New HDI report warns global community is falling short

• Human development progress path has shifted downwards and is now below pre-2019 trend
• UNDP cautions if global HDI value continues to evolve below pre-2019 trend, losses will be permanent

For the first time on record, the inequalities in the Human Development Index (HDI) values—which measure a country’s health, education and standard of living—are growing between the countries at the bottom and the countries at the top of the index, the United Nations cautioned. This is after 20 years 
of progress.
Following the 2020 and 2021 declines in the global HDI value, the world had the opportunity to build forward better. However, the latest Human Development Report shows that the global community is falling short. 

Deaths in battle and displacement from violent conflicts are increasing, reaching the highest levels since World War II. Leading up to a decade of increasingly higher temperatures, 2023 has been the hottest ever recorded. 
“The path of human development progress shifted downwards and is now below the pre-2019 trend, threatening to entrench permanent losses in human development. Unless we change course,” the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) cautioned in the snapshot Human Development 
Report 2023/2024.

The report stressed that if the global HDI value continues to evolve below the pre-2019 trend, as it has since 2020, losses would be permanent. 
Based on the 1999–2019 trend, the global HDI value was on track to cross the threshold defining very high human development (a value of 0.800) by 2030—coinciding with the deadline to meet the Sustainable Development Goals.

“Now, the world is off track. Indeed, every region’s projected 2023 HDI value falls below its pre-2019 trend. Whatever its future trajectory, the global HDI value will capture —incompletely, if at all—many other important elements, such as the debilitating effects of chronic illness or the spikes in mental health disorders or in violence against women, all restricting people’s possibilities for their lives,” the report said.
For rich and poor countries alike, some losses will never be recovered. The HDI is an important, if crude, yardstick for human development.