UN Human Development Report pleads for reform as poverty and misery deepen

In the words of Kevin Watkins, head of the UNDP’s Human Development Report Office, the latest survey of 177 countries (175 UN members, plus Hong Kong and occupied Palestine) “shows in clear, cold numbers that many countries are not only failing to progress, but are actually slipping backwards, and they will continue on that downhill path unless the international community steps in to help with more resources and new policies.”

Eighteen countries, including 12 in sub-Saharan Africa, and 6 former constituent republics of the Soviet Union, have a “Human Development Index” (HDI) today that is lower than it was in 1990, when the Index, which combines data on life expectancy, educational attainment and real income to arrive at an overall measure of social well-being, was developed and published in the first of the Human Development Reports.

The devastation in sub-Saharan Africa is closely related to the unchecked and enormous HIV infection rates in much of the region. As the report points out, life expectancy in France fell by about 16 years as a result of the massive casualties of the First World War nine decades ago. By comparison, as a result of AIDS, the nation of Botswana is looking today at a fall in life expectancy of 31 years. Someone living in Zambia has less chance of attaining 30 years of age today than someone born in England in 1840. South Africa has fallen 35 places since 1990 in the ranking of countries based on their HDI. Even though life-saving therapy has existed for more than a decade and has saved the lives of many in the richer countries, only 4 percent of those suffering from HIV infection are receiving this therapy in the rest of the world.

Falling life expectancy is also contributing to the absolute decline in conditions in Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, where the collapse of the Soviet Union has produced an obscene gulf between rich and poor, along with the elimination of much of the social safety net, including adequate health care, for the masses of working people.

The 18 countries that have fallen back in absolute terms are home to 460 million people. But they are only the sharpest expression of the social misery that is inseparably connected with the current stage of the capitalist globalization of production and the growing gulf it is creating between rich and poor countries as well as within national borders.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/unhd-s16.shtml