Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
1.5 THE MILLENNIUM
DEVELOPMENT
GOALS
TARGETING DEVELOPMENT
The Origins and Nature of the
Millennium Development Goals
In Chapter 1.2 it was noted that what are referred to as the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) can be regarded as representing a hands-
on approach to monitoring global and regional development targets
that have been promoted since 2000. The goals aim to map out what
needs to be done in order to work towards a more equal world at the
beginning of the twenty-first century. Thus, reflecting the enormous
magnitude of the inequalities that characterize the contemporary
world, the intention to do something about it exists in the form of an
agreed international set of development targets - the Millennium
Development Goals - to which the 192 United Nations member states
and approximately 23 international organizations committed their sup-
port at the start of the Millennium.
In fact, the MDGs were formally adopted at the General Assembly of
the United Nations held in New York on 18 September 2000, a meeting
that was referred to as the United Nations Millennium Summit (Rigg,
2008). But the targets had first been enumerated by the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in a document enti-
tled
Shaping the Twenty-First Century
(OECD, 1996), and were strongly
supported in the United Kingdom by the Department for International
Development (DFID) as the International Development Targets (see, for
example, the United Kingdom White Paper, DFID, 2000b).
