This panel, coordinated by the Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law of the American University Washington College of Law and the American Society of International Law, will discuss the achievements and challenges of the UN Millennium Development Goals agenda of the past 14 years as well as future prospects.

World leaders met at the United Nations headquarters in New York in September 2000 to adopt the UN Millennium Declaration. They made a commitment to create a global partnership that would seek to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. In the 2010 MDGs summit, the highlight of the meeting was the adoption of the global action plan titled “Keeping the Promise: United to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals.” The UN is now working with governments, civil society and other partners to build on the momentum generated by the MDGs and carry on with a post-2015 development agenda. In this effort, it will be necessary to identify areas in which the MDGs failed to achieve the set objectives, as well as issues that were not adequately addressed in the initial goals. 

SPEAKERS:

• Olivier de Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food
• Siobhan McInerney-Lankford, Senior Counsel, World Bank

MODERATOR: 

• Sarah Joseph, Professor and Director, Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, Monash University