US unveils new effort to meet the Millennium Development Goals

One of the big stories that happened during our vacation involved US efforts on the Millennium Development Goals. US Aid unveiled the Obama Administration strategy to meet the goals by 2015. The US says it is going to concentrate on four strategies to meet the MDGs including leveraging innovation, investing in sustainability, tracking development outcomes, and enhancing the principle and practice of mutual accountability.

The full report from the US government can be downloaded from here, you can also download US Aid director Rajiv Shah statement on the report from here.

The Brookings Institution has already analyzed the report and posted a reaction. David Gartner works as a Co-director for Global Education efforts at the institution and says that the US should not forget education in its strategy.

President Obama is releasing a plan for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 in advance of the largest gathering of world leaders in at least a decade at the United Nations. While the Administration’s outline includes useful ideas on tracking development outcomes and increasing transparency and accountability, it also represents a missed opportunity to deliver on Obama’s commitment to invest $2 billion in a Global Fund for Education to achieve universal primary education. For most of the MDGs, particularly those that are most off-track, success will be nearly impossible without the achievement of universal primary education, MDG 2. With 72 million children still not in primary school, achieving universal education would offer extraordinary leverage in the broader fight against global poverty.

While there is some progress in poverty reduction for MDG 1: “Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger,” there is much less progress on the commitment to halve the number of people suffering from hunger by 2015. Child malnutrition is a key dimension of world hunger and 137 million children under the age of 5 are still underweight globally. Educating women is an important tool for reducing child hunger, according to a cross-country analysis of 63 countries. The study found that educational gains in women’s education accounted for 43 percent of all progress in reducing child malnutrition.

MDG 3: “Eliminate gender disparity,” commits to closing the gender gap in all education levels and increasing female representation in the wage employment and national parliaments. The latest data indicate that 28 countries still have fewer than 9 girls in school for every 10 boys. Nearly two-thirds of these countries are located in sub-Saharan Africa, where there are fewer than 8 girls for every 10 boys enrolled in secondary school. A focus on educating girls, especially in Africa, is not only essential to achieving universal education, but it is also vital to achieving the nutrition and health MDGs.

The goal that is most off-track is MDG 4: “Reduce child mortality,” the commitment to cutting child mortality by two-thirds between 1990 and 2010. A recent study published in the Lancet finds that despite progress in the last 20 years in all regions, child mortality will still need to be reduced by another 3.7 million over the next five years in order to meet that goal. Half of all child deaths now occur in Sub-Saharan Africa with rates as high as 180 deaths per 100,000 children in Equatorial Guinea; compare that to just 2.5 deaths per 100,000 children in Singapore.