The Arab Human Development Report will once again court controversy, writes Hassan Nafaa*, and for good reason I had set off to Beirut for the launch of the 2009 Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) on Human Security Challenges in Arab Countries. As is customary the ceremony, held on 21 July, was followed by a series of discussions organised by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which sponsored the report, in cooperation with Weghat Nazar (Points of View), an intellectual periodical published in Cairo. Since I am one of the panellists in the discussions, I was given the opportunity to preview this year's report. Although AHDRs have sparked controversy since they first appeared in 2002, I believe the 2009 report triggers a more diversified and multifaceted debate. The focus of the report -- human security -- is still a subject of dispute in social science literature despite the rapid spread of the use of the term since the publication of the UNDP Human Rights Report of 1994. Although the AHDR dedicated an entire chapter to defining the term, elaborating at length on its evolution, its diverse interpretations (which can sometimes be so broad as to encompass just about every aspect of human affairs and at others narrow to the point of rigidity), and its relationship with other relevant concepts, the report ultimately settled for a very loose and ambiguous interpretation. "Human security," it states, "is the liberation of human beings from severe, widespread, long-term and extensive threats to their lives and freedom." Arab intellectuals will undoubtedly pick up on the fact that the report was not strict in its treatment of the various issues and challenges related to Arab human security. It was variously selective, unbalanced and partial in both its choice and its prioritisation of the types of threats and challenges it covered. The very sensitivity of the issues it covers is also certain to add to its contentiousness. Following the scheme used by the UNDP Human Rights Report of 1994, it designated seven human security "dimensions": economic security (threatened by poverty), food security (threatened by famine and undernourishment), health security (threatened by disease), environmental security (threatened by pollution, ecological disequilibrium and depletion of resources), personal security (threatened by crime and violence in society), political security (threatened by various forms of physical and moral repression), and social security (threatened by ethnic and sectarian disputes). It was no small task to attempt to explain, analyse and diagnose such a mighty list of issues, which I would divide into two categories: those of a more technical nature that are not political sensitive or whose political sensitivity, if it exists, is of secondary or coincidental concern, and those which fall in the centre of the heated political and intellectual controversies that stir passions regionally and internationally. Because of the extremely thorny nature of the latter, it requires a considerable degree of courage to treat them with the objectivity and detachment they merit. I will return, below, to a brief discussion of how convincing the report is on this score. What concerns me here is that while the 2009 report has not introduced anything new -- most of the issues it covers have been treated in one way or another in the four previous AHDRs -- this time it is approaching them all from the perspective of human security, as opposed to separate and distinct issues, which is precisely why I expect this year's report to spark more intensive and widespread debate than its predecessors. A third reason why the AHDR 2009 will be contentious stems from the open quarrel between its lead author and UNDP. According to recent reports in the media, Mustafa Kamel El-Sayed claims that the version that went to the printers is fundamentally different to the version he submitted. If, indeed, this is the case, it raises a very serious question mark over the credibility of the UNDP. In her preface to AHDR 2009, UNDP Director-General Helen Clark reiterates the formula that appeared in all previous reports: "The Arab Human Development Reports are, deliberately, not formal UN or UNDP documents and do not reflect the official view of either organisation. Rather they have been intended to stimulate and inform a dynamic, new, public discourse across the Arab world and beyond." This time, though, she felt compelled to add, as if to pre-empt fingers levelled in her direction or the direction of the UN, the following remark: "Some of the views expressed by the authors of this report are not shared by the UNDP or the UN." This formula helped make it possible for independent experts and thinkers to express themselves beneath the UN umbrella, which is one of the reasons AHDRs are unique and have attracted widespread interest among both Arab and non-Arab intellectuals, governments, NGOs and international organisations. Yet, while in the past we have heard this or that member of the report team or some readers or consultants voice reservations and even complaints about pressures having been exerted behind the scenes by Arab or non-Arab governments or Arab or non-Arab funding agencies, this is the first time, to my knowledge, that a lead author has denied all responsibility for the published version of the report and proclaimed his decision to boycott the launch and subsequent discussions. Naturally, one cannot help but wonder whether some party was determined to convert the report into a political instrument. According to the allegations of the lead author, fundamental changes have been introduced, without his permission or knowledge, to the text he submitted. Entire paragraphs have been cut from the theoretical presentation in the first part and the chapters reordered so as to place the one covering threats arising from foreign occupation at the end, and the introduction and conclusion were entirely rewritten, as well as some portions of the other chapters, notably the one on personal security. In addition the chapter on identity conflicts in the Arab nation was omitted, the subject condensed into two pages that were attached to the chapter on the state and which homed in on a single case, the identity disputes connected with the civil war in Darfur. It is not my concern here to determine whether such accusations are true or false. If true, however, they would cast a shadow over the UNDP's credibility. They would also raise the question as to motives for manipulating the report. It is still fresh in our memories how US officials, under Bush Junior, would reference previous reports, especially those that analysed the democratic deficit and lack of civil and individual freedoms in the Arab nation. In fact, Bush himself quoted whole passages in one of his official speeches. That same administration subsequently attempted to obstruct the publication of another AHDR because it happened to dwell at length on the detrimental impact of the US occupation of Iraq and the Israeli occupation of Palestine on democratisation and civil and individual liberties in those countries. On the positive and negative aspects of the substance of year's report it is impossible, here, to go into detail. Suffice to say that a report on the challenges to human security in Arab countries must, by dint of its subject matter, offer at least one chief advantage, that of comprehensiveness. Regardless of the reservations and objections one might have to some of its contents, AHDR is a significant document that sheds light on the general Arab condition. But was its treatment of the challenges facing Arab human security sufficiently complete, accurate and convincing? Was it fair and objective in its analysis of these challenges? These are important questions and require much more thorough analysis and discussion than I can offer here. I will, therefore, confine myself to a basic observation, which is that the report did not devote sufficiently serious attention to the dialectic of the relationship between the internal and external dimensions with regard to responsibility for the current decline in Arab human security. Arab intellectuals are deeply divided over this point. Some pin the blame entirely on external factors, which serves as a convenient way to evade internal deficiencies for which governments, as well as the public, are responsible. Others head in the opposite direction, ignore the external factor completely and lay the blame on domestic conditions, especially the absence of democracy and the quality of the prevailing political culture. Both approaches are flawed. The reason for this is very simple: in the Arab case, in particular, it is almost impossible to separate internal from external factors. No other regional order is as vulnerable to outside penetration as the Arab order due, primarily, to its geo-strategic position, oil and Israel. As a result, many negative phenomena in the Arab world can only be explained by taking into account the external factor without, of course, falling prey to the conspiracy theory trap. I believe that the AHDR 2009 failed to offer a full diagnosis of the problems facing human security in the Arab region, the actual causes of these problems and possible ways of remedying them. This is because, for no clear or objective reason, it was inclined to the approach that sees the fault for these problems in domestic factors and, therefore, only cast its sights towards possible external factors when absolutely necessary and, then, only timidly, as though the external dimension was tangential. I also have no doubt that the decision on the part of the editors to keep the chapter on the challenges to Arab human security posed by foreign military occupation and intervention to the end, just before the closing remarks, reflects an ideological prejudice on their part. I can see no possible rational justification for their decision. But the matter goes beyond chapter order. Clearly the language had been watered down to the point of euphemism. The brutal Israeli aggression against Gaza became, in the report, merely a "military campaign" and the international condemnation of it was prompted only by Israel's "excessive and disproportionate use of force". As for the annexation wall and the injustices it is inflicting on the Palestinians, and the "Jewishness" of the state of Israel and the dire repercussions this notion could have on the human security and future of Palestinians inside Israel, the report gave these matters no more than a few lines. These are only a few instances of the biases that seem to riddle AHDR 2009. * The writer is professor of political science at Cairo University.
