Summer 2002
Communications Development announces the publication of Human Development Report 2002: Deepening Democracy in a Fragmented World, a high-profile product of the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report Office.

Since 1990 Communications Development has worked closely with the Human Development Report Office to plan, design, edit, and produce this highly visible and influential report. The 2002 edition of the Human Development Report analyzes the role politics play in achieving human development.

The report emphasizes the importance of political freedoms as a goal of human development and explores how democratic institutions help promote equitable social progress and economic growth. The second stage of democratic reforms, following the democratic wave of the 1980s and 1990s, should be deepening democracy—giving ordinary people a greater say in both national and global policymaking. The report examines the emergence of new forms of participation through civil society at local, national, and global levels and the growing influence of global networks of nongovernmental organizations. In addition, a chapter focuses on the challenge of democratic control of the security sector and warns against compromising human rights and support for democracy in the fight against global terror.

As in previous years, the report ranks 173 countries according to their level of human development as measured by the Human Development Index. This report also provides a country by country assessment of trends toward meeting the Millennium Development Goals, two years since world leaders set measurable objectives for development and poverty eradication by 2015.

Human Development Report 2002 can be found online at http://www.undp.org/hdr2002/.