Interesting Spin

The third Arab Human Development Report (AHDR), released on Tuesday under U.N. auspices, said most reforms were “embryonic and fragmentary” and did not amount to a serious effort to end repression in the region, which has some of the world’s most authoritarian governments.

The United States, which says it aims to promote democracy in the region, contributed to an international context that hampered progress through its policy toward Israel, its actions in Iraq and security measures affecting Arabs, the report said.

Both the U.S. and Egyptian governments criticized parts of an early draft of the report, leading to a dispute that held up its release for at least three months.

The report, which covers the year from Oct. 2003, was written before elections in Iraq and street protests in Lebanon that the Bush administration has cited as evidence of change.

Rima Khalaf, the senior UNDP official who presided over the intellectuals and reformers who wrote the report, said Arab states had to embark on reforms that expanded public freedom.

To do nothing would deepen the imbalance in the distribution of power and wealth, and “lead some to perpetrate more violence and deepen internal conflicts,” she told Reuters.

AMERICAN OBJECTIONS

Following the American and Egyptian objections, the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) eventually decided to put the report out under its logo, with a disclaimer in the preface.

“Some of the views expressed by the authors are not shared by UNDP or the U.N. … (But) This report clearly reflects a very real anger and concern felt across the region,” wrote Mark Malloch Brown, UNDP Administrator at the time it was written.

The most controversial sections described the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and the occupation of Iraq by the United States and its allies as violations of freedom and obstacles to development.

Khalaf said in the launch address that over a 10th of Arabs now lived under foreign occupation.

“Occupation is a confiscation of rights by violence,” she said, adding that last year’s Abu Ghraib scandal, when U.S. interrogators tortured Iraqi prisoners, meant detainees’ basic rights were no longer protected by international jurisdiction.

The report said occupation of Arab land had given governments an excuse to postpone democratization, forced Arab reformers to divert energy away from reform and strengthened groups that advocate violence.

It also accused the United States of undermining the international system by repeatedly using or threatening to use its U.N. Security Council veto, enabling Israel to build new Jewish settlements and extend its barrier in the West Bank.

In Iraq, the occupation increased human suffering and, because the United States failed to protect citizens, there was “an unprecedented loss of internal security,” it said.

It said U.S.-led authorities had dismantled the old state but made little progress in building a new one.

WESTERN AMBIGUITY

The U.S. response to the September 2001 attacks on the United States added to the ambiguity in the Western attitude to human rights in the Middle East, it said.

“The ‘war on terror’ has cut into many Arab freedoms … An unfortunate by-product in some countries has been that Arabs are increasingly the victims of stereotyping, disproportionately harassed or detained without cause,” it said.

“The fact that some Western countries … have taken steps widely perceived to be discriminatory and repressive, has weakened the position of those reformers calling for Arab governments … to change their course.”

The report noted an increase in activity by civic groups pressing for changes inside Arab countries, some reform initiatives by Arab governments, some improvements in education and some empowerment of women in the Arab world.

But it added: “There is a near-complete consensus that there is a serious failing in the Arab world, and that this is located specifically in the political sphere …