Through the adoption of the United Nations Millennium Declaration by the General Assembly on 8 September 2000,3 the United Nations introduced a concrete set of development targets embodied in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Poverty reduction was featured as the first and pre-eminent goal. However, the Goals, per se, do not encompass any particular strategy for achieving those objectives. For instance, while productive employment creation is generally considered a main vehicle for poverty reduction, targets for the creation of decent employment were not initially part of the MDG agenda, employment indicators were introduced only after 2005.4 The goals provide no more than a set of targets, which, though they may provide a focus for a coherent strategy, do not as such offer any guidance on what combination of policies would be most effective in fostering the simultaneous achievement of the MDGs.