Top UN human development rank for Bahrain
Manama, July 28, 2014
Bahrain has been ranked in the top 25 per cent of countries around the world in a United Nations (UN) report documenting health, education and income.
The country was placed 44th overall in the 2014 Human Development Report, which covers a total of 187 countries, said a report in the Gulf Daily News (GDN), our sister publication.
Called Sustaining Human Progress: Reducing Vulnerabilities and Building Resilience, the report groups countries into four main categories - very high, high, medium or low.
Bahrain was placed at the top of the "very high" scale, but came in fourth out of all GCC countries.
Qatar was the highest ranked GCC country at 31, followed by Saudi Arabia at 34 and the UAE at 40.
In fifth place was Kuwait at 46, while Oman came in at 56 and was the only GCC country not in the "very high" category.
Norway was the top ranked country in the world followed by Australia, Switzerland, Netherlands and the US.
The worst ranked country was Niger, with the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Chad and Sierra Leone completing the bottom five.
The report takes into account factors such as life expectancy, which is 76.6 years in Bahrain, and maternal mortality rate - which is 20 per 100,000 births here.
The report highlights Bahrain's efforts to empower women, with females accounting for 18.8 per cent of the National Assembly and 39.4 per cent of the workforce in 2012.
It highlights a literacy rate of 92.6 per cent among those aged over 15 between 2005 and 2012 and puts the suicide rate at 3.5 per cent among males and four per cent among females between 2003 and 2009.
Growth
The prison population from 2002 to 2013 was put at 275 per 100,000 people, while it says the population will grow to 1.6 million by 2030.
The report was released in Tokyo and says 1.2 billion people around the world live on $1.25 a day or less.
It reveals that almost 1.5 billion people in 91 developing countries are living in poverty and warns that almost 800 million people are at risk of falling back into poverty if setbacks occur.
Among other recommendations, the report calls for universal access to basic social services, especially health and education; stronger social protection including unemployment insurance and pensions; and a commitment to full employment. - TradeArabia News Service
