With the 2015 deadline to fulfill the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) rapidly approaching, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s re-election bid on the horizon, expect MDGs-related rhetoric from the world’s top diplomat to start spinning an overly positive picture of past progress and optimism for the coming five years.
In the early years following 2000, when the largest gathering of world leaders in history produced the UN Millennium Declaration -- mapping out a path to reduce extreme poverty and seven of its contributing dimensions -- the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) soared as the world organization’s (and the world’s, for that matter) flagship development program.
But 10 years on, despite headway on some of the eight fronts, the MDGs are flagging. As many critics noted in 2000, 15 years was a wildly unrealistic timeframe in which to fix the direst of global problems. Granted, the Goals represent a level of unparalleled benevolence on the part of the international community. But that benevolence, spawned in the midst of turn-of-the-millennium euphoria, had one fundamental flaw: it was unrealistic. In particular, the Declaration’s impossible deadline and Quixotic hope that a “global partnership” for development could be assembled within this deadline, combined to eviscerate the Goals’ chances of assuaging the plight of hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest on the scale envisioned. Thus, for many pragmatic observers it was never a question of “if” the MDGs would be reached by 2015, but rather “by how far” they would fall short.
Ten Years Down, Five to Go
At the 2010 MDG Summit in New York, only five years shy of the impending 2015 deadline, world leaders convened to “review progress [and] assess obstacles and gaps” of the eight Goals, eventually producing an “accelerated” plan forward.
The plan is accelerated because recent MDGs statistics have indicated just how short most of the, look to fall of their projections. For example, Goal four -- reducing the under-five mortality rate by two-thirds from 1990 levels of 10 percent -- is only about one-third of the way to its target. Likewise, Goal five -- reducing the maternal mortality ratio by three-quarters from 1990 levels -- is highly unlikely to succeed due to the lagging progress of one of its indicators: proportion of births attended by skilled medical personnel, which has only increased from 64 percent in 1990 to 80 percent in 2008. Five years simply is not enough to bridge these gaps.
Rallying a World of Development Actors
Perhaps most worrisome of the lagging Goals is number eight, which strives to create a global partnership for development. It is in many ways the lynchpin of the MDGs concept, attempting to coordinate myriad global development actors. On this front, Mr. Ban emphatically wrote in February of 2010 that, “In the countdown to 2015, amidst a global economic crisis, the need to accelerate delivery on...Goal eight commitments has now reached emergency proportions, rather than simply being a matter of urgency.”
One of the main reasons for such “emergency” action is a shortage of financing. The UN requests that rich countries allot .7 percent of their GDP to Official Development Assistance (ODA), but the average of late is only around .5 percent. At $120 billion in 2009, the UN is requesting an additional $35 billion in ODA each year through 2015 to close the financing gap.
This begs the question: is it fair to pressure the rich world—which is funded by taxpayers, many of whom struggle to make ends meet themselves—for billions of extra dollars to support the virtually unattainable project of partnering a boondoggle of global development actors within five years? Conversely, is it fair for the rich world to shortchange the poorest on the planet?
Election Season: Enter the Spin Doctors
Damage control is a hallmark of aspiring incumbents entering reelection season. No matter how well their policies have shaped up, someone in the electorate is certain to be displeased. And it is the job of the damage controllers to appease that part of the electorate through carefully worded speeches and appeals.
Already Mr. Ban has softened the frantic tone exhibited in his February 2010 address, taking a much more optimistic view of the MDGs. He began his closing remarks at the 2010 MDG Summit with “Congratulations...The Summit has laid a solid foundation for the progress we need in our quest to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by the internationally agreed deadline of 2015.” Hardly a realistic statement given recent MDGs data.
Statements like the latter will become more and more common in coming months, as Mr. Ban prepares his bid for reelection. In a practical sense, pitching the past progress and future hopes of accomplishing the MDGs in an overly positive way are simply shrewd calculations of an aspiring politician. But with billions of dollars at stake, let us not forget that many of the Goals are unattainable by 2015, a reality that was built into the MDGs’ DNA when framers drafted an impossibly tight deadline coupled with the Herculean task of coordinating the world’s disparate, myriad development actors, all for the broader purpose of tackling some of humanity’s most intractable problems.
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Spinning Millennium Development Goals in UN Election Season
February 19, 2011
With the 2015 deadline to fulfill the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) rapidly approaching, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s re-election bid on the horizon, expect MDGs-related rhetoric from the world’s top diplomat to start spinning an overly positive picture of past progress and optimism for the coming five years.
In the early years following 2000, when the largest gathering of world leaders in history produced the UN Millennium Declaration -- mapping out a path to reduce extreme poverty and seven of its contributing dimensions -- the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) soared as the world organization’s (and the world’s, for that matter) flagship development program.
But 10 years on, despite headway on some of the eight fronts, the MDGs are flagging. As many critics noted in 2000, 15 years was a wildly unrealistic timeframe in which to fix the direst of global problems. Granted, the Goals represent a level of unparalleled benevolence on the part of the international community. But that benevolence, spawned in the midst of turn-of-the-millennium euphoria, had one fundamental flaw: it was unrealistic. In particular, the Declaration’s impossible deadline and Quixotic hope that a “global partnership” for development could be assembled within this deadline, combined to eviscerate the Goals’ chances of assuaging the plight of hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest on the scale envisioned. Thus, for many pragmatic observers it was never a question of “if” the MDGs would be reached by 2015, but rather “by how far” they would fall short.
Ten Years Down, Five to Go
At the 2010 MDG Summit in New York, only five years shy of the impending 2015 deadline, world leaders convened to “review progress [and] assess obstacles and gaps” of the eight Goals, eventually producing an “accelerated” plan forward.
The plan is accelerated because recent MDGs statistics have indicated just how short most of the, look to fall of their projections. For example, Goal four -- reducing the under-five mortality rate by two-thirds from 1990 levels of 10 percent -- is only about one-third of the way to its target. Likewise, Goal five -- reducing the maternal mortality ratio by three-quarters from 1990 levels -- is highly unlikely to succeed due to the lagging progress of one of its indicators: proportion of births attended by skilled medical personnel, which has only increased from 64 percent in 1990 to 80 percent in 2008. Five years simply is not enough to bridge these gaps.
Rallying a World of Development Actors
Perhaps most worrisome of the lagging Goals is number eight, which strives to create a global partnership for development. It is in many ways the lynchpin of the MDGs concept, attempting to coordinate myriad global development actors. On this front, Mr. Ban emphatically wrote in February of 2010 that, “In the countdown to 2015, amidst a global economic crisis, the need to accelerate delivery on...Goal eight commitments has now reached emergency proportions, rather than simply being a matter of urgency.”
One of the main reasons for such “emergency” action is a shortage of financing. The UN requests that rich countries allot .7 percent of their GDP to Official Development Assistance (ODA), but the average of late is only around .5 percent. At $120 billion in 2009, the UN is requesting an additional $35 billion in ODA each year through 2015 to close the financing gap.
This begs the question: is it fair to pressure the rich world—which is funded by taxpayers, many of whom struggle to make ends meet themselves—for billions of extra dollars to support the virtually unattainable project of partnering a boondoggle of global development actors within five years? Conversely, is it fair for the rich world to shortchange the poorest on the planet?
Election Season: Enter the Spin Doctors
Damage control is a hallmark of aspiring incumbents entering reelection season. No matter how well their policies have shaped up, someone in the electorate is certain to be displeased. And it is the job of the damage controllers to appease that part of the electorate through carefully worded speeches and appeals.
Already Mr. Ban has softened the frantic tone exhibited in his February 2010 address, taking a much more optimistic view of the MDGs. He began his closing remarks at the 2010 MDG Summit with “Congratulations...The Summit has laid a solid foundation for the progress we need in our quest to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by the internationally agreed deadline of 2015.” Hardly a realistic statement given recent MDGs data.
Statements like the latter will become more and more common in coming months, as Mr. Ban prepares his bid for reelection. In a practical sense, pitching the past progress and future hopes of accomplishing the MDGs in an overly positive way are simply shrewd calculations of an aspiring politician. But with billions of dollars at stake, let us not forget that many of the Goals are unattainable by 2015, a reality that was built into the MDGs’ DNA when framers drafted an impossibly tight deadline coupled with the Herculean task of coordinating the world’s disparate, myriad development actors, all for the broader purpose of tackling some of humanity’s most intractable problems.
