LONDON/CAIRO, July 2: The United Nations accused a host of Arab nations on Tuesday of squandering the wealth generated by oil and depriving millions of their people of basic political freedoms.
A top Arab official warned leaders in the Arab world to heed the hard-hitting findings of the UN Development Programme’s Arab Development Report 2002 to avoid social upheaval.
“There have to be improvements in the life of young people, because the repercussions of such negligence would be serious socially,” Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa told Reuters. “And I’m not thinking in terms of international terrorism, or American policy, but of social repercussions.”
Moussa, a former Egyptian foreign minister, was speaking after the report was officially released at the Arab League’s headquarters in Cairo. The UN survey focused on the bloc’s 22 member nations.
Clovis Maksoud, a former Arab League ambassador to the United Nations and a member of the report’s advisory board, also said social pressures posed a danger to the region.
“Lack of action would lead to a level of stagnation which would lead to popular explosions,” Maksoud told Reuters.
Compiled by Arab experts over the past 18 months, the report said growth in per capita income among the 22 nations in the past 20 years — at an average of just 0.5 percent — was the lowest in the world except for sub-Saharan Africa.
Labour productivity had declined at an annual average of 0.2 percent, it said.
Even added together, the gross domestic product (GDP) of the 22 nations combined was less than a medium-sized European country such as Spain.
“Oil revenues are not always reinvested productively in the country let alone the region. And when such revenues are used in physical capital formation they contribute little to growth,” it added.
The report also pointed out that half of young Arabs polled wanted to emigrate from a region where there are more young people as a percentage of the population than in any other part of the world.
Almost 38 percent of 280 million Arabs are under 14 years old, it said.
PRAISE AND CRITICISM: The report praised Arab nations for raising the life expectancy of their peoples, cutting infant mortality and reducing extreme poverty, but it was critical of the lack of freedoms and opportunity.
“The three main deficits are freedom, gender and knowledge,” said Rima Khalaf Hunaidi, head of the UN’s Arab section and leader of the team which wrote the report — the first UN survey of Arabs by Arabs.
The report accused many of the nations from the Maghreb to the Gulf of allowing scant political freedom, keeping women subjugated and letting education standards drop sharply.
While more people had entered the educational system, the quality of that education was crumbling, leading to what the report described as deficits in opportunity and capability.—Reuters