Millennium Development Goals

Bethany Winkin

POLS 463

Professor Dietrich

November 30, 2017

Millennium Development Goals

        In class, we often talk about the United Nations and the effects that it has globally. There are many controversial opinions concerning the actions of the UN. For example, there is much debate as to whether or not their interference in political issues affects the sovereignty of countries. However, in September 2000, world leaders came together to create the Millennium Declaration, which established the eight goals that world leaders agreed were important to work on. These were very lofty goals, but between 2000 and 2015, an unprecedented amount of progress was made on all of them. Although they were not all completed fully, the act of developing these goals set the world in motion and turned out to be an extremely successful endeavor. Based on these facts, I think that the most effective action driven by the United Nations is the Millennium Development Goals, and to further the betterment of the world population, the United Nations should continue to lead initiations similar to the Millennium Development Goals. The success of these goals is due to the publicity and unison in which they were distributed, as well as the basic level of need in which they addressed. 

        One of the main reasons the Millennium Development Goals were so successful is the basic needs that the goals addressed. The fact that, despite differences between cultures, world leaders were able to come together and agree on these areas of improvement is inspiring and uniting. It created a sense of comradery worldwide. It is hard to argue that anyone, despite race, culture, or religion, deserves to live in poverty. For example, the first Development Goal is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Since 2015, a person who lives on less than $1.90 a day is considered to be living in extreme poverty. According to the Millennium Development Goals Report released in 2015, between 1990 and 2015, the number of people living in extreme poverty dropped from 1.9 billion, to 836 million. This is obviously not a complete eradication, but the subset of this goal was to halve the number of people living in poverty between 1990 and 2015, and that goal was met two years before the deadline. This goal is easy to measure, so it is a good example of how setting a goal initiates real action. The progress that was made on this goal, in comparison to the progress that would have been made without setting the goal in the first place, is substantial.