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Thirteen years ago the largest-ever gathering of world leaders took place on 8 September 2000 at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in New York, where the UN Millennium Declaration was made. The Declaration was the most supported, ambitious and specific list of global development goals agreed upon to date, and established a list of commitments to reduce extreme poverty by 2015 which became known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The Millennium Development Goals set in 2000

Source: United Nations

The MDGs were significant for global development cooperation due to their ability to stimulate global support, specifically financial resources. Many aid agencies and donors used them to direct their funding projects, and several governments also largely founded their health strategies upon them to receive external funding, which could comprise over 50 per cent of the state’s health budget. The MDGs thereby created a specific global development agenda, which some critics however now argue was not entirely in tune with the real needs of development of low- and middle-income countries. For example, proponents of a greater focus on non-communicable diseases (NCD) criticise that despite NCDs are now the leading cause of death worldwide, they did not receive a single mention in the 2000 MDGs.