While the UN's 2012 status report on millennium Development Goals (MDGs) indicates possible early achievements before 2015 deadline, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warns that it's not time to celebrate.

Ki-moon points out that while it remains a major problem, the on-going economic crisis should not be allowed to setback the achievements so far attained in 2012.

"Let us build on the successes we have achieved so far, and let us not relent until all the MDGs have been attained," says Ban Ki-moon in the foreword of the MDG report, 2012.

The challenge is meant for all states subscribing to the UNDP's MDG campaign, including Rwanda, which is, commended for giving more women a platform to participate in politics and for having attained high marks for universal access to antiretroviral therapy.

Though there was a 30% increase in female membership in 49 chambers of parliament globally, Rwanda and Andorra are the only countries the report applauds for surpassing the 50% mark as of 2012.

Only seven parliaments in the world (down from ten) remain without a single female member in chamber.

This is quite a milestone because promoting gender equality and empowering women is millennium development goal number three and Rwanda is further commended here for not only having more than 50% female membership but also having one of only41 female parliamentary speakers out of the 271 posts available.

According to the report, Rwanda is commended for being one of the ten countries to have coverage of at least 80% of the population in need of antiretroviral therapy.

There are at least 13.7% million people estimated to be in need of antiretroviral therapy in developing countries including Rwanda but on a bright note access to these drugs has seen a tremendous increment from 40% in 2009 to 48% in 2010.

In other words, Rwanda is being praised for working hard to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, which is Millennium Development Goal number six.

MDG number six is one of the most important commitments states have promised to achieve by 2015 and it involves efforts to halving and beginning to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS HIV prevalence rate among the population aged 15 -24, having halted and began to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases and finally increasing the proportion of children under 5 sleeping under an insecticide-treated bed net.

However, according to Rwanda's MDG national program, supervised by the UNDP, the country is ranked as being on track with an overall score of 69.6% as of 2011/2012 on this particular goal.

'Green color'

Out of the eight MDGs, the UNDP gives Rwanda the 'green color' at least five of them. The green color means 'on track'. Rwanda gets green on MDG goal 2, which is to achieve universal primary education by 2015.

By the end of last year, UNDP reckons Rwanda had achieved 91.7% (up from 86.6% in 2006) on net enrolment ratio in primary school, achieved 81% (up from 51.7% in 2006) on the proportion of pupils starting grade one, who reach the last grade of primary school and an 83.7% (up from 76.9%) score on literacy rates of women and men aged 15 -24 years.

Rwanda also gets 'green' on goal number five concerning the commitment to improve maternal health.

While the target by 2015 is to only have at least 325 pregnant women deaths, Rwanda has been able to come within reach of the target recording 487 deaths per 100, 000 mothers as of 2011/2012. The result indicates progressive drops from 750 deaths in 2006 and 1,300 in 1990.

That performance is largely attributed to the fact that more women (69% in 2012) are getting attention of skilled and professional health workers as compared to 39% in 2006 and 26% in 1990.

Rwanda is also considered on track on MDG7 about ensure environmental sustainability scoring an impressive 73.3% slightly short of the 2015 target of 82.0%.

In his advice to the states, Ban Ki-Moon called for increased Global Partnership for development, which is MDG8 as a basis to achieve more success three years before the deadline. MDG8 calls for the increase in the number of people using ICT (phones and computers connected to internet).

It's an area where Rwanda will need to put in more work. According to UNDP, mobile phone ownership per 100 Rwandans stood at 45.2% as of 2011/2012 while personal computers per 100 persons is only at 1.7% having grown (slightly) from 0.3% in 2006 and nonexistent in 1990.

This indicates that even when programs such as one laptop per child are ongoing there's a bit more needed to actually increase access and ownership of the devices.

Though Rwanda has recently been applauded by UNICEF for having reduced Infant mortality rate in the country to 50 deaths per 1000 babies, the UNDP maintains an 'orange color' on MDG4 which is to reduce Infant mortality rate to at least 28 deaths per 1,000 babies below five years of age by 2015.

Even the under-five mortality rate which has reduced from 152 deaths in 2006 to 76 in 2011/2012 is still deemed as mediocre compared to the ultimate target of 47 deaths per 1000 by 2015.

Fighting poverty and hunger which is MDG1 remains major and while Rwanda has reduced the poor to 44.9%, it has another half to go to achieve the ultimate 23.8% target by 2015.

There's no time to relax as it's projected that in 2015 more than 600 million people worldwide will still be using unimproved water sources, almost one billion will be living on an income of less than $1.25 per day.