The Millennium Development Goals: A Check-up on Latin America’s Progress

With much to deliberate since their last meeting in 2005, 140 leaders from across the globe came together in New York for the Assembly of the United Nations September 20th through September 23rd to discuss their Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The project, initiated in 2000, has committed 189 countries to eight specific goals to be realized by the year 2015. Leaders have pledged to cut extreme poverty and hunger by half, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health care, combat HIV and AIDS, ensure environmental stability, and build a global partnership for development. But the United Nations has already acknowledged a harsh reality: only one objective, halving the number of people who live in poverty, and a portion of the seventh goal, halving the number of people without drinkable water, are likely be met on a global scale.

Throughout the duration of the summit, UN member-states assessed what has been accomplished during the first decade, and what is still to be achieved, with the pressure of the 2015 deadline looming. Indeed, the MDGs have set the bar high for many nations around the world. But as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon explained in the to the Millennium Development Goals Report of 2010, “It is clear that improvements in the lives of the poor have been unacceptably slow, and some hard-won gains are being eroded by the climate, food and economic crises.”

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