It is worth remembering why the MDGs came about. The donors (in an OECD/DAC high level meeting) reported their parliaments and publics kept asking what foreign aid was trying to accomplish. The US delegate recommending collecting the approved global development goals as the aim of donors. The fact that national governments had approved a bunch of global goals became the legitimacy of the MDGs. A coherent set of goals? No. But was there another set of goals offered up then or now with comparable legitimacy? No. Will the next round of goals have more coherence and a stronger rationale? Surely.

When Ban Ki-Moon came into office, I made the same point as Todd about the risk of castigating hard workers on the goals as failures when the fault was late starts in countries like Liberia. UN colleagues were shocked that I would suggest letting the Sirleafs of the world off the hook by suggesting extending their deadlines. But one of Africa’s most powerful political figures advised me, in essence, to back off. He said that we all needed to keep the pressure on even such outstanding people as President Sirleaf and that Africa’s political leaders would see to it that the good work of the Liberias in Africa on the MDGs would not be seen as a failure. Who was I to contradict?

Bob Berg
Senior Advisor
World Federation of United Nations Associations

Yes they are. Poverty reduction, Education, health, environment, gender equity are important for Africa’s development. Reading several comments some posted in June 2010 leads me to some conclusion that some people have not taken time to understand MDGs. MDGs were meant to rally all stakeholders from the various sectors into action and more importantly in a coordinated manner. Progress in education is important to both India and Mauritania. However, methods employed to achieve this in India might be different from those in Mauritania. Coomunities in each of these countries are supposed to be engage throughout the process of developing strategies for improving education or any of the eight goals (to be precise any of the relevant indicators). For example, we all want child mortality to decrease, the important question is how do we achieve it. Actions to be taken leading to reduction in child mortality should be agreed among all stakeholders including the beneficiaries

MDGs are definitely useful for Africa. The indicators may be unrealistic for most African countries considering that the start off point for individual countries are different and other issues such as post conflict restructuring and corruption take most of the focus and attention. MDGs however serve as a driving factor for African countries to improve on health, education and social reforms and also an avenue for these sectors to work in a coordinated manner thereby fostering long term stability.
The challenges with the MDGs in Africa are the strategies used in implemention and lack of accountability. Specific country contexts are not considered in developing strategies thereby making it difficult to assess progress of different countries on the same platform just as Todd pointed out. Lack of country directed programs, low level of community participation and high level of foreign dictation also contribute to these issues. Ensuring accountability among the donors and country governments can improve results. Also adjusting the goals and indicators to meet specific country baseline peculiarities will give a more objective analysis of progress.

What on earth does “implementation of the MDGs” mean? They are precisely not operational. This is part of the problem. And I may be grumpy, but I can’t possibly to believe that the solution is is either more coordination or more consultation. These are just work-around processes that don’t in any way resolve the underlying shortcomings of this approach.

MDG’s are useful if only they were given a guideline on how to implement them and what policies and laws need to be passed in each particular country to achieve them . For instance the goal on universal primary education is very important but if there are no laws within the country to compel parents to take their children to school and to compel governments to spend more on education than on military hardware and other political adventures, how can you achieve MDG’s in this situation

We at UNDP Somalia are working on an MDG comic book. Our intention is to disseminate MDG goals in very simple ways that can be understood easily by people at all levels of education and specifically those who are not literate. It will be disseminated throughout Somalia in various forums e.g. billboards, workshops etc. It is hoped that through these messages, Somalis will be galvanized into action to do what is within their means to improve their lives and to hold to account those who are to facilitate or meet the others. When their is sufficient dialogue/debate by all stakeholders on these development goals in a country, such laws as reccomended by Robbie should develop from within the country and not as somethin imposed from outside