The United Nations Human Development Report for 2023-2024 shows that Nigeria’s human development has remained on a constant deline since 2019.
The report titled, “Breaking the Gridlock: Reimagining Cooperation in a Polarized World,” is targeted at
helping the world to recover from the decline in human progress.
UNDP published the first Human Development Report in 1990 with an introduction of a new Human
Development Index, HDI to measure development progress.
The underlying principle of the HDI, considered radical in 1990, was very simple as it entailed that national development should not be measured simply by per capita income, as had long been the practice, but also by health, educational, and other important indicators.
The UNDP Resident Representative in Nigeria, Elsie Attafuah says the report has shown that the path of human development progress, which shifted downwards in 2020, had remained below the pre-2019 trend, threatening to entrench permanent losses in human development gain
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Other areas of concern highlighted in the report are deaths from violent conflicts with displacements reaching the highest levels since World War II, as well as rising temperatures, Inequalities, widening between countries at the bottom and countries at the top of the HDI.
Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, says the HDR is a rallying cry that the world must do better and chart the way forward for conversations on reimagining development cooperation for a better world.
There were also recommendations that developed countries should provide support for developing countries to help ease the burden, which has kept them on the downward trend since Covid-19.
(Editor: Terverr Tyav)
