Bhutan's Progress: Midway to the Millennium Development Goals

Bhutan along with 189 other member states adopted the United Nations Millennium Declaration in 2000, committing to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and setting out a series of time-bound targets with a deadline of 2015 that are known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The draft Tenth Five Year Plan of Bhutan reflects a strong MDG orientation with poverty reduction as the key objective and the MDGs have been advocated effectively to mobilize social support for the goals and promote wide national ownership. 

This publication, Bhutan's Progress: Midway to the Millennium Development Goals, highlights Bhutan's achievements of the MDGs and the targets up to 2008, challenges in achieving some of the targets and for the first time, analyses the relationship between Bhutan’s development philosophy of Gross National Happiness (GNH) and the MDGs.