Still the least developed place on Earth?

On December 18, the United Nations released their annual statistical update for the Human Development Index, and Sierra Leone is once again the world's cellar dweller, 179th of 179.

Technically, this is actually down two spots from 2007, since three countries (Montenegro, Serbia, Liberia) were added to the survey and only one (Zimbabwe) was removed.

And granted, this indictment doesn't actually mean that Sierra Leone is the single worst place to live in the world today. The HDI relies on being able to access data for their statistical indicators, meaning that the most heinously unlivable places in the world are necessarily excluded from the running. Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia are all notably absent from the HDI tables, for example.

But SL is still pretty close to the bottom. To get an idea of just how dire the realities of Sierra Leone are, one need only compare it to some of the world's most disastrous states.

Zimbabwe, for example, is a country that currently dominates headlines, as unmovable 84-year-old dictator Robert Mugabe stubbornly oversees the economic implosion of his country and refuses to accept any responsibility for the current cholera outbreak, a humanitarian disaster boasting a death toll in excess of 1700.

On October 9, the UN World Food Programme estimated that 83% of Zimbabweans were living on less than US$2 a day, a figure that has undoubtedly worsened as one of the largest crisis periods in that country's history has only intensified in the last three months. The situation is nothing short of tragic.

Yet, according to a Dec. 11 article in The Economist entitled "Life on 70 cents a day", they're still living on more than double the daily means of over 70% of Sierra Leoneans. And this is a country that is seven years removed from the horrific civil war that still largely defines them in the Western public consciousness. One cannot help but wonder when stability and prosperity will come.

And yet, for reasons that are simultaneously valid and ludicrous, SL has often been touted as an African success story in recent months.

The country's recent history is staggering. Consider this. January 2002 marked the end of Sierra Leone's civil war, one of the most brutal conflicts in modern history. It was a war where child soldiers sniffed "brown brown" (a mixture of cocaine and gun powder) and destroyed entire villages with sadistic impunity, where rebel soldiers systematically crippled their own countrymen and women, severing their hands and arms in the service of a perverse symbolism intended to deprive them of their means of voting. The horror was unfathomable.

And yet, just five and a half years later, as skeptics the world over turned to Sierra Leone with every expectation of failure, of violence, of unrest to inspire headlines about yet another hopeless, cyclical African conflict, the people of this nation ushered in a new era, not only participating in an election deemed free and fair by international observers, but bringing about a rare transfer of power.

It's one thing for an election to proceed peacefully when the political status quo is maintained; it is another thing entirely when a political regime is toppled and quietly accepts the democratic decision of its people.

So, yes, there are certainly valid reasons to label Sierra Leone an African success story. But ascribing that moniker also says something profoundly unsettling about the world's expectations of the African continent.

How can we label a success the country with the worst human development rating in the entire world? It speaks to a cultural relativism that surely must not be acceptable to Western morals, an implication that we can accept the more 'natural' deaths brought on by innocuous diseases coupled with inadequate health care, so long as Africans aren't killing and maiming one another in a revolting manner.

I've meditated over the value of the HDI for the last month, ultimately gravitating towards the conclusion that its importance is perhaps overestimated, or at least initially was by me. For old time's sake, I wrote an editorial about it for The Cord, which can be viewed here.

I'd be interested in hearing feedback from anyone with opinions on the matter, recognizing that my grasp of complex international issues still lacks a good deal of nuance.

Still, there is certainly validity to the claim that SL is a nation in desperate need of development. And as my colleague Craig pointed out, there is a sort of strange comfort in knowing that, save for war zones, this is about as bad as it gets. We've been able to spend a few months amidst these dire realities without being overcome by depression or giving up on humanity altogether. That has to be worth something, right?