UN Millennium Development Goals

My Semester at Sea voyage in May and June of 2012 was based on the U.N. Millennium Development Goals (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/), which are 8 goals the UN came up with in 2000 in a joint effort from affluent countries to help developing countries in a sort of aid and trade environment. These general goals were to be accomplished in 15 years (so by 2015), and each one had specific targets to achieve in the process.

Each bracelet represents a specific goal. It is a TRADE NOT AID product, which means that each one was handmade by female crafters of fair trade producers in South Africa (www.shaketheworld.org)

 Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s)

1.        Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger (yellow)

a.       Target A: Cut in half the number of people whose income is less than $1 a day

b.      Target B: Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people

c.       Target C: Halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger

2.       Achieve universal primary education (light green)

a.       Target A: Children have full course of primary education (Primary education is not the same as elementary education, which I originally thought: primary education means K-3 grade)

3.       Promote gender equality and empower women (orange)

a.       Target A: eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education

4.      Reduce child mortality (light blue)

a.       Target A: reduce by 2/3 the mortality rate of children under five

5.       Improve maternal health (pink)

a.       Target A: reduce ¾ the maternal mortality rates (which is much higher in poor countries and poor people regardless of country)

b.      Target B: Achieve universal access to reproductive health (in 1800 the population was 1 billion. Now it is 8 billion. The ideas is that to lessen the strain on our resources we need to reduce the growth of the population)

6.      Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases (red)

a.       Target A: Halve and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS

b.      Target B: Achieve universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for those who need it

c.       Target C: Halve and begun to reverse incidence of malaria and other diseases (we’ve eradicated malaria mosquitoes from Panama and Washington DC, which used to be infested. We know how it’s done, but we lack the resources to do it)

7.       Ensure environmental sustainability (dark green)

a.       Target A: integrate the principles of sustainable development into the country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources

b.      Target B: reduce biodiversity loss

c.       Target C: halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation practices

d.      Target D: Significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers

8.      Develop a global partnership for development (dark blue)

a.       Target A: develop open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system

b.      Target B: address the special needs of the least-developed countries (aid and trade)

c.       Target C: address the special needs of landlocked developing countries and small island developing states

d.      Target D: deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries by making debt sustainable in the long term

e.       Target E: provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries (the leading cause of death is currently diarrheal illnesses, which we can often fix with a single pill, sometimes two)

f.        Target F: make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications

Of course, this isn’t super extensive, and if anything is interesting to you, let me know and I’ll tell you more! I think these are great goals, whether we reach them by 2015 or not, and I think that the more people who are involved, the better. If one person has the power to change the world, what kind of power do we have as a global society?