Process for setting new global development goals should be open, inclusive

Aug 28 2012

In this CNN opinion piece, Jamie Drummond, co-founder and executive director of ONE, notes the 2015 deadline for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is approaching, assesses progress towards these goals and examines issues surrounding the creation of a new set of goals. "With partners we've worked on a few specific commitments in the fight against extreme poverty, hunger, and disease and seen how when they are focused, such agreements can make a real measurable difference," he writes, adding, "Take AIDS or malaria -- in the last 10 years eight million more people are on life-preserving HIV treatment, and the number of people dying from malaria has been nearly halved. Or vaccines -- which have prevented more than five million deaths."

"When you've seen campaigns such as these go from the margins to the mainstream and achieve real success and save lives, it is hard not to be supportive of more such goals," but "the key thing here is, what do you think should be in the new goals?" he continues. "The process by which they could be agreed in the middle of the second decade of the 21st century should certainly look very different than that through which they were agreed at the end of the 1990s" because of advancements in technology, he writes, noting, "We can today poll, scientifically, people across the developing world in ways we couldn't before. We can also ask a wider community of people around the world what they want the goals to be and how they want to support the achievement of these goals." He concludes, "My belief is that not only will the new goals build on the momentum of the original goals and in many cases finish off the job they started, but we will also develop a bigger constituency for getting the goals finished than we had the first time around" (8/26).