How is the UN Helping the World's Poor? (LINK)
March 11th 2008 01:20
All member states of the United Nations adopted the governing body’s proposed Millennium Development Goals (MDG) in 2000. These eight goals have since come to encapsulate the world’s aims for helping developing countries develop in a sustainable and widely beneficial way.
The eight goals were adopted in 2000 and were designed as a part of 15 year plan. So seeing as we are now in 2008, the half way stage of the project, I decided to have a look at how the UN’s MDG’s are helping the world’s poor.
But first, here are the eight goals:
1. Eradicate extreme hunger and poverty
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 life threatening diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development
In every region of the world the amount of people living on less than $1 a day has significantly dropped. Except in West Asia where it has risen from 1.6% in 1990 to 3.8% in 2004. Childhood hunger has also dropped in every region, although not at a rate that the UN would have hoped.
In regards to the second development goal, achieving universal primary education, the UN is as of this moment failing. The amount of children attending school remains at similar levels to those of 1990. In the MDG Report the UN sates, ‘72 million children of primary school age were not in school in 2005; 57 per cent of them were girls.’ Although there has been definite improvements in the numbers of children attending school in Sub Saharan Africa.
Across the globe there are generally more women sitting in parliament than there were in 1990 and there is generally more women in paid work positions. Although the only region which has experienced substantial rises in these areas is Oceania – 28% of Oceania women were in paid work in 1990, compared with 38% in 2005.
In reference to the fourth MDG the UN states, ‘estimates for 2005 indicate that 10.1 million children died before their fifth birthday, mostly from preventable causes. Though infant and child mortality rates have declined globally, the pace of progress has been uneven across regions and countries.’
One of the UN’s greatest success stories is with the fifth MDG, improving maternal health. In Northern Africa in 2000 only 40% of child births were attended by a skilled healthcare professional but by 2005 that had risen to a staggering 75%. Similar improvements have taken place in Eastern Asia and Latin America.
In 2000 the UN proclaimed that it wanted to have halted and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015. This is a long from being achieved as the preventative measures designed to stop the transmission of the disease are failing to keep pace with the spread of the virus. Since 2000 the amount of people living with HIV/AIDS has actually risen considerably. There are currently 40 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS.
There is no need to even discuss the seventh goal as forests continue to be logged each and every day across the globe and CO2 continues to be pumped into the Earth’s atmosphere at high levels. Environmental sustainability has not even improved in the developed world, let alone the developing world. There is no way the UN will reach this MDG. The world is loosing 7.5 million hectares of forest a year.
To view the whole report click on the link above
The eight goals were adopted in 2000 and were designed as a part of 15 year plan. So seeing as we are now in 2008, the half way stage of the project, I decided to have a look at how the UN’s MDG’s are helping the world’s poor.
UN General Assembly
But first, here are the eight goals:
1. Eradicate extreme hunger and poverty
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 life threatening diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development
In every region of the world the amount of people living on less than $1 a day has significantly dropped. Except in West Asia where it has risen from 1.6% in 1990 to 3.8% in 2004. Childhood hunger has also dropped in every region, although not at a rate that the UN would have hoped.
In regards to the second development goal, achieving universal primary education, the UN is as of this moment failing. The amount of children attending school remains at similar levels to those of 1990. In the MDG Report the UN sates, ‘72 million children of primary school age were not in school in 2005; 57 per cent of them were girls.’ Although there has been definite improvements in the numbers of children attending school in Sub Saharan Africa.
a boy in Jakarta
Across the globe there are generally more women sitting in parliament than there were in 1990 and there is generally more women in paid work positions. Although the only region which has experienced substantial rises in these areas is Oceania – 28% of Oceania women were in paid work in 1990, compared with 38% in 2005.
In reference to the fourth MDG the UN states, ‘estimates for 2005 indicate that 10.1 million children died before their fifth birthday, mostly from preventable causes. Though infant and child mortality rates have declined globally, the pace of progress has been uneven across regions and countries.’
One of the UN’s greatest success stories is with the fifth MDG, improving maternal health. In Northern Africa in 2000 only 40% of child births were attended by a skilled healthcare professional but by 2005 that had risen to a staggering 75%. Similar improvements have taken place in Eastern Asia and Latin America.
In 2000 the UN proclaimed that it wanted to have halted and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015. This is a long from being achieved as the preventative measures designed to stop the transmission of the disease are failing to keep pace with the spread of the virus. Since 2000 the amount of people living with HIV/AIDS has actually risen considerably. There are currently 40 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS.
AIDS poster in Vietnam
There is no need to even discuss the seventh goal as forests continue to be logged each and every day across the globe and CO2 continues to be pumped into the Earth’s atmosphere at high levels. Environmental sustainability has not even improved in the developed world, let alone the developing world. There is no way the UN will reach this MDG. The world is loosing 7.5 million hectares of forest a year.
To view the whole report click on the link above
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