Since their proclamation in 2000, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have become the leitmotiv of international development politics. With the MDGs, the development discourse among governments and international organisations has focused on eradicating the most extreme forms of hunger and poverty as well as on basic social services for the population, above all in the fields of primary education, health and water supply. Most of the MDGs are linked to clear quantitative and time‐bound targets, the majority of which are to be attained by 2015.

Over the past years, the MDGs have proven to be effective in stimulating public interest, have been addressed in global campaigns, and have had a considerable political mobilisation impact. This was reflected, for instance, in the two declarations on supporting the MDGs initiated by UK Premier Gordon Brown in July 2007, which were signed by 22 heads of state and government, including Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel, as well as by 21 corporate leaders (Commission of the European Communities 2008: 13). Marking the MDG midpoint, they noted that the world was “not on track” in realising the goals, concluding that:

“We need urgent action to meet this development emergency if the world is to get back on track."

To this end, they called for a summit of governments, business and civil society. Taking the initiative, UN Secretary‐General Ban Kimoon has invited the parties concerned to a High‐level Event on the MDGs in New York on 25 September 2008. There, however, the participants of this meeting are not only going to be confronted with deficits in the implementation of these goals. The debate over the MDGs is characterised by fundamental controversies about the attainability of the goals, their methodology, the strategies of their implementation and their status within a holistic development approach.

These debates have become all the more urgent on account of the revised poverty statistics provided by the World Bank. New calculations rate the number of people living in extreme poverty at 1.4 billion, which is more than 400 million above what has previously been assumed (World Bank 2008b). With this new calculation, the midpoint review becomes more sobering, and the fragility of the data base appears particularly clearly. In a nutshell, the MDG project has run into crisis. Against this background, both the agenda for the second half on the way to the 2015 goals and all post‐2015 strategies have to take the political, conceptual and methodical challenges in realising the MDGs into account.