The United Nations is a global organization originated after the second world war, committed to maintaining international peace and security. The alliance began with 51 original members and has since grown to 192 united countries. At the turn of the century, these countries collaborated together for the Millennium Summit in New York city, creating a set of descriptive goals with set target dates for the purpose of globalization and achieving freedom and equality for all. The eight individual goals were selected with the purpose of ensuring global security through eradication of extreme poverty, preventing a global collapse. The ultimate hope for these goals would be to achieve the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, providing universal primary education, reducing child mortality, promoting gender equality, combatting HIV/AIDS and other diseases, and ensuring environmental sustainability. Ultimately, the desire would be to unite as a global partnership for change. One way to look at the issue is that our society could choose one of two directions for our planet, and the United Nations has decided that fight our ailments as a team shows more promise than fighting each other for resources as we deplete them and lose ourselves in the process. The Millennium Development Goals have been treated with mixed judgements, however the progress that has been achieved works as lesson to the power of active involvement. With the consistent growth of our population, poverty rates would hypothetically rise proportionally. However, with the introduction of the Development Goals, the UN has reached the goal of halving the poverty levels far before the set date of 2015. Though 1.2 billion of earths inhabitants still live in extreme poverty, the 700 million fewer since 1990 should serve as undeniable proof of progress. Hunger reduction is close to half as we approach 2015 and gender equality has been increasingly emphasized in the last decade. No on