Millennium Development Goals (MDG) constitute one of the most important global institutions today because of their origins, their ambitions and their effective role in shaping international development efforts. In developing this argument, Sakiko Fukada-Parr analyzes: whether the goals are adequate as benchmarks for the Millennium Declaration and the UN conference commitments; how the goals came to be formulated the way they were, identifying key actors and their motivations, the support they received and the obstacles they faced, the nature of the criticisms levelled; how the goals affected policy change on the part of both developing countries and the international community; how the goals affected policy change on the part of donors and the international development community; and, whether the goals have had an impact on accelerating poverty reduction, drawing on the multitude of reports prepared at global, national, and sub-national levels.
1. Introduction: risk or opportunity for human centered development agenda? 2. Why and how the MDGs emerged and evolved 3. 'When the rubber hits the road': How they have been used and what impact have they had on developing country policies and performance? 4. 'When the rubber hits the road': Have they had an impact on donor policies? 5. Conclusions: a step forward or step back for people centered development agenda?
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr is Professor of International Affairs at the New School, New York. She has considerable background on the MDGs in particular and the evolution of the UN development agenda in general. She led the UNDP Human Development Report (HDR) 2003 on MDGs and has authored other articles on the subject. She has also been involved in the debates internal to the UN on MDGs and development agendas in general. She has considerable experience with writing for publication, having been lead author of UNDP Human Development Reports for 10 years.