A/67/270 reached. 28 The future goals and targets should therefore explicitly embrace equality alongside universality. While universality is about ensuring access for all, equality is about “levelling up” or working towards improving the quality and levels of service of groups that lag behind. 46. Equality is relevant to all fields of development and must be applied to all future goals and targets, including those concerning water, sanitation and hygiene. Integrating non-discrimination and equality into all future goals and targets requires including incentives to reduce inequalities. However, to underscore the intrinsic value of equality as an overriding objective, it should also be a stand-alone goal. 29 Having a stand-alone goal on the reduction of inequality is essential to bring it to light and to give it a centre stage in the development agenda. While some argue that a separate equality goal will lead to an insular treatment of equality, 30 the Special Rapporteur is of the opposite view: including equality as an overarching, crosscutting concern at the goal level will ensure that the reduction of inequalities will be addressed under all the substantive targets, while she acknowledges that this will depend on the way the goal is crafted. 47. Among the ideas for a dedicated goal on equality, one of the most cited proposals is to have a target for income inequality by using the Gini coefficient. 31 A target could either relate to a specific level of income equality or it could call for a reduction in the Gini coefficient until it fell below a certain value. 32 48. The conventional discourse describes poverty as multidimensional, yet its quantification has remained largely one-dimensional, focused on income, making it incapable of reflecting reality. Future targets should reflect the reality that poverty is often the result of multiple, intersecting forms of discrimination. Income inequality is not always the best proxy for measuring overall inequality. Other metrics of inequality may capture existing processes of discrimination and resulting inequalities better and more in line with human rights considerations. 49. In fact, the current Millennium Development Goal on gender equality represents already an attempt at formulating a stand-alone goal on one particular area of equality that is of paramount importance across the world. The accompanying target has been heavily criticized for limiting gender equality to education, which is again somewhat broadened by the indicators that also measure the share of women in wage employment and the proportion of seats in national parliaments. 33 Still, the gaps between the goal and its accompanying targets and indicators related to the overall measure of gender equality highlight the difficulty of reducing a goal on equality to a limited number of quantifiers that can capture the __________________ 28 29 30 31 32 33 14 United Nations System Task Team, “Addressing inequalities”, p. 12 (see footnote 3 above). The United Nations Development Strategy Beyond 2015 (United Nations publication, Sales No. E.12.II.A.3), p. 18. Jan Vandemoortele, background paper prepared for the Experts Group Meeting to support the advancement of the Post-2015 United Nations Development Agenda, New York, 27-29 February 2012, sect. 7.8. A country’s Gini coefficient is between 0 and 100, with 0 indicating perfect income equality and 100 indicating absolute income inequality, meaning that a single person would have all the income. Melamed, “Putting inequality”, p. 4 (see footnote 2 above). Claiming the Millennium Development Goals: a Human Rights Approach (United Nations publication, Sales No. E.08.XIV.6), p. 26. 12-45653