If not Europe, then what?

The choice facing Malta is not between joining the European Union and staying out. The present state is not an option. Malta cannot stay it alone in a world where even the biggest countries have become too small on the shrinking globe. Malta has to join up with other countries, either to the north or to the south. That is the real choice.

The difference between the two options is that European countries to our north are among the most advanced and successful in the world. Their standards are among the highest, whether measured in terms of economic prosperity, freedom, democracy, protection of consumers, protection of the environment, and prospects for the future of their younger generations. Sadly, the Arab countries to Malta's south are still lagging behind and have achieved lower standards in all these respects.

This is the clear conclusion of the Arab Human Development Report 2002, just published by the United Nations Development Programme and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development. It is readily available on the site http://www.undp.org/rbas/ahdr.

The report was written by a group of distinguished Arab intellectuals and has been praised for its wealth of unbiased and objective analysis.

After a detailed and scientific examination of the political and social situation in 17 Arab countries, they reach the conclusion that "no Arab country enjoys high human welfare. Seven Arab countries, representing less than 10 per cent of the population of the sample, enjoy medium human welfare. The remaining 10 Arab countries, accounting for more than 90 per cent of the sample population, have low human welfare".

Lack of freedom

The first fact that emerges from the report is that, while the Arab region has outperformed sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia as regards human development, it is still below the levels reached by East Asia, including China, and Latin America - let alone Europe and North America. The inadequacy of the Arab region is all the more deplor-able since many of its member states are rich in oil and money.

The report stresses that the Arab region's human development is hampered by three key deficits - lack of freedom, lack of women's empowerment and lack of knowledge and human capabilities relative to income.

As regards freedom, the report says that "out of seven world regions, the Arab countries had the lowest freedom score in the late 1990s" - the highest scores being those of North America, Europe and Australia. The Arab region also has the lowest value of all regions of the world for what is called "voice and accountability". This measures freedom of speech, including press freedom, and the accountability of the rulers to the governed.

These objective truths need not come as a surprise to Maltese who are acquainted with the two Arab countries geographically closest to us. Libya has been a military dictatorship for more than 30 years. Freedom and democracy as we know them do not exist there, despite the riches. Tunisia has made economic progress, but it remains a police state parading as a democracy, where the rights and freedoms that we take for granted are infringed on a permanent basis.

The UNDP report says: "Reform of the legal system in Arab countries needs to focus on ensuring that the law and associated administrative procedures guarantee citizens' rights and are compatible with fundamental human rights, particularly the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of association for all, under the aegis of a truly independent judiciary that impartially enforces the rule of law... Once these freedoms are in place, governance reform, designed to enhance voice and participation in Arab countries, can move forward in three critical areas: strengthening local governance; liberating civil-society organisations; and fostering free and responsible media."

The first reform consists of reducing the burden of domination by the state and ending the system whereby government "authorisation" is necessary for the operation of non-governmental organisations, including trade unions, unions of industrialists, the press and human rights organisations. "The attitudes of Arab public authorities range from opposition to manipulation to freedom under surveillance... Public authorities are not yet open to associations' positions on issues such as delegation, consultation and decentralisation. Authorities are sometimes uncomfortable with the wide social bases established by large civil organisations, which can be mobilised by political parties outside government for their own goals."

Other deficits

The report remarks that "any society is as free as its media". It adds that in its Press Freedom Survey 2001, the New York-based Freedom House showed that not a single Arab country had genuinely free media. Only three states had media rated as partly free, the rest being "not free". In particular, state control over broadcast media that reach large segments of society, including the illiterate, remains widespread. The broadcast media are used as instruments of crude government propaganda, as are newspapers. A superficial look at Libyan and Tunisian newspapers is enough to illustrate this statement.

The second "glaring" deficit observed in Arab countries is in women's empowerment. The share of girls in school enrolment, especially in higher education, is still relatively low, even though some Arab countries have marked important improvements in recent years. Compared to other regions in the world, only sub-Saharan Africa has a lower score than the Arab region in women's empowerment, mainly because of the limited participation of women in political organisations.

The third deficit is the knowledge deficit relative to income. Human capabilities in the Arab region are relatively weak and poorly utilised. The report remarks that "in an age of knowledge intensity, poor knowledge acquisition, let alone its production, is a serious shortfall.

"A telling indicator of the poor level of educational attainment in the Arab countries is the persistence of illiteracy rates that are higher, and educational enrolment rates that are lower, than those of dynamic less developed countries in East Asia and Latin America... The Arab region has the lowest level of access to information and communication technology of all regions of the world, even lower than sub-Saharan Africa". In all these respects, Europe and North America are among the best.

Dissatisfied youth

With these accumulated deficits, the Arab region offers unfavourable prospects to young people. An opinion poll of Arab youth, analysed in the report, clearly suggests that job availability is their most common concern, followed by education

The report comments: "Remarkably, 51 per cent of older youths expressed a desire to emigrate to other countries, clearly indicating their dissatisfaction with current conditions and future prospects in their home countries. Among those contemplating emigration, European countries were the favourite destination (46 per cent of respondents), followed by the United States and Canada (36 per cent) and other Arab countries (13 per cent). The implicit judgment of how livable these young people consider Arab societies to be is evident."

The Arab intellectuals who wrote the report on Arab Human Devel-opment 2002, are aware that "recent years have seen changes in how some Arab governments function. Political systems have begun to open up". However, they have to conclude that on closer observation the picture is more complex. "The pro-cess remains heavily regulated and partial; it has not been opened up to all citizens... the process of political liberalisation has bypassed too many people". In the end they have to conclude that "political participation is less advanced in the Arab world than in other developing regions... Mass mobilisation-type regimes still exist in a number of Arab countries, freedom of association is restricted in other cases; levels of political participation are uneven, and the transfer of power through the ballot box is not a common phenomenon in the Arab world."

The historic choice before the Maltese people is whether their future should be tied to Europe and the West or to the Arab world. At the time of the Cold War, some Maltese preached the necessity of keeping at an equal distance between Western Europe and the Communist world. The collapse of Communism showed that view to be bankrupt. Some of the same people now oppose Malta's European future on the grounds that it would diminish our prospects of building strong links to the Arab world.

The national interest demands that we tie Malta's future to Europe, which is one of the most advanced regions of the world in terms of political freedom and economic success. The alternative - that of making common cause with the Arab world - does not offer any prospect for Malta's youth.