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

Middle East / North Africa and the Millennium Development Goals
Figure 1: Trends in the implementation of MDG1 / Target 1
(Halve the proportion of people with less than 1 US$ a day) 3
Source: Designed by the author on the basis of data in Table A2, Annex
Note: Countries for which the available data are either markedly contradictory
or unreliable are omitted.
Most of the MENA countries, however, will not reach this target if they do
not succeed in reversing present trends (ESCWA 2005). This goes in particular
for Algeria, Yemen, Iraq, Oman, and Mauritania, which have been
classified by UNDP as ‘high-priority countries’ with regard to MDG1 –
Algeria, Yemen, Iraq, and Oman because they have as yet made no progress
at all in reducing income poverty, and Mauritania because income
poverty is so widespread in the country that it will be as good as impossible
to further step up efforts to reduce it (UNDP 2003a, 43 and 53).
3 This and the following figures show – for reasons of clarity – only relative changes: The
initial level has been normalized to 0. This is problematic in the way that the diagrams
do not show what absolute changes have occurred and how large the differences are between
the absolute base values for the individual countries. Still, this form of presentation
is justified in that the MDGs themselves refer to relative changes.
German Development Institute 47