After the MDGs in The Guardian

With the deadline of 2015 for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) fast approaching, many people are discussing the possibilities for global frameworks after 2015. We discussed the topic on GlobalMama, and Women Deliver is running a series of posts called “Beyond 2015.”

Alicia Yamin from Harvard University and Sakiko Fukuda-Parr from the New School add to the conversation in The Guardian. They argue that any framework that replaces or extends the MDGs must address some of the criticisms leveled at the MDGs:

Nations must agree on a new set of goals. Ending poverty necessitates the confrontation of ever-changing challenges and shifting priorities; it also involves addressing the underlying exclusion and discrimination that fuel poverty and violate human rights.

The successor goals and targets must consider lessons from the current set of MDGs, which are extremely narrow. They focus on sub-sections of certain social sectors and selective human needs. Greater balance could be achieved by including such challenges as creating decent work, reinforcing social protection, and increasing productivity; addressing climate change and its disparate impacts on the poor; ameliorating risks of global financial and commodity market crises; ensuring fairer trade rules; and, finally, reducing gaping inequalities within and between countries, based on class, gender and ethnicity, among other factors.