Tehran, July 25, 2007 - The Millennium Summit in 2000, when world leaders, including from Iran, agreed to the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), marked a turning point in the fight against extreme poverty.
The MDGs reflect the equal right to development for all.The Summit set a deadline of 2015 to achieve the goals. In 2007, midway to that deadline, while clear progress has been made towards implementing the MDGs, much still remains to be done.

The Goals call for quantified progress in eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education; promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women; reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability, and developing a global partnership for development. These are not comprehensive but they represent an important consensus among member states from all parts of the world, on some key priorities.

Very importantly, they are measurable, both at the global as well as the individual country level. Because the goals are common, they are also measurable against the same yardsticks for every person in every country. Implementing the goals is the responsibility of the member states and not the United Nations.

The most recent global report released by the UN, showed that there has been significant progress toward the target of halving extreme poverty by 2015 with the proportion of people worldwide living on the equivalent of a dollar a day dropping from 32 per cent (1.25 billion in 1990) to 19 per cent (980 million in 2004).

Further, the report revealed there were other improved indicators. For instance, in Asia in terms of children's education and in controlling diseases such as malaria and TB, there was definite progress. Even child mortality rate has declined worldwide.

But this was only one side of the picture. While efforts to reduce extreme poverty have borne fruit in many Asian countries, economic growth has led to growing inequalities within these very same countries - something which we observe in Iran too. Asia is also lagging in meeting the Goal of promoting gender equality and empowerment of women, the report noted. There are other hurdles too blocking progress towards implementing the MDGs.

The achievement of MDGs is only possible as a joint effort between developing and developed countries. Barring five countries, other developed nations have failed to keep their commitment to significantly increase their official development assistance up to 0.7% of the Gross national Income.

What of the situation in Iran? The MDGs indicators in Iran somewhat mirror the situation in Asia.

Iran has made systematic progress in reducing absolute poverty and hunger in terms of availability of food and access to basic needs. It is also one of those countries that is well placed to meet most of the MDGs at a national level, if the right policies are pursued over the next seven years. But the challenge lies in the fact that inequality and relative poverty is on the rise because of conditions such as inflation, unemployment, marginalization, lack of full social insurance coverage and other factors.

Regular investments by the government in education and health sectors have resulted in the greatly improved availability of education facilities and expansion of health network in the country. This has meant that the net enrolment ratio in primary education reached 98 per cent in 2005. On the health front, Iran has made striking progress in reducing under-five mortality rate, which has almost halved from 68 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 36 deaths in 2000. The maternal mortality rate has also sharply declined from 91 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1988 to 24.6 death per 100,000 live births in 2005.

The government of Iran has made strenuous efforts to improve gender equality in education, with the result that the ratio of girls in primary, secondary and tertiary education has grown from 79.2 per cent in 1990 to 94.3 per cent in 2005. But the related challenge of this is that despite these advances, the share of women in employment and management and policy-making roles remains relatively small.

On the HIV/AIDS front, Iran has seen rising infections in recent years, and there are signs that the infection patterns are making the dangerous shift from injecting drug users to sexual transmission. The government must be lauded for its progressive policies in tackling this disease. However, more resources and better coverage needs to be speeded up to deal with the problem.

The country also has to deal with some complex environmental issues. For example, some Iranian experts say that Iran has the fastest growth in desertification in the world.

Iran is not lacking in the national capacity and expertise to reach MDGs. Even though some of these can be strengthened, in some areas Iran has expertise that can be used by other countries to improve their situation. The difficulty in Iran is the lack of awareness of MDGs, its processes, techniques and its related indicators, particularly at the provincial and local levels. The national statistical system needs strengthening. Reliability of data is key to any planning and policy making process. MDGs are interrelated and that requires inter-sectoral work to make the most of the resources and efforts being put in to achieve the MDGs. Also needed are linkages and consistency between integrated macro-level planning and local community-based development approaches.

Iran is different from many other countries in that it is rich in human, natural and financial resources. Therefore, it is well positioned to achieving most of the goals at the national level. But due to some of the hurdles mentioned above, it faces the prospect of missing the MDGs targets in some provinces and regions.

The UN has advocated creation of alliances and partnerships between the government, civil society, private sector and media to promote awareness of and capacity to implement the eight goals. The UN system in Iran is prepared to mobilize technical support from across the UN System, facilitate international cooperation between countries, and assist in strengthening national capacities to overcome the hurdles in reaching the goals.