St. Kitts-Nevis has emerged as the high­est ranked Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­try in the 2023-24 Hu­man De­vel­op­ment Re­port (HDR), re­leased by the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP) on Wedes­day.

The UNDP re­port, ti­tled “Break­ing the Grid­lock: Re-imag­in­ing co­op­er­a­tion in a po­lar­ized world”, pro­vides a sum­ma­ry mea­sure re­flect­ing a coun­try’s Gross Na­tion­al In­come (GNI) per capi­ta, ed­u­ca­tion, and life ex­pectan­cy.

The re­veals a trou­bling trend, which is, the re­bound in the glob­al Hu­man De­vel­op­ment In­dex (HDI) which is pro­ject­ed to reach record highs in 2023 af­ter steep de­clines dur­ing 2020 and 2021.

“But this progress is deeply un­even. Rich coun­tries are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing record-high lev­els of hu­man de­vel­op­ment while half of the world’s poor­est coun­tries re­main be­low their pre-cri­sis lev­el of progress.”

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port of the 193 coun­tries sur­veyed, the twin is­land Fed­er­a­tion placed 51st with a HDI in­dex of 0.838, in 2023, a change of 0.006 per cent from the 2021 fig­ure.

An­tigua and Bar­bu­da was the next high­est CARI­COM coun­try at 54 with a HDI in­dex of 0.826, a 0.007 per cent dif­fer­ence from its 2021 fig­ure, fol­lowed by The Ba­hamas at 57 with an HDI in­dex of 0.920, a dif­fer­ence fo 0.021 from the 2021 fig­ures.

Trinidad and To­ba­go was po­si­tioned at num­ber 60 with a HI­DI in­dex of 0.814 and a dif­fer­ence of 0.010, fol­lowed by Bar­ba­dos, which placed 62nd record­ing a HDI in­dex of 0.809 with a dif­fer­ence of 0.006 per cent, while Grena­da at 73, had a HDI in­dex of 0.793 and a dif­fer­ence of 0.005 per cent.

St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines reg­is­tered a HDI in­dex of 0.772 and a dif­fer­ence of 0.007 per­cent to be placed at 81st, while Guyana with a HDI of 0.742 and a dif­fer­ence of 0.021per cent came in at num­ber 95, fol­lowed by Do­mini­ca at 97 with a HDI in­dex of 0.740 and a dif­fer­ence of 0.003 per cent.

The UNDP fig­ures showed that St. Lu­cia at 108 an a HDI in­dex of 0.690 and a dif­fer­ence of 0.001 per cent,, was fol­lowed by Ja­maica at 115 with a HDI in­dex of 0.706 and a dif­fer­ence on its 2021 fig­ure of 0.002 per cent, while Be­lize came in at 118 with a HDI in­dex of 0.700 and a dif­fer­ence of 0.002 per cent.

The Dutch speak­ing CARI­COM coun­try of Suri­name was pegged at 124 with a HDI in­dex of 0.690 and a dif­fer­ence of 0.001 per cent, while the French-speak­ing CARI­COM coun­try of Haiti was in the cel­lar po­si­tion of re­gion­al coun­tries with a HDI in­dex of 0.0552 and a dif­fer­ence of 0.001 per cent to be placed at 158.

Re­gard­ing Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (LAC), the re­port notes that the re­gion ex­pe­ri­enced the largest drop in the HDI glob­al­ly dur­ing 2020-2021.

Re­gard­ing the com­po­nents of the HDI, life ex­pectan­cy in the re­gion, with a val­ue of 73.9 years, ex­ceeds the world av­er­age of 72 years. The re­gion is al­so ahead in the com­po­nent of ex­pect­ed years of school­ing and av­er­age years of school­ing, but be­hind in gross per capi­ta in­come.

The re­port said coun­tries in the re­gion must in­vest in so­cial pro­tec­tion and re­silience so that the im­pacts do not have such a strong im­pact on peo­ple.

“It is im­por­tant to pay at­ten­tion to how so­ci­eties are built that are re­silient to these shocks where hu­man de­vel­op­ment does not change its growth tra­jec­to­ry. Through bet­ter so­cial pro­tec­tion sys­tems, for ex­am­ple, coun­tries can re­cov­er more quick­ly.

“In Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, these types of shocks, such as the pan­dem­ic, cause the tra­jec­to­ry of hu­man de­vel­op­ment to not be the same again and groups of so­ci­ety are left be­hind and do not re­cov­er,” the re­port added.

.In its re­port the UNDP said that un­even de­vel­op­ment progress is leav­ing the poor­est be­hind, ex­ac­er­bat­ing in­equal­i­ty, and stok­ing po­lit­i­cal po­lar­iza­tion on a glob­al scale, warn­ing that the re­sult is a dan­ger­ous grid­lock that must be ur­gent­ly tack­led through col­lec­tive ac­tion.

Glob­al in­equal­i­ties are com­pound­ed by sub­stan­tial eco­nom­ic con­cen­tra­tion. As ref­er­enced in the re­port, al­most 40 per cent of glob­al trade in goods is con­cen­trat­ed in three or few­er coun­tries; and in 2021 the mar­ket cap­i­tal­iza­tion of each of the three largest tech com­pa­nies in the world sur­passed the Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP) of more than 90 per­cent of coun­tries that year.

“The widen­ing hu­man de­vel­op­ment gap re­vealed by the re­port shows that the two-decade trend of steadi­ly re­duc­ing in­equal­i­ties be­tween wealthy and poor na­tions is now in re­verse. De­spite our deeply in­ter­con­nect­ed glob­al so­ci­eties, we are falling short. We must lever­age our in­ter­de­pen­dence as well as our ca­pac­i­ties to ad­dress our shared and ex­is­ten­tial chal­lenges and en­sure peo­ple’s as­pi­ra­tions are met,” said Achim Stein­er, head of the UN De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme.

“This grid­lock car­ries a sig­nif­i­cant hu­man toll. The fail­ure of col­lec­tive ac­tion to ad­vance ac­tion on cli­mate change, dig­i­tal­iza­tion or pover­ty and in­equal­i­ty not on­ly hin­ders hu­man de­vel­op­ment but al­so wors­ens po­lar­iza­tion and fur­ther erodes trust in peo­ple and in­sti­tu­tions world­wide,” Stein­er added.

The re­port ar­gues that ad­vanc­ing in­ter­na­tion­al col­lec­tive ac­tion is hin­dered by an emerg­ing ‘democ­ra­cy para­dox’: while nine in 10 peo­ple world­wide en­dorse democ­ra­cy, over half of glob­al sur­vey re­spon­dents ex­press sup­port for lead­ers that may un­der­mine it by by­pass­ing fun­da­men­tal rules of the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process, as per da­ta analysed in the re­port.

Half of peo­ple sur­veyed world­wide re­port hav­ing no or lim­it­ed con­trol over their lives, and over two-thirds be­lieve they have lit­tle in­flu­ence on their gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sions.

NEW YORK, Mar 13, CMC