Somewhat surprising, the new UN report on the post-2015 development agenda talks of “remarkable achievements”, “remarkable success”, “given this success”, etc… It then discusses potential new development goals to be achieved for 2030.

So check this out, too:

Millenium Development Goals – 2012 Progress Chart

If for more than half of the targets the progress is insufficient and for some targets there is even no progress or deteriotation, then the words used in the report should not be “remarkable achievements”, “remarkable success”, “given this success”. So let me provide you – for your convenience – the UN-into-plain-english thesaurus:

“remarkable achievements” – “unfortunate, significant shortfalls”
“remarkable success” – “big failure”
“given this sucess” – “given these problems”

Look, while there are certainly some achievements, it seems surprising to try to set new goals when most of the old ones have not been met yet.

Also, I wonder how the crisis is going to impact the achievements made so far. Anyone?