From the MDGs to the SDGs: Great progress with greater challenges

The international community reached a major milestone in 2015 in the fight against global poverty. That year marked the end of a fifteen-year movement to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – eight international development goals established by the United Nations – that guided many efforts to alleviate poverty, with a prime objective of cutting in half the proportion of people living in poverty. To many, this effort was seen as the most successful anti-poverty movement in history. Governments, international organisations, and civil society groups all contributed to achieving the target of halving extreme poverty, which was achieved not only in time, but five years ahead of the 2015 deadline. More than a billion people were lifted out of poverty, and the rate of people living under extreme poverty dropped from close to half in 1990 to just 14 per cent in 2015. The success of the MDGs prompted world leaders to launch another set of global goals in 2015 – the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – that build on the momentum of the MDGs but with an even more ambitious goal of eradicating ‘poverty in all its forms’ by 2030.

Despite progress made, it would be naive for world leaders to assume that eliminating global poverty entirely can be accomplished by just staying the course. When one considers how the incredible feat of cutting poverty in half was actually achieved, there are very good reasons to be dubious. For one, although globally poverty was halved, in 30 countries – eighteen in Sub-Saharan Africa alone – poverty actually increased.