Financial Transparency Coalition

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once said, “I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.” He might well have said development. Regions that have experienced the fastest growth in the last fifty years have also had a tax base they could use to invest in the infrastructure of growth – roads, schools, and health. While some have argued that taxes impede growth, the long-term picture doesn’t sit well with that theory.

In September at the turn of this century, the leaders of the world convened at the Millennium Assembly of the United Nations. The Assembly was the culmination of nearly a decade of United Nations summits and conferences to address development and poverty. It was 2000, however, that the world’s leaders adopted the United Nations Millennium Declaration, a commitment to a noble new partnership to drastically reduce poverty worldwide. All 193 member states of the United Nations and 23 organizations agreed to achieve a set of eight goals by 2015. They are: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; ...

On Wednesday I wrote a blog post about the number of people worldwide who suffer from hunger; a figure that has dropped in the last year, but is still much higher than it was a decade ago. I wrote that in 2000 the United Nations (UN) set about the lofty goal of halving global poverty and hunger as part of its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs represent perhaps the most ambitious set of development objectives ever. And next week, in New York City, world leaders will convene for a UN Summit to evaluate the progress...

A major report on the Millennium Development Goals (MGDs) published by Leprosy Mission Ireland and launched by Minister Peter Power, Minister of State with responsibility for Overseas Aid calls for radical new thinking on development and aid with several recommendations to address the failure of the MDGs.