SOAS Research Online

Abstract

What are the development targets, such as the International Development Targets and the Millennium Development Goals, for? For supporters, they are a crystallisation of what it is that international development is supposed to be about. The Targets are seven quantifiable goals, against which the performance of donors and international development agencies can be measured. First set out in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) document Shaping the Twenty-First Century (OECD, 1996), they won unprecedented support and prominence. In the UK in particular, the Department for International Development (DFID), and its former Secretary of State, Clare Short, was vocal in promoting the International Development Targets. They have occupied a central position in two government White Papers, the public pronouncements of the Secretary of State, and within DFID in developing its new anti-poverty strategy. Meanwhile, agreement on the ‘Millennium Development Goals’ at the Millennium Summit in New York in September 2000 has extended the number of agreed targets to eighteen, although some are not precisely defined.