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Richard Nyamanhindi Correspondent
We are slowly counting down to the end of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015. And even as some will be hard to reach, the post-2015 agenda is currently a global topic of discussion. According to the Zimbabwe 2012 Millennium Development Goals Progress Report, although Zimbabwe has made encouraging progress in achieving MDG Goals 2, 3, 6 and 7, it is unlikely going to achieve Goals 1, 4, 5 and 8 – (Goal 1: is on Eradicating Extreme Poverty and Hunger; Goal 2: Achieving Universal Primary Education; Goal 3: Promoting Gender Equality and Empower Women; Goal 4: Reducing Child Mortality; Goal 5: Improving Maternal Health; Goal 6: Combating HIV and AIDS, Malaria and other diseases; Goal 7: Ensuring Environmental Sustainability, Goal 8: Developing a Global Partnership for Development).
While the MDGs were critical in creating a platform for collaboration and aligning interests around important causes, a lot of development players in Zimbabwe have noted that they are also lacking in many ways.
Basically cast in a service-delivery model, they paid little attention to participatory frameworks from ordinary people, and in the process failed to build a consensus among those in the development community and the supposed benefiting communities.
These issues are connected and mutually reinforcing; any comprehensive post-2015 vision needs to mobilise these separate communities under one frame- work.
In Zimbabwe as in many other African countries, reducing poverty will be a central goal in any post-2015 framework, but it is less clear how rights and equity particularly for women and children will be addressed.
In a country where more than 70 percent of the people are considered poor, a focus on equality has renewed importance.
The possibility of creating goals that apply to all the classes – the have and the have-nots (such as access to health care or sustainable economic growth) can blur the traditional distinctions between the rich and the poor by focusing on poor households everywhere rather than placing focus on sectors that have the potential on a sustainable level to catapult the poor out of poverty.
This universal agenda is unlikely to garner much support among the traditional donors and falls right into the political divide that has affected relations between the rich and poor countries.
Determining how to align what will replace the MDGs with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be a critical element of any effective post-2015 agenda. Climate change-related environmental challenges are likely to increase in coming years as we have already begun to experience, and people especially children and women will be hardest hit.
While often addressed separately, a focus on environmental sustainability will become imperative to ensure that development efforts have a lasting impact especially in rural areas where according to the Zimbabwe National Statistical Agency (Zimstat) individual poverty prevalence is 84 percent compared to 47 percent in urban areas.
Ultimately we will need government, development partners and the people to own and buy into any new goals.
They need to be simple, globally and more importantly nationally understandable and acceptable, and focused with a clear accountability mechanism.
This is no easy task for goals that will be developed under intense public scrutiny. Finding the right accountability mechanism also remains a challenge.
Whatever goals finally pass through, a gauntlet of nation states skittish about their sovereignty and development partners will continue to have a very important role to play in amplifying the voices and demands of marginalised and vulnerable people.
Making the post-2015 vision a reality will require a variety of actors working together.
The post-2015 goals must become the people’s goals.
The author is Communications Officer at UNICEF Zimbabwe. For comments and contributions email: [email protected]
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