LifeNews.com
2009-11-06
November 4, 2009 — A new paper investigating the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goals (MDG) asserts that the project could do more harm than good.
The paper finds the sweeping global development project generally views the poor as “a problem to be solved rather than partners in achieving their own development and success.” It explains that world leaders set forth the MDGs with high hopes in 2001, but now at the midpoint for achieving them, they have become susceptible to politicization and influence by special interests.
In “The Millennium Development Goals in light of Catholic Social Teaching” authors Brian Scarnecchia and Terrence McKeegan say that one major problem is that implementation of the 8 goals along with their 20 targets and 56 indicators has tended to be top-down, expert-driven and technological.
This approach is championed by the UN’s chief economic advisor on the goals, Columbia University professor/technocrat Jeffrey Sachs but, the authors say, it fails to take account of the two bedrock principles of moral human development, solidarity and subsidiarity.