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United Nations

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Human Development Report 2025

A matter of choice: People and possibilities in the age of AI

The 2025 Human Development Report explores the implications of artificial intelligence for human development and the choices we can make to ensure that it enhances human capabilities. Rather than attempting to predict the future, the report argues that we must shape it—by making bold decisions so that AI augments what people can do.

Human Development Perspectives

2024 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI)

Poverty amid conflict

The 2024 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) report overlays violent conflict data with multidimensional poverty data to better understand their interlinkages across countries and over time.

Global Reports

Human Development Report 2023-24

Breaking the gridlock: Reimagining cooperation in a polarized world

The 2023/24 Human Development Report assesses the dangerous gridlock resulting from uneven development progress, intensifying inequality, and escalating political polarization, that we must urgently tackle. The report emphasizes how global interdependence is being reconfigured and proposes a path forward where multilateralism plays a pivotal role.

Human Development Perspectives

2023 Gender Social Norms Index (GSNI)

Breaking down gender biases: Shifting social norms towards gender equality

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Background Papers

This study looks at how human development and sustainability norms are generated and which norm makers from the South have played a role in their emergence and diffusion. It identifies specific norm entrepreneurs from the South, explores their diverse backgrounds and policy experiences, and assesses their roles in shaping sustainable development priorities and bringing environmental concerns into focus.
Human Development Perspectives

The COVID-19 crisis is a systemic human development crisis, compounding risks to progress towards gender equality. The pandemic and its consequences hit a world wealthier than ever but facing deep divides in human development. Some of the consequences of COVID-19 have had a greater impact on some countries and groups within countries, as pre-existing horizontal inequalities can magnify the effects of the crisis.
National Reports
Afghanistan has been afflicted by decades of conflict, but recent moves towards peace could create the opportunity for a new era of human development. The Government is committed to the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals. But how will the necessary investment be financed? An enticing option is to capitalize on the country’s extensive mineral wealth. This will be complex and difficult, but not impossible.
Global Reports

Beyond income, beyond averages, beyond today: Inequalities in human development in the 21st century

In every country many people have little prospect for a better future. They are without hope, purpose or dignity, watching from society’s sidelines as they see others pulling ahead to ever greater prosperity. Worldwide many have escaped extreme poverty. But even more have neither the opportunities nor the resources to control their lives. Far too often a person’s place in society is still determined by ethnicity, gender or his or her parents’ wealth. Inequalities. The evidence is everywhere.
Background Papers

This background paper examines how conflict affects horizontal inequality. While a large literature looks at how horizontal inequality is linked to the onset of armed conflict, we know very little about if, and how, conflict in turn affects such inequality.
Background Papers

There is nothing new about the nature and scope of inequality engulfing the world today. Still, notwithstanding the ‘starving artist’ mantra—which has become an acceptable truism—inequality in the arts is rarely examined.
Report Writing Toolkit
Human development and biodiversity are inextricably linked. The degradation of our environment, coupled with significant declines in biodiversity, is very much a human development problem.
National Reports

In Kazakhstan, as in many other nations around our planet, more and more citizens are choosing to live in cities, as they often offer more diverse services and greater opportunity for personal development and economic advancement than rural areas do.