Originally published on the CGS blog on August 18, 2014.
If you have not yet heard of Brandon Stanton and his photo blog, Humans of New York, you need to check it out here (and here is the Facebook page).
Stanton started HONY in 2010. His goal was to photograph 10,000 New Yorkers and plot the city’s inhabitants on a map; the result is not only photos, but an incredible blog that highlights the human dynamic and diversity of New York.
Now the United Nations has taken notice; with their help, he is taking his project a step further. On August 7th, Stanton embarked on a journey to ten countries with a larger purpose in mind. According to the HONY Facebook page, he hopes to raise awareness for the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.
The MDGs are eight humanitarian goals the member countries of the UN set for the world in 2005. The goals range from reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS to alleviating extreme poverty to promoting environmental sustainability; in all, the eight goals are meant to meet the needs of the world’s poorest by 2015.
In the statement released on the HONY website and Facebook page, Stanton hopes his trip will “in some way help to inspire a global perspective, while bringing awareness to the challenges that we all need to tackle together.”
His trip, supported by the Secretary General’s MDG Advocacy Group, will provide a much-needed face and voice to the MDGs and the people impacted. Stanton is giving us human stories that have been ignored while the debates rage on about actions in places such as Syria, Iraq, and Gaza.
As we near the target year of 2015, it is a good time to explore those eight goals and evaluate our progress. Here we will take a look at the first two goals.
The first goal of the MDGs is a bold one: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. The targets of goal one are halving the number of people whose income is less than $1 per day, reach full and productive employment, and halve the number of people who suffer from hunger.
Despite the immense challenge, we have made significant progress.
According to the UN Report, approximately 700 million fewer people lived in the extreme poverty conditions from 1990 to 2010. More impressively, extreme poverty rates have dropped in every developing region. Unfortunately, even with such astounding progress, 1.2 billion people still live in extreme poverty.
We have also seen progress in reducing the number of people suffering from hunger. The numbers remain high according to the UN, with one in eight people suffering from hunger globally. However, the percentage has dropped from 23 percent to 15 percent, though we have yet to hit the declared goal of a 50 percent reduction.
The second of the eight goals, achieving universal primary education, has stalled after significant progress. Globally, enrollment grew seven percent to 90 percent from 2000 to 2011 and the number of out-of-school children dropped from 102 million to 57 million.
Sadly, this progress has all but stopped in its tracks. Roughly 25 percent of children are likely to drop out before completing primary school. As aid to primary education continues to decrease, we risk not meeting the MDG’s objectives by 2015.
As we continue to highlight the eight MDGs and look ahead to 2015 and beyond, it is important that we keep the principles and foundations of these goals at the forefront. No country is immune to the effects of poverty. With support and guidance from the UN, we must continue to strive to realize the ideals established by the Charter of the UN, the Universal Declarations of Human Rights, and these Millennium Development Goals.
