WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo, World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the G-20 Leaders’ Summit in Brisbane.

The 2014 Human Development Report by the UN Development Program reported that Saudi Arabia achieved a significant progress by ranking in the 34th globally, compared to its previous 57 rank in the UNDP report of 2013. Such a rank boosted its position and qualified the Kingdom to join high human development index countries.

The Kingdom also ranked second on the Arab and Gulf levels, and 10th within the G-20 countries, reflecting a positive development, which the nation must build on to improve its future ranking on the Human Development Index launched in 1990.

An analytical study prepared by the Supreme Economic Council on the realities of Saudi Arabia, included in the human development report 2014 which was entitled “Sustaining Human Progress, Reducing Vulnerabilities and Building Resilience,” confirmed that despite the improvement made during the march of the economic and social development in the Kingdom, the composite of evidence and the other evidences on the country’s ranking, in addition to the results of opinion polls made on the satisfaction degree concerning the human element, all such factors indicated that the Kingdom’s ranking could be improved and boosted.

The study said the human development report 2014 was inclusive in terms of the human development issue, which is not based on the financial achievements of countries alone, but includes also an integrated system for the right of individuals to live a long decent life, have education and good living standards.

The report followed the same methodology to measure the human development levels. The report of 2014, meanwhile, looks into the factors that jeopardize the human development to risks and how these risks are changeable, to help decision makers and the concerned bodies involved with development to adopt the polices and ward off risks and build stamina.

The report on the human development provides information and detailed data on the indicators of human development in 187 countries of the world, monitoring the human progress in these countries by using the human development guide, a composite of indicators that measures health, education and income, and each of the indicators is based on other sub-indicators.

The report calculated also the human development indicator adjusted by inequality-adjusted human development index (IHDI), gender inequality index, multidimensional poverty index and development according to gender (introduced this year 2014).

According to the report, 49 countries fall within the group of very high development index, led by Norway. 53 countries fall within the group of high development index, 42 countries fall within the group of medium development index and 43 countries within the low development index.

To define the strengths of the development march of the Kingdom and build on it, and to detect the weaknesses and the challenges and then turning them to opportunities that might help in achieving more progress for the state and citizens, the general secretariat of the Supreme Economic Council monitored and analyzed the realities of the Kingdom in terms of the human development evidences cited in the report in all categories of the indicators, then compared them with the global median and the median of each group of the very high human development index.

 
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