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International development goals

The United Nations Millennium Development Goals

The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) form a blueprint agreed to by all the world's countries and all the world's leading development institutions. They have galvanised unprecedented efforts to meet the needs of the world's poorest.
The goals are:

  • Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
  • Achieve universal primary education
  • Promote gender equality and empower women
  • Reduce child mortality
  • Improve maternal health
  • Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
  • Ensure environmental sustainability
  • Develop a Global Partnership for Development

For each goal the United Nations has set clear targets and indicators. Education has a major part to play in attaining each of these targets. Open and distance learning can ensure that educational interventions reach the politicians, policy makers, practitioners and citizens who are involved.
More information can be found on this site: http://www.undp.org/mdg/goallist.shtml

The MDGs are part of a broader development agenda that also includes the goals of Education for All (Dakar) and the Commonwealth's objectives of peace, democracy, equality and good governance.

Education for All

The Education for All initiative, led by UNESCO, aims to meet the learning needs of all children, youth and adults by 2015. It was launched in 1990 and reaffirmed at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal in 2000. The Dakar Framework for Action establishes six specific goals:

  • Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children
  • Ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to and complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality
  • Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programmes
  • Achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults
  • Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving gender equality in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls' full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality
  • Improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognised and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills.

The Framework for Action sets out the strategies and commitments for achieving these goals and can be found at this site: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001211/121147e.pdf

The Commonwealth objectives

The Commonwealth is an association of 53 independent states consulting and co-operating in the common interests of their peoples and in the promotion of international understanding and world peace. The Commonwealth's 2 billion citizens, about 30 per cent of the world's population, are drawn from the broadest range of faiths, races, cultures and traditions.

The Commonwealth is committed to promoting democracy and good governance, human rights and the rule of law, gender equality and sustainable economic and social development, guided, however, by a series of agreements on its principles and aims.

More information can be found on the Harare Commonwealth Declaration at this site: http://www.thecommonwealth.org/Templates/Internal.asp?NodeID=34457

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