The ONE Campaign welcomes today’s report from the United Nations’ High Level Panel (HLP) outlining its vision for the next set of global development goals.

Michael Elliott, President and CEO of ONE, says:

“Today’s HLP report is a milestone in the world’s effort to fight extreme poverty and preventable disease. We particularly welcome the report’s specific commitment to ‘eradicating extreme poverty from the face of the earth by 2030.’ Now we have to turn words into action.

We are delighted that the panel recognized that ‘no one should be left behind.’ It is vital that the needs and desires of the world’s poorest and most marginalized are placed at the heart of a new development agenda.

While most of the funding for sustainable development will come from nations’ own resources, we welcome the report’s reminder that ‘aid remains vital for low-income countries and the promises made on aid must be kept.’ We’ve made remarkable progress in the past decade and a half in the fight against extreme poverty and preventable diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria. Now is not the time to put such progress at risk by cutting foreign assistance budgets.

The HLP’s call for a data revolution to strengthen accountability and transparency is hugely important. Sunlight is the best disinfectant against the perils of poor governance and corruption. Citizens should be empowered to hold governments accountable for the use of public resources.  We welcome the proposed Global Partnership on Development Data to fill critical gaps in our knowledge and expand the accessibility of data.

Finally, with less than 1,000 days until the current MDGs expire, we need to concentrate on getting the current job done. Even as we debate future development goals, we cannot lose sight of the need to achieve existing ones. Now is the time to redouble our efforts to keep the promise the world made to itself in the Millennium Development Goals.”

To track the progress being made on the current MDGs, ONE released the 2013 DATA Report on May 29. The report is the only major study ranking countries on their overall MDG progress. It also assesses the contribution that sub-Saharan African countries’ own spending is having on their performance.

One of the DATA report’s key findings is that 30 countries in sub-Saharan Africa have accelerated progress in the last three years on reaching the MDGs and 16 are on track to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015. But further momentum is at risk. Governments across sub-Saharan Africa are set to fall short of their own development commitments by an estimated $243 billion by 2015.