... it is well known that relief and development progress reflects almost total failure of the process ... but at the end of the day the RDS experts recommend doing the same things over and over again with more money and expecting different performance. The big questions of HOW and WHY there is relief and development failure is not asked out loud ... in big part because there are far too many people who are quite happy with the status quo.

Where has the money gone? What has it been used for? What results of any tangible value have been achieved? These are legitimate questions, and though not very challenging academically, none of the RDS organizations or the RDS leadership (people) seem willing or able to give solid answers. It really is a sad and unacceptable state of affairs.

Are there any changes in progress that might give cause for optimism? Maybe. There are many professional and technical people in Africa who could make a difference, but they need opportunity ... not just to become involved in more dialog, but to actually do productive work that has durable value in the context of the African community. It is a step to integrate African academics into the global dialog, but this is only an interim step ... there has to be conversion of academic work into applications and tangible economic goods and services of value.

Will the needed opportunity ever have access to funding? A weaker maybe. But without this Africa will not do very well. This is not achieved by debt relief of government debt ... but needs modest amounts of real money in the right places. It can be done, but some hard work is needed to attract the capital into this ... and very little has been done on this up to now.

In our own little way, we are moving ahead in these directions ... now it is malaria (with an integrated mosquito and malaria control program strategy) ... soon it will be community level job creation ... and then ....... we shall see.

But one thing we know ... going out 15 years with our goals in not our idea of how to manage a difficult process effectively, though it does employ a lot of report writers and analysts!

Sincerely

Peter Burgess
Transparency and Accountability Network
mailto:profitinafrica@gmail.com

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The Millennium Development Goals Report 2006 (3)
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In a paper I am currently writing, I ask:

"what is the meaning of a global progress report when there really is no systematic global program of action toward the goal? The Millennium Development Program has been misleading because there never has been any real global program of action. This is not the story of a failed strategy; it is about the absence of strategy. Despite the lofty rhetoric of the Millennium Development Program and all the summits and agreements on hunger that preceded it, there never has been a truly global program of action to address the problem. It has always been treated as a collection of national problems."

And a few paragraphs later:

"Serious strategies for addressing malnutrition would offer more than a few scattered recommendations. They would describe stepwise plans of action designed to reach the goal. There should be clear incentives for the actors to do what needs to be done, and there should be institutional mechanisms in place to assure that all actors are held accountable for doing their jobs. Just as the construction of a building or a bridge is only possible with detailed planning and periodic course corrections during the process of working toward the goal, the human right to adequate food can only be fully realized through carefully designed and implemented programs of action."

Is it any different for malaria?

Aloha, George
mailto:kent@hawaii.edu