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MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS

United Nations Millennium Development Goals

The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight international development goals that all 192 members and a number of international organizations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015 to end poverty. They include reducing extreme poverty, reducing child mortality rates, fighting disease epidemics, such as HIV/AIDS, and creating a global partnership for development.

The main goal that concerns the WTO is MDG 8, building a global partnership for development. However, WTO activities are also relevant to other goals, such as MDG 1, whose aim is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. In fact, the MDGs cannot be seen in isolation: they are all interconnected.

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Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

Target 1a: Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day
Target 1b: Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people
Target 1c: Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger

Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education

Target 2a: Ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling

Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women

Target 3a: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015

Goal 4: Reduce child mortality

Target 4a: Reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five

Goal 5: Improve maternal health

Target 5a: Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio
Target 5b: Achieve, by 2015, universal access to reproductive health

Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

Target 6a: Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS
Target 6b: Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it
Target 6c: Halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases

Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability

Target 7a: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources
Target 7b: Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss
Target 7c: Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation
Target 7d: Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020

Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development

Target 8a: Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system
Target 8b: Address the special needs of the least developed countries
Target 8c: Address the special needs of landlocked developing countries and small island developing States
Target 8d: Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries
Target 8e: In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries
Target 8f: In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications