New Orleans, United States
19 février 2010
Speakers:
Mary Jane Parmentier, Lecturer, Arizona State University
Chair and Discussant
Craig Murphy, Professor, Wellesley College, Massachusetts
Human development and the UN
Jeni Klugman, Director of UNDP Human Development Reports
HDR 2010: Human Development Retrospective and Prospective
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Professor, The New School, New York
MDGs, Human Rights and Human Development: competing or complementary policy agendas
David Hulme, Professor, Manchester University, United Kingdom
Eradicating Poverty as a global agenda
Organizer: Sakiko Fukuda-Parr (fukudaps@newschol.edu)
Human development is one of several paradigms that define what ‘development’ is, should be, and what policy options work best. Built on Amartya Sen’s work on capabilities, and launched as a paradigm in the 1990 Human Development Report led by Mahbub ul Haq, it has been an important reference in international development policy debates for the last 2 decades. What has been its influence?
Speaker 1
Craig Murphy, Professor, Wellesley College, Massachusetts
Human Development and the UN System
Post-development scholars see the institutions of development and of international development cooperation as something of a ruse, as a continuation in a new form of patterns of imperialism and dependency that go back to beginning of the modern world. Yet, the even the political structure of the UN system suggests we need a more nuanced and differentiated understanding of the institutions and ideas governing development cooperation. In particular, the open-ended research program instituted by Mahbub ul Haq and the Human Development office encouraged a multi-vocal and, in some cases, bottom-up process of defining development goals and of coming to learn about the impediments to achieving them. Yet, as the concept of Human Development became more popular, both within the UN system and outside, there is some evidence that the idea did become more rigid and more consistent with the kind of top-down processes that post-development scholars abhor. But the rigidification (and even reification) of Human Development that has taken place as the concept migrated from UNDP to the World Bank and beyond should be much less worrying to post-development scholars than the crowding out of Human Development by the equally well-meaning, but inherently much more universalizing and top-down program to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
Speaker 2
Jeni Klugman, Director of UNDP Human Development Report Office
HDR 2010: Human Development: A Retrospective and Prospective
The year 2010 provides a major and timely opportunity to reflect on achievements of the human development approach, and its robustness and scope for change. To help ground the panel's debates, this paper will begin with a brief review of systematic evidence about trends in human development outcomes over three decades, correlates of success, weakness and failure, and how the world has changed, and not changed, since 1990. Major new and recurring challenges to human development since the 1990s -- economic crises, conflict, environment, HIV AIDS - will be explored, before going on to consider the key implications for the concepts and policy agendas that have been promoted under the human development agenda. Avenues of exploration of new indicators and innovations in the HDI will be highlighted.
Since the launch of the first global HDR and introduction of the HDI, innovation in the measurement of human development has also been expanded through the research and advocacy work of over 600 regional, national and sub-national Human Development Report teams in over 130 countries. Like the global HDR, these nationally owned and participatory report processes often generate tremendous debate among policy-makers, the academia, civil society and the general public on ways to measure and further human development. Many reports adapt the HDI and other HD indices to address specific national development needs, often also disaggregating the HDI and other data down to the regional and municipal level.
Although it is hard to quantify the impact of these HDRs and the HDI on policy and on efforts to measure human progress, their influence is extensive. The HDRs are widely disseminated and accessed electronically. The most recent global HDR 2007-08 and its statistics, available in twelve languages, has been downloaded over 400,000 times, more than any other UN development report. The global HDRs have been cited in over 380 articles published in peer-reviewed journals. There have been over 8,000 news articles published on the HDI and other HD indices since 1990. Academic courses and training are being delivered to a new generation of researchers and policy-makers on the HDI and other HD topics in over twenty countries.
Speaker 3
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Professor, The New School, New York
MDGs, Human Rights and Human Development: competing or complementary policy agendas
The adoption of the 2000 Millennium Declaration and the emergence of the Millennium Development Goals could be expected to have shifted international development agenda in line with the priorities advocated by proponents of human development and human rights based approaches to development. The MDGs reflect the key indicators of human well being – rather than performance of economies – advocated by the proponents of these approaches as the essential purpose of development. This paper argues that that this apparent complementarity between human development/human rights priorities and MDGs is deceptive, and that the MDGs have become competing policy agendas.
Speaker 4
David Hulme, Professor, Manchester University, United Kingdom
The End of Poverty and the Role of Human Development
This paper examines the ways in which the concept of Human Development influenced the evolution of ideas about eradicating poverty during the 1990s and early 2000s. It explores the reasons why human development was interpreted in global agreements and plans (MDGs, Millennium Project, FFD) from a basic needs perspective. The conclusion reviews prospects for shifting to a human rights interpretation of human development post 2010.
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