A/72/139 progress against the duties of the State under human rights treaties to progressively realize economic, social and cultural rights. In fact, the targets associated with certain Goals, such as halving the number of people living in extreme poverty, encouraged targeting those closest to the threshold needed to reach the target rather than reaching out to those most in need and ensuring the fulfilment of the related rights of all citizens. Victims of contemporary forms of slavery are invariably among the most vulnerable in society and they face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, based on, among other things, gender, age, poverty, being perceived as being of low caste status, being of slave descent and belonging to indigenous communities. This vulnerability and the fact that such populations were all too often excluded from the successes of the Millennium Development Goals limited the extent to which the prevailing development framework could address the root causes and consequences of contemporary forms of slavery. 19. Furthermore, there are questions about the extent to which the Millennium Development Goals were able to encourage high-quality development outcomes that could have contributed to tackling the causes and consequences of contemporary forms of slavery. The targets associated with the Goals tended to quantify outcomes in a one-dimensional way and focus on absolute reductions in chosen measurements with very limited focus on the corresponding quality and impact. For example, while enrolment in primary education increased significantly under the Goals, and it is commonly cited as a key success story, there are reports of children in countries who achieved progress in this area finishing primary education functionally illiterate and thus still being deprived of their right to education. This is contrary to the human rights obligations of States to ensure good -quality primary education that is free and compulsory. 8 In addition, the narrow focus of the Goals did not adequately address the structural and systemic shift of socioeconomic trends, discussed below, which undermine sustainable human development and enable contemporary forms of slavery to continue unabated. 20. While it is difficult to say with authority what impact the exclusion of slavery and broader human rights concerns has had on the number of victims of contemporary forms of slavery, the available data do not present a positive picture of the progress made during the period of the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals. In 2005, ILO published its first global forced labour figures, estimating that, at a minimum, 12.3 million persons were in forced labour at any point in time in the period from 1995 to 2004. In 2012, when ILO published new estimates, the number was 21 million. Given the significant methodological differences in the estimates cited, the figures cannot be compared. The figures, however, leave no room for doubt that large numbers o f people were victims of contemporary forms of slavery in the same period when significant resources and efforts were dedicated to implementing the Goals. The most recent data published by ILO also included 5.5 million children thought to be in situations of slavery, which is similar to an indicator included in the 2005 figures, highlighting the failure of the Goals to reduce contemporary forms of slavery among the most vulnerable victims. 9 21. The way in which the Millennium Development Goals were developed and conceptualized was also a missed opportunity to establish crucial links in the normative debates about slavery, human rights and systemic socioeconomic trends. The Goals had a profound impact on the development discourse and the fact that __________________ 8 9 17-11988 Elaine Unterhalter, “Education targets, indicators and a post -2015 development agenda: education for all, the MDGs, and human development”, working paper series (May 2013); and United Nations, “Who will be accountable? Human rights and the post -2015 development agenda”, HR/PUB/13/1 (New York and Geneva, 2013). ILO, ILO Global Estimate of Forced Labour. 7/21