ESCWA Sees Knowledge, Professional Challenge in Arab Spring Commission Launches Millennium Goals Report in Time of Transition

Beirut, 21 February 2012 (UN Information Services) — Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) today said the Arab Spring is a knowledge and professional challenge for United Nations agencies which these organizations do not shun, and have rather begun to reconsider the development paradigm itself building on lessons from this experience. ESCWA Deputy Executive Secretary Nadim Khouri said the Arab Spring has amplified responsibilities of governments, international organizations and peoples to identify their clear path towards a national and Arab developmental, revivalist project. These statements were made during the launch of ESCWA’s report entitled “Arab Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Report 2011: An inclusive approach to development in a time of transition”. The event, held at the Central Administration of the Lebanese University (LU), was jointly organized by ESCWA and the LU’s Institute of Social Sciences, and was attended by LU President Adnane Al Sayed Hussein, Advisor of the Lebanese Minister of Economy and Trade Roger Melki, Lebanese MP Abd El Latif El Zein, as well as professors and students from LU’s institutes of higher education. In a statement delivered on behalf of UN Under-Secretary General and ESCWA Executive Secretary Rima Khalaf, Khouri said it is insufficient to rely only on reading figures and statistics to get people’s pulse and grasp the dynamics swaying their hearts and minds, for people are development’s means and end. It was on that basis that the report contained new ideas that are not limited to a narrow, specialized domain as much as they are targeting first and foremost those concerned with change, he added. The ESCWA official said the MDGs report is an outline of global development priorities for the 2000-2015 period, and opting to launch it with LU is because it is the right setting for strengthening partnership between academia and the U.N. He noted that over the past decade Arab countries have achieved partial developmental progress and at different rates, and “if we are living in a globalized system as everyone asserts, this means the world community and the global economic system are fundamental partners in success or failure, globally and at the level of developing countries.” Al Sayyed Hussein, for his part, commended ESCWA’s work that contributes to process of development through its studies, which became documented in books and publications serving university students in their researches. He added that LU was able to keep up with research and practical advances in this sphere, pointing out the need to reinforce cooperation between his university and U.N. agencies. LU chief said overall regional stability is needed to achieve development and fully benefit from ESCWA’s report. This stability could be reached when decision making processes are based on science when practicing politics. Al Sayyed Hussein highlighted the importance of the concept of citizenship, urging ESCWA to organize a scientific conference on this concept in view of its nexus to the decision-making process that is based nowadays on fragmented foundations that are bound to fail. In his statement, Melki noted that following the Arab Spring people were now speaking about a new, more inclusive development approach after it was previously focused only on social, economic and environmental aspects. This approach includes demographic transformations, rural-to-urban migration and their effects on national, regional and world economy. He pointed out the need to compare figures contained in ESCWA’s report with those of other countries of the world to gauge progress or regression on a wider scale. Melki stressed the importance of the report, saying it can serve as a major reference for university students and for governments’ administrations and politicians who could benefit from its indicators in bettering and fine-tuning data available to them. Following the opening statements, ESCWA Regional Advisor on the MDGs Adib Nehmeh highlighted the report’s major points, analyses and figures regarding the Millennium Goals. He also tackled arguments raised about measuring progress, indicators cited and challenges to the achievement of these goals. Nehmeh pointed out the Arab initiative the report contains in this context, namely launching a regional program to support achieving these goals in the Least Developed Arab countries and in Palestine, given that this is a regional priority and responsibility. Professor of Development at the Institute of Social Sciences, Dr Ali Moussaoui, presented the report’s chapter on Social Policies, while General Director of the Middle East and North Africa Food Safety Associates, Atef Idriss, discussed its chapter on Economic Policies.