In 2000, diplomats at the United Nations adopted eight development goals aimed at poverty reduction, education, nutrition, gender equality and safeguarding the environment in the world’s poorest countries. An impressive consortium of governments, multilateral organizations, philanthropic foundations, nongovernmental organizations and even celebrities answered the U.N.’s call to implement the so-called Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In the past 15 years, partly due to the MDGs agenda, progress was made on a wide range of these development challenges: Extreme poverty was cut in half; deaths from malaria and tuberculosis were drastically reduced; millions of people gained access to anti-retroviral drugs to fight […]