Armenia ranks 83 in UNDP annual report

PanARMENIAN.Net - Iceland topped the United Nations 2007 Human Development Index report released Tuesday. The other top placers in the survey are Norway, which slipped to second place, Australia, Canada and Ireland. The U.S. went down to 12th rank from its 8th place in 2006.



UK ranks 16; Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia rank 43, 44 and 45 respectively.



Belarus and Russia (64 and 67) were included in the group of 70 states with the highest human development indices.



The other CIS member states were ranked as states with middle human development index: Kazakhstan (73), Ukraine (76), Armenia (83), Georgia (96), Azerbaijan (98), Turkmenistan (109), Moldova (111), Uzbekistan (113), Kyrgyzstan (116) and Tajikistan (122).



The UNDP ranked 175 UN member nations, including Hong Kong and Palestinian territories, but excluded 17 countries including Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia due to lack of data. It has been publishing the annual Human Development Index report since 1990.



The index measures life expectancy, literacy, education and standard of living. With its benchmarks, nations are classified as developed, developing or underdeveloped, the UN press center said.