Development Curbed by AIDS, U.N. Says

UNITED NATIONS —  Because of the scourge of AIDS, babies born today in seven African countries cannot expect to live past 40, indicating a dramatic reversal in the continent’s development, according to a U.N. report released Thursday.

For children in Zambia, where more than 16% of the population is infected with HIV, life expectancy is 32 years, compared with 50 three decades ago.

“In all these countries, AIDS is reversing the hard-won development gains of recent decades,” said Elizabeth Lwanga, deputy director of the U.N. Development Program’s Africa bureau. The seven countries are the Central African Republic, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

The U.N. Human Development Report, which ranks the world’s richest and poorest countries, also shows that African nations hold all but three of the last 30 spots among the 177 countries listed in the index. The development ratings of 20 nations -- 13 of them in Africa -- have declined since 1990 because of AIDS, armed conflict and other factors.

Sierra Leone, devastated by a prolonged civil war, has been last on the list for seven consecutive years.

Norway tops the index for the fourth year in a row, with a life expectancy of 79 years, a school enrollment rate of 98% and a per capita gross domestic product of $36,600.

The Human Development Index assesses life expectancy, infant mortality and education levels as well as income to draw a fuller picture of development levels. The United States ranks eighth, having dropped one place from last year.

As developed countries progressed, their contributions to other countries decreased, the report says, widening the gap between the successful and the struggling.

“The picture that emerges is increasingly one of two very different groups of countries: those that have benefited from development and those that have been left behind,” it says.

Disease, war and poverty are not the only obstacles to development, according to the report. Developing countries are at a disadvantage in Western markets, the report says, and it urges rich countries to provide greater access.

For the first time, the report identifies diversity and official respect for cultural differences as essential criteria for development. It seeks to debunk “myths” that diversity slows economic growth -- arguing that pluralistic societies grow faster, not slower, and that conflict between groups, religious or ethnic, tends to result from political suppression, not because of differences.

“Diversity shouldn’t be on the back burner,” said Stefano Pettinato, one of the report’s authors. “If it is seen as a secondary luxury problem to be dealt with only after reaching a certain development stage, it’s a lost opportunity. Embracing diversity rather than eliminating it actually does provide an opportunity for additional development, increased stability and exchange of ideas.”

The report estimates that one in seven people in the world is a member of a disadvantaged minority, and it appeals for limited “equal opportunity” programs to even the odds.