Human development slips further

Africa has fared badly once again this year in providing a better life for its people, according to the UN's latest human development indicators.

"In sub-Saharan Africa human development has actually regressed in recent years, and the lives of its very poor people are getting worse," the UN Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report for 2002, released on Wednesday, warned.

HIV/AIDS, it said, took a grim toll on the quality of life and life expectancy. The report noted that by the end of 2000, almost 22 million people in the world had died from AIDS, and more than 40 million people were living with HIV/AIDS. Of those, more than 75 percent were in sub-Saharan Africa.

With the central message of the report being that effective governance was central to human development, it noted that many countries had failed to consolidate the first steps towards democracy and several were slipping back into authoritarianism.

In Africa, rising opposition through the 1980s and 1990s tossed out long-standing dictators like Malawi's Kamuzu Banda in 1994 and ended apartheid in South Africa. However, the "third wave" of democratisation during the last two decades had stalled.

The report said democracy, a vital component of human development, helped protect people from economic and political catastrophes such as famine and violence. "It can mean the difference between life and death."

Democratic governance could also trigger a "virtuous cycle of development" as political freedom empowered people to press for policies that expanded social and economic opportunities.

However, when democratic governments did not respond to the needs of poor people, the public became more inclined to support authoritarian or populist leaders who promised better outcomes. Often, however, that did not translate into real gains.

The report also looked at the effect of internal conflicts which today vastly outnumber wars between states, with civilians accounting for more than 90 percent of the casualties. Children accounted for half of all civilian casualties in war.

Civil wars had grave effects on economic growth and food production and seven of the 10 countries with the lowest human development indices have recently suffered civil wars.

Mozambique, which is fourth from last out of 173 countries compared in the report, lost more than 40 percent of its schools and health centres during its 16-year civil war. Industries were so damaged that postwar production was only 20 to 40 percent of pre-war capacity, with economic losses estimated at US $15 billion - several times its pre-war GDP.

Fighting also caused massive refugee flows and displaced populations, illustrated in Angola's present struggle to provide for over three million people affected by its just-ended civil conflict.

"Especially extraordinary" efforts would be needed in sub-Saharan Africa to reach Millennium Development Goals," the report said, adding that the failure to reduce poverty in the region was a grave concern.

In six sub-Saharan African countries, levels of malnourishment were more than 40 percent of the population, with only South Africa having a less than 10 percent incidence.

The region was also doing poorly in education, gender equality and maternal mortality. Besides the exceptionally high rate of HIV/AIDS Africa had 90 percent of the world's malaria cases.

While most of the world had increased the share of children who were immunised against the leading diseases, immunisation rates in sub-Saharan Africa had fallen below 50 percent since 1990, the report said. That lowered economic growth by 1 percent or more a year.

Many developing countries still paid enormous sums in debt which strangled their public purses, the report noted. The most recent move to reduce debt was the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, launched by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1996 to provide comprehensive debt relief to the world's poorest, most heavily indebted countries. However, activists have criticised the relief as not enough to lift the countries out of poverty.

The report also noted the need for better African representation and voting rights on important bodies like the World Trade Organisation and fairer trade conditions.

For the full report:
http://j1.mediag3.com/s/c016/m04/[email protected]&IL=0