UNDP Presents Global & Regional Human Development Reports

Two fundamental reports of 2016 were presented by the United Nations Development Program in Georgia (UNDP) on April 11, addressing the global human development challenges and specific development issues that the societies from the Eastern Europe, Turkey and Central Asia regions are facing today.

The global Human Development Report 2016 ‘Human Development for Everyone’, released in 2017 argues that human development progress continues to leave many people behind, with systemic, often unmeasured, barriers to catching up. The Report suggests that a stronger focus on those excluded and on actions to dismantle these barriers is urgently needed to ensure sustainable human development for all.

Among the basic messages communicated in the global Human Development Report, universalism is seen as key to human development. It also highlights that “various groups of people still suffer from deprivation and face substantial barriers to overcoming them”.

“Human development for everyone calls for the refocusing of a number of existing analytical issues and assessment perspectives. New policy options, if implemented, would contribute to achieving human development for all. A reformed global governance with fairer multilateralism would also help attain human development for all,” the report states.

The regional Human Development Report released in October 2016 explains how many countries in the regions of Eastern Europe, Turkey and Central Asia are facing growing threats to their human development accomplishments. It shows how popular concerns about inequalities, in terms of income and wealth, but also equality before the law, seem to be on the rise, and identifies key policy reforms and programming areas for more effective responses to the region’s inequality challenges. The regional Human Development Report: Progress at Risk points to a significant reduction in or low overall rates of income inequalities throughout the region as one of its key findings. “Progress in reducing inequalities is now being put to the test across the region,” it states.

“The combination of low commodity prices, falling remittances, and slow or negative growth on key European and Russian export markets is putting pressure on economies in general, and on vulnerable households in particular. This poses new challenges as the implementation of the global sustainable development agenda 2030 begins in the region,” the report claims, while also noting that “data and indicator problems with measuring inequalities and their links to social exclusion and environmental sustainability in the region are significant”.

Another key message of the regional Human Development Report states that labor market inequalities and exclusion are the major inequality challenges in the region.

“People without decent jobs face much higher risks of poverty, vulnerability, and exclusion from social services and social protection. Women, young workers, migrants, the long-term unemployed, people with disabilities, Roma, and others with unequal labor market status are particularly vulnerable to these risks.”

Social protection, better allignment of employment, microeconomic policies, reducing the scale of informal employment and decreasing taxes on labor, while strengthening policy linkages between labor markets and social protection, are emphasized as major directions to be addressed. The report also points to the gender inequality, noting in its key messages that although the region “compares favorably to many other developing countries in terms of gender equality, it also lags behind global best practices in many areas”.

Among its key messages, the regional Human Development Report points out that “the development outcomes in the region are strongly influenced by access to healthcare which is a reflection of the social, economic, and environmental determinants of health”.

As one of its findings, it also identifies the fact that environmental sustainability concerns are highest among the region’s lower-middle income countries, together with concerns related to the depletion of natural capital. Quality of governance is stated as one of the major public concerns.

Georgia’s HDI value for 2015 is 0.769, which put the country in the high human development category, positioning it at 70 out of 188 countries and territories. Between 2000 and 2015, Georgia’s HDI value increased from 0.673 to 0.769, an increase of 14.3 percent, the report shows. Between 1990 and 2015, Georgia’s life expectancy at birth increased by 4.7 years, mean years of schooling increased by 0.5 years and expected years of schooling increased by 1.5 years.

Georgia’s 2015 HDI (0.769) is above the average of 0.746 for countries in the high human development group and above the average of 0.756 for countries in Europe and Central Asia. From Europe and Central Asia, countries which are close to Georgia in 2015 HDI rank and to some extent in population size are Armenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which have HDIs ranked 84 and 81 respectively.

Georgia’s HDI for 2015 is 0.769. However, when the value is discounted for inequality, the HDI falls to 0.672, a loss of 12.2 percent due to inequality in the distribution of the HDI dimension indices. Armenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina show losses due to inequality of 9.3 percent and 13.3 percent respectively. The average loss due to inequality for high HDI countries is 20.0 percent and for Europe and Central Asia it is 12.7 percent. The Human inequality coefficient for Georgia is equal to 12.2 percent.

Georgia’s GNI per capita increased by about 17.1 percent between 1990 and 2015, according to the report.

“Many of the issues raised in the reports are particularly poignant in Georgia considering that the country reports some of the region’s highest levels of income inequalities and its Human Development Index drops by 12.2 percent once its value is discounted for inequality,” Niels Scott, Head of UNDP in Georgia said when presenting the global and regional Human Development reports, at an event organized by the UNDP Georgia in cooperation with UNDP’s regional hub in Istanbul and the International School of Economics (ISET).

“Many developmental accomplishments in these countries are at risk of being lost, particularly because of inadequate numbers of decent jobs, growing gaps in social protection systems, and perceptions of inequality before the law,” Ben Slay, UNDP Senior Regional Economic Advisor and lead author of the Regional HDR, said.

Nino Gugunishvili