Anushka Shahjahan – Indonesia and the Asian region have made substantial progress toward achieving the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, although gaps in poverty reduction remain, according to an annual report published recently.
The "Asia-Pacific Regional Millennium Development Goals" report indicated considerable success in the region, but was skeptical about the region meeting its MDG commitments by the 2015 deadline.
Nearly two-thirds of the world's poor live in this region, and even after 2015, there will be considerable unfinished business, according to the report.
While Indonesia has been an early achiever in reaching its goals to reduce the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day, nearly 743 million people in the region continue to live in poverty.
The report states that Indonesia is also on track to achieve its goals of providing its population with safe drinking water by 2015. However, the trajectory is dismal in terms of providing the population with proper basic sanitation.
"Indonesia is the second ranking country in the world where 63 million people don't have toilets," said Angela Kearney, the Unicef representative to Indonesia.
Although the report cites Asia Pacific's strong performance in areas of health and hunger, Indonesia's goals in these directives may not be met by 2015.
Progress in reducing infant mortality and maternal mortality is also lacking. However, there is progress in both areas, unlike the regression that Indonesia has shown in its attempt to reduce the prevalence of HIV, with the number actually increasing drastically over the years.
According to UNAIDS estimates, around 380,000 Indonesians were infected with HIV in 2011, with the estimated number of deaths due to HIV/AIDS-related causes amounting to nearly 15,000.
Rising income inequality and gender discrimination are among the emerging threats to the region and Indonesia, which need to be faced not only for the 2015 MDGs but even beyond, in order to ensure further development within the region.
Indonesian government statistics show that the decrease in the official poverty rate is slowing – from 12.3 percent of all Indonesians in September 2011 to 11.7 percent a year later.
If the gap between the rich and poor grows even wider, "it will engender social unrest," warned H.S. Dillon, the presidential special envoy for poverty alleviation, in an interview earlier this year.
"Inequality continues to be more acutely felt. This is politically corrosive and socially divisive, and needs to be a top priority for all local leaders," he said.
And while Indonesian politics often tends to be focused on economics, according to Ndiame Diop, lead economist and economic adviser at the World Bank in Indonesia, empowering women should not be overlooked, because women's rights are "a human right, but it is also smart economics," he said.
Indonesia has made some notable progress toward narrowing the gender gap and achieving the MDG on equality.
This includes significantly more access to education for girls and an increase of female political representation in the national government. But Tomi Soetjipto, a spokesman for the UN Development Program in Indonesia, said the nation still had some way to go before achieving full gender equality.
The UN Millennium Development Goals were set in September 2000.