Global Strategic Frameworks, and in this case specifically the Millennium Development Goals, have certain opportunities as well as limitations. While this post will focus on the limitations of these global strategic frameworks, it is important to note that even failures within them show us where to improve and demonstrate a desire to do so in the first place. On that note, the Millennium Development Goals were not reached. It is that simple. There are many arguments as to why but one of the most important that was heavily addressed in the Sustainable Development Goals was what and how the Millennium Development Goals measured initiatives and outcomes. One example of this is Goal 2 of the MDGs: Achieve universal primary education, was measured by enrollment rates and how many students attended school each day. While numerically, many country’s rates of student enrollment increased, it did not measure the quality of education they received as a result of rapid school building projects to achieve Goal 2.

Another argument, rooted in the one before, is that the MDGs were more useful to donors and program initiators then the governments behind them. Because these goals were largely drafted without the input of the developing nations that would be receiving the aid, the language was drafted in a way to benefit investors and donors than to be clear to locals or government officials.

Finally, the immediately obvious difference between the MDGs and SDGs is the number of goals. The MDGs lumped many things into single categories, not emphasizing certain issues enough. This has hopefully been addressed by separating many of these categories into their own entities in the SDGs.