MDG-F convenes regional meeting to assess MDG progress in Latin America

More than 180 development practitioners and UN and government representatives meet in Colombia this week to assess and strengthen their work in reducing poverty and advancing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Latin America.

The second Latin American Regional Meeting of the MDG Achievement Fund (MDG-F) will take place from June 7th to 9th in Cartagena de Indias. Participants will exchange experiences and consolidate learning from more than 50 MDG-F-supported programmes aimed at poverty reduction, UN reform and implementation of the Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness.

"America is poor because it is unequal. The MDG Fund aims to reduce inequality in Latin America by promoting equal opportunities in the exercise of rights and the access to public goods and services," said José Antonio González Mancebo, a member of the MDG-F Directorate. One of the goals of the meeting is to boost future work in Central and South America by strengthening joint projects with government and civil society stakeholders in the region.

The MDG-F (www.mdgfund.org) supports national efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, a set of internationally-agreed targets to eradicate extreme poverty and ensure universal access to health, education, food security, gender equality and other development benchmarks by 2015. It funds 130 programs in 50 countries, which are carried out jointly with UN agencies and a range of national, regional and local partners.

MDG-F-financed projects in Latin America are valued at $ 304 million. In Colombia, the MDG-F supports programmes in four of the eight thematic windows in which it operates globally: Environment and Climate Change, Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (programme being implemented in Cartagena), Conflict Prevention and Peace-Building and Food Security and Nutrition.

The MDG-F will hold another global workshop to assess projects in the Africa region, Asia, Arab states and Eastern Europe on June 20-22 in Casablanca, Morocco.