ADDIS ABABA, March 15 (Xinhua) -- The rise of the South is radically reshaping the world of the 21st century, with developing nations driving economic growth, lifting hundreds of millions people from poverty and propelling billions more into a new global middle class, according to a UN report released here on Friday.
"The rise of the South is unprecedented in its speed and scale, " says the 2013 Human Development Report of the UN Development Program (UNDP).
The Report shows that more than 40 developing countries have made greater human development gains in recent decades than would have been predicted.
The achievements are largely attributed to sustained investment in education, health, care and social programs, and open engagement with an increasingly interconnected world, says the Report.
Samuel Bwalia, senior economist at the UNDP, on Friday made the report in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia.
According to the report, the historic progress is creating opportunities for the South and the North to collaborate in new ways to advance human development and confront shared challenges such as climate change.
Countries across the South are extending trade, technology and policy ties throughout the North, while the North is looking South for new partnership that can promote global growth and development, the report said.
At the media launch of the report, Eugen Owusu, UNDP resident representative, noted that there is growing global rebalancing due to the rising of the South.
"We witness this in the set of countries that have been labeled the BRICS -- Brail, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, which have captured our attention in recent past. But the trend goes beyond these countries," said Owusu.
He said the combined output of China, India, and Brazil is on course to surpass the aggregate production of United States, Britain, Germany, Italy, France and Canada.
The resident representative said the rebalancing is not only in economic terms, adding that the rise of the South is dramatically "reshaping the world we live in."
"As development actors, who look at through the human lens, we in UNDP have found this trend worth following, not least because as these countries in the South increasingly drive the world's economic growth, millions of people are being lifted out of poverty," he said.
The report entitled "The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World" said the South as a whole is driving global economic growth and societal change for the first time in centuries.
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