The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight specific goals to be met by 2015 that seek to ensure a basic human development for all by 2015.  The Millennium Development Goals address poverty in its many dimensions - income poverty, hunger, disease, lack of adequate shelter, and exclusion - while promoting gender equality, education, environmental sustainability and global cooperation in development. They are also basic human rights - the rights of each person on the planet to food, health, education, shelter, and security.

The MDGs were agreed upon at the UN Millennium Summit held in 2000, the largest gathering of world leaders in history. The Millennium Declaration, adopted by the world leaders, promised to: "free all men, women, and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty." The MDGs are drawn from this Millennium Declaration. The declaration was adopted by 189 nations and signed by 147 Heads of State.