Millennium Development Goals and Human Rights

At the 2000 Millennium Summit, heads of State and Government adopted the Millennium Declaration that marks a global development partnership for the new century. In the Declaration member States have outlined their commitment to achieving eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) until the year 2015.

The Millennium Development Goals present a key opportunity to improve the enjoyment of people’s human rights around the world. Conversely, the MDGs will only be achieved in a sustainable way if States’ human rights obligations are respected and strengthened in the strategies aimed at achieving the Goals. OHCHR works to ensure that the human rights aspects of these strategies are in the first instance highlighted.

To this end the Office has actively participated in the work of the Millennium Project. The High Commissioner's Special Advisor on MDGs and Human Rights presented a paper outlining his views on the relevance of human rights to the MDGs . The human rights aspects of the MDGs have been underlined in both the report of the Millennium Project, Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals, and in the Secretary-General’s report to the General Assembly: In larger freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all.

One of the ten key recommendations the Millennium Project has put forward is to strengthen MDG-based poverty reduction strategies that provide a framework for promoting human rights. It also aims to increase awareness of the links between human rights and the MDGs, including through joint work with the Millennium Campaign, and to strengthen the capacity of the UN system at the country level to incorporate human rights concerns into the development issues which lie at the heart of the MDGs.

The Office is also working to raise awareness of the MDG process and its potential benefits among the human rights community, in the first instance through drawing the attention of the UN human rights mechanisms to the relevance of the MDGs to their work.

As requested by the Commission of Human Rights in its resolution 2005/4 the Office will provide assistance to the high-level task force on the right to development that, at its meeting in 2005, will examine MDG 8 on a global partnership for development. The task force will suggest criteria for the periodic evaluation of MDG 8 with the aim of improving the effectiveness of global partnership with regard to the realization of the right to development.