The MDG Gap Task Force Report systematically tracks existing international commitments and their fulfilment at the international level in the areas of official development assistance trade debt relief and access to essential medicines and technology as defined by the targets and indicators of MDG 8. The MDG Gap Task Force Report 2014 will build on the 2013 Report by drawing lessons learned from monitoring MDG 8 and analysing conceptual gaps created by how MDG was originally defined. This should provide insight to discussions on the post-2015 agenda. The Task Force consists of more than 30 UN entities including participation from the World Bank and the IMF as well as the OECD and WTO. The Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat and UNDP and are the lead agencies in coordinating the work of the Task Force.

The 2012 Report will continue to follow the progress on official development assistance market access debt sustainability access to essential medicines and new technologies as prescribed by the Millennium Development Goal 8. Closer attention will be given to the impact of the global crisis on meeting the targets and ways to further increase aid effectiveness following the recommendations of the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness. Some evidence on whether the needs of developing countries are being met will be presented. The Report will also serve as a building block to start formulating the post-2015 development agenda by taking stock of the progress made so far.

Further progress has been made towards fulfilling the promises embodied in the Millennium Development Goal 8 (MDG 8). However the Global Partnership for Development has suffered important setbacks most of which have arisen from the current state of the world economy which is experiencing its severest downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. In the countdown to 2015 urgent responses are needed to bridge the existing implementation gaps to make good on the promises made to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. The 2009 issue of the report by the United Nations Millennium Development Goals Gap Task Force identifies these gaps in detail and provides recommendations to all major stakeholders on how to address these gaps.

The present report was prepared by the MDG Gap Task Force which was created to improve the monitoring of the MDG 8 by leveraging inter-agency coordination. The objective of the report is to identify remaining obstacles to accelerate progress in the achieving the targets contained in MDG 8. It highlights the degree of compliance to the commitments made by developed and developing countries with a view to strengthening the global partnership for development. The main message of the report is that while there has been progress on several counts important gaps remain in delivering on the global commitments in the area of aid trade debt relief and access to new technologies and affordable essential medicines.