The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the world's shared development agenda to reduce extreme poverty, hunger and preventable disease. Efforts to achieve the Goals have yielded many successes, yet urgent action still remains if we are to achieve them by the 2015 deadline.

It is critical to understand that government leaders cannot solve global challenges on their own any more. In today's much flatter world, it is everyday people – and, critically, their personal networks – who have the potential to be the world's big new problem solvers. Post-disaster emergency responses in recent months have vividly displayed the need for coordinated best efforts from non-profits, companies, individuals, online communities, governments and the UN system. The same mindset of partnership, urgency, and "all hands on deck" is also required to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, the world's integrated targets for tackling extreme poverty by 2015.

For a video presentation on the Goals, please click here.

For the latest reports on the MDGs, please click here.

The following talking points on the MDGs are presented in the following parts:

• A status report on the world's progress toward meeting the Goals.
• A special focus section on sub-Saharan Africa, the region furthest off track. This section outlines the extent of the challenge and makes the case for hope.
• A set of recommended urgent next steps

Key progress towards the MDGs includes:

• Primary school enrolment has reached 90% globally and the world is on target to achieve the 2015 goal of 100% in all but two out of 10 regions.
• Since 1990, 1.6 billion people have gained access to safer water.
• Girls' primary school enrolment increased more than boys' in all developing regions between 2000 and 2006.
• The number of people using improved sanitation facilities has increased by 1.1 billion since 1990.
• Of the nearly 650 million people at risk of malaria in Africa, the portion covered by insecticide-treated bed nets rose from 3% in 2001 to 39% in 2007.
• The Measles Initiative has vaccinated over 600 million children, helping to reduce global measles mortality by 74% globally between 2000 and 2007. During the same time period, measles deaths plunged by 89% in Africa alone.
• With the expansion of antiretroviral treatment to more than two million people since 2000, the number of people who die from AIDS has started to decline, from 2.2 million in 2005 to 2.0 million in 2007.

Amidst the tremendous global progress, urgent action is still needed to achieve the Goals by 2015 and overcome key challenges, such as:

• Climate change, a global economic slowdown and volatile food and fuel prices threaten to reverse the progress that has been made.
• Each year, there are between 350 million and 500 million cases of malaria worldwide. The disease kills over one million people annually. The universal anti-malarial bed net distribution campaign promises to make strong progress on this critical issue.
• More than half a million mothers in developing countries die in childbirth or from pregnancy complications every year.
• Nearly one billion people today lack access to safe sources of drinking water and some 2.5 billion people lack access to basic sanitation services.
• The number of underweight children in developing countries exceeded 140 million in 2006.
• Some 2.4 billion people live without access to modern cooking and heating services and 1.6 billion have no access to electricity.
• Official development assistance to Africa is essentially unchanged since 2005, when major promises were made to double aid by 2010. Aid flows need to increase by $18 billion per year to meet the promises made by the G8.

The global collective effort towards achieving the MDGs has yielded some tremendous successes. Progress is uneven across regions, however, with sub-Saharan Africa the furthest off-track towards meeting the Goals. This region faces some particular challenges, including:

• Progress towards reducing the number of people living in extreme poverty has been negligible in sub-Saharan Africa. Between 1990 and 2005, the poverty rate remained around 50%.
• Africa is the only region in the world where per capita food production has fallen in the last 30 years.
• Half the deaths of children under five in the developing world occur in this region.
• Of the more than one million people who die annually from malaria in the world, 80% are children under five in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Of the more than one million people who die annually from malaria in the world, 80% are children under five in sub-Saharan Africa.
• In sub-Saharan Africa, the net primary school enrolment ratio is up dramatically, from 58% in 1999/2000 to 71% in 2005/06. Still, the region lags behind global progress on this goal, with around 38 million children of primary school age out of school.
• The vast majority of those living with HIV are in sub-Saharan Africa.
• The majority of countries making the least progress in reducing child malnutrition are in this region
• Vulnerable employment is highest here. It accounts for three quarters of all jobs.
• Half a billion people in sub-Saharan Africa lack access to basic sanitation services
• The region accounts for more than a third of those without improved drinking water supplies.

In spite of the many challenges the feasibility of rapid large-scale progress towards the MDGs is being demonstrated across Africa:

• Malawi’s voucher program for fertilizers and seeds has led to a doubling of agricultural productivity during the past two growing seasons. This ambitious subsidy program has helped lift Malawi from dependency on food aid to being a food-surplus nation, even supplying Zimbabwe with 300,000 tons of maize during its food crisis. Additionally, the bumper harvests resulting from the program are helping poor farmers to earn more income.
• Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, and many other countries have abolished fees for primary schools resulting in dramatic increases in enrolment rates. In Kenya, since the first week of tuition-free school in January 2003 more than 1.3 million children have entered school for the first time, pushing national enrollment from 5.9 million in 2002 to 7.2 million in 2004.
• Rwanda experienced a 64% reduction in incidence and 66% decline in deaths from malaria within one year of distributing bed nets and making available artemisinin-based combination therapies (top line malaria treatments).
• Ghana is successfully implementing a national school feeding program using locally produced foods that is reaching about a million children.
• Senegal is on track to achieving the water and sanitation goals through a national investment program financed with donor support.
• The Millennium Villages are demonstrating that community leadership and a combination of integrated interventions in agriculture, education, health, gender equality, basic infrastructure and improved environmental management can transform impoverished communities in a short period of time. African governments, such as Mali, are now taking the lessons of the Millennium Villages to national scale.
• With support from the Red Cross, WHO, UNICEF and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, African countries have successfully launched national campaigns for measles vaccination and distribution of long-lasting insecticide-treated malaria bed nets. As noted, measles deaths plunged in Africa by 89% between 2000 and 2007.

The MDGs have galvanized an unprecedented global coalition in the fight to end extreme poverty. Government leaders are being joined by hundreds of private sector CEOs, philanthropists and civil society leaders. In a growing global grassroots movement, millions of citizens in both rich and poor countries are calling on their leaders to deliver. Bolstered by this support, the world needs to shift into high gear for a six-year push to achieve the MDGs. UN Member States have agreed to convene a formal summit on the MDGs to review implementation in 2010. Efforts in 2009 will be pivotal in setting the future course for this benchmark review. Key points to emphasize include:

• The estimated and agreed upon amount of official development assistance needed to reach the MDGs has already been committed. No new commitments are needed to deliver on the Goals. Instead, the international community needs to follow-through on existing commitments and implementation of what it has already acknowledged needs to be done.
• In order for developing countries to plan and program ambitious MDG strategies, country-by-country timetables for how aid will be increased through these pre-existing commitments is essential. At present, only five of the world's richest countries fulfilled their aid commitments and only 16 of 22 countries have set timetables to meet their promises by 2015.
• Development partners should leverage their aid commitments to at least double infrastructure financing in Africa to some US $23.7 billion annually by 2010 in order to close growth-inhibiting gaps in transport, energy, communications, water and sanitation services.

Major global successes—on school enrolment, child health, access to clean water, malaria control and AIDS treatment—even in the poorest countries, show that the MDGs are achievable, if strong leadership, good policies and practical strategies for public investments are met with adequate and predictable financial and technical support from the international community.

Updated March 2010