The Millennium Development Goals Report 2012

This year’s report on progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) highlights several milestones:

• Extreme poverty is falling in every region
• The poverty reduction target was met
• The world has met the target of halving the proportion of people without access to improved sources of water
• The world has achieved parity in primary education between girls and boys

The target of reducing extreme poverty by half has been reached five years ahead of the 2015 deadline, as has the target of halving the proportion of people who lack dependable access to improved sources of drinking water.

Conditions for more than 200 million people living in slums have been ameliorated -double the 2020 target. Primary school enrolment of girls equalled that of boys, and we have seen accelerating progress in reducing child and maternal mortality.

Meeting the remaining targets by 2015, while challenging, is possible, but only if Governments do not waiver from their commitments made over a decade ago. Much depends on the fulfilment of MDG-8, the global partnership for development. The current economic crises besetting much of the developed world must not be allowed to decelerate or reverse the progress that has been made. Let us build on the successes we have achieved so far, and let us not relent until all the MDGs have been attained.

Available online PDF [72p.]