*EPF413 06/29/00
Report Says Human Rights as Important as Trade for Development
(UNDP releases 11th edition of Human Development Report) (1500)
By Judy Aita & Kate Woodrow
Washington File Staff Writers

United Nations -- Successful development at the start of the 21st century is as much about human rights as about money and trade, argues a new report released by the UN Development Program (UNDP) June 29.

While charting the progress of nations in the traditional areas of education, health, economic performance, resource flows, and energy use, UNDP's "Human Development Report 2000" takes into account human freedoms in ranking the countries of the world and challenges national governments and international organizations to tackle oppression, discrimination, and new threats to freedom to improve the lives of people around the world.

Richard Jolly, principal author and coordinator of the report, said that "the report is about human rights and human development, not just about human rights. It is about all countries not just developing countries, and it is about progress as well as set backs and new challenges in the era of globalization."

The 290-page report analyses human rights and development in terms of seven basic freedoms which are closely aligned to the key elements of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: freedom from discrimination; freedom from want; freedom to develop and realize one's human potential; freedom from fear; freedom from injustice and violations of the rule of law; freedom of thought and speech and to participate in decision-making; and freedom for decent work without exploitation.

The report demands the eradication of poverty not just as a developmental goal, but as a central challenge for human rights.

Worldwide, the progress of human development and human rights over the 20th century has made "remarkable advances" even though there have been setbacks and uneven progress, especially in sub-Saharan Africa where progress has been the least, Jolly said at a press conference introducing the report.

"One of the positives is that since 1990 there has been a surge of ratifications of human rights instruments," Jolly said. "In 1990, ten percent of the countries had ratified all six of the core conventions. Today it is over half-- about 100 countries."

"South Africa, since the end of apartheid is a shinning example of a country that has used human rights, embodied them in the constitution in many respects, and is showing how human rights can be very practically used to guide advances," he said.

In the area of elections, Jolly pointed out, "at the turn of the century no country had universal suffrage anywhere in the world. Today about three-quarters of the world's people live in some 140 countries which have had not only some form of elections but multi-party elections."

But the report "is not starry eyed," he said. "We point out that there is a large unfinished agenda that needs action and with globalization there are new problems. Global inequality and marginalization of the poorest countries of the world, the surge of civil conflicts...and parts of the international system which do not help as much as could be (the) poorer countries."

The report calls for inclusive democracy that protects minorities, separates power and ensures public accountability as well as the extension of the state-centered model of accountability to the obligations of non-state actors including corporations, international financial institutions and multilateral organizations. It also urged the use of statistics to create a culture of accountability in order to reinforce the push for appropriate changes in policy and behavior.

"The report offers valuable information to those with the will and the power to correct or push forward policies that empower all citizens," Jolly said. UNDP hopes the report will help take the development and human rights debate out of the abstract by describing the realities of people's lives.

The report sets a human development index (HDI) based on life expectancy, adult literacy, gross school enrollment, and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.

The report ranks 174 countries and territories according to their level of human development with Canada, Norway and the United States at the top of the index, Sierra Leone, Niger and Burkina Faso at the bottom. The 24 lowest ranking countries on the HDI were all African, making it the most represented region in the "Low Human Development" category, which also includes Nepal, Togo, Haiti, and Bangladesh.

However, the report's authors point out that while every country looks to see where it stands in the index, closer scrutiny of the 32 tables and other statistics in the report offer more complex findings and insights.

For 69 countries, the HDI rank is lower than the GDP per capita rank. These countries "have been less successful in translating economic prosperity into better lives for their people," the report said.

The report shows that countries with similar incomes often have large disparities in their human development achievements. For example, Guinea and Vietnam have similar GDP per capita income, with Guinea slightly higher. Yet Vietnam has a life expectancy of 67.4, and Guinea has a life expectancy of 46.5. Guinea ranks 162 on the Human Rights Index, while Vietnam ranks 108.

In many countries, including Turkey, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, school enrolment varied by sex, with male students at a much higher level of enrollment than female students, the report points out. The percentage of people with access to health services varies depending on urban or rural environments, with urban dwellers more than twice as likely to have access to health services than rural inhabitants in Uganda, Namibia and Zambia.

Gender equality does not depend on economic growth either, with some developing countries outperforming richer countries. Costa Rica, for example ranks 24 in the report's measure of gender empowerment, ahead of Japan at 41. Yet Costa Rica's GDP is less than one-third of Japan's.

Although the United States has the second highest per capita income among the 18 richest countries, it has the highest poverty rate, followed by Ireland and the United Kingdom. The main reason is the prevalence of functional illiteracy -- approximately one person in five.

There are emerging new issues in human rights reflected in the report. "We live in an era of dramatic change and transition," it said. "The world is being transformed by new rules, new tools and new actors into a vast global marketplace. Human freedoms face new threats from transition, conflicts, xenophobia, human trafficking and religious fundamentalism. And all over the world people with HIV/AIDS face serious threats to their human rights," the report said.

Of the 101 countries which the HDI has tracked between 1975 and 1998, all but Zambia had a higher HDI in 1998 than in 1975. Zambia managed to improve its HDI from 1975 to 1985, but then slid back, largely because of the impact of HIV/AIDS on life expectancy, said the report. Twenty countries have experienced reversals of human development since 1990 as a result of HIV/AIDS, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The report said that "worldwide, there are some 250 million child laborers. And millions of children are domestic workers often suffering physical and psychological abuse." In the Philippines 776,000 children are domestic workers, as are 700,000 in Jakarta, Indonesia, and 300,000 in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Domestic violence is a serious human rights threat to women in every society rich and poor, developing and industrialized. Around the world, one in every three women has experienced violence in an intimate relationship, the report said.

A survey showing the percentage of women ever physically assaulted by an intimate partner shows that in Bangladesh 47 percent of women have been physically assaulted, in New Zealand 35 percent, in Barbados 30 percent, in Switzerland 21 percent, and in South Africa 13 percent.

Disparities within regions can be significant, with some having more ground to cover in making up shortfalls than others. Sub-Saharan Africa has more than twice the distance to cover as Latin America and the Caribbean, South Asia nearly three times as much as East Asia without China.

Along with these new issues, persistent poverty and widening inequality are now treated as a denial of human rights, the report said.

The move to democracy and the emergence of NGOs were key developments of the 1990s. Building on the mutually reinforcing rights of free expression, assembly, participation, food, housing, health care and many others is essential in empowering poor people to lift themselves from poverty, the report said.

The number of NGOs rose from 23,600 in 1991 to 44,000 in 1999. "From Guyana to Zambia, from India to Russia, people are organizing civil society groups and NGOs, getting experience defending people's rights against eviction, holding government accountable for building schools, for community development and for human rights education and engaging in countless other struggles," the report said.

Civil and political rights empower poor people to claim their economic and social rights to food, to housing, to education, to health care, to decent work and to social security. These rights empower them to demand accountability, the UNDP report said.
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