Asia-Pacific Aspirations: Perspectives for a Post 2015 Development Agenda

This report is the sixth in the series of Asia-Pacific MDG reports produced since 2004 by the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific/Asian Development Bank/United Nations Development Programme regional partnership to support the achievement of the MDGs. The report reveals striking disparities between and within sub-regions, countries and even social groups in their progress towards MDGs. While South Asia as a whole is on track for just nine MDG indicators, Sri Lanka is on track for 15 indicators and outperforms the sub-region. Within countries disparities between men and women, between social and ethnic groups and between regions hold large sections of the population back from achieving the MDGs. The report notes that many countries can speed up progress with just a little effort. Fourteen off-track Asia-Pacific countries need to accelerate progress by less than 2 percentage points annually to reach the target of halving the proportion of underweight children by 2015.