Call to Action on the Millennium Development Goals

25 September 2008
On 25 September the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, will host an historic event in New York. For the first time, the world will come together to accelerate progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The event, which will be attended by over 90 heads of state plus business, faith and charity leaders and celebrities, will be part of a week of action at the UN.
What has happened since 2000?

At the start of the new millennium, world leaders gathered at the UN to make a promise: that we would do everything within our power to halve extreme poverty by 2015. And halfway to the 2015 MDG deadline, vital progress has been made. There are now 41 million more children in school, 3 million more children are surviving childhood each year, and 2 million more people are receiving treatment for AIDS.

But more needs to be done:

    * 75 million children are still not in school.
    * Half of the developing world lack basic sanitation.
    * Over half a million women still die each year from treatable and preventable complications of pregnancy and childbirth.
    * Over 33 million people are living with HIV.
    * More than one million people die of Malaria every year, including one child every 30 seconds.
    * 980 million people still live on less than $1 a day.

Without an extraordinary effort we will fail to achieve the MDGs. To inspire action and measure progress, we need to set some milestones to 2015. There needs to be an endorsement of the following milestones at the relevant meetings this year including the UN MDG meeting. These milestones are:

    * 75 million more people out of extreme poverty by 2010.
    * 25 million more children need to be in school in 2010.
    * 4 million more children's lives need to be saved.
    * 35 million more births need to be attended by trained health workers.
    * In Sub-Saharan Africa, 70 million more people need access to improved water.
    * 85 million more people given access to basic sanitation in sub-Saharan Africa.

 For more information go to http://www.dfid.gov.uk/mdg/call-to-action.asp