The Millennium
Development Goals are the first global development vision combining
global political endorsement with a clear focus on, and means to
engage directly with, the world's poor people. They are an
indivisible package of measurable goals and targets to be achieved
by 2015. They were adopted at the Millennium Summit in
September 2000, and expressed in the United
Nations Millennium Declaration.
These goals, and the commitments of countries to
achieve them, were affirmed in the Monterrey
Consensus that emerged from the March 2002 United Nation Financing
for Development Conference, the September 2002 World Summit on
sustainable Development and the Launch of the Doha Round on
International Trade. This commitment forms the basis for the Millenium
Development Compact that calls all stakeholders to orient the
efforts towards ensuring the success of the goals, in a system of
shared responsibilities. The Human Development
Report 2003 concentrates on assessing the main issues to attain
the goals, and offers concrete proposals of how to accelerate
progress.
In November 2003, a conference was organized in
Brazil to promote political consensus around the implementation of
the MDGs in Latin America and the Caribbean, resulting in the Brasilia
Declaration signed by heads of state, parliamentarians, senior
officials and representatives from civil society, and the private
sector.
In the January 2004 in Geneva, at a High-Level Forum for
Health MDGs, issues as the importance of accelerating progress,
defining clear procedures to mobilize resources, develop policy and
institutional change, and connect them to debt and trade were
highlighted.
The MDGs have brought the investment in people's
health to the very center of the global development agenda. This
opens new opportunities for the health sector and health
organizations to gain wide support for the health agenda.
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PAHO is a key contributor
to the effort towards the attainment of the MDGs by the countries of
the Americas. PAHO's
vision on the MDGs was delineated in the paper presented at the
38th Session of the Subcommittee on Planning and Programming.
The Director has established a Working
Group on the MDGs to develop an institutional policy and
operational strategy for the Organization's work related and
contributing to the Millennium Development Compact and the
MDGs.
PAHO sees the MDG strategy as the opportunity to
jointly address the unfinished health agenda, protect its
achievements, and confront new challenges. The MDGs have a strong
technical component and fit into the work already being done by PAHO
but their key intention is to create a sense of urgency, political
commitment and accountability - ACTION beyond the program level, so
that they do not turn into a bureaucratic process.
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