Iraq and human development: culture, education and the globalization of hope

Arab Studies Quarterly (ASQ), Spring, 2004 by Jacqueline Ismael, Tareq Y. Ismael, Raymond William Baker

The first Arab Human Development Report, published in 2002, was unlike all other Human Development Reports: as noted above, it was prepared by Arab intellectuals and policy analysts, not by UN civil servants. This departure, as suggested, created the possibility of undermining the new human development discourse from within. In addition, unlike the national, regional or development issues foci of the others, "the focus of this Report is on the people of the Arab world, the citizens of the 22 member states of the Arab League." (10) The ethno-cultural focus and Arab authorship constituted an indigenization of the human development perspective, without the intent of changing its implicit liberal assumptions. The actual report, however, exceeded these expectations and raised the spectre of transcendence of the narrow ideological parameters that had been prescribed by the international discourse on human development. This unintended consequence was reflected by the Arab authors' emphasis on "strengthening of Arab co-operation in order to maximize the benefits of globalization and avoid its perils." (11) More pointedly, this unintended consequence was manifest in the explicit attention to the context of conflicts "driven by regional and extra-regional factors." (12) The inclusion of Palestine and Iraq in the Arab Human Development Index (AHDI) emphasized the link between international politics and regional development, thus explicitly transcending the liberal framework of the new discourse.

Identifying both the attainments and shortfalls of human development in the Arab world, the Report identified three major deficits--freedom, empowerment of women, and knowledge. Focusing on the knowledge deficit, the 2003 Arab Human Development Report expanded the process of indigenization of the human development perspective initiated in the first Report. The most immediate representation of this was the inclusion of a chapter on culture (Chapter 6) to examine its relationship to knowledge acquisition: "for knowledge does not evolve in a social vacuum but rather in a particular society and global context. It is this last element that has a special significance for the Arab world in this phase of its history." (13) In the context of Israel's reoccupation of Palestinian territory, the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and "plans ... being drawn up outside the Arab world for restructuring the area and for reshaping the Arab identity," the 2003 Report emphasized "that reform efforts, which genuinely serve the region's interests, must be initiated and launched from within." (14) The message was unmistakable that facts on the ground indicated a contrary reality throughout the Arab world.

The inclusion of Iraq and Palestine in the initial AHDR by its Arab authors refrained the concept of human development to incorporate Arab cultural and historical terms of reference that transcended liberal parameters. The notion of framing is used in the sense of drawing a discursive border that will define a social problem in a way that links discourse to policy. Refraining in this case subverted the ideological link with neo-liberal economic development policies that was established by the 1990 Human Development Report. In place of the particularization of problems around depoliticized development issues and individual states inherent in the international discourse on human development, the Arab Human Development Reports adopted a contextualist approach informed by the harsh political realities of international politics and economics. Iraq and Palestine emerge as central, collective Arab issues. From the perspective of this critical refraining, the challenge of educational reform and national reconstruction in Iraq can no longer be completely contained within a framework that voids culture and history of their local and regional meanings.