MANAMA: Some Arab states have made significant strides in human development over the past 40 years, but challenges such as public empowerment and official accountability remain, a new UN report said. Arab states make up five of the 10 “top movers” in the Human Development Index (HDI) - countries that have “made the greatest progress relative to their starting points on the HDI over the past 40 years,” said a UN briefing on Arab states in the 2010 Human Development Report, which was released Thursday. Oman made the most improvement since 1970, out of the 135 countries ranked, while Saudi Arabia was fifth, Tunisia seventh, Algeria ninth and Morocco 10th, a statement on the report said. “The high-achieving Arab countries can attribute their success largely to impressive long-term improvements in health and education,” rather than oil and gas earnings, the report's main author, Jeni Klugman, said in the statement. However, “while people in the Arab states have made great advances on several fronts, serious challenges remain in the areas of public empowerment and official accountability,” said the UN Information Center in Bahrain, in a briefing on Arab states mentioned in the report. “Few Arab states have experienced in-depth democratization,” it said, and though some states have multiparty systems, they “do not always equate to competitive multiparty democracy.” – Agence France
