Edmund Rice Justice Bulletin

In September 2000, 188 member states of the United Nations signed on to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – a set of eight targets which aim to halve world poverty by 2015.

The MDG's have featured regularly in this bulletin and many readers have participated in a variety of actions to ensure nations honoured their commitments. The result is that considerable progress has been made. For example, since 1990, the world has:
- halved the number of people living below the extreme poverty line of US $1.25/day
- halved the proportion of people living without access to clean drinking water. On current rates of progress 92% of the world’s population will have access to clean drinking water by 2015.
- reduced the number of children dying before their fifth birthday from 12 million a year down to approximately 7 million a year (which equates to 14,000 fewer children dying each day compared to 20 years ago.)
- reduced the number of women dying worldwide each year in pregnancy/childbirth from 543,000 women to 287,000 women – almost half.    
Visit the Micah Challenge website  for a summary of progress to date.

But:
- 287,000 women still die each year from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth,
- 6.9 million children each year still do not live to celebrate their fifth birthday and
- 2.5 billion people still live without access to adequate sanitation.
Micah Challenge  is calling for a renewed effort to ensure the global community finishes what it started.

Visit the Micah challenge website to learn more about what action you can take to Finish the Race