It is time to own up to the facts of our under-development. Egyptian scholar Nader Fergany gives a daring presentation at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Fatemah Farag reports "There is a false illusion shared by the West and many in our region that the Arab countries are relatively well-off. We do not have much time to wait before we shake this misconception off," Nader Fergany, head of Al-Mishkat independent research centre and principal author of the provocative Arab Human Development Reports (AHDR) told attendants at a lecture he gave on 17 April at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. The statistics to justify his argument were only too plentiful. Among them was the fact that "it will take the Arab world 140 years to double the current income while unemployment is at least 15 per cent compared to the world average of five per cent," said Fergany. Even the indicators often cited as showing improvement are riddled with problems. "For example, when considering the health factor, while it is true that we are living longer, health is not only calculated in terms of longevity. The World Health Organisation [WHO] has developed a measure of how much time is lost to disease and it is estimated that in the Arab world, while the average [life expectancy] is 65, six to 12 years are lost to disease. Health standards remain low and in many cases this is related to environmental degradation," explained Fergany. What all the numbers and indicators show us, argues Fergany, is that the Arab world has failed in terms of both economic and human development terms. "In economic terms, the operation may have succeeded but the patient is dead and in human development terms, which give us more comprehensive indicators with which to measure development, our failure is even more poignant." Fergany suggests that the starting point in turning this process of failure around would be to confront reality. "We must admit this developmental failure. We must confront the lies for starters. And then we can adopt a two- pronged approach: building a knowledge-based society while expanding good governance and freedom of expression." Fergany shrugged off issues such as the population explosion in seeking to explain the current state of under-development in the Arab world. "There are countries like China and India who knew how to transform large populations into a production force and there are other countries which take much smaller populations and transform them into beggars," he noted, suggesting that perhaps more important is the unequal distribution of income and power over the past 20 years. Fergany said that a "pernicious marriage of power and money has developed", while head of the Supreme Council for Culture Gaber Asfour, who was chairing the session, said bluntly that "it is impossible to achieve development within the framework of a corrupt system. It seems that there must be changes in the political system in a way which allows for human development." Fergany announced that the theme of the upcoming AHDR -- which will be the third report of its kind released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) -- will be centred around good governance and the expansion of freedom of expression in the region. The wording reflects the sensibility of the Arab researchers involved in producing the AHDR. On the one hand the report has come under attack within the region as providing justification for the current United States' policy. "We cannot blame people for making this connection when every paragraph of the US administration's Greater Middle East Initiative begins with AHDR," admitted Fergany, who went on to point out that "the report was misused in an unethical manner by the US administration which ignored all references made to US and Israeli policy in the region and AHDR's clear criticism of those policies". Fergany highlighted that "I do not think that the current US administration wants democracy in the region. I think they are used to dealing with oppressive governments." On the other hand there is a sensitivity regarding what some terms have come to represent within the current world order. "We do not use the word 'democracy' intentionally because, unfortunately, the word now has a bad reputation -- even in countries like the US where the government has taken series measures against civil freedoms. What we want and mean is to get rid of all that is against human dignity, that systems of governance be based on institutions and not persons and that everyone be held accountable to the law," explained Fergany. This was not a session where words were minced. Fergany stated clearly that "what we can achieve within the framework of the current government is cosmetic reform with the intention of preserving the current status quo. Hence what I am calling for requires a long social struggle that comes with a price, that begins with thought and research and ends in politics. We need to change the essence of authority in the Arab region."
