Human Rights in the Least Developed Countries of Asia: An Index for Quantifying Sustainable Development Goal 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing)

This paper aims to measure disparities among the variables associated with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3 defined by the United Nations (UN) in the least developed countries (LDCs) of Asia. In the terms of the UN Conference on Trade and Development, LDCs are countries with profound economic and social inequalities. The indicator was constructed using a set of variables associated with SDG3: Good Health and Wellbeing. Applying Pena’s DP2 distance method to the most recent data available (2018) enables regional ordering of Asia’s LDCs based on the values of these variables. The index integrates socioeconomic variables that permit examination of the impact of each individual indicator to determine territorial disparities in terms of the partial indicators of SDG3. “Maternal education,” “Proportion of women who make their own informed decisions regarding sexual relations, contraceptive use, and reproductive health care,” and “Gender parity index in primary education” are the most important variables in explaining spatial disparities in good health and wellbeing in the LDCs of Asia. ; R&D&I Research Project REINAC- “Reintegration and support processes for women on temporary release”, Reference EDU2016-79322-R (2016–2020) ; Spanish National Plan for Research, R&D&I Research Projects, the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) ; State Research Agency (AEI) ; FEDER, Spain ; Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness of Spain ; State Research Agency (SRA) ; European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), grant number ECO2017-86822-R ; Regional Government of Andalusia and the European Regional Development Fund (projects P18-RT-576 and B-SEJ-018- UGR18); ; University of Granada (Plan Propio. Unidad Científica de Excelencia: Desigualdad, Derechos Humanos y Sostenibilidad (DEHUSO))