The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) will expire in 2015. For 15 years, MDGs rallied behind a common understanding of poverty eradication and provided targets to guide policy decisions.
Reducing by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to drinking water has already been achieved and the poverty rate has fallen to under half of its 1990 value. Deaths from malaria and HIV infections declined; availability of anti-retroviral drugs for HIV/AIDS treatment increased. However, decreases in maternal mortality are far from the target. Significant steps towards achieving universal primary education have also been made. Much more remains to be done, as progress is uneven among countries and regions and some targets are still off-track.
The United Nations at its September 2013 MDG Summit will agree on a roadmap to define the vision for the post 2015 Sustainable development framework that will be adopted at the Global Summit in 2015.
Europe and national Governments must take a strong stand at this process. Considering that:
the Parliamentary Assembly: