This is a joint post written with Claudia Williamson, a post-doctoral fellow at DRI.
If you’re reading this blog, and especially if you’re in New York City right now, you’re probably familiar with the Millennium Development Goals. Besides being the focus of this week’s United Nations summit, they are just (according to the UN) “the most broadly supported, comprehensive, and specific development goals” in human history. Should we fail to meet them by 2015, (according to Oxfam) “we are likely to witness the greatest collective failure in history.”
They are the Hollywood blockbuster of development targets. They may not be nuanced or realistic, but they bring in lots of money.
For the rest of the world, who may have never been inside a white Land Cruiser, or can’t tell a CIDA from a SIDA, who’s ever heard of the MDGs?
In the latest wave of the World Values Survey, taken from 2005 to 2008, people in countries around the world were asked this question.
In the US, the world’s largest donor, only 5 percent of people surveyed were willing to admit that they had heard of something called the Millennium Development Goals. (Another survey from 2010 which posed the question slightly differently found that 10 percent of Americans had heard “a lot” or “some” about the MDGs, while 89 percent had heard “not much” or “nothing at all.” Either way you slice it, more Americans now believe the US president is a Muslim (18 percent) than have heard of the MDGs.)
In Japan, the second largest donor included in the survey (there are unfortunately no figures for the UK), 11 percent had heard of the worldwide targets. The Germans and Swedes scored the highest among donors, with 27 percent and 31 percent awareness, respectively.
When we plotted data from the World Values Survey against per capita income (data from the World Development Indicators) we found a negative relationship between income levels and the percentage of respondents who had heard of the MDGs.
Source: World Values Survey and World Development Indicators
Ethiopia, the poorest country in the sample and a large aid recipient, registered the highest MDG awareness, at 66 percent. Mali (47 percent) and Zambia followed (44 percent).
So people in countries that receive aid are more likely to be aware of the MDGs than people in the countries that give it. This probably doesn’t come as a shock. After all, aid policy in recipient countries affects people’s daily lives, determining for many whether they will get a loan for their small business, whether their crops will be competitive at market, whether their child will be vaccinated against a deadly disease. But aid policy in donor countries makes little difference to most. Simply put, people know when it pays to know.
Many people who think the MDGs are deeply flawed as specific development targets still support them because they believe they can be effective tools for advocacy in rich donor nations. And they have been effective at raising aid budgets over the last ten years. But as a tool to raise awareness among the wider population in wealthy countries about the problems facing poorer nations, the MDGs have fallen short.
5 Comments
One in ten of the entire world population are living with a disability. That’s 650 Million people! And what’s nuts, is that 80% of these people are living in developing countries! – That in my opinion is a talking point!!!
I personally believe that the inclusion of People with Disabilities in targets is an essential prerequisite to the achievement of the MDGs.
It’s very important that we focus more attention on the MDGs, especially in donor countries to keep governments focused on their commitments. I address some ways that NGOs and individuals can link to the MDGs here http://bit.ly/ap0N7T
Karen, I think you brought up a very interesting point and data, of which I myself, never knew before. The reason why we know nothing about people with disabilities in the developing world and why they are almost always left out of picture is because even healthy people there struggle to survive. I am not saying that it is right to disregard people with disabilities. Yet from what I see even in my own country, Russia, a supposedly developed nation, an absolute disregard and indifference to the people with disabilities, I understand that for these people to be addressed their countries have a very long way to go. You would think that the international community should have gotten involved, but they are already short on money & fail to help even the healthy people.
The answer maybe NGOs that in their work do not leave people with disabilites from their reach. I proudly say that the organization I volunteer for, Color Me In!, that works in rural Zambia, also works with people with disabilities.
http://www.colormein.org/
Where do you think the answer to this problem lies?
Aidwatch and Clemens/Moss have criticized the MDG’s for the following reasons:
• The goals are not evidence-based and there are no real systems for measuring progress or even knowing whether we are reaching them.
• The goals are unrealistic for the poorest countries and even countries that are making significant progress in the areas of the goals will be portrayed as failures.
• No one has been held accountable for the goals. Responsibility for achieving them is so diffuse that we have no way of knowing who or what is helping to achieve the MDG’s and what has failed and should be stopped.
• Even as an awareness raising tool, they have done poorly.
• They have not paid sufficient attention to the importance of economic growth and trade.
I agree with most of these criticisms, but I think they have missed the most important part of what is wrong with the MDG’s. The biggest problem with the MDG’s is they were conceived, promoted and driven by the international development community from donor nations. They are another manifestation of the top-down approach to development that leads to lack of true ownership and local problem solving that is at the heart of real development. Yes, there has been the usual process of getting leaders from poor nations to commit to the goals, but these are artificial exercises that are a part of the rituals of diplomacy that no one should mistake for real ownership.
Moreover, I think one of the worst things that could happen would be to create a massive system of accountability for achieving the targets and tracking of quantitative targets year by year. When the starting point is an externally owned, top down approach, managing to results with close measuring of progress can be a dangerous thing. Some of the experience with PEPFAR and the Abuja targets is instructive. By the time the lofty goal is broken down to a yearly target in a specific district that a sub grantee is accountable for, you have a system of incentives that keeps people focused on achieving short term process indicators and ignoring the larger issues of progress around the problem that the target was intended to solve. So, instead of making sure people are really changing their behavior to adopt safe sex practices, you have people just counting heads at awareness raising sessions. Instead of making sure that mosquito nets are being used by people most at risk, you have people focused on distribution targets. The process indicators inevitably take precedent over the outcomes.
I recently met with an official at a global malaria control program to discuss the fact that private sector contributions to malaria control were being marginalized and that even while coverage was improving, the health system was becoming less efficient and less sustainable. Although the official agreed with my analysis of the situation, she said that they couldn’t think about sustainability or efficiency until they achieved the Abuja targets. This is my biggest fear about the MDG’s.
So if we have to have the MDG’s let’s just use them to fundraise, to raise awareness about important problems, but please don’t build any global implementation systems around them. Country leaders need to take responsibility for setting their own targets that are based on their resources, their needs and their priorities.
I’m actually pretty astonished that 1 in 20 Americans have heard of the MDGs…. I suspect sampling problems.
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[...] The Millennium Development What? – Aid Watch – “So people in countries that receive aid are more likely to be aware of the MDGs than people in the countries that give it. This probably doesn’t come as a shock. After all, aid policy in recipient countries affects people’s daily lives, determining for many whether they will get a loan for their small business, whether their crops will be competitive at market, whether their child will be vaccinated against a deadly disease. But aid policy in donor countries makes little difference to most. Simply put, people know when it pays to know.” [...]
[...] the results of a survey that in the U.S., the world’s largest donor, 89 percent of Americans “had heard ‘not much’ or ‘nothing at all’” about the [...]
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