Human development is a paradigm that focuses on people’s ability to live long, healthy, productive lives, in which individuals are understood to be both the means and ends of development. Human development also emphasizes the importance of expanding people’s capabilities, choices, agency, and freedoms. It goes beyond narratives that reduce development to increases in per-capita incomes and focuses on increases in individuals’ capacities to benefit from health, education, and other policy measures.

This Human Development Report posits that strengthening the region’s collective capabilities through expanded regional cooperation and (where appropriate) integration could help the HoA countries to better address the common challenges they face, thereby unlocking their development potential and building resilience. It highlights three key pillars on which regional collaboration could focus: enhanced intra-regional trade; increasing sustainability and resilience in the water-energy-food nexus; and fostering effective governance and peace. Each of these pillars is discussed further below.