For the first blog of the new decade I want to take you back to the turn of the century. A time when we had Westlife at number 1, Tony Blair in his pomp, the prospect of the millennium bug and a plan by world leaders to tackle global poverty -the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
They were trumpeted by the leaders of the G8 (the world’s most industrialised nations), as a great solution to the continuing scar of global poverty.
However, we are way off track for meeting these commitments. If we don’t start to see some strong action this year then they will just become empty promises. And that’s where you come in. Take part in Oxfam’s Big Promise and send a message to world leaders that promises can and must be kept.
Through the MDGs millions of people could be lifted out of poverty. They aim to provide, among other things, clean water, access to medicines and build schools. The short film below gives more of an idea of what these commitments are.
The deadline for meeting these eight goals is 2015 but as things stand we’re nowhere near reaching them. Unless something changes dramatically, our leaders will break the promises that we made to the developing world.
Millions of people in poor countries continue to get low-quality health care, or are forced to go without it altogether. Fees are too high, hospitals and clinics are too few.
More than 72 million children in the developing world – the majority of them girls – are going without education. That’s more than the population of the United Kingdom.
So now is the time to put pressure on our leaders and make sure that they can’t wriggle out, forget about or spin their way around meeting the MDGs.
In some ways the new century has been a disappointment. I still don’t have a flying car or a robotic butler. There’s not much chance that I’ll get either of them in the next five years. But with the right will, us lot putting the pressure on and leaders, erm leading, we can reach the MDGs and lift millions of people out of poverty.