UNDP, The Human Development Report 2003

"The Human Development Report is probably the most noticed annual report of the UN, coming out since 1990 and usually getting headline treatment in newspapers around the world. The importance of this report of 2003 is that it concentrated on the Millennium Development Goals and presented them as a compact among nations to end human poverty, particularly a compact between developed donor nations and developing nations. What I particularly liked and think is so important about this report is that it went into the economic strategy the countries need to follow if they are to make rapid progress towards human development and the Millennium Development Goals. Often there is the idea that mostly what a country needs to achieve the goals is rapid economic growth. This is far too simple – for all the reasons set out clearly and punchily in the summary at the beginning of this report. Elements of national strategy are also clear from the many examples elaborated on in later chapters. So I think it is a very important document and again one that presents specifics on many of these issues. The report also supplied evidence to justify a more optimistic picture of past performance of countries in pursuing UN goals. Many people start with a totally negative view about whether it is even possible to achieve the goals and of why countries or people should take seriously goals set up by the UN in New York. What difference will it make? Well, this report shows that the UN since its early days has adopted some 50 development goals – time-bound targets for economic and social progress. Some – like the eradication of smallpox – have been fully and dramatically achieved, in spite of great scepticism when the goal of eradication was first adopted in 1966. Smallpox was killing two million people a year until the mid 1960s. Yet eradication was achieved in 11 years at remarkably little cost – $300 million in total, the cost at the time of three fighter bombers. This is the most impressive – but many of the other UN goals have had a big impact."