MDR/PRL Campaign  //  To translate the MDGs into a model bill on poverty reduction and the fight against malaria

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The Millennium Development Goals form a multidimensional commitment of the whole global community, to be achieved by 2015. All recent evaluations, in particular those held in view of the international MDG Summit in New York in September 2010, confirm that at the current pace of progress, the MDGs will not be reached.

The International Cooperation Ethics Advisory Agency – ACECI – advocates the human factor in major global stakes like the fight against poverty, sustainable development, management of the environment, bi- and multilateral relations.

ACECI is convinced that the implementation of MDGs would gain a new major impetus if the countries of the South committed themselves to translate the MDGs into a poverty reduction law. To join action to the ethical vision of development and cooperation it is advocating, the agency has launched since 2009 a sensitisation, advocacy and mobilisation campaign for the formulation and adoption of a model bill on poverty reduction. In 2010 ACECI is proposing to the government of Burundi a project for the production and promotion of mosquito repellants based on catnip – Nepeta cataria – to prevent malaria and contribute to sustainable development.

Fighting poverty through binding legislative measures is not only a strong sign of responsibility and ownership by the people, civil societies, parliaments and governments; it also offers a legal cooperation framework to international partners.

Such a law guarantees on the one hand respect for elementary human rights, good governance, equity, resource sharing, accountability, the installation of control mechanisms; on the other hand, it obliges governments to invest in its people, the most important resource of any country anywhere in the world.

The concrete implementation of such a law will require innovative forms of commitment of all actors, including a private sector conscious of its social responsibility, and a highly participatory approach to ensure national ownership from the very start of the activities. Significant added value will be generated through sustainable production methods and local transformation of renewable natural resources.

In anticipation of direct actions for the implementation of the Anti-Poverty law, in analogy with the law on HIV / AIDS, ACECI offers to the people and government of Burundi an investment project for the production of mosquito repellant accessible to vulnerable populations. This sustainable development project that involves many cooperation actors (governments, private companies, NGOs, academia, foundations, etc.) combines fighting against malaria - the leading cause of mortality – to investment for job creation, capacity building, economic growth through trade in the sub-region and even beyond the borders of the East African Community.

This project is an operational implementation of MDG 1 (poverty reduction), MDG 4 (reduction of child mortality), MDG 5 (improving maternal health), MDG 6 (malaria control) and MDG 8 (global partnership, access to work, make affordable products for the prevention of malaria, access to new technologies in cooperation with the private sector).

Visit www.aceci.org for more information on the MDG-Poverty Reduction Law campaign