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.