UN's report on human development reviewed
UN's report on human development reviewed
JAKARTA (JP): Indonesian and regional experts will review the
United Nation's Human Development Report which was published last
week with the gloomy finding that the gap between the world's
rich and poor has widened.
The Jakarta office of the United Nations Development Program
(UNDP) is co-hosting the two-day workshop to review the regional
significance of the report. The other co-host of the workshop,
which starts today, is the Center for Information and Development
Studies.
Minister of National Development Planning Ginandjar
Kartasasmita will open the workshop.
Other speakers are from neighboring countries. They include
Nay Htun, director of the UNDP Regional Bureau for Asia and the
Pacific, and Emil Salim, chairman of the Kehati Foundation and
former environment minister.
"This year's Human Development Report builds on the
recognition that economic development does not automatically
translate into an overall improvement in the quality of life," C.
Jan Kamp, UNDP's representative in Indonesia, said.
"We hope the report will contribute to the discussions on how
countries worldwide can strengthen their development plans and
policies to improve the people's daily lives, rather than serving
economic purposes alone," Kamp says.
The report, launched in Tokyo on July 17 and published by
Oxford University Press for the UNDP, focuses on economic growth
and human development.
The report found that economic growth had failed for a quarter
of the world's people. "If present trends continue, economic
disparities between industrial and developing nations will move
from inequitable to inhuman," James Gustave Speth, UNDP
administrator, wrote in the report's foreword.
On Indonesia, the report's ranking of its real per capita
gross domestic product had improved from 99 (out of 174 countries
surveyed) last year to 88 this year. But Indonesia's ranking
according to a human development index -- the main composite
index in the report which tries to capture as many aspects of
human development as possible -- only improved from 104 to 102.