MDG Quotes
Ban Ki Moon, UN Secretary General:
"Addressing global challenges requires a collective effort, involving all actors. Through partnerships and alliances, and by our pooling comparative advantages, we increase our chances of success".
Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan:
"...A world that is not advancing toward the Millennium Development Goals - a world mired in the deprivation of hunger, the prevalence of disease and the despair of poverty -- will not be a world at peace."
Eveline Herfkens, former Executive Coordinator for the Millennium Development Goals Campaign, Special Advisor to the UNDP Director.
"The Millennium Development Goals are owned by the people." -
The Millennium Campaign:
"Additional (financial) resources must be delivered free of harmful conditionalities and without causing another downward spiral of debt."
World Bank and IMF Global Monitoring Report 2009: A Development Emergency (GMR):
"It is estimated that an additional 55 to 90 million people will be trapped in extreme poverty in 2009 due to the worldwide recession. The number of chronically hungry people is expected to climb to over 1 billion this year, reversing gains in fighting malnutrition and making the need to invest in agriculture especially urgent." (warning that that achievement of the Millennium Development Goals are still within reach, but growing more elusive by the day.)
Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Executive Director of the Millennium Campaign.
"We need new systems of "pipe fitting and pipe connection." We need advanced degrees in international organizational plumbing. How do you make the UN, a private company, a local community, an academic institution work together, where each is putting in its piece of the solution, in a way which makes sense - for an international diplomatic organization, a profit making firm, a local community and a national government? We don't have answers for that." -
Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations:
"These often unsung heroes understand...that poverty, disease and famine are just as deadly and destructive as earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis. Individuals ...are taking on these challenges in their communities, volunteering to make a difference. They remain the true champions of our work towards the Millennium Development Goals."
Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations:
"Dangerous social and political fuses have been lit. Facing crisis on many fronts, the world is coming to grasp the need for a transition -- to sustainable development, to new levels of cooperation, to a new multilateralism."
Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations:
"It is not in the United Nations that the Millennium Development Goals will be achieved. They have to be achieved in each of its Member States, by the joint efforts of their governments and people."
Lotta Hakansson:
"Even though more people are now aware of the MDGs, much remains to be done; campaigning on the MDGs is key to building the necessary support from citizens to make a difference in the fight against poverty." - (Lotta Hakansson is Chair of the International Committee of Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, and was reaffirming the strong commitment of local authorities in Sweden to the MDGs.)
Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations:
"The Millennium Development Goals can be met by 2015, but only if all involved break with business as usual and dramatically accelerate and scale up action now."
Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations: "World military spending has now risen to over $1.2 trillion. This incredible sum represents 2.5 per cent of GDP(global gross domestic product). Even if 1 per cent of it were redirected towards development, the world would be much closer to achieving the Millennium Development Goals." -
Carol Bellamy, former Executive Director of the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) :
"Despite the threat of global terror hanging over all of us, there is only one path: to pursue the Millennium Development Goals with fresh resolve -confronting violence, bigotry and hatred with the same determination that we attack the causes from which they spring - conflict, ignorance, poverty and disease. The world we seek, where every child can grow to adulthood in health, peace and dignity - in short, a world fit for children - has remained a dream for more years than we can count. But we at UNICEF are convinced that working together with committed partners, and with an appropriate plan of action and a commitment to resources, we can make that dream a reality for each and every child on earth." -
Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations:
"We will have time to reach the Millennium Development Goals - worldwide and in most, or even all, individual countries - but only if we break with business as usual. We cannot win overnight. Success will require sustained action across the entire decade between now and the deadline. It takes time to train the teachers, nurses and engineers; to build the roads, schools and hospitals; to grow the small and large businesses able to create the jobs and income needed. So we must start now. And we must more than double global development assistance over the next few years. Nothing less will help to achieve the Goals."
Mrs. Anna Tibaijuka: UN-HABITAT Executive Director:
"It is only through collective effort that the Millennium Development Goals can be achieved for the sake of human wellbeing, livelihood, sustainable development and global peace and stability."
Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations: "...if we are to make significant progress on meeting these Goals and stay true to the promise the world made to build a better, fairer world for all, there is no time to lose in putting in place the necessary policies and resources needed to achieve these aims. Eradicating extreme poverty, the overarching aim of the MDGs, cannot, however, take place without the involvement of all sections of society, including government, civil society, the private sector, the media and ordinary citizens alike. As is being demonstrated around the world today, volunteers have a unique and important role to play as active participants in development."
Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations: "... The Goals offer a compelling platform for business involvement. The target for water, for example, is to cut in half, by the year 2015, the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water. That requires making 270,000 new connections per day until then - something that Governments, NGOs and development agencies alone simply cannot do. I could give you similar numbers for many of the other targets, and for the broader development investments needed to achieve them, from energy to telecommunications. The Goals are intended, first and foremost, to help people. But they can be good for business: first, because helping to build the infrastructure is an enormous business opportunity; and second, because, once it is built, business will find larger, eager markets in place".
Kofi Annan, former Secretary-General of the United Nations:
"They [states] adopted the Millennium Declaration, which includes the eight Millennium Development Goals - precise pledges to achieve measurable results by 2015. Those pledges should be engraved on the heart, or at least the desk, of every political leader in every country. Indeed, they should be known throughout every society, so that in each country the people can monitor performance, and hold their leaders to account.... Many poor countries cannot hope to reach the targets unless rich countries help them - with official aid, with investment, with advice, with debt relief, and perhaps above all with a reform of the international trading system, so that producers in poor countries no longer face barriers to their exports, or unfair competition from subsidised imports."