The Millennium Campaign

It was the best news for decades, when in 2000 world leaders acknowledged that the most urgent matter at the dawn of the new century was to put an end to poverty, and that the world has the resources and the know-how to do so. With the UN Millennium Declaration, the international community finally achieved the political consensus on what should be done by whom, after years of disagreements between non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and Governments, between international financial institutions and the United Nations system, and between the North and the South. Leaders repeatedly declared that they would “spare no effort” to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015.