Salil Shetty, Director, Millennium Campaign, UNDP

Salil Shetty is the Director of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Campaign. The campaign aims to promote the MDG globally and secure increased buy-in, not just from governments, but civil society stakeholders. The Millennium Campaign aims to mobilise North and South to achieve the MDGs. Salil’s work focuses particularly on helping the Campaign unit galvanise campaigns in the South by stimulating national political debate and harnessing existing national and regional networks and social movements in support of the MDGs. In a telephonic interview with Jayalakshmi Chittoor, Salil Shetty shares his extraordinary understanding of global and local development issues.

I read in a report that a group of parliamentarians are proposing for a new MDG-9 on sexual and reproductive rights. Is the Campaign looking at these kinds of proposals?
There are many people who have been suggesting various amendments to the Goals, which were adopted during the Millennium Summit in 2000. It is not just the case of sexual and reproductive rights issues along. There are some who feel human rights should be the Goal 9. There are many such proposals.

Folks from the environment side have been giving suggestions. After the September 2005 MDG +5 Summit, where the heads of state are meeting 5 years after they signed up, to review progress, an expert group will be looking at the goals, the targets and indicators to see whether there is any case to making any change, etc.

I am sure that there will be some possibility to look at the targets and indicators. In fact as it happens, on the gender question, which is where the reproductive rights issues, gets covered focuses on gender equality and empowerment.

As far as the Campaign is concerned, we do strongly believe there is a strong case to bring in sexual and reproductive rights as well the issue of violence against women.

Can you tell us about the concerns on addressing the issues relating to disability?
None of these goals are new or are meant to substitute what has been agreed in other UN commitments and other processes.

In case of sexual and reproductive rights, the Millennium Development Goals are not meant to be replacing that the Cairo IPCD commitments or the Beijing commitment.

These are tools to mobilise the political will for the achievement of previous commitments. Not a single word in the Millennium declaration or in the MDG was invented at the Millennium Summit. It is a summary of various UN commitments.

The declaration is a much more powerful document than the goals which are kind of short hand because from a communication point of view. You cannot present 15 pages to the public when you are trying to communicate through mass media etc. This is useful for the general public.

For those interested in the intricacies of international development issues, we have the declaration and other documents that we can go back to.

Are the regional differences well perceived at the national levels or the regional levels with respect to MDGs?
Millennium goals are meant to be international mobilising tools for political will to be created in order to achieve some of the basic needs of the vast majority of people in the world but there was never a conception or expectation that these goals are kind of global targets. You cannot achieve anything at the global level. Ultimately things are to be achieved at the national level and local level. These goals are to be adopted and defined in the local and national contexts, which provide broad guidelines. Most countries are adapting.

Vietnam, for example, has laid the targets rather low as compared to global goals. They have defined it as Vietnam Development Goals.

In the case of India, Government of India has translated and interpreted the MDGs in the context of the tenth five-year plans because it is meaningless talking of global goals in the Indian context. India is a big country, and even national goals are a bit meaningless if you look at it state-wise.

The real action is at national level, which is equally relevant from the point of view of women rights, etc.

Many countries have adapted the global goals at the national level and brought in a whole lot of issues like gender, sexual and reproductive rights, as they should.

OECD DAC is using MDG as their performance indicators. They have reframed their own DAC agenda. Is it re-diverting resources into programmes that are more macro-scale and actually missing that micro-support that came from these agencies. Could these translate into concerns?
I don’t know how familiar you are with OECD DAC target, because it is interesting. OECD DAC target preceded the


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Millennium Goals. In fact, MDG were partly inspired by OECD DAC targets. The main difference is in the Goal 8 which states the responsibilities of the rich countries are particularly in relation of trade and debt. Having a global set of parameters by which we can measure progress is very useful to understand international development.