A LOOK AT THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS

PROGRESS, PITFALLS AND PROSPECTS.

COVER STORY: MILLENNIUM DEVE LOPMENT GOALS

The MDG Promise: Sweeping Neoliberal Dirt Under The Rug

With five years left before 2015, world leaders are meeting in New York this September to take stock of the progress and gaps in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. But, however laudable, the MDG effort is poised for failure—above all, for skirting the structural issues at the root of global poverty.

In September 2000, leaders of 189 countries that were assembled for the United Nations (UN) Millennium Summit in New York signed on to the Millennium Declaration. In it, member-states reaffirm their commitment to realizing the goals agreed upon in various UN summits and conferences over the 1990s. Commitments were made in the areas of the environment, human rights, peace, and strengthening the UN. The best-known commitments, though, are those for development and poverty reduction, which contained goals explicitly setting 2015 as the deadline year.

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