SOUNDING BOARD is an outlet for opinions on good and crazy things going on at home (wherever I may be). All are welcome. You are not expected to bring anything except your common sense & sense of humor.
'If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get one million miles to the gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.'
-Robert X. Cringely (from geek wisdom)
SOUNDING BOARD
Friday, April 18, 2003
_____________________________________________
Mainstreaming the Millenium Development Goals: From global to country-level rhetoric
The MDGs are global goals on poverty reduction, social development and environmental regeneration, which were agreed upon by world leaders at the Millennium Summit of the United Nations General Assembly in September 2000. There are seven substantive goals and an eighth goal aimed at establishing and strengthening international partnerships for achieving the previous seven. These goals are backed up by 18 targets and 48 success indicators.
These goals should be very familiar to those who keep abreast of the goings-on in the international development circle. The MDGs are based on numerous agreements signed in international conferences during the 1990s. These agreements were stamped with the promises of the world leaders to themselves and to their peoples. Then came the MDGs in 2000. It had a reputation of being the 'mother of all summits'. It was a set of global goals stamped with the same promises given to previous international conferences.
If it did not worry you in 2000, you should be concerned now. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan sounded the alarm during the UN Day last year. He stressed that 'we are not on track... if we don't do better... we shall miss most of the goals'. In essence, the general concern was to prevent the 'mother of all summits' from becoming the 'mother of all rhetorics'.
When you read the MDGs, pay more attention to the success indicators rather than the goals and targets. The goals and targets were poorly and vaguely written such that you get a different impression from what it actually want to say. For example, the goal 'promote gender equality and empower women' only has one target --- 'eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005 and in all levels of education not later than 2015'. Then the target has success indicators on 'share of women in wage employment in non-agricultural sector' and 'proportion of seats held by women in national parliament' (in addition to the obvious male-female enrolment ratios). Other than the goal being too broad for the target, it is quite unrealistic to expect that the 'share of women in wage employment in non agri sectors' and 'proportion of women in parliament' determines whether our efforts to close the gender gap in primary and secondary education are successful or not. You would tend to hope that one thing leads to another. In reality, however, the causation is not as clear-cut as one would expect. In addition, when you have a gobal target of 'improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers' (under goal7), one doubts whether the vagueness was intended to mask the difficulty of the task.
