Box 2. The Millennium Development Goals

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger: between 1990 and 2015 halve the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day.

2. Achieve universal primary education: ensure that by 2015 all children are able to complete a full course of primary schooling.

3. Promote gender equality and empower women: eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015.

4. Reduce childhood mortality: between 1990 and 2015 reduce the under-five mortality rate by two-thirds.

5. Improve maternal health: between 1990 and 2015 reduce the maternal mortality ratio by three-quarters.

6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases: halt and reverse the spread of these and other major diseases by 2015.

7. Ensure environmental sustainability: integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the losses of environmental resources; by 2015 halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.

8. Develop a global partnership for development: develop further an open, rules-based, predictable, nondiscriminatory trading and financial system; deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures to make debt sustainable in the long term.