Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was the UN development agenda that preceded the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It was adopted in 2010 and focused on 8 goals to be reached by 2015:

MDG 1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger; MDG 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education; MDG 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women; MDG 4: Reduce Child Mortality; MDG 5: Improve Maternal Health; MDG 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other Diseases; MDG 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability; MDG 8: Global Partnership for Development.

Even though important progress for global development has been made under the MDGs, the MDGs failed to achieve what the 2030 Agenda now puts at the centre of all efforts: To leave no one behind. Progress has been very uneven, leaving significant gaps and sometimes even exacerbating existing inequalities. The Millennium Development Goals Report 2015 addresses these gaps and makes recommendations for a more inclusive post-2015 development agenda, i.e. to deploy targeted efforts to reach the most vulnerable people, including persons with disabilities, e.g. in education and by investing in high-quality data, disaggregated not only by age and sex but also including migrant status, indigenous status, ethnicity and disability among others.