At the Millennium Summit, held in September 2000, 189 states adopted the UN
Millennium Declaration. This Declaration committed developed and developing
countries to a global agenda, which sets a time-bound group of eight goals, 18
targets and 48 indicators to be achieved by the year 2015. These global goals have
become known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and are as follows:
1. Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger
2. Achieve Universal Primary Education
3. Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
4. Reduce Child Mortality
5. Improve Maternal Health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases
7. Ensure Environmental Sustainability
8. Develop a Global Partnership for Development
Since 1999, under Security Council Resolution 1244, the United Nations Interim
Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) has been responsible for the governance
of Kosovo, which therefore had no seat at the 2000 Millennium Summit. Thus, the
Millennium Declaration has not been signed by Kosovo representatives and, as such,
the Government of Kosovo has no formal commitment to work towards reaching the
MDGs by 2015. However, this should not hinder efforts to reach these goals, which
are very relevant for the future development of Kosovo.
In 2004, the UN Kosovo Team (UNKT) produced the first baseline report on the
MDGs, spelling out where Kosovo stood in terms of achieving the goals. The report
provided a good benchmarking against which progress can be gauged. The present
document, the second MDG report, follows on from the baseline United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) Report of 2004 and assesses the work done so far
in achieving the MDGs in Kosovo. It identifies targets and indicators adapted to
Kosovo priorities and local circumstances. In addition to the eight MDGs, this report
has also taken into consideration and identified a 9th goal, dealing with Good
Governance, as a prerequisite to achieving the eight global MDGs.
The present report shows that despite some achievements made in several areas,
Kosovor society continues to face serious and persisting problems that reflect the
challenges that have to be faced for it to meet all the MDGs by 2015. Income
poverty is widespread and it is estimated that a large share of the population could
fall into income poverty as a result of the continuing unstable political situation and
the related risk of economic slow down.
Poverty encompasses non-income dimensions: Kosovo continues to have unfavorable
health indicators; it faces very severe environmental problems, with poor water
quality and waste management, as well as air and soil pollution, while the data that
exist are unsatisfactory and unreliable. Nevertheless, education attainment indexes
do show an improvement, which in turn is reflected in the slight increase in Kosovo’s
Human Development Index (HDI). The World Bank (WB) Poverty Assessment report
shows that Kosovo, with an annual average growth rate of two per cent, is likely to
meet MDG 2, on Education, and MDG 6, on HIV/AIDS. The current situation with
data gathering makes it difficult to estimate exactly whether MDG 5, on Maternal
Mortality, will be met.
Second Millennium Development Goals Report for Kosovo
________________________________________________________________________
N7
Adopting and tailoring MDGs, developing appropriate human rights-based policies
and programmes, and putting in place monitoring and reporting mechanisms
(through, for example, a DevInfo database) will increase Kosovo’s capacity for
human development. Hence, there is a strong and immediate need for improvements
in the quality and availability of data in order to track achievements in terms of
indicators and enable monitoring and reporting mechanisms. In this regard, Kosovo’s
institutions should set up clear achievable objectives, as well as a road map to
facilitate the development of the Statistical Office of Kosovo (SOK) as an efficient,
effective and reliable institution that will have appropriate databases and publish
relevant information on national accounts, demographic statistics and those on social
and public services.
The policies that have been targeted for achieving growth rates of about five to
seven per cent during the period 2009–2015 will create the space for many of the
concerns related to the MDGs formulated for Kosovo to be addressed.