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

Middle East / North Africa and the Millennium Development Goals
Figure 29: Awareness about the MDGs
Source: European Commission (2005, Table Q1)
6 Recommendations for the future
It has been shown in the preceding chapters how relevant the MDGs are
for the MENA region. Most of the MENA countries have problems in implementing
MDG1 (income poverty and hunger), MDG2 (the quantity,
and even more, the quality of education), MDG7 (mainly ecological sustainability),
and MDG8 (mainly good political and economic governance,
reduction of youth unemployment, and access to modern technologies). At
present it even appears that some of these countries will not be able to
meet at least one single of the MDGs by 2015. This goes above all for the
low-income countries Sudan, Mauritania, and Yemen, but also for Iraq.
The main reasons for the deficits encountered thus far in implementing the
MDG agenda in the region are financial, institutional, and organizational
bottlenecks on the one hand, but also a lack of willingness on the part of
some of the governments in the region to work for the international goals.
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