I’m suffering from a bit of candidate burnout, and we still have more than 7 months to go before we elect our next president. Generally, I’ve been trying to stay focused on the candidates’ actual stances on the issues I care most about, and trying to ignore all the spinning & sniping (if you’ve tried this yourself, you know it can be surprisingly hard).
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| MILLENIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS -- 1: Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty, 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education, 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women, 4: Reduce Child Mortality, 5: Improve Maternal Health, 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases, 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability, 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development |
As you might imagine, it’s impossible to work here at the U.S. Fund for UNICEF and not feel interested in the candidates’ takes on child survival issues. I was really glad to discover that a partner organization of ours, ONE, has put together this excellent web feature at ONE Vote ‘08 that enables you to see -- side-by-side -- the candidates’ plans for addressing issues such as halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, eradicating malaria, improving child and maternal health, and vastly reducing the number of people who don’t have access to enough food or clean drinking water. I encourage you to check it out.
Senator Clinton, Senator McCain and Senator Obama all express their commitment to helping in these areas, though that’s to be expected. It would be imprudent (or just plain weird) for any candidate to imply that he or she was NOT in favor of, say, improving child and maternal health. What’s interesting to me is the way that, on certain issues such as combating HIV/AIDS, Senators Clinton and Obama have pretty specific plans (including real-number monetary commitments) while Senator McCain tends to be rather general. Is this meaningful? I guess we have to wait about a year to really know.
The issues raised by ONE Vote ‘08 echo a number of the Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs. In 2000, 189 United Nations member states agreed to adopt eight world-changing development goals to be achieved by 2015. These are goals every UN organization is striving for every day (here’s an excellent website for learning more about the MDGs and tracking MDG progress). UNICEF has been instrumental in helping achieve some really amazing progress towards these goals. But, though 2015 may seem ages away if you’re thinking about making dinner reservations, it’s a blink-of-the-eye in development goal time, and there’s an enormous amount of work to be done. And the MDGs will not be achieved without strong international support, particularly from wealthy Western countries like the U.S. The outcome of our 2008 presidential election will be felt all over the planet.
What are the global child survival issues you think the next president needs to address most urgently? Do you think the MDGs are achievable by 2015? We really want to hear from you. (And THANKS to everyone who posted comments on my first blog – you brought up some interesting issues that I will try to address in my next post.)