Pakistan moves up on UN's Human Development Index
By Sonita Taylor 'Pakistan Times' Special Correspondent

UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan went up by one point -- from 135 in 2005 to 134 in 2006 -- on the U.N.'s 2004 Human Development Index (HDI), which measures achievements in terms of life expectancy, educational attainment and adjusted real income.

The HDI forms part of the Human Development Report 2005, a flagship study produced annually by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It was released at UN Headquarters on Friday.

India ranked 126 on the HDI, also one step up from 127 in 2005.

Rankings of other South Asian countries:

Bangladesh: 137 (139 in 2005); Sri Lanka: 93 (same as in 2005); Maldives: 98 (96 in 2005); Nepal 138(136 in 2005) and Bhutan 135 (134 in 2005).

The new index reveals that 18 of the world's poorest countries, with a total of 460 million population, are doing worse on most key human development indicators.

The Human Development Report says that the gap between the richest and poorest countries in the world is growing, as human development in sub-Saharan Africa stagnates and progress in other regions accelerates.

After a costly setback in human development in the first half of the 1990s, Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) have recovered strongly, and progress since 1990 in East and South Asia continues to accelerate.

But sub-Saharan Africa shows no sign of improving, principally because of the devastating effect of HIV/AIDS on life expectancy.

The Index analyses 2004 statistics from 175 UN member countries along with Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region, China), and the occupied Palestinian territories.

The HDI rankings this year do not include 17 UN member nations, among them Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, due to insufficient data.

Introduced with the first Human Development Report (HDR) in 1990, the HDI assesses the state of human development through life expectancy; adult literacy and enrolment at the primary, secondary and tertiary level; and income, based on the most recent reliable data from UN partners and other official sources.

The HDI statistics reveal that life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa is actually lower today than it was three decades ago. In the 31 countries at the bottom of the list, 28 of which are in sub-Saharan Africa, a person can hope to live on average only 46 years, or 32 years less than the average life expectancy in countries of advanced human development, with 20 years slashed off life expectancy due to HIV/AIDS, according to the authors.

Less visible though equally disturbing has been the significant impact of HIV/AIDS on the lifespan of women in the same region. Due to the feminization of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, in Botswana, Lesotho, South Africa and Swaziland the life expectancy of women will be two years less than that of men in the five year period between 2005 and 2010; between 1990 and 1995, by contrast, women in those countries lived on average seven years longer than men.

The countries at the top and bottom of the rankings in the 2006 HDR are unchanged from the 2005 HDR; Norway ranks highest, while Niger is last of the countries for which sufficient information is available.

People in Norway are more than 40 times wealthier than people in Niger and they live almost twice as long. They also enjoy near-universal enrollment in primary, secondary and tertiary education, compared with an enrollment rate of 21 percent in Niger.●