OMD 1 : Réduction de l’extrême pauvreté et de la faim

• Liam Brunham
  Medical Genetics / Medical Doctor, PhD
  University of British Columbia Delegation (CB)
  (extrait)

 

The UN Millennium Development Goals: A Human Rights Issue for Canada and the World (extrait)
Liam Brunham
Medical Genetics / Medical Doctor, PhD
University of British Columbia Delegation (CB)

« Every morning we could wake to the news that 20,000 people had died the day before of hunger, malnutrition and easily treatable diseases. Died for want of food, antibiotics and mosquito nets. Died only because they are poor. Yet somehow through the comfort of our own existence we maintain insular equanimity and unrelenting numbness in the face of this ongoing human catastrophe. It is in the context of this glut of preventable suffering that the UN Millennium Goals (MDGs) must be appreciated. The MDGs are a set of eight steps which are at first glance deceptively modest in scope: the eradication of extreme poverty (defined as surviving on less than $1 a day), universal primary education, gender equality, reductions in infant mortality, improvements in maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS and malaria, ensuring environmental sustainability and developing a global partnership for development. These goals are not a utopian vision. They are realizable goals, the self-evident simplicity of which is counterbalanced only by the egregious state of the world which has made them necessary. Yet they are also a remarkable source of hope for the future of our species, and, in the words of Stephen Lewis, a magnificent remedy to the excruciating indignity of the human condition. But we are falling far short of meeting these goals (…) »