The Power of Numbers: A Critical Review of MDG Targets for Human Development and Human Rights OVERVIEW

This paper presents a brief overview of the Power of Numbers project (the “Project”), an independent research initiative involving 17 scholars and coordinated by Sakiko Fukuda-Parr (The New School) and Alicia Ely Yamin (Harvard University). It arose out of a shared concern amongst the 17 participating scholars with the need to more fully understand the consequences of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on development agendas, including both the empirical effects on policy priorities and strategies and normative effects on development discourses about important objectives and means to achieve them. In particular, the Project is concerned with whether these effects further the people-centered vision for development enshrined in the Millennium Declaration.