Millennium Development Goals

Millennium Development Goals

by Mike Batell
AIDemocracy Online
September 2005

This week, officials from over 170 nations will converge in New York City for the largest gathering of world leaders in history. The UN World Summit will focus in part on advancing programs to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, a set of eight measurable targets for the reduction of extreme poverty and disease in developing countries to which 191 nations have committed themselves, including the United States. Perhaps the best public policy document exemplifying the sacred American value of helping others help themselves, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) unite nations of the world together in a partnership to solve the worst problems afflicting poor countries.

Indeed, the MDGs are essential in a world where over a billion people still live on less than one dollar a day, while at the same time there are over seven million millionaires. They are essential in a world where a child dies every three seconds from diseases that can cost just a few dollars to prevent or treat. Think about that: by the time you have finished reading this column, more than forty innocent kids will have died from diseases we could have easily prevented.

The MDGs originated during the 2000 UN World Summit, and the 2005 UN Summit was to be devoted in part to evaluating progress towards realizing those Millennium Development Goals. However, it was recently revealed that President Bush’s appointee for UN Ambassador, John Bolton, is trying to hijack the World Summit agenda by eliminating all references to the MDGs. We should all be alarmed by this move.

Less than four weeks into his controversial recess appointment, it is disturbing that Mr. Bolton is trying to swoop in at the last minute to nullify over five years of preparation and work leading up to this year’s Summit. This move jeopardizes America’s reputation around the world, further alienates our allies, and drives a deeper wedge between the US and the 190 UN member nations that still support the MDGs. Our bargaining position at the UN is thus undermined.

In essence our government is saying to the world, “We don’t buy into partnership with you on the issues of economic development in poor countries,” while at the same time the US demands that the world buy into partnership with us on our security objectives. This is dangerous diplomacy to say the least. The move also gives ammunition to anti-American propagandists and terrorist networks that attempt to portray the US as a cold-hearted nation unconcerned about the fate of the world’s poor.

Conditions of extreme poverty create breeding grounds for terrorism. When he justifies the war in Iraq, the President is fond of asserting that we must “take the fight to the terrorists over there, so we don’t have to fight them here.” Well, it could also be argued that we need to promote development over there in order to eliminate terrorist safe havens and breeding grounds, and then we won’t have to fight them here.

If the Administration is willing to suffer these costs to our national interest by coming out against the MDGs, surely there must be a good reason for its surprising flip-flop. By looking at the text of the Millennium Declaration itself, perhaps we can find an answer to the question: What exactly is it about the MDGs that Mr. Bolton and the Bush Administration so strongly disagree with? Is it the goal to “By 2015, reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day” that the Administration is against? Or is it the goal to “Achieve universal primary education”? Maybe it’s the goal to “reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five,” or the goal to “reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.”

For some inexplicable reason, the Administration has taken a stance against these Millennium Development Goals and is slowing progress towards their achievement. Please contact the White House to urge the Administration to put a stop to this senseless assault on a cherished set of goals that the rest of humanity supports. At the UN World Summit this week, our government has an opportunity to reverse course by reaffirming our support of the MDGs and the policies necessary to achieve them: more and better development assistance, debt cancellation, freer and fairer trade, renewed efforts to tackle corruption, and support for democratization.

Mike Batell is Americans for Informed Democracy member at the University of Georgia