Millenium Development Goals

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Basic Information

The new century opened with an unprecedented declaration of solidarity and determination to rid the world of poverty -let’s remind that at the beginning of this century a child of less than ten years dies of hunger each 7 seconds, as well as around 100000 people a day! In 2000, the UN Millennium Declaration, adopted at the largest-ever gathering of heads of state, committed countries - rich and poor - to doing their best to eradicate poverty, promote human dignity and equality and achieve peace, democracy and environmental sustainability. At the 2000 summit the UN General Assembly also asked the UN Secretary General to prepare a road map for achieving the Declaration’s commitments. The resulting UN Millennium Development Goals , as they became known, are made up of 8 Goals, 18 targets and 48 indicators. These goals, to be reached by 2015 or earlier, are as follows:

  1. Halve the proportion of people living in extreme poverty
  2. Achieve universal primary education
  3. Promote gender equality and empower women
  4. Reduce child mortality
  5. Improve maternal health
  6. Combat HIVAIDS, malaria and other diseases
  7. Ensure environmental sustainability
  8. Develop a global partnership for development
Overview on Russia’s MDGs (end of 2003)
The President of the Russian Federation has recently announced an ambitious program aimed at achieving sustainable growth and development for Russia. Though the MDG targets have not been widely operationalized by the Russian Government, the figures and analysis below gives a sense of the country’s performance on MDGs.
Eradicate extreme poverty
The target set by the President is to decrease the number of people living under the official poverty line which was around 2.33 USD a day (around 7.07 USD at PPP exchange rate) in the end of 2003. Right now 22.5% of the population live below this line.
Achieve universal primary education
Primary education enrollment has remained around 99%, so the global goal has already been achieved, however reaching a more ambitious goal of 99% coverage with basic education is still ahead, with current average of 90%. Moreover, even official statistics show that around 800 000 children are homeless, i.e. unaccounted for and without access to education. The enrollment in pre-school education is not sufficient. Considerable regional differentiation is observed in virtually all indicators of implementation of the basic goals on education. Quality indicators remain largely unattended by Russian authorities.
Promote gender equality and empower women
Russian Government has not set any specific targets in the area of gender equality. Though Russia has certainly reached the global goals based on such indicators as ratio of girls to boys in primary education (0.95) or female share of non-agricultural wage employment (50/50), latent, not direct gender discrimination problems are to a greater degree topical for Russia. Level of political participation of women remains relatively low. Whereas women amount to 71% of the total number of public servants in the country, they hold only 12% of the highest positions and only one seat in the Federal government.
Reduce Child Mortality
Over the recent years the indicator of infant mortality rate (number of deaths at the age under 1 per 1,000 liveborn) in Russia has been in steady decline. During the period of 1993 - 2002 this rate went down from 19.9‰ to 13.3‰, or nearly by one third. The present day infant mortality rate in Russia is as five-fold higher as in the countries with the least indicator (in 2001, according to the data available to us, the least indicator was registered in Finland - 3.22‰, while in Russia it was 14.6‰), and is 3.5 times higher the average in the European Union and 1.5 higher the average in Europe. The figure for some of the regions is as high as 40 deaths per 1 000 people. The actual infant mortality gap between Russia and developed countries is likely to be even bigger (by 14-15%). The reason for this is that till 1993 Russia applied its own criteria for the definition of live birth different from more strict criteria of the WHO applicable in other countries.
Improve maternal health
Even though the maternal mortality rate in Russia has been steadily declining, its level remains quite high by Western Europe standards. The present-day maternal mortality rate in Russia is comparable with the rates registered in the European Union countries, USA and Japan in mid-70ies. Despite the improvements of the situation with abortions in Russia, their rate remains so far one of the Europe and world’s highest. Not the modern contraception methods, but induced interruption of unwanted pregnancy remains the basic method of family planning in Russia.
Combat HIV/AIDS and other diseases

As of 06 August 2003, the cumulative number of officially registered HIV infections in the Russian Federation totalled 248,609, of those 7,544 - in children under 15. The total number of AIDS cases reported in the period of 01 January 1987 through 06 August 2003 constituted 817, of them 193 in children under 15. Experts estimate that the true number of people living with HIV/AIDS in Russia is three to four times higher than that shown by official figures. High estimates of the number of people living with HIV/AIDS in Russia in the end of 2002 ranged from 840,000 (UNAIDS) to 1,000,000 (Federal AIDS Centre). During the last three years, there was a visible increase in leadership and commitment, at higher political levels, to combat the HIV epidemic. In his 2003 Address to the Federal Assembly, the President of the Russian Federation has mentioned AIDS as the disease that, along with drug abuse, aggravates negative demographic situation in Russia already characterised by depopulation and decrease in life expectancy at birth registered in the country over the last three years.

In the course of 11 years (from 1990 till 2001) in Russia the number of newly detected cases of infectious form of TB increased by 2.58 times, and the number of deaths caused by TB grew 2.47 times. The TB related mortality rate was 24 per 100 000 people with significant variations across regions. Prevalence was at the level of 93 per 100 000 people which is many times higher than in the developed countries. The Russian Ministry of Health is cooperating with the WHO and major donors through a high-level working group. Introduction of WHO DOTS strategy remains an important priority, particularly in the remote and underdeveloped regions.

Ensure environmental sustainability
Though and coverage of land area by forests remain at a high (50%) and access to safe drinking water at a relatively high (96%) level, such indicators as GDP per unit of energy use ($ 1.6 as compared to $ 3.3 in Canada and $ 4.4 in Sweden) as well as carbon dioxide emissions show that even the significantly downsized post-soviet economy is not yet environmentally sustainable. Steps that are taken by the Russian Government including several official programs are important for the attainment of the target in the near future but not enough to offset the ecologically costly economic rise, imperfection of environmental legislation and deficiency of investment in environmental protection.
Develop a global partnership for development
As a G-8 member and a member of the Security Council Russia is continuing to play a major role in the world political affairs, peace keeping operations and combat of terrorism. Economically, Russia is also an emerging donor, both in terms of official development assistance (monetary and in-kind contributions in 2003 amounted to $ 11 mln.) and technical assistance (crisis prevention and recovery, emergency relief, etc.). In addition, Russia as one of the members of the Paris Club may potentially play a significant role in global debt relief efforts.

Millenium Development Goals Documents

UN Millennium Project

The UN Millennium Project is an independent advisory body commissioned by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to develop a global plan for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. The Project is directed by Prof. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, Special Advisor to the Secretary-General on MDGs, and based at UNDP headquarters in New York.

The Project presented its findings to the Secretary-General in January 2005. The release of the report, “Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals,” is the first in a series of major global initiatives on the MDGs this year, culminating in a high-level summit of the General Assembly on the Goals in September. 2005 represents a historic chance for making the necessary global policy breakthrough needed to help the poorest countries achieve the Goals. The Millennium Project’s report provides a detailed blueprint for making this happen.

If the world achieves the MDGs, more than 500 million people will be lifted out of poverty. A further 250 million will no longer suffer from hunger. 30 million children and two million mothers who might reasonably have been expected to die will be saved.

The UN Millennium Project’s report draws on over two years of extensive research by ten thematic Task Forces, comprising a total of 265 internationally recognized experts in the field –collectively, a “who’s who” of development thinkers and doers.

These 10 task forces each addressed the development issues of specific sectors covered by the MDGs. The Task Force teams were charged with diagnosing the key constraints to meeting the MDGs, and recommending actions to ensure nations are on track to achieve the MDGs by 2015.

Together with “Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals,” the 13 Task Force reports present the complete findings of the UN Millennium Project. The full report “Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals” and reports of the Task Force teams are available at the Millennium Project’s website: www.unmillenniumproject.org