New Report from ActionAid Outlines a 12-part Framework for Governments to Reframe the MDGs

News Advisory:

Press Conference: Sept. 8, 10am to 10:30am

Location: United Nations, Room C226

Subject: A new framework for the MDGs


Contact: Deborah Tompkins, Communications Coordinator, ActionAid International 202-341-1765

New Report from ActionAid outlines a 12-part framework for governments to reframe the MDGs

As leaders from 189 nations will meet at the UN World Summit to discuss progress toward achieving the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), analysts, policy specialists, academics, and civil society leaders will voice their call for reforms.

Everyone will have a voice except the very people the MDGs were designed to help.

To fill that gap, ActionAid International went to people living in poverty and asked them whether their freedom, rights and dignity have enlarged over the past five years.

On Thursday, September 8, ActionAid will release its summary report of this extensive and unprecedented survey, Millennium Development Goals: As If People Matter in which the world’s poor speak out on the lack of progress of the MDGs.

The collective viewpoints and experiences of more than 340,000 impoverished people living in 5,000 villages across 18 countries were surveyed during June, July and August 2005 in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Camobodia, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Senegal, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Tanzania, Somalia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Brazil and Guatemala.

Findings include:

-- In 64 percent of the villages AAI visited, people regularly go hungry.

-- In 83 percent of settlements, work is not available for part of the year.

-- Nearly half the villages have no access to any social services.

-- Women often subsist on less than half the wages paid to men.

-- Children as young as 5 work for money in 71 percent of the villages.

-- Four out of five school-age girls have never been inside a classroom.

The report concludes with a 12-part framework for governments to reframe the MDGs from a rights-based perspective and engage poor people as the agents of their own liberation from poverty.

The report and a new framework for the MDGs will be discussed on Thursday, September 8, from 10 am to 10:30am in Room C226 at the United Nations.

Panelists include:

Chair: H.E. Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Bangladesh.

Ramesh Singh, Executive Director, ActionAid International

John Samuel, (title) ActionAid International

Minar Pimple, Executive Director, PDHRE

Zareen Bibi, Pakistan Women’s Rights Group

Margaret Bamukyawa, Uganda Farmer’s Group

Note to Editors:

ActionAid International is a nonprofit organization bringing relief to some 13 million individuals in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean every year. Working hand-in-hand with 2,000 civil society partners, over 90 percent of ActionAid’s employees herald from developing countries.

Contact Information

Deborah Tompkins

Media Contact

ActionAid International

Contact via E-mail