MDGs’ uneven success: Key gaps left unfilled

When the final report on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was released recently, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the campaign as the “most successful anti-poverty movement in history,” because one billion people had been lifted out of poverty.

The ultimate agenda of the MDGs, adopted in 2000, was to “tackle the indignity of poverty” across the globe by 2015.

But while worldwide there were remarkable gains made on the eight goals, progress has been uneven across regions and countries, leaving significant gaps.

“Millions of people are being left behind, especially the poorest and those disadvantaged because of their sex, age, disability, ethnicity or geographical location,” notes the UN report.

In particular, sub-Saharan Africa lags behind the other developing regions on most targets.

Sipho Moyo, Africa executive director for ONE (an international campaigning and advocacy organisation), says the major reason for the region’s slow progress is the escalation of wars and conflicts, which disable human activities and divert funds that should have been invested.

“The UN must find concrete solutions to these conflicts for anti-poverty goals to be achieved,” said Dr Moyo. “It must bolster key-player nations that facilitate peace and reconciliation.”

On the first target of reducing by half the proportion of people living in extreme poverty (defined as the number of people living on less than $1.25 per day), for example, the UN reports that it was achieved globally five years ago, but in the region, more than 40 per cent of the population still lives in extreme poverty.

Notably, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia had comparable rates (57 per cent and 51 per cent respectively) in 1990, but by this year, the latter’s had fallen to 17 per cent compared with the former’s 41 per cent.

However, sub-Saharan Africa has made the greatest progress in primary school enrolment among all developing regions.

“Its enrolment rate grew from 52 per cent in 1990 to 78 per cent in 2012. That is, from 62 million children to 149 million,” the report notes.

The developing regions have also achieved the target on eliminating gender disparity at all levels of education, with a parity index of 0.98 in primary and secondary education and 1.01 in tertiary education. The accepted measure of gender parity is between 0.97 and 1.03.

“However, significant differences remain across regions and countries, as disparities favouring either sex can cancel each other out when aggregated,” says the report.

With regard to wage employment, the proportion of women earning an income outside the agricultural sector has increased from 35 per cent in 1990 to 41 per cent currently, but gender gaps persist.

“Despite notable gains by women, significant gaps remain between women and men in the labour market. Women are still less likely to participate in the labour force than men,” says the report.

Barriers to women’s employment include household responsibilities and cultural constraints.

On the child mortality rate, though it is highest in sub-Saharan Africa, the absolute decline has been the largest over the past two decades, falling from 179 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 86 in 2015. The region, therefore, still faces an urgent need to accelerate progress.

Around the world, every minute 11 children die before celebrating their fifth birthday, mostly from preventable causes. Sub-Saharan Africa carries about half of the burden of the world’s under-five deaths—3 million in 2015 —and is also the only region where both the number of live births and the under-five population are expected to rise substantially over the next decades.

“Reducing under-five mortality requires political will, sound strategies and adequate resources,” says the report.

On the healthcare targets, Amit Thakker, chief executive of Kenya Healthcare Federation says that in order to accelerate progress, there is a need to switch from disease cure to preventive measures. 

“This will require intensified support to countries lagging behind and sustained effort in countries where progress is happening,” said Dr Thakker.

Maternal survival on the other hand has improved significantly since the adoption of the MDGs, dropping by 45 per cent worldwide between 1990 and 2013, from 380 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births to 210. Despite this progress, every day hundreds of women die during pregnancy or from childbirth-related complications.

Maternal deaths are concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, which together accounted for 86 per cent of such deaths globally in 2013.   

Water on the other hand remains scarce, affecting 40 per cent of people in the world, and this scarcity is projected to worsen.

Global greenhouse gas emissions have been rising too, and the resulting likely impacts of climate change such as altered ecosystems, weather extremes and risks to society, remains an urgent, matter for the global community, according to the report.
Poor people’s livelihoods are more directly tied to natural resources, and as they often live in the most vulnerable areas, they suffer the most from environmental degradation.

As the globe prepares for the post-2015 development agenda, strengthening data production for use in policy making and monitoring are becoming increasingly recognised as fundamental means to development.

The MDG monitoring experience has shown that the effective use of data can help to galvanise development efforts, implement successful targeted interventions, track performance and improve accountability.

“Thus, sustainable development demands a data revolution to improve the availability, quality, timeliness and disaggregation of data to support the implementation of the new development agenda at all levels,” says the UN report.