Executive Summary
The Arab region appears to be embarking on a major revision of the long standing social contract which has underpinned governance structures of the region. The relationship between State and citizen has become strained by virtue of rising expectations of an increasingly well informed and educated public confronting the diminishing ability of the State, in the ever more liberalized economic system, to offer jobs and other opportunities for engaging in decisions which affect their lives and aspirations. As an increasing number of youth found themselves without jobs or voice, they have led the current wave of political contestations.
The youth in the region are clear in their expectations of transformative change within a development paradigm that reaffirms the centrality of human beings and in particular of human dignity. There is a corresponding need for impartial international support for peaceful transformational change processes that respond to people’s aspirations for human dignity and which is fully cognizant of the constraints within which the development discourse takes place. The UN system in general and UNDP in particular has a major role to play as the people of the region chart a new paradigm of people-centred development.
The current strategy has been drafted to act as a guide for mutually supportive action at the regional and national levels, while taking into account the important nuances and differences from one country to the next. Clearly there is need for support in developing, in a participatory manner, a new type of social contract, while concurrently working to address some of the major development failures which have fueled the current wave of discontent, notably socially explosive levels of youth unemployment and wide degrees of regional disparities within and between countries. It is not at all a question of denying the role of the State in socio-economic development, but rather to argue for a strong and capable state that is responsive to popular aspirations and focused on societal and inclusive development.
The problems of the region result from the interplay of political and socio-economic factors, with non-representative or non-inclusive and participatory polities reinforcing and being reinforced by rentier economies.
Hence the solution should also build on a symbiotic relationship between truly representative political systems and economic systems that promote productive investment and set in motion a virtuous cycle of increasing productivity and wider markets creating jobs in diverse sectors and subnationally.
The negative effects of corruption on optimal use of public resources and productive private investment need redress through a system of checks and balances that ensures societal control over use of public assets and provides the private sector with the required stability to invest for the long term.
The increasing voice of the voiceless would help underpin social stability and cohesion hence strengthen national identity and security. The funds currently allocated to internal security can thus be diverted to funding investments in human capabilities.
A transformed region which invests more in its people and uses its natural resources more wisely would be able to regain its central place at the crossroads of humanity as a beacon of hope and progress. It would also be more able to deal more effectively with its fragile environment and situation of water scarcity that have already disrupted the livelihoods of many in some of the poorer parts of the region and threaten others if no urgent action is taken to resolve them.