The United Nations (UN) has expressed disappointment that a peaceful Malawi continues to be part of 20 low human development countries in the world.<\/p>\n
UN Resident Coordinator Mia Seppo said Malawi has no business in a category comprising countries that at one time or another experienced war.<\/p>\n
Mia was speaking during the launch of 2016 Human Development Report whose index has ranked Malawi 170 out of 188 UN-recognised countries and territories.<\/p>\n
The Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary measure for assessing progress in three basic dimensions of human development such as a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living.<\/p>\n
The report puts Malawi\u2019s index value for 2015 at 0.476.<\/p>\n
According to the report, despite some progress in global human development over the last 25 years, millions of people are left behind in terms of human development.<\/p>\n
In Malawi, if nothing is done, 9.5 million people will be living in poverty by 2020 despite the HDI value increase of 46.4 percent between 1990 and 2015.<\/p>\n
In the period in question, Malawi\u2019s life expectancy at birth increased by 20.1 years, from around 42 years to 63 years, mean years of schooling increased by 1.9 years and expected years of schooling increased by 5.4 years.<\/p>\n
However, Malawi\u2019s gross national income per capita decreased by about 27.2 percent between 1990 and 2015.<\/p>\n
Mia said in a fast changing world, there is need for a step change not only in the pace but also the quality of development that is taking place.<\/p>\n
\u201cMalawi is making its way out of low development countries at a very slow pace,\u201d Seppo said.<\/p>\n
She said the rising income inequality in the country\u2014 where the consumption of the top 10 percent of the population is about four times higher than that of the poorest 40 percent population\u2014 influences inequalities in other dimensions of well-being.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we leave today, each one of us should have a mission to not only share and disseminate the messages on human development but also come up with practical means of ensuring that we, individually and collectively, work towards advancing human development,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Minister of Finance, Economic Planning and Development Goodall Gondwe said he was equally challenged by the talk of leaving behind some people in terms of human development.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have always said it is not true that Malawi has not done anything in past 50 years because the urban areas are not the same as they were in 1964. But at the same time, when the rural areas are considered, the life I lived in the 1940s is the same that people are living today, which is not good. Therefore, I agree that all people need to move together. We don\u2019t have to leave anybody behind,\u201d Gondwe said.<\/p>\n
He, however, said the country would only move not because of what government is supposed to do, but what each Malawian does in ensuring that no one is left behind.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government is not there to give you more to eat, but it is there to supplement what you are doing to move forward,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The report considers women, girls, the elderly, people in vulnerable locations, ethnic minorities and refugees as some groups that are left behind in terms of human development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United Nations (UN) has expressed disappointment that a peaceful Malawi continues to be part of 20 low human development countries in the world. UN Resident Coordinator Mia Seppo said Malawi has no business in a category comprising countries that at one time or another experienced war. Mia was speaking during the launch of 2016 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44429,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44425\/revisions\/44429"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}