(09 December 2019) – The Human Development Report 2019 is launched today by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The demonstrations sweeping across the world today signal that, despite unprecedented progress against poverty, hunger and disease, many societies are not working as they should.
The connecting thread, argues a new report from UNDP, is inequality. The 2019 Human Development Report, entitled “Beyond income, beyond averages, beyond today: inequalities in human development in the 21st Century”, says that just as the gap in basic living standards is narrowing for millions of people, the necessities to thrive have evolved.
A new generation of inequalities is opening up, around education, and around technology and climate change — two seismic shifts that, unchecked, could trigger a ‘new great divergence’ in society of the kind not seen since the Industrial Revolution, according to the report.