Poverty: MDG's success and failings

Ten years ago, world leaders agreed at the UN on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), 8 Goals to significantly reduce extreme poverty, disease and illiteracy by 2015. World leaders met to take stock of progress at the mid-point. The first nine years have seen some important successes at the aggregate level, 40 million more children are in school, hundreds of millions of people have come out of extreme poverty, some deadly diseases like tuberculosis and measles have been contained, and fewer people are dying from HIV/AIDS. But the UN Secretary-General warned that if the world has to meet the MDGs by 2015, the speed of implementation needs to be substantially accelerated. Paradoxically, foreign aid levels have actually fallen in the last four years and some of the richest countries are cutting back even further.It is no surprise then that virtually every leader from a developing country spoke during the summit about rich countries breaking their aid promises to the poor with the consequence being schools and health centres left without staff and equipment.But turn our attention to the street conversation from Dhaka to Dakar, from Manila to Mexico City and we shall hear a different discourse on why the MDGs are not being met. For the poorest people living in rural Africa or Asia or the sprawling slums of Latin American cities, their daily experience is of being powerless in the face of being denied basic public services. The economic boom that many countries in the developing world are yet to translate into MDGs for the poor. Whether it is privatization of basic services, social exclusion, or plain inefficiency and corruption, the net effect is the same - more poverty, unemployment and deprivation for those at the bottom of the pile.
http://nation.ittefaq.com/issues/2010/04/26/news0632.htm