Middle East / North Africa and the Millennium Development Goals ...

Middle East / North Africa and the Millennium Development Goals
Overview 5 continued: The MDG agenda and Yemen’s official development
goals: a comparison
MDG7 – By 2015, connect 100 % of all urban households to the
public drinking-water supply (PRSP).
– Increase the proportion of the rural population with access to
safe drinking water from 25 % (1998) to 50 % (2015)
(PRSP).
– Increase the share of households with sewage disposal from
7 % (1998) to 60 % (PRSP).
MDG8 – Provide for good governance and administration as a means
to ensure that available resources are used optimally and all
members of society are able to participate in political
decision-making processes (PRSP).
– Improve the quality of governance and security (five-year
plan).
– Extend the percentage of paved roads from the present 9 %
of all roads to 11km per 1000 km2 (PRSP, five-year plan).
Source: By the author, based on Khan / Chase (2003, 2, Table 1); supplemented
with data from Republic of Yemen (2002); Republic of Yemen (2003)
Yemen’s strategy papers also show the clear-cut influence of the MDGs.
While the country’s 1996–2000 five-year plan focused on economic
growth and efforts to secure the country’s economic stability, the 2001–
2005 five-year plan specifies poverty reduction and sustainable development
as priority goals. Yemen has also prepared a PRSP, even though it
has no prospects of being granted debt relief under the HIPC initiative. Its
PRSP notes only in passing that the goals it sets out are in conformity with
the MDG agenda (Republic of Yemen 2002). The country has nowhere
explicitly embraced the MDGs as national development goals. However,
nearly all of the MDGs are contained implicitly in the country’s PRSP or
in other national strategy papers (see Overview 5).
However, the action taken by Mauritania, Algeria, and Yemen still lags
further behind the ambitious targets set than the first group of countries
named above. In some areas Mauritania has already taken the measures
provided for in its PRSP (e.g. in implementing the Plan Directeur National
pour la santé in the health sector). In other areas, though, the government
is still lagging behind its planning targets. Thus far neither the
Programme d’Action National pour l’environnement et le développement
German Development Institute 117