For the Arab world, 2022 will be even more difficult – Rami Khouri

If, at the end of the year, you review what has changed in the Arab world in 2021 and what the future holds, you are likely to miss the main threats facing the peoples and states of the region.

Climate change, ideological conflicts and ongoing wars will continue to wreak havoc in most states, but there are also older and more corrosive dangers threatening the well-being of families and the integrity of entire countries, as a number of new ones reminded us. international reports published last week. A clear majority of Arab families – around two-thirds in critical sectors like economics and education – can no longer meet their basic needs and slowly and quietly slide into destitution, despair or worse.

The investigations show how the covid-19 pandemic has worsened the already alarming conditions of Arab citizens in the sectors that should make a dignified existence possible: school goals and related human skills, access to adequate food, overcoming inequalities between citizens, creating a sufficient number of jobs for its citizens.

Without school
The most frightening discoveries – according to a report written by Unicef, the World Bank and Unesco on the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the progress of Arab states in terms of education – come with the bad news that about two thirds of children in the region of ages 5 to 14 were unable to read properly even before covid-19. Now this condition could affect nearly 70 percent of all children, due to absences from school in the past two years. The proportion of 15-year-olds who perform poorly in school tests by international standards could rise from 60.1 to 71.6 percent.

This will ensure that legions of poorly educated Arab youth will be unable to contribute to their national economies, other than as a manual, unskilled labor force in the informal economy. They will suffer lifelong poverty, vulnerability and marginalization, with mental health problems, socialization, and reduced personal well-being and satisfaction. Many will likely become young men and women in disarray and alienation, the typical candidates to join radical and violent movements that end up shaking the integrity of countries and social systems.

Once strong and centralized states have become polarized and fragmented, some even exploding (usually with the contribution of foreign military action, as we have seen in recent years in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Palestine, Lebanon, Libya and elsewhere ).

The minority of young Arabs who manage to get a good education will dominate the public or private sectors or emigrate to seek a better life abroad. This has been the case for at least four decades, with governments unable or unwilling to correct distortions in their policies and economies. This will further aggravate the equality gaps that already exist within Arab countries and between states.

The 2022 World Report on Inequalities, released last week, confirms that the Arab-majority region of the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) is the most unequal in the world. In these territories, the richest 10 per cent control 58 per cent of income (compared with 36 per cent in Europe). It seems difficult to do worse in terms of inequality – UN studies in recent years have repeatedly shown that poor and vulnerable citizens make up two thirds of the total Arab population – but the Covid-19 crisis has even made matters worse.

Poverty, vulnerability and inequality continue to spread in the Arab world, partly because young people are not prepared to take up new jobs, and partly – as an article from the respected Economic Research Forum says – because the private sector in Arab countries is not creating enough opportunities. of decent work.

The majority of educated Arab youths end up accepting informal and low-paid jobs, due to state policies and private sector practices since the economic reforms of the 1990s: policies that have not generated enough decent jobs in the formal sector , if anything, favoring informal work, low productivity sectors and the profit of large companies, which in turn have led to a low participation of the workforce.

It is therefore not surprising that youth unemployment in many Arab countries has reached 40-50 per cent and the situation never seems to improve. These structural problems are the result of deeper and more chronic dynamics, such as political instability, the ineffectiveness of regulatory frameworks and labor market institutions, fiscal restraints, corruption, and a lack of economic differentiation.

Without protection
The last two years, marked by the pressures of Covid-19, have only exacerbated the feeling of helplessness of citizens and the unreliable answers offered by the state’s social protection. Even in Arab countries that have offered some emergency assistance to families in difficulty – as emerged in a meeting of experts of the UN Economic and Social Commission for West Asia last September – the monetary contributions have been inadequate in the in most cases, being less than 20 percent of average income or expenses on average. These experts were unanimous in pointing out that the harsh reality of Arab families is due to poverty and related social problems, and to historical structural barriers to income redistribution and equitable economic and political participation.

A report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), released on Dec.16, revealed that the percentage of undernourished Arabs has increased by 15.8 percent since 2014 and, more alarmingly, by 91 percent over the past two decades. Covid-19 added another 4.8 million undernourished people, reaching a total of 69 million. Moderate or severe food uncertainty has also grown in recent years, reaching 141 million.

Deteriorating access to food has affected all sectors of society, including the dwindling middle class. The FAO report notes that “about 32.3 percent, or almost a third, of the region’s population in 2020 did not have regular access to sufficient and nutritious food”.

And, unsurprisingly, the same alarm bell rings again in our ears when the FAO says that hunger and food insecurity stem from “pre-existing vulnerabilities and exposure to multiple traumas and pressures such as poverty, inequality, conflict. climate change and others “.

In other words, all of these recent reports tell us, in slightly different ways, that most Arab societies and economies over the past forty years have been run in an inefficient, unfair and often incompetent way.

These trends paint a grim picture for years to come, in which more and more people will lack the jobs, income, health, water, food and educational services necessary for a decent life. It is also impossible for all Arab citizens to nail their governments to their responsibilities, and thus halt the disastrous descent towards the collapse of their countries, with the unstoppable spread of human misery.

The consequences of all this in the long term are all the more frightening when you consider that it is almost impossible for poor families today to escape misery and become the middle class. Governments lacking the funds, knowledge or willpower to reduce poverty and improve the general well-being of their citizens are now reacting to the suffering of their population by mostly military means, or by repressing freedom of expression and other fundamental rights. It is no coincidence that hungry, angry, humiliated and increasingly desperate citizens in the region have unleashed riots against their ruling elites since 2010.

Other reports such as those of last week, which confirm the worsening conditions of most Arab citizens in the face of the neglect of their states, portend dark times for both citizens and states.

(Translation by Federico Ferrone)