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Rescuing human development from a lip‐service syndrome
Author(s) -
Hirai Tadashi,
Comim Flavio,
Jolly Richard
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
development policy review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.671
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1467-7679
pISSN - 0950-6764
DOI - 10.1111/dpr.12478
Subject(s) - acknowledgement , human development (humanity) , praise , international development , political science , context (archaeology) , engineering ethics , sociology , psychology , social psychology , computer science , engineering , paleontology , computer security , law , biology
Motivation Despite widespread acknowledgement of and praise for the Human Development Report by policy‐makers, practitioners and individual academics, the paradigm of human development has often lacked sustained academic and operational policy‐making attention. Purpose Investigating this undesirable disconnect and discussing the possible reasons behind it, this article reveals two fundamental challenges: to make more specific the rich concepts of human development and to relate them to the dominant concepts of development, and to motivate and guide the context‐specific choices at the national and regional level. Approach and Methods Addressing these challenges will require a more careful exploration of the theoretical and operational implications of the work of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, and of their adoption by the Human Development Report Office (HDRO) at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Conclusions To achieve the adoption of the human development paradigm, the article makes some proposals both to the UNDP and to academia for the future directions of the Human Development (HD) approach. Policy implications The proposals on HD seek to chart pathways out of the current economic stagnation and slowdown.