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With the target date for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) behind us, this book asks did they work? And what happens next? Arguing that to effectively look forward, we must first look back, the editors of this insightful book gather leading scholars and practitioners from a range of backgrounds and regions to provide an in-depth exploration of the MDG project and its impact.
Contributors use region-specific case studies to explore the effectiveness of the MDGs in addressing the root causes of poverty, including resource geographies, early childhood development and education, women’s rights and disability rights as well as the impact of the global financial crisis and Arab Spring on MDG attainment.
Providing a critical assessment that seeks to inform future policy decisions, the book will be valuable to those working in the development community as well as to academics and students of international development, international relations and development economics.
217 NINE Marginalised minorities in conflict: women and Millennium Development Goals Sarah Hoesch and Alireza Saniei-Pour Introduction Increasing violence in volatile corners of the world has had a dramatic impact on human populations, especially on women. Unrest has extended social inequalities, which has further marginalised women both at micro and macro levels. In a report on ‘Gender, conflict and the MDGs’ Ngozi Eze (2011, 2) revealed that as of 2011, ‘70% of the 1.3 billion people living in extreme poverty are women, who perform 66% of the world
251 TEN Ideas from early childhood development approaches to contribute to Millennium Development Goals’ achievements in Latin America1 Laura Agosta Introduction The following article focuses on the analysis of the trends that Latin America is following in terms of early childhood development programmes (ECD) and how some innovations are shaping the debate. The relevance of this topic in terms of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and their successor, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), is that some key ECD programmes adopt a multi
289 TWELVE Developmental crises affecting the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal achievements in Bangladesh: a critical perspective Saleh Ahmed Introduction Bangladesh is one of the major developing countries in the Global South. In recent years, the country has played an important role in the changing pattern of regional peace, development and politics. The country has shown demonstrable progress based on different development indicators, such as reducing extreme poverty rates and hunger, ensuring universal primary education and decreasing the
79 FOUR The impact of the global financial crisis on Millennium Development Goal attainment in Africa Leah McMillan Polonenko Introduction In 2009, UNESCO wrote ‘the aftershock of the global economic and financial crisis in 2008–09 risks depriving millions of children in the world’s poorest countries of an education…With 72 million children still out of school, a combination of slower economic growth, rising poverty and budget pressures could erode the education gains of the past decade’ (UNESCO, 2009b). Although there were significant increases in
309 THIRTEEN Between progress, stasis and reversals: an analysis of the Millennium Development Goals in Nigeria Olabanji Akinola Introduction The turn of the twenty-first century witnessed a renewed attempt by world leaders to significantly reduce global poverty by 2015. This renewed attempt came in the form of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with the view to halting the global rise of hunger, illiteracy and diseases. However, while the MDGs have succeeded in serving as the reference point in the fight against global poverty, various stakeholders
359 FIFTEEN United Nations Millennium Development Goals (UN MDGs) and the Arab Spring: shedding light on the preludes? M Evren Tok, Nancy Elbassiouny, Sofia Samper and Mohammed Sayeed Showkath Introduction Most western social scientists, Arab academics and secular intellectuals alike utterly failed to predict the powerful social and political explosion that led to a change of regime in several Arab countries, including Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen. Among Arab Nations, this phenomenon has been referred to as an ‘Arab Awakening’, while in the west it has been
273 ELEVEN Exploring the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) as a micro- Millennium Development Goals’ framework in Nigeria Adebusuyi Isaac Adeniran Background to the study Conceptually, as a socio-economic framework for enabling sustainable human development in Nigeria, the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) had focused on introducing the basic targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) into government policy, at both national and grassroots’ levels. Although the NEEDS has been projected as a
121 SIX The Millennium Development Goals, disability rights and special needs education in Ethiopia: a case study of the Oromiya region Jeff Grischow Introduction The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2000 cover a wide range of economic, environmental and social development priorities. In order to facilitate performance and assessment, the MDGs include 21 Targets and 60 Indicators (Higgins, 2013, iv). On education, MDG 2 calls for the achievement of universal primary education (UPE) by 2015, with Target 2A
215 FIFTEEN Health, inequalities and mobilisation: human rights and the Millennium Development Goals Paul Nelson Introduction Rapid, sustained progress on global health and development would require the mobilisation of governments and the financial resources they command, and of social movements and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), whose ability to mobilise social energy and action is essential to overcoming barriers that exclude many poor and socially marginalised groups from the benefits of global growth. The international aid social system – donor
