Since the Millennium Summit in 2000, the United Nations' development goals have succeeded in driving and focusing the world debate on human development. The UN Millennium Declaration, adopted by all 193 UN members, sought to define a common global approach to addressing poverty, health, and education challenges.
Access to education is a major plank of this effort, listed at number two out of the eight Millennium Goals, adopted in 2005 at the follow up World Summit meeting in New York. While other goals include eliminating extreme poverty, empowering women, and combating disease, in the realm of education, the focus of the effort is to deliver universal primary education. Specifically, world leaders committed a deadline of 2015 to achieve both the enrollment in and completion of a full course of primary schooling for any child, girl or boy.
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