Within post-Soviet countries Belarus in in the top five on the Human Development Index

According to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP)'s Human Development Index annual report, Belarus is rated among countries with high level of human development.

As the UN Press Office informs, Belarus was rated by the UN 50th in the world on the Human Development Index. Among the countries at the post-Soviet area, Belarus occupies 4th place, losing to Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.

This year “the rise of the South is radically reshaping the world of the 21st century, with developing nations driving economic growth, lifting hundreds of millions of people from poverty, and propelling billions more into a new global middle class”, says the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) 2013 Human Development Report. The achievements made by the developing countries “are largely attributable to sustained investment in education, health care and social programmes, and open engagement with an increasingly interconnected world”, say the authors of the report. All in all, the human development gains in recent decades are greater than would have been predicted.

Quite predictably, Norway, Australia, the United States, the Netherlands and Germany top the list of countries with a very high human development index. The US is also reported to remain the largest economy in the world and, moreover, unlikely to be replaced by any other country in the near future.

At the bottom of the list such countries as Burkina Faso, Chad, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Niger can be found.

Let us recall that the UNDP reports, which are drawn up by a group of independent experts and based on various analytical data and international statistics, are published annually since 1990. The report contains data on living standards, social protection, health, education, cultural development, crime rate, environmental protection and participation of people in decision-making processes.

You can download the full text of the report here.