Summary (English)

This report presents an accounting to date of how far the world has come in meeting the goals using data available as of May 2010. Progress towards the eight Millennium Development Goals is measured through 21 targets and 60 official indicators. The Millennium Development Goals Report, an annual assessment of regional progress towards the Goals, reflects the most comprehensive, up-to-date data compiled by over 25 UN and international agencies. Produced by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the report has been designated by the UN General Assembly as an official input to the MDG summit.

The UN report cites big gains in getting children into primary schools in many poor countries, especially in Africa strong interventions in addressing AIDS, malaria and child health; and a good chance to reach the target for access to clean drinking water. But disadvantages that hurt the poorest, those living in remote areas or with a disability or due to ethnicity or gender, have sapped progress on many other fronts.

Among the findings are that only half of the developing world’s population has access to improved sanitation, such as toilets or latrines; girls in the poorest quintile of households are 3.5 times more likely to be out of school than those from the richest households, and four times more likely than boys from this background; and less than half of the women in some developing regions benefit from maternal care by skilled health personnel when giving birth.

The share of people in the developing world who subsist on less than $1.25 a day, in constant US dollars, dropped from 46 per cent in the baseline year of 1990 to 27 per cent in 2005 – led by progress in China and Southern and South Eastern Asia – and is expected to tumble to 15 per cent by the target year of 2015.

But the MDG Report 2010 also indicates that progress against hunger has been impacted more severely by economic troubles. The ability of the poor to feed their families was hit consecutively by skyrocketing food prices in 2008 and falling incomes in 2009, and the number of malnourished, already growing since the beginning of the decade, may have grown at a faster pace after 2008.