The association between human rights and human development in he GHDR 2000 is an eloquent illustration that the importance of the reports goes beyond the simple annual calculation of the indices that allows the UNDP to classify countries on a particular scale. If this was their only function, the GHDRs might eventually have lost their relevance, all the more so because the main indicators used as variables are not of such a nature as to under go sudden alterations from one year to the next.

The indices are important indicators in analysing development. But the major contribution of the GHDRs lies precisely in the themes developed in each edition, which always offer an innovative analysis of the overall problems and challenges of development.

It is important to stress that many of the themes dealt with over the last ten years of the GHDRs demanded a great deal of creativity, daring, and intellectual audacity. But the rigour of the analyses projected the concepts developed in the reports, transforming them into important instruments in the debate on global development and inter national economic relations, with the analysis always anchor ed in the welfare of human beings. This spirit also underlies the drafting of the national reports, such as this work.

Many of the themes dealt with in the GHDRs are beginning to leave the sphere of the UNDP where human development was originally articulated, and are being taken seriously in forums which, up to a short while ago, were tied to the dogma that "economic growth will bring everything". This is a reality that, if truth be told, was unthinkable a few years ago.