UN Millenium Development Goals

What are the Millennium Development Goals?

The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – which range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015 – form a blueprint agreed to by all the world’s countries and all the world’s leading development institutions. They have galvanized unprecedented efforts to meet the needs of the world’s poorest.

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
-Reduce by half the proportion of the people living on less than a dollar a day
-Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger

2. Achieve universal primary education
-Ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling

3. Promote gender equality and empower women
-Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015

4. Reduce child mortality
-Reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five

5. Improve maternal health
-Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio

6. Combat HIV/AIDS malaria and other diseases
-Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS
-Halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases

7. Ensure Environmental sustainability
-Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources
-Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water
-Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020

8. Develop a global partnership for development
-Develop further an open trading and financial system that is rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory, includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction— nationally and internationally
-Address the least developed countries' special needs. This includes tariff- and quota-free access for their exports; enhanced debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries; cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous official development assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction
-Address the special needs of landlocked and small island developing States
-Deal comprehensively with developing countries' debt problems through national and international measures to make debt sustainable in the long term
-In cooperation with the developing countries, develop decentand productive work for youth
-In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries
-In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies— especially information and communications technologies

UN Six Principal Organs

Six Principal Organs:

The General Assembly:
- Consists of all member states with 1 vote each
- GA decisions merely recommendatory and not enforceable international law
- Has a large number of developing states

The Security Council:
- Consists of 15 members – five permanent and 10 non-permanent members elected by the GA for a term of two years
- Primary responsibility: the maintenance of international peace and security

The Economic and Social Council
-Consists of 54 members elected by the GA
Promotes:
-Higher standards of living, full employment and conditions of economic and social progress & development
-Solutions of international economic, social, health and related problems and international cultural and educational cooperation
-Universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinctions as to race, sex, language, religion.

The Secretariat
- It provides studies, information, and facilities needed by United Nations bodies for their meetings.
- It also carries out tasks as directed by the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly, the UN Economic and Social Council, and other U.N. bodies

The Trusteeship Council
- Established to provide international supervision
- Authorized to examine and discuss reports from the Administering Authority on the political, economic, social and educational advancement of the peoples of Trust Territories and, in consultation with the Administering Authority, to examine petitions from and undertake periodic and other special missions to Trust Territories.

The International Court of Justice
- Able to issue binding decisions in cases where countries have consented to its jurisdiction
- Based in the Hague, Netherlands
- Also known as the world court
- The main judicial organ of the UN

The United Nations: Overview

United Nations:
An international organization whose stated aims are to facilitate cooperation in:
-international law
-international security
-economic development
-social progress
-human rights issues

History of the United Nations:

League of Nations
-was an international organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919-1920
-its goals included disarmament, preventing war through collective security, settling disputes between countries through negotiation diplomacy and improving global welfare.
-after a number of notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis Powers in the 1930s
-the onset of the Second World War suggested that the League had failed in its primary purpose — to avoid any future world war.

Inter-Allied Declaration
-Signed in London on 12 June 1941, the Inter-Allied Declaration- "to work together, with other free peoples, both in war and in peace" -was a first step towards the establishment of the United Nations.

Atlantic Charter
-On 14 August 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the United States and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the United Kingdom proposed a set of principles for international collaboration in maintaining peace and security. The document, signed during a meeting on the ship HMS Prince of Wales, "somewhere at sea", is known as the Atlantic Charter.

Declaration by United Nations
-On 1 January 1942, representatives of 26 Allied nations fighting against the Axis Powers met in Washington, D.C. to pledge their support for the Atlantic Charter by signing the "Declaration by United Nations". This document contained the first official use of the term "United Nations", which was suggested by President Roosevelt.


Moscow and Teheran Conferences
-In a declaration signed in Moscow on 30 October 1943, the Governments of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States and China called for an early establishment of an international organization to maintain peace and security. That goal was reaffirmed at the meeting of the leaders of the United States, the USSR, and the United Kingdom at Teheran on 1 December 1943.

Dumbarton Oaks Conference
-The first blueprint of the UN was prepared at a conference held at a mansion known as Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. During two phases of meetings which ran from 21 September through 7 October 1944, the United States, the United Kingdom, the USSR and China agreed on the aims, structure and functioning of a world organization.

Yalta Conference
-On 11 February 1945, following meetings at Yalta, President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Premier Joseph Stalin declared their resolve to establish "a general international organization to maintain peace and security".

San Francisco Conference
-On 25 April 1945, delegates of 50 nations met in San Francisco for the United Nations Conference on International Organization. The delegates drew up the 111-article Charter, which was adopted unanimously on 25 June 1945 in the San Francisco Opera House. The next day, they signed it in the Herbst Theatre auditorium of the Veterans War Memorial Building
24 October 1945

*United Nations is created as its Charter is ratified by the five permanent members of the Security Council and the majority of other signatories, and comes into force.

Secretary – General:
BAN KI-MOON
1.Country of Origin: Republic of Korea
2.The eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations
3.Brings to his post 37 years of service both in government and on the global stage.

Objectives of the United Nations:
1.To maintain international peace and security and to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace
2.To achieve international cooperation in solving international problems often economic, social, cultural or humanitarian character
3.To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace
4.To be a center for harmonizing the actions of nations in attaining these common ends

Principles of the United Nations:
1.UN is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its members;
2.All members shall fulfill in good faith the obligations under the Charter;
3.Settlement of international disputes by peaceful means;
4.Non-use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state;
5.Non-interference in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state.