The Millennium Development Goals, chosen on the grounds that they were realistic and achievable, are a commitment by global leaders to halve poverty and hunger, provide education for all, improve standards of health, halt the spread of major diseases such as HIV/AIDS, and slow down environmental degradation by 2015. A vital aim of these goals is that the poorest countries will have the finance needed to achieve them. To do this, rich countries have promised to provide a very small fraction of their wealth -- just 0.7 per cent of their national income -- and to improve the way in which they give aid, to make it work best for poverty reduction, and to end the burden of debt which means that low-income countries must pay out $100 million every day to their creditors. For rich-country donors, making this finance available is not simply an act of charity: it is a both a moral obligation and a matter of justice -- born of a collective duty to guarantee the rights of all citizens, and the responsibility of rich countries to recognise their role in creating the debt crisis which continues to threaten the prospects of poor countries. A failure to meet these obligations also has consequences for rich countries themselves, with global poverty threatening the prosperity and security of the entire international community.