Ramping up disaster preparedness in the Middle East

From IRIN, a story on improving disaster response in the Middle East.

Several Middle East countries which over the years had failed to prioritize disaster preparedness have established national databases and should now be able to estimate their level of risk and improve response, according to the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) Secretariat.

"The region is affected by several hazards: earthquakes, floods, landslides and drought. However, disaster risk reduction has not been a priority for governments until recently," said Luna Abu-Swaireh, regional programme officer at the Cairo office of the UNISDR. "The commitment is relatively new [and] we have witnessed various progress levels in nations in the region, but overall it is still lower than global levels."

Some progress has also occurred in policy development. "For the first time this region has a strategy for 2011-2020 that outlines a commitment to reducing risk and vulnerability for the Arab countries and populations by working on multi-hazard approaches, risk assessment, identification and enhancing capacity," Swaireh told IRIN.

According to a 2010 report by Arab environment ministers, their region has suffered 276 disasters in the last 25 years, in which 100,000 people died, 10 million were affected and 1.5 million left homeless.

The region is at risk of earthquakes because the Jordan rift valley system extends from the Red Sea, through Palestine and north across the Dead Sea and Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley. About two-thirds of Jordan’s population, the entire population of Lebanon and a large urban population in Syria live within 50km of a fault line.

Increasing scarcity of water and arable land are also a threat to food security, while flooding in recent years has increased vulnerability. In Syria, for example, an estimated one million people lack food because of drought, especially in the northeast which is home to vulnerable, agriculture-dependent families, according to a 2010 drought vulnerability report on Syria.

Tracking disaster losses

Syria, along with Yemen and Jordan, have developed national disaster loss databases which can be used to analyse extensive risks based on data provided by the country, including case studies, illustrations and background on risk drivers.

"A group of Arab states are now making progress in systematically reporting disaster losses, providing an indispensable empirical [data set]," the ISDR noted in a recent report entitled Revealing Risk, Redefining Development.

Jordan, Syria and Yemen have all recently completed national disaster loss databases and will soon be joined by Egypt and Morocco, it said. Other countries are now in the process of finalizing their databases, while Djibouti and Lebanon are following suit.

These databases are nationally owned, managed, maintained and regularly updated by the respective governments. In Yemen, management is a joint effort between the Ministry of Water and Environment, civil defence, and partners including the UN and the World Bank.

"The impact of disasters on the economics of the Arab countries coupled with the problems they are already facing in terms of poverty, etc., makes it a challenge to engage in disaster risk," Abu-Swaireh said. "You need to work today on disaster reduction, to make sure your system does not collapse in the face of a disaster.

"Countries like Jordan, Lebanon, [occupied Palestinian territory] and Syria are at very high risk from earthquakes with concentrated populations around fault lines," he added. "Some countries have undertaken rigorous assessments and linked this to town planning. Lebanon and the occupied Palestinian territory have started assessing hospitals for earthquakes and some schools too, but this is still in its early stages."

A number of specialized agencies in the Arab world, according to the ISDR, have also developed sub-regional early warning systems for specific hazards. According to ISDR, drought has over the years affected the region’s GDP and agricultural production.

"In the last quarter of 2011, we will bring together all relevant stakeholders [government, civil society, private sector] in the region to discuss how we can put the strategies into action, prioritize issues, and invest in risk reduction," Abu-Swaireh said.

Video: Violence continues across Bahrain

From Al Jazerra, a video on another political uprising in the Middle East, this time Bahrain. Warning, this video is pretty graphic.

Domestic slaves in Arab world not joining in calls for freedom

The people protesting throughout the Middle East and North Africa want equality and a voice. However, one group of people within these countries are still not being heard despite the calls for more freedom.

Three million domestic slaves are still suffering through the same plight throughout the Arab world. Most of the domestic maids and servants work for little money or even for free. Many are treated to slave like working conditions and are subject to rape or abuse.

From the Inter Press Service, writer Simba Russeau has the story of one such domestic slave.

Before leaving Madagascar, Dima 19, was told she would find good employment and an opportunity to provide much needed money for her family that was struggling with extreme poverty and unemployment. But within a few hours of arriving at the home of her new employer in Lebanon in early April of last year, she confronted a different reality.

"The male employer picked me up from the airport and when we arrived to the home he told me to take a bath," Dima told IPS in an interview.

"He insisted that I leave the door slightly open and while I was in the bath he entered and raped me."

It became worse some weeks later. She says she was tied up and raped by the employer and two of his friends.

Within a month Dima escaped. "While the family was getting into the car I started running. I couldn’t bear living like this any more."

The current financial climate in Africa and Southeast Asia has forced many families to look for desperate ways out of life in extreme poverty.

"Recruitment agencies from our home countries are tricking new domestic employees by telling them that will have a great job, with a high paying salary and the ability to save money and provide for their families," says Aimee, a community leader and freelance domestic worker from Madagascar.

Will the protests spread to Saudi Arabia?

When we talk about the protests in the Middle East and North Africa we often wonder how much further they will spread. Many worry that the demonstrations and overthrows will spread to Saudi Arabia. The country sits atop a fifth of the world's oil reserves so any political unrest could make today's gas prices look cheap.

Although there are some grumblings by the people of Saudi Arabia, the king there is very popular. King Abdullah on Wednesday opened up the kingdom's pocket book by announcing a 135 billion social welfare package. This package is an attempt to calm people who might protest over inequality.

from this Associated Press article that we found at the San Francisco Chronicle, writer Tarek El-Tablawy describes the package to us.

The total cost was estimated at 135 billion Saudi riyals ($36 billion), but this was not largesse. Saudi Arabia clearly wants no part of the revolts and bloodshed sweeping the already unsettled Arab world.

Saudi officials are "pumping in huge amounts of money into areas where it will have an obvious trickle-down by addressing issues like housing shortages," said John Sfakianakis, chief economist for the Riyadh, Saudi Arabia-based Banque Saudi Fransi. "It has, really, a social welfare purpose to it."

The most prominent step was the injection of 40 billion riyals ($10.7 billion) into a fund that provides interest-free loans for Saudis to buy or build homes. The move could help reduce an 18-year waiting list for Saudis to qualify for a loan, Sfakianakis said.

Another 15 billion riyals ($4 billion) was being put into the General Housing Authority's budget, while the Saudi Credit & Savings Bank was to get 30 billion riyals ($8 billion) in capital. The bank provides loans for marriage and setting up a business, among other things, and is supported by the Saudi government.

Other measures included a 15 percent cost of living adjustment for government workers, a year of unemployment assistance for youth and nearly doubling to 15 individuals the size of families that are eligible for state aid. The government also will write off the debts of people who had borrowed from the development fund and later died.

While Saudi Arabia has been mostly spared the unrest rippling through the Middle East, a robust protest movement has risen up in its tiny neighbor, Bahrain, which like others around the region is centered on calls for representative government and relief from poverty and unemployment.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/02/23/international/i105855S35.DTL#ixzz1EuQ0q4el

NPR has this analysis on why revolt in Saudi Arabia is possible but unlikely. Writer Kevin Beesley says that many people see King Abdullah as a reformer.

NPR correspondent Deborah Amos is in Saudi Arabia and says the reason is simple: "The king is extremely popular, among young people and with reformers, too, unlike [former President Hosni] Mubarak in Egypt, and [former President Zine El Abidine] Ben Ali in Tunisia, who were deeply, deeply hated. They see [the king] as a reformer, and the changes he's introduced in the last two years have been startling."

The reasons behind the unrest that led to successful revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and protests in Libya, Bahrain and elsewhere, vary from country to country. But there are three fundamental factors that nearly all have in common: economic deprivation, youth unemployment and political frustration.

Saudi Arabia has all those problems, and more. With its massive oil wealth, the kingdom is one of the world's richest countries, but the money is not distributed evenly. There are many wealthy Saudis and an estimated 6,000 royal princes, but the average national income is around $20,000 a year and many Saudis live on the poverty line.

"Inflation has hit Saudis hard," Amos says. "There have been sharp increases in food prices, and you need two salaries to get by."

Most estimates put unemployment in Saudi Arabia at around 10 percent. But like nearly all Arab countries, Saudi Arabia is experiencing a massive "youth bump" in its population — about two-thirds of the population is younger than 29 — and the unemployment rate for young people is thought to be around 40 percent.

Like the other oil-rich Gulf states, Saudi Arabia has invested billions in education, including sending students to universities in the United States, England and Australia. Now all of these graduates, especially an entire generation of well-educated young women, are looking for ways to use their education — and there are limited opportunities for them.

Social business could play a big role in the Middle East and North Africa

With the political change sweeping through the Middle East, people are beginning to ask "now what?" If the protests stem from a lack of an economic opportunity and a lack of a political voice, what is the best way to give to those things to the masses.

Suzi Sosa of the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service at the University of Texas at Austin says that social business could be one of the answers. The dual aims of profit and social benefit that these type of businesses bring can help give the people of the Middle East what they need. Soza's latest op-ed piece was found at INC Magazine.

Social entrepreneurship can be a powerful solution for the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. By blending both financial sustainability (profits) with a prioritization of social impact, social enterprises will contribute to both economic revitalization and social reconstruction. Social entrepreneurship is also particularly well suited to youth. It not only taps into the desire for independence and self-actualization, but it is also relevant for a generation whose worldview incorporates a sense of responsibility that goes significantly beyond immediate family and self.

Social entrepreneurship provides a "third way" that can productively balance the desire for greater social equity with the need for rapid economic growth. At the macroeconomic level, social entrepreneurship deploys a stakeholder model that not only provides more robust checks-and-balances in the system but also more fairly distributes profits and benefits and adds greater emphasis to long-term planning. For example, in social entrepreneurship, instead of just focusing on shareholders, the enterprise governs itself by taking into account a network of stakeholders, including customers, employees, suppliers, investors, the community, and the environment. In the MENA region many states governed from a semi-socialist approach while informal economies practiced unregulated capitalism. Social entrepreneurship can balance wealth creation with equity and fairness and can provide greater accountability without the overbearing bureaucracy and regulation that inhibits growth.

Finally, social entrepreneurship is a powerful solution because it contributes to the reduction of social and environmental problems without having to rely on charity or public funding. For example, in Egypt there are virtually no public resources to fund social programs. Currently, Egypt's public debt is more than 80 percent of GDP and government spending on education is less than 4 percent of GDP. The national GDP per capita is a meager $6,000 per year, leaving more than 20 percent of the country living in poverty. The only hope of achieving sustainable, scalable solutions to pressing social and environmental problems is to create enterprises that can provide for the public good while being financially sustainable and scalable on their own.

The MENA region is already home to some impressive social entrepreneurs. Synergos recently recognized 22 Arab World Social Innovators, including Kamal Mouzawak, a Lebanese social entrepreneur who founded two enterprises, Souk el Tayeb and Tawlet—both focused on the economic empowerment of rural farmers by providing profitable opportunities for them to sell their goods. In the Palestinian territories, Mohammed Kilany and Lana Hijazi founded Souktel, a social enterprise that leverages mobile networks and SMS messaging to connect unemployed Palestinians to job opportunities for an affordable monthly fee.

How development policy falls short with the Middle East protests

The countries now doing the rioting in the Middle East are some of the best performers in meeting the Millennium Development Goals. The same countries also perform well on the World Bank's Human Development Index. This might contradict what we and many others have been saying about the protest being all about lack of jobs and lack of money.

According to Alasdair McWilliam of the Overseas Development Institute, the protests do center around inequality. In his piece for the Guardian, McWilliam says the protests are fueled by an economic inequality not easily measured by the UN or World Bank.

Unemployment among 15- to 24-year-olds in the Middle East is the highest in the world, at more than 25%. However, about two-thirds of the region's population is now below 24 years of age. The ever-greater numbers of high school and university graduates are not being absorbed into the economy, while the private sector is not generating enough skilled positions. Employers, meanwhile, complain of poor education quality and low graduate skills.

Tertiary enrolment – school leavers going to higher education – in Egypt has risen from 14% to 28% since 1990, and in Tunisia from 8% to 34%. Egyptian high school graduates account for 42% of the workforce, but 80% of the unemployed. According to the global employment trends from the International Labour Organisation, Arab countries need to generate more than 50 million jobs in the next decade just to stabilise employment. These conditions have created a large body of disaffected youth, a boiling pot of frustration that is now spilling over at governments that have failed to provide employment opportunities.

The reasons for unrest aren't all economic. Increases in literacy and education, alongside urbanisation and the expansion of the media, have extended political consciousness and broadened demands for political participation. Despite national increases in living standards, the region's repressive, authoritarian regimes are often plagued by corruption and nepotism. Dani Rodrik, a development economist, points out that economic growth does not buy stability unless political institutions mature at the same time. This shows that widely used measures of development such as the MDGs and the HDI are, by themselves, insufficient to determine development priorities: much greater attention needs to be played to inequality, but not only inequality of income.

Middle Eastern countries have had, at least until recently, one of the most equal income distributions in the world. Egypt, for example, registered a Gini coefficient (a measure of inequality) of 32 in 2005, far lower than the 47 achieved by the US in the same year. This suggests that access to gainful employment and acute inequalities in political power also need to be considered.

Video: Mideast Unrest Spreads in Bahrain, Yemen, Libya

From the Associated Press, a video that summarizes the latest developments in the widespread Middle East protests.