Arab Human Development Report

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The Arab Human Development Report is published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). However most of the writers, contributors and editors are independent from the UNDP body. It was first published in 1999 and since AHDR 2002, 2003, 2004 were released. It is condidered as a different, challenging and new point of view in development field, despite having many common indicators with the Human Development Index of the UNDP. The two important and new contributions made by the Arab Human Development Report in this field are, firstly its attempt to include 'Women's empowerment gap' and secondly 'Information technology' gap. Hence the report claims to evaluate the Arab World in terms of these current capacities.

In the 2003 report the writers were very critical of the tendency in Arab education to depend too much on rote learning and to not encourage creative thinking. Al Jazeera and the Economist describe education and science as being in a "state of crisis"^[1], and "self-doomed to failure"; three things were lacking: freedom, knowledge, and an adequate status for women.^[2]

The quality of education in the Arab World has deteriorated severely, and there is a severe mismatch between the labour market and the education system. Adult illiteracy rates have declined but are still very high: 65m adults are illiterate, almost two-thirds of them women. Some 10m children still have no schooling at all. One of the gravest results of their poor education is that the Arabs, who once led the world in science, are dropping ever further behind in scientific research and in information technology. Investment in research and development is less than one-seventh of the world average. Only 0.6% of the population uses the Internet, and 1.2% have personal computers. The 2002 report comments on the severe shortage of new writing; in the 1,000 years since the reign of the Caliph Mamoun, say the authors, as many books have translated into Arabic as Spain translates in one year.^[3]

The Economist notes:

The most delicate issue of all ... is the part that Islam plays in delaying and impeding the Arab world's advance towards the ever-receding renaissance that its intellectuals crave. One of the report's signed articles explains Islam's support for justice, peace, tolerance, equilibrium and all good things besides. But most secularists believe that the pervasive Islamisation of society ... has played a significant part in stifling constructive Arab thought ... From their schooldays onwards, Arabs are instructed that they should not defy tradition, that they should respect authority, that truth should be sought in the text and not in experience. Fear of fauda (chaos) and fitna (schism) are deeply engrained in much Arab-Islamic teaching. "The role of thought", wrote a Syrian intellectual "is to explain and transmit...and not to search and question."^[2]

Al Aljazeera summarizes:

True democracy is absent and desperately needed. Most of the time human rights are no more than a poster hung in sham councils and organisations. The educational system is severely retarded; schools produce ignorant young men and women who excel in rote memorisation more than educated innovators. Most intellectuals, even if they deny it, realise that most of what was said in the most recent Arab Human Development Report is true.^[4]