Millennium Development Goals: Concrete targets needed.

(From Business Line)

The Millennium Development Goals, endorsed by all members of the UN, set out a raft of time-bound and quantifiable targets ranging from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015.

EVEN as the United Nations is yet to get over the shock of having been sidelined by the world's superpower - the US - when it waged a unilateral war against Iraq much to the consternation of conscientious members, some siblings of the UN, such as the UN Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), the UN Educational Social and Cultural Organisation and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) seldom refrained from taking a swipe at the rich world, in general, and their policies that have a wider ramification on the rest of the world, in particular.

No wonder this year's Human Development Report (HDR) of the UNDP demands from the rich countries whether the time has come to subject them to scrutiny and be made to report on their progress towards meeting the goal governing their policy changes for aid, debt, trade and technology transfers, just as it is being scrutinised whether the poor countries would meet the seven Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The goals, endorsed by all members of the UN, set out a raft of time-bound and quantifiable targets ranging from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDs by 2015.

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