The Post-2015 Development Agenda. The Millennium Development Goals in Perspective
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The Post-2015 Development Agenda. The Millennium Development Goals in Perspective
Official paper by the Dutch Advisory Council on International Affairs. The Advisory Council on International Affairs was asked by the federal Dutch government to give hindsight about the results of the Millennium Development Goals and the perspectives beyond 2015.
- Has the Millennium Declaration proved sufficiently successful in addressing the problems that hinder or block development?
- Has the Millennium Declaration contributed to the focus on poverty?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of the way in which the targets have been formulated? With respect to the disadvantages, is it possible to examine issues that may have been neglected in the past ten years?
- To what extent has the concept of the MDGs influenced donor policy in terms of decisions on the allocation of resources and choices of themes and sectors? To what extent have developing countries been able to influence decision-making by donors? To what extent have the Millennium Declaration and the MDGs been a common enterprise of the states that signed the Declaration?
- The goals are formulated in general terms. Has that been an obstacle to country-specific action? Has it affected developing countries’ ownership of their own development?
- Has the concept of the Millennium Development Goals contributed to greater policy coherence for development and coordination of aid? If so, how significant was the contribution?
- How did the concept of the Millennium Development Goals influence the evolution and implementation of the development agenda in donor and partner countries?
- To what extent has the Millennium Declaration proved to be a catalyst in increasing donor countries’ financial commitment towards the 0.7% norm)?
- What ideas are currently shaping international thought about development and development processes? Does the AIV believe that they could serve as a starting point for a new global development agenda? (If so, why; if not, why not?) Or does the AIV believe that the current approach (possibly with some adjustments)should be continued?
- Could issues that are linked to interdependence, such as the distribution of and access to global public goods, form the basis for development goals after 2015?If so, what role will development cooperation play?
Recommendations
A number of practical recommendations – some of which have already been mentioned above and others that can be seen as anticipating part B of this report – for the Netherlands’ input in the process of designing a post-2015 system. 1. Focus on the process approach to achieving a new post-2015 system.
2. Do not set new target dates (no new ‘2015’), but measure progress every five to ten years. Review the strategy in a ‘rolling’ process on the basis of the results. Set sustainable targets.
3. There is no need to retain the ‘M’ for Millennium. This is no longer relevant after 2015. Where possible, use the terminology of the G20 and the Seoul Declaration to facilitate international consensus.
4. Refer to actions, strategies and indicators, rather than goals.
5. Limit the current eight goals to a maximum of four or five clusters of goals, for example by grouping health goals together; maintain the indicators and benchmarks agreed so far.
6. Add a maximum of two or three goals or goal clusters, such as peace and (social)security or effective governance, to do justice to themes that are widely considered to be missing from the current system, especially the objective capabilities approach and global public goods, and establish a link between the MDGs and the latter.
7. Embed human rights and gender issues by:
i) incorporating them throughout as cross-cutting issues by, for example, measuring results according to gender, ethnicity,rural-urban, regional, ‘bottom-top quintiles’ (principle of non-discrimination) and so on;
ii) by including references in the post-2015 system to key globally endorsed conventions on human rights and agreements such as Cairo and Beijing;
iii) by establishing that all programmes of action must comply with the principles of participation, non-discrimination and accountability.
8. Make sure that donors organise themselves around a new system based on the efficiency principles of the Paris Agenda (division of tasks and fewer national priorities) and, if possible, establish a clear link with MDG themes.
9. In each new goal, describe action to be taken by donor countries, recipient countries and other actors, and specify the roles and responsibilities of the various actors (governments, parliaments, the private sector, trade unions and NGOs).
10. Include a number of indicators of demographic development to support the regular analysis and monitoring of the progress made with development processes, but do not express demographic developments as a goal. Preserve goals and indicators relating to the use of contraceptives, and devote attention to ageing.
11. Ongoing globalisation, recent global developments and the financial-economic crisis of 2008 and 2009 call for a post-2015 system that will introduce improvements to the current international trade and financial systems.
See also
References
The Post-2015 Development Agenda. The Millennium Development Goals in Perspective. Advisory Council on International Affairs.No. 74, April 2011. Netherlands: The Hague.
