The Wheel of Development: the Millennium Development Goals as a communication and development tool

Despite the shortcomings of the Millennium Development Goals as a development tool, they have proven to be an important communication tool that is worth preserving after 2015. Inclusion of important themes of the Millennium Declaration and elements of the capability theory is essential in a post-2015 system, as well as putting human rights and gender principles at its core. Process orientation rather than end goals could lead to ‘Millennium Development Actions’ with ‘Progress Signs’, which, represented in a circular symbol, form a ‘wheel of development’, complemented by a Wheel of Governance. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the elaborated synthesis of goals agreed at international conferences in the 1990s. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee was first in synthesising the goals agreed at the various world summits and attempting to formulate development goals (‘Shaping the 21st Century: the contribution of development cooperation’, 1996). In 2000 the leaders of the IMF, OECD, UN and World Bank embraced these goals in an unprecedented display of unity (‘A better world for all: progress towards the International Development Goals’). On 8 September 2000, the international community adopted the Millennium Declaration. This led a year later to the formulation of eight Millennium Goals (UN Secretary-General’s report, ‘Roadmap towards the implementation of the Millennium Declaration’), approved by the UN General Assembly. At the world summits in 2005 and 2010 the intention to achieve the goals in 2015 was reiterated and some new issues were put on the table. However the Millennium Declaration remained the cornerstone of strategic direction. Mid-2011 the debate started concerning what a post-2015 agenda should include, with the UN Secretary General issuing its report in July. This article examines the merits of the MDGs as communication tool as against its merits as development tool. It is a follow-up of the report ‘The Dorine E van Norren is in the Advisory Council on International Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, P.O. Box 20061, 2500 EB The Hague, The Netherlands Third World Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 5, 2012, pp 825–836 ISSN 0143-6597 print/ISSN 1360-2241 online/12/050825–12 2012 Southseries Inc., www.thirdworldquarterly.com http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2012.684499 825 D ow nl oa de d by [ D or in e va n N or re n] a t 0 8: 11 1 5 Ju ne 2 01 2 development agenda post-2015: the Millennium Development Goals in perspective’ of the Netherlands Advisory Council on International Affairs.