all is not well in the Arab world.

Holding a Harsh Mirror to the Arab World
IT IS NO SECRET, LEAST OF ALL TO THE ARAB PUBLIC,
that all is not well in the Arab world. As a whole, Arab states have
badly lagged behind much of the rest of the world in economic and
social development, even prior to the latest post-Cold War wave of
globalization. However, speaking frankly
about these matters, even taking the first step
towards amelioration has never been a simple
task.
Ruling Arab elites have long viewed nonofficial
intellectual endeavor with suspicion
and have acted to coopt, corrupt or repress
independent voices that might delegitimize
their authority and thus threaten their monopoly
on power.
This is at least one of the reasons, then,
that Arab political and intellectual life over
the last half-century has been severely
stunted, characterized by a dearth of selfcriticism,
with the preponderance of blame
for Arab societies’ shortcomings usually
being ascribed to pernicious foreign forces.
However, this is no longer entirely the
case, thanks in part to the series of Arab
Human Development Reports crafted by a
cross-section of Arab academicians from the
region and beyond. The fifth and latest one,
issued in late July, is entitled “Challenges to
Human Security in the Arab Countries.” (www.arab-hdr.org)
In more than 200 pages of data, vignettes and analysis, the report
paints a sobering portrait of contemporary Arab social and political realities.
As such, it promises to serve as a base-line reference point for all
upcoming policy discussions addressing the ills of the Arab world.
The conceptual emphasis of the report is on “human security,”
namely, “the liberation of human beings from those intense, extensive,
prolonged and comprehensive threats to which their lives and freedom
are vulnerable.” The threats to human security are analyzed according
to seven categories: 1) pressures on environmental resources; 2) the performance
of the state in guaranteeing or undermining human security;
3) the personal insecurity of vulnerable groups; 4) economic vulnerability,
poverty and unemployment; 5) food security and nutrition;
6) health and welfare; and 7) the systemic insecurity of occupation and
foreign military intervention.
Each section is extremely sobering. For example, with regard to the
environment, the total population of Arab countries will have increased
from 150 million in 1980 to 395 million in 2015, while renewable water
reserves are being depleted faster than they can be replenished, water pollution
is expanding, desertification is expanding and access to clean water
is declining, thus exposing children, in particular, to a range of diseases.
With regard to the State, the report suggests that it is a major part of
the problem, pointing to its authoritarian ways, the absence of democratic
democratic
governance, representative institutions and the rule of law, and a
failure to respect cultural, ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity.
Women are deemed among the most vulnerable of groups, and the
report pulls no punches in detailing the myriad ways in which women
are continuously exposed to family and institutionalized
violence, not only physical but
also as victims of cultural and social practices,
such as female genital mutilation and
child marriage, as well as human trafficking.
The Arab countries’ “fabled oil wealth”
masks, and in fact causes, serious structural
weaknesses of many Arab economies.
Hunger and malnutrition rates are rising,
according to the report; the only other region
where this is the case is sub-Saharan Africa.
In the health sphere, despite improvements,
health care systems available to most Arabs
are inadequate, with wide disparities in quality
both within and between countries.
Moreover, HIV/AIDS “represents a stubborn,
proximate and misunderstood danger.”
As for the role of occupation and military
intervention, the report details the damage to
all spheres of human security, particularly in
Iraq, the West Bank and Gaza, and Somalia.
Interestingly, it does not fail to note how both
extremist groups and Arab governments
exploit these situations to their own ends and thus perpetuate cycles of
destruction and oppressive rule.
Not surprisingly, the report’s findings
Not surprisingly, the report’s findings were not uniformly greeted with
applause. Strangely enough, its lead author, Cairo University Prof. Mustafa
Kamel El-Sayed, disassociated himself from it, declaring that his final draft
had been substantially altered by its United Nations publishers so as to
emphasize domestic factors at the expense of external causes, in order to
appease the U.S. and Israel. Samir Radwan, a former International Labor
Organization official, chimed in, calling the report’s emphasis on issues
like female genital mutilation and climate change a “flavor of the month”
approach, at the expense of the Iraq and Palestine issues.
In response, the former Director of the Al-Ahram Center for
Strategic and Political Studies, Abdel Moneim Said Aly, declared that it
was up to Arab political elites – rulers, the civilian bureaucracy, the military
establishment, and the culture and media agencies – to recognize
how bad things are and to take responsibility for changing them, as
other elites in other countries and regions have done in similar circumstances.
“At some point,” he stated, “our elites, who are brave and
smart, have to put two and two together and get four.”
Poignant advice indeed, and applicable elsewhere as well. • The author is the Marcia Israel Senior Research Fellow at the
Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel
Aviv University.