Arab League Secretary-General Amre Moussa said events in Tunisia are being discussed at the group’s summit meeting and that the “Arab soul” is broken by poverty, unemployment and a regression in development indicators.
“The Arab citizen is in an unprecedented state of anger and frustration,” Moussa said at the conference in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm El Sheikh on Wednesday. “Achieving success that is tangible to the Arab citizens in their living conditions will help comfort our societies.”
The Arab world needs a “renaissance”, he said.
Moussa said a $2bn fund to support Arab League member states’ small and medium-sized businesses, proposed two years ago in Kuwait, “is being implemented and more than 60 percent of its capital has been officially pledged by 10 Arab countries.”
He said Libya announced it will contribute $100m to the fund.
Former Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, 74, fled to Saudi Arabia on January 14 after protests that began with a focus on youth unemployment and escalated to include criticism of corruption and repression. Seventy-eight people died and 94 were hurt in the unrest, which caused $2bn in damage in the North African country, the government said.
“The general atmosphere under which we are working controls many of our actions and decides many of our needs,” Moussa said. “The large social shocks that our Arab countries are facing and the revolution in Tunisia are not far from the topics of discussion at this summit. And by that I mean social and economic development.”
Unemployment in Tunisia is forecast to be 13.1 percent this year, while the economy is expected to grow 4.8 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund. The London-based Economist Intelligence Unit was less optimistic about growth in a January 6 report, predicting that it will slow this year from a projected 3.4 percent in 2010 because of weak growth in the European Union, Tunisia’s key trade market.
Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak said at the summit today that job creation in the Arab world will remain one of the most important goals and challenges for countries.
“The Arab youth is the most precious resource that we have,” Mubarak said. “They represent more than 25 percent of our populations.”
A man in the Egyptian city of Alexandria died yesterday after setting himself on fire to protest poor economic and political conditions, Al Jazeera reported.
Egypt, Algeria and Libya all rank in the bottom half, well below 65th-placed Tunisia, in the latest survey of corruption perceptions in 180 nations by Berlin-based Transparency International. All Arab countries except Lebanon and Iraq are classified as authoritarian regimes in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2010 Democracy Index.
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