UN says EU and US thwart Middle East reform quest

By Andrew Beatty

Date: 07/04/05

Western attempts to democratise the Middle East risk derailing domestic efforts, the author of a major UN report on the Arab world has warned.

According to Nader Fergany who headed the team which drafted the 2004 UN Arab Human Development Report, current EU and US attempts to promote reform are producing little progress.

Fergany said that the Group of Eight's (G8) 'Broader Middle East Initiative' - endorsed by the EU and US in June last year - is to lose relevance as it "risks deteriorating into meetings of western governments with Arab governments".

The EU cautiously backed the plan during an EU-US summit in Ireland last year after Washington watered down its proposal, dispelling concerns that the EU's own ten-year old 'Barcelona Process' would be superseded.

Both programmes aim to tackle the democratic deficit, illiteracy and economic stagnation in the Middle East and North Africa.

After a cornerstone meeting in Morocco last year, the 'Forum for the Future', Washington and Brussels are currently preparing for a summit expected to be held in Bahrain in November.

But Fergany warned that "it could promote cosmetic reforms… if it falls into the trap of accommodating and courting regimes".

This is the third in a series of four reports on freedom in the Arab world. Drawn up by team of over 100 predominantly Arab academics and activists, the reports have become a reference point for supporters of Middle East reform.

Fergany argues that the situation in the region has barely improved in the two years since the publication of the first report.

"The United States has given us the first colonisation of the twenty-first century, one as sinister in some ways as the Israeli occupation of Palestine," he said, adding that the US occupation of Iraq "increased human suffering".

In addition, tough anti-terror legislation had done much to harm Europe's image, developing "a justifiable aversion to democracy as defined in the West" he said. "Western democracy has acquired a bad name throughout the world."

Much of the lack of freedom is laid squarely at the door of Arab governments: "Of all the impediments to an Arab renaissance, political restrictions on human development are the most stubborn," the report says.

The report does note some progress on reforms, but adds that these have been "embryonic and fragmentary". The Sudanese constitution comes in for criticism as do the governments of Egypt, Syria and Sudan for implementing quasi-permanently an emergency rule.

It notes all the members of the Gulf co-operation council, with which the EU is negotiating a free trade agreement, prohibit the formation of political parties.

"We are expecting a backlash [from Arab governments]," said one UN official involved with the project.

The 2004 Arab Human Development Report, published in April 2005 by the United Nations Development Programme and drafted by Nader Fergany, warns that Western attempts to democratise the Middle East risked derailing domestic efforts.