About the UN Millennium Project

The Millennium Project was commissioned by the United Nations Secretary-General in 2002 to develop a concrete action plan for the world to reverse the grinding poverty, hunger and disease affecting billions of people. Headed by Professor Jeffrey Sachs, the Millennium Project is an independent advisory body and presented its final recommendations, Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals to the Secretary-General in January 2005. The Millennium Project has been asked to continue operating in an advisory capacity through the end of 2006.

Investing in Development proposes straightforward solutions for meeting the Millennium Development Goals by the 2015 deadline. The world already has the technology and know-how to solve most of the problems faced in the poor countries. To date, however, these solutions have not been implemented at the needed scale. Investing in Development presents recommendations for doing so in countries both rich and poor.

The Project has been working with developing countries to help identify: how many mothers need access to health clinics; how many children need immunizations; how many teachers should be in every district; how many roads need to be built; how many water pumps should be installed and so on, for individual countries to get on track to 2015. Backed with tried-and-true examples of what is already working to combat the many faces of poverty, Investing in Development recommends concrete strategies for scaling-up throughout the developing world and outline how donor country aid commitments can help achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

Meeting the Millennium Development Goals

There is still time to achieve the Millennium Development Goals—barely. Even in the poorest countries, the Goals can be achieved by 2015. But the window of opportunity is closing. A major global policy breakthrough is needed in 2005 to get the world’s poorest countries on track to meeting the Goals.

More than one billion people—one-sixth of the world’s population—live in extreme poverty, lacking the safe
water, proper nutrition, basic health care and social services needed to survive. This means a single episode of disease, an ill-timed pregnancy, a drought or a crop-destroying pest can be the difference between life and death. In many of the poorest countries, life expectancy is half of that in the high-income world—40 years instead of 80 years.

The consequences of this poverty reach far beyond the afflicted societies. Poverty, inequality and disease are chief causes of violent conflict, civil war and state failures. A world with extreme poverty is a world of insecurity.

The Millennium Project is recommending a global strategy to help nations turn the tide against poverty. Using the targets outlined in the Millennium Development Goals, the Project’s policy recommendations are centered on:

• Planning for the 2015 time horizon
• Pursuing the Millennium Development Goals as minimum policy targets in developing countries
• Specifying the ways donor countries need to follow through on their aid, trade and debt relief commitments to coherently support the world’s poorest countries to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

If, in 2005, the world adopts and follows a plan to meet the Goals, we can arrive in 2015 with unprecedented success in reducing poverty, disease, hunger and discrimination in the poorest countries. In doing so, we will not only save tens of millions of lives, we will help the world achieve the peace and security it craves.

How we work

The bulk of the Project’s work has been carried out by 10 thematic Task Forces comprising a total of more than 250 experts from around the world including: researchers and scientists; policymakers; representatives of NGOs, UN agencies, the World Bank, IMF and the private sector. Over the last three years, the Task Forces have conducted extensive research within their fields of expertise to produce recommendations for meeting the Millennium Development Goals. The ongoing work of the Project is led by a secretariat housed at UNDP headquarters in New York.

The core recommendation of the Millennium Project is that the Millennium Development Goals must be at the center of national and international poverty reduction strategies. For this to happen, developing countries need to conduct vigorous “needs assessments” to identify where they stand on the Goals and what interventions need to be in place in order to get on track for 2015.

In 2004, the Project began working with the UN system in selected “pilot countries”– Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, Tajikistan and Yemen – to help identify the best ways to integrate Millennium Development Goal targets and timelines into their national strategies to reduce poverty. The aim is for these national strategies to serve as models for similar undertakings in developing countries throughout the world.

But, for the Millennium Development Goals to be achieved, donor countries must keep up their end of this global deal as well. The Goals contain a specific target for a “global development partnership” that details what is needed from the world’s richest countries in order to finance the fight against poverty in the developing world. Meeting the Millennium Development Goals will require a marked increase in official development assistance.

The Project’s findings demonstrate that with developing countries’ “MDG-based poverty reduction strategies” matched with the 0.7 pledge made by developed countries, the Millennium Development Goals can be achieved, even in the poorest countries, by 2015.

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