UN Millennium Development Goals Advocacy Group holds first meeting

On 16 July the recently established UN Millennium Development Goals Advocacy Group held its first meeting in Madrid. The group of former and current political leaders, business people and activists was set up by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 23 June with the aim to galvanize worldwide support for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and includes well-known figures such as former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, Nobel Peace Prize laureates Muhammad Yunus and Wangari Maathai, philanthropist Bill Gates and Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs.

In his opening remarks, Ban Ki-moon highlighted the important role of the group, especially in the lead up to the MDG Summit that will take place at UN headquarters in New York in September. To its members, he said: “This Group will identify strategic opportunities. You will help build awareness. You will help translate the rhetoric of good intentions into results – real results for real people.” He also added: “Around the world, people support the goals and the values embedded in the MDGs — but we must do more to educate and inform about the MDGs. That’s where the MDG Advocacy Group comes in.”

With regard to the meeting, the UN Secretary-General expressed his hope that this meeting would lead to its own programme of action and would bring ideas for scaling up successes, for mobilizing new resources, and for moving from aspiration to achievement. He called upon the Group’s members to use the necessary means to spread the MDG message, e.g. through writing op-eds, spreading the MDG message at national, regional and global events, offering expert advice, or through raising funds for MDG programmes.

Also speaking at the meeting was UNDP Goodwill Ambassador Antonio Banderas, who raised concern about the “risk” of the public “becoming insensitive to the suffering of the poor that appears on our television screens for a few minutes.” He further described his own role as UNDP Goodwill Ambassador as “a way of understanding and acting to help the millions of human beings who are victims of endemic injustice arising from gender inequality, the lack of food, and the impossibility of receiving healthcare, education or decent housing.”

See also: Antonio Banderas, United Nations call for action on the MDGs

Read also: Role of UN advocacy group vital to achieving anti-poverty targets, Ban says

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