Mapping underdevelopment
Is human development measurable? Fatemah Farag reviews the seventh Egypt Human Development Report, released this week
How can the average woman in Lower Egypt be compared with her Upper Egyptian counterpart? What is the relationship between GDP per capita and adult literacy? This year's Egypt National Human Development Report (NHDR) is aiming not only to answer questions such as these but to make the answers available at the glance of a map or the touch of an icon.
The NHDR is the seventh in a series of reports issued annually since 1994 by the Institute of National Planning (INP) in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The preamble of this year's report explains: "Egypt's NHDRs have been inspired by a visionary framework and a development strategy that has been elaborated through the efforts of UNDP in regularly preparing and publishing the Global Human Development Report since 1990."
At the core of the HDR philosophy is the Human Development Index (HDI), an index that "combines measures for three key elements of development, income, life expectancy and education -- [it] provides a benchmark by which the human aspects of development can be assessed," explains UNDP.
This is the first year that the project in Egypt has taken HDI measurements on the levels of markaz (district), hai (neighbourhood) and city. This year's report uses over 70 indicators in an attempt to reveal the situation of development nationwide -- in 451 local administrative units.
Generally, the report found that the highest level of human development (0.831) was registered in hai Sharq in the governorate of Port Said, while the lowest (0.529) was in the markaz and city of Dar Al-Salam (see related article). Between 1990 and 2001, urban governorates were found to have the highest HDI ranking. Data collected by the NHDR team indicated that "the majority of the areas in governorates in Upper Egypt are characterised by having low human development [0.502 - 0.615 HDI]."
Unemployment -- which is estimated at nine per cent, a figure well below independent studies which have put it as high as 20 per cent -- is identified by the report as a nationwide concern.
However, those who worked to compile the NHDR are keen to point out that because the data collection and analysis were conducted at the levels of districts and neighbourhoods, more detailed information, such as the per capita income of Dar Al- Salam in Sohag, the primary and preparatory pupil/teacher ratio in the city of Al-Badrasheen and the number of physicians and nurses per 10,000 people in the city of Al-Fath in the Upper Egyptian governorate of Assiut, are now readily available to policy-makers.
"This cross-referencing exercise can help policy-makers to identify discernible pockets of deprivation and to also better understand the disparities which emerge from analysing the local human development picture." The report's authors suggest examples of this: "[A] relationship between high rates of average GDP per capita and improved levels of literacy; the fact that unemployment is more likely to discourage political participation..."
Perhaps more important is the fact that this year's NHDR has chosen participation, defined as "the participation of people in the decisions that affect their lives", as its main theme. According to NHDR 2003: "The previous six Egyptian [NHDRs] tackled the basic human development approach, concepts and strategies in addition to thematic issues like poverty, social spending and education. The present report focuses on participation. It pays great attention to the relationship between participation and human development with special emphasis on grass-roots participation and its role in local development."
A press release distributed at the launch of the report went on to explain, "The report identifies centralised state authority and cultural passivity as being key culprits, while ambiguous laws have weakened participation in national development." It advised that with "[g]ood governance... which implies democratic rule and the political space for participation, citizens can legitimise government and governing institutions." Towards this aim, the report suggests a system of participatory planning, democratisation, decentralisation and the development of civil society, especially at the grass-roots level.
But the devil is in the details. On the one hand, some of the figures presented are troublesome. According to a press release distributed at the launch of the report, UNDP and INP see an indicator of economic progress in the fact that "the proportion of the poor in Egypt has dropped from about 30 per cent since 1990 to about 17 per cent in the year 2000." But has it? The report released last August by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood (NCCM), The Situation of Egyptian Children and Women, says that for 1995-96, and in accordance with the measure of the International Poverty Line (less than US $2 per day), the proportion of the poor in Egypt stands at 52.7 per cent. If the Human Poverty Index (composite index bringing together four key measures of human deprivation) were to be used, the percentage of poor Egyptians would be 32.3 per cent. The discrepancy could be considered a mere difference in opinion if the sources cited by the UNICEF/NCCM report for these estimates were not the Egypt Human Development Report of 1996, the Human Development Report of 2000 and the World Bank indicators 2000.
More worrisome is the ambiguity of the political context set out by the report. For example, in explaining the role of professional syndicates the report says: "[T]he professional syndicates confront problems concerning the practice of activity and relations between the hierarchy and the syndicates' free will to choose their own leaders and systems." This is probably the most obtuse way of stating that the white collar syndicates have been a major arena of confrontation between the government and the Muslim Brotherhood during the 1990s, often resulting in government crackdowns that brought the most powerful syndicates to a virtual halt.
Syndicates have also been exposed to manifold constraints on their activities. Examples abound, such as the violent police clamp down on the protest of the Bar Association against the death of lawyer Abdel-Hareth Madani in 1994, and more recently, police clamp downs on several rallies organised by various professional syndicates to protest Israeli aggression in Palestine and the US/British invasion of Iraq. The legal framework binding the syndicates is highly restrictive. A notable indication has been the ongoing battles of Journalists to have the law regulating their syndicate amended, to little avail.
Accuracy is not improved when the report moves on to the issue of trade unions. The report claims that "Egypt's workers' syndicates are democratic, optional-membership self-financed associations of workers that operate under the umbrella of Law 85 of 1942." For starters, the current trade union structure came into being in 1957 within the framework of a developing "social contract" between the state and the working class. The allegedly democratic nature of the current structure, and the legislation regulating, is to say the least a matter of fierce debate, not least for the fact that it prohibits pluralism in trade union organisation, allowing only one state-backed, Soviet-style trade union structure. Furthermore, trade union membership is not optional for those who are employed in the public sector, while those in private sector ventures with a total employment of under 200 have not been allowed to apply for union membership for several years now.
Urging the press to play a greater role in encouraging scientific and critical reasoning, the report seems to jump the gun by telling journalists the kind of findings that such scientific and critical reasoning, and presumably investigative reporting, should result in. The press, therefore, is urged to make people aware of the "significant role played by the private sector, especially in providing job opportunities to reduce unemployment and sustaining investment, as well as promoting creative values towards economic competition".
Such assertions, needless to say, are far from self-evident, especially in a country where the private sector has been often criticized, even by government officials, for its long-standing failure to as as a serious provider of job opportunities under a free market economy.
Certain significant omissions are also worthy of note. The Future General Foundation, which the report highlights in a separate box as an exemplary NGO in the field of human development, may well deserve the NHDR's special focus. But surely, the fact that it is founded and led by Gamal Mubarak, a leading member of the ruling party and the president's son (which the report fails to mention), is relevant to an evaluation of the efficacy of that particular NGO.
Of course, NHDR is correct when debating the issue of citizen participation in pointing out that "access to information remains a key dimension of the dialogue on participation." And, NHDR provides a wealth of such information: demographic indicators, social indicators including health, education, literacy, communication and participation as well as economic indicators such as those related to unemployment and poverty, gap indicators between urban and rural areas and women and men.
However, one cannot help but consider that people understand when they are not employed that they need a job. What might empower them is not necessarily giving them scientific evidence of this fact but explaining the political/economic context which renders them unemployed. Only then can they become decisive agents in changing the system towards development in their favour. After all, the report does note that "both participation and empowerment are two faces of one reality, as participation does not only aim to develop society and create its future, it also aims to develop those who participate by increasing their abilities, capacities and their effective and operative role in society."
In explaining the characteristics of political life in Egypt, the report is bold in emphasising that "[f]reedom to start political parties must be guaranteed whatever their ideological and political orientations, especially when they adopt legal goals and means. This can be achieved through reforming the laws that regulate political pluralism. Similarly, the electoral process, rights and freedoms should be reviewed. This should include the ending of restrictions on political parties, syndicates and the media."
The report also highlights the fact that recent figures of voter turnout (in the parliamentary elections of 2000) show an "evident decline". The report states, "Abstentation [sic] from participation in the electoral process is clear, given that the average national turnout was 24.1 per cent." This is explained as the result of a myriad of structural, cultural and psychological factors as well as the lack of democratic experience, fragility of political parties and general lack of credibility. And yet, these were elections marked by extremely passionate battles, starting in the north of the country, where for the first time in over 20 years the opposition and independent candidates were resoundingly defeating long-standing official ruling-party candidates. The second and third phases of the elections were characterised by an increasingly repressive climate and widespread allegations of electoral rigging. Dozens of court cases and verdicts testify to the faulty electoral process and, by default, the questionable legitimacy of many members of parliament. This is a state of affairs that cannot possibly enhance people's participation in the current system. It is not just a matter of amended legislation.
On another level, the report points out the importance of participation in the field of services and social organisation. While hailing the development of parents' councils, which have become involved in the development of education through the public supervision of educational activities and school affairs, it rightly laments the fact that to date student participation in development remains limited because "the intervention of teaching boards and security agencies, the changing of election schedules and the marginalisation of the role of student unions have all led to the decline in student participation."
Finally, the importance of local development through increasing the role of local government brings the report to a close. Shorouk, a programme for integral rural development initiated in 1992 by the Ministry of Local Administration, is highlighted as a positive example of such local development through grass-roots participation.
