Tag: economic reform
Never let a crisis go to waste
“The region already faced significant economic fragility prior to the pandemic, but the coming recession will hurt the Middle East especially hard.” On May 1, the Wilson Center hosted a panel discussion on “The Middle East Workforce and COVID-19: Resetting the Regional Economic Formula.” The discussion featured six speakers:
Sheikh Meshal bin Hamad Al-Thani: Ambassador of the State of Qatar to the US
Theodore Kattouf: President of AMIDEAST and Former United States Ambassador to Syria and the United Arab Emirates
Denise Lamaute: Economic Officer, Middle East Bureau, USAID
Andrew Baird: President and CEO, Education for Employment-Global
Alexander Farley: Research Associate
Merissa Khurma: Project Manager, Middle East Special Initiatives, moderated
Current context
In Ambassador Al-Thani’s keynote speech, he pointed out that unemployment, the lack of human development, and the absence of social justice have posed a threat to political, economic, and social instability in the Middle East. The outbreak of COVID-19 across the world has led to a greater challenge. The collapse of oil prices as well as the decline of tourism revenue, emigrant remittances, and economic demand are aggravating the region’s structural weaknesses. Limited opportunities for youth and their lack of prospects will create discontent and generate distrust to political leaders. Al-Thani believes that this is the main reason of the Arab Spring.
Baird thinks that COVID-19 is an enormous disrupter. The hospitality industry, including restaurants, hair salons, and manufacturing, are suffering from this crisis. There are, however, winners at this point, including home health care, public health workers, transportation, agriculture, and the information technology sector. Baird is concerned that this crisis may have a long-term impact on SMEs, making them more vulnerable. They will take a longer time to recover than larger businesses. Additionally, Baird emphasized that the crisis will widen the digital divide between men and women.
Education and workforce
Farley summarized key findings of An Analysis of Workforce Asymmetries in the Middle East and North Africa:
- The skills mismatch and deficit of needed skills in the labor market
- Private sector and education uncoordinated
- Education systems do not emphasize essential skills
- Technical vocational education and training (TVET) is neglected and suffers stigma
- Mindsets adhere to a hierarchy of public over the private sector
- SMEs face barriers to expansion, economic growth is limited
- Entrepreneurship and new business creation is low
- Women ahead in education but behind in workforce participation
Kattouf said that during the Ottoman period, there was no education except for certain elites who were educated by the British and French to serve colonists’ needs. In the Gulf, most of the current countries were protectorates without education. It was not until Nasser and Arab socialism that an aspiration for universal education and literacy started.
While the number of educational institutions is now overwhelming, the quality of higher education is decreasing as more students are admitted to public universities and good professors prefer to teach in the Gulf for higher salaries. Kattouf added that when the youth graduate from tertiary education, they are equipped with fewer skills than expected and there are fewer jobs than needed.
Remedies
Al-Thani believes that Middle Eastern states need to take collective action to make long-term, youth-centered development agendas in order to address the challenge of workforce asymmetries, including protecting youth rights and allowing them to participate in public life.
Farley listed various recommendations from An Analysis of Workforce Asymmetries in the Middle East and North Africa:
- Realigning education systems to labor market needs
- Rethinking assessment and tracking student progress
- Upgrading the TVET pathway
- Strengthening entrepreneurship and SMEs
- Increasing female labor force participation through multiple interventions
Denise suggests that governments, the private sector, and education systems should pursue a firm understanding of the region’s demographics, the evolving demands for skills, and the connections between providing goods and providing services. Since the pandemic forces people to embrace digital tools, it may push a “fourth Industrial Revolution.” This revolution can lead to faster technology adoption, increased productivity and performance, emergence of new markets and new consumers, the relocation of value chains, and job loses as well as job gains. Since the MENA region possesses a young workforce, they will be ready to adopt the “fourth Industrial Revolution” to create more opportunities and changes.
Baird resonated Denise’s point to never let a good crisis go to waste. He suggests that the financial system can bring the private sector closer to education. As governments exert more control over the private sector, they can take advantage of it to propose women friendly policies, including women friendly transportation, anti-harassment policy, and day care.
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Ethiopians at loggerheads
The 2019 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, for restarting peace talks with Eritrea. Since taking office in 2018, he has initiated a series of reforms founded in a new ideology: medemer. Translated from Amharic, medemer means synergy and collectivism. On February 13, the United States Institute of Peace hosted a panel titled, A Changing Ethiopia: Understanding Medemer, with guests from Addis Ababa and Washington D.C.
The conversation was moderated by Aly Verjee, Senior Advisor of the Africa Program at USIP, with attendance from, Fitsum Arega Gebrekidan, Ethiopian Ambassador to the US, Lencho Bati, Senior Political, Diplomatic, and Foreign Policy Advisor, Office of the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Mamo Mihretu, Senior Adviser on Policy Reforms and Chief Trade Negotiator, Office of the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, and Etana Dinka, Visiting Assistant Professor of African History at Oberlin College. The panel was very tense at moments and the discussion involved many audience reactions in the form of both applause and verbal boos.
What is medemer in practice?
Verjee persistently directed the panel numerous times to illuminate what medemer means in practice in Ethiopia, rather than what it means as an ideology. Despite Verjee’s tenacity, his question, although reemerging many times, lacked concrete responses. Ambassador Fitsum delineates medemer as a social contract for Ethiopians to live together and pool their sources and efforts to achieve collective prosperity. He professes it as “a convenant of peace that seeks unity in our community, humanity, practicing love, forgiveness, and reconciliation.” Lencho explains medemer as the Prime Minister’s way of organizing a society and achieving a middle ground between different ethnic, religious, and federal sectors. He classifies it as striking a balance between competition and cooperation. Mamo professes that memeder is used as a framework to reform policy by engaging the past in a productive way through acknowledgement and lessons of what was successful and unsuccessful, rather than completely erasing it. Etana, taking a radically different view than the government officials, proclaims, “for ordinary citizens, medemer is hell.”
Ongoing Reforms
Much of the panel discussion was composed of biting remarks between the Ethiopian government officials and Etana. When engaging with Verjee’s question about the type of reforms that Ethiopia should undergo, the officials agreed that the “home-grown economic plan” of partial privatization is necessary moving forward. Ambassador Fitsum identified this plan as a tailored, Ethiopia-specific plan that will help shift its agrarian society to become more industrialized. Overall, the officials noted a much more progressive society since the PM’s election.
Etana disagreed with this rosy analysis, claiming that since 2018, when the Prime Minister took power, Ethiopia has experienced significant violent clashes in the countryside and instead of fixing and reforming Ethiopia, the PM Prime Minister has been building a foundation to stay in power. Etana sees the main obstacle to reform as the Prime Minister.
In response, Ambassador Fitsum conceded that the government has been trying to implement this new philosophy first by teaching and then by applying law, highlighting that there is still room for growth in this process.
Abiy Ahmed as a Federalist?
The government representatives declare that the Prime Minister is a federalist; however, this received vehement criticism from Etana, who professes that the government is ignoring identity politics as well as the sharing of state power. Etana claims that if the Prime Minister were actually a federalist then there would not be clashes in certain states in Ethiopia and the Prime Minister would not be failing to recognize that some people want separate statehood.
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Tunisia needs to keep trying
Since the overthrow of the regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011, Tunisia has been on a long journey of reform and change. However, as panelists at the Atlantic Council’s “Tunisia’s Road to Reform” last Thursday pointed out, the destination does not always appear to be democratization and economic improvement, two of the revolution’s goals. The event included former Tunisian communications minister Oussama Romdhani of the Arab Weekly, Sarah Yerkes of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Fadil Aliriza, an independent journalist based in Tunis. The discussion was moderated by Karim Mezran introduced by Fred Hof of the Atlantic Council.
Tunisia’s path to democratization began with a national dialogue and the election of a new president, and according to Romdhani will continue with the upcoming municipal elections of 2018 and the general elections of 2019. There are several obstacles to democratization, including lack of participation in elections and failure of political parties to gain respect and credibility. Tunisia’s political parties, the most significant of which are Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes, are largely disconnected from the reality faced by their constituents and are inefficient due to the continuous feuding that occurs between them. Aliriza criticized the current parties saying that they are based on personality rather than politics and that their categorization (liberal, secular, Islamist, etc) and ideologies are outdated and based on the old, pre-revolution model.
Romdhani also referred to social unrest, which he considered to be in part a result of the desire for “instant gratification” by Tunisia’s youth. This has put pressure on a government that, in his view, does not have the means to provide reform in a short period of time. Economic pressures, the instability in neighboring Libya, and lack of support from the West are all additional obstacles to democratization and reform listed.
Yerkes and Aliriza both went a step further to say that Tunisia has actually taken steps towards authoritarianism, a claim that they supported using several recent events, including a cabinet reshuffle, the postponement of municipal elections, and the adoption of a reconciliation law. It was the reconciliation law that seemed to be the most worrying to Aliriza, because it pardons civil servants accused of contributing to corruption under the old regime. This he said is a violation of the constitution and an effort to create a separate justice system for those associated with the old regime. The law is only beneficial to a minority of the population and has caused protests and unrest in the country.
Most importantly, the debate around the law is distracting the government as well as civil society organizations from focusing on reform. The government does have the means, Aliriza argued, but is misusing them. The law threatens the country’s stability, the disconnect between the regime and the people is growing, and the government’s legitimacy is under question. The government seems to be engaging in revolution-denial by repeating “old regime practices.”
Aliriza’s focus on the government’s shortcomings led Mezran to inquire what the panelists thought should be done about the flawed operations of the parliament and political parties. Aliriza responded by emphasizing the importance of employing staff for parliament in order to allow parliamentarians to connect with their constituencies, bridging the existing divide. He also proposed the creation of new parties and the greater inclusion of youth in formal politics. Yerkes agreed on the need for parliamentary staff to allow parliamentarians to travel and meet with the population.
She also thinks the time has come to move past Tunisia’s consensus model. The requirement that political parties agree with each other on policy issues may have previously provided stability, Yerkes admitted, but is currently undermining the legitimacy of each party in the eyes of its followers. The lack of debate has led to stagnation.
More defensively, Romdhani called for a change in perspective when viewing Tunisia’s government. Credibility, for example, should not be viewed as an isolated issue, but should rather in a regional context: the Tunisian people, in comparison with other countries that witnessed revolutions as part of the Arab spring, are still committed to freedom and democracy, making the Tunisian case “less worrisome” than others. Furthermore, in what can be interpreted as a response to Aliriza’s firm opposition to the reconciliation law, Romdhani said that those opposed to the law must pursue an already existing legal process and better explain their concerns instead of resorting to protests and filibusters.
While the panel revolved mostly around challenges and obstacles to reform in Tunisia, Yerkes took some time to remind the audience of promising aspects of the country’s development. These include the potential that the 2019 election brings and the role that civil society plays in holding the government accountable. Despite a large number of challenges, Tunisia remains, in the eyes of many, an example of a successful Arab revolution. As long is it continues to take steps towards fulfilling such a vision, that image will persist.
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Peace picks July 11 – July 15
1) HEARING: Human rights under siege worldwide | Tuesday, July 12th | 10:00 AM | 2172 Rayburn House Office Building | Chairman Royce on the hearing: “Human rights violations are on the rise around the world. In Iran, the courts carry out public amputations and floggings. In Putin’s Russia, journalists are jailed for exposing government corruption and reporting the facts. In failed states like Syria, we’ve seen abhorrent treatment of civilians, including genocide. We’ve even seen backsliding in respect for human rights among established democracies. These are disturbing trends, and this hearing will seek answers on how the U.S. should respond.” Witnesses include: The Honorable Mark P. Lagon, President of Freedom House. Thomas Farr, Ph.D., President of the Religious Freedom Institute. Ms. Amanda Schnetzer, Director of the Human Freedom Initiativeat the George W. Bush Institute. Mr. Mark Bromley, Chair at the Council for Global Equality
2) Economic and Labor Reform in Bahrain | Wednesday, July 13th | 12:00 PM | Brookings | Click HERE to register | No country in the Gulf region and perhaps in the broader Arab world has thought about and experimented with reform more than the Kingdom of Bahrain. Indeed, Manama was setting up economic visions of the future long before the trend became popular. However, the country’s reform process faces various challenges, posed by an ongoing political crisis at home and an increasingly turbulent regional environment. Ausamah Abdulla Al Absi, Chief Executive Officer of the Kingdom of Bahrain’s Labour Market Regulatory Authority (LMRA), will join the Atlantic Council to discuss Bahrain’s reform accomplishments and shortcomings and lay out the country’s path toward sustainable development. In his capacity as head of the LMRA, Mr. Al Absi is responsible for realizing Bahrain’s economic reform plan. Since its inception in 2006, the LMRA has played a crucial role in HRH Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa’s economic reform program. Additionally, the large and vastly important institution oversees the implementation of Bahrain Vision 2030. Speakers include:
Ausamah Abdulla Al Absi, CEO of the Labour Market Regulatory Authority, Kingdom of Bahrain Introduced by: Barry Pavel, Vice President, Arnold Kanter Chair, and Director of the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security at the Atlantic Council. Moderated by: Bilal Y. Saab, Director, Middle East Peace and Security Initiative, Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security Atlantic Council.
3) Blasphemy Laws and Censorship by States and Non-State Actors: Examining Global Threats to Freedom of Expression | Thursday, July 14th | 2:00 PM | 2322 Rayburn House Office Building, click HERE for event details | The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission | The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission will hold a hearing that will examine blasphemy laws, state censorship, actions by non-state actors, and other threats to freedom of expression around the world. This hearing will examine these issues, while seeking to provide concrete recommendations for how U.S. policy makers can most effectively encourage the protection of freedom of expression around the globe. This hearing will be open to members of Congress, congressional staff, the interested public and the media. The event will be hosted by Joseph R. Pitts, M.C. and Co-Chairman, TLHRC. James P. McGovern, M.C. and Co-Chairman, TLHRC.
Panel I:
David N. Saperstein, Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, U.S. Department of State
Panel II:
Rev. Thomas J. Reese, S.J., Chairman, U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom
Panel III:
Ms. Vanessa Tucker, Vice President for Analysis, Freedom House
Ms. Nina Shae, Director, Hudson Institute Center for Religious Freedom
Dr. Karin Karlekar, Director of Free Expression Programs, PEN America
Dr. Courtney C. Radsch, Advocacy Director, Committee to Protect Journalists
Mr. Wael Aleji, Spokesperson, Syrian Network for Human Rights
4) After Fallujah: Security, Governance, and the Next Battle Against ISIS | Friday, July 15th | 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM | Middle East Institute hosted at the Johns Hopkins Kennedy Auditorium | Click here to register | Iraqi forces have expelled the Islamic State (ISIS) from Fallujah, but difficult work lies ahead to retake the territory still under ISIS control, provide security, and rebuild. Restoring government and the rule of law, returning the displaced, and rebuilding homes and infrastructure will be crucial for sustaining the victory. Who will have the power and legitimacy to manage local resources and services? What will it take for civilians to return? Can the Popular Mobilization Forces that played an important role in the liberation of Fallujah be demobilized or absorbed into the army, or will they remain independent power centers? The Middle East Institute (MEI) and the Conflict Management Program at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) are pleased to host Robert S. Ford (MEI), Charles Lister (MEI), Jessica Lewis McFate (Institute for the Study of War), and Douglas Ollivant (New America) for a discussion of these and other questions regarding the aftermath of Fallujah, how ISIS may react in defeat, and the challenges ahead facing the liberation of Mosul.
5) How to Defeat Terrorism in Iraq | Wednesday, July 20th | 10:30-12:00| The Institute for World Politics | Click here to RSVP | Sheikh Jamal al-Dhari will share his vision for his country: a political re-crafting of the existing government structure away from sectarianism and towards a new constitution based on Iraqi national citizenship and inclusive of participation from all sectarian communities. HE Sheikh Jamal al-Dhari is the Chairman of the Iraq National Project and President of Peace Ambassadors for Iraq (PAFI). One of the leaders of the al-Zoba tribe in Iraq, he is the nephew of the late Islamic scholar and religious leader. Sheikh Harith al-Dhari Jamal was born in the Abu Ghraib district of Iraq on July 16, 1965. He grew up within the al-Zoba tribe and in the 1970s he attended the Hafsa School. In the 1980s, Jamal was conscripted into the Iraqi Army to fight in the Iran- Iraq War. During his time on the frontline, he fought alongside both Sunni and Shia officers and friends, in the Iraqi Republican Guard. Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq by coalition forces, Jamal was a strong proponent of Iraqi nationalism and self-rule. In 2005, he and his family fought against al-Qaeda’s occupation of Iraqi territory and, as a consequence, Jamal lost 70 members of his family in the struggle. In 2014, Jamal helped to establish the nonprofit think tank Peace Ambassadors for Iraq, whose purpose is to advocate for a renewed system of government in Iraq, to determine the best policies to fully eliminate ISIS/Daesh and other terrorist forces from Iraq, and to build international support for an all-inclusive Iraq. Presently, Jamal is working for a renewal in Iraq by forging a non-sectarian and inclusive settlement for all Iraqis.
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