Millennium development goals

Millennium development goals

Introduction

Millennium development goals were developed during the millennium summit of the United Nations held in 2000. All the 189 members of the united nation and other international organization that are approximately 23 agreed to work towards these goals and make sure they are achieved by the 2015. These millennium development goals include;

Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger,

Achieving universal primary education,

Promoting gender equality and women empowerment,

Reducing child mortality rate,

Improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases,

Ensuring environment sustainability and

Developing a global partnership for development

All of these goals were given specific targets and the dates they must be achieved. Reports made on China regarding millennium development goals has shown that there is some progress to some of the eight goals but there still is a lot to be done as there are some of the goals that seem to lag far much behind as shown below.

 

 

,Millennium development goals and indicator	Current	Target	Progress
Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day	3.8%	4.7%	Already met
Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education Net enrolment rate at primary school Gross enrolment rate at junior middle school	99.4% 99.0%	100 % 100%	Already met
Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women Primary school enrollment rate (girl / boy) Gender parity index for 5-yr retention rate (PS) Gender parity index for 3-yr for JMS Women seats account 1/3	67.44/ 47.2% 52% 21.4%	30%	Likely
Goal 4: Reduce Child Mortality the under five mortality rate reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015,	17.2‰	20 ‰	Already met
Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health The maternal mortality ratio reduce by three quarters    between 1990 and 2015 (per 100000 birth) The skilled personnel assistant delivery The accessing rate to reproductive health	31.9 96.3% 89.5%	22%	Likely Potentially
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases (1/100000) Incidence rate of HIV/AIDS Incidence rate of malaria Incidence rate of tuberculosis	0.057 0.55 74.27	Likely Potentially Likely
Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability Forestry coverage Coverage Rate of Improved Drinking Water Coverage Rate of Improved Sanitation	20.36% 94.3% 63.2%	86	Likely Likely
Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development Make available the benefit of new technologies, especially information and communications The fixed phone penetration rate The mobile phone penetration rate The Internet penetration rate The number of internet user	22.9% 60.5% 31.8% 420 million	On-going

 

This paper sets out to discuss the progress of millennium development goals (MDGs) in China.

Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger

China is on tract in the eradication of poverty and hunger through halving poverty levels. In addition, China’s efforts represents the overall development together with enacting polices as well as budgetary support for eradicating poverty. The rate at which the rate of poverty has reduced in China is extremely slow for it to achieve the given target. The percentage of people that lived with extreme poverty was taken to be 58 eight percent and this was back in 1991 (Langford, 2010).  The rate was seen to fall to a percentage of 42.3 percent in 2010. This drop took a cumulative of nineteen years. It has been observed that the rate has greatly reduced in the recent years. The percentage of reduction of the poverty rate has been 0.5 in four years that is between 2006 and 2010. And yet the given target that is 13.3 percent away is supposed to be achieved in the remaining 5 years from the year 2010 to the year 2015. The extreme poverty in China has been seen to occupy the largest portion in the rural areas more than it is prevalent in the urban areas. So that this goal achieves its 2015 target the specific accelerators are needed to take action. The rural poverty has been tallied to be four times higher than in the urban areas. The reason behind the levels of poverty in the rural areas is the limited access to the social and physical infrastructure such as medical facilities, roads and even electricity which drags the development behind (Sachs, 2005).

The rural areas have got 17.2 percent to cover in the five years from 2010 to 2015 whereas the urban areas are really close to reaching the target. In fact most of the urban areas have already attained the required goal but the rural areas still drag the national wide efforts down. In the past decade it has been observed that the poverty has reduced due to rural urban migration as the people move from the economically poor rural areas to the stabilized urban cities with the economic opportunities (Nelson, 2007). The rural areas are in dire need of poverty reduction programs if they are to make it in reaching the 2015 target goal of poverty eradication. There are obstacles that have countered efforts of poverty reduction. Higher poverty in the households headed by female is one of them. The female headed homes are afflicted by poverty more than the families headed by a male counterpart. In 2010 the female headed household recorded 60.4 percent poverty level as compared to the 57.1 percent from male headed families. The families that experience loss of a male spouse which may be as a result of death or even divorce, tend to suffer from reduced labor capacity and hence lower income (Saith, 2006). This makes the female headed household more prone to food insecurity and poverty. Another barrier is the low labor productivity prevalent in China. This is particularly caused by agriculture which although carries two third of the rural population brings negative results. Also the fact that as per 2010 only 22 percent of the household had their households connected to electricity. The electricity in China is unequally distributed and even low and this work a lot more in low labor productivity (Kabeer, 2003).

High population growth rate has impacted efforts towards poverty eradication. This has negatively impacted the efforts for poverty eradication as it exerts pressure on the public expenditure. There is a weak connection that exists between the areas with economic growth and the areas which give employment to the poor (Chen, & Ravallion, 2012: Singer,  2008.).Also the wide income inequality has been a hindering factor towards poverty reduction .The poverty should be weakened by income equality but for the case of China income inequality is prevalent. Additionally there has been a rise in the inequality from 2006 to 2010 (Hulme, 2010). The urban areas are filled with economic activities while the urban area is left underdeveloped depending only on farming. This encourages poverty in China.

China’s effort to curb extreme hunger has been very futile to some extent as there are still cases of hunger and malnutrition. The country men have to learn ways of using disease resistant foods to ensure lower cases of drought. Generally poverty goes hand in hand with hunger and so efforts to reduce poverty will be beneficial to hunger reduction (Vandemoortele, 2011).

Promoting gender equality and empowering women

Despite the efforts to curb gender inequality and women empowerment, China is not likely to attain the 2015 target. The ratio of girls to boys in the primary education has increased perfectly and even more is that there has been equality in the primary enrolment of primary schools. The programme for the advancement of girls’ education is what has worked to this. Gender inequality has however been decreasing in the secondary schools. This inequality has been brought about by the high dropout rate of girls. The main cause of these girls dropping out of schools is to uptake social responsibilities (Clemens, Kenny, & Moss, 2007).

China has recorded a high number of girls who should be school going, and female headed families. For instance, statistics below shows the ratio of literate female to male  in East and North-east Asia.

 

Additionally the fact that HIV/AIDS affects all ages, it leaves a lot of families forced to withdraw older children from school so that they can help take care of their siblings and/or even assist in the production of food. In the tertiary education gender equality has been stagnant from 2005 where it was 0.74 percent and in 2009 it recorded to be 0.75. Many women find it difficult to join tertiary institutions especially after they get married or become. Some tertiary institutions have made great improvements in admitting female spouses.

The secret to the improvement of women representative can only be with the adoption of legal frameworks that make women seating in the parliament a guarantee. Additionally political parties play a very big role in the acceleration of gender inclusiveness politically in the national, regional and local sections (UNDP, 2010).

Reducing child mortality rate

According to the decline in child mortality rate in China, the target will not be attained by 2015. Under-five mortality rate has fallen from 190.7 deaths per 1,000lives in 1992 to 137.6 deaths per 1,000 births in 2010. The main cause of deaths among infants is complications that come about during childbirth. The other causes are respiratory infections, diarrhea, measles, malaria and malnutrition and also a combination of these. Many nations have reduced successful child mortality through the implementation of ‘integrated management of childhood illnesses’ strategic plan which was developed by UNICEF and world health organization with an aim of improving child health. The child health intervention in China needs to be revised despite the fact that they have adopted the IMCI strategy. The country has a problem in the management and prevention of diarrhea, pneumonia and malaria. The citizens need awareness on the need of appropriate feeding of young ones, hygiene and safe drinking water (Minujin & Delamonica 2003).

Access to safe drinking water has improved but the rate is too slow to achieve the target of 25.5 as given out by the MDG by 2015. The group of people who didn’t have access to improved water sources declined from 51 percent to 36.9 percent between the years 1991 to 2010  (Barnes & Brown, 2011). National water reforms have been made by the government. The government has introduced commercialized water and sewerage utility companies in the urban and the rural areas. The companies rendering these services have done a lot in improving the quality of services but there are still problems of coverage and viability (Renwick, 2011).  The rapid rate of urbanization and the growth of slums in the urban areas has accounted for the rise of people having poor water access which rose from 11.8 percent in 2006 to 15.3 percent in 2010. Basic sanitation has also become a big problem in China. The percentage of people affected by poor sanitation rose from 26 in 1991 to 67.3 in the year 2010. China is unlikely to reach the 2015 target of 13 percent. The decline can be explained by the human settlements that don’t have basic sanitation. The mostly used sanitation in China is the pit latrines which are used by 73.1 percent of Chinese.

This is a loss caused by diarrhea and loss of productivity. Bringing water closer to communities by piping or even digging boreholes can be very beneficial in the improvement of sanitation and moreover can help women and girls secure more time for more constructive activities like education.

Conclusion

Millennium development goals are international development goals that were made by the 189 nations consisted in the United Nations and other 23 international organizations. The target was to be achieved by 2015 (Morvaridi, 2008).  China is one of the participant nations that have worked toward the development goals. However when four millennium goals were chosen and an analysis made, it can be observed that China is somehow a bit far from the target goal and so a lot has to be done .  However there are still some goals that will have been achieved by 2015. There are goals like combating HIV/AIDS and malaria that have already been achieved.

Bibliography

 

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