ABSTRACT
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 18 September 2000 and over 190 countries signed up to them. The MDGs to some extent were a product of their time in that they picked up the spirit of the new millennium, and in a sense were a new start. Here was a commitment by the nations of the world to reduce poverty and improve the lives of the global majority population. There was a great sense of optimism surrounding the MDGs, a new start and ‘a break with business as usual’, as the then Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, put it (cited in Rigg, 2014).
