Introduction
The United Nations Development Programme has issued the fifth volume in the series of Arab Human Development Reports (HDR), authored by intellectuals and scholars from the Arab countries who would hardly be expected to be heard in their own countries. In the introduction the authors lament the fact that seven years after the publication of the first HDR (2002) "the fault lines as traced in that analysis may have deepened." This HDR is set to find out why the obstacles to human development "proved so stubborn." (p.1)
Conceptually, the report distinguishes between human development and human security, the latter being the principal focus of the report. While human development is concerned with "the individual's capabilities and opportunities," human security "focuses on enabling peoples to contain and avert threats to their lives, livelihoods and human dignity." (p.2) In the Arab region, human insecurity, rather than human security is pervasive, affected by military occupation and armed conflict, flawed constitutions, and flawed laws and climatic changes. (p.2)
The ranking of Arab countries on the human development index (HDI) shows a major discrepancy between those few countries ranked high and the majority of the countries which are rated much lower. Globally, Kuwait ranks #33, followed by Qatar #35, and Saudi Arabia #61. They are followed by Jordan #86, Tunisia #91, Algeria #104, Occupied Palestinian Territory #106, [2] Syria #108, Morocco #126 [3], and Yemen #153. (p.229) Iraq and Somalia are not rated.
Seven Dimensions of Threat to the Arab Region
The report identifies seven dimensions of threat to the Arab region. [4] This dispatch will review the various components of each of these dimensions as they affect human security or insecurity in the Arab countries which includes 22 countries that are members of the Arab league. They include Egypt, the largest in terms of population; Saudi Arabia and most of the Gulf countries, the wealthiest in terms of per capita income; the failed state of Somalia and the remote Indian Ocean island of Comoros.
1. People and Their Insecure Environment
Population pressures and dwindling resources pose a serious challenge to the security of the region. The population in the Arab countries is projected to increase to some 395 million by 2015, compared with 317 million in 2007, and 150 million in 1980. The most serious aspect of the demographic profile is the "youth bulge." Some 60% of the population of Arab countries is under 25 years old, making the region one of the most youthful in the world with a median age of 22 years compared to global average of 28. (p.3) This demographic structure is attributed to the highest population growth rates in the world. From 1975-1980, the total fertility rate in the region was 6.5, meaning that the average Arab woman gave birth to six or seven children. This rate declined to 3.6 in 2000-2005, a rate that is still higher than the population replacement rate of 2.1 (p.34) In fact, the projected rate of population growth in the Arab countries for the period 2010-2015 is double that of the world average. (p.35)
The report identifies a number of environmental problems that may be aggravated by the rapid population growth. Among these problems are water scarcity compounded by dependency on water resources, particularly Egypt, Iraq and Syria, shared with neighboring [non-Arab] countries; stressed groundwater systems, often the only source of fresh water; the peril of desertification (68.4 percent of the total area of the region has been swallowed by desert); and water pollution (attributed to the increased use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, among others).
The report seems to draw comfort from the fact that the United States in 2003 showed an absolute rate of pollution more than 10 times that of the highest Arab polluter, and the Russian Federation "out-polluted" the highest Arab polluter by a factor of nearly 7.5 (p.45) The region as a whole has an estimated 300 billion cubic meters of water which represents 1 percent of the world's total water resources, while the region's population accounts for 5 percent of the world's population.(p.139) The report warns that much of the population of the region will suffer from water stress, while others will experience water shortage. (p.39) On the other hand, air pollution in the Arab countries is generally among the lowest in the world, mainly because many of the Arab countries "have not progressed very far with industrialization." (p.3) All in all, the report warns that environmental degradation in the foreseeable future is more dangerous than war. (p.50)
2. The State and its Insecure People
The borders of most Arab states were drawn by colonial powers incorporating diverse ethnic, religious and linguistic groups as minority groups. Rather than making a serious effort to integrate these heterogeneous groups into a nation-state, the majority of Arab states have tried to subdue them under what the report characterizes as "command structures." Not surprisingly, many of these groups question the legitimacy of the state under which they live. A number of Arab writers hold the view that the achievement of individual human security "will have the effect of transforming the authoritarian state into one that respects the rule of law."(p.23)
The report underscores the constitutional failings of the Arab states and their inability to adhere to international charters governing the right to life and the right to freedom. Indeed, the report accuses Arab states of adopting in their constitutions ideological or doctrinal formulas that "empty stipulations of general rights and freedoms of any content." (p.5) The report points out that six [unnamed] Arab countries prohibit the formation of political parties. In many others, there are restrictions, particularly on the formation of opposition political parties, that are tantamount to their prohibition. In the case of civil societies, most of them come under an array of restrictive measures that for all intent and purpose render them ineffective if not entirely useless.
Under the guise of national security, many Arab countries have transformed martial law or emergency rules into a permanent way of conducting political life. These measures are often accompanied by state-sponsored practices of torture and illegal detention. Again, six unnamed countries are accused of practicing torture. (p.6) In some cases, the number of victims reaches thousands. (p.61) In the absence of checks and balances, the executive branch of government controls both the legislative and the judiciary branches of the state. Judicial independence exists on paper, and the judiciary is often subject to the whims of non-democratically elected political figures. The report laments the tragic fact that "[A]ll Arab heads of state wield absolute authority, answering to none."[p.6] In short, the report points to "a human security deficit," despite the constitutional commitments of Arab states. (p.76) Post-invasion Iraq would definitely be an exception since the president of the republic wields little power and the prime minister must constantly shuffle competing political forces both inside and outside the government to keep an unwieldy governing coalition together.
3. The Personal Insecurity of Vulnerable Groups
This dimension addresses three issues that affect the personal security of citizens in Arab countries. These include violence against women, human trafficking, and the plight of refugees and internally displaced persons. In particular, the report stresses the absence of security for some groups of people that are beyond the mainstream society.
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In terms of violence against women, the report finds that Arab women "are still bound by patriarchal patterns of kinship, legalized discrimination, social subordination and ingrained male dominance." (p.7) Women suffer different forms of violence, from beating to rape and murder, or are victims of cultural practices such as female genital mutilation. And the Arab countries have yet to adopt laws prohibiting child marriage before the age of majority.
Human trafficking is a multi-billion dollar underground business which involves many Arab countries serving as destination for trade, a transit point or the source of persons being trafficked. (p.8)
Apart of "the world's longest [Palestinian] refugee question" and that of the refugees in Darfur, the report estimates the internally displaced persons in the region at 9.8 million; most are found in six Arab states - Sudan, Iraq, Somalia, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.
4. Volatile Growth, High Unemployment and Persisting Poverty
The report suggests that the oil wealth of the Arab countries presents a misleading picture of their economic situation, one that masks structural weaknesses that result in insecurity of countries and citizens alike. (p.9) The dependency on oil revenues, which are themselves hostage to exogenous factors, generates booms and busts which are a main cause of economic insecurity.(p.100) The "tyranny of oil" has destabilized the Arab economies, petro- or not, since 1970. (p.198) Elsewhere, the report points out that the region's oil-driven development model led to jobless growth. (p.199)
The report underscores a very disturbing fact that that for nearly two and half decades since 1980, the region "witnessed hardly any economic growth." Drawing on World Bank data, the report asserts that the real [growth minus inflation] of GDP per capita in the Arab countries grew by a mere 6.4 percent over the entire 24 year period from 1980 to 2004, which translates into 0.5 percent annually. Since the 1990s, real per capital growth rates in non-oil as well as oil countries "have fluctuated erratically, often turning negative." (p.101). No less significant is the fact that, generally speaking, the Arab countries were less industrialized in 2007 than in 1970 as they turned into increasingly import-oriented and service-based economies.(p.103) As a result, the contribution of the manufacturing sector to GDP is characterized as "anemic." (p.103)
Unemployment remains a major source of insecurity in most Arab countries. Figures supplied by the Arab Labor Organization indicate that, in 2005, unemployment rate for the Arab countries was about 14.4 percent compared with 6.3 percent for the world at large. Youth unemployment presents the biggest challenge to all Arab countries, although the rate of youth unemployment varies from 46 percent in Algeria to 6.3 percent in UAE. Even high-income Arab countries suffer from double digit unemployment rates, with Saudi Arabia (26 percent), Kuwait (23 percent) and Qatar (17 percent). In the middle income countries, the rate of youth unemployment was 39 percent in Jordan and 26 percent in Egypt (pp.108-9). Given this rate of unemployment and the young age of the Arab population referred to earlier, the Arab countries will need to produce 51 million new jobs by 2020."Most of these jobs," the report asserts, "will be essential to absorb young entrants to the labor force who will otherwise face an empty future." (p.10) For now, the unemployment rate among Arab youth is nearly double that in the world at large.
Unemployment among Arab females is also the highest in the world. The report identifies three factors for the high rate of unemployment in the Arab world: (a) the contraction of the public sector; (b) the limited size of the private sector; and (c) the type and quality of education that does not produce enough individuals with technical and vocational skills in demand. (p.11)
The report refers to "the backlog of poverty," which comprises income poverty and human poverty. Based on figures available in 2005, the report establishes the rate of income poverty at 20.3 percent of the Arab population, or the equivalent of 34.6 million Arabs, living below the two-dollar-a-day international poverty line (p.11) The figure of income poverty is as high as 59.5 percent in Yemen and 41 percent in Egypt.
Human poverty is a much more elusive concept that income poverty and it is measured by human poverty index (HPI) which comprises three measurements: (a) longevity, (b) knowledge, and (c) standard of living. Low-income Arab countries "exhibit the highest incidence of human poverty" with a score of 35 percent compared with an average of 12 percent in high-income countries. The high incidence of human poverty affects children in particular, contributing to low school completion rates that perpetuate the insecurity of the poor. In short, the report points out, "poverty in the Arab countries is a more conspicuous phenomenon than commonly assumed." (p.12)
5. Hunger, Malnutrition and Food Insecurity
Despite ample resources, the frequency of hunger and malnutrition is on the rise in the Arab countries. Indeed, other than the countries in sub-Saharan Africa the number of undernourished in the Arab countries has risen from 19.8 million in 1990-1992 to 25.5 million in 2002-2004. Most surprising are the data applicable to individual countries. Djibouti, Sudan and Mauritania have made the greatest progress towards lowering the prevalence of undernourishment. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco and Yemen have "recorded increases in both the absolute numbers and the prevalence of undernourishment." (p.12) Malnutrition in the region has also been the cause of rising obesity, particularly among women in contrast with the U.S. where obesity is prevalent among men.
The report highlights an interesting point in that most Arab governments subsidize food commodities as part of a social contract "based on state provision of essential needs in exchange for the people's loyalty." (p.13) A basic feature of the social contract is the citizen's acquiescence on limitations of state accountability in return for state-provided benefits. In the absence of free speech it is difficult to determine whether such acquiescence is driven by resignation or by fear. This rentier model is possible to apply where government have sources of income other than direct taxation, such as oil revenues. (p.197) Saddam Hussein had exercised this linkage by denying the Kurds and segments of the Shi'ite population of Iraq the food-rationing coupons that provided the bearers with basic food commodities either free or at heavily discounted prices.
Undernourishment affects children the most. Figures provides by the report indicate that for the years 2000-2006, 14.6 of children in the Arab countries under five are of less than average weight while 22.2 percent of the same age group are victims of stunted growth. (p.137)
6. Health Security Challenges
The reports maintains that in the Arab countries, while considerable progress has been made in forestalling death, extending life, and reducing infant mortality from 152 to 39 per thousand births (p.149) there is considerable disparity, for example, for under-five children mortality, ranging from less than 20 per 1,000 births in most Gulf states to more than 100 per 1000 in Djibouti, Mauritanian and Yemen.(p.151)
The report points out that the Arab states have not taken a holistic view of health and human development. As a result, they have assigned low priority to the subject of health itself in their national budgets compared with job creation and economic growth. Information on the health situation is not readily available because in most Arab states vital recording systems are not available or seldom reliable.(p.148)
With regard to health, two issues are worth mentioning. One is smoking and the other is genital mutilation of females. The report shows that the Arab countries are marked by a high percentage of cigarette smokers; in fact, it has one of the highest smoking rates in the world.
Female genital mutilation, which entails the removal of the external female sexual organ, is widely practiced in many Arab countries, with estimates ranging from 95.8 percent in Egypt to 22.6 in Yemen.(p.155) Wajeha al-Huwaider, the well-known Saudi women rights activist, has written about her own wrenching experience as she was dressed one morning by her mother in a white dress and taken together with her best friend Sara to a house where a number of young girls assembled. She graphically tells about the procedures which entailed the use of a razor by a woman to cut her external sexual organ, a traumatic experience that haunts her decades later. She lived to tell her story but her young friend Sara bled to death. [5]
7. Occupation and Military Intervention
The primary thesis of this chapter is that "occupation and military intervention expose human security to violence on three levels - institutional, structural and material." It lists three cases of occupation and military intervention: the Occupied Palestinian Territory (the West Bank and Gaza Strip), Iraq, and Somalia. Occupation and military intervention displace peoples across borders, creating humanitarian challenges. Arab governments claim that occupation and military intervention are threats to their sovereignty and a pretext to halt or postpone democratization and to perpetuate authoritarian rule. (p.165)
Concluding Reflections
The report offers a number of "concluding reflections" drawn from the analysis of the issues. Those who have spent years or even decades in the field of foreign aid would consider many of these reflections as conventional wisdom that are hardly unique to the Arab countries. Among these reflections are putting people's security first, protecting the environment, reorienting the economy from oil-based to knowledge-based (the entire human development report in 2004 was devoted to this issue, and obviously not much progress has been made), ending hunger, boosting health, and resolving and preventing conflicts.
While the report does not offer a blueprint to address many of the sources of insecurity in the Arab countries, it does warn that "the public has become restive in the grip of authority fashioned in a bygone age, and the state's hold on power grows more fragile each year." (p.207) Whether the public will become restive enough to force a major change in governance is yet to be seen.
*Dr. Nimrod Raphaeli is Senior Analyst at MEMRI.
Endnotes:
[1] United Nations Development Programme, Arab Human Development Report (2009), p.9.
[2] See a special index on the overall rating of the Occupied Palestinian Territory in MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis No. 550, "'Ending the Occupation, Establishing a State' - An Analysis of Palestinian PM Salam Fayyad's Blueprint for Independent Palestine," September 24, 2009, 'Ending the Occupation, Establishing a State' – An Analysis of Palestinian PM Salam Fayyad's Blueprint for Independent Palestine.
[3] As far as we were able to establish, Morocco is the only Arab country which officially protested its low ranking as "totally unfair." Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, London, October 10, 2009.
[4] The "Arab region" is somewhat of a misnomer because it excludes non-Arab countries in the Middle East but includes Somalia in Eastern Africa and the Comoros in the Indian Ocean off the cost of East Africa. Our preference is for "Arab countries" rather than "Arab region."
[5] Wajeha al-Huwaider, "rafiqati Sara" ("My Friend Sara") in Sawt al-mar’a al-saudiya in www.sawomenvoice.com/news.php?action=view&id=2451 of October 9, 2009
