In 2000, the United Nations hosted world leaders at its New York headquarters for the Millennium Summit. There, all the world’s countries and leading development institutions agreed on a set of goals with specific targets to be reached by 2015.

These eight goals, known as the Millennium Development Goals, form a roadmap for global action.

FAO is most involved with the first Millennium Development Goal: eradicating hunger and extreme poverty.

But all the goals are related. Progress in one area can lead to progress in others. That’s why FAO is committed to working with partners to help countries reach all of the goals.

Here they are:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

• Target 1: Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day
• Target 2: Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger

2. Achieve universal primary education

• Target 3: Ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling

3. Promote gender equality and empower women

• Target 4: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015

4. Reduce child mortality

• Target 5: Reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five

5. Improve maternal health

• Target 6: Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio

6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

• Target 7: Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS
• Target 8: Halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases

7. Ensure environmental sustainability

• Target 9: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources
• Target 10: Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water
• Target 11: Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020

8. Develop a global partnership for development

• Target 12: Develop further an open trading and financial system that is rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory. Includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction—nationally and internationally
• Target 13: Address the least developed countries’ special needs. This includes tariff- and quota-free access for their exports; enhanced debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries; cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous official development assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction
• Target 14: Address the special needs of landlocked and small island developing States
• Target 15: Deal comprehensively with developing countries’ debt problems through national and international measures to make debt sustainable in the long term
• Target 16: In cooperation with the developing countries, develop decent and productive work for youth
• Target 17: In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries
• Target 18: In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies—especially information and communications technologies