Hope MDG

  1. Ajay Kumar Uprety

Millennium Development Goals are just a combined hope of 191 nations to see the world without a person under the line of poverty. During the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000, eight MDGs were set to be achieved by 2015. The goals comprises an ambitious agendas that significantly improve global human life by 2015 from halving global poverty & hunger to protecting environment, improving health to promoting gender equality. Along with eight goals, there are 18 targets with time frame which make it easy to measure. The goals of United Nations reflect the present situation along with the future hope.

The ratified goals are:
Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Children especially in African countries are starving day to day. MDG aim to halve the proportion of people whose income is less than 1$ per day & people suffer from hunger.

Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
Education is backbone of development, so it envisions a situation where children without discrimination of age, sex, religion & region will be able to complete a full course of primary education.

Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
Development cannot sustain without ending discrimination by sex either in education, politics or governmental services. MDG tries to ensure the elimination of gender disparity in primary & secondary education by 2005 and all types of disparity no latter than 2015. We have crossed 2005 two years before but we cannot feel like that.

Goal 4: Reduce child mortality
High rate of mortality in developing countries is a great headache to all developmental process. MDGs targets to reduce children under five mortality, infant mortality by two third with in time frame.

Goal 5: Improve maternal health
Child mortality is also interlinked with maternal health. Lack of trained birth attendant and good facilities is must to improve maternal health. MDG aimed to reduce maternal mortality by three quarters.

Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
HIV & AIDS in developing countries pull behind us from socializing. Lack of education, misconceptions and stigmas are intended to end to halt the spread of HIV & AIDS by 2015 and targeted to reverse the spread. Combating with other diseases as malaria and tuberculosis can also be halted by the dateline.

Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
Global carbon dioxide emission and consumption of environment polluted factors should be reducing to achieve sustainable environment. These factors are related with global warming, which also have serious effect to achieve MDG. MDG also assure to halve the people using poor drinking water.

Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development
All the seven goals are related with different aspects of improving individual lives but this goal is related to cooperation to achieve the stated seven goals. It is dealt with debt problems of developing countries, need of landlocked countries and cooperation of private sectors. It aimed to improve internet, computer, and other technological users.

MDG acknowledge that development rests on the foundations of democratic governance, the rule of law, respect for human rights and peace & security. With out these we cannot envision a country without poverty.

The first basis of development is practical commitment without political commitment, the development cannot be sustainable. One of the major obstacles to achieve MDG by 2015 is lack of political commitment & political stability in developing countries. During insurgency in Nepal, the developmental work and process was totally halted.

Leadership without knowledge of MDG & pool of corruption badly hampered the running. It does not leave a place to be optimist that we can achieve the targets. The developmental process cannot proceed if the people do not trust their beurocracy, which is seen in Nepal.

It is a great fear that the corruption especially in developing countries brings barriers in our way to reach the MDGs of halving number of people living in extreme poverty by 2015. Corruption result in great loss of public funds needed foe education, healthcare improvement, & poverty alleviation.

One group blamed that MDG is small investment of developed countries to take away resources of poor countries. They usually told that this type of charity investment should better opposed by trade investment. We cannot cut down poverty until we do not focus on productivity of our own resources. Only the charity money donated by foreign countries cannot lift us drastically. Increasing aid always not does better to promote the livelihood of citizen. Current mechanism to donate aid must be checked if it is effective for poverty reduction of any country.

Civil society organizations, government, multilateral institutions point to issues of global equity – debt cancellation, trade justice, equitable governance in global institutions, and political, social & economic rights for the poor – as an basic foundation for a politics that will enable sustained progress to end poverty in developing world.

Involving youth in each level of developmental work, policy making & monitoring is a strong support to our commitment. Only eight years is left, but we are almost in same strand where we are in 2000 in our developmental practice. This cannot convince us that we can achieve MDG by 2015. Our hope that we can one day be free from injustice, poverty, & diseases. It is not wise to let foreigners think positively for us. We have to awake to step up the ladder. As youth, we are the first generation that can end poverty.