Excellent study material for all civil services aspirants - being learning - Kar ke dikhayenge!
SHARE:
Economic growth and human development
1.0 introduction
According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), human development may be defined as "a process of enlarging people's choices." The major requirements for people at all levels are, to live a long and healthy life, to acquire better knowledge and to have access to resources needed for a decent standard of living. If these essential choices are not available, many other opportunities to improve the quality of life will remain inaccessible.
Human development has two dimensions.
- Acquiring human capabilities, and
- The use people make of these acquired capabilities for productive, leisure and other purposes.
The benefits of human development go far beyond the expansion of income and wealth accumulation because people constitute the very essence of human development.
A distinction can be drawn between human resources development and human development. The former focuses on the production aspect and as such deals with people as a factor of production like material, capital and natural resources. Thus, the end goal of investment in human capital, in terms of health, education, nutrition and training, is to boost production and generate additional income.
1.1 Components of human development
As per UNDP, human development basically has four components:
Equality: Defined as equal access to opportunities. This concept implies the existence of competitive markets and competitors with equal access to productive assets and knowledge.
Productivity: Human development is not antipodal to the theory of economic growth. It is rather dependent on the contention that economic growth and improved productivity can be achieved through development of human resources and creation of a conducive environment where people can make use of their capabilities optimally. Adequate focus is placed on the quality aspect of growth, rather than exclusive emphasis on its quantitative aspect.
Sustainability: To ensure sustainability of choices in order to accommodate the needs of future generations.
Empowerment: Empowerment and participation imply provision of an adequate social environment in which people participate for achievement of a better life.
Thus human development, in line with its focus on enabling people to enjoy a better life as the ultimate goal of human endeavor, highlights that this goal cannot be achieved solely through improvements in income or material well-being. Further there is inter-dependence between the key components of human well-being. For example, without adequate income, many health and education services may not be accessible; and without a good education rewarding jobs and income opportunities may not be available to an individual.
Therefore, these components of human development must be treated within a comprehensive framework. And while their evaluation by people may change over time and differ between countries and even groups within the same country, the basic components of human development - income, education and health - are nevertheless considered essential at all levels of development.
The broad scope of the prerequisites for human development as outlined above raises an important issue as to their applicability to individual countries. Their policy implications are certain to vary from one country to another as what constitutes appropriate some of the human development policy is likely to be unique to each individual country and will be influenced by its religious, cultural, social, political and economic values.
A recent World Bank (WB) report brought out poverty ratios across countries. According to these estimates, poverty in India in 2011-12 could be as low as 12.4 per cent if we use "modified mixed reference period" (MMRP), in which there are three recall periods depending on the nature of items. This contrasts with the Rangarajan committee estimates of 29.5 per cent. The poverty line (PL) used by the Rangarajan committee for India was around Rs 1,105 per capita per month. That translates to $2.44 per capita per day, in terms of purchasing power parity. As such, the WB's PL of $1.90 per capita per day is only about 78 per cent of the PL used by the Rangarajan committee. The lower PL is the reason for the lower poverty ratio estimated by the WB.
However, the WB report also talks about the depth of poverty in terms of person-equivalent headcounts. According to the report, the depth elasticity at the global level between 1990 and 2012 was 1.18. In other words, the reductions in traditional head count ratios were accompanied by even larger reductions in person-equivalent poverty ratios. This is true in the regions where the bulk of the poor reside, such as South Asia.
1.2 Human Development Reports (HDRs)
The Human Development Report is published annually by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Featuring the HDI - the Human Development Index - every report presents agenda-setting data and analysis and calls international attention to issues and policy options that put people at the center of strategies to meet the challenges of development today - economic, social, political, and cultural.
Regional Human Development Reports are highly encouraged by UNDP, whereby each Region produces a report that focuses on relevant and pressing issues. They are an instrument for measuring human progress and triggering action for change. They serve to promote regional partnerships for influencing change, and address region-specific human development approaches to human rights, poverty, education, economic reform, HIV/AIDS, and globalization.
The UNDP Regional Bureau for Arab States (UNDP/RBAS) has started publishing an annual report since 2002.
National Human Development Reports (NHDR) provide a tool for national policy debate placing human development at the forefront of the national political agenda. They are a tool for policy analysis reflecting people's priorities, strengthening national capacities, engaging national partners, identifying inequities and measuring progress.
1.3 The Human Development Index (HDI)
The origins of the HDI are found in the annual Development Reports of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The Human Development Index (HDI) was devised and launched by Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq in 1990. The purpose was "to shift the focus of development economics from national income accounting to people-centered policies". To produce the Human Development Reports, Mahbub ul Haq formed a group of development economists including Paul Streeten, Frances Stewart, Gustav Ranis, Keith Griffin, Sudhir Anand, and Meghnad Desai. Alongwith Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, the group worked on capabilities and functions that provided the underlying conceptual framework.
Haq was sure that a simple composite measure of human development was needed in order to convince the public, academics, and politicians that they can and should evaluate development not only by economic advances but also improvements in human well-being. Sen initially opposed this idea, but he soon went on to help Haq develop the Index. Sen was worried that it was going to be difficult to capture the full complexity of human capabilities in a single index, but Haq persuaded him that only a single number would shift the immediate attention of politicians from economic to human well-being.
The index also provides an initial working tool that could be further developed and refined, and that could guide country efforts to establish relevant databases. Additional indexes based on the HDI have been developed to examine, in more depth, specific issues, such as the Gender-related Development Index (GDI), the Gender-Empowerment Measure (GEM) and the Human Poverty Index (HPI). Some countries have also developed complementary indexes to help policy-makers deal with specific national issues.
1.4 Method for calculating HDI
Human Development Index (HDI) consists of three parameters to assess the quality of life which is referred as human development and well being. These are
- Life expectancy
- Education or Knowledge availability
- Per capita income of the concerned people of a country.
1.4.1 Life Expectancy Index assessment as per HDI calculation method
New Life Index calculation has come out with changing its goalposts (minimum and maximum of the life expectancy). For life expectancy, it has taken 1980-2010 as years which are considered to form these values. Minimum value for life expectancy is fixed at 20 years in new calculation. Maximum value for life index is kept at 83.2 years.
where LE = Life Expectancy of a country
1.4.2 Education Index assessment as per HDI calculation method
Education Index (EI) assessment is composed of two indices. They are
- Mean Years of Schooling Index (MYSI)
- Expected Years of Schooling Index (EYSI)
‘Mean Years of Schooling’ means the number of years spent by a person of 25 years or older in school. The low value was fixed at 0 and the maximum value for mean years of schooling is fixed at 13.2. These values are taken after observation of various countries in the time of 1980-2010.
The formula for Mean Years of Schooling Index is:
where MYS = Mean years of schooling
Expected Years of Schooling means years expected to be spent by a 5 year old boy in school in a particular country, including repetition.
The formula for Expected Years of Schooling Index is:
where EYS = Expected Years of Schooling
This assessment of goal posts (Minimum and maximum values) for expected years of schooling is also based on 1980-2010 in various countries. Low value for expected years of schooling is fixed at 0 and high value is fixed at 20.6.
Finally, the Education Index EI will be:
1.4.3 Income Index assessment as per HDI calculation method
To calculate this index, goal posts are set as per observations during 1980-2010 in various countries. Gross National Income per capita is taken as measure to calculate new Income Index in new HDI. Minimum income is set as $163 and maximum income is set as $108,211.
Income Index is 1 when GNI per capita is $75,000 and 0 when GNI per capita is $100.
1.4.4 Finally, the Human Development Index (HDI) is got as
Thus, the new Human Development Index (HDI) is the geometric mean of Life Expectancy Index (LEI), Education Index (EI) and Income Index (II).
After this calculation, the final HDI value will be between 0 and 1. As per the values gained, countries will be placed in the list of division of countries. They are divided into very high human development, high human development, medium high human development and low high human development countries.
1.5 Economic growth and human development
Economic Growth: Economic Growth is defined as the increase in the money value of goods and services produced by all the sectors of the economy during a particular period of time. It is a quantitative measure that shows the increase in the number of commercial transactions in an economy.
Economic growth can be expressed in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) and gross national product (GNP) and helps in measuring the size of the economy. It lets us compare and calculate how much an economy has progressed since last year. It is an outcome of the increase in the quality and quantity of resources and advancement in technology.
Economic Development: Economic Development is defined as the process of increase in volume of production along with improvement in technology, rise in the standard of living, institutional changes, etc. In short, it is the progress in the socio-economic structure of the economy.
Human Development Index (HDI) is the appropriate tool to gauge the economic development in a nation. Based on certain parameters, the HDI statistic ranks countries. It considers the overall development in an economy regarding the standard of living, GDP, living conditions, technological advancement, improvement in self esteem needs, creation of opportunities, per capita income, infrastructural and industrial development and much more.
Key Differences Between Economic Growth and Economic Development
The basic differences between economic growth and development are explained in the points given below:
- Economic growth is the positive change in the real output of the country in a particular span of time economy. Economic Development involves rise in the level of production in an economy along with the advancement of technology, improvement in living standards and so on.
- Economic growth is one of the feature of economic development.
- Economic growth is an automatic process. Economic development is the outcome of planned and result oriented activities.
- Economic growth enables an increase in indicators like GDP, per capita income, etc. On the other hand, economic development enables improvement in the life expectancy rate, infant mortality rate, literacy rate and poverty rates.
- Economic growth can be measured when there is a positive change in the national income, whereas economic development can be seen when there is an increase in real national income.
- Economic growth is a short term process which takes into account yearly growth of the economy. Economic development it is a long term process.
- Economic Growth results in quantitative changes, but economic development brings both quantitative and qualitative changes.
- Economic growth can be measured in a particular period of time. As opposed to economic development is a continuous process, so it can be seen in the long run.
Economic growth and human development are closely related. Robust economic growth creates the resources that aid efforts regarding poverty reduction, human development and environmental protection. Hence, gross domestic product (GDP) and indicators of development such as life expectancy, infant mortality, adult literacy, political and civil rights, and some indicators of environmental quality have a close relation. But this does not happen automatically. Well-functioning civil institutions, secure individual and property rights, and broad-based health and educational services are also vital to raising overall living standards.
Over the past 25 years, though the industrialized economies continued to dominate economic activity, an emerging trend was the increasingly significant role played by the developing nations, in particular the populous economies of east and south Asia. Integration of these hitherto closed economies into the world economy has been a major factor causing this development. Expansion of international financial markets, new technologies that have revolutionized international communications and encouraged the development of transnational patterns of production and consumption, and the fourfold increase in foreign direct investment flowing to developing and transition economies over the past decade are the other factors.
At the same time, disparities are growing among the developing countries. Some countries have not been able to take advantage of the benefits of globalization. Since 1980, the fastest-growing economies of Asia and Latin America have been characterized by high rates of domestic savings, declining dependence on agriculture, and a rapid growth in trade, especially of manufactured exports. The emerging economies of the developing world - such as Brazil, China, Indonesia, and Mexico have been increasingly attractive to private finance; two thirds of the US $95.5 billion foreign direct investment (FDI) flows in 1995 went to just six developing countries. About 12 million jobs have been created by corporations in developing countries.
However some 100 countries have experienced economic decline or stagnation; in 70 of these countries, average incomes are lower today than they were in 1980. Factors in this decline include continued dependence on exports of primary commodities and falling commodity prices, high levels of indebtedness, slow progress with political and macroeconomic reform, and, in some countries, political instability and armed conflict.
The net result of these mutually opposite trends is that more than 3.8 billion people have seen their incomes rise by 3 percent or more from 1980 levels, but some 1 billion others are worse off. Not something to be proud of, really.
Poverty remains an enormous problem worldwide, despite major reductions over the past 50 years. Within the developing countries, about one-third of the population lives on less than US$1 a day (the World Bank defines poverty as an income of less than
US$1.25 per day). By this measure, although the percentage of the world's population living in poverty declined slightly between 1987 and 1993 (from 30.1 percent to 29.4 percent), the absolute number of people living in poverty increased from 1.2 billion to 1.3 billion people. Although some Asian countries, such as Indonesia, have made considerable progress in reducing poverty, in south Asia, progress has been slow. In sub-Saharan Africa and in Latin America and the Caribbean, the percentage of the population living in poverty actually increased slightly.
1.6 India's Human Development Index
The contest between India's GDP and the Human Development Index (HDI) as the most appropriate measure of the performance of a country has been longstanding. While GDP is a measure of income, HDI is one that indicates the well-being of citizens. The HDI is a composite statistic used to rank countries by degree of 'human development,' which is considered synonymous with 'standard of living' and/or 'quality of life.' The first Human Development Report introduced a new way of measuring development by combining indicators of life expectancy, educational attainment and income into a composite human development index, the HDI. The breakthrough for the HDI was the creation of a single statistic which was to serve as a frame of reference for both social and economic development. The HDI sets a minimum and a maximum for each dimension, called goalposts, and then shows where each country stands in relation to these goalposts, expressed as a value between 0 and 1.
1.7 HDI rankings 2017
India was ranked 130 among 189 nations in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)'s Human Development India (HDI) for the year 2017. It moved one rank up to 129, as per HDI 2018 (released in 2019).
India’s HDI went up from 0.636 in 2016 to 0.64 in 2017, but grew at a slower pace, at 0.63 per cent, compared with 1.4 per cent in each of the preceding two years. This is in line with the slow HDI growth at the global level, from above 0.5 per cent in preceding two years to 0.3 per cent in 2017.
In comparison, however, HDI growth in Europe and Central Asia—the region with the greatest number of developed countries—has improved in the last year to 0.5 per cent, from , 0.36 per cent in 2016.
The reason for slow HDI growth in India can be ascribed to the stagnation in the primary indicators on which the HDI is based.
The expected years of schooling in 2017 stood at 12.3 years, unchanged from the 2016 level. The same holds true for mean years of schooling, which remained unchanged at 6.4 years.
Such a situation demands an improvement in the age-specific enrolment rates in schools, suggest the report. According to the latest data, school enrolment has dropped from 94 per cent at the elementary level (Class 8) to 80 per cent at secondary level (Class 10) and 55 per cent at higher secondary level (Class 10+2).
Further, the growth in national income per person in the country slowed down from 5.9 per cent in 2016 to 2.6 per cent in 2017. India’s economy grew slower over the last two years, from 8.2 per cent in 2015-16, to 7.1 per cent in 2016-17, to 6.7 per cent in 2017-18, according to revised estimates.
However, the overall growth masks the inequalities among the populace. Factoring in the inequality, India’s HDI on this account fell from 0.64 to 0.47, showing an “inequality loss” of 26.8 per cent, worse than neighbours and regional average. The average loss due to inequality for medium HDI countries was 25.1 per cent and for South Asia it was 26.1 per cent.
Despite being the fastest growing developing economy, India’s HDI at 0.64 was still lower than the overall HDI of developing economies group at 0.68, suggesting that human development follows economic development with a lag.
Among its closest neighbours, India leads in income levels or overall economic empowerment. However, it also leads in terms of income inequality, due to which the inequality-adjusted HDI suffers a bigger fall.
2.0 The 2019 scenario
India has moved one spot up in the human development index (HDI) to 129 from 130 last year, according to latest rankings of 189 countries released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). in Dec 2019. [Rank is for 2018]
Among the other South-Asian countries, Sri Lanka ranked 71 with the HDI value of 0.78 and Maldives at 104 with the HDI value of 0.719 were ahead of India. On the other hand, neighbours Bangladesh and Pakistan were ranked at 135 and 152 respectively. India’s HDI value is above the average of 0.647 for the region. HDI measures the progress in key dimensions of human development such as education, health and living standards.
According to the latest index, India’s HDI value in 2018 was 0.647, which retains the country in the medium human development category. According to UNDP, between 1990 and 2017, India’s HDI value has increased from 0.427 to 0.647, an increase of almost 50 per cent. Around the same period, India’s life expectancy at birth too increased by nearly 11 years.
Also, the country’s Gross National Income (GNI) per capita increased 30 per cent between 1990 and 2018.
The top five countries in the global HDI ranking were Norway (0.954), Switzerland (0.946), Ireland (0.942) and Germany (0.939) and along kong (0.939). On the other hand, Niger (0.377), the Central African Republic (0.381), and, Chad (0.401) have the lowest scores in the HDI ranking.
2.1 Factors behind India's low HDI
Health: The liberalization and globalization policy has been biased towards economic growth rather than social development. Allocations for public healthcare spending have increased marginally from 1 percent to just about 1.4 percent of the GDP in a period of six months till Feb 2010. Consequently, a large proportion of health expenditure - about 4 per cent of the GDP - is left to be borne out of private income, which results in inequity.
Education: India has, for long, been cautious in its approach towards spending on education. The Right to Education Bill (RTE) was in danger of being shelved on the grounds that it was too expensive for the government. The country still accounts for around 30 percent of the world's illiterate population and 70 percent of these people are women.
Urban poverty: There is no urban equivalent of the National Rural Health Mission (NHRM) or the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS - the MGNREGA). India's low scores on human development have much to do with the absence of safety nets for the urban poor.
Environmental performance: India ranks 125 among 132 countries on Yale University's Environmental Performance Index, behind the likes of Pakistan, Moldova and Kyrgyzstan.
3.0 MEASURES FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
Work for human development is about more than just jobs, but human development is also about expanding people's choices and making sure that opportunities are available. This includes ensuring that adequate and quality paid work opportunities are available and accessible for those who need and want paid work. National employment strategies are needed for addressing the complex challenges in work in many countries. About 27 developing countries have adopted national employment strategies, another 18 are doing so and 5 are revisiting their policies to better respond to new employment challenges. Major policy instruments of a national employment strategy might include:
Setting an employment target: More than a dozen countries have employment targets (including Honduras and Indonesia). Central banks may pursue dual targeting- moving beyond a focus primarily on inflation control to emphasize employment targets. They may also consider specific monetary policy instruments (such as credit allocation mechanisms) for creating more work opportunities, as in Chile, Colombia, India, Malaysia and Singapore.
Formulating an employment-led growth strategy: Employment can no longer be considered to be simply a derivative of economic growth. Some policy interventions would entail strengthening links between small and medium-sized enterprises in need of capital and large capital-intensive firms to boost employment, upgrading workers' skills over the lifecycle, focusing investments and inputs on sectors where poor people work (such as agriculture), removing barriers critical to employment-led growth (such as removing biases towards small and medium-sized enterprises in access to credit), implementing solid legal and regulatory frameworks and addressing the distribution of capital and labour in public spending to emphasize technologies that create jobs.
Moving to financial inclusion: An inclusive financial system is essential for structural transformation and work creation. In developing countries the lack of access to finance is a major hindrance to enterprise operation and growth, particularly for women. Policy options might encompass extending banking services to disadvantaged and marginalized groups (as in Ecuador), steering credit towards unserved, remote areas and targeted sectors (as in Argentina, Malaysia and the Republic of Korea) and lowering interest rates and providing credit guarantees and subsidized credit to small and medium-sized enterprises and export-oriented sectors.
Building a supportive macroeconomic framework: Some policy instruments to reduce volatility and create secure jobs include keeping the real exchange rate stable and competitive, managing capital accounts prudently, restructuring budgets towards job-creating sectors, building fiscal space for public spending, promoting an enabling business environment, ensuring high-quality infrastructure and adopting a regulatory framework that encourages competition, enhances efficiency and ensures transparency and accountability for business.
Seizing opportunities in the changing world of work requires policy actions to help people thrive in the new work environment. Individuals can flourish if they are equipped with skills, knowledge and competencies to harness new technologies and capitalize on emerging opportunities. Some of the policy actions here would require:
Heading off a race to the bottom: Given the realized and potential benefits that globalization brings to work, a race to the bottom ever lower wages and worsening working conditions is not the only outcome. Global attention to ensuring decent wages, maintaining workers' safety and protecting their rights can pre-empt such a race and make business more sustainable in the long run, as can fair trade, because work conditions are becoming increasingly critical in consumers' minds.
Providing workers with new skills and education: Higher and specific skills will be needed for science and engineering jobs and for many other jobs, as will be an aptitude for creativity, problem solving and lifelong learning.
4.0 THE SEN-BHAGWATI DEBATE
The Sen-Bhagwati debate highlights two different approaches towards human development.
While Sen believes that India should invest more in its social infrastructure to boost the productivity of its people and thereby raise growth, Bhagwati argues that only a focus on growth can yield enough resources for investing in social sector schemes. Investing in health and education to improve human capabilities is central to Sen's scheme of things. Without such investments, inequality will widen and the growth process itself will falter, Sen believes. Bhagwati argues that growth may raise inequality initially but sustained growth will eventually raise enough resources for the state to redistribute and mitigate the effects of the initial inequality.
The debate between Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya on the one side, and Sen and Jean Dreze on the other has sharpened after the two sets of researchers released their new books on India. In Why Growth Matters: How Economic Growth in India Reduced Poverty and the Lessons for Other Developing Countries, Bhagwati and Panagariya hold up growth as the panacea for all of India's ills. Bhagwati & Panagariya argue that India's economic growth since the 1990s has indeed substantially reduced poverty: The proportion of the poor population, according to Planning Commission figures, fell from 44.5 (1983) to 27.5 (2004-5) per cent; taking population growth during this period into account, they estimate that 187.5 million people have left the status of poverty (at least in its most extreme form) in the same period.
Bhagwati & Panagariya then identify persistent impediments to India's further growth: an inflexible labour legislation operating against the sizing-up of companies; the difficulties of land acquisition for public and private industries and housing; the poor state of public infrastructure, most dramatically so in the field of power supply.
In An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions, Sen and Dreze prescribe state-led redistributive efforts as the solution to India's problems. For Drèze & Sen, India's main contradiction is the persistence of poverty combined with rising inequality, despite rapid economic growth. While the measurement of poverty figures in India remains notoriously difficult, it is clear that even using the same Planning Commission figures as Bhagwati & Panagariya (above), the absolute number of Indians in poverty has far less reduced than the high GDP growth may suggest, if at all.
Instead of mere economic growth, Dreze & Sen see the developmental process primarily as the need to grow human capacity, and on the systems that enable and help to provide it: education, health, and social support services. They point to the severe deficits that make India risk wasting the "demographic dividend" it currently has: poor education (except in a few top-level institutions) as well as severe health and nutrition issues that, besides the death toll, make substantial parts of the population less productive than they could be.
Bhagwati criticises Sen's embrace of growth by citing instances where Sen has chided others for focusing too much on growth. Bhagwati argues that by providing the intellectual foundations for populist excesses and fiscal profligacy that stoke inflation, Sen is actually hurting the life chances of the poor. By arguing for redistribution to precede growth, Sen is putting the cart before the horse, Bhagwati says.
According to Sen both growth and welfare programs are needed, and not at the cost of each other and subsidies that don't aid the poor must go. Sen also questions Bhagwati's argument that growth must precede redistributive efforts to improve human capabilities. Bhagwati argues that the reforms of 1991 made even the lowest social classes greatly more prosperous today. Hence, those reforms must be strengthened. Critiquing the critics of India's growth experience, Bhagwati argued that a low rank on the human development index (HDI) did not mean much. HDI owes its origins to the efforts of Sen and the renowned Pakistani economist, Mahbub ul Haq. Bhagwati questioned the widespread use of HDI, saying there was very little science behind the index.
By 2020, it was becoming clearer that the rising inequalities worldwide - as borne out by various global reports (Oxfam, WEF, World Bank etc.) - had cast a deep shadow on the trickle-down effect theory, which stated that economic growth will inevitably lead to higher human development. Today, we realise that human development is not an automatic outcome of higher GDP growth in any nation, but needs sustained efforts in specific directions to materialise. That is the reason Indian politics too started embracing the idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI) in its many variants and avatars (PM-KISAN, NYAY etc.).
5.0 Millennium Development Goals
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were the eight international development goals that were established following the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in 2000, following the adoption of the United Nations Millennium Declaration. All 189 United Nations member states at the time (there are 193 currently), and at least 23 international organizations, committed to help achieve the following Millennium Development Goals by 2015:
- To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
- To achieve universal primary education
- To promote gender equality and empower women
- To reduce child mortality
- To improve maternal health
- To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
- To ensure environmental sustainability
- To develop a global partnership for development
Although the MDG targets were not achieved completely, there have been major advancements and improvements. However, the progress has been uneven between the countries. In 2012 the the "UN System Task Team on the Post-2015 UN Development Agenda" was established by UN Secretary-General established. It brought together more than 60 UN agencies and international organizations to focus and work on sustainable development.
At the MDG Summit, UN Member States discussed the Post-2015 Development Agenda and initiated a process of consultations. Civil society organizations also engaged in the post-2015 process, along with academia and other research institutions, including think tanks. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were proposed as targets relating to future international development. In 2014, the UN's Commission on the Status of Women agreed on a document that called for the acceleration of progress towards achieving the millennium development goals, and confirmed the need for a stand-alone goal on gender equality and women's empowerment in post-2015 goals, and for gender equality to underpin all of the post-2015 goals.
COMMENTS