The Rt. Rev. Njongo Ndungane, retired Archbishop of South Africa is calling for all governments to scale up their efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. The MDGs have 8 goals for eradicating extreme poverty, improving health, providing education, supporting environmental sustainability, and attaining gender equality. From a press release from Africa Monitor today:
Archbishop Njongo Ndungane, Founder and President of African Monitor, today called on parliamentarians from the Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU) member states to gear up in order to ensure that Africa and other developing countries also meet the MDGs by 2015. He was addressing the parliamentarians at the UNICEF’s Countdown to 2015 Conference in Cape Town.
The Archbishop called on the governments to do more in order to ensure that the MDGs are achieved by 2015, particularly in the areas of maternal health and child mortality, which affect the most vulnerable segment of human beings.
“The Millennium Development Goals are the most important and comprehensive promises that our governments have made for tackling the scourge of poverty”, he said.
Archbishop Ndungane said that continental bodies, like the African Monitor, will always monitor development programming by both governments and donors and advocate for pro-poor and result-oriented development programmes that listened to and acted on the voices of poor people.
He emphasized the need to hold public officials who made public promises accountable and said that public pronouncements by duty bearers should be less about public relations and more about true actionable undertakings that translated to the improvement of the situation of the poor, particularly women and children.
More information is here.
The Episcopal Church MDG campaign is here.
A network of Episcopalians committed to this work is here.
A list of the Millennium Development Goals follows:
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child Mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development