Towards Millenium Development Goals
Towards Millenium Development Goals
World Vision contributes towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) through both our development and advocacy work.
Our lobbying and influencing work focusses mainly on the eighth MDG, and its aim to 'develop a global partnership for development', and the delivery of what we call economic justice.
In this vein, international campaigns, such as the Global Call to Action Against Poverty and the UN Millennium Campaign have focussed on a number of issues such as debt cancellation, trade justice and more and better aid, as well as strengthening governance and accountability in developing countries themselves.
They have been characterised for example, by the pressure put on the world’s richest country governments to finally meet the target agreed in 1970 of providing 0.7% of their national income (GNI) for overseas development, and to cancel unpayable debts.
It was only in 2005, with the Make Poverty History Campaign, that the UK government set the deadline of 2013 for meeting this target, and that governments agreed a 100% debt cancellation deal for 18 poor countries – albeit that there is much more to be done on both of these fronts.
World Vision engages in advocacy for more and better aid, debt cancellation and trade justice, through working with other networks such as BOND, UK Aid Network, Jubilee Debt Campaign and Trade Justice Movement.
Our key area of focus is that of better aid, where we push for:
- country-owned poverty reduction strategies
- good donor conditionality
- better allocation of aid to poor countries and sectors (e.g. an increased focus on HIV and AIDS, education and the inclusion of disabled people)
- increasing aid predictability and reducing volatility
- strengthened civil society and accountability mechanisms.
We argue that increased aid to meet the Millennium Development Goals will only be truly effective if governments, as well as institutions such as the World Bank, address these issues.