Millennium Development Goals

In September 2000, building upon a decade of major United Nations conferences and summits, world leaders came together at United Nations Headquarters in New York to adopt the United Nations Millennium Declaration, committing their nations to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and setting out a series of time-bound targets - with a deadline of 2015 - that have become known as the Millennium Development Goals http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals (MDGs).

The eight MDGs range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education by 2015. They serve as a blueprint agreed to by all countries and leading development institutions and have galvanized unprecedented efforts to meet the needs of the world’s poorest.

In April 2009, The Secretariat for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO)  organized an “Expert Group Meeting on Mainstreaming Disability in MDG Policies, Processes and Mechanisms: Development for All”. The objective of the meeting was to develop a “roadmap” to mainstream disability in all phases of programs and policies to achieve the MDGs. Read more about the conclusions and recommendations of the meeting at the UN Enable website.