section_path: Global mechanisms/Sustainable Development Goal Number 6/Millennium Development Goal Number 7 until 2015
section_name: Millennium Development Goal Number 7 until 2015
paragraph_text: Millennium Development Goal Number 7 until 2015
  
  The United Nations, during the Millennium Summit in New York in 2000 and the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, developed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aimed at poverty eradication and sustainable development. The specific sanitation goal for the year 2015 was to reduce by half the number of people who had no access to potable water and sanitation in the baseline year of 1990. As the JMP and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report in 2006 has shown, progress meeting the MDG sanitation target is slow, with a large gap between the target coverage and the current reality.
  
  In December 2006, the United Nations General Assembly declared 2008 "The International Year of Sanitation ", in recognition of the slow progress being made towards the MDGs sanitation target. The year aimed to develop awareness and more actions to meet the target.
  
  There are numerous reasons for this gap. A major one is that sanitation is rarely given political attention received by other topics despite its key importance. Sanitation is not high on the international development agenda, and projects such as those relating to water supply projects are emphasised.
  
  The Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation of WHO and UNICEF (JMP) has been publishing reports of updated estimates every two years on the use of various types of drinking-water sources and sanitation facilities at the national, regional and global levels. The JMP report for 2015 stated that: