If not the Millennium Development Goals, then what?
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If not the Millennium Development Goals, then what?
This article was written by Jan Vandemoortele, former researcher at UNICEF and UNDP and was published in Third World Quarterly (2011.32-1)
Even if the MDGs are achieved, the world will still face unacceptably high levels of hunger, morbidity, mortality and illiteracy beyond 2015. Global targets can be drivers of change. The debate about the post-2015 framework should not be about the usefulness of global targets but about their improved architecture and enhanced relevance. After reviewing the good, the bad and the ugly that have happened since the MDGs were created, this article discusses several challenges and pitfalls in the process of defining the post-2015 framework, including the need to formulate the MDGs more clearly as global targets, to maintain their measurability, to focus on ends, to embed equality of opportunity, to include interim targets, and to conduct global summitry differently so as to make it better fit for purpose. A Peer & Partner Group is proposed as the global custodian of the MDGs in order to reduce undue donorship.
Conceptual clarification
Jan Vandermoortele starts by clarifying what is meant by “Millennium development Goals”. It is first represents a political action, feasible at the global level. The MDGs are meant to be a suggestive list of targets and aims not definitive ones and do not furnish the ways to attain it. Despite their success, Vandemoortele argues that the MDGs can be significatively improved beyond 2015.
Criticism of the Millenium Development Goals
There have been many reserves towards the MDGs, caveats that need to be addressed by frameworks beyond 2015:
- One of the most recurring is the collective targets that have been used to assess the national performances of countries. The MDGs were tailored to measure global targets not national ones, but that seems to be inevitable. Progress at national levels have been assimilated to failures when related to the MDGs targets. These misperceptions should be addressed by any future framework after 2015.
- Adding more targets to the already existing ones is not a way to make them perfect. Conciseness was one of the main strength of the MDGs and need to be kept.It is possible to add non-quantifiable aspects to the MDGs without diminishing their measurability. But, quantitative datas and statistics are importants and all new indicators must satisfy the following three conditions:
- clarity of concept;
- solidity of indicator(s);and
- robustness of data. Several of the current MDGs fail that test—for example, poverty is ill-defined; decent work has no solid indicator; and maternal mortality has no robust data. The call for adding more non-quantitative dimensions, such as access to justice, good governance or the quality of education, is ill-advised. “Subjective truth”must be avoided according to the author.
- Targets should focus on the outcomes, not on the means to attain them if a post-2015 framework shall pass through international consensus.
Millenium Development Goals and national inequities
- Vandemoortele argues that it is imperative to avoid the tyranny of averages. National averages hide the pattern of inequalities and inclusiveness inside countries and their rate of progress. MDGs were made for people, not countries. A methodology for adjusting national statistics for equity of opportunity – in terms of basic health and education – has been proposed.31 The spirit of the MDGs is not only to generate sufficient progress but also to ensure equitable conditions for self-realisation, in line with the human rights principle of nondiscrimination. An equitable and inclusive pattern of progress is preferable from the perspective of both human rights and economic efficiency.
- Long-terms targets do not go with accountability of politics. Leaders signed the global sets but were never held accountable for not attaining them. Interim targets at five-year intervals (when leaders gather to review the MDGs) is one of the way to escape from collective responsibility. Choosing a global custodian for the future framework who would be facilitators and moderators at world summit and with the capacity to challenge world leaders at these events and force them to make tough decisions is another way to guarantee the credibility of the global targets.
See also
References
Jan Vandemoortele (2011): If not the Millennium Development Goals, then what?, Third World Quarterly, 32:1, 9-25
