In September last year, the world’s attention focused on New York City, where global leaders and grassroots activists gathered for the historic Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Review Summit at the UN headquarters. Designed to assess progress in international efforts to reach what philanthropist and United Nations Foundation founder and chairman Ted Turner has called “the world’s to-do list,” the Summit honed in on the successes and challenges for advancing the eight development goals. Set by 189 world leaders in 2000, these goals tackle the biggest challenges facing the world today – such as alleviating global poverty, improving women’s and children’s health, ending hunger and ensuring education for all (see The Millennium Development Goals list). And while problems such as hunger and disease are daunting, the renewed commitments made at the Summit were inspiring. There were also many MDG successes to be celebrated.
To build on this success and make further progress towards two of the most challenging MDG, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon used the occasion of the MDG Summit to build awareness and support for the new Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health, a comprehensive plan to save the lives of mothers, newborns and children. This strategy is essential because although progress has been made in reducing maternal and child mortality, there is much more that remains to be done. For example, today in the developing world, one woman in eight will die in childbirth. If the world does not come together to improve conditions, an estimated 16 million mothers, newborns and children will die by 2015.
To set the stage for the launch of this Global Strategy, the UN has reached out to NGOs, civil society organisations, foundations, corporations and other stakeholders to ask for their partnership. The response has been resounding. Over the next five years alone, groups including the Carlos Slim Foundation in Mexico, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, and the UN Foundation have pledged more than $40bn for women’s and children’s health. This money will go a long way toward enabling the call to action spelled out in the Global Strategy.
In addition to the $40bn pledged for women’s and children’s health, the UK announced its own commitments to accelerate progress on the MDG which included a tripling of its funding to fight malaria and scaling up nutrition by joining the “1,000 days” campaign. This campaign focuses on how the impact of malnutrition during the first 1,000 days, from pregnancy to the age of two, is irreversible but preventable; a child who receives the right nutrition during this period is less likely to die or be harmed by disease.
With a focus on mutual accountability, the UK also lobbied and secured an annual review mechanism and monitoring of all of the policy and financial commitments made by governments, the private sector and civil society organisations at the Summit. And the UK’s civil society also stepped up for the MDG, releasing statements and positions papers coordinated through networks and forums such as Bond and CONCORD to create a drumbeat of attention leading up to the Summit. More than 60 UK civil society organisations demanded the UK government support an ambitious and universal MDG rescue plan that addressed the linkages between all eight MDG and included a global action plan for maternal, newborn and child survival. Although many aid groups praised the global health initiative, some criticised the lack of binding commitments on transparency and accountability, and the inability to fulfill lagging aid targets.
In addition to the UK’s support, the European Union offered a billion euros to the most committed and needy countries, and private companies from around the world launched initiatives to boost education, gender equality, and access to clean water.
The power of partnerships
There was a common theme threading these commitments together: a fundamental understanding that governments, multilateral agencies and the private sector alone cannot do what can be accomplished through smart, effective partnerships. These kinds of collaborations can magnify the resources and expertise needed to address and make progress on global challenges. In short, everyone has a role to play in achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
Take, for example, the UN Foundation’s work with the Vodafone Foundation, which since 2005 has leveraged nearly ?15m using telecommunications technologies to help save lives around the world. The partnership between the two foundations emerged out of their work together to harness the latest technology to increase UN efforts in providing humanitarian relief, health data collection, and access to emergency communications.
Today, the UN Foundation and Vodafone Foundation, together with the Rockefeller Foundation, PEPFAR and the GSM Association, are founding partners of the mHealth Alliance, which is playing an active role in leveraging the power of mobile technology to help accelerate and advance the Secretary-General’s Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health plan.
The challenge of the Millennium Partnerships are imperative if we are to reach those populations which have previously been considered as unreachable.
“While the primary responsibility for realising these goals still rests with governments which need to act decisively in the interest of their people, if we are serious about intensifying efforts to meet the 2015 deadline we need to forge creative and wide-ranging partnerships,” said Corinne Woods, director of the UN Millennium Campaign. “The active support of charities and foundations such as the UN Foundation and others is critical as it demonstrates an ongoing commitment and investment in the MDG and sends a clear message of belief in their potential to ensure a productive, equitable and secure future for all.”
The Millennium Development Goals rarely make it into the spotlight and without this Summit it would have been hard to rally this level of support. Recognising that no one sector can achieve the MDG alone, the private sector, together with foundations and other partners, continue to play a critically important role in strengthening efforts to achieve the MDG. The challenge now is to take the big push generated by the UN MDG Review Summit, and follow through with concrete action needed to meet these goals. But the effectiveness of that action hinges on the resolve of political leaders to deliver on their commitments and for all others – businesses, NGOs, civil society, foundations and faith-based groups – to do their part. The MDG offer a roadmap for solving the world’s toughest challenges. They are shared goals of everyone who believes in our individual and collective power to shape a better world.
This was first published by Charity Insight on January 24, 2011.