São Paulo – Five Arab nations are in the list of countries with very high Human Development Index (HDI) of the United Nations Development Programme (Undp). In the list of 49 countries which comprise the ranking, Qatar is the 31st and the first among Arabs. Also listed are Saudi Arabia, at 34th, the Emirates, at 40th, Bahrain, at 44th, and Kuwait, at the 46th position. Norway, Australia and Swiss are at the top of the list, in ascending order.
The HDI shows quality of life and economic development of a country, evaluating areas such as health, education and income. The index ranges from zero to one. The closer to one, the better qualified is the country. Norway, the first in the ranking of the study disclosed this Thursday (24th), which concerns last year, had a 0.944 HDI. Qatar has 0.851, Saudi Arabia 0.836, Emirates 0.827, Bahrain 0.815 and Kuwait 0.814.
The United Nations classify the countries in four levels of HDI: very high, high, medium and low. Brazil is part of the group of nations with high level, at 0.744. It is placed 79th in the general ranking. Among the Arabs, high HDI nations include Libya, Oman, Lebanon, Jordan and Algeria. Out of those, only Algeria is behind Brazil, at the 93rd position, with 0.717.
Arabs classified with medium human development are Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Morocco. The list of countries with low HDI includes the Arabs Yemen, Comoro Islands, Mauritania, Sudan and Djibouti. Two of the Arab nations, Tunisia and Somalia, are not classified. The average score of very high HDI nations is 0.890, while high HDI average is 0.735. Medium indexes are 0.614 and low are 0.493.The Arab nation’s average HDI is 0.682.
In the Arab World, Comoro Islands moved down one position in the ranking in relation to 2012’s survey, Egypt dropped two positions, Kuwait has also dropped two positions, Libya moved down five, Mauritania moved down two and Syria moved down four positions. Morocco was the only country which moved up, two positions. The other nations remained in the same position in the ranking.
The report points out that most countries improved their human development in relation to the situation they were in 1990. In this group there are over 40 developing countries, which accommodate most of the world population. The Undp stresses, though, that the growth rate of the HDI slowed down in all groups: very high, high, medium and low.
According to the Undp, 2.2 million people are in poor or almost poor condition. Around 842 million people, or 12% of the population, are chronically hungry. And almost half of the workers in the world, over 1.5 billion people have informal or unstable employment. The report stressed that the gains, in health and nutrition areas, may be quickly reverted by natural disasters or economic recessions.
*Translated by Rodrigo Mendonça
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