SECRETARY-GENERAL PAYS TRIBUTE TO CREATOR OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT
Press Release
SG/SM/6752
SECRETARY-GENERAL PAYS TRIBUTE TO CREATOR OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT
19981015 Following is the text of remarks made today at Headquarters by Secretary-General Kofi Annan at the celebration of the life and intellectual leadership of Mahbub ul Haq:Three months after Mahbub ul Haq's untimely death, it is still very difficult to come to terms with the fact that he is no longer with us. After his immediate family, we here are the ones that feel the loss most acutely -- we who were privileged to know and work with Mahbub in the United Nations system. We know how great, and how unique, his contribution was. We also know that it is a loss for the whole world.
His enduring monument is the annual Human Development Report, which he created in 1990 and edited until 1996. It has caught the world's imagination, and has served as a model for similar national reports in more than a hundred different countries. He showed us the power of ideas - and the United Nations at its best has always been built on bold ideas rooted in human concerns. In economics this has been recognized, albeit sometimes belatedly, by the award of the Nobel Prize to no fewer than nine economists who worked with or for the United Nations over the years.
I am sure it would give great pleasure to Mahbub, as it does to us all, that the latest to receive this honour should be Amartya Sen, whose moving tribute to his old friend we have just heard.
It is obvious enough what these two great South-Asian economists have in common: the profound conviction that what matters in development is not quantities produced but the quality of life lived by human beings.
In Mahbub's case that belief was deeply rooted in his Islamic faith. It informed all his work through the decades - at the World Bank; as adviser to so many international commissions; as Minister in his own country, Pakistan; and above all at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It is with him that we most strongly associate the idea that governments should not focus simply on economic growth, but on expanding the range of choices available to ordinary people.
We shall miss him as a friend, but he is still with us as an inspiration. We must never lose sight of his example.
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