At the UN General Assembly in September 2000, 147 heads of State or Governments - and 189 nations in total - adopted the Millennium Declaration, recognizing their "collective responsibility to uphold the principles of human dignity, equality and equity at the global level".

In order to accomplish these principles, a set of eight Millennium Development Goals has been defined. These MDGs should show, in a way which can be quantified and monitored, the achievements in sustainable development and poverty eradication by 2015 for each country.

HOW MUCH PROGRESS HAS TURKEY MADE IN MEETING THE MDGs ?

Turkey's achievements so far in meeting the Millennium Development Goals are measured and evaluated in the country's first Millennium Development Goal Report, which was published in 2005. This suggests that while overall Turkey is well on its way to meeting and even surpassing some of the goals, a number of specific challenges remain, noticeably in the eradication of poverty and hunger (goal 1); gender equality (goal 3); child mortality (goal 4) and maternal mortality (goal 5). For more details of Turkey's progress towards achieving the MDGs, click here.

Global and national efforts to reach the Millennium goals are linked and coordinated by UNDP, as the UN's global development network. For details of the worldwide campaign to achieve the MDGs by 2015, click here.

THE MILLENIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

• Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day
• Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger

• Ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling

• Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015

• Reduce by two thirds the mortalityrate among children under five

• Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio

• Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS
• Halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases

• Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources
• Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water
• Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020

• Develop further an open trading and financial system that is rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory. Includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction-nationally and internationally
• Address the least developed countries' special needs. This includes tariff- and quota-free access for their exports; enhanced debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries; cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous official development assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction
• Address the special needs of landlocked and small island developing States
• Deal comprehensively with developing countries' debt problems through national and international measures to make debt sustainable in the long term
• In cooperation with the developing countries, develop decent and productive work for youth
• In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries
• In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies-especially information and communications technologies

Turkish children who work to support their families often miss out on school. (Photo: ILO Turkey)

Shepherding on the Anatolian plateau - UNDP helps Turkey integrate environmental concerns into development policies (Photo: UNDP/GEF Turkey)