The Millennium Project is an initiative that focuses on research implementing the organizational means, operational priorities, and financing structures necessary to achieve the Millennium Development Goals or (MDGs). The goals are aimed at the reduction of poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women. At the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000 world leaders initiated the development of MDGs and had set a completion date for the project of June 2005.
In order to support the MDGs, both UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), Mark Malloch Brown, have launched the Millennium Project to determine the best strategies for achieving the MDGs. The Project is headed by Professor Jeffrey Sachs. The Millennium Project worked from 2002-2005 to devise a recommended plan of implementation that will allow all developing countries to meet the MDGs and thereby substantially improve the human condition by 2015. The Millennium Project presented its final recommendations, "Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals," to the Secretary-General in January 2005.
Ten theme-orientated task forces have been created in order to perform the majority of the research. The task forces are an amalgamation of representatives from the academic community, public and private sectors of society, civil society organizations, and UN agencies that also include participants from outside the UN. Each Task Force is composed of 15-20 members who are all international leaders in their specific area, and are selected on the basis of their practical experience and technical expertise.
Famous quotes containing the words united nations, united, nations, millennium and/or project:
“The United Nations cannot do anything, and never could; it is not an animate entity or agent. It is a place, a stage, a forum and a shrine ... a place to which powerful people can repair when they are fearful about the course on which their own rhetoric seems to be propelling them.”
—Conor Cruise O’Brien (b. 1917)
“The veto is a President’s Constitutional right, given to him by the drafters of the Constitution because they wanted it as a check against irresponsible Congressional action. The veto forces Congress to take another look at legislation that has been passed. I think this is a responsible tool for a president of the United States, and I have sought to use it responsibly.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep,
Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow,
And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness.”
—Edwin Muir (1887–1959)
“The millennium will not come as soon as women vote, but it will not come until they do vote.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“A candidate once called his opponent “a willful, obstinate, unsavory, obnoxious, pusillanimous, pestilential, pernicious, and perversable liar” without pausing for breath, and even his enemies removed their hats.”
—Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)