Through the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the world assumed a commitment to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability, and develop a global partnership for development. In September 2005, more than 170 world leaders assembled at the UN World Summit in New York to assess global progress towards achieving the MDGs. The summit offered a key opportunity to assess whether contemporary macroeconomic policies will enable countries to attain these goals by the target date of 2015.
OSI's Network Women's Program and ActionAid International convened a panel of experts to discuss two new ActionAid International reports which suggest the need for alternative macroeconomic policies to better enable countries to achieve the MDGs. Topics included:
- the degree to which current economic policy choices may be hindering development;
- current models of alternative macroeconomic policies being developed by UNDP and various NGO and research institutes around the world;
- the policy space available in countries for consideration of more expansionary policy choices;
- what is needed for achieving the MDGs, in particular regarding HIV/AIDS, women's rights, and education.
Moderated by Anastasia Posadskaya-Vanderbeck, Director of the Network Women's Program, the panel featured:
- Everjoice Win, International Head Women's Rights, ActionAid International;
- Rick Rowden, Policy Analyst, ActionAid International USA;
- Akanksha Marphatia, Senior Education Policy Analyst, ActionAid International.