With 10 years to go to the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target date of 2015, current trends will leave most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa far short of most targets. The gap between trend and target can be expressed in statistics. But behind the statistics are human costs.
This note provides a preliminary assessment of the potential scale of these costs. It draws on a global trend projection analysis developed by UNDP’s Human Development Report Office (HDRO). The analysis uses country-by-country data for the period 1990-2003 to build global and regional aggregates that capture changes in the distribution of poverty, child mortality, children out of school and other indicators.
The full global trend projection will be published in the 2005 Human Development Report in advance of a UN summit to review progress and prospects for achieving the MDGs.
We stress that the data set out in this provisional note reflect current trends, not destiny. Trends can be changed through national policies and effective international cooperation. The Gleneagles G8 Summit in July 2005 provides a critical opportunity to prevent the potential human development costs identified in this report from becoming actual costs.
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