13.     Economic and social progress is one of the three pillars of action in the framework for international cooperation established by the Millennium Declaration. In that area, the framework fixes specific, time-bound targets and performance measures for poverty eradication and sustainable development. And it sets eight Millennium Development Goals, each of far-reaching importance: to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; to achieve universal primary education; to promote gender equality and empower women; to reduce child mortality; to improve maternal health; to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; to ensure environmental sustainability; and to develop a global partnership for development.

14.     This chapter begins by setting the development objectives of the Millennium Declaration in the context of the wider UN development agenda. It describes both the UN system’s strategy and inter-agency collaborative work to support the achievement of those objectives. It also covers the system’s efforts to address in this area the special needs of Africa, on which the Millennium Declaration puts a particular emphasis.

15.     The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) must be understood in the context of the UN conferences and summits on economic and social issues. Although these did not originate as a formally linked series of conferences, they shared similar perspectives and processes. Each conference concentrated on a different dimension of development, but always in terms of its impact on and implications for the human person. Each proceeded through a participatory process, engaging all relevant actors in the UN system, all Member States, and an array of non-State actors. Together, these conferences have generated global consensus and shaped the policy orientation of Member States and of the UN system in a wide range of development areas, such as poverty eradication, employment and social inclusion, food security, health, education, environment, human rights, women and gender equality, children, population and human settlements.

16.     The inclusive way in which the conferences were conceived and organized became a crucial factor in securing the broad engagement needed to sustain their effective follow-up. Nonetheless, the interconnections among the development challenges confronting states and their peoples proved to require approaches not only global in character, but also multisectoral in concentration. None of the conference outcomes could be enduringly advanced independently of the others. The need clearly existed for a coordinated and integrated follow-up to the whole series of UN conferences, which would come to include the historic Millennium Summit. The leadership exercised by the UN Economic and Social Council in guiding this effort has received—and will continue to receive—the strong support of the Chief Executives Board.

17.     Two international conferences that followed the Millennium Summit have helped to round out the UN global development agenda: the International Conference on Financing for Development, convened in Monterrey in March 2002, and the World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg in September 2002. Monterrey produced a new global compact that commits developing countries to improve their policies and governance and simultaneously calls on developed countries to increase support, especially by providing developing countries with more and better aid, debt relief and greater access to markets. Johannesburg built a foundation for practical action to implement commitments on sustainable development. This included: a clear programme of action in key areas relating to sustainable resources, and innovative approaches to voluntary partnerships and their links to government commitments.

18.     The Millennium Declaration has greatly facilitated the UN system’s effort to achieve coordinated and integrated follow-up to the landmark conferences and summits in the development field. It has helped CEB to expand its focus from programmatic, sectoral matters to include—and indeed focus on—strategic issues of system-wide concern. Since 2001, CEB has organized its work around the themes identified in the Secretary-General’s “Road map towards the implementation of the United Nations Millennium Declaration.”⁽⁸⁾  Building on this “Road Map,” CEB has been devising and promoting common strategies to advance the UN system’s contribution to achieving an effective, coordinated follow-up to different aspects of the Millennium Declaration and to related outcomes of other global conferences. In this effort, CEB has aimed both to support intergovernmental follow-up processes and to drive effective inter-agency responses.

19.     In a way that has simultaneously built on and reinforced this inter-agency effort, nearly all of the intergovernmental bodies of the organizations that make up the CEB membership have sought to frame their strategies and policies around a common set of goals. In 2001, for instance, the World Bank’s governing body adopted a multi-year Strategic Framework that explicitly aligned the Bank’s efforts with the goals of the Millennium Declaration. In 2003, the Development Committee reaffirmed the shared commitment of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to achieving the MDGs, particularly the goal of reducing poverty.⁽⁹⁾  Similar inter-governmental processes have been underway throughout the rest of the UN system, bringing it together in an unprecedented fashion.

^8.  “Road map towards the implementation of the United Nations Millennium Declaration: Report of the Secretary- General (A/56/326).” This has enabled CEB to contribute to a system-wide perspective in the Secretary-General’s subsequent reports on the Declaration’s implementation. See “Implementation of the United Nations Millennium Declaration,” Reports of the Secretary-General 2002, 2003 and 2004 (A/57/270 and A/57/270/Corr.1; A/58/323; and A/59/282 and A/59/282/Corr.1).

^9.  The Development Committee is a forum of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that facilitates intergovernmental consensus-building on development issues. Known formally as the Joint Ministerial Committee of the Boards of Governors of the Bank and the Fund on the Transfer of Real Resources to Developing Countries, the Committee was established in 1974. The Committee’s mandate is to advise the Boards of Governors of the Bank and the Fund on critical development issues and on the financial resources required to promote economic development in developing countries. Over the years, the Committee has interpreted this mandate to include trade and global environmental issues in addition to traditional development matters.