Thailand Slips Four Places on UNDP Index by Phairath Khampha 27 July 2002 After making good progress over the past decade, Thailand has dropped four places to 70th on a UN Development Programme index ranking 173 countries according to life expectancy, levels of education and per capita income. The Human Development Report ranked Thailand fourth in Southeast Asia behind Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia. The list was topped by Norway, with Sierra Leone maintaining its position at the bottom of the pile. It warned poor countries against sacrificing democracy for economic prosperity, urging them to place more emphasis on social, economic and political reforms. Meanwhile, rich nations must provide more trade opportunities, and increase aid and supplies of other resources, it said. The UNDP urged its member nations to "deepen democracy" through their institutions, legal systems, and "ethical and professional" independent media. It also called for reforms of international institutions, such as the UN Security Council, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation, to allow greater roles for developing nations. Although the WTO worked on a one-country, one-vote basis, most key decisions were made by an elite group of economic powers, it said. These organisations were being used by the elite powers to economically neo-colonise poorer countries and "pay" their leaders to cooperate with the more powerful countries' multinational corporate entities, but at the same time impoverish the ordinary people in the developing countries. Representatives of industrialised nations also accounted for almost half of the voting rights of the World Bank and the IMF. "Powerful states are always going to have a major role in global decision-making," said Mark Malloch Brown, UNDP administrator. "But there is plenty of room to give poorer countries a real say in helping confront the challenges of a more inter-dependent world."