Gender equality, poverty and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the Caribbean subregion

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are fundamentally a set of eight global goals
for the achievement of basic economic and social rights for all, with time-bound targets to be achieved
by the year 2015. In adopting the Millennium Declaration in 2000, the member States of the United
Nations pledged to “spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and
dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty.”1 The focus of this report is on the progress made by
Caribbean countries towards the achievement of Goal 1: the eradication of extreme poverty and
hunger; and Goal 3: the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women, and identifies
linkages between the two goals.