Our apologies

The page you are looking for has moved to the new Oxfam Education website.

You are now being redirected to the homepage, where you can find a huge range of resources to help you take a global approach in the classroom.

If you are not redirected automatically, please click here.

Day 2 - Background information: The Millenium Development Goals

What are the Millennium Development Goals?

The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are international targets for reducing global poverty. By the year 2015 these goals, if they are reached, will have lifted around 500 million people out of poverty. Fewer women will die in childbirth, fewer people will die from treatable diseases, many more boys and girls will go to school and the lives of millions of people will improve dramatically.

How did they come about?

In the year 2000, the member states of the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the Millennium Declaration. This document outlines the 189 countries’ commitment to the UN’s principle of working towards a more just, peaceful and equal world. The MDGs, as a set of realistic and achievable targets, are central to this process. By signing up to these goals, governments of both developing and developed countries have committed themselves to working collaboratively towards a better future for all of us.

What is happening now?

Progress on the goals will be measured each year, in order to help achieve them all by 2015. For the first seven goals, the onus is on the governments of developing countries to ensure that targets are met or bettered. It is the eighth goal, however, to ‘build a global partnership for development’ that will create the conditions necessary for achieving the other seven. With this goal, the responsibility falls on the richer countries and the wider ‘global community’ to reduce debt, to give more and better aid and to make trade fairer, among other measures. At the current rate of progress, many of the targets will be missed and it is therefore vital that pressure is stepped up on the world community to increase efforts to achieve them.