Are the UN's Millennium Development Goals achievable?

Are the UN's Millennium Development Goals achievable?
Andy Clark interviews Fiona Dove and Guido Schmidt-Traub
Radio Netherlands International, 23 September2005

The world should be held accountable, this is not just an African problem or a developing country problem - this is a problem for everyone.
- Fiona Dove

The recent mega UN summit held in New York was originally called to review progress on the Millennium Development Goals - the UN's ambitious plans on poverty, healthcare, education and the environment. It was supposed to give the goals - agreed five years ago by no fewer than 189 countries - a much-needed boost.

In reality, though, discussion of the development proposals, aimed at tackling disparities between the haves and have-nots of the world, was pushed down the agenda by concerns over terrorism and UN inefficiency and corruption.

Amsterdam Forum focused on the goals this week and asked if there was any hope still for the ambitious plans giving the lack of political will to back them wholeheartedly.

Host Andy Clark was joined by Guido Schmidt-Traub, the Associate Director of the UN Millennium Project, the body that is overseeing the implementation of the goals, and Fiona Dove, the director of the Transnational Institute, an Amsterdam-based think tank for progressive politics.

Key quotes

How far behind schedule are we for meeting the Millennium Development Goal?

Guido Schmidt-Traub:
"We are very far behind particularly in Africa, there are some regions that have made tremendous progress, East Asia, South Asia, India and China are the best examples. But, across the board, Africa is not only lagging behind; there are many countries that are actually experiencing regress. Life expectancy is falling and child mortality rates are rising in some countries, so the gap is actually widening."

Fiona Dove on who's responsible if the goals aren't met:

"The world should be held accountable, this is not just an African problem or a developing country problem - this is a problem for everyone. And the world has become a lot smaller in many senses in the last couple of decades and I think the international community should be held accountable for failure."

Guido Schmidt-Traub on whether the goals are achievable by the deadline of 2015:

"The ten years that we have are enough, barely though. To me real action to meet the goals needs to start now because these countries will need ten years to build up their systems to allow them to provide all the services to their citizens that are required to meet these goals."

Fiona Dove on whether the goals are achievable by the deadline of 2015:

"I'm sure there can be some progress made in ten years and I think it is important to say we can do it, theoretically, a kind of optimism of will is important, but on the intellectual side of things I'm a little pessimistic - it is going to be very difficult."

Guido Schmidt-Traub on the UN summit in New York as a missed chance to give the Millennium Development Goals a boost:

"We would have liked to have seen more public debate and discussion about the Millennium Development Goals, particularly following the very live discussion around the G8 summit, but I think this summit came up with a few very important decisions on the goals. They were re-affirmed by all countries, that's very important particularly in the light of the discussions that happened just before the summit, when this was in doubt [The US ambassador to the UN John Bolton questioned whether the MDGs were worth continuing with]. Countries also re-committed themselves to give 0.7 percent of GDP in official development assistance and two other very important decisions were made."

"Countries were asked to develop MDG-based national development strategies and the summit agreed on a range of quick impact initiatives that can be implemented right away - such as strategies to tackle malaria."

Fiona Dove on the New York Summit:

"It was very much promoted as a make or break summit in terms of getting these Millennium Goals back on track and I think it was really unfortunate that the US in particular played an obstructionist role before the summit. I think there has been a consistent strategy to undermine the UN, particular under the Bush administration and I think that was very unfortunate not only in skewing the agenda of this summit but I think it's going to skew the approach on how to achieve the Millennium Development Goals."