Toomey: Each Country Has to Make MDGs National Priorities
Director, United Nations Millennium Campaign (UNMC), Mr. Mitchell Toomey was in Nigeria recently to assess the remarkable progress made by the country in the MY World global survey. He spoke to some select journalists on various issues including the MDGs
Could you please, tell us about yourself? Sure. I have been working in the United Nations for the past 12 years, and I am an American citizen working in the UN, and I graduated in Business Administration which has to do with business planning and my specialty is in developing metrics, and NGO performance. As we move into an era of measurement in development planning, everyone is looking for more details in measurement. I am grounded in the quality of measurement and this kind of background has been helpful in this kind of job. Could you please tell us specifically why you are here in Nigeria? Well, as I mentioned in MyWorld survey there is great success in Nigeria, and that is not by accident, but because there has been a comprehensive willingness to address the MDGs and the focus in development planning of the country around these goals.
And so, there was readiness, and when I came to find out the magic formula for the success engagement I understand and had information that it was the combination of the CSOs and your country having a positive relationship with the MDGs by the Government and the UN country team that is really enthusiastic to ensuring that it was a success in the MyWorld survey process. We want to have your views about the MDGs. I want you to talk specifically about the MDGs, and the reasons why the SDGs are coming up? Sure. The MDGs was crafted in an international collaboration in the year 2000, when there was a new millennium for a breakthrough when there was a critical sifting on the part of the dividend of the Cold War, and that cut across cold war and it was seen as an international collaboration to end the cold war. And so, the coming together of the world leaders was a way of solving poverty and through this process there were set goals, for say 15 years, we now have it that by 2015 there were set goals and targets to be met.
And so, the MDGs was an experiment, I say experiment because there you tried, you experiment and you absorbed, and you try again, And I think, you assigned scientific approach to development and come out with the hypotheses, and after these, you begin to take very careful measurement along the way, and again you now begin to test the performance amongst your member states whether this goal is achieved or not.
Therefore, in coordinating development, you now look at the MDGs where there was a mistake and make amendment because it was the first time the MDGs target were set and when we see success, whether it is for economic growth with a specific for the underlying indicator, but there is chance that some countries have economic growth and still lack in the economic performance in the economic indicators and other countries have seen some significant improvement in the economic performance, and economic growth is the critical factor that would determine human development.
And so, some Asian countries are ahead in their level of achievement in their goal 1 and we can say that was easy by the commercialisation of the Chinese environment, though it did not make enough headlines, there was significant improvement in the human development index. Can you mention some of the countries? I do not have the data off head to give here right now
Can you please, throw light on the some of the goals where much impact were made in the MDGs? Well, in some measure like the maternal health which seems to be a specific health issue that has to do with tackling the cause questions would be raised. In fact, tackling the cause there is a correlation between tackling the maternal health and achieving the success question.
And so, you need to take tackling the health measures and making the overall understanding to the healthcare system, and in measuring the healthcare measure means you are measuring the overall health care performance. There are arguments from some quarters that the MDGs have not actually succeeded and that is why the SDGs are put in place to succeed the MDGs as it is more comprehensive. What do you have to say about the SDGs? I think the issue about setting the MDGs goals was actualising the set targets. The goals were universal for every member states and actualising the set targets for members’ country was how the goals will significantly impact on the human development of the members’ state countries.
And if you look at the aggregate on how the member states in the world met the goals, you will have to say that we have not met the set targets. And if we have to look at the SDGs, I will say the world is going to work on the improvement on MDGs to actualise the SDGs. It is not like we changed the format that was met for the MDGs.
Do not forget that there was an agreement made on improvement because in science you do not give up as you have to learn the lesson from the past experience on work done and use the lessons learnt to improve on the prospects of the SDGs, especially on the point on development and the processes for the past 15 years. It is a continuous improvement process for each country based on the national and local conditions.
This is the sort of aspirations and goals for anyone that wants to qualify what they want to do, as a global measure and should not have any political undertone and it is a technical issue. Is there any particular country that has met the MDGs targets? Well, I do not have the data here on the follow up of countries that have met the deadline as this has to do with data and technical back up.
In Nigeria for instance, the enabling capacity infrastructure has improved. And so, instead of choosing one country like Nigeria, the country has a lot of opportunities which is exactly how these processes are unfolded. The point of having any agenda that can be measured in the institutions within the Government and the CSOs together done is the achievement, but we look at specific measure. I have to acknowledge that there was achieved specific goal. In pursuing for the realisation of some of these goals, from your viewpoint will it be better if it is done on a regional perspective or on country specific perspective? The best approach is through the local point because what drives the day to day lives of the people which matters a lot. But if we use regional or international aggregation, it will simply keep track, but frankly the single model that survives like the improvement in healthcare will be displayed in the statistics and not for the family, and so while we measure and compare and contrast there is the possible benefits having regional perspective using the business metrics. And so, when you aggregate the comparison and contrasting the data, you are allowed to use the regional perspective to judge.
This is because it is through the bases you can find out which goal is working and which is not working in the national and sub-national level, for instance in gender sensitive or non in a systematic way. You have been in the UN system for the past 12 years, and I am sure you have been attending the General Assembly, is there any way we can look at restrictions by the member-countries?
There has been a great deal of continental consensus in the MDGs development agenda with the CSOs across the continent to bring that kind of power together.
The consensus can be group of heads of states and their representatives with a broad range of countries around the world making commitments to going into the exercise and that has profound impact by consensus amongst representatives from Africa. And so, that also depends on the goals chosen, the execution of the goals and the monitoring of the evaluation and accountability for the goals.
The same measures cut across the regions because the actors are in control of the success or the failure. And so, aggregating in making one position in goal is good, but sometimes you lose the details in the average. What of the issue of inequality amongst member states. Can you bridge the gap through the MDGs or the SDGs? There is talk of making sure that countries having different agenda, but same story point but must go into negotiations because on one hand there must be single baseline of discussion that has a universal goal, and on the other hand when you come to the MDGs, you have to understand that for you to have improvement, it can be achieved through one baseline so that countries that have deficit can easily adjust to meet up.
And that should not be seen as a failure on their part but an encouragement to approaching a single goal and when they need international support on the kind of global consensus on the way to go, the issue would be put to rest.
That is another achievement of the MDGs where the eight goals were put on the table as broad goals; each country has to find their ways to match each of the goals by making the goals their national priorities.