AIDS has "crippled" at least six countries in the region

AIDS has "crippled" at least six Southern African countries, where the life expectancy has fallen to 40 years or less, according to the annual United Nations' Human Development Report (HDR) released on Thursday. The Human Development Index (HDI) in Angola, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe has suffered a reversal since 1990, said the report. The HDI focuses on three measurable dimensions of human development - living a long and healthy life; being educated; and having a decent standard of living. In at least four Southern African countries - Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe - more than one in five people between the ages of 15 and 49 are infected with HIV/AIDS, and more than one in three are HIV positive in Botswana and Swaziland. "The AIDS crisis cripples states at all levels, because the disease attacks people in their most productive years. It tears apart the foundations of everything from public administration and health care to family structures," said the UN Development Programme's administrator, Mark Malloch Brown, at the release of the report in Brussels. According to the Human Poverty Index (HPI) list of 95 developing countries, at 91st Zimbabwe is the poorest Southern African country. The HPI is calculated taking into account the percentages of people expected to die before age 40; illiterate adults; overall economic provisioning in terms of people without access to health services and safe water; and underweight children under five. Zambia, Mozambique, Lesotho and Malawi also feature in the bottom 20. Mauritius, rated by the report as the best HPI performer in Sub-Saharan Africa, is ranked at 16, with an HDI ranking of 64. "African success stories are emerging," noted the report, citing Mauritius and Mozambique as countries where the Gross Domestic Product per capita grew at more than three percent in the 1990s. Zimbabwe, along with Botswana, features among the worst performers in terms of child mortality. The number of Zimbabwean children dying per 1,000 live births increased from 80 in 1990 to 123 in 2002, while in Botswana the number rose from 58 in 1990 to 110 in 2002. Fewer children are enrolling in primary schools in Angola, which features among the report's worst performers in primary education. The percentage of Angolan children seeking admission to primary schools dropped from 58 percent in 1990/91 to 30 percent in 2001/02. Malawi, however, recorded an increase of 31 percent in primary school enrolment between 1990/91 and 2001/02. The HDR report, 'Cultural Liberty in Today's Diverse World', also argues that "cultural freedoms should be embraced as basic human rights and as necessities" for human development. South Africa is cited as one such champion of cultural liberty in recognising legal pluralism, multiple identities for its diverse population, and widening choices for non-English and non-Afrikaans speakers. In post-apartheid South Africa, "a groundswell of innovation is instilling new authority, resources and dignity into customary law ... the challenge lies in integrating common and customary law in line with the new constitution, enshrining such principles as gender equality." The report noted that while people with different "cultural identities live side by side, but often in different worlds, black South Africans still earn about a fifth of the incomes of whites." Few countries calculate the HDI across groups and Namibia is the only country to have calculated HDI by linguistic group. "The differences are staggering," noted the report. "The German-speaking population would finish comfortably ahead of Norway at the top of the [HDI] ranking, with the English and Afrikaans speakers not far behind. San speakers would come 174 places below."