The United Nations-led summit on the Millennium Development Goals this September could be “a real turning point” in the fight against poverty, Helen Clark says.
The administrator of the U.N. Development Program says her agency has been putting together 30 “specially-commissioned national MDG reports” of what factors help advance the MDGs in the run-up to September’s summit.
UNDP will use these and other recent MDG reports to produce an international assessment of what it would take to achieve the MDGs.
“The MDGs can be achieved – but that to do so against the background of the multiple crises our world has been experiencing will require a stepped-up effort and clear prioritisation around what, on the evidence to date, is most likely to work,” Clark said Aug. 24 before the School of Population Health, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Supporting country-led development and effective governance will contribute to the realization of the eight internationally agreed development goals, Clark said. Inclusive economic growth and more opportunities for women and girls, as well as investments in social safety nets and energy will also help to advance the MDGs, the UNDP chief added.
Clark said the MDGs “are everyone’s business,” not just the developing world’s.
“Now in the interconnected world in which we live, we are all neighbours. What happens far away to others can impact on us. In this broader sense, if our neighbours are poor and struggling, our prospects are affected too,” Clark said, citing impacts of natural disasters and global recession that are felt all over the world.
