Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, former Director of the UN Human Development Reports Office, shared her reflections on the impact of global goal setting on the development agendas of countries and of the international community as a whole. She noted that, over the years, targets and goals—projecting an aura of scientific certitude and authority, have come to wield enormous power. No longer subservient to broader development goals, they have come to drive the agenda. Among the problems with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), was the reliance on universal goals that had the unintended consequence of marginalizing national priorities and undermining domestic advocacy efforts. While the simplicity of the MDGs made these goals easy to communicate, the numbers and goals over-simplified complex concepts and became equated with development rather than serving as proxies for broader development aims.

Fukuda-Parr noted that during the 1990s there were many advances in thinking about human development—among these, the ideas that freedom, capabilities and choices were core elements of development and that development was a process of dynamic and social change. The MDGs, however, failed to reflect this dimension of development and  instead articulated a ‘basic needs agenda.’

As the global community works to develop a new development agenda, it must rethink its criteria for setting goals, targets, and indicators, drawing on experiences and insights from past experience. The creation of new data will be critical—specifically disaggregated and qualitative data. Reliance on existing data will not suffice; new data is needed to reflect the priorities identified in the evolving development agenda, including democracy, employment and levels of corruption. Targets have to be subservient to our important social and political objectives,” stressed Fukuda-Parr, “and not the other way around.”