The MDGs and Poverty Reduction in the 21st Century: A Critical Assessment
Public event at the Bergen Resource Center for International Development, with participation of CROP Scientific Committee members.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDG's) have shaped a broad vision that remains the overarching framework for the development activities of the United Nations (UN), according to its own view. And, in the words the Secretary General of the organization, Ban Ki Moon, “the MDGs have helped to lift millions of people out of poverty” and saved lives (UN MDGs Report 2011). This way, the MDGs are seen an “independent variable” that explains poverty reduction (among many other things) and therefore, may project overarching influence beyond 2015.
Critical analysis and monitoring of national and international policy responses to poverty everywhere is one of CROP’s core objectives. This event will discuss how accurate the UN assessment that credits the MDGs with being a major driver of poverty reduction around the world? This question seems to be relevant in both methodological and theoretical grounds, since poverty is a multivariate phenomenon with causes in (and effects on) various level of analysis (global, international, national, and local).
The event will be held 16:00-18:00 at UiB Global/Bergen Resource Center for International Development, in Jekteviksbakken 31.
Thomas Pogge, Julio Boltvinik, Bob Deacon, Asuncion St. Clair, and Karen O’Brien will be participating.
