Poverty is not history but goals brought focus

LATER this month, the world’s leaders meet at a special UN summit to assess their track record on achieving a set of goals agreed 13 years ago.

These Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, were agreed in 2000, spawned by the optimism of a new century, and setting new global priorities and targets on how to eradicate the worst forms of poverty, hunger, and disease.

The UN has already reported that some of the goals were achieved before their 2015 deadline, while others will not be met. But commentators are keen to emphasise that, as a global ‘recipe’ for the fight against poverty, the MDGs have been truly successful.