Human Development Indices and Indicators: 2018 Statistical update is being released to ensure consistency in reporting on key human development indices and statistics. It includes an analysis of the state of human development—snapshots of current conditions as well as long-term trends in human development indicators. With a comprehensive statistical annex, our data gives an overview of the state of development across the world, looking at long-term trends in human development indicators across multiple dimensions and for every nation, the 2018 Update highlights the considerable progress, but also the persistent deprivations and disparities. The overall trend globally is toward continued human development improvements, with many countries moving up through the human development categories: out of the 189 countries for which the HDI is calculated, 59 countries are today in the very high human development group and only 38 countries fall in the low HDI group. Just eight years ago in 2010, the figures were 46 and 49 countries respectively.

What is objectivity in SDG measurement? This commentary explores the complexity of objectivity in measurement when the problems are ‘global’ yet manifest themselves with local specificities. This special issue helps elicit gaps in knowledge, tools and contexts in SDG measurement. But in doing so through the lens of political economy, ‘sets the cat among the pigeons’. The key question they raise is the sanitization of measurement and its sanctification to the status of objectivity without realizing that the process is fraught with contexts that make self? interest and conflict of interest an endemic risk.

The GPI covers 99.7 per cent of the world’s population, using 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators from highly respected sources and measures the state of peace using three thematic domains: the level of Societal Safety and Security; the extent of Ongoing Domestic and International Conflict; and the degree of Militarisation. In addition to presenting the findings from the 2017 GPI, this year’s report includes analysis of the Positive Peace factors that are most important for transitioning to higher levels of peace and how deteriorations in Positive Peace are linked to the rise of populism in Europe. The report also assesses the trends in peacekeeping and militarisation, including a cost/benefit analysis highlighting the positive economic benefits from early peacebuilding interventions.

This is the twelfth edition of the Global Peace Index (GPI), which ranks 163 independent states and territories according to their level of peacefulness. Produced by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), the GPI is the world’s leading measure of global peacefulness. This report presents the most comprehensive data-driven analysis to-date on trends in peace, its economic value, and how to develop peaceful societies. The results of the 2018 GPI find that the global level of peace has deteriorated by 0.27 per cent in the last year, marking the fourth successive year of deteriorations. Ninety-two countries deteriorated, while 71 countries improved. The 2018 GPI reveals a world in which the tensions, conflicts, and crises that emerged in the past decade remain unresolved, especially in the Middle East, resulting in this gradual, sustained fall in peacefulness.

El Índice de Paz México (IPM) 2019 proporciona una medición integral de los niveles de paz en México. El IPM se basa en la metodología del Índice de Paz Global, la más reconocida medición de la paz en el mundo, que ha sido elaborado por el IEP cada año desde 2007. El principal hallazgo del informe de este año es que, ante la escalada de violencia, el gobierno ha invertido en el sistema judicial menos de lo que se requiere. Actualmente, el gasto del gobierno en las fuerzas policiales y el sistema judicial como porcentaje del PIB, es apenas la mitad del promedio de los demás países que integran la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económicos (OCDE). Aunado a ello, únicamente en 7% de los delitos se abrieron carpetas de investigación en 2017 y menos de 3% terminaron en una sentencia, lo que arrojó una tasa de impunidad de 97%.