THE Bishop of Chelmsford has called attention to the millions of lives which depend on the promises made in the Millennium Development Goals (below).
He has urged the churches in Chelmsford diocese to write to the Prime Minister before he leaves for the meeting of the United Nations on September 25 to support him in pressing on the meeting the desire to keep those promises.
Speaking of the passion across the Lambeth Conference on the urgent necessity of meeting the Millennium Development Goals, the Bishop has said: "Time and again people from north and south would say that they were tired of having to argue about sex and the church when millions were dying because of our failure to act."
Reflecting on the Lambeth Conference, the Bishop has spoken of the enormous privilege of being with so many Christian leaders from across the world seeking to make the love of God known today.
"The commitment of the Bishops, not only to listen to each other and to hold together across our diversity and differences but also to be a voice for the poor and dispossessed and to work for the future health of our planet and environment, was profoundly challenging and moving," the Bishopadded.
"Here in Chelmsford we must redouble our own commitment to the Millennium Development Goals, to the unity of the Christian Church and the wider human community, and to living as true followers of Jesus."
Readers can find the Bishop's reflections on the 2008 Lambeth Conference online at www.chelmsford.anglican.org/news
MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
● Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day
● Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people
● Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
● Ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
● Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015
Goal 4: Reduce child mortality
● Reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five
Goal 5: Improve maternal health
● Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio
● Achieve, by 2015, universal access to reproductive health
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
● Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS
● Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it
● Halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
● Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources
● Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss
● Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation
● Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020
Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development
● Develop further an open trading and financial system that is rule-based, predictable and non discriminatory, includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction- nationally and internationally
● Address the least developed countries' special needs. This includes tariff- and quota-free access for their exports; enhanced debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries; cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous official development assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction
● Address the special needs of landlocked and small island developing States
● Deal comprehensively with developing countries' debt problems through national and international measures to make debt sustainable in the long term
● In cooperation with the developing countries, develop decent and productive work for youth
● In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries
● In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies- especially information and communications technologies.
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