All boys and girls should go to school, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger should be halved and men and women should receive equal treatment – these are just three of the eight Millennium Goals the United Nations agreed in 2000. Only UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is fairly optimistic. He believes the goals will be realised in five years time.

The UN Summit in New York has finished, and the heads of state and the hundreds of diplomats and representatives of development organisations are ready to return home. Many of them don’t share Ban Ki-moon’s optimism. US President Barack Obama even sounded downhearted:

"With ten years down and just five years to go before our development targets come due, we must do better."

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende addressed the UN Summit on Wednesday. He urged more attention for two goals in particular that are far behind schedule: reducing maternal mortality and promoting gender equality.

Briefcase
On leaving Schiphol, Prime Minister Balkenende received a briefcase from the director of the Dutch joint aid groups (SHO), Farah Karimi. The contents were meant to remind the prime minister of the Millennium Goals and all that still needs to be done to achieve them. Ms Karimi:

“Ten years ago heads of state agreed, for example, that the proportion of people suffering from hunger worldwide should be halved, that maternal and child mortality should be reduced and that all children should go to school, and they made various other promises. They made eight promises in total. Well, we are nowhere near fulfilling these promises. They were all supposed to be realised by 2015, but we have serious concerns about this.”

China's success story
According to critics, the results that have been achieved are mainly do to with progress in China and India. If you took these countries off the Millennium list, the situation would be a lot less favourable. Oxfam Novib worker, Sasja Bökkerink puts China’s success story into perspective: Beijing has made a lot of progress in reducing poverty, but not in decreasing hunger and maternal mortality.

So far the Netherlands has made a relatively large financial contribution towards achieving the Millennium Goals, for example by setting aside a larger percentage for development aid than most countries. However if, as seems increasingly likely, the new Dutch government is a right-wing coalition of the Liberals (VVD) and Christian Democrats (CDA), supported by the Freedom Party (PVV), less money is likely to be reserved for development aid.

Capital flight
Naturally Oxfam Novib hopes the new government won’t make cut back development aid, but Ms Bökkerink believes there are other ways of reducing poverty. For example, by tackling capital flight:

“We know that, currently, around 160 billion US dollars per year of tax money flows out of developing countries, because multinationals are very good at avoiding having to pay taxes. Ultimately, that has nothing to do with corrupt governments. It has all to do with the behaviour of multinationals.”

Corruption
But columnist and former MP Arend Jan Boekestijn does believe corruption is a problem when trying to achieve the Millennium Goals.

“Sadly, the idea that if you put more money into something, the results will be better, is an illusion. As far as the Millennium Development Goals are concerned, hardly any testing of effectiveness takes place. There is every reason to assume that parts of the policy are relatively ineffective. So one should certainly not put more money into it without looking into how effective it will be.”

Combating corruption and more intelligent aid, are better solutions, he thinks. President Obama has also announced a change in the way aid is to be given. In a speech in New York, he presented a new development aid policy that is more sustainable and efficient, and is achieved by means of diplomacy and by changing trade and investment policies