UN agency launches awards to recognize contribution to human development

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) today announced the launch of the 2002 UNDP Awards for Human Development, which recognizes the critical role people play in national and regional development processes.

Among the awards, which are to be conferred in December at a ceremony in New York, will be the Mahbub ul Haq Award for Outstanding Contribution to Human Development, named after the pioneer of that concept and the founder of the global Human Development Report. The prize will be presented to a world leader who has most successfully put human development at the heart of the political agenda.

"The National Human Development Reports are growing into an extraordinary country-level movement for global change," UNDP Administrator Mark Malloch Brown said. "From the bottom-up they are breaking down the global targets for poverty reduction and human development into national benchmarks and action plans that enjoy increasing political attention, debate and mobilization."

Others awards will be presented for excellence in quality of analysis, policy impact, a participatory and inclusive process, human development innovations and support of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

A panel of judges, including Princess Basma Bint Talal of the Jordan Hashemite Fund for Human Development, Kwesi Botchwey of the Center for International Development at Harvard University, Gita Sen of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore and Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University, will join Mr. Malloch Brown and Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Head of the Human Development Report Office, to select the winners of the 2002 Awards.