Attachments
In recent years, the Arab region has experienced a string of successive, overlapping and reinforcing crises, known as a polycrisis. Environmental, economic, institutional and conflict-related crises have interacted with each other to a devastating degree, resulting in detrimental effects on people’s access to social and economic services and opportunities. Not everyone, however, has been affected equally. Those who were already at risk of being left behind find themselves further behind their peers, as crises have accentuated inequality in all its forms and eroded the potential of social mobility.
This third edition of the Arab Inequality Report presents the growing risk of polycrisis in the Arab region since 2015. It introduces a novel way to capture inequality in all its forms, through a new multidimensional inequality framework. It also highlights the positive correlation between multidimensional inequality and the risk of polycrisis. Yet, polycrises and high multidimensional inequality are not inevitable. The report concludes with concrete and practical policy recommendations for countries to protect equality in times of crisis. In particular, the report calls for immediate humanitarian assistance in the face of crises, without political implications, and innovative financing mechanisms that enable more vulnerable countries to pursue sustainable socio-economic development and leave no one behind.