MDG Monitor tracks progress to development goals

United Nations -- The United Nations, Google and Cisco last week unveiled a pioneering online site that tracks progress towards decreasing global poverty by 2015, a global campaign known as the Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched the project, called MDG Monitor, and highlighted the urgent need to increase global cooperation, the UN office said.

"Achieving the Goals is a truly global task, requiring governments, international organizations, private companies and civil society to work together,” said the Secretary-General. “I thank Google and Cisco for helping us create the MDG Monitor -- an example of the kind of innovative partnerships we need.”

The Secretary-General was joined by UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis, Cisco Senior Vice President Carlos Dominguez, and Google Chief Technologist for Google Earth and Maps, Michael T. Jones in launching the project, a groundbreaking innovation in charting development progress. MDG Monitor tracks progress toward the MDGs in a number of categories in nearly every country in the world.

The site presents the most current data from multiple sources in development bellwethers like public health, education and women’s empowerment. By laying out areas of progress and continuing challenge for the world to see, MDG Monitor aspires to keep the global community’s eye firmly fixed on the Millennium Goals, and to provide vital information for policy makers and development practitioners worldwide.

The MDGs, agreed by world leaders from 189 countries in New York in 2000, call for quantified, time-bound progress in eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education; promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women; reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and developing a global partnership for development. UNDP, in its designated role as MDG scorekeeper, initiated MDG Monitor as an innovative means of keeping track of progress and raising awareness at the same time.

Although almost eight years have passed since the MDGs were first introduced, today just short of one billion people live on less than one dollar a day, every year six million children die from malnutrition before their fifth birthday, and in deeply impoverished nations less than half of the children are in primary school and fewer than 20 percent go to secondary school.