Millennium Development Goals
The Millennium Development Goals were adopted in the Millennium Declaration by the heads of 189 states at the United Nations Organisation’s summit in the year 2000. The eight Millennium Development Goals constitute the international community’s commitment to reduce poverty and hunger worldwide, to achieve equal status of women and men, improve the state of health, improve the educational conditions, combat AIDS, protect the natural environment, and develop a global partnership for development. The deadline for the achievement of these Goals was clearly fixed for the year 2015.
Millennium Development Goals:
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by reducing by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day. 2. Achieve universal primary education by ensuring that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling. 3. Promote gender equality and empower women by eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015. 4. Reduce child mortality by reducing by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five. 5. Improve maternal health by reducing by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio. 6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases by halting and beginning to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, halting and beginning to reverse the spread of malaria and other major diseases. 7. Ensure environmental sustainability by integrating the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes, reversing the loss of environmental resources. Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water. Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020. 8. Develop a global partnership for development by developing further an open trading and financial system that is rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory; obligate the system’s participants to undertake activities promoting good governance, development and poverty reduction; address the special needs of the least developed countries, landlocked and small island developing states (in particular, increase their access to the markets of developed countries, offer debt relief, and more generous development assistance); develop work strategies for youth; provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries; and make available the benefits of new technologies to them.
Poland and MDGs
Poland has adopted the Millennium Declaration, which means that our country has undertaken to make an effort to achieve the Declaration’s eight goals by 2015. The major goal is to reduce the proportion of people living in extreme poverty, i.e. on less than one dollar a day. At present, there are almost 1.2 billion such people worldwide. Poland is acting for the achievement of the Millennium Goals above all by increasing the amount of funds allocated to foreign assistance. The MDG Campaign: Time To Help Others
Between 2004 and 2005, the first campaign on the Millennium Development Goals entitled “The Millennium Development Goals: Time To Help Others” was launched in Poland. The campaign was organised by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Poland, the UN System in Poland and the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The campaign included the promotion of assistance under the following heading: “Poland is a Paradise for the World’s 1.2 Billion Poorest People”. The campaign was part of a more comprehensive information campaign aimed at propagating international development issues and winning social support for the Millennium Development Goals.
Information taken from: http://www.polskapomoc.gov.pl/Millennium,Development,Goals,207.html
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