Roselle May Advincula

Opinion: The Possible Hindrances to UN’s Millennium Development Goals For years, leaders, organizations and countries have been battling every kind of global cancer- poverty, hunger, unemployment, women and child abuse, insufficient healthcare and education services. All these have been under every international head’s scrutiny and endless analysation; all these have been under the keenest studies, statistics and strategic planning of the world’s biggest research institutes, and yet, change and improvement are seemingly unseen. Silver linings flashed at every impoverished country’s cloud as the United Nations established MDG or the Millennium Development Goals in the year 2000, expecting to achieve the following international developmental goals in the year 2015: 1. Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, 2. Achieving universal primary education, 3. Promoting gender equality and empowering women, 4. Reducing child mortality rates, 5. Improving maternal health, 6. Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, 7. Ensuring environmental sustainability, and 8. Developing a global partnership for development, However, being two years away from the targeted date of accomplishment of this goals and for the last 12 years of trying to achieve the cure for every social and economic disease, the results, unfortunately, are mostly read in the organization’s sites, statistical reports and surveys, but never actually seen or felt in, if not all, most third world nations. The hindrances towards the solution of these problems are as many as the actual problems and the one beaming brightest among all of those- conflict. We are all drivers of conflict. The conflicts that stop us from development are not only those that go between countries and nations but as well as the ones that grow within ourselves. Looking at the entire picture, we see how the conflict between nations can cause additional baggage in the world’s multiple problems. The discrepancies and wars creates more poverty and hunger as properties, private and governmental, are destroyed; the insufficiency of health and medical services are drastically increasing as many wounds need to be tended and the number of people who has acquired diseases are growing; education is put last as one’s safety and survival is put first; the number of abuse and violence victims becomes alarmingly large. No matter what kind of developmental project we execute in a nation (or our world) ringing with the sound of guns and protests, nothing will happen. It’s like extinguishing a fire that will keep on burning no matter what. Every nation has a different perspective of change and development and that’s where the conflict arises. They all want change but their own kind of change. Their perspectives are stained with personal interests. Looking within, every man has conflict within their selves. Admit or not, change is hard to swallow and there is that line between change and the things we got used to. Everyone wants improvement but not all wants to change. Like the lines we always hear in the television, when a reporter interviews a resident of a depressed area, “...ganito na kami eh. Nasanay na kami.” (We’re used to our situation.) When asked if they want their lives to improve, the usual answer, “Kung pwede bakit hindi...” (If possible, why not.) Their desire to improve is often conflicted with their lack of willingness towards change. They want to get out of their impoverished situations but they are not as willing to get out of their misguided lives built from what they used to and what they were taught. Change, development, improvement- all these can practically be achieved when discrepancies are replaced with unison, when different and clashing perspectives for one’s own benefit becomes a single vision that will put no one in power but everyone in greatness. The goals of MDG are not impossible to achieve, but with conflicts that are continuous and are defined in various levels, it will be unachievable.