A new report from the United Nations argues that an unprecedented array of crises have set human progress back five years and fuelled a global wave of uncertainty.

The UN Development Program (UNDP) announced on Thursday that for the first time since it was created over 30 years ago, the Human Development Index — a measure of countries' life expectancies, education levels and standards of living — declined for two years straight, in 2020 and 2021.

"It means we die earlier, we are less well educated, our incomes are going down," UNDP chief Achim Steiner told AFP in an interview.

"Just under three parameters, you can get a sense of why so many people are beginning to feel desperate, frustrated, worried about the future," he said.

The Human Development Index has steadily risen for decades, but began sliding in 2020 and continued its fall in 2021, erasing the gains of the preceding five years, the paper says.

Titled Uncertain Times, Unsettled Lives, the report points to the COVID-19 pandemic as a major driver of the global reversion, but also says that a compounding number of crises — political, financial and climate-related — have not allowed time for populations to recover.

The setback is truly global, impacting more than 90 per cent of countries around the world, according to the study.

Switzerland, Norway and Iceland all retain their spots at the top of the list, while South Sudan, Chad and Niger sit at the bottom.

And while some countries had begun to recover from the pandemic, many others in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Caribbean had not yet turned the corner before a new crisis hit: the war in Ukraine.

'People have lost trust in one another'

While the fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine on food and energy security has not yet been calculated into this year's index, "without any doubt, the outlook for 2022 is grim," Mr Steiner said.