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Human Development Report
Human Development Reports (HDRs) have been released most years since 1990 and have explored different themes through the human development approach. They have had an extensive influence on development debate worldwide. The reports, produced by the Human Development Report Office for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), are ensured of editorial independence by the United Nation’s General Assembly
ISSN (online):
24123129
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Annual
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Sustainable Development Goals
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Human Development Report 2023/2024
Breaking the Gridlock - Reimagining Cooperation in a Polarized World
Mar 2024
Book
Today collective action on challenges ranging from climate change mitigation to peace and security is frustratingly slow or stymied altogether. Lack of trust and polarization--both associated with insecurity--exacerbate the gridlock. Shared interlinked global challenges like the pandemic and its recovery are outpacing our willingness and our institutions’ capacities to respond to them.Why despite all our riches and technologies are we so stuck? How do we get unstuck? Is it possible to mobilize action to address globally shared challenges in a world that is intensively polarized? The 2023-2024 Human Development Report explores these issues and offers a platform for strategic discussion on how to move beyond narrow zero-sum thinking and support cooperation even as we have diverging interests and views. The e-book for this publication has been converted into an accessible format for the visually impaired and people with print reading disabilities. It is fully compatible with leading screen-reader technologies such as JAWS and NVDA.
Human Development Report 2021/2022
Uncertain Times, Unsettled Lives: Shaping our Future in a Transforming World
Sep 2022
Book
Continuing the thread of the 2019 and 2020 Human Development Reports (HDRs) the 2021/2022 HDR carries forward a conversation centered on inequalities while integrating other important themes related to uncertainties in the Anthropocene: societal-level transformations mental health impacts political polarization but also crucially opportunity. The Report explores how uncertainty in the Anthropocene is changing what is driving it what it means for human development and how we can thrive in spite of it. The Report argues that in the end doubling down on human development is central to a more prosperous future for all.
Human Development Report 2020
The Next Frontier - Human Development and the Anthropocene
Dec 2020
Book
The 30th Anniversary 2020 Human Development Report is the latest in the series of global Human Development Reports published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) since 1990 as independent and analytically and empirically grounded discussions of major development issues trends and policies. This report offers a thought-provoking necessary alternative to paralysis in the face of alarming planetary change. Its release comes as the COVID-19 (coronarvirus) pandemic simultaneously offers a glimpse of what a ‘new normal’ could hold and opens up the opportunity for humanity to change course. The report also sets out new metrics of human development to guide us including a new experimental Planetary pressures-adjusted Human Development Index. The e-book for this publication has been converted into an accessible format for the visually impaired and people with print reading disabilities. It is fully compatible with leading screen-reader technologies such as JAWS and NVDA.
Human Development Report 2019
Beyond Income, Beyond Averages, Beyond Today - Inequalities in Human Development in the 21st Century
Dec 2019
Book
Inequalities in human development are a roadblock to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. They are not just about disparities in income and wealth. They cannot be accounted for simply by using summary measures of inequality that focus on a single dimension. And they will shape the prospects of people that may live to see the 22nd century. The 2019 Report explores inequalities in human development by going beyond income beyond averages and beyond today. It asks what forms of inequality matter and what drives them recognizing that pernicious inequalities are generally better thought of as a symptom of broader problems in a society and economy. It also asks what policies can tackle those drivers—policies that can simultaneously help nations to grow their economies improve human development and reduce inequality. The e-book for this publication has been converted into an accessible format for the visually impaired and people with print reading disabilities. It is fully compatible with leading screen-reader technologies such as JAWS and NVDA.
Human Development Report 2016
Human Development for Everyone
Mar 2017
Book
The 2016 Human Development Report focuses on how human development can be ensured for every one now and in future. It starts with an account of the hopes and challenges of today’s world envisioning where humanity wants to go. Our vision draws from and builds on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that the 193 member states of the United Nations endorsed last year and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) the world has committed to achieve. The Report explores who has been left behind in human development progress and why. It argues that to ensure that human development reaches everyone a mere mapping of the nature and location of deprivations is not enough. Some aspects of the human development framework and assessment perspectives have to be brought to the fore. The Report also identifies the national policies and key strategies to ensure that will enable every human being achieve at least basic human development and to sustain and protect the gains. And it addresses the structural challenges of global institutions and presents options for reform.
Human Development Report 2015
Work for human development
Jan 2016
Book
This report takes a broad view of the link between work and human development. Work is a critical tool for economic growth and security poverty reduction and gender equality. It enables full participation in society while affording people a sense of dignity and worth. Humans working together not only increase their material well-being they also accumulate a wide body of knowledge that serves as the basis for cultures and civilizations. The report finds that work enhances human development when policies are taken to expand productive remunerative and satisfying work opportunities. Workers' skills and potentials are enhanced their well-being in terms of rights safety and benefits are ensured with targeted interventions and an agenda incorporating decent work a new Social Contract and a Global Deal is pursued.
Human Development Report 2014
Sustaining Human Progress: Reducing Vulnerabilities and Building Resilience
Aug 2014
Book
Over the last decades most countries have improved levels of human development. But progress maybe slowing as uncertainty intensifies globally. This report examines vulnerabilities that endanger human development focusing especially on the poorest. Most threats are structural and persistent and linked with life cycle vulnerabilities. Identifying policy measures to reduce threats and increase human resilience is therefore a high priority. The report sets out synergistic proposals including universal public provisioning of basic services over the life cycle to maintain and strengthen human capabilities full employment and social protection policies. It highlights collective action and international cooperation to address global vulnerabilities and ensure sustainable progress.
Human Development Report 2013
The Rise of the South - Human Progress in a Diverse World
Mar 2013
Book
This report identifies more than 40 developing countries that have done better than expected in human development terms in recent decades. It analyzes the causes and consequences of these achievements and the challenges they face. Each of these countries has its own unique history. Yet they share important characteristics and face similar challenges. They are increasingly interconnected and interdependent and their peoples are increasingly demanding to be heard as they share ideas through new communications channels and seek greater accountability from governments and international institutions. The report identifies policies rooted in the new global reality that could promote greater progress. With fresh analytical insights and clear proposals for policy reforms the report helps chart a course for people in all regions to face shared human development challenges together fairly and effectively.
Human Development Report 2011
Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All
Dec 2011
Book
This report examines the urgent global challenge of sustainable development and its relationship to rising inequality within and among countries. It strives to identify polices that would make development both more sustainable and more equitable. The integral relationship between inequality and unsustainability is recognized. The inequitably apportioned control and consumption of natural resources is a key driver of global warming — and yet those who will suffer most from climate change are disproportionately those least responsible for environmental deterioration. The report seeks to identify ways in which sustainability and equity can be jointly advanced. It examines long-term trends in inequality at national and global levels and argues why it is essential to promote practices today that will both increase sustainability and reduce inequality for future generations.
Human Development Report 2010
The Real Wealth of Nations – Pathways to Human Development, 20th Anniversary Edition
Dec 2010
Book
The Human Development Report has had a profound impact on development policies around the world. The 2010 Report continues the tradition of pushing the frontiers of development thinking. For the first time since 1990 the Report looks back rigorously at the past several decades and identifies often surprising trends and patterns with important lessons for the future. These varied pathways to human development show that there is no single formula for sustainable progress—and that impressive long-term gains can and have been achieved even without consistent economic growth. Looking beyond 2010 this Report surveys critical aspects of human development from political freedoms and empowerment to sustainability and human security and outlines a broader agenda for research and policies to respond to these challenges.
Human Development Report 2009
Overcoming Barriers – Human Mobility and Development
Nov 2009
Book
For many people around the world moving away from their home town or village can be the best – sometimes the only – option open to improve their life chances. The report explores how better policies towards mobility can enhance human development. It traces the contours of human movement – who moves where when and why and argues for practical measures that can improve prospects on arrival which in turn will have large benefits both for destination communities and for places of origin. The report fixes human development firmly on the agenda of policy makers who seek the best outcomes from increasingly complex patterns of human movement worldwide.
Human Development Report 2007-2008
Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a Divided World
Nov 2008
Book
Climate change is the greatest challenge facing humanity at the start of the 21st Century. Failure to meet that challenge raises the spectre of unprecedented reversals in human development. This year’s Human Development Report explains why we have less than a decade to change course and start living within our global carbon budget. The Report explains how climate change will create long-run low human development traps pushing vulnerable people into a downward spiral of deprivation. Because climate change is a global problem with global causes and effects it demands a global response with countries acting on the basis of their historic responsibility and capabilities.
Human Development Report 2006
Beyond Scarcity – Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crises
Nov 2006
Book
The 2006 Human Development Report focuses on water and human development. Water is central to the realization of human potential. It is a source of life for people and for the planet. Clean water and sanitation have a profound bearing on health and human dignity. Inequalities in access to clean water for drinking and to water as a productive input reinforce wider inequalities in opportunity. With competition for water intensifying there is a danger that poor and vulnerable communities will become increasingly marginalized. The twin challenge facing governments and donors is to accelerate progress towards universal access to water and sanitation; and to ensure that water management policies strengthen the rights of poor households to access water resources.
Human Development Report 2005
International Cooperation at a Crossroads – Aid, Trade and Security in an Unequal World
Dec 2005
Book
The Human Development Report 2005 examines the scale of the challenge facing the world at the start of the ten year countdown to the 2015 Millennium Development Goals mark. The Report focuses on three pillars of cooperation each of which is in urgent need of renovation. The first pillar is international aid; the MDG project has been compromised by chronic and sustained under-financing allied to problems in aid quality. The second pillar is international trade; under the right conditions trade can act as a powerful catalyst for human development. The ‘development round’ of World Trade Organization talks launched in 2001 provided northern governments with an opportunity to create those conditions. The third pillar is that of security; violent conflict is a source of systematic human rights violation and a barrier to progress towards the MDGs that must be overcome.
Human Development Report 2004
Cultural Liberty in Today's Diverse World
Dec 2004
Book
Cultural Liberty in Today’s Diverse World argues that states must actively devise multicultural policies to prevent discrimination on cultural grounds – religious ethnic and linguistic. The Report states that the expansion of cultural freedoms not suppression is the only sustainable option to promote stability democracy and human development within and across societies. Its overarching message is to highlight the vast potential of building a more peaceful prosperous world by brining issues of culture to the mainstream of development thinking and practice. In delivering it’s message the Report debunks the myths that have been used to deny expansions of cultural freedoms showing that diversity is not a threat to state unity not the source of inevitable clashes and not an obstacle to development.
Human Development Report 2003
Millennium Development Goals – A Compact among Nations to End Human Poverty
Dec 2003
Book
Human Development Report 2003 overviews successes and failures of development over the last decade and presents a bold action plan on how nations can achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The plan entitled “Millennium Development Compact” lists six policy areas where a number of countries need to make progress to reach the MDGs. The plan argues for a big step-up in resources to ensure that these countries meet the Goals and invites donor countries to keep their promises. Human Development Report 2003 includes the first full set of data indicating the status of each goal in every country.
Human Development Report 2002
Deepening Democracy in a Fragmented World
Dec 2002
Book
This report examines political participation as a dimension of human development. It emphasizes the importance of political freedoms as a goal of human development and explores how democratic institutions help promote economic and social progress. The Report examines power politics and human development and presents the imperatives for continuous strengthening of democratic capacity within and across governments institutions and communities-- rich and poor.
Human Development Report 2001
Making New Technologies Work for Human Development
Dec 2001
Book
New technologies hold the promise of tackling the most pressing needs of human development: vaccines for HIV and malaria drought-resistant seeds for sub-Saharan Africa sustainable energy sources for the 2 billion people who have no access to electricity and accessible information technologies for people currently marginalized by the digital divide. The Human Development Report 2001 explores the evolving and complex trends of how technology is shaped created and owned and proposes bold new ideas for ensuring that the needs of the world's poor people are not left on the sidelines.
Human Development Report 2000
Human Rights and Human Development
Dec 2000
Book
Human Rights and Human Development provides a thought provoking analysis of these two interrelated and intertwined issues. Human rights and human development are mutually reinforcing and culminate in enlarged human freedom. The Report traces the history of struggle for human rights as a common human experience and outlines the new frontier of the rights agenda for the 21st Century. Human Development Report 2000 demonstrates the ways in which human rights enrich human development goals: adding moral force and ideas of claims duties and obligations. This Report proposes strategies for promoting development that also protect and further human rights with significant implications for a pro-human rights approach to development. This publication includes and updates the widely respected Human Development Indicators that compare the relative levels of human development in most countries of the world and presents data tables on all aspects of human development.
Human Development Report 1999
Dec 1999
Book
The 1999 Human Development Report argues that globalization is more than the flow of money and commodities - it is the growing interdependence of the world's people through 'shrinking space shrinking time and disappearing borders'. It notes that markets have been allowed to dominate the process of globalization and the benefits and opportunities have not been shared. The Report recommends an agenda for action: reforms of global governance to ensure greater equity new regional approaches to collective action and negotiation and national and local policies to capture opportunities in the global marketplace and translate them more equitably into human advance.
Human Development Report 1998
Dec 1998
Book
Prepared by a team of eminent economists and distinguished development professionals Human Development Report 1998 reviews the challenges that all people and all countries face - to forge consumption patterns that are more environmentally friendly more socially equitable that meet basic needs of all and that protect consumer health and safety. This book marshals environmental developmental technological and moral arguments to present a critique of consumption patterns that are inimical to human development and an agenda for action to create an enabling environment for sustainable consumption for human development.
Human Development Report 1997
Dec 1997
Book
The Human Development Report's eighth annual edition continues its tradition of updating the unique Human Development Indicators comparing human development in most countries of the world and the data tables on all aspects of human development. The 1997 edition focuses on the goal of eradicating extreme poverty in the early 21st century and views this goal as completely attainable regarding it as a moral imperative to which almost all countries committed themselves at the World summit for Social Development in 1995.
Human Development Report 1996
Dec 1996
Book
The Human Development Report seventh edition updates the unique Human Development Indicators comparing human development in most countries of the world and the data tables on all aspects of human development. The special focus of this edition is on the important link between economic growth and human development. The Report maintains that the link is not automatic but can be established through proper policy management arguing the case for initiating and accelerating economic growth and at the same time accelerating and sustaining human development in different parts of the world. The Report also maintains that the quality of growth is as important as its quantity; otherwise growth can be jobless voiceless ruthless rootless and futureless. It identifies employment as an important instrument in translating the benefits of economic growth into people's lives.
Human Development Report 1995
Gender and Human Development
Dec 1995
Book
The theme of the 1995 Human Development Report is gender and human development. The sixth in an annual series prepared by an independent team of eminent economists and social scientists it analyses global trends in closing and widening gender gaps in different regions and countries. It shows graphically that no country treats its women as well as its men and identifies a new action agenda for promoting gender equity in the decades ahead. This report has been prepared in advance of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in September 1995.
Human Development Report 1994
Dec 1994
Book
The 1994 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. The Report seeks to deal with these concerns through a new paradigm of sustainable human development capturing the potential peace dividend a new form of development co-operation and a restructured system of global institutions.
Human Development Report 1993
Dec 1993
Book
The challenge for development is to identify the best route to unleash people’s entrepreneurial spirit – to take risks to compete to innovate to determine the direction and pace of development. Every institution – and every policy action – should be judged by one critical test: how does it meet the genuine aspirations of the people? This is the vision national and global decision-makers must consider if the 1990s are to emerge as a new watershed in peaceful development – and if the 21st century is to see the full flowering of human potential all over the world. It is fitting therefore that this year’s Human Development Report has people’s participation as its special focus.
Human Development Report 1992
Dec 1992
Book
The world has a unique opportunity in the current decade to use global markets for the benefit of all nations and all people. This report looks at the workings of these global markets – at how they meet or fail to meet the needs of the world’s poorest people. The global issues in this Report supplement the analysis of domestic policy issues in the first two Reports. It attempts to analyse global markets from a human perspective. It presents a disturbing new analysis of the global distribution of income and opportunities 00 demonstrating that income disparities have in recent years widened dramatically. It concludes that if developing countries are to trade on a more equal basis they will need massive investments in people – because knowledge and the mastery of new technology are a country’s best competitive advantage today.
Human Development Report 1991
Dec 1991
Book
This report is about financing human development. A single powerful idea runs through it – that the potential is enormous for restructuring national budgets and international aid in favour of human development. It lays foundations for a fresh set of priorities. It aims to refine further the concepts and the methods of measurement – and to distil more practical experience from many countries. Another aim is to do more research and analysis on participatory development and to examine the global dimensions of human development looking at familiar international issues from a human perspective. The final message of this Report is one of hope. If we can mobilize the political base for action – nationally and globally – the future of human development is secure.
Human Development Report 1990
Dec 1990
Book
This report is about people — and about how development enlarges their choices. It is about more than GNP growth more than income and wealth and more than producing commodities and accumulating capital. A person's access to income may be one of the choices but it is not the sum total of human endeavour. This report lays out a concrete priority agenda for better data collection that will enable the human development index to be used increasingly as a genuine measure of socioeconomic growth. It analyses the record of human development for the last three decades and the experience of 14 countries in managing economic growth and human development. It ends with a special focus on the problems of human development in an increasingly urban setting.
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