Millenium Development Goals: Involving Different Constituencies

I attended a dinner hosted by Save the Children Fund UK on Thursday to discuss the Millenium Development Goals ahead of the UN summit later this month. I should note that the dinner was offered by a supporter of SCF and so did not cost the charity.

Attendees included those involved with SCF, politicians & journalists and the discussion covered progress to date on the MDG and what needs to be done to achieve the goals by 2015. Ten years since they were adopted, there has been signficant progress on the goals, more than most people expected, but on current trends most of the goals will be missed. What can be done to increase the momentum?

Different speakers talked of the challenge of involving more people who had not been touched or empowered by the process to date:

• business people investing in developing countries had an interest in educated, healthy workforces but did not relate to large government or inter-governmental programmes
• women could be a huge force for driving some of the required changes, but were too often seen as victims of underdevelopment rather than resources for change
• the faith communities, with their mixed record of sometimes providing enormous help but sometimes putting up barriers due to entrenched beliefs, had not been engaged enough in the underlining moral imperatives of the goals
• the younger generation, often idealistic and passionate about creating a fairer world and more sustainable lifestyles, were another group who felt little involvement with inter-governmental initiatives

At the same time, there were currently few charismatic leaders on the world stage who could drive through further change at governmental levels and the current economic climate made it seem unlikely that developed countries would substantially raise their actual giving (as opposed to their commitments) over the next few years. While a number of governments in developing nations had become committed to the MDGs, none of them seemed to have the position and authority to act as role models who would galvanise their neighbours.

It struck me that the slowing impetus at the governmental level together with the untapped potential of different non-governmental constituencies (businesses, youth, women, faith) calls for the MDGs to be pursued in different ways. They need to be made relevant to these constituencies and resources directed to empowering them to make changes. It is not changing the goals, but marketing them differently.

I make no apology for using the term marketing, since it is vital that the messages are put in terms that will galvanise each group and that all the different talents contribute in their own way to the overall aims.