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"AHDR 2002 challenged the Arab world to
overcome three cardinal obstacles to human development posed by
widening gaps in freedom, women’s empowerment and knowledge across the
region.
Looking at international, regional and
local developments affecting Arab countries since the report was
issued confirms that those challenges remain critically pertinent and
may have become even graver, especially in the area of freedom.
Nowhere is this more apparent than the status of Arab knowledge at the
beginning of the 21st century, the theme of this second report.
Despite the presence of significant human capital in the region, AHDR
2003 concludes that disabling constraints hamper the acquisition,
diffusion and production of knowledge in Arab societies. This human
capital, under more promising conditions, could offer a substantial
base for an Arab knowledge renaissance.
The Report affirms that knowledge can
help the region to expand the scope of human freedoms, enhance the
capacity to guarantee those freedoms through good governance and
achieve the higher moral human goals of justice and human dignity. It
also underlines the importance of knowledge to Arab countries as a
powerful driver of economic growth through higher productivity.
Its closing section puts forward a
strategic vision for creating knowledge societies in the Arab world
based on five pillars: Guaranteeing key freedoms; Disseminating
quality education; Embedding science; Shifting towards knowledge based
production; and Developing an enlightened Arab knowledge model.
AHDR 2003 makes it clear that, in the
Arab civilization, the pursuit of knowledge is prompted by religion,
culture, history and the human will to achieve success. Obstructions
to this quest are the defective structures created by human beings-
social, economic and above all political. Arabs must remove or reform
these structures in order to take the place they deserve in the world
of knowledge at the beginning of the knowledge millennium." |
