According to a report unveiled on Wednesday, Pakistan holds the 161st position out of 191 nations on the UN Human Development Index, with a score of 0.544 points.
Comparing this to the previous year, there’s a marginal improvement as in 2023, Pakistan was ranked 164th, scoring 0.540 points. This slight progress follows a similar trend from its 2022 ranking. Notably, Pakistan’s HDI rank had remained stagnant at 161st globally from 2019 to 2021.
The index is constructed using indicators for health, education, and income, each ranging from 0 to 1.
Within the South Asian region, Sri Lanka leads at 73rd place with 0.782 points, trailed by Bangladesh at 129th with 0.661 points, and India at 132nd with 0.633 points. Nepal holds the 143rd position, while Afghanistan lags behind at 180th with 0.478 points, though it’s slightly above the bottom 10.
South Sudan anchors the list at 191st place with 0.385 points, while Switzerland claims the top spot with 0.962 points, closely followed by Norway at 0.961 points.
The report highlights a global return to pre-pandemic levels of development but underscores a widening disparity between affluent and impoverished nations.
This recovery comes after a two-year downturn; in 2021 and 2022, the global Human Development Index experienced consecutive declines for the first time in its nearly 35-year history, largely attributed to the Covid-19 crisis, which erased five years of progress.
