Disability and the Millenium Development Goals

The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), set in 2000, are a set of targets to reduce poverty, disease, degradation, illiteracy and gender inequality.  They provide an international focus on reaching specific targets and enable governments measure if and when they are doing enough to combat poverty.

Here are what some people working in development are saying about the MDGs:

'I speak to those who are most vulnerable to climate change and those who suffer the most grinding poverty.  Let 2008 be the year of the bottom billion.'                                                                                                                                         UN General Secretary Ban Ki Moon

’While the MDGs have specific targets on children and youth they are silent on issues of age, ethnicity and disability. As a result, these invisible groups are unlikely to benefit from the global effort to eradicate poverty.’                                                                   Todd Petersen, HelpAge International's Chief Executive Officer

'Unless disabled people are brought into the development mainstream, it will be impossible to cut poverty in half by 2015 – goals agreed to by more than 180 world leaders at the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000.'                                                  former World Bank President James Wolfensohn

Yet despite these calls for inclusion to ensure that disabled people are not left out of the Global Call for Action, more often than not they are...