Abstract:
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are "the world's time-bound and quantified targets for addressing extreme poverty in its many dimensions - incomes, poverty, hunger, disease, lack of adequate shelter, and exclusion - while promoting gender equality, education, and environmental sustainability".1 The formulation of the goals was a multilateral response to the development challenges confronting the developing world with the objective of reducing global poverty and other sources of human deprivation like hunger, universal primary education, gender inequality and the need for the empowerment of women, child mortality, maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS, bringing about enduring environmental sustainability, and developing global partnerships for development.