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.

Poverty blamed for parents forcing children into work

from Arab News

by Badea Abu Al-Naja

MAKKAH: The need for money sometimes drive parents to force their children to work in order to help them earn a living, despite a general consensus that child labor is wrong. Still, poverty can lead to the practice of utilizing child labor, including using kids as beggars.

Arab News visited a center in Makkah for children found begging on the streets and interviewed some of the kids living in the shelter.

Mukhtar Mahrani, a nine-year-old Burmese child, said his father compelled him to work to earn some money in order to help the family. He said he bought a wheelchair to rent for SR50 to the old and disabled who want to circumambulate the Kaaba in the Grand Mosque. While there are wheelchairs freely available, Mahrani says there is an occasional demand at peak times.

“When there are too many people the government chairs are not sufficient, so it is our chance to rent out wheelchairs,” he said.

Mahrani said since the guards at the gates of the Holy Mosques will not allow him to enter with his wheelchair, he usually volunteers to pick up an elderly or a disabled man or woman free of charge and pushes him or her right into the Haram. He would sometimes ask his father or mother to push the chair and turn it over to him inside the mosque.

Mahrani said his average daily income is SR500 but it doubles or triples at peak seasons.

Mahrani would not tell officials at the center the location of his parents lest they be arrested.

“I told them that I did not know my house as I always stay at the Holy Mosque. This way they cannot reach my parents,” he said.

Fawaz Ibrahim, a 10-year-old Afghan child, said his father has made him sell water bottles near a traffic light in the holy city. He said he would buy a carton containing 28 bottles of cold water at SR14 and sell them for SR1 apiece for SR14 profit. He said he starts work before Maghreb prayer and continues until close to Fajr prayer. “I am so tired. I cannot even fast. I hate my father for making me do this,” he said.

Hussain Shafie, a 13-year-old with no nationality, said when he refused to sell water, his father rented him to another man who made him sell water.

Majed Hassan, a 14-year-old Burmese kid, said he is working for himself and does not give his father a single riyal from his business of selling potable water. “I am better off now at the center. I forgot the pain of work when I came here,” he said.

Link to full article. May expire in future.

Doubling of grants to UN food aid agency urged

from the Financial Times

A report from an UK parliament committee asks for the doubling of aid to the UN's World Food Programme. - Kale
By Javier Blas in London

Donations to the United Nations' World Food Programme must double to secure aid for those pushed into poverty by rising food and fuel prices and to compensate for higher procurement costs, a report warned yesterday.

The UK parliament's International Development Committee said that significant increases to the WFP's budget would probably be needed in the short term and sustained over the years. "The usual annual total of $3bn [€1.9bn, £1.5bn] in voluntary contributions may need to double."

Last year, the WFP received donations of $2.7bn, up from $1.7bn in 1998. After mounting an appeal this year, the WFP received $2.6bn in the first six months of 2008 and is likely to need about $6bn.

The report is the first to look at the WFP's future financial needs. It suggests that the Rome-based agency must sustain over the medium term this year's emergency appeal for extra funds. Although the WFP is likely to raise enough money this year, it is unclear whether it could continue to do so in subsequent years.

Diplomats said that some of this year's large donations, including one of $500m from Saudi Arabia, looked more like one-off contributions than permanent commitments. John Powell, WFP deputy executive director, said: "They [donors] need to recognise that this is not a passing storm, but something that is going to stay with us."

Nobel Laureate Yunus to introduce micro credit in Saudi Arabia

from Indian Muslims

Jeddah –(IINA)February 26 – Nobel Laureate Prof. Muhammad Yunus plans to introduce his Grameen Bank's micro credit concept in Saudi Arabia so as to stimulate business growth at the grassroots. The professor, who is on a visit as speaker of the Ninth Jeddah Economic Forum under way here, made the announcement at a reception hosted by the Consulate General of Bangladesh at Al-Salam Holiday Inn on Sunday evening. Prof. Yunus said that Abdul Latif Jameel Company has already applied the micro credit scheme and more companies would be engaged under his plan. Micro credit is the extension of very small loans to the unemployed, to poor entrepreneurs and to others living in poverty that is not considered bankable. These individuals lack collateral, steady employment and a verifiable credit history and therefore cannot meet even the most minimal qualifications to gain access to traditional credit.

In 2006, Prof. Yunus and the bank were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below," through micro credit. Yunus is the founder of Grameen Bank and its managing director. "If financial resources can be made available to poor people on terms and conditions that are appropriate and reasonable, these millions of small people with their small pursuits can add up and create the biggest development wonder," the Saudi Gazette reported quoting him.

Addressing the Jeddah Economic Forum yesterday, Prof. Yunus stressed that the society should shoulder responsibility for the poverty among its members. “If anyone has to be blamed for the menace of poverty, it’s the society and it’s unfair economic systems that should be blamed for poverty, not poor people. There is nothing wrong with the poor,” he said. “They’re as good as anybody else. They’re as active as anybody else. They’re as creative as anybody else. They’re as smart as anybody else. Poverty is not created by poor people, it is created by society,” he said.

He also made it loud and clear that poverty is a global phenomenon, not restricted to the Third World in a rebuttal to Alastair Stewart, the moderator, who said that he has done a very good job to elevate poverty in the Third World. Prof. Yunus, a practical visionary, talked about how social entrepreneurship and technical expertise can, together, change the world. He called upon businessmen and other social organizations to help “in creating a world where there are no poor and poverty becomes a thing of the past.” “We should keep poverty in a museum for the coming generation to come and see,” he said. Yunus is the pioneer of micro credit, the process of using collateral-free loans of small amounts to help millions of families out of poverty.

Poverty fuels trafficking of Yemeni children

from the International Herald Tribune

SANAA: Ali Abdu, a slim boy of 14, just wants to go home to his family in the Yemeni mountains. His dream of making money in Saudi Arabia ended in a hospital bed.

"First I worked as a goatherd, then in a car-wash for three months. Then I was hit by a car and spent 29 days in hospital," he mutters. "After that I gave myself up so I could come back."

Abdu is one of thousands of children, mostly boys, who U.N. officials say are trafficked from impoverished Yemeni villages to Saudi Arabia and other rich Gulf countries to work illegally as beggars, camel jockeys, domestic servants or labourers.

The murky cross-border business is run by gangs who recruit boys directly from their families or from the army of child workers already seeking survival on Yemeni city streets.

"It's just underground," Aboudou Adjibade, the Yemen representative of the U.N. children's agency UNICEF, told Reuters. "It's difficult to control because there's a lot of complicity from the community level and the authority level."

Driven by poverty and greed, the trade exposes children to the risks of violence, sexual abuse and exploitation. Worldwide, UNICEF says about 1.2 million children are trafficked annually.

"I went to Saudi Arabia with a friend. We walked all the way," said Abdu, from Mahwit, a rugged region northwest of the Yemeni capital and about 100 km (60 miles) from the border.

Feet tapping nervously, he told his confused story in the courtyard of the Centre for Protection and Rehabilitation of Children in Sanaa. The government-run institution had received its first batch of a dozen boys only a few days earlier.

All seemed bewildered. Staffers said some were traumatized. The atmosphere was awkward and formal, with few signs of purposeful activity for the boys, who had been transferred from a bigger reception centre at Harad, near the Saudi border.

"We will care for them while we try to trace their families," said Abdulillah Thabet, the centre's director.

BACKWASH OF POVERTY

UNICEF, which supports the Sanaa and Harad centres, says traffickers move several thousand children a year, perhaps many more, from Yemen. It plans a survey for accurate figures.

"It's a heavy phenomenon in deprived, remote governorates, where there is not much opportunity for work and even agriculture is deteriorating for lack of water," said Adjibade.

He said desperate families with too many mouths to feed might hand a son over to traffickers on the promise of future earnings. In Yemen's patriarchal society, boys are anyway expected to shoulder responsibility early in life.

"The dramatic consequence on children is that when they go to Saudi Arabia, it's a horrible form of exploitation," Adjibade said. "They beg or work on farms in painful conditions."

Abdu's voice shook as he recalled his tiring days washing cars with a few older Yemeni youths. He said he had slept alone in a nearby room and had been paid 500 rials (67 pounds) a month.

Asked if he had been lonely, the black-haired boy said: "I don't know. I used to finish work, sleep, then go back to work."

Abdu had saved 1,500 rials to bring home to his family before he was run over by a Saudi driver, who paid for him to stay in hospital until his leg had mended.

"I would love to go back to school, learn something," he said. "I would like to have a shop near my house. I'll do anything, any work, but it must be halal (permissible)."

TABOO SUBJECT

When UNICEF tried to alert the Yemeni, Saudi and other governments to the trafficking problem 10 years ago, Adjibade said the common response was denial, on the grounds that such a practice contradicted Islamic injunctions to protect children.

"The reality is completely different," he said. "It took some time, in Yemen and the region, to recognize the facts."

The International Organization of Migration (IOM), which trained Yemeni staff at the two centres for trafficked children, also says government attitudes are slowly changing.

"Two years ago, we couldn't even talk about this problem officially," said IOM representative Stefano Tamagnini. "Now they start accepting the word trafficking."

Acknowledged or not, the flow of youngsters to Saudi Arabia goes on, spiking each year around the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the pilgrimage to Mecca, when child beggars can expect the faithful to show more generosity than usual.

The Saudi authorities dump the children back over the border whenever they catch them, although UNICEF is promoting a Yemeni-Saudi dialogue aimed at a more coordinated response.

Some boys at the centre in Sanaa had made several trips to the kingdom. Others had been intercepted at the border.

"I've been to Jeddah three times with my cousin and his group," said Khaled Ali, 18. "I used to herd goats in the morning until 11 a.m. and then work on the farm until the night. It wasn't easy ... I don't want to go back there again."

UNICEF spokesman Naseem-ur-Rehman said children were victims of the poverty eroding Yemen's social fabric as population growth outstrips resources. Parents often did not realize what awaited their sons in Saudi Arabia or on city streets.