We are at the half-way point in the great global campaign to address the unacceptable divide between rich and poor. The 2000 Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – agreed by 189 Governments from the North and South - have provided a global framework to measure the world’s progress to reduce poverty by the year 2015. It is unique for 2 reasons. First because it has specific measurable goals and second because it is about a 15 year campaign. Campaigns come and go and it is difficult to keep sustained attention over a long period of time.

The MDGs help keep attention going and growing. The High Level Event on MDGs in September, called by the UN Secretary-General is another opportunity to reinvigorate the commitments of every country. Where do we stand on the MDGs? Some progress has been made. 15 years ago one in three people lived on less than a dollar a day. We are now at one in five. More children have enrolled in primary education and child mortality has declined globally. The tuberculosis epidemic appears to be on the verge of decline and key interventions to control malaria have been expanded. But this is not enough. We have only 7 and a half years left and one billion people still live in extreme poverty. More than one billion people lack access to safe drinking water. About 2 billion people have no regular access to reliable energy services. 6,000 people die of AIDS each day. 750 million adults cannot read. And one of the most striking statistics is that the odds that a woman will die from complications in pregnancy in sub-Saharan Africa are 1 in 16 over the course of her lifetime, compared to 1 in 3,800 in the developed world. And those who carry almost zero responsibility for climate change are bearing the brunt of its effects, while the gap between the haves and the have-nots is widening.

Can Africa fulfill the Millennium Development Goals by 2015? That's a question that is often asked anytime there is a discussion about MDGs. It was on many lips during the celebration of the International Women's day on March 8. Behind the question of course is a lot of cynicism by the questioner (s). There is a generalized doubt that the MDGs, may not be met on schedule in a majority of African states. Official reports and anecdotal evidence suggest that at current pace even by 2050 the goals may still remain unmet by these states.

The situation is not helped by the fact that most of the reports available are usually aggregated. Hence the negative conclusion that Africa's progress is at best very slow and patchy. Like all generalizations and aggregated statistics they hide the specific, more positive picture of steady progress on a number of the goals in quite a few countries across Africa. It also panders to the fashionable Afro pessimism that caricatures events in Africa promoting embedded attitudes of 'Hopeless Africa'. 'Helpless people and continent' that needs the help and handout of everybody else except its own peoples and leaders.

Madhya Pradesh is far away from achieving the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, if one takes into account a mid-term evaluation report prepared by a voluntary group, Triple 7 Report. The report --- christened as `Mid-term status of Millennium Development Goals in Madhya Pradesh - A Peoples' report' makes a telling commentary as to what extent the state lags behind on eight development goals as set by the United Nations over seven years back.

The UN on September 8, 2000 made a declaration for the millennium which stated that by 2015, eight goals of development vis-a-vas removing extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, empower of women and increasing gender equality, reducing infant mortality, improving health of mothers, fighting against diseases and protection of environment and its development would be achieved.

A mid-term evaluation report on these goals in Madhya Pradesh, said that 44.77 lakh families in the state lived below poverty line, while 15.81 lakh families came in the circle of extreme poverty (quoting M P Economic Survey report 2006-07. The report quoting the National Sample Survey organization report, said that poverty in Madhya Pradesh declined from 37.43% to 21.4 per cent, which is far more than decline in poverty at national level from 26.1% to 21.8%.

As per the latest report of the union government till July 2007, works towards strengthening livelihood of 1.15 lakh families in Bihar, 2.93 lakh families in Rajasthan, 95000 families in Andhra Pradesh had been undertaken but not families in Madhya Pradesh was getting this benefit.

As per the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which provides guarantee for employment of 100 days per year to labourers, the state government as against issuing job cards to 43 lakh families, provided employment to merely 25.48 lakh families.

The UN under its second millennium development goals had envisaged to increase enrollment of children in primary schools to 100 per cent by 2015. However, going by the present status of enrollment in Madhya Pradesh, it seemed unlikely that the state will achieve its goal by the given time period. A survey undertaken in 10 districts of the state under M P Shiksha Abhiyan in 2006-07, revealed that that the net enrollment ration of children in primary schools was at 84.5%. The report also said that 32% primary schools in the state had one primary teacher, while in 33.75% primary schools, there was no female teacher at all.

The MDGs envisaged to reverse the trend of child mortality under five year by -3rd by 2015 but on this front also, the situation in Madhya Pradesh is far from satisfactory. The infant mortality in state stood at 76/1000 live births. Similarly, 2.4% of the children aged 12-24 years were not immunized against all prevalent diseases. The report also revealed a substantial drop on state government's expenditure on health which declined from 5.1% of the total budget in 2000-01 to 3.4% in 2004-05. The target to bring the infant mortality rate down to 53.14% hardly seems to be achievable. The report quoting National Family Health Survey III, said that the status of malnuitrion in Madhya Pradesh increased by 6.3%, going up to 60.3% the highest in the country. Similarly, the maternal mortality rate in the state stood at 379/1000, one of the highest in the country. As per the millennium development goals, the MMR and IMR in the state are essentially to be reduced to 220/1000 and 62/1000 respectively by 2011.

America's foreign aid programs are controversial. Polls indicate most Americans want the United States to be a generous donor of foreign aid. At the same time, these Americans greatly overestimate how much help we send overseas.
Others are concerned that our foreign aid falls far short of the global commitments made in the Millennium Development Goals. And yet others say Western foreign assistance is focused more on "giving a man a fish" than on "teaching a man to fish."

To deal, in part, with this complexity, Congress moved in 2004 to create a panel which would recommend small and large changes to the structure of U.S. And their report is now available.

As we welcome the new year, many of us will resolve to lose weight, start a new diet, workout or work less.  It disturbed me to see headlines for the newest fad diet - they appeared almost a few hours into Christmas day.  Jared Diamond's NY Times editoral on the world's consumption puts the new year in perspective.  He writes that Americans and other developed nations consume 32 times more resources than the developing world - a lifestyle that is clearly not sustainable or attainable for the world's 6.5 billion people. 

Just as it is certain that within most of our lifetimes we’ll be consuming less than we do now, it is also certain that per capita consumption rates in many developing countries will one day be more nearly equal to ours. These are desirable trends, not horrible prospects. In fact, we already know how to encourage the trends; the main thing lacking has been political will.

We are now almost at the mid-point of the 15-year period in which to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). And as we approach this mid-point, data are now becoming available that provide an indication of progress during the first third of this 15-year period. The results are, predictably, uneven in many areas of these Millennium Development Goals. It cannot be denied that since 2000, when world leaders endorsed the Millennium Declaration, we have seen some visible gains here and there, even in areas where the challenges are greatest.

These small achievements demonstrate that success is possible but that the Millennium Development Goals will be attained only if concerted additional action is taken immediately and sustained until 2015. All stakeholders need to fulfill, in their entirety, the commitment they made in the Millennium Declaration and subsequent pronouncements.

These results, these limited achievements highlight how much remains to be done and how much more could be accomplished if all concerned lived up fully to the commitments they have already made.

More generally, the lack of employment for young people, gender inequalities, rapid and unplanned urbanisation and high HIV prevalence are pervasive obstacles. We still have a lot of challenges that have to be addressed.

We still have unacceptably high numbers of women dying each year from treatable and preventable complications of pregnancy and childbirth. If current trends continue, the target of halving the proportion of underweight children will be missed, largely because of slow progress in this area. We are still losing many of our people from AIDS, and prevention measures are failing to keep pace with the growth of the epidemic.

A large percentage of our population lacks basic sanitation. In order to meet the Millennium Development Goals target, an additional large number of our people will need access to improved sanitation over the period 2008 to 2015. If the current trends continue, we are likely to miss the target.

And to some extent, these situations reflect the fact that the benefit of economic growth in our country have been unequally shared. As Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection director Fr Pete Henriot has correctly observed, the economic growth and single digit inflation our government talks about has only benefited the government, investors and not the ordinary Zambians. We have failed to provide employment opportunities to our youths.

In order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, we will need to mobilise additional resources and target public investment that benefits the poor.

Clearly, achieving these goals is possible and rapid and large-scale progress is feasible. But this progress is only possible when strong government leadership is in place and appropriate policies and strategies that effectively target the needs of the poor are combined with adequate financial and technical support from the international community.

And during the mid-point year, the international community needs to support the preparation of these strategies and to accelerate implementation of the Millennium Development Goals. In general, strategies should adopt a wide-ranging approach that seeks to achieve pro-poor economic growth, including through the creation of a large number of opportunities for decent work.

This, in turn, will require comprehensive programmes for human development, particularly on education and health, as well as building productive capacity and improved physical infrastructure. And enhanced public accountability is necessary to support all these efforts.

Success in achieving the Millennium Development Goals cannot be achieved by us alone without the assistance and cooperation of developed countries. Developed countries need to deliver fully on long-standing commitments to achieve the official development assistance target of 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income by 2015.

It requires, in particular, the Group of Eight industrial nations to live up to their 2005 pledge to double aid to our countries by 2010 and the European Union member states to allocate 0.7 per cent of their Gross National Income to official development assistance by 2015.

Aid has to be improved by ensuring that assistance is aligned with the policies we have adopted, and that flows are continuous, predictable and assured and not tied to all sorts of things with continually shifting goalposts.

We say all this because since their adoption by all United Nations member states in 2000, the Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals have become a universal framework for development and a means for developing countries and their development partners to work together in pursuit of a shared future for all.

And as we have already pointed out, there have been some gains, and success is still possible in many areas. But all these also point to how much remains to be done. There is a clear need for our political leaders to take urgent and concerted action, or the great majority of our people will not realise the basic promises of the Millennium Development Goals in their lives.

The Millennium Development Goals are still achievable if we act now. This will require inclusive sound governance, increased public investment economic growth, enhanced productive capacity, and the creation of decent work.

The successes we have recorded so far in some areas, demonstrate that rapid and large-scale progress towards the Millennium Development Goals is feasible if we combine strong government leadership, food policies and practical strategies for scaling up public investments in vital areas with adequate financial and technical support from the international community.

To achieve the goals, we need to own the strategies and our budgets must be aligned with them. This must be backed up by adequate financing within the global partnership for development and its framework for mutual accountability.

We don’t need new promises anymore. It is imperative that all stakeholders meet, in their entirety, the commitments already made in the Millennium Declaration, the 2002 Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development, and the 2005 World Summit.

Clearly, Zambia needs to put more effort in improving social amenities if we are to attain the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. At the rate we are going, it is not possible and this is worrisome. If things can be improved now, then we will see an indicator for attaining the Millennium Development Goals.

The ONE Campaign launched the new web site On The Record, which presents the plans of presidential candidates to end global poverty.  The videos are a result of hundreds of thousands of emails, phone calls, and letters sent to politicians demanding they put their plans to end poverty and achieve the MDGs on the record for everyone to see.

A great feature of the site is the ability to compare the action plans of politicians together side by side.  How does Rudy Giuliani's plan to end HIV/AIDS compare with Barak Ombama's? 

You can take part in the ONE Campaign by signing the On the Record Petition.  By getting every candidate to outline their plans to end global poverty, we will be able to hold whatever candidate becomes president in 2008 accountable to their promises.

With less than 1% of Africans able to access a broadband connection, Intel's chairman Craig Barrett is advocating for a wireless solution to Africa's long stagnating connectivity problems.

While computer access and Internet connections stagnates in Africa, mobile phone penetration is expanding exponentially. Africa’s mobile phone growth rate has been the highest of any region over the past 5 years, averaging yearly increases of almost 25%.

Mr Barrett, who is in Africa as part of the Intel World Ahead programme, said: "In every African country, except some of the more established economies, cell phones vastly outnumber fixed line phones.

Many African NGOs are now beginning to utilize mobile phones in their campaning work. In Gugulethu a small city near Cape Town, an experimental SMS-based software program called Cell-Life is being used to help administer antiretroviral drugs to people with HIV/AIDS. Two doctors and one nurse keep in contact with one another and their 500 patients via text messages sent from local counselors  "The doctors don't get to see as many patients as they would like," Anand said. "This allows them to pinpoint patients who aren't doing well. And, of course, monitor those patients that are benefiting from drug therapy."  (http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/12/06/wireless06_ed3_.php).

Last week, Nicholas Negroponte, the Founder and Chairman of One Laptop per Child (OLPC) participated in a panel discussion about OLPC in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). While celebrating many successes of the project, the forum served more as an opportunity for Negroponte to point out flaws in the original distribution plan and to announce the new "Give One Get One," business model.

The so-called, "$100 laptop" was promoted as a key tool to bridge the digital

The Millennium Development Goals were agreed upon by the international community back in 2000. The goals include measurable and achievable targets on reducing global poverty, and improving access to education, water and other benchmarks. When those goals were conceived, the countries of the world envisioned achieving them by 2015.

Now that we're at the halfway point (or a little beyond), many people are wondering how far we've come toward attaining these goals.  The UN Millennium Campaign has some answers in a detailed report

In the meantime, Salil Shetty, director of the Millennium Campaign, spoke to us at St. Luke Lutheran Church in Portland about the progress we are making towards these goals. (Thanks to St. Luke member Lisa Wenwick for organizing this event).