Abstract

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) provide a shares vision of a much improved world by 2015, where extreme poverty is cut in half, child mortality is greatly reduced, gender disparities in primary and secondary education are eliminated, women are more empowered and health and environment indicators improve within a global partnership for development. These goals are ambitious and their attainment will require a global effort. Using the normative framework for human rights codifi ed in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is a solid strategy for national and international policy in poverty reduction. This report establishes that Human Rights and the MDGs have much in common. They share guiding principles such as participation, empowerment and national ownership. They serve as tools for reporting processes that can hold governments accountable and most fundamentally, they share the ultimate objective of promoting human well-being and honouring the inherent dignity of all people. Therefore, Linking Millennium Development Goals with Human Rights is a good possibility in order to obtain a solid normative framework. From a gender perspective, the report link the Goal 3 gender equality and empowerment of women, with two treaty bodies, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as well as the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women in order to give a solid framework to achieve this Goal. Gender equality is important not only as a goal in itself, but also as a path towards achieving the other goals. _Published online_: 11 December 2017.