SDGs & MDGs

[Yousuf.Chy]

Sustainable Development Goals in short SDGs is another development objective like Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). After the year 2015 MDGs will replace with SDGs. MDGs aim to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, reducing child mortality rates etc. 

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) refer to an agreement of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development held in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012 (Rio+20), to develop a set of future international development goals.

Background

The current development agenda is centered on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that were officially established following the Millennium Summit of the United Nations (UN) in 2000. The MDGs encapsulate eight globally agreed goals in the areas of poverty alleviation, education, gender equality and empowerment of women, child and maternal health, environmental sustainability, reducing HIV/AIDS and communicable diseases, and building a global partnership for development.

As the target date of the MDGs, 2015, is approaching, a debate on the framework of international development beyond 2015 has started. In this vein, 192 UN member states agreed at the Rio+20 summit to start a process of designing sustainable development goals, which are “action-oriented, concise and easy to communicate, limited in number, inspirational, global in nature and universally applicable to all countries while taking into account different national realities, capacities and levels of development and respecting national policies and priorities”.
The Rio+20 outcome document, “The Future We Want”, also calls for the goals to be integrated into the UN’s post-2015 Development Agenda.
 
Current process

Since Rio+20 did not elaborate specific goals, a 30-member Open Working Group (OWG) was established on 22 January 2013 by the decision of the UN General Assembly. The OWG is tasked with preparing a proposal on the SDGs for consideration during the 68th session of the General Assembly, September 2013 – September 2014.

The OWG uses a constituency-based system of representation, which means that most of the seats in the working group are shared by several countries.

The Rio+20 outcome document states that, “at the outset, the OWG will decide on its methods of work, including developing modalities to ensure the full involvement of relevant stakeholders and expertise from civil society, the scientific community and the United Nations system in its work, in order to provide a diversity of perspectives and experience”.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals

[Yousuf.Chy]

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight international development goals that were officially established following the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in 2000, following the adoption of the United Nations Millennium Declaration. All 189 United Nations member states and at least 23 international organizations have agreed to achieve these goals by the year 2015. The goals are:

1.   Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger,
2.   Achieving universal primary education,
3.   Promoting gender equality and empowering women,
4.   Reducing child mortality rates,
5.   Improving maternal health,
6.   Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases,
7.   Ensuring environmental sustainability, and
8.   Developing a global partnership for development.

Each of the goals has specific stated targets and dates for achieving those targets. To accelerate progress, the G8 Finance Ministers agreed in June 2005 to provide enough funds to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the African Development Bank (AfDB) to cancel an additional $40 to $55 billion in debt owed by members of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) to allow impoverished countries to re channel the resources saved from the forgiven debt to social programs for improving health and education and for alleviating poverty.
Debate has surrounded adoption of the MDGs, focusing on lack of analysis and justification behind the chosen objectives, the difficulty or lack of measurements for some of the goals, and uneven progress towards reaching the goals, among other criticisms. Although developed countries' aid for achieving the MDGs has been rising over recent years, more than half the aid is towards debt relief owed by poor countries, with much of the remaining aid money going towards natural disaster relief and military aid which do not further development.

Progress towards reaching the goals has been uneven. Some countries have achieved many of the goals, while others are not on track to realize any. A UN conference in September 2010 reviewed progress to date and concluded with the adoption of a global action plan to achieve the eight anti-poverty goals by their 2015 target date. There were also new commitments on women's and children's health, and new initiatives in the worldwide battle against poverty, hunger, and disease.

Government organizations assist in achieving those goals, among them are the United Nations Millennium Campaign, the Millennium Promise Alliance, Inc., the Global Poverty Project, the Micah Challenge, The Youth in Action EU Programme, "Cartoons in Action" video project, and the 8 Visions of Hope global art project.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals