8 January 2013: Save The Children, a child-focused non-governmental organization (NGO), has outlined proposals for the post-2015 development agenda, including “zero targets” to eliminate absolute poverty, hunger, and preventable child and maternal deaths, and goals for universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation, sustainable energy, and a sustainable, resilient and healthy environment. The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) welcomed the report.

The report, titled “Ending Poverty In Our Generation,” highlights the need to confront inequality, promote accountability among state actors for resourcing efforts to reach agreed targets, and give attention to inter-linkages among development issues, for example between poverty, hunger and successful learning at school. It argues that the Millennium Development Goals’ (MDGs) focus on ensuring access to social services has masked issues regarding the quality of outcomes. It also says that the MDGs have not seriously addressed environmental sustainability, arguing that efforts to do so should underpin a new consensus on post-2015 development.

Save The Children proposes ten development goals for the post-2015 agenda, as well as three mechanisms for their achievement, as follows. First, it calls on state actors to commit to national financing strategies that may draw on taxation, foreign and domestic private investment, and aid. Second, it proposes the establishment of a formal global accountability and reporting mechanism that would also be accountable to poor and vulnerable people, potentially building on existing reporting procedures of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and other international agreements. Third, it calls for the establishment of global data systems that will make use of common indicators and internationally agreed data collection standards, managed globally and supported by countries’ regular input.

UNICEF welcomed the report’s approach of using the momentum of the MDGs to address the most marginalized children and groups in society. [Publication: Ending Poverty In Our Generation] [UNICEF Press Release]