Holy See says objective of MDGs and human rights is human dignity

(September 26, 2008) The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by which world leaders in the year 2000 set out to reduce poverty and hunger and improve education, equality, health care and the environment by 2015, is related to human rights in as much as both have the common objective of preserving and protecting human dignity. This was the heart of the message which Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Holy See’s Permanent Observer to the United Nations in New York, delivered on Thursday to the UN’s 63rd General Assembly. He said that while the MDGs are ultimately political commitments, the human rights inherent in each goal, make achieving them a social and moral responsibility. The archbishop said that in the last 8 years several Least Developed Countries (LDCs) have made remarkable progress with regard to the MDGs, especially in the elimination of poverty and universal access to education. However, the situation of generalized poverty has not be tackled. “A failure in attaining the MDGs in the LDCs and other poor countries would mean a moral failure of the whole international community and would have political and economic consequences even beyond the geographic boundaries of the LDCs,” the Vatican official said. “The effectiveness of civil society, including religious organizations serving poorer populations,” he said, “is the practical proof of the possibility to achieve the goals by 2015 or in the proximate successive years.” “Civil society and faith-based organizations,” he said, “remain indispensable actors in the delivery of vital goods and services,” and he called for greater efforts to allow them access to populations in need.