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Nations Development Program Occasional papers and library
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Human Development Report
2013
The rise of the South. Human Progress in a Diverse World
Occasional papers
One of the most heartening developments in recent years has been the broad progress in human development of many
developing countries and their emergence onto the global stage: the “rise of the South”. This growing diversity in voice and
power is challenging the principles that have guided policymakers and driven the major post–Second World War institutions.
Stronger voices from the South are demanding more-representative
frameworks of international governance that
embody the principles of democracy and equity.
Just as important, many developing countries
are reshaping ideas about how to attain human
development. The rise of the South has resulted
not from adhering to a fixed set of policy prescriptions,
but from applying pragmatic policies
that respond to local circumstances and
opportunities—including a deepening of the
developmental role of states, a dedication to
improving human development (including by
supporting education and social welfare) and
an openness to trade and innovation. Even so,
future progress will require policymakers to
play close attention to such issues as equity,
voice and accountability, environmental risks
and changing demography.
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Human Development report
2011
Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All
Occasional papers
In June 2012 world leaders will gather
in Rio de Janeiro to seek a new consensus on global
actions to safeguard the future of the planet and the right of future
generations everywhere to
live healthy and fulfilling lives. This is the great development
challenge of the 21st century.
The 2011 Human Development Report offers important new contributions to
the global dialogue
on this challenge, showing how sustainability is inextricably linked to
basic questions of
equity— that is, of fairness and social justice and of greater access
to a better quality of life. Sustainability
is not exclusively or even primarily an environmental issue, as the
Report so persuasively
argues. It is fundamentally about how we choose to live our lives, with
an awareness that
everything we do has consequences for the 7 billion of us here today,
as well as for the billions
more who will follow, for centuries to come.
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Human
Development Report 2010
Occasional papers
The real wealth of nations: pathways
to human development
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) launched the Human
Development Report (HDR) in 1990. It is worth recalling the broader
context. The
Berlin Wall was crumbling, and the Soviet Union would soon dissolve.
The apartheid regime in South Africa had just released Nelson Mandela
from prison.
Iraq was about to invade Kuwait. Augusto Pinochet had left power in
Chile,
replaced by a new democratic regime. The Sandinistas were voted out of
office in
Nicaragua. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy Party won
Myanmar’s
national elections. Students were demonstrating for political reform in
Beijing. The Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges opened. Margaret
Thatcher had
ruled the United Kingdom for more than a decade. The term “Washington
Consensus”
had just been coined.
In this climate the first HDR stood out, calling
with eloquence and humanity for a different approach to economics and
to development.
These calls have continued to resonate around the world and have gained
renewed
prominence with recent investigations into measuring people’s
well-being and remarkable
advances in data and knowledge. Box 1.1 traces these recent calls back
to earlierdecades and introduces Mahbub ul Haq, the
visionary Pakistani economist who pioneered the HDR.
Human Development Report 2009
Overcoming barriers: Human mobility and development
Human development is about putting people at the centre of development.
It is about people realizing their potential, increasing their choices
and enjoying the freedom to lead lives they value. Since 1990, annual
Human Development Reports have explored challenges including poverty,
gender, democracy, human rights, cultural liberty, globalization, water
scarcity and climate change.
Migration, both within and beyond borders, has become an increasingly
prominent theme in domestic and international debates, and is the topic
of the 2009 Human Development Report (HDR09). The starting point is
that the global distribution of capabilities is extraordinarily
unequal, and that this is a major driver for movement of people.
Migration can expand their choices– in terms of incomes, accessing
services and participation, for example -- but the opportunities open
to people vary from those who are best endowed to those with limited
skills and assets. These underlying inequalities, which can be
compounded by policy distortions, will be a theme of the report.
The report will investigate migration in the context of demographic
changes and trends in both growth and inequality. It will also present
more detailed and nuanced individual, family and village experiences,
and explore less visible movements typically pursued by disadvantaged
groups such as short term and seasonal migration.
There is a range of evidence about the positive impacts of migration on
human development, through such avenues as increased household incomes
and improved access to education and health services. There is further
evidence that migration can empower traditionally disadvantaged groups,
in particular women. At the same time, risks to human development are
also present where migration is a reaction to threats and denial of
choice, and where regular opportunities for movement are constrained.
National and local policies play a critical role in enabling better
human development outcomes for both those who choose to move in order
to improve their circumstances, and those forced to relocate due to
conflict, environmental degradation, or other reasons. Host country
restrictions can raise both the costs and the risks of migration.
Similarly, negative outcomes can arise at the country levels where
basic civic rights, like voting, schooling and health care are denied
to those who have moved across provincial lines to work and live. The
HDR09 will show how a human development approach can be a means to
redress some of the underlying issues that erode the potential benefits
of mobility and/or force migration.
The 2009 Human Development Report will be launched in
October of 2009.
Human Development Report 2007/2008
Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world
Climate change is the defining human development challenge of the 21st
Century. Failure to respond to that challenge will stall and then
reverse international efforts to reduce poverty. The poorest countries
and most vulnerable citizens will suffer the earliest and most damaging
setbacks, even though they have contributed least to the problem.
Looking to the future, no country—however wealthy or powerful—will be
immune to the impact of global warming.
The Human Development Report 2007/2008 shows that climate change is not
just a future scenario. Increased exposure to droughts, floods and
storms is already destroying opportunity and reinforcing inequality.
Meanwhile, there is now overwhelming scientific evidence that the world
is moving towards the point at which irreversible ecological
catastrophe becomes unavoidable. Business-as-usual climate change
points in a clear direction: unprecedented reversal in human
development in our lifetime, and acute risks for our children and their
grandchildren.
Occasional papers
Human Development Report 2006
Beyond scarcity: power, poverty and the global water
crisis
Throughout history water has confronted humanity with some of its
greatest challenges. Water is a source of life and a natural resource
that sustains our environments and supports livelihoods – but it is
also a source of risk and vulnerability. In the early 21st Century,
prospects for human development are threatened by a deepening global
water crisis. Debunking the myth that the crisis is the result of
scarcity, this report argues poverty, power and inequality are at the
heart of the problem.
In a world of
unprecedented wealth, almost 2 million children die each year for want
of a glass of clean water and adequate sanitation. Millions of women
and young girls are forced to spend hours collecting and carrying
water, restricting their opportunities and their choices. And
water-borne infectious diseases are holding back poverty reduction and
economic growth in some of the world’s poorest countries.
Occasional papers
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Human Development Report 2005
International cooperation at a
crossroads: Aid, trade and security in an unequal world
This year's Human Development Report takes stock of human
development, including progress towards the MDGs. Looking beyond
statistics, it highlights the human costs of missed targets and broken
promises. Extreme inequality between countries and within countries is
identified as one of the main barriers to human development and as a
powerful brake on accelerated progress towards the MDGs.
Occasional papers
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Human Development Report 2004
Cultural Liberty in Today's Diverse
World
Accommodating people's growing demands for their inclusion
in society, for respect of their ethnicity, religion, and language,
takes more than democracy and equitable growth. Also needed are
multicultural policies that recognize differences, champion diversity
and promote cultural freedoms, so that all people can choose to speak
their language, practice their religion, and participate in shaping
their culture so that all people can choose to be who they are.
GLOBAL - 2004 - Occasional papers |
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Human Development Report 2003
Millennium Development Goals: A
compact among nations to end human poverty
The range of human
development in the world is vast and uneven, with astounding progress
in some areas amidst stagnation and dismal decline in others. Balance
and stability in the world will require the commitment of all nations,
rich and poor, and a global development compact to extend the wealth of
possibilities to all people.
GLOBAL - 2003 - Occasional papers
Human Development Report 2002
Deepening democracy in a fragmented
world
This Human Development
Report is first and foremost about the idea that politics is as
important to successful development as economics. Sustained poverty
reduction requires equitable growth-but it also requires that poor
people have political power. And the best way to achieve that in a
manner consistent with human development objectives is by building
strong and deep forms of democratic governance at all levels of society.
GLOBAL - 2002 background
papers
Human Development Report 2001
Making new technologies work for
human development
Technology networks are
transforming the traditional map of development, expanding people's
horizons and creating the potential to realize in a decade progress
that required generations in the past.
GLOBAL - 2001 - Occasional papers
Human Development Report 2000
Human rights and human development
Human Development Report
2000 looks at human rights as an intrinsic part of development and at
development as a means to realizing human rights. It shows how human
rights bring principles of accountability and social justice to the
process of human development.
GLOBAL - 2000 - Occasional papers
Human Development Report 1999
Globalization with a Human Face
Global markets, global
technology, global ideas and global solidarity can enrich the lives of
people everywhere. The challenge is to ensure that the benefits are
shared equitably and that this increasing interdependence works for
people not just for profits. This year's Report argues that
globalization is not new, but that the present era of globalization,
driven by competitive global markets, is outpacing the governance of
markets and the repercussions on people.
GLOBAL - 1999 - Background
papers
Human Development Report 1998
Consumption for Human Development
The high levels of
consumption and production in the world today, the power and potential
of technology and information, present great opportunities. After a
century of vast material expansion, will leaders and people have the
vision to seek and achieve more equitable and more human advance in the
21st century.
GLOBAL - 1998
Human Development Report 1997
Human Development to Eradicate Poverty
Eradicating poverty
everywhere is more than a moral imperative - it is a practical
possibility. That is the most important message of the Human
Development Report 1997. The world has the resources and the know-how
to create a poverty-free world in less than a generation.
GLOBAL - 1997
Human Development Report 1996
Economic growth and human development
The Report argues that
economic growth, if not properly managed, can be jobless, voiceless,
ruthless, rootless and futureless, and thus detrimental to human
development. The quality of growth is therefore as important as its
quantity for poverty reduction, human development and sustainability.
GLOBAL - 1996
Human Development Report 1995
Gender and human development
The report analyses the
progress made in reducing gender disparities in the past few decades
and highlights the wide and persistent gap between women's expanding
capabilities and limited opportunities. Two new measures are introduced
for ranking countries on a global scale by their performance in gender
equality and there follows an analysis of the under-valuation and
non-recognition of the work of women. In conclusion, the report offers
a five-point strategy for equalizing gender opportunities in the decade
ahead.
GLOBAL - 1995
Human Development Report 1994
New dimensions of human security
The report introduces a new
concept of human security which equates security with people rather
than territories, with development rather than arms. It examines both
the national and the global concerns of human security.
GLOBAL - 1994
Human Development Report 1993
People's Participation
The Report examines how and
to what extent people participate in the events and processes that
shape their lives. It looks at three major means of peoples'
participation: people-friendly markets, decentralised governance and
community organisations, especially non-governmental organisations
(NGOs), and suggests concrete policy measures to address the growing
problems of increasing unemployment.
GLOBAL - 1993
Human Development Report 1992
Global Dimensions of Human Development
The richest 20% of the
population now receives 150 times the income of the poorest 20%. The
Report suggests a two-pronged strategy to break away from this
situation. First, making massive investments in their people and
strengthening national technological capacity can enable some
developing countries to acquire a strong competitive edge in
international markets (witness the East Asian industrializing tigers).
Second, there should be basic international reforms, including
restructuring the Bretton Woods institutions and setting up a
Development Security Council within the United Nations.
GLOBAL - 1992
Human Development Report 1991
Financing Human Development
Lack of political commitment
rather than financial resources is often the real cause of human
development. This is the main conclusion of Human Development Report
1991 - the second in a series of annual reports on the subject.
GLOBAL - 1991
Human Development Report 1990
Concept and Measurement of human
development
The Report addresses, as its
main issue , the question of how economic growth translates - or fails
to translate - into human development. The focus is on people and on
how development enlarges their choices. The Report discusses the
meaning and measurement of human development, proposing a new composite
index. However, its overall orientation is practical and pragmatic.
GLOBAL - 1990
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