The latest Human Development Report, published by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), finds that development progress is uneven, leaving the world’s poorest countries behind, compounding inequalities, and fueling political polarization on a global scale. The report calls for collective action to address interconnected challenges and break this “global gridlock.”
The 2023/2024 report titled, ‘Breaking the Gridlock: Reimagining Cooperation in a Polarized World,’ finds that the rebound displayed by the global Human Development Index (HDI) “has been partial, incomplete, and unequal.” The HDI is a composite measure reflecting a country’s Gross National Income (GNI) per capita, education, and life expectancy.
According to the report, wealthy countries are achieving record-high levels of human development, with Switzerland, Norway, and Iceland leading the national human development indices. At the same time, half of the world’s poorest countries remain below their pre-COVID-19 levels of progress, with the Central African Republic (CAR), South Sudan, and Somalia lagging the furthest behind.
“The widening human development gap revealed by the report shows that the two-decade trend of steadily reducing inequalities between wealthy and poor nations is now in reverse,” said UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner. “The failure of collective action to advance action on climate change, digitalization or poverty and inequality not only hinders human development but also worsens polarization and further erodes trust in people and institutions worldwide,” he emphasized.
The report calls for a new generation of global public goods. It recommends immediate action in four areas: planetary public goods; digital global public goods; new and expanded financial mechanisms, including a novel track in international cooperation that complements humanitarian assistance and traditional development aid to low-income countries (LICs); and dialing down political polarization through new governance approaches. The report highlights the fundamental role of multilateralism in addressing “the planetary nature of the provision of global public goods.”
In his video message on the occasion of the report’s launch, UN Secretary-General António Guterres underscored that cooperation to end conflicts, tackle the climate crisis and advance the SDGs, and agree on guardrails for digital technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) “is critical to our shared future.” He recommended the Human Development Report as an important contribution to the Summit of the Future in September.
The report was launched in New York, US, on 13 March 2024. [Publication: Human Development Report 2023/2024: Breaking the Gridlock: Reimagining Cooperation in a Polarized World] [Snapshot] [Digital Report] [UNDP Press Release] [UN News Story] [SDG Knowledge Hub Story on Human Development Report 2021/2022]