The InterDependent

In the summer of 2002, the United Nations published a breakthrough report on human development in Arab nations, written by Arab intellectuals. It bears rereading in the light of the unexpected political revolution in Tunisia and the protests this week in Egypt.

The first Arab Human Development Report pointed boldly to a region in intellectual isolation, virtually devoid of research in science and technology, persistent in repressing women and abysmally low in bringing global thinking to the Middle East through translation. In 1,000 years, the report noted, the Arabs have translated roughly the same number of books Spain translates in one year.

Above all, said Fouad Adjami, director of Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University and a contributor to the report, there was no positive movement or development in politics. Rulers held power for life. “People just don’t know how to overthrow, how to reform, how to change them,” he said in an interview then.

This month, Tunisians poured into the streets by the thousands to discover that they had more power than most of them ever imagined. Almost unwittingly, they learned “how to overthrow,” and the shock waves from the sudden collapse of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's repressive regime have been felt across North Africa and the Middle East, powered by television and the Internet.

Following closely on the Tunisian uprising, Egyptians in the thousands in Cairo and elsewhere in the country called for the end of the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak, the president, one of the first such protests in years.

UN Photo

UN regional development reports on the Arab world, written by Arab experts, have consistently showed the area to be intellectually bare and politically frozen in time, suggesting that the recent uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt are a consequence of the region's lack of productive policies.

In the decade since the publication of the original Arab Human Development Report, there have been four sequels, the latest in 2009, built around the general theme of human security – a sense of safety and well-being among citizens. It asks the question, Why have obstacles to human development in the region proved so stubborn? The answers, the report suggests, “lie in the fragility of the region’s political, social, economic and environmental structures, in its lack of people-centered development policies and in its vulnerability to outside intervention.”

Written again by Arab thinkers, not UN officials, and bolstered by opinion polls, the 2009 report examined the tensions under which the region labors and the political conditions that have held it back in global terms, despite efforts by several rich Persian Gulf states to open doors to international cultural and educational institutions. Like all human development reports since 1994, when a wary General Assembly decided to make them unofficial documents, the Arab reports are labeled independent but are very much another testimony to the extraordinary work that the UN supports in analyzing world affairs.

UNDP

The latest report, from 2009, viewed the region against a background of severe environmental strain, with a population heavily dominated by youth, many of them jobless.

The 2009 Arab Human Development Report viewed the region against a background of severe environmental strain, with expanding deserts and severe water problems. The population profile was, and is, skewed to youth, many of them desperate for jobs and education. The rioting in Tunisia was sparked initially by the beating of a young man who was trying to make a living selling fruit on the street and set himself on fire in protest. “Young people are the fastest growing segment of Arab countries’ populations,” the report said. “Some 60 per cent of the population is under 25 years old, making this one of the most youthful regions in the world.”

The young need jobs and political space, but they are denied economic opportunities and roles in civic life, the 2009 report said. Constitutions have been restrictive or meaningless, and inequalities, most of all between men and women, are enforced by law or tradition or both.

“Across the Arab region, six countries continue to prohibit the formation of political parties,” it added. “In many other cases, varying degrees of repression and restrictions on the establishment and functioning of political parties, particularly opposition parties, effectively amount to their prohibition.” Religious minorities suffer intolerance that can readily descend into violence.

UNDP

This month, Tunisians discovered they had more power than they might have ever imagined, overthrowing their government and influencing similar antigovernment riots in Egypt.

What is loosely called civil society – a mix of individuals, varied unofficial groups and nongovernmental organizations -- holds the hope of progress in the region, the 2009 report reiterates. People-power movements everywhere need guiding hands and minds to keep revolutions on course to political evolution and away from more violent and undemocratic turns -- in the Arab case to Islamic militancy or another repressive leader taking advantage of a restive population. For other nations, not only in the Arab region, Tunisia – and now, possibly, Egypt, will be a test case.

Worth noting: The dynamic force behind the first Arab Human Development Report was Rima Khalaf Hunaidi of Jordan, the director at the time of the UNDP’s Arab bureau. Last September, she was appointed to head the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, based in Beirut [to read more about her, go to www.theinterdependent.com/100929/a-new-leader-at-the-un-regional-office-in-beiruit-offers-hope]. From that broad perspective, she can again play an active part in the continuing discussion of development across a wide region. The debate she opened with the 2002 report is more critical than ever to the shape of the Arab future.

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