Tatimma Issue 2

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are a set of eight specific objectives for enhancing the human condition, including goals of poverty reduction and improvement in education, gender equality, health, and environmental quality among others. Each goal is associated with specific targets – eighteen in total – and each target is related to quanti able indicators – forty-eight in total.

In this issue of Tatimma, and on the occasion of the 10 year anniversary of the MDGs Declaration, we focus on this problematic which is of the utmost importance, but from a local perspective. In this context, George Azzi from the Arab Foundation for Freedom and Equality gives an overview of the situation in Lebanon regarding HIV/AIDS, while Gisèle Achkar from the Mouvement Social briefs us on their initiatives to contain the drop out phenomenon in the country. On a more general note, we also have contributions from Dr Ahmad Baalbaki, a translation of an interview with Damien Millet, and a paper from Samir Amine that shed light on different criticisms that have been formulated in the past few years on the MDGs by activists, the global justice movement, as well as academics and practitioners.

In a few words, the aim of this issue is to initiate a space of debate on this question in the development and humanitarian community in Lebanon.

Finally, at a time characterised by the growing protest movements in the Arab world and the region, one could only wonder how the MDGs could produce change while disregarding the specific context and institutional environment of countries of the Global South...