The Millennium Development Goals are a concise set of goals, numerical targets and quantifiable indicators to assess progress in development. The set includes 8 goals, 18 targets and over 40 indicators.

All United Nations Member States have pledged to meet the following goals by the year 2015.

Click on each of the MDG icons to read how volunteers are contributing to achievement of the related goal.

More than a billion people still live on less than US$1 a day: sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and parts of Europe and Central Asia are falling short of the poverty target.

Target for 2015: Halve the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day and those who suffer from hunger.

As many as 113 million children do not attend school, but the target is within reach. India, for example, should have 95 percent of its children in school by 2005.

Target for 2015: Ensure that all boys and girls complete primary school.

Two-thirds of illiterates are women, and the rate of employment among women is two-thirds that of men. The proportion of seats in parliaments held by women is increasing, reaching about one third in Argentina, Mozambique and South Africa.

Targets for 2005 and 2015: Eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015.

Every year nearly 11 million young children die before their fifth birthday, mainly from preventable illnesses, but that number is down from 15 million in 1980.

Target for 2015: Reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five

In the developing world, the risk of dying in childbirth is one in 48, but virtually all countries now have safe motherhood programmes.

Target for 2015: Reduce by three-quarters the ratio of women dying in childbirth.

Forty million people are living with HIV, including five million newly infected in 2001. Countries like Brazil, Senegal, Thailand and Uganda have shown that the spread of HIV can be stemmed.

Target for 2015: Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS and the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.

More than one billion people lack access to safe drinking water and more than two billion lack sanitation. During the 1990s, however, nearly one billion people gained access to safe water and the same number to sanitation.

Targets for 2015:

• Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources.

• By 2015, reduce by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water.

• By 2020 achieve significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.

Many developing countries spend more on debt service than on social services. New aid commitments made in the first half of 2002 could mean an additional $12 billion per year by 2006.

Targets for 2015:

• Develop further an open trading and financial system that includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction – nationally and internationally

• Address the least developed countries’ special needs, and the special needs of landlocked and small island developing States

• Deal comprehensively with developing countries’ debt problems

• Develop decent and productive work for youth

• In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries

• In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies – especially information and communications technologies.