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Interview: Rima Khalaf-Hunaidi Discusses A Report Written By Arabs On The State Of Development Of Arab Countries
All Things Considered: July 2, 2002
 Arab Report
LYNN NEARY, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Lynn Neary.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
In Arab countries, there are vast human resources and higher expenditure on education than elsewhere in the developing world. Life expectancy is generally high, adult illiteracy has declined and dire poverty--life on less than a dollar a day--is more rare there than just about anywhere else. But freedom, women's rights and participation in the modern communications and computer revolution are in short supply. These are all findings of a United Nations Development Program report released today in Cairo. Unlike many other pronouncements on the state of the Arab world, this report was written by a team of Arab intellectuals.
Rima Khalaf Hunaidi, the director of the UN Development Program's Regional Bureau for Arab States, joins us by phone from Cairo.
Rima Khalaf, first, some of the deficits. This report measures freedom, which seems to be a pretty subjective act, but it concludes that the Arab world actually scored lower than any other region of the world. How do you arrive at that conclusion?
Dr. RIMA KHALAF HUNAIDI (UN Development Program): It was measured in a number of ways. One of them is called voice and accountability. It looks into the political process itself, into the freedom of the press and other areas, and this is where the Arab region scored lowest among the seven regions of the world.
SIEGEL: Second deficit was women's rights. Do you find that the lot of women relative to men in the Arab world is worse than it is elsewhere?
Dr. KHALAF: Yes, it is. Only sub-Saharan Africa scored lower than Arab countries when it comes to the important of women. There are certain areas where women are deprived of political rights, even in countries where we have elected parliaments. Some of them do not grant the right to elect or run for elections for women. You see very low participation by women in also economic processes. So it's both political and economic participation that is very low in the Arab region.
SIEGEL: Now in various parts of the report where you address deficits in education and an involvement in the intellectual life of the world, you cite a stunning statistic which has to do with the number of books translated into Arabic nowadays, which is very, very low.
Dr. KHALAF: It is. Actually, we were concerned at the low level of production of what we call creative output. So it is not only translations, it's production of new books, even production of movies, also the level of translation, which is low. I mean, for Arab countries it's around 330 books a year, which is less than one-fifth of what Greece translates in one year.
SIEGEL: There are also some measures by which the Arab countries are very surprisingly low, and that is in terms of access to the Internet or to a computer, or to a cell phone, to a mobile telephone, remarkably low compared to other developing parts of the world.
Dr. KHALAF: Yes, it is. Only 0.6 percent of Arabs have access to the Internet. But the report is concerned not only with this aspect of connectivity, it is concerned with the lack of Arab content on the Internet. So even if you give people accessibility to the Internet, there isn't still much material in Arabic that they can access. So the recommendation goes both ways from this report.
SIEGEL: Dr. Khalaf, part of what this UN-sponsored report written by Arab intellectuals is saying is that Arab governments discourage freedom, reduce participation in government, are not transparent. How has this gone over with Arab governments? What are you hearing today?
Dr. KHALAF: Well, it wasn't the objective of the report to be provoking Arab governments or people. It was actually to provoke a dialogue. It's very different from hearing it from the rest of the world. This is a look by Arabs for Arabs. We hope that this would allow Arab societies to move forward on what they see as the real problems facing them at this stage.
SIEGEL: Dr. Khalaf, thank you very much for talking with us today.
Dr. KHALAF: Thank you very much. Thanks.
SIEGEL: Rima Khalaf Hunaidi is the director of the Regional Bureau for Arab States of the United Nations Development Program. She spoke to us from Cairo.
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