UNDP Human Development Report 1999
News
Jul 13 1999
On the 12th of July 1999 the UNDP released a new Human Development Report: ‘People, not just profits’. The Human Development Reports give an original approach to Human Development. In 1990 the concept and measurement of human development was defined. After that, every year a report was published on economical, political, social and other factors determining human development. The overall trend is clear: most countries have shown significant advances in human development over the last two decades, even many of those that have suffered setbacks in per capita income. Between 1975 and 1990, human development, as measured by the Human Development Index, improved in every country of the world. The newest report focuses on the positive and negative aspects of globalisation and the importance of keeping in mind what all international co-operation is about: People, not just profits. This vision includes the role of ICT’s. ICT’s are of central importance for human development in a globalised environment. Yet the gap between the knows and the know-nots seems to be widening.
A human face for
globalisation
First the positive effect of globalisation are formulated as follows:
Globalisation offers great opportunities for enriching people’s lives and creating a global community based on shared values.
Yet there are a number of negative effects, which have to be addressed:
- Markets have been allowed to dominate the process, and the benefits and opportunities have not been shared equitable
- A “grotesque” and dangerous polarisation between people and countries benefiting from the system and those that are merely passive recipients of its effects.
- Care “the invisible heart of human development” is threatened because today’s competitive global market is putting pressures on the time, resources and incentives for caring labour, without which individuals do not flourish and social cohesion can break down.
- Breakthroughs in technology, such as the Internet, can open a fast track to knowledge-based growth in rich and poor countries alike, but at present benefit the relatively well-off and educated.
- Biotechnology is prejudiced: Cosmetic drugs and slow-ripening tomatoes come higher on the list than a vaccine against malaria or drought-resistant crops for marginal land.
- The “breakneck” speed of globalisation is making people’s lives less secure, as the spread of global threats to well-being outpaces action tackle them
- Financial volatility, which is an inherent feature of globally integrated financial markets results in financial crises like the East-Asian
- Job insecurity is also increasing in both industrialised and developing countries.
- Culturally, many people feel threatened by the predominantly one-way flow.
- Criminals are beneficiaries of globalisation, with the six major international syndicates believed to gross $1.5 trillion a year.
These drawbacks can be summarised in the following way: “Competitive markets may be the best guarantee of efficient production but not of human development.”
The way ahead
While the contributors to the report clearly are not blind to the dark sides of globalisation they express a realistic hope in the future: “With political commitment in the global community the negative effects can all be reversed. With stronger governance -local, national, regional and global- the benefits of competitive markets can be preserved with clear rules and boundaries, and stronger action can be put in place to meet the needs of human development.”
Furthermore the report urges a new vision for national and international policy-making which includes:
- a balanced concern for profits with concern for people
- establishing comprehensive approaches to global threats to human security such as international crime and acid rain
- supporting technologies for the poor
- building a more representative and coherent system of global governance
“The aim is to put human concerns at the centre of the globalisation debate, to end the polarisation between connected and the unconnected, to focus on the global interdependence of people and not just of financial flows, to make globalisation work for people not just for profits.”
Reducing the gap between the knows and the know-nots
As the report says: “Information and communications technology are tremendous tools for development and can open a fast track to knowledge-based growth, a track followed by India’s software programming, Ireland’s computing services and the Caribbean’s data processing.
But many of those who most need access cannot obtain it. An invisible barrier has emerged that, “true to its name, is like a world wide web, embracing the silently and almost imperceptibly, excluding the rest.”
A number of trends are summarised:
- Concentration of hardware and software in the industrialised countries (The United States has more computers than the rest of the world combined; Bulgaria has more Internet hosts than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, excluding South Africa. South Asia with 23 per cent of the world’s people has less than one per cent of the world’s Internet users.
- The typical Internet user world-wide has a university education, is male, has a high income, is under 35 years old, is urban based, and English speaking.
- English is used in almost 80 per cent of websites. Yet fewer than one in 10 people worldwide speaks the language.
- By privatisation, market liberalisation and the tightening of property rights the needs and concerns of the developing countries risk not being taken into account. For poor people, the technological progress remains far out of reach.
Market forces alone will not rectify the imbalance, the Report warns. Governance of the Internet should be widened to bring in the voice of the developing countries.
Also the report calls for a shift of research towards the needs of the world, rather than just of those who pay. It recommends the establishment of a group of independent scientists to identify technological problems that, if solved, would contribute to human development, particularly of the world’s poorest people, and to human security.
A woman's lot is still not a happy one
Despite the overall improvements in human development several gaps appear, enlarge or remain. The most widespread discrepancy is that between the sexes. The statistics indicate “gender inequality in every society” and show that only a few countries have made “substantial progress” in this area. High income is not necessary for the creation of opportunities for women: Costa Rica is ahead of France in terms of gender equality in political, economic and professional activities, and Israel outperforms Japan.
This means according to the report that countries do not need unlimited income to achieve respectable levels of human development. Socially sensitive policy-making is a key factor.
Globalisation
The report finishes with a number of trends composing the concept of globalisation:
- The top three billionaires have assets greater that the combined GNP of all least developed countries and their 600 million people.
- The number of computers with a direct connection to the Internet rose from 100.000 in 1988 to 36 million in 1998
- Internet access is available mainly to the educated and wealthy - 30 percent of all users have at least one university degree
- To purchase a computer would cost the average Bangladeshi eight years’ income, the average American, one month’s wage
- 80 percent of all web-sites are written in English, but only 1 in 10 people in the world speak English
- Industrialised countries hold 97 percent of all patents world-wide
- The income gap between the richest and the poorest fifth of the world’s population was 74 to 1 in 1997, up from 30 to 1 in 1960.
- 95 percent of all new HIV infections occur in developing nations. 16.000 people are infected with HIV daily.
- Organised crime syndicates estimated to gross $1.5 trillion a year
- Trafficking in women and girls for sexual exploitation is a $7 billion a year business.
- Over 80 countries have lower per capita incomes today than they did a decade ago
- Production losses from the East Asian financial crisis between 1998 and 2000 are estimated to
amount to $2 trillion
- American films make up 70 percent of the European market and 83 percent of the Latin
American market. Foreign films are only 3 percent of the American market
- Hollywood films grossed over $30 billion in 1997- 50 percent of that sum was made outside of
the United States
- 5 1.5 trillion is exchanged in the world's currency markets daily
- In Cambodia in 1996, there was one telephone per 100 people, in Monaco there were 99 per 100
people
- 20 percent of the world's people living in the highest income countries control:
- 86 percent of world GDP - the poorest, 1 percent
- 80 percent of world export markets - the poorest, 1 percent
- 74 percent of telephone lines - the poorest, 1.5 percent
- European unemployment remains at 11 percent despite a decade of sustained economic growth
- Pressures of global competition have led to labour policies with contingent work arrangements.
30 percent of workers 'm Chile and 39 percent of Colombian workers do not have contracts.
- Tanzania spends nine times more on repaying debts than it does on health care, and four times
more than it spends on education
- In Estonia in 1997, 28 crimes per 100,000 were related to drugs. In 1990, only. 4 crimes per
100,000 were drug related
IICD's vision and examples
The 1999 Human Development Report shows the central importance of knowledge and information technology for human development on a global scale. At IICD this is recognised and acted upon.
As IICD’s Managing Director Mr. van de Guchte explains in a Dutch radio interview: “without a dialogue between the ‘north’ and the ‘south’ the information gap will get wider.”
The vision of IICD is a world in which Information and Communication Technologies support sustainable development. In order to attain this IICD uses a cross-sectoral approach in which local entrepreneurs ('agents of change') come up with proposals themselves for ICT applications. IICD acts as catalyst in this. Using this demand driven or bottom-up approach, IICD strives for an as realistic as possible applicability of ICT’s, which can count on broad consensus. We believe that local ownership and a broad social consensus form an essential basis for sustainable development.
IICD realises that not only governments are the driving force behind the embedding of ICT’s in developing countries. Private enterprise, local institutes, the media, centres of expertise and financial institutes also form essential drivers in the process. IICD acts as an independent advisor and broker between these driving forces in the global ICT market and those with promising initiatives in the South.
Examples of the concrete alignment of this vision and method are: The Global Teenager Project where ICT’s, dialogue, training and sustainability go hand in hand; and the InfoBoutiques in Burkina Faso where you can see the viability of telecentres in rural Africa.
First the positive effect of globalisation are formulated as follows:
Globalisation offers great opportunities for enriching people’s lives and creating a global community based on shared values.
Yet there are a number of negative effects, which have to be addressed:
- Markets have been allowed to dominate the process, and the benefits and opportunities have not been shared equitable
- A “grotesque” and dangerous polarisation between people and countries benefiting from the system and those that are merely passive recipients of its effects.
- Care “the invisible heart of human development” is threatened because today’s competitive global market is putting pressures on the time, resources and incentives for caring labour, without which individuals do not flourish and social cohesion can break down.
- Breakthroughs in technology, such as the Internet, can open a fast track to knowledge-based growth in rich and poor countries alike, but at present benefit the relatively well-off and educated.
- Biotechnology is prejudiced: Cosmetic drugs and slow-ripening tomatoes come higher on the list than a vaccine against malaria or drought-resistant crops for marginal land.
- The “breakneck” speed of globalisation is making people’s lives less secure, as the spread of global threats to well-being outpaces action tackle them
- Financial volatility, which is an inherent feature of globally integrated financial markets results in financial crises like the East-Asian
- Job insecurity is also increasing in both industrialised and developing countries.
- Culturally, many people feel threatened by the predominantly one-way flow.
- Criminals are beneficiaries of globalisation, with the six major international syndicates believed to gross $1.5 trillion a year.
These drawbacks can be summarised in the following way: “Competitive markets may be the best guarantee of efficient production but not of human development.”
The way ahead
While the contributors to the report clearly are not blind to the dark sides of globalisation they express a realistic hope in the future: “With political commitment in the global community the negative effects can all be reversed. With stronger governance -local, national, regional and global- the benefits of competitive markets can be preserved with clear rules and boundaries, and stronger action can be put in place to meet the needs of human development.”
Furthermore the report urges a new vision for national and international policy-making which includes:
- a balanced concern for profits with concern for people
- establishing comprehensive approaches to global threats to human security such as international crime and acid rain
- supporting technologies for the poor
- building a more representative and coherent system of global governance
“The aim is to put human concerns at the centre of the globalisation debate, to end the polarisation between connected and the unconnected, to focus on the global interdependence of people and not just of financial flows, to make globalisation work for people not just for profits.”
Reducing the gap between the knows and the know-nots
As the report says: “Information and communications technology are tremendous tools for development and can open a fast track to knowledge-based growth, a track followed by India’s software programming, Ireland’s computing services and the Caribbean’s data processing.
But many of those who most need access cannot obtain it. An invisible barrier has emerged that, “true to its name, is like a world wide web, embracing the silently and almost imperceptibly, excluding the rest.”
A number of trends are summarised:
- Concentration of hardware and software in the industrialised countries (The United States has more computers than the rest of the world combined; Bulgaria has more Internet hosts than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, excluding South Africa. South Asia with 23 per cent of the world’s people has less than one per cent of the world’s Internet users.
- The typical Internet user world-wide has a university education, is male, has a high income, is under 35 years old, is urban based, and English speaking.
- English is used in almost 80 per cent of websites. Yet fewer than one in 10 people worldwide speaks the language.
- By privatisation, market liberalisation and the tightening of property rights the needs and concerns of the developing countries risk not being taken into account. For poor people, the technological progress remains far out of reach.
Market forces alone will not rectify the imbalance, the Report warns. Governance of the Internet should be widened to bring in the voice of the developing countries.
Also the report calls for a shift of research towards the needs of the world, rather than just of those who pay. It recommends the establishment of a group of independent scientists to identify technological problems that, if solved, would contribute to human development, particularly of the world’s poorest people, and to human security.
A woman's lot is still not a happy one
Despite the overall improvements in human development several gaps appear, enlarge or remain. The most widespread discrepancy is that between the sexes. The statistics indicate “gender inequality in every society” and show that only a few countries have made “substantial progress” in this area. High income is not necessary for the creation of opportunities for women: Costa Rica is ahead of France in terms of gender equality in political, economic and professional activities, and Israel outperforms Japan.
This means according to the report that countries do not need unlimited income to achieve respectable levels of human development. Socially sensitive policy-making is a key factor.
Globalisation
The report finishes with a number of trends composing the concept of globalisation:
- The top three billionaires have assets greater that the combined GNP of all least developed countries and their 600 million people.
- The number of computers with a direct connection to the Internet rose from 100.000 in 1988 to 36 million in 1998
- Internet access is available mainly to the educated and wealthy - 30 percent of all users have at least one university degree
- To purchase a computer would cost the average Bangladeshi eight years’ income, the average American, one month’s wage
- 80 percent of all web-sites are written in English, but only 1 in 10 people in the world speak English
- Industrialised countries hold 97 percent of all patents world-wide
- The income gap between the richest and the poorest fifth of the world’s population was 74 to 1 in 1997, up from 30 to 1 in 1960.
- 95 percent of all new HIV infections occur in developing nations. 16.000 people are infected with HIV daily.
- Organised crime syndicates estimated to gross $1.5 trillion a year
- Trafficking in women and girls for sexual exploitation is a $7 billion a year business.
- Over 80 countries have lower per capita incomes today than they did a decade ago
- Production losses from the East Asian financial crisis between 1998 and 2000 are estimated to
amount to $2 trillion
- American films make up 70 percent of the European market and 83 percent of the Latin
American market. Foreign films are only 3 percent of the American market
- Hollywood films grossed over $30 billion in 1997- 50 percent of that sum was made outside of
the United States
- 5 1.5 trillion is exchanged in the world's currency markets daily
- In Cambodia in 1996, there was one telephone per 100 people, in Monaco there were 99 per 100
people
- 20 percent of the world's people living in the highest income countries control:
- 86 percent of world GDP - the poorest, 1 percent
- 80 percent of world export markets - the poorest, 1 percent
- 74 percent of telephone lines - the poorest, 1.5 percent
- European unemployment remains at 11 percent despite a decade of sustained economic growth
- Pressures of global competition have led to labour policies with contingent work arrangements.
30 percent of workers 'm Chile and 39 percent of Colombian workers do not have contracts.
- Tanzania spends nine times more on repaying debts than it does on health care, and four times
more than it spends on education
- In Estonia in 1997, 28 crimes per 100,000 were related to drugs. In 1990, only. 4 crimes per
100,000 were drug related
IICD's vision and examples
The 1999 Human Development Report shows the central importance of knowledge and information technology for human development on a global scale. At IICD this is recognised and acted upon.
As IICD’s Managing Director Mr. van de Guchte explains in a Dutch radio interview: “without a dialogue between the ‘north’ and the ‘south’ the information gap will get wider.”
The vision of IICD is a world in which Information and Communication Technologies support sustainable development. In order to attain this IICD uses a cross-sectoral approach in which local entrepreneurs ('agents of change') come up with proposals themselves for ICT applications. IICD acts as catalyst in this. Using this demand driven or bottom-up approach, IICD strives for an as realistic as possible applicability of ICT’s, which can count on broad consensus. We believe that local ownership and a broad social consensus form an essential basis for sustainable development.
IICD realises that not only governments are the driving force behind the embedding of ICT’s in developing countries. Private enterprise, local institutes, the media, centres of expertise and financial institutes also form essential drivers in the process. IICD acts as an independent advisor and broker between these driving forces in the global ICT market and those with promising initiatives in the South.
Examples of the concrete alignment of this vision and method are: The Global Teenager Project where ICT’s, dialogue, training and sustainability go hand in hand; and the InfoBoutiques in Burkina Faso where you can see the viability of telecentres in rural Africa.