Millennium Development Goals Assignment Paper

The Millennium Development Goals were created to provide developing countries support through the partnership of developed countries. One of these goals was to “eradicate extreme poverty and hunger” in the world. How successful do you feel these goals have been in achieving their mission

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The pledge to eliminate poverty

The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) represent a global consensus to address humanitarian issues within set time frames. The first MDG is the intention to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger in the world. A 2015 target was set to halve the proportion of people living on less than 1 US$ every day, and those suffering from hunger. This goal was set with the awareness that poverty affects more than 30% of all children (approximately 600 million in number) who live on less that 1 US$ everyday with one person dying every 3.6 seconds as a result of starvation. Given this awareness, the MDG under the supervision of the UNICEF responded with five action plan. The first plan was to get girls to school since approximately 32% of girls in rural areas of Asia and Africa have never attended school. This was considered a concern since education offers them an opportunity to be more productive and earn a living. The second plan was to support good nutrition to ensure that they remained in good health. The third plan was to improve water and sanitation since approximately 30% of all children do not have access to sanitation facilities while 20% of children do not have access to safe drinking water (UNICEF, 2019). The fourth plan was to create a plan that protected children, especially in unstable regions that experienced ill governance and inequalities. The final goal was to support policies for children’s wellbeing.

While the goal and five action plans are commendable, it is worrying that little progress has been made with the target for 2015 not achieved. To be more precise, China and India are the only recorded countries closes to achieving this target, although national disparities are still reported in these countries where 142 million are acutely/chronically malnourished in China while 221 million are acutely/chronically malnourished in India. Regional statistics show that 60% of Pacific and Asia residents are malnourished. 30% of infants are born underweight. Sub-Saharan Africa reports 204 million being hungry with 40% of the African population underfed (UNICEF, 2019). The implication is that although some effort has been made toward achieving the MDG goal of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, there is need for greater commitment from all stakeholders.

References

UNICEF (2019). Millennium Development Goals: eradicate extreme hunger. Retrieved from https://www.unicef.org/mdg/poverty.html . Millennium Development Goals Assignment Paper