As global poverty lessens and aid increases: Did famed UN development goals matter?

Christian Science Monitor: As global poverty lessens and aid increases: Did famed UN development goals matter?

Days before Sept. 11, 2001, a set of eight 'Millennium Development Goals' were declared to improve health, education, and welfare across the planet. As the goals expire on 2015, a sympathetic look at how they fared. …

… The number of the world’s people living with hunger has dropped by 132 million, or from nearly 19 percent of the world’s population in the early 1990s to 12.5 percent last year, a new report by the World Food Program and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization finds. …

… But even more important – and perhaps the part with the greatest potential for keeping hunger on the decline – are the innovative ways that international organizations are working with “host” governments to put a new emphasis on local food producers and farm families.

Much of the focus of new programs aimed at reducing hunger is on women and girls.

“If you look at the people suffering from hunger today, about half of them are farmers – and they are primarily women,” says Leach. He speaks of a “simple idea” recently implemented in parts of Africa that has organizations working with small farmers – on irrigation, better use of seeds, fertilization – and committing to buy their increased yields. …

… Another new approach: Providing food rations to families that send their daughters to school and keep them going. …

… “We’ve learned that we’re not going to determine in Washington what needs to happen in Uganda or Somalia, it needs to be led by the country and they need to own it,” Leach says. “It’s another example of how all of us – in the donor countries, the host countries, the international organizations, the private and corporate sectors – are together getting better and smarter about solving the hunger problem.”