More people today have access to information. Water and toilet conditions have improved. And it is progressing within the field of education. These are just some of the advances that the Global Social Progress Index has seen in its analysis of 2021. They consider that overall, people’s lives have improved when it comes to social progress around the world since 2011. – in the future – and so it should be, says Helle Samuelsen, lecturer at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen. It’s moving forward There are many things that can create quality of life: It can be getting food on the table every day, having personal security, a roof over your head and access to a health system. Living in a society with access to education and technology. Or to have the freedom to say and believe what one wants and where everyone has equal access to the judicial system. The organization Social Progress Imperative, has since 2011 investigated the state of such social progress. After a decade, 147 of the 168 nations surveyed in 2021 could boast of having achieved a better score than ten years earlier. Only in four countries has the development gone the wrong way. – The greatest progress has been made in access to the internet and communication. Today, almost everyone in Africa, for example, has access to a mobile phone, says Helle Samuelsen, who believes it helps to create positive progress: – When people have access to the internet, they have greater access to information that can create an improvement in life. their. For example, a poor farmer in Africa can keep up with grain prices internationally so that he can better negotiate his own prices. At the same time, the world’s overall average score has improved. If you play with the idea that the whole world is a country – that is, that you take an average of all the countries’ scores in relation to the population, then the “world” would land in the place between countries number 101 and 102 in the ranking, with a score of 65 point. This is an increase of 4.63 points since 2011. Two steps forward, one step back Although social progress has generally improved in the world over the past decade, it is happening with slow and uneven steps, the report concludes. Especially in the field of personal rights, the world is not doing so well. Here it has even gone back. Since 2011, it has been weakened in 116 of the 168 countries surveyed. The reasons vary from country to country, but poorer access to justice systems and loss of political rights such as freedom of expression are repeated in several countries. According to Helle Samuelsen, the explanation can first and foremost be found in the political picture around the world. – There has been no increased democratization in very many countries, and in many countries the population has not been given greater freedom in recent years. The whole of Africa is characterized by autocracies to a very high degree, this also applies to other parts of the world. So it does not surprise me that it stagnates here. The high jumpers Unlike many other surveys, the Social Progress Index is not based on economics. Instead, they examine how people experience social progress. Here, Norway performed absolutely best in the ranking and got a first place with a score of 92.63 points out of 100. Denmark came in third place, just after Finland, with only 0.48 points less than Norway. Despite the Nordic countries’ top rankings, low- and lower-middle-income countries, including Gambia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Eswatini and Sierra Leone, have improved the most since 2011.
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Global rankings: Gambia, Sri Lanka and Sierra Leone have made great social strides
