This year's report is titled: International cooperation at a crossroads: Aid, trade and security in an unequal world.

The Index indicates that Armenia has maintained its position and improved somewhat, among the list of countries with Medium Human Development. Armenia's position is number 83.

Minister Oskanian addressed these and other issues in his statement (below).

Minister Vartan Oskanian's Remarks at the Launch of the UN Human Development Report 2005

Armenia looks forward to each year's Development Report because it's like a report card. It tells us how we're doing in three broad areas that reflect quality of life: life expectancy, income and education.

Fortunately, each year, we have received a good report card, we have recorded forward movement, we have recorded improvement. Compared with some neighbors who don't cease to remind us of their resources, compared to other neighbors whose size dwarfs us, compared to countries of similar size and location, we are doing better than expected.

In fact, without competing with our neighbors, we are winning in the areas that count most for a society. We are ahead in most of the Millennium Development Goals.

With our Poverty Reduction Strategy, with our national plan to tackle the MDGs, with significant assistance from international organizations and agencies, we have marked tremendous gains.

We should not underestimate these gains. But if we're going to be fair and forward-looking, then neither should we exaggerate them. We must look at the promise of this index and see in it that there are gaps we must close.

Let's be honest. We are not living the life we want to live. We must close the gap between rich and poor, between the cities and the villages.

We don't need to compete with our neighbors. But we must compete with ourselves, striving to reach our own goals.

As the Development Index demonstrates, it's not possible to improve and increase human development without economic growth. Fortunately, we have been marking accelerated economic growth. The challenge is to turn economic success into human development advances.

We can do this if we target poverty reduction, boost democratic processes and institutions, and harness the potential of the international assistance community and the Diaspora. All three are doable. All three are necessary in order to make a life of dignity possible for each Armenian.

First, We must target ways to accelerate poverty reduction. A society is judged by how it deals with those most vulnerable. In Armenia, our most vulnerable are those who cannot take drinking water for granted, cannot take basic medicine and health care for granted. We cannot assume that everyone's parents and grandparents will have enough heat to make it through the winter. In the villages, neither roads nor schools can be taken for granted. In Armenia, poverty is concentrated in the rural areas. We must ensure that our high economic growth trickles down to the individual families outside Yerevan's center and in the regions. So, economic development for us means integrated rural development, it means identifying and encouraging the conditions which favor development and enable unleashing production capacity.

Second, we must turn democracy into a tool for development. Democratic institutions and processes are not just goals. They are also means to creating the necessary political and economic environment which lead to distributed growth and dignified development. The cruelties inherent in the process of massive economic readjustment which we have been undergoing have led to a continuation of the sense of powerlessness on the part of ordinary Armenians. Stable, consistent, transparent, strong democratic institutions empower each citizen. Institutions which are egalitarian and predictable will constrain the actions of the elite and prevent uneven playing fields.

Finally, we've been fortunate in the amount and type of aid that Armenia has received since independence. Individual donor countries and major international organizations, UNDP among them, have fueled Armenia's economy and advanced human development. But, this year's Human Development Report is subtitled: International cooperation at a crossroads. That is a signal to us that it can't be business as usual any longer. Coordinated giving, targeted cooperation, wise mobilization of Diaspora and Armenia resources is what it will take to push Armenia forward.

Forward. To the top of the human development index. We will not continue to be satisfied at being ahead of our neighbors, in the middle of all of the countries of the world. That is satisfactory today, because we have demonstrated that against all odds, despite geography, in spite of history, we know how to survive.

But tomorrow... Tomorrow, we want to be a 21st century country, not just with schools and health centers and roads and jobs in every village and every town, but with telephones, television and internet throughout the country.

In other words, we have a right to want a life of dignity that the Constitution promises our children and our parents. And we have the responsibility to build the country and the institutions which make such a life possible.