THE ROAD AHEAD
FAO and the Millennium Development Goals

Leaders gathered at the World Food Summit in 1996 committed their countries to cutting hunger in half by the year 2015. A series of international conferences and summits during the 1990s identified other major goals and quantified targets with the same time horizon. These were brought together in the Declaration adopted by the UN Millennium Summit in september 2000 and later restated in the form of eight Millennium Development Goals.

Now is the crucial moment for stepping up action if the world is to deliver on the pledges made at the Millennium Summit. The Goals, with their related time-bound targets and indicators, are designed as an agenda for action by countries with support from the international community.

In September 2005 the UN General Assembly will review progress in achieving them. FAO currently is reviewing how its own activities assist countries in this urgent and ambitious effort, and complement the work of UN partners.

See discussion paper entitled, "FAO and the challenge of the Millennium Development Goals: The road ahead"

FAO is dedicated to promoting agriculture, nutrition, forestry, fisheries and rural development, and to facilitating achievement of the World Food Summit goal of eradicating hunger. The Organization is a world centre of food and agricultural information and knowledge and a forum for policy dialogue and forging agreements among nations. Its work in these areas, on standard setting and on provision of global public goods, both underpins and complements the activities that it directly targets to helping achieve the Millennium Development Goals.