“ In short, the concept of human development could be said to be based on a much truer and more comprehensive understanding of reality, since if we attempt to evaluate objectively the level of development of a given country, we must in addition to its economic growth indicators also examine the extent to which its inhabitants genuinely exercise their economic, social and cultural rights, participate in the political life of their country and make use of their freedom. ”

“ There is an obvious link between poverty, on the one hand, and isolation and exclusion, on the other. Integration and social cohesion are best achieved in societies that are stable, secure and just, i.e. societies based on the promotion and protection of all human rights. For this reason, the poor sectors of the population should be duly informed of their rights and provided with the means of enforcing them, and communication to and with those sectors must be improved. ”

“ This re-examination is based on a demonstrable fact: economic growth does not necessarily produce well being for the whole population. One all too often hears it said that an improvement in an economic indicator does not, in practice, bring equal benefits to all sectors of the population. Growth should thus be considered not so much in quantitative as in qualitative terms. In human development, account should be taken not only of economic expansion, but also of how fairly its results are distributed. ”

“ Unlike the effects of economic crises, which generally hit the most disadvantaged layers of the population first and hardest, progress, and especially wealth, tends to concentrate in the most well to do sectors and not to filter downwards as easily. This explains why the Fourth United Nations Development Decade proposes a "broadly based" model of development as an international strategy, one in which economic progress is distributed as widely as possible among all sectors of society. ”

“ The World Summit for Social Development, attended by nearly 100 Heads of State and Government, as many representatives again of various international organizations and over a thousand non governmental organizations, was a landmark in the history of international relations. The Declaration and Programme of Action adopted at the Summit invest social problems with importance similar to that traditionally attached to political, economic and security matters by the planet’s leaders. ”

“ Thus for many years politicians, economists and development planners have used average per capita income as an indicator of a country’s progress or decline. As a result, many national development activities focused exclusively on economic growth, often ignoring the human side of development and the potential of social investment for accelerating it. ”

“ Poverty, especially extreme poverty, is a multidimensional, multifaceted phenomenon that cannot be fought with economic measures only, but requires action in many different areas and the introduction of intersectoral policies. ”

“ Development must also be "sustainable": present needs must be met through the rational and appropriate use of existing resources without compromising supplies or the future for later generations. This is why so much emphasis is currently placed on ecological balance, protection of the environment, etc., as a sine qua non if the benefits of progress are to last and development is to be sustainable. ”

“ The 10 commitments of the Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development [12] reflect a consensus on the importance of the social dimension of development. They also define poverty, unemployment and social exclusion as the three biggest social problems affecting mankind at the end of the century. In this connection, it should be noted that every world summit held in the last decade [13] has made poverty and its eradication a central concern. ”

“ It is essential to create an economic, political, social, cultural and legal environment conducive to social development. Development must be durable, economic growth must be broadly based and the trade system must be equitable. When structural adjustment programmes are agreed to, they should include social development goals concerned in particular with eradicating poverty, promoting full and productive employment and enhancing social integration. ”

“ As part of its international supervisory role, IMF has drawn attention to a series of questions involving problems of unemployment and the labour market in the industrialized countries, the economic advantages of reducing unproductive expenditures, institution building and human resource investments in the developing countries and the social protection safety nets in the economies in transition. ”

“ UNDP’s contribution in this area has been considerable, first, because of its decisive role in both elaborating and implementing the concept of sustainable human development. As stated above, this has transformed the old approach to international cooperation. The diversification and expansion of cooperation to include social and other areas or sectors of human priority have made for more cooperation projects geared towards the disadvantaged sectors of the population. Second, UNDP has made the eradication of poverty its highest priority. ”

“ There has been a marked increase in recent years in the resources made available under international cooperation for health, education, justice, human rights in general, protection of children, women, disabled persons and other vulnerable groups, ecological conservation, protecting the cultural heritage of indigenous populations, and so forth. ”

“ In the social sphere, analysis and technical or general policy advice are, to a large extent, matters for international organizations other than IMF, such as the World Bank, the regional development banks, FAO, ILO, UNDP and UNICEF, as well as bilateral donors and non governmental organizations. ”

“ Among the many objections to such programmes are that they impede the exercise of the right to development, that the adjustment burden is distributed unequally, usually falling on the low income sectors and accentuating disparities, and that the measures designed to relieve their negative effects are inadequate or hastily contrived. ”

“ The bitter criticism aroused by this imposition of outside conditions on national economic policies grew when people realized the social costs that structural adjustment programmes entailed in most developing countries where they were introduced. ”

“ On the one hand, it shows where human rights as a whole belong among the irreducible components of sustainable development, and on the other, it supersedes the traditional approach to international technical and economic cooperation, including social considerations and other human priority areas among its main goals and objectives. ”

“ Once it was realized that this type of investment in human capital is essential for growth, the volume of Bank loans in those areas rose from 5 per cent of the total in the early 1980s to over 17 per cent in financial year 1994. ”

“ In recent years, however, this extremist economic viewpoint that somewhat simplistically identifies "economic growth" with "development", has begun to be re-examined, and an extremely interesting debate is under way in different international circles. ”

“ In addition, realizing that structural adjustments usually have short term negative effects on the poorest and most vulnerable sectors of the population, IMF has advocated the adoption of certain palliative or corrective measures. ”