UN General Assembly Address

September 22, 2010
Remarks on progress against the MDGs.

I am honored to join you at the conclusion of this critical dialogue among world leaders about what I believe is one of the most urgent challenges facing the world today: how to accelerate progress toward the Millennium Development Goals. Over the past week, I have heard some people say we’ll never meet the MDGs. Sometimes, our impatience with the way the world is leads us to be pessimistic about our ability to change it.

But at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we believe we can be very impatient with the way the world is—and very optimistic that we will change it. The MDGs themselves embody this impatient optimism. They recognize how much there is to be done, while at the same time signaling the scale and scope of the world’s ambition.

One reason I am optimistic is the progress I have seen in the 10 years since the MDGs were agreed to as part of the historic Millennium Declaration. The world is not called on to conjure progress from a void. Instead, it is called on to learn from very real progress on nearly all the MDGs, to expand it, and to speed it up.

One refrain I hear is that we are off track on many of the goals. That statement is technically accurate. Not every country will meet every goal, and there is a risk that some of the global goals won’t be met. But that binary outlook—with total success on one side, total failure on the other, and people on both sides blaming each other—obscures extraordinary progress driven by extraordinary people across the globe.

Take the MDG for child mortality. The goal is a two-thirds reduction, and we may not reach it by 2015. But have we failed when 4 million children who would have died in 1990 will survive in 2010? Have we failed when we have reduced polio, a crippling childhood disease, by 99 percent in the past 20 years?

Another complaint I hear a lot is that progress isn’t spread evenly. Some people dismiss the fact that 1.3 billion people have lifted themselves out of poverty by pointing out that most of them live in China and India, not in African countries.

I believe that when poor people lift themselves out of poverty, we ought to celebrate, no matter where they happen to come from. Bill and I started our foundation because we believe that all lives have equal value, and I am not comfortable comparing one person’s suffering to that of another.

While it’s true that some countries are reducing poverty more quickly than others—and some, sadly, have moved backwards—eight African countries have already achieved the goal on poverty reduction, and several more are on schedule to do so by 2015. Across nearly every goal, there are inspiring examples of even the poorest countries making dramatic improvements in short periods of time.

The task ahead is to learn what the most successful countries are doing right, so that we can spread their best practices. In difficult economic times, it is imperative that we increase support for effective interventions that provide maximum value for money—and not shift even bigger burdens to the poorest by cutting back on development spending.

For example, agricultural development. More than three quarters of the poor people in the world depend on farming for their food and income, which is why agriculture is such an effective weapon against hunger and poverty. The Gates Foundation is supporting partners like the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa to work with donors and developing countries to create new agricultural opportunities for small farmers.

The G8 and G20 countries increased their commitments to agriculture last year, and many developing country governments, especially in Africa, have followed up with spending increases of their own.

Or take another example, women’s and children’s health. We know that investments in women and children generate huge returns. A healthy mother who can give her children a healthy start in life has a tremendous ripple effect on development. Earlier today, the Secretary General launched the Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health, which builds on the financial commitments made at the G8 meeting in Canada this summer.

Along with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Deputy Prime Minister Nicholas Clegg, I was proud to announce that the Gates Foundation has formed a partnership with USAID, DFID, and AUSAid to coordinate our efforts on the ground in poor countries. The synergy will help all of us make a bigger difference in the lives of more women and children.

So I am impatient. I am impatient because the world is not getting better fast enough, or for enough people.

But I am also optimistic. I am optimistic because there are proven and affordable ways to decrease hunger and poverty, to help mothers and their babies thrive, to make rapid progress on all the MDGs.

And I am optimistic about one more thing. I am optimistic that our impatience will lead us all to be more motivated, not less. I am optimistic that our sense of urgency will inspire us to work together, not to isolate ourselves. For if we are motivated, if we are inspired, if we work together—then we can meet again in five years to celebrate achievements that few of us might have dared to imagine.

September 22, 2010

Melinda French Gates speaks about progress on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at the 2010 United Nations General Assembly in New York, New York.