HDialogue

Measuring Human Development in the Future

01 June 2016 | Selim Jahan, Director of the Human Development Report Office, UNDP
Each year, the Human Development Index (HDI), the signature index of the Human Development Reports (HDR), captures headlines across the globe, as countries track their progress...Read more

Creative work

03 May 2016 | Orhan Pamuk. Novelist, screenwriter, academic and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature
There is a charming anecdote about the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. According to the version our mathematics teacher in Istanbul told us, a class of high school students in Germany was misbehaving (much like we were), and to punish them...Read more

Community participation for improving rural livelihoods— lessons from the past

26 April 2016 | Maithripala Sirisena, President of Sri Lanka
Centuries of irrigated agriculture and rice farming have been embedded in Sri Lanka’s cultural traditions, enriching the lives of her people in all aspects. The relevance of these traditional occupations to the demands of a modern economy has to be...Read more

Human Development – the Way Ahead

19 April 2016 | Selim Jahan, Director of the Human Development Report Office at UNDP
The 2016 Human Development Report (HDR) will be the 25th edition. Over the last quarter of a century, these reports have extensively influenced the development discourse, provided a strong lens to...Read more

Energising Human Development

14 April 2016 | Dr Julia K Steinberger, Associate Professor in Ecological Economics, Sustainability Research Institute, University of Leeds, United Kingdom.
Reducing the risk of climate change requires large and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, most of which are caused by the burning of fossil energy sources (1). The debate around emission reductions has been dominated by concern for economic...Read more

Living Free and Equal

06 April 2016 | Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General of the Ibero-American General Secretariat
In the quarter-century since the publication in 1990 of the first Human Development Report, the world has made astounding strides in reducing poverty and improving the health, education, and living conditions of hundreds of millions of people. And yet...Read more

Recyclers: from waste pickers to global agents of sustainable development

05 April 2016 | Nohra Padilla, Director of the National Association of Recyclers (Colombia) and recipient of the 2013 Goldman Environmental Prize.
The Millennium Development Goals and the post-2015 Agenda for Sustainable Development have drawn attention to the world’s 20 million recyclers. Given the international nature of these platforms, this attention will likely lead to local and national...Read more

Is gender equality destined to remain our perpetual aspirational dream?

18 March 2016 | Selim Jahan and Tanni Mukhopadhyay
The global record on gender equality remains mixed with progress on many fronts, but gaps remaining in others. The 2015 Human Development Report ‘Work for Human Development’, twenty years...Read more

The Pursuit of Happiness: paying greater attention to Mental Health

18 March 2016 | Natalia Linou and Jon Hall are policy specialists in, respectively, UNDP’s HIV, Health and Development team and the Human Development Report Office.
Sunday marks the United Nations’ 5th International Day of Happiness. Few people are against the pursuit of happiness, but many argue that governments – and international organisations for that matter – have no business in setting happiness as a public...Read more

Paid parental leave, including mandatory paternity leave

17 March 2016 | 2015 Human Development Report
Paid parental leave is one of the most important benefits of flexibility extended to working parents, especially when mandatory paternity leave policies are implemented. The correct mix of policies can help ensure high rates of female labour force...Read more
Browse through all HDialogues