The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) set by the United Nations (UN)
has effectively reduced a significant number of people who face poverty, such that there is a drop in the number of people living in Asia on less than US$1.25 a day from 1.5 billion in 1990 to 947 million in 2005. MDG was established in 2000 to meet goals such as halving the cohort of people living in abject poverty, reducing two-thirds of the child mortality rates and increasing the accessibility of Internet facilities.=MDG represents a compact between all the world’s major economic players where poorer nations seeks to improve policies and governance while affluent nations would provide the resources.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDG)
On the contrary, the number of people who are confronted with issues of poverty and hunger as the Asian region houses two-third of the world’s poor and hungry, seeing 1 in 6 people being malnourished and Asia did not perform well in the reduction of child mortality and improving maternal health. The failure of reducing hunger, reducing poverty and alleviating poverty conditions among women led to a worrying trend and drew the concern and attention of world leaders. With these problems in light, many have cast doubts over achieving the targets set by MDG in 2015.
Access to education among children has been identified as the crucial factor in allowing the people to break out of the circle of poverty. The broader objective of MDG is to enable all children to be able to attend primary schooling and eliminate the presence of gender inequality in all levels of education. It is estimated that there are 69 million children who are out of school around the world. Children in the African continent are the worst hit and it is estimated that around US$4.6 billion would be lost annually from education budgets in the sub-Saharan Africa region due to the footprints of the global financial crisis. This is of grave concern as accessibility to good quality education is the key to other positive impacts such as improved health and social welfare, economic growth and development. With this, the World Bank has pledged another US$750 million in grants over the next five years to countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia which are lagging behind the education goal. European leaders have also offered €1 billion at the MDG summit in New York to offer more help to allow the developing nations to alleviate poverty conditions. However, with the developed nations facing problems of deficit in their economies, there is an urgent need to source for alternative sources of financing to improve education and poverty in the developing world. It has been estimated that around US$120 billion has to be pooled over the next five years so as to achieve the goals of MDG.
References:
- The Straits Times (September 22, 2010). ‘Less poverty in Asia but millions still starve’.
- http://www.un.org/en/mdg/summit2010/
- http://www.endpoverty2015.org/en/goals
