-Safal Ghimire
This synoptic note summarizes an article that proponent of Human Development, Mahbub ul Haq, had written while proposing it's inclusion in the UN level reporting and judging the development of the world we are living now. This note is prepared after going through his vibrant article in Readings on Development. Excerpts:
The advent of human development
F Fascination with industrial chimneys and technology did not replace early economists' concern with real people.
F Beneficiaries of development were forgotten.
F 1980s- considerable human distress in the richest societies
F Structural adjustment programme that time by IMF and WB were under the reel of question.
F In this favorable climate, he presented the ideal of preparing an annual human development report to the Administrator of UNDP, William Draper III, in the spring of 1989.
F Then, the first human development report was published by Oxford University Press in the May of 1990.
F 1990-concept and measurement- London
F Health, education, physical environment, and freedom- to name a few other human choices- may be just as important as income.
F Challenged some of the conventional wisdom, exploded some of the old myths and reached some important policy conclusions.
F First, it was wrong that development process has failed in most developing countries in the past three decades.
F Average life expectancy has increased by 16 years, adult literacy by 40% and per capita nutritional levels by more than 20% and child mortality rates have been halved. In fact, developing countries have achieved in the past 30 years the kind of real human progress that industrial countries took nearly a century to accomplish.
F Second, it is wrong to suggest that economic growth is unnecessary for human development.
F Third, it was wrong to regard poverty alleviation as a goal.
F Rather needed to invest in their education and training, and to bring them back into the mainstream of development.
F Fourth, it is wrong to suggest that developing countries lack enough resources to address their human development goals.
F Many poor countries spend two to three times more on their military than on the education and health of their people.
F Fifth, it is wrong to pretend that markets alone can deliver balanced patterns of economic growth and human development. Instead, there must be a judicious mix of market efficiency and social compassion.
F It suggested some agenda for 1990s.
F Developing countries to frame own human development goals.
F Better data on human development indicators an din undertaking more professional analysis of the link between their economic growth and human development.
F Focus on people, not only on production.
F Incorporating human development concerns in aid allocations and policy conditionality.
F 1991- Financing human development
F Launched in Washington DC on 23 May 1991
F Wasted resources and wasted opportunities to be brought
F Sources for fund for human development
F Halting capital flight
F Combating corruption
F Reforming public enterprises
F Restructuring debt payments
F Expenditure on human priority goals that time was very less
F 1992- International dimensions of human development
F Stockholm, 23 April, 1992
F Search for equitable access to market opportunities must extend beyond national borders to the global system
F The income of the richest billion people is 150 times that of the poorest billion, a dangerously large gap.
F Global markets deny as much as $500 billion of market opportunities to poor nations and poor people every year.
F What can be done?
F Improve their economic management, liberate their private initiative and invest in the educations of their people and in the technological progress of their societies.
F Japan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore and, more recently, China, Malaysia and Thailand have followed this human investment path to development.
F East and South-East Asia doubled their share of world trade between 1970 and 1990, as did China. But Sub-Saharan Africa was with minimal human development.
F Many of the poorest nations, particularly in Africa, can not even begin to fully make use of market opportunities without additional financial help.
F Who can persuade the rich nations? International institutions are also confined to influence the policy of the poor nations only, such as in GATT rules.
F For the global institutions to become truly global will take time.
F Fear may prove to be an even greater motivating force than hope. It is same in the case of international migration of poverty.
F 1992- People's participation
F From the turbulent slums of Los Angeles to the restless ghettos of Johannesburg, the forces of people's participation are gathering momentum. They are the messengers of a new age.
F World of;
F Absolute poverty
F Income disparity
F Gender inequity
F Ethnic minorization
F Color discrimination
F Needed today is a fundamental change in the management of economic and political systems
F Open markets are often the best guarantee for unleashing human creativity.
F To share market opportunities is a must.
F Conflict between the state and the market is thus false because people must be empowered to guide bother the state and the market.
F Developing countries are experiencing double digit unemployment rates.
F They need to learn from the experience of Japan and the industrializing tiger of East Asia, and to experiment with new employment strategies.
F Industrial nations- whether it is better of roost people to work five days a week- can we make them instead four days a week and provide employment for the rests?
F It is too small for the big things, and too big for the small.
F Most developing countries are over centralized.
F Patterns of their governance is also no satisfactory.
F Lead to more democratic decision-making in the World Bank and the IMF and to a strengthened socioeconomic role for the UN system.
F Although the forces of people's participation demand new structures for markets and the state, they can find their ultimate fulfillment only in the institutions of a vigil society that enable people to take control of their own lives. Rule of law, freedom of expression, non-governmental organizations and other community associations are an integral part of such a civil society.
F 50,000 major NGOS reaching more than 250 million people and channeling more than 53 billion of aid funds a year to the developing countries.
F Five important pillars for people's participation;
F New concepts of human security
F Sustainable human development
F New partnership between state and the market
F National and global governance
F New forms of international cooperation
F 1994- Human Security
F Copenhagen, 1st June, 1994
F Security is now increasingly interpreted as the security of people in their daily lives- in their homes, in their jobs, in their streets, in their communities and in their environment.
F Poverty can not be stopped at national borders. Poor people may be stopped. But no the tragic consequences of their poverty, drugs, AIDS, pollution and terrorism. When people travel, they bring much dynamism and creativity with them.
F It is time to fashion a new concept of human security that is reflected not in better weapons for countries but in better lives for people.
F equal access ti development opportunities, for present and for future generations
F A new frame work of development co-operations mush be based on global compacts among nations.
F To include trade, investment, technology, and labor
F New design for development cooperation
F Aid- an essential investment
F Developing countries- compensated for trade and immigration barriers imposed by the rich nations
F Polluting nations are made to pay for their overuse of global commons
F Peace dividend for the priority human development agenda
F Global compacts are negotiated in specific areas- population, environment, drug control- between rich and poor nations
F Six concrete proposals disseminated
F A world social charter
F Reduction of global military expenditure
F A 20:20 compact for human development
F A global human security fund
F A new framework of development cooperation
F An Economic Social Council in the United Nations, as the highest decision-making forum to consider basic rules of human security
F A final observation. The world has seen more hopeful changes in the past decade than ever before- from the collapse of communism to the fall of the Berlin Wall, from the end of apartheid in South Africa to a dim outline of peace in occupied Palestine.
F Can a 'second birth' of the United Nations be engineered at the time of its 50th anniversary, giving rise to committed human security?
F Impact of the Human Development Report
F More than 100,000 copies of the report now circulate in 13 languages.
F To identify specific country experiences- both successes and failures- rather than to bury them in vague generalization.
F Controversies are inevitable.
F Most governments and their representatives abroad do not like to be criticized in international reports.
F Listen to the message than to go after the suggestions of the messengers.
F The real impact
F First, global search for new development.
F Development opportunities must be created not only for present Generations but for the future generations too.
F So, regenerating natural capital is also a must.
F Second, new policy proposals
F Third, human development strategies that many developing countries have begun to formulate.
F Bangladesh, Bhutan, Bolivia, Botswana, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Tunisia and Turkey getting UNDO technical assistance
F Fourth, influential devices are also becoming controversial too- i.e. Human Development Index
F Holds a mirror up to all societies so that policy-makes can see how the people in their societies live and breathe, and where the key tension points are for urgent attention.
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