UNDP re-launches website to mark 20th anniversary of Human Development Report

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) on Thursday re-launched its website with free web access to 40 years of data to mark the 20th anniversary of its Human Development Report.

It coincided with the launch of the 2010 report by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and UNDP Administrator Helen Clark.

The website offers the new 2010 Human Development Report in nine different language editions. It includes 20 years of past reports, as well as an expanded section on statistical resources.

Included in the report is the 2010 Human Development Index (HDI), a combination of national measures of health, education and income that tracks the achievements for 169 countries. The report provides insights into the world's most pressing challenges facing humanity.

The report highlighted Norway, Australia and New Zealand as countries leading the way with their national achievements in health, education and income.

The website also features a user-friendly "build your own index" option, which draws on extensive HDI databases. It also includes an interactive visualization tool for all countries in the HDI.

With the updated and new online tools and a greatly expanded database of international data, visitors can explore statistics, generate graphs and images, extract tables of data, and retrieve country profiles with the most current internationally vetted statistics on income, health, education and other development areas.

With the re-launched website, visitors have a free access to 40 years of data.

Supplementary indices that were not in previous editions -- the Inequality-adjusted HDI, the Gender Inequality Index and the Multidimensional Poverty Index, were also highlighted.

Since 1990, more than 140 countries have adopted the Human Development Report framework for their own policy and analytical purposes, which has produced more than 600 national Human Development Reports with UNDP support.

Source: Xinhua