Millennium Development Goals

Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts

Thursday 22nd November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Nicholson, for raising the issue of the millennium development goals and for her perceptive speech and questions, so eloquently followed by other contributors to the debate. There are problems that are always inherent in goals and targets. Let me take the example of schools. Let us suppose that there are goals to reach certain standards in reading and mathematics. Schools in deprived areas will have more difficulty reaching the targets than those in affluent areas. As head teachers often say, it depends on where children start off, and success should be measured by what improvement has been made from the baseline of when a child enters school. Some countries, as we know, have horrendous problems around climate, poverty, disease, malnutrition, overpopulation, corruption and conflict. They will find it difficult to reach goals that others find much less so because the baseline varies in different countries. I support overarching goals, but I agree with the UK-based Global Health Network that we need to focus on inequity by directly targeting the groups, regions and countries that have fallen furthest behind in the development efforts related to the MDGs, and that we should build on vital unmet existing MDG commitments rather than seek to replace them.

I shall focus on the well-being of children, and I declare an interest as a trustee of UNICEF UK. Children are vulnerable. The Save the Children Fund points out that 200,000 Syrian refugee children are at risk of enduring freezing temperatures this winter. More than 50% of the population of Gaza are children. Children are the hope of the future. Another key consideration, one that is supported by Women and Children First, is ensuring the involvement at the local level of civil society, communities and affected populations in the design, development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of laws, policies and programmes; in other words, investing in people. A top-down approach, as my noble friend Lady Kinnock discussed so eloquently, may alienate and disempower the very people it seeks to help. Many women and children in communities must be enabled to have a voice, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, said.

UNICEF is about to carry out a consultation with children about the successor framework. Helping and empowering children demonstrates how important are the links between education, health, poverty reduction and gender equality. Improvement in any one of these aspects helps to improve the others. In helping children, development becomes more sustainable. Countries cannot tackle diseases such as malaria and HIV, reduce poverty or improve the capacity of populations without investing in children.

Other noble Lords have talked about education in this debate. A focus on education, particularly of women and girls, should be paramount. The Millennium Declaration and the UNICEF “A World Fit for Children” declaration can serve as guidelines and incentives for future progress, but with the caveat I expressed earlier that more targeting on specific countries and populations in difficulty should be a priority, and children’s well-being must be to the fore. A UN summit held in September 2010 set a target to ensure that by 2015 children everywhere, boys and girls alike, would be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. In 2008, enrolment in primary education in developing regions reached 89%, up from 83% in 2000. This rate of progress is insufficient to meet the MDG target of achieving universal primary education by 2015. Around 69 million school-age children are not in school, and almost half of them are in sub-Saharan Africa. I hope that the successor framework will address the shortfalls identified by Save the Children, which points out that there are inequities within countries which must be addressed.

However, there are many good examples of education initiatives which I hope will be shared so that good practice is developed across the world, particularly for women and girls. Can the Minister tell us how the successor framework is to be developed? What are the processes and who will have input into it? How will the UK contribute, apart from through the Prime Minister? Will voluntary sectors and local communities around the world be involved? Can the successor framework, while maintaining the ambitions of the MDGs, refocus within each of the eight goals in order to prioritise the most vulnerable, and be realistic about some of the threats to development such as conflict and overpopulation? That is not a must, but a should. I look forward to the Minister’s response.