Jolly, Richard. "Human Development", In The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations, edited by Sam Daws and Thomas G. Weiss. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Jolly, Richard. "Human Development", In The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations, edited by Sam Daws and Thomas G. Weiss. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

• The author claims that the UN has always contained many agencies with a human-centric focus: "The ILO, for example, was founded to be concerned with the conditions of employment and the mandates of FAO deal with food supply and the ending of hunger, WHO with health and human well‐being, and UNESCO with education, science and culture. The funds and agencies of the UN have also long had a human focus—UNICEF on children, WFP on supplying food for people in emergencies, UNFPA and UNIFEM on women. The UN Human Settlements Programme (Habitat) focuses on people in urban communities and many of the smaller UN agencies or divisions are concerned with migrants, older persons, and other special groups. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) has a broader mandate, but its coordinating role for all UN field operations has inevitably put human concerns at the center" (634).
• Human development is a concept which bring together all of the central aims of the UN, as it combines economic, social, and political goals to secure an environment of prosperity, stability, and peace for all people (635).
• "Human development is a process of enlarging people's choices. The most critical ones are to lead a long and healthy life, to be educated and to enjoy a decent standard of living. Additional choices include political freedom, guaranteed human rights and self‐respect—what Adam Smith called the ability to mix with others without being ‘ashamed to appear in publick." (636).
• The position of the UN to actual enforce its ideas about politics and economics has been limited, largely due to the predominant role of the IMF and World Bank in shaping international economic policy. As a result many UN ideas, like human development, have not been incorporated into practice (635).
• This was particularly true from the 1970s onward, when the Washington Consensus of neoliberalism was the dominant ideology of the IMF and World Bank. During this period until the late 1990s, the UN's concerns about human development were largely sidelined (646).
• Human development is measured via HDI, which incorporates average life expectancy at birth, literacy rates, average level of education, and income per capita (637).
• Three other indices are also used: the gender-related development index [GDI], which compares the HDI scores for the two sexes and adjusts the composite score accordingly; the gender empowerment measure [GEM], which adds in variables for female participation in politics and business, and wage gaps; and the human poverty index [HPI], which measures the portion of the population which fails to meet minimum HDI criteria (637-638).
• Human rights and human development are mutually reinforcing concepts, with many human development goal legally enshrined by human rights legislation, and human development allowing for some varieties of human rights to be quantitatively measured (640).
• Human development has been a major concept in expanding the perceptions of security in the post-Cold War era to include human security and the many non-military threats to be dealt with. This has come alongside an increased focus on police forces, as well as dissolution of conflict scenarios and quashing lingering post-conflict violence (641).
• The Millennium Development Goals can be considered a representation of the post pressing issues of human development in the world. They combined recognized human development objectives with quantitative goals in each category (643).
• Like the aid of the IMF or World Bank, most UN aid is given in the form of grants without any requirements of conditionality. This make UN assistance more attractive in some countries. The system is weak, however, in terms of long-term planning as the budget is only determined one or two years out (647).