MDGs in South Africa

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In September 2005 the South African Government released its first national MDG Report. The Report gives a positive view of development progress in South Africa and reflects the Government's confidence that it has the capacity to meet its MDG commitments by 2015. The MDG Report builds on work done for the preparation of the Ten Year Review, and represents a comprehensive overview of national and sectoral development activities.

The Millennium Development Goals

The United Nations Millennium Declaration, signed in September 2000, commits the states to:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

• 1. Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than one U.S. dollar a day.
• 2. Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
• 3. Increase the amount of food for those who suffer from hunger.

2. Achieve universal primary education

• 1. Ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling.
• Increased enrollment must be accompanied by efforts to ensure that all children remain in school and receive a high-quality education

3. Promote gender equality and empower women

• 1. Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015.

4. Reduce child mortality

• 1. Reduce the mortality rate among children under five by two thirds.

5. Improve maternal health

• 1. Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio.

6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases

• 1. Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS.
• 2. Halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.

7. Ensure environmental sustainability

• 1. Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources.
• 2. Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water (for more information see the entry on water supply).
• 3. Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020.

8. Develop a global partnership for development

• 1. Develop further an open trading and financial system that is rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory. Includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction—nationally and internationally.
• 2. Address the least developed countries’ special needs. This includes tariff- and quota-free access for their exports; enhanced debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries; cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous official development assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction.
• 3. Address the special needs of landlocked and small island developing States.
• 4. Deal comprehensively with developing countries’ debt problems through national and international measures to make debt sustainable in the long term.
• 5. In cooperation with the developing countries, develop decent and productive work for youth.
• 6. In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries.