Arabs Lift Their Voices

My favorite member of the liberal elite, Tom Friedman, summarizes the UN’s latest Arab Human Development Report today:

Meanwhile, the Arab peoples were told by their own leaders and state-owned intellectuals that democracy had to come later – after the nationalist struggle against colonialism or the liberation of Palestine or the creation of an Islamic state.

Well, the combination of 9/11, the Bush policies and the flattening of the world, whereby everyone can increasingly see how everyone else is living, changed all that – as evidenced this week with the publication of the third Arab Human Development Report, written by a courageous group of Arab social scientists under the auspices of the United Nations Development Program. This is one of the finest U.N. products under Kofi Annan.

The first report, in 2002, was about the poor state of Arab human development. The second, in 2003, was about the poor state of Arab education and science. The new one focuses on “the acute deficit of freedom and good governance” in the Arab world. It underscores how much Arab peoples crave, and need, freedom and good government – as much any other people. With the great news that Iraqis are finally forming a new government, it couldn’t appear at a better time.

You can download your own PDF copy for only $10 by clicking here.