The Social Pillar and the Paradox of Development in the Arab Region

by | Jul 12, 2024

During the last few years, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) has endeavored to facilitate a consultative process, including Arab governments as well as other stakeholders, to identify regional priorities in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the post-2015 agenda With a wider specter. In July 2014, the Open Working Group (OWG) released its 17 proposed SDGs, each of which includes a number of targets. In order to ensure that the final SDGs incorporate the priorities of Arab countries, ESCWA seeks to provide a platform for regional evaluation of the proposed goals. As part of that effort, it is presently putting together an Arab Sustainable Development Report (ASDR). This ASDR background paper aims to evaluate the relevance of the social dimension of the proposed SDGs for the Arab region.

In the Arab region, important successes have been coupled with increasing challenges or even, severe crises. This paradox impacts sub-regions differently as the challenges now face higher levels of poverty and/or military conflict. Emphasizing health, education, housing, poverty, and unemployment, this paper examines these regional issues in relation to the SDG’s, concluding the following: (1) The region witnessed major improvements across many health-related key indicators such as life expectancy, child mortality, and levels of communicable disease, yet the region faces a rise in non-communicable diseases resulting from life-style changes. (2) Access to health care is severely stratified. (3) Low-income countries (LIC) face a double burden of continued levels of communicable diseases and rising non-communicable diseases. (4) Regions facing military conflict and war face disproportionate health problems, including physical and mental disabilities. (5) While educational enrollment rates in primary and secondary school have advanced dramatically, It is estimated that in the year 2011 around 4.8 million primary school age children in the Arab states were out of school and some countries still have a high illiteracy rate and a low school enrollment of girls compared to boys1, and low quality of education.2. (6) Excessive funds are often spent on luxury housing developments, while significant sectors of the population lack access to affordable housing. (7) It is becoming increasingly difficult for LIC to cope with urbanization and the transition from rural to urban-based settlement and the challenges that have developed out of the rise in informal housing schemes. (8) Social political and economic exclusion is a major obstacle to stability and social cohesion, impacting the populations in different ways across the region. (9) Expanding markets and private investments exist alongside rising poverty levels, unemployment, and economic inequality. (10) An increased number of middle-class citizens are sliding into poverty and the unemployment rate in the region remains at one of the highest levels in the world, particularly amongst young people and women.

The paper also examines the following governing trends which have impacted the possibilities for the region to tackle key challenges related to the social dimensions of sustainable development. (1) Focusing on immunizations has led to a disappearance of diseases such as poliomyelitis from the region and the control of many preventable diseases. (2) While increasing attention is paid to family planning, reproductive health, and the problem of drug addiction, some health concerns receive minimal attention, despite their urgency in the region, such as disability and. Acquired immune deficiency syndrome/ Human immunodeficiency virus (AIDS/HIV) (3) Much focus was put on achieving quantifiable changes in education and improving literacy and most countries now have substantive national literacy plans as well as increased levels of participation in international assessment programs. (4) shortages in affordable housing was mainly addressed by drawing on public and private sector resources such as increasing land grants, loans and financing (5), Infrastructure improvements, renovations, new construction and resettlement programs were made in both Middle Income Countries (MIC) and Lower Income Countries (LIC). (6) While several countries have alleviated poverty levels in the past 20 years, numbers of the poor have remained high in Yemen, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia. (7) Focus on industrial support for employment 1 UNESCO EFA global monitoring report 2013/14: teaching and learning- Achieving for all pp 52.70.71.76 & http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002256/225660e.pdf: accessed on 12/03/2015@ 16:04 hrs 2 Ibid. iii was primarily made on the presumption that there will be rapid progress as opposed to areas that need development.

Finally, this paper suggests rights-based strategies rooted in the principles of social justice as potential avenues for implementing the SDGs in the near future. These strategy proposals account for meeting general regional goals and specific realities and disparities within and across each country. They require collaborations between civil society, governments and national, regional, and international stakeholders and they focus on the following general areas:

Health:
1. Eliminating communicable and non-communicable disease through the integration of
prevention, poverty reduction, and overall well being
2. Reducing disparities in access to health care
3. Implementing HIV education and treatment
4. Collecting and publishing data on health care access and quality of health care for all
5. Monitoring and regulating costs and quality of health care within the private sector
Education:
6. Curriculum development and teacher training
7. Improving the quality of education and the conditions of schools
8. Linking education to employment
Housing:
9. Ensuring affordable housing safety and safety for all
10. Improving housing conditions and upgrading informal and underdeveloped housing
Eradicating poverty and unemployment:
11. Channeling the benefits of economic growth to benefit the poor
12. Creating more equitable inter-regional and north-south economic policies
13. Increasing transparency in government structures and critically assessing the impact of
international financial institutions’ prescriptions on poverty levels in the region.
14. Creating more jobs, stability and sustainability in employment, and fair and equitable
taxation.
15. Targeting women and youth in efforts to end unemployment

By understanding the challenges related to the social pillar and potential strategies for transformation, the Arab region can coherently and effectively voice its priorities towards achieving a sustainable future that leaves no one behind.

Sectarianism and National Emergencies: Barriers or Facilitators for Women, Sexual Minorities and Transgender People

by | Jan 8, 2024

This study investigated the relationship between moments of heightened national crisis and sectarianism and the possibilities for feminist and LGBTQ interventions into public discourse in Lebanon. It focused on the national crisis surrounding the You Stink Protests of 2015. These protests were concerned with the garbage crisis, government corruption, the centralization of services, and new parliamentary elections. They called for alternative solutions and management and committed to exposing the corruption of the government. The research entailed interviews and participant observations with feminist activists who participated in the 2015 You Stink protests including broad political coalitions that formed during this period such as Al Sha’b Yurid [The People Want] as well as the feminist coalition, The Feminist Bloc.

Project Muse: Intersectionality in an Era of Globalization: The Implications of the UN World Conference against Racism for Transnational Feminist Practices–A Conference Report

by | Dec 9, 2023

As we prepared this report, we struggled tojind the meaning ofthe UN World Conference against Racism (wcar) buried under the rubble ofthe first week ofthe U.S. bombing campaign against Afghanistan and the devastation and massive loss oflife at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania. Like a historic dividing line that bisects our hearts and sense oftime— before September 11, 2001 and after— activists and organizers returned home from Durban tojind that the political terrain had shifted beneath ourfeet in ways we might still be measuringjor decades to come. Despite the dijpculry ofthe times, we need the message and the lessons gleanedJTom this historic anti-racism gathering more than ever as accounts pour injrom all over the country of the over 700 reported instances ofhate crimes committed against Arab Americans and those who have been mistakenfor them, mostly members ofSouth Asian communities. The post-September 11 political context has not only witnessed an upsurge in racist violence, it has also seen the implementation ofretrogressive policies, including indefinite detention and the renewal ofanti-immigrant policies such as “secret evidence” as a basis/or detention and deportation.

Project Muse: The Cry for Human Rights: Violence, Transition, and the Egyptian Revolution

by | Dec 9, 2023

In January 2011, Egypt and, indeed, the world witnessed something immense and unprecedented: millions of people from every sector of society took to the streets to overthrow their dictator. As known scholars and activists involved and interested in Egyptian politics, both authors of this essay were approached to comment on the momentous events and/or speak about them at public forums. Various media outlets sought out Atef Said, an Egyptian human rights lawyer and sociologist living in the area. The questions they asked, however, were disconcerting and followed a similar pattern: ‘‘What if Islamists take over? What about the fate of minorities and women?’’ Nadine Naber had a similar experience. From Facebook conversations to events at the university at which she taught, U.S.-based audiences consistently asked Naber about the potential for an ‘‘Islamic takeover’’ and the consequences for ‘‘women’s rights.’’

The Rules of Forced Engagement: Race, Gender, and the Culture of Fear among Arab Immigrants in San Francisco Post-9/11

by | Dec 5, 2023

Based on ethnographic research on the impact of the aftermath of 11 September 2001 on Arab immigrant communities in San Francisco, this essay explores the ways that the Bush administration’s ‘war on terror’ has taken on local form in everyday life. I argue that the post-9/11 backlash is not a historical anomaly, but represents a recurring process of the construction of the Other within liberal polities in which long-term trends of racial exclusion become intensified within moments of crisis within the body politic. I further argue that class, gender, sexuality, religion, and citizenship simultaneously operated intersectionally to produce a variety of engagements with anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism. Finally, I argue that, together, state policies and everyday forms of harassment have produced an ‘internment of the psyche’, or an emotive form of internment that engenders multiple forms of power and control in the realm of the psyche.

Beyond Erasure and Profiling: Cultivating Strong and Vibrant Arab American Communities in Chicagoland

by | Dec 5, 2023

In this report, we examine the state of racial justice for Arab Americans who live in the Chicago Metropolitan Statistical Area, which we refer to colloquially as Chicagoland. Despite their myriad differences, some of which we will attend to in the report, there are important continuities in the conditions and experiences of Arab Americans in Chicago. Arab Americans come to the United States from the Arab countries of the Middle East and North Africa, countries that are themselves comprised of many racial and ethnic communities that have distinct histories and cultures. While not everyone in the Arab region identifies as “Arab,” we use the term Arab American as a shorthand to refer to the diverse immigrants, refugees, and their descendants who have come to the United States from Arab countries since the turn of the 20th century.