‘ Ethiopia : Worst country to live in,' - UNDP Human Development Index

By Groum Abate

The gap between the richest and poorest countries in the world is growing, as human development in Sub-Saharan Africa stagnates and progress in other regions accelerates, according to the U.N. Development Program's Human Development Index.

The index ranked Norway as the best country to live in for a sixth consecutive year. Ethiopia is placed 170 th out of 177 countries, literally the worst place to live in.

Oil-rich Norway , with its generous welfare state, topped the UNDP human development index whose criteria are based on issues such as life expectancy, education and income. Iceland is number two followed by Australia , Ireland , Sweden , Canada , Japan and the United States .

According to the study, Norwegians earn 40 times more than the study's lowest-ranked country Niger , live almost twice as long, and have nearly five times the literacy rate.

The report also revealed that life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa is actually lower today than it was three decades ago.

Out of the 31 countries at the bottom of the list, 28 are in sub-Saharan Africa . A person can hope to live an average of only 46 years that is 32 years less than the average life expectancy in countries of advanced human development.

Norway is already one of the world's most generous foreign aid donors per capita, giving nearly 1% of its gross national product.

Norway , a nation of 4.6 million people, is the world's third-largest oil exporter, after Saudi Arabia .

The five countries with the lowest scores than Ethiopia are Guinea-Bissau ranked 173 rd , Burkina Faso 174 th , Mali 175 th , Sierra Leone 176 th , and Niger 177 th .

The report was unable to rank 17 countries including Iraq , Afghanistan and Somalia because there was insufficient data.

UNDP's human development index pointed out that lack of access to clean water and basic sanitation kills nearly 2 million young children each year. This amounts to nearly 5,000 deaths per day, most of them preventable, making diarrhea the second biggest child killer.

The humble flush toilet, taken for granted in most rich countries, could be a cheap but powerful tool to reduce childhood deaths and boost global development, noted the report.

The report "Beyond scarcity: Power, politics and the global water crisis," painted a grim picture of global imbalances and the low political priority accorded to safe drinking water and sanitation.

"Dripping taps in rich countries lose more water than is available each day to more than 1 billion people," it said.

The report called for a global campaign, similar to the Global Fund against AIDS, TB and malaria to try to coordinate all the fragmented efforts of different agencies working with water.

It also criticized developing countries for spending too little on water and sanitation. It sates that most sub-Saharan African countries normally spend 0.2 to 0.4 percent of their budget on water and sanitation. In Ethiopia the military budget is 10 times the water and sanitation budget and in Pakistan 47 times.

Two out of three people in South Asia lack basic sanitation, numbers that put the region on a par with sub-Saharan Africa .

And more than one billion people live without clean water. Some 2.6 billion - half of the developing world's population - lack access to sanitation. The two issues are inextricably linked, for without proper sanitation pollution of drinking water is almost inevitable.

To set aside the financial resources to fulfill the Millennium Development Goal to halve the number of people without sustainable access to safe water would cost about 10 billion dollars annually over the next decade.

The UN report has examples of strategies that have worked, and those that have not. It cites success stories in Thailand , Sri Lanka and Vietnam and comparative good news in South Africa , where water was once a symbol of apartheid division, where a system of entitlement has been introduced. It should be extended across the world, the report points out, with all governments legislating for water as a human right, with a basic minimum of 20 litres per person per day - less than half of what a British flush daily down the lavatory. To do that aid spending need to be raised by about 4 billion dollars a year. That is less than Europe spends on bottled mineral water.