Human Development Report 2007/2008
Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world

Climate change is the defining human development challenge of the 21st Century. Failure to respond to that challenge will stall and then reverse international efforts to reduce poverty. The poorest countries and most vulnerable citizens will suffer the earliest and most damaging setbacks, even though they have contributed least to the problem. Looking to the future, no country—however wealthy or powerful—will be immune to the impact of global warming.
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Human Development Report 2006
Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis

The report debunks the myth that the crisis is the result of scarcity; and confirms that poverty, power and inequality are at the heart of the problem. In a world of unprecedented wealth, almost 2 million children die each year for want of a glass of clean water and adequate sanitation. In today’s world conflicts over water are intensifying within countries, with the rural poor losing out. The potential for tensions between countries is also growing, though there are large potential human development gains from increased cooperation.
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Human Development Report 2005
International Cooperation at a Crossroads: Aid, Trade, Security in an Unequal World.

New approaches to international cooperation are vital if the promises of the MDGs are to be realized. Practical action is needed to make the next 10 years a "decade for development". Focusing on aid, trade and security, three of the central pillars of international cooperation, Human Development Report 2005 sets out a bold analysis of the problems and identifies solutions. It argues that rich countries need to move beyond encouraging words to align their policies with the commitments made in the Millennium Declaration.
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Human Development Report 2004
Cultural Liberty in Today’s Diverse World

Accommodating people’s growing demands for their inclusion in society, for respect of their ethnicity, religion, and language, takes more than democracy and equitable growth. Also needed are multicultural policies that recognize differences, champion diversity and promote cultural freedoms, so that all people can choose to speak their language, practice their religion, and participate in shaping their culture—so that all people can choose to be who they are.
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Human Development Report 2003
Millennium Development Goals: A Compact among Nations to End Human Poverty

The range of human development in the world is vast and uneven, with astounding progress in some areas amidst stagnation and dismal decline in others. Balance and stability in the world will require the commitment of all nations, rich and poor, and a global development compact to extend the wealth of possibilities to all people.
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Human Development Report 2002
Deepening Democracy in a Fragmented World

This Human Development Report is first and foremost about the idea that politics is as important to successful development as economics. Sustained poverty reduction requires equitable growth-but it also requires that poor people have political power. And the best way to achieve that in a manner consistent with human development objectives is by building strong and deep forms of democratic governance at all levels of society.
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Human Development Report 2001
Making New Technologies Work for Human Development

Technology networks are transforming the traditional map of development, expanding people's horizons and creating the potential to realize in a decade progress that required generations in the past.
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Human Development Report 2000
Human Rights and Human Development

Human Development Report 2000 looks at human rights as an intrinsic part of development—and at development as a means to realizing human rights. It shows how human rights bring principles of accountability and social justice to the process of human development.
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Human Development Report 1999
Globalization with a Human Face

Global markets, global technology, global ideas and global solidarity can enrich the lives of people everywhere. The challenge is to ensure that the benefits are shared equitably and that this increasing interdependence works for people—not just for profits. This year’s Report argues that globalization is not new, but that the present era of globalization, driven by competitive global markets, is outpacing the governance of markets and the repercussions on people.
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Human Development Report 1998
Consumption for Human Development

The high levels of consumption and production in the world today, the power and potential of technology and information, present great opportunities. After a century of vast material expansion, will leaders and people have the vision to seek and achieve more equitable and more human advance in the 21st century?.
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Human Development Report 1997
Human Development to Eradicate Poverty

Eradicating poverty everywhere is more than a moral imperative - it is a practical possibility. That is the most important message of the Human Development Report 1997. The world has the resources and the know-how to create a poverty-free world in less than a generation.
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Human Development Report 1996
Economic growth and human development

The Report argues that economic growth, if not properly managed, can be jobless, voiceless, ruthless, rootless and futureless, and thus detrimental to human development. The quality of growth is therefore as important as its quantity for poverty reduction, human development and sustainability.
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Human Development Report 1995
Gender and Human Development

The report analyses the progress made in reducing gender disparities in the past few decades and highlights the wide and persistent gap between women's expanding capabilities and limited opportunities. Two new measures are introduced for ranking countries on a global scale by their performance in gender equality and there follows an analysis of the under-valuation and non-recognition of the work of women. In conclusion, the report offers a five-point strategy for equalizing gender opportunities in the decade ahead.
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Human Development Report 1994
New Dimensions of Human Security

The report introduces a new concept of human security which equates security with people rather than territories, with development rather than arms. It examines both the national and the global concerns of human security.
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Human Development Report 1993
People's Participation

The Report examines how and to what extent people participate in the events and processes that shape their lives. It looks at three major means of peoples' participation: people-friendly markets, decentralised governance and community organisations, especially non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and suggests concrete policy measures to address the growing problems of increasing unemployment.
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Human Development Report 1992
Global Dimensions of Human Development

The richest 20% of the population now receives 150 times the income of the poorest 20%. The Report suggests a two-pronged strategy to break away from this situation. First, making massive investments in their people and strengthening national technological capacity can enable some developing countries to acquire a strong competitive edge in international markets (witness the East Asian industrializing tigers). Second, there should be basic international reforms, including restructuring the Bretton Woods institutions and setting up a Development Security Council within the United Nations.
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Human Development Report 1991
Financing Human Development

Lack of political commitment rather than financial resources is often the real cause of human development. This is the main conclusion of Human Development Report 1991 - the second in a series of annual reports on the subject.
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Human Development Report 1990
Concept and Measurement of Human Development

The Report addresses, as its main issue, the question of how economic growth translates - or fails to translate - into human development. The focus is on people and on how development enlarges their choices. The Report discusses the meaning and measurement of human development, proposing a new composite index. However, its overall orientation is practical and pragmatic.
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Arab Human Development Report 2005
Towards the Rise of Women in the Arab World

The rise of women in Arab countries goes beyond redressing historical injustices against them and ensuring their equitable treatment - notwithstanding that both are due obligations for Arab societies. Indeed, the advancement of women is a pre-requisite for a comprehensive Arab renaissance.
Arab countries have undoubtedly attained significant achievements in the advancement of women, but the ultimate objectives of this endeavour, as conceptualised in the Arab Human Development Reports, require further effort. Much more remains to be accomplished by way of enabling the equitable acquisition and utilisation of human capabilities and the exercise of human rights, before women’s advancement can be complete. Since the status of women in the Arab world is a culmination of the complex – and often problematic - interaction of cultural, social, economic and political factors, there are many impediments to this process in the region. Nevertheless, Arab women have managed to attain outstanding achievements in diverse fields of human activity. 
Societal reform aimed at enabling the rise of women, in line with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), is envisioned as one of the two wings of the bird symbolising the rise of women in the Arab world. A bird, however, needs two wings to fly. The other wing would be a wide-ranging and effective movement in Arab civil society that engages both women and their male supporters in steadily extending and consolidating targeted societal reform initiatives on the one hand, and on the other, empowering women - and the society at large - to benefit from them.
In particular, the report calls for the adoption of time-bound affirmative action, tailored to the specificities of each Arab society, in order to expand the participation of women in all fields of human activity. This is considered imperative to dismantle the structures of centuries of discrimination.
ARAB STATES - 2005
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Arab Human Development Report 2004
Towards Freedom in the Arab World

The Arab world finds itself at a historical crossroads. Caught between oppression at home and violation from abroad, Arabs are increasingly excluded from determining their own future. Freedom in its comprehensive sense, incorporates not only civil and political freedoms (in other words, liberation from oppression), but also the liberation from all factors that are inconsistent with human dignity. To be sustained and guaranteed, freedom requires a system of good governance that rests upon effective popular representation and is accountable to the people, and that upholds the rule of law and ensures that an independent judiciary applies the law impartially.
The report describes free societies, in their normative dimension, as fundamental contrasts with present-day Arab countries. The enormous gap that separates today’s reality and what many in the region hope for, is a source of widespread frustration and despair among Arabs about their countries’ prospects for a peaceful transition to societies enjoying freedom and good governance. Moreover, persisting tendencies in Arab social structures could well lead to spiraling social, economic, and political crises. Each further stage of crisis would impose itself as a new reality, producing injustices eventually beyond control.
The Arab world is at a decisive point that does not admit compromise or complacency. If the Arab people are to have true societies of freedom and good governance, they will need to be socially innovative. Their challenge is to create a viable mode of transition from a situation where liberty is curtailed and oppression the rule, to one of freedom and good governance that minimizes social upheaval and human costs, to the fullest extent possible. History will judge this a transcendent achievement through which the region finally attained its well-deserved freedom.”
ARAB STATES - 2004
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Arab Human Development Report 2003
Building a Knowledge Society

AHDR 2002 challenged the Arab world to overcome three cardinal obstacles to human development posed by widening gaps in freedom, women’s empowerment and knowledge across the region. Looking at international, regional and local developments affecting Arab countries since the report was issued confirms that those challenges remain critically pertinent and may have become even graver, especially in the area of freedom. Nowhere is this more apparent than the status of Arab knowledge at the beginning of the 21st century, the theme of this second report. Despite the presence of significant human capital in the region, AHDR 2003 concludes that disabling constraints hamper the acquisition, diffusion and production of knowledge in Arab societies. This human capital, under more promising conditions, could offer a substantial base for an Arab knowledge renaissance. The Report affirms that knowledge can help the region to expand the scope of human freedoms, enhance the capacity to guarantee those freedoms through good governance and achieve the higher moral human goals of justice and human dignity. It also underlines the importance of knowledge to Arab countries as a powerful driver of economic growth through higher productivity. Its closing section puts forward a strategic vision for creating knowledge societies in the Arab world based on five pillars: Guaranteeing key freedoms; Disseminating quality education; Embedding science; Shifting towards knowledge based production; and Developing an enlightened Arab knowledge model. AHDR 2003 makes it clear that, in the Arab civilization, the pursuit of knowledge is prompted by religion, culture, history and the human will to achieve success. Obstructions to this quest are the defective structures created by human beings- social, economic and above all political. Arabs must remove or reform these structures in order to take the place they deserve in the world of knowledge at the beginning of the knowledge millennium."
ARAB STATES - 2003
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Arab Human Development Report 2002
Creating Opportunities for Future Generations

The first Arab States' Report acknowledges that Arab countries have made substantial progress over the past three decades. Life expectancy has increased by 15 years; mortality rates for children under five years of age have fallen by about two thirds; adult literacy has almost doubled, reflecting large increases in gross educational enrollments. Yet it is obvious that Arab countries have not developed as quickly as comparable nations in other regions. Indeed, more than half of Arab women are illiterate; the region's infant mortality rate is twice as high as in Latin America and the Caribbean. Over the past 20 years, income growth per capita has also been extremely low. The Report highlights the causes of these deficits and identifies three areas where Arab institutional structures are hindering performance and crippling human development: governance, women's empowerment, and access to knowledge.
ARAB STATES - 2002
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HIV and Human Development in Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States

Reversing the Epidemic - Facts and Policy Options
EASTERN EUROPE - 2004
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Avoiding the Dependency Trap
The Roma Human Development Report

EASTERN EUROPE - 2003
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HIV/AIDS and Development in South Asia 2003

SOUTH ASIA - 2003
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Human Development Report for the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS)
Building competitiveness in the face of vulnerability

CARIBBEAN - 2002
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Central America and Panama: The State of the Region

CENTRAL AMERICA - 2002
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Human Development in South Asia 2002
Agriculture and Rural Development

SOUTH ASIA - 2002
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Globalization and Human Development

SOUTH ASIA - 2001
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Human Development in South Asia
The Gender Question

SOUTH ASIA - 2000
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SADC Regional Human Development Report

SOUTHERN AFRICA - 2000
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State of the Region in Human Development 1

CENTRAL AMERICA - 1999
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Regional: Transition 1999: The Human Cost of Transition
Human Security in South East Europe

EASTERN EUROPE - 1999
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Creating Opportunities

PACIFIC - 1999
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The Crisis of Governance

SOUTH ASIA - 1999
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Poverty in Transition?

EASTERN EUROPE - 1998
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The Education Challenge

SOUTH ASIA - 1998
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Governance and Human Development in Southern Africa

SOUTHERN AFRICA - 1998
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The Shrinking State: Governance and Sustainable Human Development

EASTERN EUROPE - 1997
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The Challenge of Human Development

SOUTH ASIA - 1997
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Human Settlements under Transition
The Case of Eastern Europe and the CIS

EASTERN EUROPE - 1996
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Gender and Development

EASTERN EUROPE - 1995
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Poverty and Human Development

WEST AFRICA - 1995 
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General Human Development Report

PACIFIC – 1994
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