High-level UN summit on Millennium Development Goals opens in New York
Episcopal News Service. September 20, 2010 [092010-01]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
A three-day United Nations summit on the Millennium Development Goals begins Sept. 20 with the awareness that the organization is $20 billion short on the 2010 commitments its member nations made toward achieving the goals by 2015.
As the world's leaders gathered in New York for the 65th session of the U.N. General Assembly and its three-day high-level summit, U.N. General Secretary Ban Ki-moon told a news briefing that "Africa accounts for 80 per cent of that gap, that means $16 billion."
"It is particularly distressing that the place of greatest need is also the place that accounts for the lion's share of the shortfall," he said at a Sept. 16 press conference which introduced the 2010 report of the MDG Gap Task Force.
The general secretary said the report "should motivate world leaders to act with urgency" at the Sept. 20-22 "high-level plenary meeting" on the MDGs. He urged the world's leaders to renew their commitment to the global partnership for development that is the foundation for the goals, a set of eight targets designed to reduce by half poverty, hunger, maternal and child deaths, disease, inadequate shelter, gender inequality and environmental degradation by 2015.
"We have the tools and the resources to achieve the goals by 2015," he said. "We know what works. We must not balance our budgets on the backs of the poor."
The U.N.'s 2010 MDG report notes that "uneven" progress has been made towards achieving the goals and calls for a "major push forward."
"Old and new challenges threaten to further slow progress in some areas or even undo successes achieved so far," the authors said.
The authors of the report say that the MDGs "have made a real difference" in many people's lives around the world, "but unmet commitments, inadequate resources, lack of focus and accountability, and insufficient dedication to sustainable development have created shortfalls in many areas" which have been aggravated by the global food and economic and financial crises.
A draft 31-page "outcome document" reaffirming the leaders' "resolve to work together for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples" has already been informally agreed to and sent to the summit for approval.
The Episcopal Church has been committed since 2003 to helping the world achieve the standards called for in the MDGs. The goals formed the basis of the church's budget priorities for the 2006-2009 triennium and a continued commitment to the goals was included in a different set of priorities for the 2010-2012 budget.
"We need continue with our advocacy for the MDGs, continue to educate at all levels of the church as to how our commitment to achieving the goals is consistent with how we understand God's mission of restoration and reconciliation," Diocese of Connecticut Bishop Ian Douglas told Episcopal News Service recently.
He said that the use of the MDGs to reply to what he called "the missiological invitation before us to heal a broken world and a broken creation" is "still a key vocation for us as Episcopalians."
Douglas was the sponsor of Resolution D019 which the 2009 meeting of General Convention approved to, among other commitments, reaffirm the church's use of the MDGs as "a primary mission priority through 2015."
Explaining that he has a "grave concern" that the MDGs are "falling off of the agenda of civil society," Douglas said the relief and development concerns generated recent natural disasters such as the earthquake in Haiti and recent flooding in Pakistan, and other crises should not be seen as competition for commitment to the MDGs.
"The urgent crises and disasters are invitations actually for us to recommit and re-engage with the goals," he said. "It's not a competition; it's an opportunity because we can understand how to engage with those disasters and those tragedies through the lens of MDGs."
Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation, founded in 2006 to help the church live into its support of the MDGs, recently announced two activities that are meant to continue and change that advocacy.
"We are, in the church, in a defining moment," EGR Executive Director Devon Anderson told ENS. "We can allow the constraints of the global economic crisis to confuse our priorities and blow us off course. Or, we can choose the kind of prophetic witness to which Jesus called us. We can choose to act, to redouble our efforts and build a movement that signals to the world that our church will -- always and sacrificially -- align ourselves with the poorest of humanity."
EGR Organizing Institute is billed as a way to "answer to the challenges of realizing ambitious Millennium Development Goals in the current economic climate." Saying that "measurable action is what the MDG movement needs at this point in its life cycle," the organization sees the institute as a way to help the Episcopal Church be a model to the world in setting measurable goals around global mission, and training the leadership needed to achieve them.
"Despite economic challenges at home, the Episcopal Church must not walk away from the tragedy of extreme poverty," Anderson said. "We must respond by redoubling our efforts, and making good on the promises we have made to our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world to actively engage the MDGs as one of our most urgent priorities."The first two organizing projects will involve partnering with the dioceses of Spokane and Minnesota to mobilize leadership and what EGR called measurable action around the MDGs by using the group's community organizing model and the art of public narrative.
The Spokane Organizing for Mission Initiative will use the institute to help focus its efforts on world hunger by recruiting 10 congregations to run a Lenten 2011 initiative using EGR's organizing methods. A grant to the group from Trinity Church, Wall Street is helping to fund the project, which is meant to be a pilot project for Province VIII.
In Minnesota, Bishop Brian Prior plans this fall to issue a diocesan-wide "global mission challenge" to buy one anti-malaria bed net for every 19,517 Episcopalians in the state for Episcopal Relief & Development's NetsForLife program. Congregations will send 5-person leadership teams to a January organizing training much like the one in Spokane, EGR said.
In addition to its Organizing Institute, the organization is calling on Episcopalians to join its One Prophetic Voice campaign to encourage every Episcopalian to "make one public, prophetic witness that calls others to action" in support of the MDGs between the start of the U.N. MDG summit and the beginning of Advent.
Douglas, who is the vice chair of EGR's board, said the group feels that it is time to move from MDG education and promotion to a model that will "continue to enfranchise Episcopalians for action and commitment."
"The hard work of motivation, equipping and action remains before us," he said.
Anderson called the U.N. summit "a rally cry to those of us who believe that the Episcopal Church is capable of making a prophetic and lasting contribution to the worldwide movement to eradicate extreme poverty."
Other faith-based organizations have been speaking out in advance of the U.N. meeting and will continue to do so this week in New York.
A two-day side event on religion, faith and the MDGs will take place Sept. 20-21. Organized by the World Council of Churches in partnership with Religions for Peace and the U.N. Millennium Campaign, the meeting will mark the beginning of a 5-year effort by the WCC and inter-religious partners to promote women's and children's health in various countries, according to a WCC press release.
Ki-moon has said he will launch a U.N. Global Strategy for Women's and Children's Health (http://www.who.int/pmnch/activities/jointactionplan/en/index.html) on Sept. 22 as the summit is ending.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, during a recent broadcast on Day 1, called upon the faith community to take action against global hunger by supporting the achievement of the MDGs.
"Christ's command that we serve the poor is reason enough to struggle on behalf of those without enough to eat," Carter said.
Day 1's entire Faith and Hunger series, along with other MDG-related resources, is available here. The Episcopal Church is among Day 1's six affiliated mainline Protestant denominations. The others are the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church.