Is The UN's Human Development Report Still Relevant?

The UN’s development arm today launched the 20th edition of the UN Human Development Report (HDR): “The Real Wealth of Nations,” stressing a greater reliance on human strength to combat climate change, poverty and illiteracy. This is a monumental report for the UN, and it took this journalist several trips to the press office to get a highly coveted “embargoed” copy of the HDR. But truthfully, the report doesn’t say anything new. 

The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon said this morning that twenty years ago when the report was first launched, it “stunned the international community… and was a radical concept at the time.” And this may have been the case, at the time. But other than what the lead author Jenny Klugman refers to as a shift from the use of tools to measure literacy to the use of tools to measure adult years of schooling, there is nothing that stands out in the report.  Its the same old news: Sub-Saharan Africa is the worst off—in all regards. Niger has 93 percent incidence of “multidimensional poverty.” But who doesn’t know Africa is the continent with the lowest scores in regards to human development? 

Amartya Sen, the well known Indian economist and Nobel laureate introduced the report, but even he was weary of the numbers tallied in the HDR index showing some six point gains in human development, and in countries with horrendous human rights records this past year: Myanmar and Iran included.  

“Let me speak in an unofficial capacity in “non-UNeez.”  I think I am skeptical of those numbers… the official figures are not necessarily source related,” he added. 

Although the report emphasizes using new “state of the art” measures, I find it hard to believe the use of multi-dimensional inequalities, gender disparities and extreme deprivation will make any difference.  I also doubt these are measurement tools on the front lines of technology.  And why did it take the HDR team twenty years to add a gender disparity component?

There is really nothing new in these added measurements which really should have been in place a long time ago. One would think that in countries with blatant mistreatment of women, a gender measurement tool would be first on the agenda in ranking women and girls human development capabilities. Was this the first gender disparity HDR measurement used in the Democratic Republic of Congo? I find this very disheartening considering the recent mass rapes of women and children which occurred in villages a mile or so from UN Peacekeeping offices. 

In my view, the report also makes contradictory remarks, stating at first that “progress has been substantial in all areas of human development across the globe: education, health, economic growth etc. But then reemphasizes that “rich countries have grown faster than poor ones over the past 40 years…and the divide between developed and developing countries persists.”  So how is growth truly measured if the divide still remains wide? And why are countries in the East labeled as “low and medium” juxtaposed to those in the West? Seems an unfair standard from the beginning, where low and medium will never catch up to high. It also states:  ”… the world is a much better place today than it was in…1970.” I doubt the people of Afghanistan would agree.

The HDR also underlines “proliferation of mobile telephony and satellite television and increased access to the Internet have vastly increased availability of information and the ability to voice opinions.” Yet, advances in technology have not necessarily increased access. Just look at technologically advanced countries like China and Iran-the world’s largest prisons for journalists, bloggers and human rights activists. 

Nevertheless, Klugman does capture some unnoticed nuances in regards to humanitarian aid and monies that come into developing countries from groups seeking to help those desperately in need. She refers to this shift in the report from Gross National Product (GNP) to GNI (Gross National Income) which she states “captures income available to residents —remittances from abroad and foreign aid.” Still, I would have liked to have seen new measurement tools weighing in the exact levels of government corruption, drug, women and child trafficking, money laundering, and in particular, human rights as key lead indicators of human development.