Working to Achieve
the Millennium Development Goals
in the Lao PDR

Background

Since 1990, the United Nations have sponsored a series of world summits and global conferences with a view to laying out a comprehensive rights-based development agenda, including quantitative goals, time-bound targets and numerical indicators.

The consensus is that goals and targets mobilise national and international partners into action and help forge new alliances for development. They also provide a means for benchmarking and assessing progress in development. Policy reforms, institutional change and budget reallocations often result from discussions centred on time-bound targets. Yet, less than one-third of developing countries have set specific and quantifiable national targets for reducing poverty.

In September 2000, 147 heads of State and Government, and 191 nations in total, adopted the Millennium Declaration. The Declaration outlines peace, security and development concerns, including in the areas of environment, human rights, and governance. The Declaration mainstreams a set of inter-connected and mutually reinforcing development goals into a global agenda. The International Development Goals (IDGs) and the development goals contained in the Millennium Declaration are similar but also, in some respects, different, as the Millennium Declaration appears more ambitious that the IDGs. The Declaration also contains a number of goals beyond those linked to poverty, e.g. peace and security, environmental protection, human rights, democracy and good governance. Recently, the sets have been merged under the designation of "Millennium Development Goals" (MDGs).

The common list of MDGs prepared collaboratively by the UN, WB, IMF and OECD does not undercut in any way agreements on other goals and targets reached at the world summits and global conferences during the 1990s. The MDGs, which incorporate the IDGs, synthesize the goals and targets for monitoring human development. They centre on eight major goals:

1. Eradicate poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development

Numerical targets have been set for each goal. Most goals are to be achieved over a 25-year period - between 1990-2015. Appropriate indicators have been selected to monitor progress on each of the targets. The MDGs incorporate most of the goals and targets set at the global conferences and world summits of the 1990s, as well as the goals contained in the Millennium Declaration. The MDGs should be considered as indicative for country-level monitoring, not as a rigid directive. There are other goals and targets such as those on environment set at the UNCED or on reproductive health set at the ICPD that can also be used for monitoring human development.

MDG monitoring will take place at the global and country levels. At the global level, the UN Secretary-General will report annually to the General Assembly on progress towards a sub-set of the MDGs and to report more comprehensively every five years. These reports will support a dynamic campaign to help keep poverty issues front and centre of the national and global development agenda. At the country level, MDG reports (MDGRs) will help to engage the Government, civil society, communities, general public and the media in a systematic and identifiable follow-up to the global conferences and world summits of the 1990s. Furthermore, assistance for periodic reporting on progress towards the MDGs at the country level will be an important contribution of the UN System to the implementation of the Millennium Declaration, at a time when the world is expecting renewed vigour of the organization.

The CCA, PRSP and National Human Development Report processes will contribute to the preparation of MDGR. For example, both the CCA and MDGR focus on similar national and global goals, targets and indicators, and both aim to support the development of sustainable statistical systems and capacities to analyze and use data for policy-making and programming. Reporting on the UNDAF implementation will be closely linked with monitoring the progress achieved in reaching the MDGs. Thus, the present UNDAF outlines the UN System support to the Lao PDR for achieving its national development goals in integrity with the global MDGs and goals of the Millennium Declaration.

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