Global Monitoring Report 2011 - "Improving the Odds of Achieving the Mdgs"

African Development Bank
(Tunis)
http://allafrica.com/stories/201105060314.html

5 May 2011

This year's Global Monitoring Report 2011 entitled "Improving the Odds of Achieving the MDGs Heterogeneity, Gaps and Challenges", reviewed the evolution of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) towards their achievement deadline set for 2015 by World Leaders in 2000. The Global Monitoring Report is a product of a strategic collaboration of multilateral development finance institutions led by the World Bank and which includes the AfDB. This year's Report analyzed the diverse efforts and achievements in improving human development across developing countries in general and Africa in particular.

AfDB contributions which related to the African continent were highlighted in the Report as in previous years. These were illustrated through the Bank's lending program, its technical assistance, and how its knowledge products have evolved in recent years to meet different country circumstances. In pursuing MDGs, the Bank Group followed its 2008-2012 Medium Term Strategy (MTS) selectivity programmes, servicing those countries most in need, including fragile states, low-income countries, and vulnerable groups. The Report also indicated how the level of concessionary aid resources was maintained at the AfDB as a reflection of its commitment to the achievement of MDGs by 2015. The Report amply demonstrated African Development Fund replenishment under the ADF XII which resulted in a 10.6 percent increase with a funding package of approximately USD 9.5 billion to support the Fund's operations in low-income countries between 2011 and 2013.

Despite the perceived sluggishness of MDGs since its inception and the increase in the absolute number of poor in Africa from 296 million in 1990 to over 388 million now, the MDGs Report, further summarized the results of impact evaluations of health and education programs and reviewed recent developments in global growth, trade, and donor policies. Below are some of the highlights of the Report:

Global progress toward the various targets continues to be mixed, and country performance is predictably diverse. Among developing countries that are off track, the top half are, on average, within 10 percent of the on-track trajectory. While countries close to the target may still miss the 2015 deadline, they could achieve the targets soon after, with improved policies and an acceleration of growth to pre-crisis levels.

For countries that are on track, or close to it, solid economic growth and good policies and institutions have been the key factors. Progress on both fronts has been evident since the 1990s. Indeed, policy responses in the recent global economic downturn have softened the negative impact, particularly for low-income countries (especially in Africa).

This substantial progress is not a reason for complacency. Without a stable expansion of the global economy, continuing access to advanced and developing-country markets, and adequate assistance from donors, progress could still break down. Enhancing the resilience to adverse economic shocks, including the provision of social safety programs, will need greater attention and support.

Reaching the MDGs is only one milestone, for there still is much work to do in fostering inclusive growth, reducing inequality and poverty, and improving health and education outcomes in even the most successful countries. Even the middle-income countries on track to reach the MDGs have trailing pockets of indigenous and socially excluded groups whose odds of reaching the goals are slim.

Unsurprisingly, countries with slower growth and poorer institutions are farthest behind. Many countries far from the target are fragile states, reinforcing the need for the international community including the African Development Bank to step up support to these countries.

Achieving the Millennium Development Goals (Studies in Development Economics and Policy)

The Millennium Development Goals Report 2010

General Assembly President holds wide-ranging talks with UK officials

Source: UN News Centre
4 April 2011

General Assembly President Joseph Deiss
4 April 2011 – The President of the General Assembly held talks today with British officials in London on issues such as United Nations reform and the anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), as well as recent developments in several global hotspots.
During his one-day visit to the United Kingdom, Joseph Deiss met with Foreign Secretary William Hague. The issues they discussed included global governance and the situations in Libya and Côte d’Ivoire.

The Millennium Development Goals and Beyond: International Assistance to the Asia-Pacific (Rethinking International Development)



Talks with Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development Stephen O’Brien focused on the MDGs – the set of eight globally agreed targets that seek to halve world poverty by 2015 by combating hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women.

The other subjects they discussed included several upcoming UN meetings concerning the least developed countries (LDCs); HIV/AIDS; and non-communicable diseases.

Mr. Deiss also held talks with the Minister of State for the UN in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Henry Bellingham, on the green economy and the preparations for the upcoming UN Conference on Sustainable Development, among other elements.

In all of his discussions, the President thanked the UK for its strong commitment to the world body.

U.N.-NGO Conference On MDGs Kicks Off In Australia

Source: KAISER Family Foundation

Monday, August 30, 2010

Ahead of next month's U.N. Summit in New York, a joint U.N.-NGO conference tracking the world's progress toward reaching the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) kicked off in Melbourne, Australia, on Monday, ABC News reports (8/30).

"The three-day conference aims to promote ways in which civil society, in partnership with those in business, academia, philanthropy, media and medicine, can work together to create conditions conducive to improving global health," PressTV reports (8/30).

"The 63rd annual DPI/NGO Conference … has attracted more than 2,200 participants from some 70 countries," according to U.N. News Centre. "In all, 41 [NGOs] from the Asia-Pacific region were associated this year, including 32 from Australia, one from Fiji, five from the Philippines, and three from the Pacific Islands," the news service adds.

"The new U.N. policy to offer association to non-governmental organizations in the region where the conference is being held also presents a chance for 'solidifying the trend of increasing geographic diversity and greater networking opportunities for NGOs affiliated with the Department of Public Information,' said UN Chief of NGO Relations Maria-Luisa Chavez," U.N. News Centre adds (8/29).

The meeting will focus on the topics of improving global health needs, "particularly saving the lives of mothers and infants and preventing HIV/AIDS," a topic that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon highlighted as an area where many countries have struggled to close gaps to meet MDGs during a video-link address to the conference, Australian Associated Press/Sydney Morning Herald reports.

"UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibe told the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) represented [at the conference] that they had played a vital role in breaking the conspiracy of silence about [HIV/AIDS], and rolling out treatment programs in the remotest parts of the world," the news service writes. Sidibe also spoke about the additional efforts necessary to prevent mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) HIV/AIDS and the need to integrate HIV/AIDS programs into other disease programs, the news service writes (Alexander/Rose, 8/30). ABC Radio Australia features an interview with Sidibe, who addresses how discrimination against groups at high risk for HIV, such as men who have sex with men (MSM), can fuel the spread of the disease (8/30).

Meanwhile, ABC Radio Australia News reports on the 34,000 people estimated to be living with HIV/AIDS in Papua New Guinea. According to Bill Bowtell, head of the advocacy group Pacific Friends of the Global Fund, three-quarters of people living with HIV/AID in PNG receive treatment for the disease. However, "Bowtell says more money is needed by international donors to help fight HIV/AIDS in poorer countries like PNG" (8/29).

Civil Society, Rights Groups Call for Greater Transparency in Fight Against Poverty

Source: VOA News.com

Joe DeCapua 11 August 2010

Next month, the United Nations meets on the status of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The target date for the goals, which address such things as poverty, health and development, is 2015. The September U.N. meeting will look at how much progress has been made toward achieving them.

Wednesday, a number of civil society and human rights groups called on governments to make a stronger commitment to transparency in the fight against poverty.

Sejal Parmar, senior legal officer for the group ARTICLE 19, says the groups have sent a letter to the ambassadors responsible for coordinating the U.N. High Level Plenary Meeting on the MDGs.

“We think that the 2010 summit happening in New York is an exceptional opportunity to take stock of the international community’s commitments on the Millennium Development Goals. And we believe very strongly that access to information and transparency are crucial to ensuring that the MDGs are achieved,” said Parmar.

Transparency International, the Carter Center, CIVICUS, the International Budget Partnership and Publish What You Fund have also signed the letter to the U.N. ambassadors.

Poverty

The groups have placed an emphasis on poverty in reaching the MDGs.

“The issue of global poverty is a human rights issue,” Parmar says. “It concerns such economic, social and cultural rights as the right to food, the right to housing, the right to water. And as an international human rights organization… we think that human rights are indivisible.”

She says the MDGs “overlap very significantly with economic and social rights,” adding, “We think that we can promote economic and social rights… through… the enabling rights of free expression and the right to access to information.”

Access to information and transparency are needed, she says, “because they promote better governance, better accountability of states who are seeking to achieve the MDGs targets.” She says they also help fight corruption and increase citizen participation in a country’s development efforts.

2015 target date

With the target days for the MDGs just five years away, how much progress has been made? Over the past year, there have been a number of assessments saying some goals are much closer to being achieved than others. Parmar would agree.

“The failure to achieve the MDGs as a whole and individually so far is not because they are unreachable or because the time is too short. But it’s really because of a lack of political will and commitment and, crucially, a lack of focus by international leaders and also accountability of the international leaders by the public,” she says.

She says the groups will consider the September U.N. meeting a success if there is “at least a clear and unequivocal commitment on the part of the international community to access to information and transparency as essential to the achievement of the MDGs.”

They also want what she calls “timely, credible and desegregated information on public resources expended to achieve the MDGs.”

ARTICLE 19 takes its name from Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states, "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

In Brief: Cambodia needs more midwives to reduce maternal deaths

Source: IRIN, Sunday 15 August 2010

Photo: David Swanson/IRIN

Maternal mortality is a key challenge for Cambodia

PHNOM PENH, 9 August 2010 (IRIN) - Cambodia must increase the number of trained health professionals to reduce its high maternal mortality rate, experts say.

There is one doctor or midwife for every 1,000 people in Cambodia, compared with two per 1,000 in Thailand, and 12 per 1,000 in Japan, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

"We need more experts, like midwives and medical doctors, and more equipment," said Keth Ly Sotha, deputy director of the National Maternal Child Health Centre.

While 56 percent of births are attended by a health professional - up from 32 percent in 2000 - Cambodia is unlikely to meet its Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing maternal mortality to 140 deaths per 100,000 live births by 2015, said Sherif Rushdy, a UN Development Programme consultant.

With 540 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, Cambodia has the second highest maternal mortality rate in the region, after 660 per 100,000 births in Laos, according to WHO.