1st August 2002

Arab countries suffer poverty because of three lacks: freedom, knowledge and womanpower, according to a study completed by the United Nations Development Program.

The Arab world-meaning the 22 members of the Arab League-accounts for 280 million people, roughly the same as the United States. They range from the 68 million population of Egypt-the Arab world's natural leader-to Quatar's 565,000. The region is expected to top 400 million in 20 years.

The Arab countries' populations live on less than $2 a day. Though the region has less abject poverty (defined as less than $1-a-day income) than any other developing part of the world, it has experienced an income growth rate of only 0.5% annually per head. At that rate, it will take 140 years for the average Arab to double his income, compared to 10 years for inhabitants of other parts of the world. And around 12 million people, 15% of the labor force, are unemployed. That figure is projected to rise to 25 million by 2010.

The U.N. report concludes that the region lags behind other parts of the world not from lack of resources (its oil deposits are legendary) but from shortage of three essentials: freedom, knowledge, and womanpower.

In the freedom category, the UNDP cites survival of absolute autocracies, confusion between executive and judiciary branches of government, constraints on the media and civil society, and "a patriarchial, intolerant, sometimes suffocating social environment." Democracy is sometimes offered, the report says, but as a concession, not as a right, and elections are often bogus.

Freedom of expression and freedom of association are both sharply limited. The report cites Freedom House's assessment that no Arab country has truly free media; three had partly free, the rest less free.

Secondly, though Arabs spend a higher percentage of Gross Domestic Product on education than any other developing region, the quality of education has deteriorated leaving a mismatch between the educational system and the labor market. Illiteracy rates remain high with 65 million adults (two-thirds of them women) unable to read. Some 10 million children still get no schooling. Only 1.2% of Arabs have personal computers, and only 0.6% use the Internet.

"From their schooldays onwards, Arabs are instructed that they should not defy tradition, but that they should respect authority, that truth should be sought in the text and not in experience," the report stated. "By discouraging transparency and innovation, it has held back progress, helping to produce a great army of young Arabs, jobless, unskilled and embittered, cut off from changing their own societies by democratic means."

Thirdly, the neglect or abuse of women is a major factor in the Arab world's slow development. "How can a society prosper when it stifles half its productive potential?" the report asks. "Half of all Arab women still can neither read nor write. Their participation in their countries' political and economic life is the lowest in the world."

With these three major deficits in Arab society, Islam itself is the only thing that offers them self-respect. "With so many other paths closed to them, some are now turning their dangerous anger on the western world," the report concludes.

Christian Aid is assisting several strategic ministries among Arab nations. They emphasize literacy, provide books and literature, educate children, teach believers in Biblical principles and uplift the status of women. For more information write and put 400-MSF on the subject line.