For its first major media event, the United Nations Office in Tunis has chosen, rightly, the theme of “The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). .
Having been adopted in September 2000, Millennium, however has not lost its topicality, being due to continue until 2015, but doubts are beginning to arise over its implementation as a result the international economic crisis. While acknowledging what could amount to imponderable, the Resident Coordinator of the United Nations in Tunis Mohamed Belhassine said that the program should not be adjusted, even if the deadline set for t its achievement could go beyond 2015.
In fact, nothing really concrete and ipso facto negative occurred so far so as it may alter or impair the timing or the content of the program whose objectives are, in the opinion of its initiators, ambitious and, we could add candid. After all, one can check a sort of a hint of evangelism in the approach of the UN which aims at halving, by 2015 the proportion of people whose income is less than a dollar a day and the people who suffer from hunger and at halving, by the same date, the proportion of people without access to drinking water or who cannot afford to be supplied with.
Though it falls within United Nations missions to make professions of faith and bound to “a strong commitment to freedom, equality, solidarity tolerance ,respect for nature and shared responsibility as well as to a strategy including peace, security and disarmament, development and poverty eradication, environmental protection, human rights, good governance and democracy, protection of vulnerable groups “as stated in the Millennium Declaration, however, experience shows that it is not often the case. Particularly because the nations that finance these actions focus on mechanisms that are different from aid as included in their new relations with countries in dire need.
What about Tunisia?
According to a mid-term assessment made by the United Nations concerning the implementation of the MDGs in Tunisia, the poverty rate, which stood at 4.2% in 2005, should reach a level below 2% in 2015. Similarly, the goal of primary education for all children reaches 97%, according to 2005 statistics.
Furthermore, the trend in terms of gender disparity has been reversed and boys are left behind by girls in terms of level of education (55.1% in higher education in 2005), performance and results.
In this review, it is also noted that the infant mortality rate was divided by four since 1970, with a rate of 22.1 per 1000 births in 2003 and that significant efforts are being made to reduce the maternal mortality rate per 100,000 births from 29.6 in 2005 18.7 in 2015.
Finally, Tunisia has integrated the principles of sustainable development. It works to improve environmental conditions of the population, providing sustainable access to potable to 94% of the population.
