Flynn Coleman is one of this year’s winners for Concern Worldwide’s annual creative writing competition. The following is an excerpt based on her award-winning essay, which urges President Obama to support the Millennium Development Goals for the sake of gender equality.
What if just one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) — achieving significant progress toward gender equality by 2015 — met its target, and in the process ensured that other MDGs would be realized as well?
In the developing world, women are gatekeepers and influencers in their villages. They have deep knowledge of local eco-systems and are the primary water gatherers, cooks, domestic organizers and healing agents for their families. When a mother is given a malaria bed net or attends a course on sexual education, she shares the net with her babies and an understanding of HIV and AIDS transmission with her partner and her friends.
Armed with a voice in community discussions, political decisions and leadership roles, women will rise above their poverty and pain. Most importantly, they will bring their children, husbands, brothers, mothers and friends with them. Women will apply the skills they learn in business school back to their hometowns and local communities.
Women will teach their children about sustainable living, ensuring environmental protection for the next generation. They will send their children to school, making sure they are wearing shoes and carrying pencils.
What if I told you that I know who holds the key to a future free from the torture of hunger, the lack of schooling, the isolation of discrimination, the grief of infant death, the confusion of sparse pre-natal care, the agony of disease, the devastation of environmental degradation and the pain of systemic injustice in the developing world?
What if I told you, that it was your daughter?
- Flynn Coleman, legal advocate for human, animal and environmental rights
We’re still in the process of looking through it, but we’ll have some analysis for you after the weekend. In the meantime, you can check out the plan here.
Oxfam America’s Porter McConnell shares her analysis of the White House’s Millennium Development Goals action plan.
The Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Summit is coming up in September. World leaders will discuss how to end hunger, send kids to school, keep mothers and their babies healthy, stop HIV/AIDS from becoming a death sentence, and all kinds of other poverty-fighting goals.
It’s a tall order. So President Obama asked USAID to produce a plan for doing the United States’ share to meet the MDGs. Today, the White House releases that MDG action plan.
A plan to fight the MDGs is a great stepping stone in fighting global poverty, but it’s not the whole story. If the US is committed to fighting global poverty, President Obama needs to deliver a global development strategy at the upcoming MDG Summit.
I’m happy to report that the MDG action plan mentions a new “development policy” coming out soon. Why is it so important that the US come up with a plan to fight poverty? Until the US has some kind of mission statement, all of these piecemeal reform efforts are like a ship without a compass. Why bother investing in “game changing innovations” if we don’t know what destination we’re trying to get to? Which innovations? To do what? How do we know when we’ve succeeded?
In the wake of the G8 in Canada, during which wealthy nations gathered to discuss and pledge their commitments to maternal, newborn, and child health, African leaders met this week in Uganda for the 15th African Union Summit. Dr. Jotham Musinguzi, Africa regional director of Partners in Population & Development, gives us his take on the Summit’s discussions and how he sees momentum from the Summit carrying forward into this fall’s MDG Summit in New York City and beyond.
No more excuses. That was the main message coming out of Kampala this past week after the 15th African Union Summit brought African leaders and high-ranking ministers together under the auspices of “maternal, infant and child health and development in Africa.”
In a debate session that lasted more than twice the allotted time, African leaders discussed the critical role of maternal health in moving the African continent forward. Leaders also agreed to renew the Maputo Plan of Action (PDF), a critical framework that ensures the rights and health of women and girls on issues of education, safe abortion, family planning and economic opportunity. Having it signed, in place and ready to be actualized is absolutely imperative.
No more excuses — we must address maternal health and women’s rights issues in Africa. While there has been outstanding leadership on these issues from all over the continent, our maternal health indicators continue to dwindle at the utmost bottom, globally. The vastness of the African continent, coupled with the severity of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the levels of poverty in many parts of our countries mean that the road to improving maternal health could not be harder.
In September of 2000, leaders of the 191 United Nations member countries met in New York City and formulated a plan to halve extreme poverty by 2015. Unanimously, these leaders agreed upon eight comprehensive, holistic, and attainable goals, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). If fulfilled, the MDGs will provide the poorest 17% of the world, who live on less than a dollar a day, with the opportunity to attend primary school, access to clean water, better child and maternal healthcare, and a sustainable future.
Since 2002, the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria has saved more than five million lives. However, there remains a $1.2 billion dollar shortfall in funding for these life-saving programs. We have a significant amount of ground to cover within the next five years.
As citizens of the United States, we must unite our voices and push our leaders to fulfill the promises they have already made. Thousands of Americans have already stepped up to take action—musician and humanitarian John Legend affirms his commitment to the MDGs here:
Be among those to lend their voice.
Commit in September is a grassroots movement demonstrating young Americans’ passion for global education, health, development in Haiti, and achievement of the UN MDGs. The campaign has been led by students calling out to peers, non-profits, and celebrities. The ONE Campaign, Water.org, Malaria No More, Rainn Wilson, Olivia Wilde, 30 Student Body Presidents and so many others are using their voices on Facebook and Twitter to help spread the word today and through the end of the month.
We know the MDGs are achievable. The most pressing question that remains is whether or not we as Americans will take small steps within our own means, to stand up and do something to end poverty in our time. Will you?
Add your name to grow the youth movement for sutainable international development: www.commitinseptember.com. Thanks for your voice.
Yesterday, Make Poverty History—Canada’s largest coalition of civil society organizations—released a new report that says the country is falling dangerously short of meeting its commitments to the world’s poorest people. As their press release pointed out:
“Canada holds a special place on the world stage. Not only are we hosting the G8 and G20 summits in Canada this month, but, as our Prime Minister rightly reminds us, we are also the G8 nation which best survived the economic crisis. That puts us in an excellent position to lead by example.”
As the report shows, Canada has made impressive progress on several of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), including hunger reduction and gender equality. But it’s still behind on half of its promises, including universal primary education, maternal health, and foreign aid spending. And if the Canadian government sticks to its recent decision to freeze aid spending, this could jeopardize all 8 MDGs.
The BBC is doing a series looking at Bangladesh and assessing whether it’s on track to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. The BBC’s Alastair Lawson has chosen to tell the story by focusing on individuals and their personal circumstances to illustrate how the country is doing broadly.
9 year old Aisha’s story – which looks at the state of primary education in Bangladesh – is particularly powerful. Her parents sacrifice so she can go to school in a country where 3.3. million of her peers are working already. Aisha says, “I want to be a lawyer when I grow up because I have seen so many people go to prison unjustly and I would like to help free them.”
ONE is campaigning to ensure that the Congressional budget does not cut foreign assistance programs like Feed the Future that help people break the cycle of poverty and hunger.
The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. More than 11 million people, mostly nomadic pastoralists and farmers in south-central Somalia, north-eastern Kenya, and south-eastern Ethiopia, are severely lacking access to food.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
As aid agencies warn more than 9 million people could be affected by a food crisis in East Africa, world leaders are failing to keep their 2009 promises to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world's poorest countries.
