Comprehensive Human Development: Realities and Aspirations

The main objectives of this paper are twofold. First, to describe the existing paradigm of comprehensive human development, trace its origin, conceptual underpinning and its policy implications in comparison with its seemingly competing development models. Second, to devise guidelines for national policymakers and their development partners deployed in the implementation of development strategies which gives utmost priority to human development in IDB member countries. The distinctive feature of this paper’s approach is not only to address human development as a means and end of development, but also to draw some lessons from countries’ experiences and to depict some success stories from their respective human development strategies. This will help us in understanding the prioritisation of access facilitation to quality education along with its soft aspects, relevance and efficiency improvement. A similar analysis is also applied to the health sector. Further, the role of IDB Group in helping its member countries meet their critical needs in health sector through Awq f and Zak h is highlighted. The organisation of the paper is as follows; Section 1 commences with an overview of history, evolution, definition, measurement and policy implications of human development paradigm. Section 2 addresses the status of human capital in IDB member countries in light of the IDB 1440H Vision and the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals in education (EMDGs). In addition, it also analyses the challenges of stalled progress in achieving EMDGs into opportunities from an Islamic perspective. Section 3 discusses a manifestation of the opportunities highlighted in section two into sets of feasible unique policies to aspire achievement of comprehensive development at country level. Section 4 sheds light upon the role of development partners in attaining human development goals. Finally, section 5 is conclusion.