Annotation Provides information on progress and trends, including poornonpoor disparities; health systems reform as a means of laying building blocks for the efficient and equitable delivery of effective interventions; the financing of health spending through domestic resources and aid; and improving the effectiveness of development assistance in health. Linking the health Millennium Development Goals? agenda with the broader poverty-reduction agenda, this book is a valuable resource for policymakers in developing countries and development practitioners working in the health, nutrition, and population sector as well as students and scholars of public health.

How can the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) be made a reality by 2015? This is an up-to-date overview of the funding proposals and mechanisms now under discussion. The contributors have contributed their analyses as part of the Helsinki Process on Globalization and Democracy--an inter-governmental initiative to develop new approaches to global problem-solving. Key resource flows examined include ODA, foreign direct investment, remittances by migrants, commodity export prices, and new ideas to secure sustainable debt relief, including debt cancellation, revaluation of IMF gold reserves, debt arbitration, and other proposals.

As the 15-year Millennium Development Goals approach their conclusion, we can now measure their larger successes and failures in more than ?snapshot? fashion; and we can begin to consider how best to shape the international development agenda for the coming decades based on what we have learned. But the performance and outlook for the MDGs can neither be reduced to the sum of its eight goals, nor be divorced from international dynamics - the hard interests of states and other actors, and the global dynamics that impact on both. For that reason, this volume balances contextual analysis, the role of formative and constraining forces, the importance of normative considerations and illuminating case studies to deliver a study of the MDGs which has depth and nuance as well as breadth. Poised between judging the recent performance and the future promise of the MDGs, this book is substantial, provocative and timely.This book was published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have contributed to reductions in poverty and improvements in the human condition in many parts of the world since their "invention" in 2000 and 2001. It nonetheless remains the case that today, as on all the previous days of the twenty-first century, almost one billion people will go hungry. Debates about whether the MDGs have made a positive contribution to poverty eradication and/or whether they have achieved as much as they should have done are becoming more frequent as 2015 and the "end of the MDGs" approaches. This book highlights that active debate about what the MDGs have achieved and what that means for the crafting of a post-2015 international framework for action, must become a priority. The work begins by examining the global context of the goals from a variety of perspectives, and moves on to focus on the region that continues to be the most impoverished and which looks likely to fall short of meeting many of the MDGs: Africa. Presenting both a broad overview of the issues and drawing together prestigious scholars and practitioners from a variety of fields, this work provides a significant contribution to debates surrounding both global poverty and the success and future of the MDGs.

This book examines how international aid donors and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) can assist countries in the Asia-Pacific region achieve the Millennium Development Goals. The book examines the progress countries have made towards the MDGs and highlights the need to tailor the goals to individual country circumstances.

This publication focuses attention on the local processes that can deliver the MDGs with regard to poverty reduction and sustainable resource use.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have generated tremendous discussion in global policy and academic circles. On the one hand, they have been hailed as the most important initiative ever in international development. On the other hand, they have been described as a great betrayal of human rights and universal values that has contributed to a depoliticization of development. With contributions from scholars from the fields of economics, law, politics, medicine and architecture, this volume sets out to disentangle this debate in both theory and practice. It critically examines the trajectory of the MDGs, the role of human rights in theory and practice, and what criteria might guide the framing of the post-2015 development agenda. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in global agreements on poverty and development.

With the target date for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) behind us, this book asks did they work? And what happens next? Arguing that to effectively look forward, we must first look back, the editors of this insightful book gather leading scholars and practitioners from a range of backgrounds and regions to provide an in-depth exploration of the MDG project and its impact. Contributors use region-specific case studies to explore the effectiveness of the MDGs in addressing the root causes of poverty, including resource geographies, early childhood development and education, women’s rights and disability rights as well as the impact of the global financial crisis and Arab Spring on MDG attainment. Providing a critical assessment that seeks to inform future policy decisions, the book will be valuable to those working in the development community as well as to academics and students of international development, international relations and development economics.

Heralded as a success that mobilized support for development, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) ushered in an era of setting development agendas by setting global goals. This book critically evaluates the MDG experience from the capabilities and human rights perspectives, and questions the use of quantitative targets as an instrument of global governance. It provides an account of their origins, trajectory and influence in shaping the policy agenda, and ideas about international development during the first 15 years of the 21st century. The chapters explore: • whether the goals are adequate as benchmarks for the transformative vision of the Millennium Declaration; • how the goals came to be formulated the way they were, drawing on interviews with key actors who were involved in the process; • how the goals exercised influence through framing to shape policy agendas on the part of both developing countries and the international community; • the political economy that drove the formulation of the goals and their consequences on the agendas of the South and the North; • the effects of quantification and indicators on ideas and action; and • the lessons to be drawn for using numeric goals to promote global priorities. Representing a significant body of work on the MDGs in its multiple dimensions, compiled here for the first time as a single collection that tells the whole definitive story, this book provides a comprehensive resource. It will be of great interest to students, researchers and policymakers in the fields of development, human rights, international political economy, and governance by numeric indicators.

This collection focuses on the Millennium Development Goals from a gender perspective. It examines the strengths and weaknesses of this way of understanding and addressing poverty, and suggests ways of strengthening the approach by using key insights and approaches associated with the struggle to establish and uphold the rights of women.