Criticism on MDGs

UPDATE: The secretariat received a press statement from the Prof. Jose Maria Sison about his criticism towards the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs). Hereby we extract some of the main points of his criticism towards the MDGs.

As the chairperson of the International League of People's Struggle (ILPS), he denounced the MDGs, "far from promoting global economic and social justice, the MDGs is a shrewd scheme of the imperialist powers to distract attention from structural issues that are the root cause of the chronic and worsening poverty which afflicts billions of people around the world today. "

"Worse, the MDGs is being used to promote the same policy prescriptions of imperialist globalization that have hastened and aggravated the massive destruction of livelihood and economic opportunities in poor countries where more than 1 billion people are forced to survive on less than US$1 a day," he added in his statement.

The criticisms:
1. MDGs conveniently distorted the issue of poverty, and ignored its causes and conditions.

2. Limited resources of poor countries are being deflected to debt servicing.

3. MDGs systematically makes semi-colonial and colonial countries more beholden to their imperialist patrons rather than promoting self-reliance through genuine national industrialization.

The alternatives:
1. The only way to fight poverty is the assertion of the poor people's inalienable human right not simply to live but to live decently and this entails the struggle to bring to an end all structures of exploitation and poverty.

2. Recognize that these reforms will not be given to the poor on a silver platter by imperialist institutions including and even the UN. Like all the hard-earned victories of the people in the past, it can only be borne out by the militant and uncompromising struggle for national liberation, social justice and peace of the anti-imperialist movement.

What do you think about this? As we are closing to the UN General Assembly, what are the issues that we need to concern about? What are the decision that affected the people and the youth? May be we can start thinking towards these questions.