Analysis of Millennium Development Goal 8: A Global Partnership for Development

Abstract

This article inquires into what have been the normative and empirical impacts of Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 8's choice of targets and indicators on human rights. It identifies some principles on the duty of international cooperation for the achievement of human rights and applies them through a set of questions as to the targets and indicators of MDG 8. The article assesses whether the chosen targets and indicators for MDG 8 enhanced accountability of rich countries for the extraterritorial human rights impacts of their economic policies, whether they increased participation in the design of economic development policies, whether they promoted mobilization of maximum available resources and whether they supported the progressive realization of economic and social rights. It finds (with some minor exceptions) that MDG 8 targets and indicators were indifferent to human rights principles and, additionally, that they created dynamics and incentives for policy-making that were ultimately detrimental to the implementation of norms on international cooperation for the achievement of human rights. The article offers some ideas on how, in a new generation of development goals, targets and indicators for a goal on international cooperation could be more aligned with the relevant requirements of international human rights norms.

Acknowledgement

The author thanks Amy Orr and Kellen Grode for helpful research assistance, as well as Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Roberto Bissio, Richard Kozul-Wright and Diana Alarcon for comments on an earlier version of this paper and Josh Greenstein for his help in editing. Responsibility for mistakes, of course, lies only with the author.

Notes

1. For some ideas on linking financial regulation to inequality measurements in a post-2015 framework, see Caliari (2012) and Overseas Development Institute, European Center for Development Policy Management, and German Development Institute (2013).

2. Performance as a level of gross national income (GNI), a superior measure, was much less impressive, with the ODA of DAC countries standing at 0.31% of Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors’ GNI in 2011, slightly above the 0.30% registered in 1995.

3. This association is propagated by the World Trade Organization itself, which claims “a clear connection between concluding the DDA negotiations and bringing about MDG 8” (http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/coher_e/mdg_e/dda_e.htm).

Additional information

About the Author

Aldo Caliari has been, since 2000, staff at the Washington, DC-based Center of Concern where he is currently a Project Director focusing on global economic governance, debt, international financial architecture, human rights in international economic policy and linkages between trade and finance policy. He has done considerable public speaking for a variety of audiences that range from popular workshops to academia and closed government briefings. He edited four books on linkages between trade and finance and one on regional and global liquidity arrangements, and his writings have been published in books, academic and specialized journals and the media. He has been a consultant to several intergovernmental organizations—such as UNCTAD, UNDP, UN DESA, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights—in addition to governments, civil society networks and foundations. Mr Caliari holds a Master of International Policy and Practice from George Washington University (2007), with a focus on economics and finance. He also holds a Master's Degree from the Washington College of Law, American University, on International Legal Studies (2000), where he was honored with the Outstanding Graduate Award. He earned his first law degree in Argentina, at the Universidad Nacional de Tucuman Law School.