Millennium Development Goals (MDG) constitute one of the most important global institutions today because of their origins, their ambitions and their effective role in shaping international development efforts. In developing this argument, Sakiko Fukada-Parr analyzes: whether the goals are adequate as benchmarks for the Millennium Declaration and the UN conference commitments how the goals came to be formulated the way they were, identifying key actors and their motivations, the support they received and the obstacles they faced, the nature of the criticisms levelled how the goals affected policy change on the part of both developing countries and the international community how the goals affected policy change on the part of donors and the international development community whether the goals have had an impact on accelerating poverty reduction, drawing on the multitude of reports prepared at global, national, and sub-national levels.