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Please click on the links below for information on the DAC's role in the achievement of the MDGs
- The DAC's role in the genesis of the Millennium Development Goals
- The MDGs and development co-operation
- DAC work and the individual goals
- Monitoring the Goals
- Aid Effectiveness to accelerate progress towards the MDGs
- Conflict prevention, Peace-building and the MDGs
3. DAC work and the individual goals
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. DAC work on Poverty Reduction
2. Achieve universal primary education. DAC work on Gender and Education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women. DAC work on Gender Equality
4. Reduce child mortality. DAC work on Poverty and Health
5. Improve maternal health. DAC work on Poverty and Health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases. Statistical data on aid to control HIV/AIDS
7. Ensure environmental sustainability. DAC work on Development Co-operation and the Environment
8. Develop a global partnership for development. DAC work on aid effectiveness, trade, debt, untying aid, information and communication technologies.
The goals and targets are inter-related and should be seen as a whole. They represent a partnership between the developed countries and the developing countries determined, as the Declaration states, "to create an environment - at the national and global levels alike - which is conducive to development and the elimination of poverty."
4. Monitoring the Goals
Lack of reliable and timely data to monitor and report on the Goals has stimulated action to improve the situation.
1) A chapter in the DAC’s Development Co-operation Report for 2004 summarizes progress towards the Goals.
2) There is unprecedented inter-agency co-operation to work together to produce as coherent a global and regional picture of progress as possible with available data.
3) The MDGs have stimulated the demand and co-ordinated international support for sustainable national statistical capacity-building. Indeed, collecting sound, reliable and comparable data is indispensable to formulating and implementing policies to achieve the Goals. The PARIS21 consortium, hosted by the DAC, is a major initiative to encourage and assist all low-income countries to design, implement, and monitor a National Strategy for the Development of Statistics (NSDS) in order to have, inter alia, nationally owned and produced data for all MDG indicators by the next Millennium review in 2010.
5. Aid Effectiveness to accelerate progress towards the MDGs
Increasing the amount of aid and improving aid’s effectiveness are both crucial to the achievement of the MDGs.
The Paris Declaration signed in March 2005 resolved to take far-reaching and monitorable actions to reform the way aid is both delivered and managed. It endorsed a number of key commitments based on five key areas:
- Ownership – Partner countries exercise effective leadership over their development policies and strategies to co-ordinate development actions.
- Alignment – Donors base their overall support on partner countries’ national development strategies, institutions and procedures.
- Harmonisation – Donors’ actions are more harmonised, transparent and collectively effective.
- Managing for Results – Managing resources and improving decision-making for results.
- Mutual Accountability – Donors and partners are accountable for development results.
Meeting these commitments will increase the impact aid has in accelerating progress in line with the MDGs. Since the signing of the Paris Declaration, the international community, guided and supported by the DAC Working Party on Aid Effectiveness, has focused on monitoring the commitments undertaken in Paris, establishing the need to manage for results rather than for inputs, driving international efforts to help increase reliance on developing both countries’ procurement and public financial management systems, and engaging with emerging donors.
6. Conflict prevention, Peace-building and the MDGs
Addressing violent conflict can help the realization of the MDGs
Experience shows that there is a causal link between enduring poverty and the prevalence of violent conflict in developing countries: First, the human and economic cost of conflict is tremendous. Second, its impact on the political, social and economic development of a country as well as its surrounding region is profound. Third, the benefits of development assistance are all too often blunted or even reversed by the outbreak of violent conflict.
The international community has increasingly come to realize the need to work together to both ensure that violent conflict is effectively prevented and promptly reacted to. To this end, much remains to be done to ensure that a common awareness of conflict-related issues is integrated into all policy areas, including development co-operation, foreign affairs, defense and trade. Furthermore, if states are to create the conditions in which they can escape from a downward spiral wherein insecurity, criminalization and under-development are mutually reinforcing, socio-economic and security dimensions must be tackled simultaneously. Security from violence and fear is fundamental to reducing poverty, protecting human rights and achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
What the OECD can do: DAC action on conflict prevention, peace-building and security
Through its focus on conflict prevention, peacebuilding and security as preconditions for sustainable development, OECD governments in the DAC continue to increase and improve their efforts to help conflict prone and conflict affected countries to manage change and political conflict through democratic and peaceful means. Ongoing efforts to draw best practices and develop guidance in areas such as Armed Violence Reduction, Security system reform and Evaluating Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding Activities are examples of key OECD activities undertaken so as to make human security a reality.
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