Time
to Bring Home Arab Human Development
By
Rami G. Khouri |
For all
those activists and reformers in the Arab world
who have worked for years to promote democracy,
civil society and political freedoms throughout
the Middle East, this may be the moment to act
decisively to promote their goals in a practical
manner. The opportunity at hand arises from the
behind-the-scenes dispute between the
United States government and the United
Nations Development Program (UNDP), who are
locked in a delicate diplomatic tango over the
contents of the UNDP's third annual Arab Human
Development Report (AHDR).
| The
U.S.
State Department has made it clear
to UNDP that American funding will drop
precipitously if the report in its
present form is published. Washington
last year cut its funding to UNDP by $12
million (down to $89 million) to signal
its annoyance with the AHDR pointing out
the obvious reality that Arab extremism
and anti-Americanism often are a
consequence of American, Israeli, and
Arab government policies in the region. |
..The
counter message
from the U.S. government
is that no criticism of
American or Israeli
policies is acceptable..
|
The
counter message from the U.S. government is that
no criticism of American or Israeli policies is
acceptable these days. Washington wants the
whole world to call Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon a "man of peace," and the
Anglo-American war and occupation in Iraq an act
of liberation to promote Arab democracy.
| The
irony is that this third AHDR, which is
now ready for printing but is still
being held up by UNDP until the
diplomatic controversy is resolved,
focuses on political freedoms in the
Arab world -- an issue that the U.S.
government has pushed in the past three
years with exuberance and militarism
that have sometimes verged on hysteria.
The report, which is written by
respected Arab scholars and activists,
represents precisely what the U.S. wants
to see happening in this region -
free-thinking Arabs analyzing their
societies and proposing means to make
them more free, democratic, pluralistic,
accountable, transparent and happy all
over. For the U.S. government to speak
of promoting Arab liberty, on the one
hand, while using financial blackmail,
on the other hand, to squash this
exercise of free-thinking Arab activism
is a sign of precisely Washington's
double standards, presumptuous
arrogance, and pro-Israeli bias that
cause so many people in the Middle East
-- and the rest of the world -- to
criticize the U.S. these days. So what
does the Arab world do in the face of
this difficult situation? |
..The
irony is that this
third AHDR.. ..focuses
on political freedoms
in the Arab world -- an
issue that the U.S.
government has pushed
in the past three years
with exuberance and
militarism..
|
The
urgent aim must be two-fold: The Arab world
itself must move quickly to prevent damage to
UNDP's credibility and programs because of its
courage in publishing the first two AHDRs, and,
the Arab world must find a way to continue this
series of useful reports and make them more
effective as instruments of Arab modernization,
reform, and democratization. For in the final
analysis, these reports are not about the U.S.
or UNDP. They are about us, the people,
societies, identities, and power flows in the
Arab world.
If
UNDP publishes the third Arab Human
Development Report in its present form,
it suffers severe financial cuts by the
U.S. and hinders its ability to operate
worldwide; if it shelves the report, its
integrity and
credibility drop, as the world would
view it as a passive instrument of
American foreign policy. The solution
must be to publish the existing
report outside the realm of UNDP, to
spare the UN Washington's destructive
and intemperate wrath. |
..The
solution must be
to publish the
existing report outside
the realm of UNDP..
|
The
most sensible option to do this would be to
establish a new, independent, pan-Arab think
tank -- an Arab Human Development Center -- in
report and subsequent ones every year. The
talent and policy-making direction for such a
center would come from the group of respected
Arab individuals who have written the first
three AHDRs. The key element is funding for the
new center, and this is where Arab activists and
democrats must step forward quickly and
decisively. It takes only about one million
dollars a year to produce and publish each
report. Activist, reform-minded, democratic and
wealthy Arab businessmen and women should get on
the phones with one another in the coming week,
round up $5 million to fund a new Arab Human
Development Center for its initial three years
or so, publish the third AHDR on time in January
2005, and announce the next three reports that
will come out in subsequent years. The fourth
report is scheduled to focus on women and the
gender deficit in the region (I would suggest
that the fifth and sixth reports focus on youth,
and civilian control of the military-security
systems in the area).
| An
indigenous research center publishing
the AHDR annually should also initiate
other activities to promote pan-Arab
reform, including publishing annual
surveys of political, press, and
personal freedoms, annual reviews of
Arab military vs. human development
spending, educational quality, gender-
and youth-related rights, and other
elements of modernity and sustainable
national development. Civil society and,
in some cases, possibly some government
institutions, might join forces to
monitor trends in these key areas,
diagnose persistent problems and
constraints, propose reform policies,
and generate the coalitions in society
needed to implement such policies. |
..All
those reform-minded
Arab businessmen and
women who have spoken
out so eloquently.. ..must
now step forward..
|
Arab
private businesses and individual investors have
earned tens of billions of dollars in profits in
recent decades and it is time for them to repay
their societies by funding an independent
research institution for pan-Arab human
development. All those reform-minded Arab
businessmen and women who have spoken out so
eloquently at reform-focused gatherings in
Dubai, Sanaa, Alexandria, Doha, Beirut and Amman
must now step forward and take this process to
the next critical level: establishing an
independent, indigenous Arab human development
research center that would provide quality
research as well as play a critical advocacy and
monitoring role in Arab societies. It is time
for Arabs to protect the Arab human development
reports, and to bring them home.
Rami G.
Khouri is executive editor of the Beirut,
Lebanon-based Daily Star newspaper,
published throughout the Middle East with the International
Herald Tribune. A Palestinian-Jordanian
whose family resides in Beirut, Amman, and
Nazareth, Khouri is an internationally
syndicated political columnist and book author,
who is often called on for comment by the U.S.
and international media.
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