On November 23, FAR was invited by Ms. Dafina Gercheva, United Nations Resident Coordinator and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Resident Representative, to attend the presentation of the 2010 Global Human Development Report held at the UN office in Yerevan.
Attendees included Dirk Boberg, UNDP Deputy Resident Representative in Armenia; Ara Petrosyan, Deputy Minister of Economy; Aghasi Tadevosyan, National Consultant, as well as representatives from various national and international organizations.
Boberg opened the ceremony. He spoke briefly about the 2010 report and congratulated all participants on the 20th Anniversary of publication of UNDP’s HDP Report. (UNDP published its first Human Development Report in 1990, with its newly devised Human Development Index.) In describing the uniqueness of this report he said, “In human development the wealth of development is the individual, not the economy.”
Tadevosian compared the previous criteria of human development (1990) vs. current criteria. “Previously, the human development indices for evaluating the country’s development were the average life duration, accessibility to education and literacy, and GDP per capita. Now, new indices have been introduced, including inequality, gender equity and multidimensional poverty.”
HDP 2010 discusses progress of health, education and rising income in the recent years as well as human opportunity and the growing power to select leaders and influence public decisions.
The report’s analysis of 135 developing and developed countries shows average life expectancy has risen from 59 to 70 years, school enrolment has grown from 55 to 70 percent, and per capita incomes have doubled to more than $10,000, according to UNDP.
According to the country ranking, Armenia is placed in the “High Human Development” category with an HDI value of 0.695, which gives the country a rank of 76th out of 169 countries. Russia is ranked 65th, while our neighbors Azerbaijan, Iran, Georgia and Turkey, are positioned 67th, 70th, 74th and 83rd, respectively. It is our hope that Armenia will be included in the developed countries’ list in near future.
For more information about the UNDP's HDP 2010 Report Ceremony, please follow UNDP.am.
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