United Nations Development Programme in the context of Bruce Perens

Climate change and poverty are deeply intertwined because climate change disproportionally affects poor people in low-income communities and developing countries around the world. The impoverished have a higher chance of experiencing the ill-effects of climate change due to the increased exposure and vulnerability. Vulnerability represents the degree to which a system is susceptible to, or unable to cope with, adverse effects of climate change including climate variability and extremes.

Climate change highly exacerbates existing inequalities through its effects on health, the economy, and human rights. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth National Climate Assessment Report found that low-income individuals and communities are more exposed to environmental hazards and pollution and have a harder time recovering from the impacts of climate change. For example, it takes longer for low-income communities to be rebuilt after natural disasters. According to the United Nations Development Programme, developing countries suffer 99% of the casualties attributable to climate change.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lie south of the Sahara. These include Central Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the African countries and territories that are situated fully in that specified region, the term may also include polities that only have part of their territory located in that region, per the definition of the United Nations (UN). This is considered a non-standardised geographical region with the number of countries included varying from 46 to 48 depending on the organisation describing the region (e.g. UN, WHO, World Bank, etc.). The African Union (AU) uses a different regional breakdown, recognising all 55 member states on the continent—grouping them into five distinct and standard regions.

The term serves as a grouping counterpart to North Africa, which is instead grouped with the definition of MENA (i.e. Middle East and North Africa) as it is part of the Arab world, and most North African states are likewise members of the Arab League. However, while they are also member states of the Arab League, the Comoros, Djibouti, Mauritania, and Somalia (and sometimes Sudan) are all geographically considered to be part of sub-Saharan Africa. Overall, the UN Development Programme applies the "sub-Saharan" classification to 46 of Africa's 55 countries, excluding Djibouti, SADR, Somalia, and Sudan. The concept has been criticised by scholars on both sides of the Sahara as a racialist construction.

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a statistical composite index of life expectancy, education (mean years of schooling completed and expected years of schooling upon entering the education system), and per capita income indicators, which is used to rank countries into four tiers of human development. A country scores a higher level of HDI when the lifespan is higher, the education level is higher, and the gross national income GNI (PPP) per capita is higher. It was developed by Pakistani economist Mahbub ul-Haq and was further used to measure a country's development by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)'s Human Development Report Office.

The 2010 Human Development Report introduced an inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI). While the simple HDI remains useful, it stated that "the IHDI is the actual level of human development (accounting for this inequality), while the HDI can be viewed as an index of 'potential' human development (or the maximum level of HDI) that could be achieved if there was no inequality."

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) compiles the Human Development Index (HDI) of 193 nations in the annual Human Development Report. The index considers the health, education, income and living conditions in a given country to provide a measure of human development which is comparable between countries and over time.

The HDI is the most widely used indicator of human development and has changed how people view the concept. However, several aspects of the index have received criticism. Some scholars have criticized how the factors are weighed, in particular how an additional year of life expectancy is valued differently between countries; and the limited factors it considers, noting the omission of factors such as the levels of distributional and gender inequality. In response to the former, the UNDP introduced the inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI) in its 2010 report, and in response to the latter the Gender Development Index (GDI) was introduced in the 1995 report. Others have criticized the perceived oversimplification of using a single number per country.

The Education Index is a component of the Human Development Index (HDI) published every year by the United Nations Development Programme. Alongside the economical indicators (GDP) and Life Expectancy Index, it helps measure the educational attainment. GNI (PPP) per capita and life expectancy are also used with the education index to get the HDI of each country.

Since 2010, the education index has been measured by combining average adult years of schooling with expected years of schooling for students under the age of 25, each receiving 50% weighting. Before 2010, the education index was measured by the adult literacy rate (with two-thirds weighting) and the combined primary, secondary, and tertiary gross enrollment ratio (with one-third weighting).

The Human Development Report (HDR) is an annual Human Development Index report published by the Human Development Report Office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The first HDR was launched in 1990 by the Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq and Indian Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. Since then reports have been released most years, and have explored different themes through the human development approach, which places people at the center of the development process.

This is a list of countries by inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI), as published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in its 2025 Human Development Report. According to the 2016 Report, "The IHDI can be interpreted as the level of human development when inequality is accounted for", whereas the Human Development Index itself, from which the IHDI is derived, is "an index of potential human development (or the maximum IHDI that could be achieved if there were no inequality)".

This is a list of the first-level administrative divisions of the People's Republic of China (PRC), including all provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities, and special administrative regions in order of their Human Development Index (HDI), along with the Republic of China (ROC, Taiwan). The subnational and national average figures for the PRC/ROC division are mainly derived from the Subnational Human Development Index (SHDI), published by the Global Data Lab at Radboud University. The index does not cover Macau, a special administrative region of the PRC. Only divisions of Mainland China are given ranking numbers in the list as the national HDI for China, which is calculated by the annual UNDP Human Development Report, is exclusively applied to the mainland.

International Human Solidarity Day (IHSD), observed on December 20, is an international annual unity day of the United Nations and its member states. Its main goal is to recognize the universal value of solidarity by making member states aware of global objectives and initiatives to reduce poverty and to formulate and share poverty reduction strategies of independent nations around the world. IHSD is promoted by the World Solidarity Fund and United Nations Development Programme, which are focused on achieving goals set for worldwide poverty eradication. An individual can participate or celebrate the day, either by contributing to education or by helping the poor or physically or mentally disabled. Governments are instead encouraged to respond to poverty and other social barriers through the Sustainable Development Goals.

The city of Chihuahua or Chihuahua City (Spanish: Ciudad de Chihuahua [sjuˈða(ð) ðe tʃiˈwawa]; Lipan: Ją’éłąyá) is the state capital of the Mexican state of Chihuahua. As of 2020, the city of Chihuahua had a population of 925,762 inhabitants. while the metropolitan area had a population of 988,065 inhabitants.

Among cities in Mexico, the city of Chihuahua is highly ranked in human and social development. According to a UNDP report on human development, Chihuahua municipality's HDI is 0.842 as of 2020 – among the highest in the country, only after municipalities in the Monterrey and Mexico City areas. IMCO ranks Chihuahua as one of the six cities with very high urban competitiveness The city was named capital of Mexico for a brief amount of time in 1864 by Benito Juarez during the second French intervention of Mexico.

Human security is a paradigm for understanding global vulnerabilities whose proponents challenge the traditional notion of national security through military security by arguing that the proper referent for security should be at the human rather than the national level, and that a people- centered view of security is necessary for national, regional and global stability. The concept emerged from a multi-disciplinary understanding of security which involves a number of research fields, including development studies, international relations, strategic studies, and human rights. The United Nations Development Programme's 1994 Human Development Report is considered a milestone publication in the field of human security, with its argument that ensuring "freedom from want" and "freedom from fear" for all persons is the best path to tackle the problem of global insecurity.

Critics of the concept argue that its vagueness undermines its effectiveness, that it has become little more than a vehicle for activists wishing to promote certain causes, and that it does not help the research community understand what security means or help decision-makers to formulate good policies. Alternatively, other scholars have argued that the concept of human security should be broadened to encompass military security: 'In other words, if this thing called 'human security' has the concept of 'the human' embedded at the heart of it, then let us address the question of the human condition directly. Thus understood, human security would no longer be the vague amorphous add-on to harder-edged areas of security such as military security or state security.'

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a statistical composite index of life expectancy, education (mean years of schooling completed and expected years of schooling upon entering the education system), and per capita income indicators, which is used to rank countries into four tiers of human development. A territory scores a higher level of HDI when the lifespan is higher, the education level is higher, and the gross national income GNI (PPP) per capita is higher.

As per United Nations Development Programme, India had a HDI of 0.434 in 1990, which steadily increased and reached 0.490 in 2000, and 0.572 in 2010. As per the latest report, the HDI climbed to 0.685 in 2023 from 0.676 in 2022, which placed India in the medium category and ranked it 130th out of 193 countries.

Capacity building (or capacity development, capacity strengthening) is the improvement in an individual's or organization's facility (or capability) "to produce, perform or deploy". The terms capacity building and capacity development have often been used interchangeably, although a publication by OECD-DAC stated in 2006 that capacity development was the preferable term. Since the 1950s, international organizations, governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and communities use the concept of capacity building as part of "social and economic development" in national and subnational plans. The United Nations Development Programme defines itself by "capacity development" in the sense of "'how UNDP works" to fulfill its mission. The UN system applies it in almost every sector, including several of the Sustainable Development Goals to be achieved by 2030. For example, the Sustainable Development Goal 17 advocates for enhanced international support for capacity building in developing countries to support national plans to implement the 2030 Agenda. 

Under the codification of international development law, capacity building is a "cross cutting modality of international intervention". It often overlaps or is part of interventions in public administration reform, good governance and education in line sectors of public services.