A Damascus bazaar

BEIRUT — It’s bad enough for ordinary Arabs to sense large gaps in their personal quality of life and widespread dysfunction in the public management of their societies. It is much more painful — though always useful — for such self-awareness to be documented in a credible report by knowledgeable and honest Arab analysts.

This is the case with the publishing this week by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) of a painful new report on the condition of the Arab world that, most importantly in my view, highlights the spectrum of interlinked deficiencies that retard meaningful and sustainable Arab development. The Arab Human Development Report 2009: Challenges to Human Security in the Arab Countries, is the fifth such UNDP text since 2004, and the best one so far, in my view.

Three key facts emerge from my reading of it: Vulnerability and insecurity for ordinary Arab citizens reflect a range of underlying factors that cut across political, economic, governance and basic services sectors; many human security indicators in the Arab world are static or even worsening; and, Arab societies have cleaved into two very different and distant worlds of affluence and order, and of poverty, need and disorder. Fortunately, the 264-page report includes a fine 16-page “report in brief” section and a striking 30-page overview of tables and graphs called “the report in numbers.” (Both are available on the UNDP website, www.arab-hdr.org)

The report asks why, seven years after the publication of the first Arab Human Development Report, the region’s fault lines have deepened and the obstacles to human development have proved so stubborn. It says the answers 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.”

It identifies the following seven dimensions of threat to human security in the Arab world and treats each in a chapter:

• Pressures on environmental resources, as the Arab population of 150 million people in 1980 will reach nearly 400 million in 2015, in a context of rapid urban growth, water pollution and scarcity, desertification, and the likely severe impact of global warming.

• The performance of the state in guaranteeing or undermining human security, in terms of citizenship rights, legal norms, administration of justice, and security sector behavior In four areas — the acceptability of the state to its own citizens, state compliance with international human rights charters, the state’s monopoly of the means of force and coercion, and, whether checks and balances prevent abuses of power — the report says that, “large and frequent shortfalls often combine to turn the state into a threat to human security, instead of its chief support.”

• The personal insecurity of vulnerable groups, focusing on violence against women (mostly in the home), human trafficking, and the plight of refugees and internally displaced persons.

• Economic vulnerability, poverty and unemployment, reflecting erratic growth due to heavy reliance on oil and gas income, persistent poverty and unemployment, and weak structural economic foundations beyond the energy sector. Shockingly, but not surprisingly for anyone who honestly analyzed the Arab world in recent decades, real GDP per capita in our region grew by only 6.4 percent over the entire period from 1980 to 2004, or less than 0.5 percent annually.

• Food security and nutrition, indicating that only this region and sub-Saharan Africa have seen an increase in the number of undernourished people since the early 1990s.

• Health and human security, where broad gains have been registered, though problems persist in terms of disparities (especially for women), quality of services, and neglect of newly emerging threats.

• The systemic insecurity of occupation and foreign military intervention, which spark a cycle of violence and domestic repression, foment extremism, and displace millions of people. Worse, prospects for settling major conflicts are now largely in the hands of non-Arab parties, i.e., with a decline in human security our Arab region also suffers deterioration in its basic sovereignty.

These reports provide important overviews of Arab world conditions while revealing disparities within the region as a whole, compelling us to speak of several Arab worlds, rather than a single unit. But they are most useful for repeatedly diagnosing the underlying weaknesses that keep most Arab citizens, even in wealthy societies, living in a state of chronic fragility and vulnerability.

How we tackle the underlying causes of our mediocrity, and bring about real change anchored in solid citizenship, productive economies and stable statehood, remains the riddle that has defied three generations of Arabs. The next AHDR report should be an analysis of how change can and does happen in some parts of the Arab world, so that we seek to make the ultimate developmental leap forward: to transcend the diagnosis of our ailments and constraints, and move into a phase of overcoming them.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon. Copyright © 2009 Rami G. Khouri – distributed by Agence Global