What are the Millennium Development Goals?

The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015 – form a blueprint agreed to by all the world's countries and all the world's leading development institutions. They have galvanized unprecedented efforts to meet the needs of the world's poorest.

The Goals

Goal 1 : Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

Target 1: Halve between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day.

Target 2 Halve between 1990 and 2015 the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.

Goal 2 : Achieve universal primary education

Target 3: Ensure that by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike will be able to complete full primary schooling.

Goal 3 : Promote gender equality and empower women

Target 4: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and Secondary education preferably by 2005 and to all levels of education no later than 2015.

Goal 4 : Reduce child mortality

Target 5: Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate.

Goal 5 : Improve maternal health

Target 6: Reduce by three-quarters, between 1990 and 2015 the maternal mortality ratio.

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

Target 7: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS

Target 8: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.

Goal 7 : Ensure environmental sustainability

Target 9: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources.

Target 10: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. Develop global partnership for development

Target 11: By 2020, to have achieved a significant in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.

Goal 8 : Develop Global partnership for Development

Target12: develop further an open, rule-based predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system.

Target 13: Address the special needs of the least developed countries includes: tariff and quota free access for least developed countries' exports, enhanced program of debt relief for HIPIC and cancellation of official bilateral debt, and more generous ODA for countries committed to poverty.

EFA Goals Agreed in Dakar Senegal 2000

•  Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children;

•  Ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to a complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality;

•  Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programmes;

•  Achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults;

•  Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving gender equality in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls' full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality;

6) Improving all aspects of the quality of education, and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy, and essential life skills