Leveraging Change for Better Lives:
UNDP in Asia and the Pacific
Asia and the Pacific’s unparalleled economic performance overall in the past decade has resulted in dramatically decreased levels in poverty. Already, the region has reached the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving poverty by 2015. Eight countries of the region have moved from low-income to middle-income between 2000 and 2011. Looking back over the last five years, to when UNDP embarked on its Strategic Plan 2008-2012, it is clear that the region has continued to progress on human development (Figure 2A and B). In fact, in the last decade the annual growth in human development has been higher for Asia-Pacific than any other region worldwide, according to the Human Development Report 2013.
Similarly, as a sign of the region’s growing maturity and resilience on the economic front, Asia-Pacific weathered the impact of the financial and economic crises of 2007-2008 relatively well.