Learning the lessons of the MDGs: second time round, let's get it right

As the 2015 deadline for the millennium development goals (MDGs) draws near, there is an urgent need for inclusive global consultations to draw up a successor agreement. With only four years left to go, many of the world's poorest people, particularly women and children, are being left behind in efforts to meet the current commitments. In September, the UN general assembly will meet to discuss how the pace can be accelerated, and what should replace the current framework after 2015. If the human rights pledges made in the original millennium declaration are to be kept, the UN must ensure the broadest possible civil society participation in constructing the new agenda.

The MDGs, announced in 2001, have raised public awareness and helped mobilise action in support of poverty eradication efforts across the world. They have provided a framework for monitoring progress and highlighting areas of achievement. Because they go beyond a statement of general objectives and define quantitative and time-bound targets, progress can be measured and gaps identified.

Without action, the MDGs might be left to lapse. Yet the task of ending poverty is far from over; one in four people in developing countries is still living on less than $1.25 dollars a day. It may be expedient simply to extend the deadline, but this is not acceptable. The objective is to end poverty, but the MDGs set only interim targets, such as to halve the proportion of people who experience hunger, or to reduce by two-thirds the under-five mortality rate. These targets were woefully unambitious from the start, based as they were on pre-existing rates of global progress rather than on more demanding human rights standards.

Nations must agree on a new set of goals. Ending poverty necessitates the confrontation of ever-changing challenges and shifting priorities; it also involves addressing the underlying exclusion and discrimination that fuel poverty and violate human rights.

The successor goals and targets must consider lessons from the current set of MDGs, which are extremely narrow. They focus on sub-sections of certain social sectors and selective human needs. Greater balance could be achieved by including such challenges as creating decent work, reinforcing social protection, and increasing productivity; addressing climate change and its disparate impacts on the poor; ameliorating risks of global financial and commodity market crises; ensuring fairer trade rules; and, finally, reducing gaping inequalities within and between countries, based on class, gender and ethnicity, among other factors.

The MDGs are global targets; they must be adapted at the national level to reflect each country's specific capacities, constraints and challenges. Ending poverty requires setting ambitious targets in each country, but "one size fits all" targets make no sense when countries have vastly different starting points. In some, the targets are not ambitious enough, in others, they are unfeasible. In addition to adapting the targets or adding new ones, and, of course, achieving them, countries should be assessed on their progress and the efforts they are making to expand opportunities to live in freedom and dignity for all, without discrimination.

One of the principal failures of the MDGs has been a lack of accountability for meeting goals in an equitable, transparent and participatory manner that promotes sustained institutional change. The absence of quantifiable commitments for trade, debt, aid and technology transfer has made it particularly difficult to hold the international community to account. The global framework must establish accessible accountability mechanisms that not only monitor progress and gaps, but also correct them. The scant attention afforded to accountability in the UN's latest progress report (pdf) does not bode well for this crucial issue.

Finally, the MDGs emerged from a closed-door, UN secretariat process without wide consultation among developing countries, civil society and other stakeholders. As a result, the MDGs have not had the strong "ownership" and "buy-in" from civil society and national governments they might have. Nor have they been informed by the experiences of those most directly affected by poverty and the denial of human rights. The initial reactions of many civil society groups to the MDGs were critical. A decade on, many of these groups have converged in broad-based global coalitions and networks to make constructive proposals from different but complementary perspectives, including those of indigenous, environmental, feminist, social justice and human rights movements. As a survey of more than 100 southern civil society groups recently affirmed, "the process of deciding what comes after the MDGs will be as important as the framework itself" (pdf).

The UN secretary general has acknowledged the need to set a more ambitious development agenda beyond the current MDGs. An urgent and critical first step is to start a process of broad consultations on the post-2015 goals. Such consultations will require time, involving local, national, and regional debate. They must involve key stakeholder groups, including national governments, national and international civil society organisations and networks, the private sector, and bilateral and multilateral development agencies. Time is short for this process if it is to be meaningful.