The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight goals related to poverty, education, gender equality, health, environmental sustainability and development set in the year 2000 at the UN Millennium Summit, and adopted by 189 nations. The eight MDGs are associated with 21 quantifiable targets, tracked by 60 statistical indicators in annual reports issued by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The goals target attainment in the year 2015. Country-by-country data is also available.

This chart shows a key indicator for malnutrition—underweight children from birth to five years. In developing regions, the proportion of children under five years old who are undernourished declined from 33 per cent in 1990 to 26 per cent in 2006, but 140 million children in developing countries were recorded as underweight in 2006. According to public health experts, undernourishment among young children is a sound indicator of inadequate nutrition in the population as a whole. As the 2009 MDG report states, "Adequate nutrition is vital for building children's immune systems and for their motor and cognitive development…The consequences can be fatal: more than one third of child deaths worldwide are attributable to undernutrition." (p. 12) Eastern Asia, and China in particular, reduced the percentage of underweight children between 1990 and 2006 by more than half. In Southern Asia, despite progress since 1990, almost half of young children are underweight. In Sub-saharan Africa, there has been insufficient progress, where more than a quarter of the region's children are underweight. Urban children are half as likely to be underweight as rural children in the same country. In Eastern Asia, where improvement has occurred, inadequate nutrition is still almost five times as high in rural areas. Notable in these statistics is the progress recorded for Latin America and the Caribbean, Northern Africa, and parts of Asia. There has been no significant progress in Western Asia, a likely result of the large number of refugees and conflict.

Overall worldwide progress is already insufficient to achieve the MDG goal to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by 2015. In developing regions between 1990 and 2007, a 5 percentage point decline in the proportion of underweight children under five years of age was achieved, leaving over a quarter of all children in these regions underfed. Progress in reducing hunger is being slowed or reversed by rising food prices due to changing diets, economic growth, a population increases, urbanization, poor agricultural policies, and use of food crops for biofuel.

This image from a 16th-century Persian manuscript illustrates the visit of a renowned teacher to a mosque. Such visits were much anticipated, and this image demonstrates the wide range of people who attended. Seating arrangements illustrate the social organization for the event. The guest of honor sat on the seat at the top of the minbar, or pulpit, while the older men sat in the first row. Younger men sat farther away, while youth without beards sat or stood on the sides. Women and young children sat in a separate section of the mosque, possibly a raised gallery or partitioned space on the same level. The painter showed small children with their mothers, some held in arms, others sitting on the floor. Because the women are among themselves, some have taken off their face veils and the bodice of their chador is loosened to show their clothing underneath. The small children were depicted climbing on their mothers' laps, interacting with them, pulling on their mothers veils and talking to them, visiting with other women who may have been their aunts, sisters, grandmothers or neighbors. The painter's style was very natural despite the formal composition, allowing the viewer to imagine some of the children running between the rows of worshippers during the prayer, a scene that can be witnessed in any mosque today.

The quotations below relate normative examples of parents' behavior upon the death of a child. In the first hadith, or narrative from the life of Muhammad, Prophet of Islam, Aisha, wife of Muhammad, asks about the salvation of those who have suffered the death of one or more children. The query is answered with the message that God compensates this suffering of parents with the reward of Paradise. The second example recounts the death of Muhammad's own grandson and describes his reaction to the death, specifically his tears of grief and explaining this outpouring of emotion as a mercy of God and a sign of mercy among family members. The third example concerns the death of Muhammad's own child, Ibrahim, when he was only a toddler. He explains that resignation to the will of God does not preclude emotion, and while he characterizes such emotion as a sign of human compassion granted by God, he also places limits on excessive displays of grief. These examples relayed in the hadith collections were featured in medieval consolation treatises which described the phenomenon of grief, but set Islamic guidelines on its public and private expression. Such treatises are interesting to scholars because they attest to the high rates of infant mortality, and also because they provide evidence that even in the face of high infant mortality, parents did become attached to their children despite the high risk of loss, and gave themselves over to love of infants and small children.

The hadith, or narrated report, reflects the Islamic custom of sacrificing a sheep upon the birth of a child, sharing the meat with extended family members, and donating some of it as charity (sadaqa). This practice of the people of Madinah mentioned in Al-Muwatta is based on the precedent of Muhammad in establishing the custom as an Islamically appropriate one. Several aspects of the hadith and the interpretation are noteworthy: the sacrifice was made for both boys and girls, the animal must be a healthy and sound one, and the pagan custom of smearing blood on the child is deemed un-Islamic. This may refer to a pre-islamic custom, like denying this ceremony to a girl child. Part of the aqiqa ceremony is naming the child and cutting its hair (or shaving the baby's head) and weighing the hair so as to give an equal amount of silver as charity.

Al-Muwatta is among the earliest written compendia of legal interpretations based on the two pre-eminent sources of Islamic knowledge, the Qur'an, or scripture, and the hadith, or reports of the sayings and deeds of Muhammad. Al-Muwatta, compiled and edited by Malik ibn Anas (c. 711 – 795 CE), means "well-trodden path" for its authoritative documentation of legal opinion and practices in Madinah, the city where Islam was established. The hadith covers both religious duties and social practices such as contracts, family matters, civil and commercial matters, and customs.

The Phoenician terracotta vessel features a human face, the nose forming a narrow spout. The bottle is an archaeological find from Carthage, near modern Tunis, dated to 399 BCE-200 BCE. Archaeologists believe this object was a baby bottle. It could have been used to feed diluted wine with honey or other sweet liquid such as juice, milk, or thin porridge, cooked cereal made from ground grain. Such vessels, called guttus, were placed with Greek infant burials of the same period, placed in proximity to the infant's head. Many such examples have been found in at Greek and Phoenician sites, in various forms, such as a dog bottle dated to c.300 BCE-64 BCE from Sousse, Tunisia, and a pomegranate-shaped Greek bottle from 399 BCE-200 BCE found in Italy. The whimsical shapes and decorations are appealing to children's appetites. These bottles may also have aided the process of weaning the child from breast milk.

Italian noblewomen presented soft, absorbent, linen towels with indigo woven borders to birthing mothers during the 14th century and later. The cultural context of the towels is illustrated in Italian paintings of the period depicting childbirth customs such as presentation and use of the towels. For example, this fresco by Paolo di Giovanni Fei, Birth of the Virgin Mary (1380) displays several uses for the towels. Women used these soft, fringed cloths as head coverings, tablecloths, and for wrapping household items. The towels were originally imported from Egypt, a center for linen and indigo dye production and weaving. Weavers finished the white body of the towels with fringe and woven border designs featuring Arabic inscriptions called tiraz. Tiraz bands alternated with geometric, plant, or animal designs. Like other luxury textiles from the East, imported Egyptian towels were copied by Italian weavers, eventually becoming a specialty of Perugia and other weaving centers. In place of the tiraz, pseudo-Arabic and then Latin lettering with Christian motifs appeared in the European border designs.

In this painting of a kuttab, or primary school, boys sit on a mat or carpet huddled close together with their writing boards. Boys, and sometimes girls, learned to recite the Qur'an at an early age, as well as the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic in schools called kuttabs. It might be held in a mosque, a building especially for the purpose, or an open courtyard, as in West Africa. This type of school was common in urban and rural settings throughout Muslim lands. The image by 13th century illustrator al-Wasiti (fl. 1237) is from the Maqamat (Assemblies) of al-Hariri (1054-1122 CE), an important figure in Arabic literature. The work is a collection of anecdotes about a picaresque hero, shown in the red robe, who perhaps having just said something outrageous, is shown disputing with the teacher. An interesting feature in several illustrations of kuttabs is the fan suspended from the ceiling, with one of the boys pulling a rope to swing it. Perhaps the boy chosen for this task was the one least proficient in his lessons.

This public building of Mamluk Cairo in Egypt has two functions. Its lower level housed a sabil, or fountain, for dispensing water to thirsty travelers and denizens of the city, and its upper level was a public primary school for the teaching of Qur'an, called a kuttab. Kuttab schools taught basic literacy skills such as arithmetic and grammar along with recitation of the Qur'an needed to perform Islamic prayers. The building was open to air and light on three façades. The sabil featured copper grillwork windows through which cups of water could be passed by an attendant inside, or passers-by could enter the cool interior with decorative tiles.

Pupils entered the building and climbed a stone stairway to the kuttab. They entered the rectangular schoolroom to sit on woven mats while the teacher likely sat on the raised platform that surrounded the room on three sides. A balcony projects slightly over the street, shaded by a large wooden awning. Delicate, turned-wooden pillars form 15 arches connected by balustrades and carved wooden screens called mashrabiyya. Clay water jugs cooled the drinking water in the breeze created by the mashrabiyya, a typical Middle Eastern architectural feature. The schoolroom walls were open to the street but screened from the sun and activity, making it an inviting, pleasant place to learn. Passers-by could take pleasure in hearing the children recite the Qu'an in unison. The construction of this significant building in 1748 CE is credited to Abd al-Rahman Katkhuda, Overseer of Awqaf (Charitable Endowments), who was associated with many Cairo monuments of the period.

The image by 13th–century illustrator al-Wasiti is from the Maqamat (Assemblies), a collection of stories of a picaresque hero. The author, al-Hariri (1054-1122 CE), is an important figure in Arabic literary history. The illustrations belong to the Baghdad School of miniature illustration, and depict scenes of ordinary life. The scene illustrates aspects of a village life. Al-Wasiti used a composition technique in which multiple levels show different planes of the scene, allowing him to compress many aspects of village life into the small space of the painting. A date palm, the village mosque, and the individual brick or adobe houses line the village street. Al-Wasiti portrayed the intimacy of life in the village, with each door open to show the family dynamics and work being done. A girl stands in one doorway with a woman, probably her mother. A woman in another doorway appears to call to someone, while a husband and wife nearby converse or argue. Poultry roost on the roofs of houses, a woman spins thread, and people tend domestic animals, including sheep, goats and water buffalo, often the work of women and children.

The image by 13th–century illustrator al-Wasiti (fl. 1237) is from the Maqamat (Assemblies), a collection of stories of a picaresque hero. In the upper half of the illustration, a boy in a short tunic and cap with tiraz embroidered bands, leads animals yoked to the saqiyya, a geared water-raising device that irrigated fields and gardens. The boy grasps the tail of the animal and carries a switch as the animals pace around the circle, turning the wheel to raise the water. The water flows into the lower part of the illustration, where guests sit in a garden around a basin and decorative fountain, listening to poetry and music accompanied by a lute. Baghdad had many garden suburbs along the canals, so this scene reflects urban as well as rural social life. The social class of the boy is likely beneath that of the group attending the social gathering. He might be the son of the family who cultivated the land, or a servant. The author, al-Hariri (1054-1122 CE), is an important figure in Arabic literature. The illustrations belong to the Baghdad School of miniature illustration, and were popular even in al-Wasiti's time, depicting dynamic scenes of life within the small space of the page.