Amman hosted the fourth Mediterranean Development Forum between October 6-9, 2002. The development community of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region was represented by a diverse group of over 500 participants, encompassing members of NGOs and think tanks, academics, public and private sector leaders and journalists, who convened to address some of the most pressing issues confronting the region.
Under the theme of ‘Progress for All, Visions for the Future,’ the gathering included four specialized workshops, five special sessions, and three plenary sessions that debated various visions for a better future.
Like the three previous MDF conferences, MDF4 witnessed a lively and open discussion of the key development concerns of the region. The participants debated issues ranging from Empowering Local Government Institutions to Employment and Unemployment, Fostering Digital Inclusion, and Trade, Investment, and the New Economy.
Special sessions were also held on critical regional development issues such as gender, media, civil society, corporate social responsibility, and youth. The conclusions of these deliberations will subsequently appear in MDF publications.
The Trade, Investment and the New Economy workshop addressed the threats, challenges and opportunities of the globalization, and among the key questions debated was the tradeoff between regional integration with Europe and multilateral liberalization. The logic of regional blocs was accepted.
There will be more advantages for MENA to speed up the process of South-South integration ahead of integration with the EU. Opting for deeper rather than shallow integration should be the strategy. In terms of gains and losses from globalization, tariff dismantling should proceed despite for lobbies that call for protectionism which are powerful in our part of the world.
Low wages in South will no longer be a competitive advantage. Globalization requires capitalizing on new instruments and tools, which are increasingly in a system where demand in the North is met through subcontracting arrangements and where large distributors rely on small supplies. Growing large is not the strategy but economy of clusters and improvement in knowledge flows, the ICT infrastructure, managing marketing skills are the strategy.
Key factors to success include a long-term vision and capitalizing on existing comparative advantage; attracting FDI by liberalization of services, improvements in investment climate and changes in regulatory framework; and harmonization of rules and norms and reform of domestic financial infrastructure to adapt to international rules.
A most important challenge facing the MENA region is reducing the high level of unemployment, exacerbated by rapidly growing populations. The region’s unemployment rate of 20 percent is one of the highest in the world, exceeding that of Europe and Central Asia (11 percent) and Latin America and the Caribbean (9.2 percent).
What makes the problem more acute is its concentration among youth, whose unemployment is twice national averages. Moreover, high unemployment translates into a waste of the region’s scarce resources. It has direct adverse effects, especially on those with no assets to compensate for joblessness. Further, a high concentration of unemployment among the educated youth can be potentially destabilizing.
How can the region meet this challenge? Extensive analysis and discussions among the participation of MDF4 concluded that partial solutions are inadequate at best and misleading at worst. Hiring the unemployed in government or extending credit to a few firms in the SME sector will not resolve the problem.
Instead, the most effective solution involves a set of policy and institutional reforms to: expand the demand, improve the skills of the population, and ensure the efficient functioning of the labor market. Expending the demand for labor requires stimulating economic activity in countries in recession. It also requires boosting labor-intensive growth, which was meager in the region.
It also requires policies to reduce the bias against exports and labor-intensive investments. On the supply side, progress on enrollment in the education system needs to be augmented by reforms to improve the quality and mix of graduates through changing the incentive structure facing all the actors involved in the process. Finally, reforms are needed to ensure that the labor market is more flexible, while protecting the rights of workers and providing decent working conditions.
Decentralization and local government empowerment is the order of the day in the MENA region. Demand for decentralization is growing both for its developmental function and for democratization. Decentralization relies on the need for the states of the region to make a strategic political choice in moving on agendas of institutional and administrative reform, and empowering societal and local actors to contribute to social and economic development and have a larger voice in public choices and policies.
Modes of decentralization are of course specific to countries, national legacies, and territorial configuration. It is not necessary to promote a uniform model of decentralization. Creative modalities have to be developed including forms of asymmetric decentralization, gradual decentralization and modular decentralization.
Decentralization strategies in the region should balance between revenue-sharing schemes and rigorous financial management, and between increased local autonomies and the necessary allocation of national resources to redress uneven development.
Finally, decentralization relates very much to the process of reform and renewal of the state functions and roles in the world and in the MENA region, in the context of globalization, increased privatization, emerging civil societies and the new division of labor between the national and the local.
The challenges of fostering digital inclusion are real, and deal with the issues of education, access, relevant content, infrastructure, legislation, investment, cooperation and regulation, among others. Ignoring collective action may entail reduced productivity, opportunity, awareness, and education in the region.
Establishing a proper Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure is essential for success in this evolving and dynamic field due to the importance of the infrastructure on these technologies. By using qualified ICT tools, education can be made available for more people.
With learning networks, good educational practices and innovative ways of learning can be shared. Also via the Internet, schools and educational institutions can enable their students to take advantage if the information society and teach them to evaluate the information.
There is thus an urgent need to create an environment that can accelerate the region’s connectivity, and identify how to use emerging ICT means and tools for developmental purposes. The is also a need for core vision and objectives to tackling the digital inclusion issue, focusing on the role of Government, NGOs, academe and the private sector in harnessing ICT as a developmental solution.
The session on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) saw the sharing of expertise on implementing CSR, promoting awareness of socially responsible business, and the benefits of socially responsible business practices. The discussion was based on the view that companies of the future will be those who have an added societal value as well as shareholder value.
Participants emphasized the need to distinguish between philanthropy/PR and CSR as part of core business activity, the need for common language/clarity when discussing CSR, the need for local ownership/understanding in addressing CSR issues, the importance of measurement/benchmarking, the importance of leadership and commitment from the governments, business, and business associations, the value of collective action, the importance of engaging the financial sector, the importance of both legislation and education, and the value of networking and experience exchange.
The special Gender and Citizenship in the Arab Region session addressed how to promote women’s full citizenship. An outcome of this debate is that nationality laws, family laws, and election laws are key areas that need reform in order to enable women to enjoy their citizenship.
Within the framework of the attempt to give more voice to the people, the session on Civil Society and Globalization tackled the issue of how to empower civil society and help it face up the challenges of globalization. Out of this meeting, which relied mostly on the audience input, came a series of recommendations from the attendees among the most important of which was the need to strengthen civil society networks to exchange information and experiences.
The Youth and Skills for the Future session highlighted the positive factors for the development of youth skills for today and the future through successful current programs in the MENA region. An unusual feature of this session on youth and skills was the participation of young teenagers from the region and elsewhere, who were most articulate in voicing their hopes and concerns. Among the session's conclusions was the decision to examine the possibility of replicating some of the successful programs featured in this session.
The Regional Mediascape 2002: Tensions and Opportunities: Another key element in the sustainable development of MENA societies is media, and this session tried to examine the question of freedom of expression in the light of the recent developments of media in the region. Several ideas were identified among which were the ownership of the media, the role of governments, whether there is a need for a code of ethics, and how a media watch could be established by civil society.
The partners of MDF4 wished in conclusion to express their concern over the slowing economic growth and continuing conflict in the region. Of particular concern are the escalating economic costs of occupation and the steady impoverishment of the Palestinians under conditions, which are preventing them from pursuing their rights to economic and social development.
The partners also are concerned about the threats to security and stability in the region and wish to emphasize that war is the enemy of development and can only destroy past achievements, deepen human suffering and undermine the region's future progress.
The above list of recommendations is extensive. Moreover, the reforms need to be tailored for each country in view of their specific conditions. The point remains nevertheless that change is both desirable and necessary. The region has enormous potential, but this cannot be realized without a concerted and co-operative reform effort by all. — (menareport.com)
© 2002 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
