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Millennium Development Goals largely ignore family

CWN - September 24, 2010

Looking carefully at the Millennium Development Goals—the UN program for aid to the developing world—Carolyn Moynihan finds a great deal of discussion about help for women and children. But something is missing: a focus on the men who are (or should be) responsible for providing for those women and children. The Millennium Development Goals assume that international donors will lift individuals out of poverty. But the UN program pays scant attention to the critical role of families. Yet societies cannot develop without stable and prosperous families. Moynihan asks:

What will happen in the long term if governments and aid agencies keep dealing with women and children as though they do not belong to families but are simply classes of people whose material and social status needs to improve?

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  • Posted by: extremeCatholic - Sep. 26, 2010 4:02 PM ET USA

    In any program for "human development" you won't find these two words: "personal responsibility". The abandonment of mother and child by the inseminator is simply a morally neutral "given".

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