In September of the year 2000, leaders of 189 countries met at the United Nations in New York and endorsed the Millennium Declaration, a commitment to work together to build a safer, more prosperous and equitable world. The Declaration was translated into a roadmap setting out eight time-bound and measurable goals to be reached by 2015, known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), namely:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

• Reduce by half the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day
• Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people
• Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger

2. Achieve universal primary education

• Ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling

3. Promote gender equality and empower women

• Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015

4. Reduce child mortality

• Reduce by two thirds the mortality of children under five

5. Improve maternal health

• Reduce maternal mortality by three quarters
• Achieve universal access to reproductive health

6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

• Halt and reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS
• Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it
• Halt and reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases

7. Ensure environmental sustainability

• Integrate principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse the loss of environmental resources
• Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss
• Halve the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation
• Improve the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020

8. Develop a global partnership for development

• Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system
• Address special needs of the least developed countries, landlocked countries and small island developing States
• Deal comprehensively with developing countries’ debt
• In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries
• In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications technologies

For more information, please visit: www.un.org/millenniumgoals