Showing posts from category Middle East.
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Watch ‘Dialogue’ TV on the Future of Women and the Arab Spring
›This week on Dialogue, host John Milewski discusses the role that women played in the Arab Spring and how these roles might evolve in the coming months and years with the enormous political changes sweeping the region. He is joined by Moushira Khattab, Lilia Labidi, and Haleh Esfandiari. [Video Below]
Moushira Khattab is a human rights activist who formerly served as Minister of Family and Population for Egypt. She also served as Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vice Chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, and was Egypt’s ambassador to South Africa during the Mandela era. Lilia Labidi is an anthropologist and professor at the University of Tunis who currently serves as Minister of Women’s Affairs in the Republic of Tunisia. Previously she was a visiting professor at the American University in Cairo and a fellow at the Wilson Center. Haleh Esfandiari is author of the book, My Prison My Home: One Women’s Story of Captivity in Iran. Haleh serves as the director of the Wilson Center’s Middle East Program.
Dialogue is an award-winning co-production of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and MHz Networks that explores the world of ideas through conversations with renowned public figures, scholars, journalists, and authors. The show is also available throughout the United States on MHz Networks, via broadcast and cable affiliates, as well as via DirecTV and WorldTV (G19) satellite.
Find out where to watch Dialogue where you live via MHz Networks. You can send questions or comments on the program to dialogue@wilsoncenter.org. -
Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?
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“The world as a whole is getting more religious,” said Professor of Politics at the University of London Eric Kaufmann, speaking at the Wilson Center for the launch of his latest book, Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Due to their consistently higher birthrates, religious fundamentalists may reverse the tide of secularism within the next century, he said. [Video Below]
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The Future of Women in the MENA Region: A Tunisian and Egyptian Perspective
›Lilia Labidi, minister of women’s affairs for the Republic of Tunisia and former Wilson Center fellow, joined Moushira Khattab, former minister of family and population for Egypt, on June 2 at the Wilson Center to discuss the role and expectations of women in the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions, as well as issues to consider as these two countries move forward. Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center, moderated the event.
Labidi focused on the participation of women in the protests in Tunisia and their aftermath. She emphasized that these developments give hope, as they attest to the mixed nature of the demonstrations in which women were not sidelined but marched amongst men. (Editor’s note: The gender balance of the protests was a feature demographer Richard Cincotta also observed in his post about Tunisia’s age structure.) She pointed to the way that Tunisian women have entered the public space and played vital roles in spreading images and information about the protests around the world. Labidi said that although the future of women in Tunisia remains uncertain, it is unlikely that they will cease to be active and retreat to the private sphere. She commented on the new parity resolution calling for an equal number of male and female candidates for each party in Tunisia’s July elections and the opportunities afforded by an increase in political pluralism and media outlets.
Labidi also elaborated on her efforts as Tunisia’s minister of women’s affairs, discussing the ministry’s results and future goals. She stressed the importance of aiding women living in poverty, changing the cultural role of women, and boosting confidence in the government’s ability to address women’s needs. In particular, Labidi spoke of the work to expand the ministry’s regional offices to become more accessible to rural and non-elite sectors of Tunisian society. She hoped that recent events will encourage recognition of women as regional political actors and that the United States will expand intellectual and political ties with Tunisia.
Khattab pointed out the numerous similarities between the role of women in Tunisia and in Egypt, saying that women’s participation in public demonstrations and disseminating information to the media “has set the stage for a paradigm shift in the rights of citizens.” She noted that there are many advances yet to be made for women, youth, and other groups but that the protests have begun a change towards “a democratic, rights-based Egypt.”
Although she sees women’s involvement as a part of continuing progress in women’s rights, Khattab made note of the various obstacles to freedom that women in Egypt still face. She expressed concern that the politics of revenge against the previous regime might sideline women in politics, who already have less representation in the government than they did under Mubarak and have been excluded from the committee drawing up a new Egyptian constitution. She noted the need to change social perceptions that “women already enjoy all their rights.” She also discussed how the new media freedom gives fundamentalist groups a platform to propagate narrow interpretations of faith that call for the repeal of some of the existing women’s rights laws. She posed the question of what interpretations of the faith would allow for a greater harmonization with domestic laws based on the ideals of human rights.
Laura Rostad is an intern with the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
Photo Credit: David Hawxhurst/Wilson Center. -
Yemen Beyond the Headlines: Governance, State Capacity, and the U.S.
›Part two of the “Yemen Beyond the Headlines: Population, Health, Natural Resources, and Institutions” event, held at the Wilson Center on May 18.
“Moving beyond Ali Abdullah Saleh has proved to be very challenging, not only for the Yemeni people, but for the neighboring countries and for the international community as a whole,” said former U.S. Ambassador to Yemen Edmund Hull, one of a number of speakers on governance and future challenges during the all-day conference, “Yemen Behind the Headlines: Population, Health, Natural Resources, and Institutions,” at the Woodrow Wilson Center. [Video Below]
Don’t Throw Out the Good With the Bad
Yemen’s protest movement is different than those of Egypt or Tunisia because neighboring countries, such as those in the Gulf Cooperation Council, are actively involved. “[They] don’t have the luxury of saying this is a purely Yemeni affair,” said Hull. “They have to identify where their national interests are and then they have to come up with a legitimate and effective way of protecting those interests.” Included in those national interests is dealing with the presence of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
But, Hull said, “It would be a shame if, as part of this revolution, what was good in Yemen gets tossed out with what was bad.” Among the institutions that should be protected are the Social Fund for Development, a government development initiative designed to reduce poverty , and the Central Security Forces, “still a very necessary institution and one that has to be protected if other challenges in Yemen are to be met,” he said.
“It’s a mistake to over-focus on the end of a regime – yes, it’s important to get a transfer of power, but I would argue [that it is] equally important to institutionalize the forces that have led to this, as a safeguard against the counter revolution and as an impetus to meeting those many, many political challenges that Yemen faces.”
Going forward, Hull said that elections will be key: Yemen had good electoral experiences in 2003 and 2006 but the system has since suffered some “backsliding,” he said. He also emphasized the importance of letting the youth participate, protecting social networking systems and NGOs, instituting legal requirements to promote transparency, and freeing up and protecting the media. “Unless you have a media spotlight, abuses are going to accumulate,” he said.
Not a “Basket-Case”
“Yemen is not a basket case,” said Charles Schmitz, an associate professor at Towson University. “There have been substantial achievements that I think we need to take into account.” Among these achievements, he highlighted Yemen’s growth in life expectancy, literacy rates, and gross domestic product. The country’s population growth rate has also slowed over the past two decades, though its total fertility rate remains one of the highest in the region.
These gains were fuelled by two resource booms, Schmitz explained: mainly, remittances from the construction boom in the 1970s and oil production. However, oil production dropped off dramatically after peaking around 2001, and remittances have not been able to keep up with the growth of the economy.
“Yemen is in a very severe crisis,” Schmitz said. “The oil has stopped… the balance of payments has been going negative for the last couple of years… and the government appears to be dipping into the central bank.” As a result, he said there is a “very real” possibility of the currency – the riyal – collapsing. The currency represents trust in the government, of which there is none right now, he said.
An Opportunity for New Thinking
“The key variable to the future of the Yemeni economy is state capacity, and this is something Yemen has not done well thus far, largely because of the political crisis,” Schmitz said.
“I think we must be attuned to the reality around us,” said Jeremy Sharp, a specialist in Middle Eastern affairs with the Congressional Research Service. “Quite frankly, Yemen needs a lobby in this country. Yes we have a tight budget environment, but it’s also an opportunity for new thinking.”
“The degree and extent of U.S. engagement with Yemen…is based primarily on the perceived terrorist threat there,” said Sharp. “Our policy toward Yemen always seems to be one horrific terrorist attack away from public outcries for deeper U.S. involvement – i.e., military involvement.”
A Cycle of Transitions?
“We may be looking at cycles of transition in Yemen over the coming decades,” said Ginny Hill, an associate fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House. “Stable political settlements take time.” The street protestors are not going to get what they want in the short term, “but just two or three of them sitting in government or being involved in the negotiation process… is going to change the dialogue in Yemen,” she said.
The United States has difficult questions to answer, said Sharp: Who will control Yemen’s security forces down the line? How will the next leader deal with the U.S.-Yemen partnership? Will power be fragmented between civilian and military leaders? Will the next leader play the nationalist card and reduce cooperation with the United States to bolster their own public standing?
“In the absence of the degree of engagement that we need, the [U.S. government] aims high rhetorically,” said Sharp. “We speak about these things while pursuing our own national security goals on the ground. Perhaps this path is unsustainable and events will force the U.S. to pay even more attention to Yemen. Or perhaps we will continue to muddle along this path and never quite reach the brink, precipice, or impending crisis that is so routinely predicted in the media.”
See parts one and three of “Yemen Beyond the Headlines: Population, Health, Natural Resources, and Institutions” for more from this Wilson Center event.
Sources: UNICEF, World Bank.
Photo Credit: “Even small children…,” courtesy of flickr user AJTalkEng. -
Watch: Eric Kaufmann on How Demography Is Enhancing Religious Fundamentalism
›May 24, 2011 // By Schuyler Null“There’s a belief, often amongst political scientists and social scientists, that demography is somehow passive and that it doesn’t really matter,” said Eric Kaufmann, author of Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth: Demography and Politics in the 21st Century and professor at Birkbeck College, University of London in this interview with ECSP. “Part of the message of this book is that demography can lead to social and political change.”
“In this case what I’m looking at is the way that demography can change the religious landscape,” Kaufmann said. “It can actually enhance the power of religion, especially religious fundamentalism in societies throughout the world.”
“Purely secular people, who have no religious affiliation, they are leading the move towards very low levels of fertility, even down to the level of one child per woman,” Kaufmann said. On the other hand, fundamentalists are reacting to this trend and deliberately deciding not to make the demographic transition, he said. “In doing so, the gap between secular and religious widens” and is actually more pronounced in places where the two groups collide.
“You can see this in the Muslim world,” said Kaufmann. “If you look at urban areas such as the Nile Delta and Cairo, in those urban cities, women are who are most in favor of Shariah have twice the family size of women who are most opposed to Shariah, whereas in the Egyptian countryside, the difference is much less because they haven’t been exposed to the same modernizing pressures.”
These dynamics affect the Western world as well, especially when you factor in migration, said Kaufmann: “The fact that almost all the world’s population growth is occurring in the developing world, which is largely religious, means that a lot of people are moving from religious parts of the world to secular parts of the world,” he said. “That effects, for example, countries like the United States or in Western Europe, which are receiving immigrants, and it means in the case of Western Europe – which is a very secular environment – that immigrants bring not only ethnic change but on the back of that, religious change; they make their societies more religious.” -
A New Security Narrative: What’s America’s Story for the 21st Century?
›We rarely had to question our place in the world during World War II or the Cold War when good guys and bad guys were easier to identify. A clear narrative, whether in the form of opposing Hitler or containing the spread of “The Evil Empire,” fueled our sense of global mission. Sure there were disagreements, but the big picture (and the big enemy) loomed large.
Our sense of realities, large and small, begins with the stories that frame our understanding of the events around us. The fall of the USSR took the wind out of the sails of our mythic sense of purpose. We were still “us,” but we now lacked a “them.”
A security narrative often emerges from our collective sense of threat assessment. It’s not only about what we stand for, but also what we stand against. On that fateful day of September 11, 2001, many believed that we had found the enemy that would provide the story lacking from our national security narrative since the fall of the Soviet empire. But an ill-defined foe lacking a nation-state home has only contributed to our post-Cold War drift. When we ask ourselves why we are committing military might in Libya (or Afghanistan, or Iraq), we’re really asking bigger questions. What is our purpose in the world? What is the story that defines our friends and our foes? And what does that story tell us about when to sit back or step up? When to watch or when to act?
The lack of a storyline also gives those who hate us the opportunity to define us as evil. So it becomes ever more urgent to start the conversation and to provide a non-partisan forum for what is bound to be a difficult deliberation. When Jane Harman left Congress to accept the leadership post at the Wilson Center, she brought her sense that toxic partisanship prevents Congress from addressing the biggest questions facing the nation in a productive and nonpartisan manner. Under her leadership, the Wilson Center has begun the “National Conversation” series to tackle the toughest issues.
The recently held inaugural event showed great promise. Two active military officers, Captain Wayne Porter (USN) and Colonel Mark Mykleby (USMC), writing under the pseudonym, “Mr. Y,” provided the framework for the discussion. Their vision for a new U.S. security story was presented in a white paper titled, “A National Strategic Narrative.” Their stated purpose is to provide a framework through which to view policy decisions well into the 21st century.
The encounter was lively and challenging, sometimes provocative, but always civil. I can summarize the immediate outcome by reporting a consensus that a narrative is missing and needed. It was a good start, but the discussion needs to continue until we reach a national consensus and not just one among five panelists and a moderator. I will not go into great detail in recapping the arguments and ideas presented, but will instead offer a contribution from each participant to whet your appetite.
Anne-Marie Slaughter, Princeton professor and former Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. Department of State began the session with a summary of the white paper, describing the changing nature of power and influence:We were never able to control international events but we had a much better possibility during the Cold War when you essentially had a bipolar world with two principal actors than we do in a world of countless state and non-state actors. Nobody controls anything in the 21st century, indeed it’s just not a very good century to be – it’s not a good time to be a control freak. [Laughter] Whether it’s your e-mail or global events it’s sort of the same problems. What you can do is influence outcomes. So we have to start by saying it’s an open system; you can’t control it but you can build up your credible influence.
Brent Scowcroft, National Security Advisor to two U.S. presidents, provided an historical framework for the discussion:I think we’re facing a historical discontinuity. The Treaty of Westphalia recognized the existence of the nation-state system codified it and so on. That was a replacement for the feudal system where our sovereignty was vague, divided between kings and princes and landowners and religious leaders. It created a new system and I think the epitome of the nation-state system was the 20th century. I think that globalization writ large is changing that system and globalization is eroding national borders. The financial crisis of 2008 showed us we’ve got a global economic system, what happened in one country spread immediately around. It also showed we don’t have a global way to deal with a global economic situation. Now, this force of globalization to me the best way to look at it is akin to the force of industrialization 250 years ago. Industrialization really created the modern nation state with a lot more power over its citizens to deal with issues than the earlier Westphalia state system had. And it brought the state together. It made it more powerful. Globalization is reacting the same way but in the opposite direction. It is diluting the power of the nation state to deal with the important things.
Thomas Friedman, Pulitzer-prize winning columnist for The New York Times, described the difference between virtual and real action:Exxon Mobil, they’re not on Facebook, they’re just in your face. [Laughter] Peabody Coal, they don’t have a chatroom. They’re in the cloakroom of the U.S. Congress with bags of money. So if you want to change the world, you gotta get out of Facebook and into somebody’s face whether that’s in the U.S. Congress or Tahrir Square. You’ll say, why I blogged on it. I blogged on it, really? That’s like firing a mortar into the Milky Way Galaxy, okay. [Laughter] There is a faux sense of activism out there that is really dangerous. The world, your world, may be digital but politics is still analog and we’ve kind of gotten away from that. Egypt changed. Yes, Facebook was hugely important in organizing people, but the fundamental change happened because a million people showed up in Tahrir Square.
Steve Clemons, founder of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, added this thought on the essence of globalization:What globalization really is, is the disruption of cartels. What blogging is, individual blogging is saying is, I’m not gonna wait for The New York Times editor to tell me no any more or [laughter] to say yes three weeks from now. You know, it is the disruption of cartels and that is happening in every sector of society.
Robert Kagan, senior fellow with The Brookings Institution and a former State Department Policy Planning Officer, cautioned against rushing to utopian conclusions about the impact of our new levels of interconnectedness:Let me just give you an example of how even something new doesn’t necessarily change things the way we want them to or the way we expect them to. I’m positive by the way that human nature is not new. So you’re kind of dealing with the same beast, and I use the term advisably, as you’ve been dealing with for millennia. Let’s talk about the fact that everyone can communicate with each other on the internet. You know, when people communicate with each other especially across national boundaries sometimes it makes them grow closer. Sometimes it makes them hate each other more. If you read the Internet in China now it’s hyper nationalistic. Now, you can argue that because that’s where the government channel said and because they don’t let anybody else or anything else or you could say the Internet is a great vehicle for the Chinese people to express their hatred of the Japanese people. It certainly is doing that now. So does that mean the Internet is going to bring nations closer and solve problems? Not necessarily.
Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN), talked about the expectations of youth and how demographics will be a key consideration when defining a narrative:The Middle East is on my mind a lot these days, what it means if you have all these societies where 50 percent of the population is under 18 years old? You know this is – this has big implications. I mean, this is a demographic reality that is going to have vast implications for the United States. So one thing is it’s not going away because lots of these people who are 18 years old, their cohort just moves through. You know, they’re going to be there a long time and they have demands, they’re going to have needs, they’re going to have expectations. You mentioned justice. They expect us to act justly. And I, when people talk about anti-Americanism, for me part of what’s going on is unmet expectations not just ‘we don’t like it.’
For this abbreviated summary of the discussion, I give the final cautionary word to Steve Clemons, who had this to say in response to an audience question about how to begin the process of constructing a new narrative:This is a town of risk-averse institutions, a town of inertia, a town of vested interests. It’s not a town that really embraces the notion of how do you pivot very quickly and rapidly in a different direction. So, fundamentally you need to begin putting out narratives like this.
A transcript and video of the event is available from the Wilson Center and additional coverage can also be found right here on The New Security Beat.
John Milewski is the host of Dialogue Radio and Television at the Woodrow Wilson Center and can also be followed on The Huffington Post or Twitter.
Photo Credit: Adapted from “1989 – Berlin, Germany,” courtesy of flickr user MojoBaer. -
Population Growth and Climate Change Threaten Urban Freshwater Provision
›May 6, 2011 // By Emanuel FeldBy 2050, more than one billion urban dwellers could face perennial freshwater shortages if major improvements are not made to water management practices and infrastructure, according to a recent study published in the journal PNAS, “Urban Growth, Climate change, and Freshwater Availability.” These challenges will arise as hydrologic changes due to climate change compound “an unprecedented wave of urban growth,” with nearly three billion additional urban residents forecast by 2050. “It is a solvable problem,” the study argues, “but one that will take money, time, political will, and effective governance.”
Using demographic data from the Earth Institute at Columbia University, as well as a variety of climate and city-level demographic scenarios, the researchers estimate per-capita water availability for cities in the developing world, where urban growth will be most rapid. They advise, however, that their findings should be taken as conservative estimates, since the study assumes cities can use all nearby water and does not account for key challenges relating to water quality and delivery to urban centers.
In 2000, 150 million people in developing countries lived in urban areas that could not support their own water requirements (i.e. less than 100 liters available per person per day). By 2050, according to the study, urban population growth alone could bring this figure to 993 million and more than three billion could face intermittent shortages at least one month out of the year. When the researchers expanded the area on which cities can draw upon to include a 100 km buffer zone, these values drop to 145 million and 1.3 billion, respectively.
However, once climate and land use change are included in the models, the aggregate number of people facing perennial shortages rises a further 100 million, if only water stores within the urban area are considered, or 22 million, for the 100 km buffer zone model.
Remarkably, these aggregate figures differ very little among the various demographic and climate scenarios. The particularities of the challenge do however vary at the regional level. Perennial water shortage will generally be limited to cities in the Middle East and North Africa. Seasonal water shortages, on the other hand, will be geographically widespread, although rapidly urbanizing India and China will be especially hard hit.
The study acknowledges the temptation to view water shortage “as an engineering challenge.” Still, the lead author, Rob McDonald of The Nature Conservancy, cautions against exclusive reliance on grey infrastructure solutions (e.g. canals and dams) in an article for Nature Conservancy, saying:Some new infrastructure will be needed, of course – that’s the classic way cities have solved water shortages. But especially in parts of the world where there’s lots of cities, just going out farther or digging deeper to get water can’t be the only solution.
Instead, McDonald and co-authors Pamela Green, Deborah Balk, Balazs M. Fekete, Carmen Revenga, Megan Todd, and Mark Montgomery, emphasize the need for cities to encourage more efficient water use by their industrial and residential sectors, as well as the potential to engage the water-intensive agriculture sector in surrounding rural areas.
“Bottom line,” McDonald said in an interview with Robert Lalasz of The Nature Conservancy’s Cool Green Science blog, “don’t think of those high numbers as a forecast of doom. They are a call to action.”
Emanuel Feld is a student at Yale University studying economics and the environment.
Sources: Cool Green Science, PNAS, The Nature Conservancy.
Photo Credit: Adapted from “Chennai prayed too hard…. Part I,” courtesy of flickr user Pandiyan. -
Watch: Jennifer Dabbs Sciubba on Population and National Security
›April 28, 2011 // By Schuyler Null“Long-term trends really are what shape the environment in the future,” said Jennifer Dabbs Sciubba in this interview with ECSP. “As we’ve seen recently with…revolution in North Africa, it’s the long-term trends that act together for these things to happen – I like to say demography is not usually the spark for a conflict but it’s the fodder.”
Sciubba is the Mellon Environmental Fellow in the Department of International Studies at Rhodes College. In her new book, The Future Faces of War: Population and National Security, she discusses the importance of demographic trends in relation to security and stability, including age structure, migration, youth bulges, population growth, and urbanization.
One of the most important things to emerge from the book, said Sciubba, is that countries that are growing at very high rates that are overwhelming the capacities of the state (like many in sub-Saharan Africa) really will benefit from family planning efforts that target unmet need.
Afghanistan, for example, “has an extremely young age structure,” Sciubba pointed out. “So if you’re trying to move into a post-conflict reconstruction atmosphere…you absolutely have to take into account population and the fact that it will continue to grow.”
“Even if there are major moves now in terms of reducing fertility, they have decades ahead of this challenge of youth entering the job market,” Sciubba said. “Thousands and thousands more jobs will need to be created every year, so if you have a dollar to spend, that’s a really good place to do it.”
For more on Jennifer Dabbs Sciubba and The Future Faces of War, see her book launch at the Wilson Center with Deputy Under Secretary Kathleen Hicks of the Department of Defense (video) and some of her previous posts on The New Security Beat.
