The Second Millennium Development Goal in Pakistan: Targets, Results and Challenges

Abstract

Why has Pakistan failed in achieving the targets of the second Millennium Development Goal? Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)—a landmark in the history of the United Nations (UN)—were adopted in the Millennium Summit in September 2000, by 189 member states and 23 International Organizations. The universal primary education, along with seven other important goals, was to be achieved through global partnership by 2015.Being a member of the UN, in order to improve lives of the poor people of the country, Pakistan also vowed its commitment in adopting and achieving the MDGs. At the outset of the new millennium, the plight of education especially at primary level in Pakistan was pitiable. It was one of those nations where a large number of children were out of school, and dropout rate was alarming. Thus, Pakistan pledged to achieve the targets of the second MDG—all children including boys and girls will be enrolled in schools, and completion of their primary education will be ensured by 2015. However, in spite of several positive signs, all three indicators show that because of both policy formulation and implementation, Pakistan failed in achieving the targets of the second MDG. Recent studies show that almost 25 million children between 5 and 16 year of age are out of school. According to the studies, fewer girls as compared to boys are going school. Analysis of the available archival data—assessment reports, review reports, analysis reports, research papers, newspaper articles and other documents— shows that medium of education, multiplicity of education system, gender discrimination, meager allocation of funds, lack of infrastructure, War on Terror, economic poverty, corruption, lack of timely available data and reporting, and teacher appointment, training and performance assessment, are the challenging hurdles in the way of achieving the desired results of the second MDG.