Email to Richard Curtis

21 September 2015


Subject: For Richard Curtis. Factual error in The World's Largest Lesson material. Fwd: Urgent: BBC set to misrepresent existing UN pledges again during next week's Summit

To: ajones@unitedagents.co.uk, dwalker@unitedagents.co.uk, aelliott@unitedagents.co.uk

...

Dear Mr Curtis,

I am sorry to break this to you, but there is a common myth about Millennium pledges which you may be in danger of repeating in a few days.

I edit millenniumdeclaration.org  -  documentary evidence on UN commitments and research methods.

Following complaints, the Financial Times Complaints Commissioner and the BBC Trust have accepted that the later Millennium Development Goal targets are less ambitious than leaders' pledges of 2000.

The former deputy director of the Millennium Campaign has stated that the easier baseline was not set at the Summit.

I am sorry to tell you that some of the information to which readers of The World's Largest Lesson are directed, is misleading.

Statements that the MDGs were set by a UN summit in 2000 understate the pledges and, ultimately, disempower the poor.

There is no 1990 baseline in the Declaration, which leaders reaffirmed in 2005 and 2013.

http://millenniumdeclaration.org/pledges.htm

Yours sincerely

Matt Berkley