Analysis Of The Millennium Development Goals And Human Rights

The Millennium Development Goals and Human Rights

Introduction

In 2000, 189 member states of the UN set out international development goals, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), by committing to the pursuit of tackling issues such as poverty, hunger, illiteracy, diseases and other key social issues by 2015. These goals had been used and applied by states, NGOs and IGOs in order to improve and defend policies aimed at development. The MDGs plan was unprecedented in its ambition and was the first ever internationally coordinated and well-funded initiative to address various social issues collectively on a global scale. Significant progress has been made in all MDGs: extreme poverty has reduced by half or more, the, the campaign against

However not all have been fulfilled and there have been large disparities within and across countries in achieving these goals. Approximately 1.2 billion people still live in extreme poverty, leaving them vulnerable to further complications such as hunger, diseases, and illiteracy to name a few Many poor countries have been neglected by a large margin and this is not necessarily due to inaction or lack of aid but because of the unrealistic goals and expectations of the MDGs which is a problem as promising excessively leads to disillusionment and can wear down the foundations for long term plans of global development. Now that we are in 2015, there has already been various discourses on post-2015 initiative concerning the MDGs and “people demand that this new agenda be built on human rights, and universal values of equality, justice and security.” In order strengthen the link between MDGs and human rights, four strategic elements must be addressed: (1) eliminating the neglection of human rights, (2) reinforcing accountability in public services, (3) improving data collection and reliability, and

Although human rights was mentioned several times as one of the key focus in Millennium Declaration , it was not mentioned specifically in the MDGs which creates a large disconnect between the two. The MDGs and human rights have mutual objectives of preserving and protecting human dignity and equal worth. However human rights still haven’t played a significant enough role in influencing MDG related activities. This is a huge concern as human rights have an intrinsic value as well as an instrumental value; therefore their recognition has a value in itself and advances its instrumental role in enabling the furtherance of the MDGs. If the MDGs were to promote human rights more effectively, it would have a more holistic view in terms of progress. For instance halving the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day (Target 1A), halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger (Target 1C) and halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation is under ambitious and disregards the other half of the people living in these conditions. A human rights approach would safeguard that nationally adopted targets are properly united with the human rights treaty obligations of the