By N Chandra Mohan
NEW DELHI, Dec 3 2015 (IPS)

The crash in oil prices is not the only challenge confronting the Gulf States in West Asia. Economic disorder and lack of opportunity are contributing to instability in the region, stated Bahrain’s minister for industry, commerce and tourism, Zayed Al Zayani, while kicking off the recent IISS Bahrain Bay Forum. He emphasized the need for “unprecedented” economic reform across the Gulf in the wake of the lower oil revenues. These policies include the generation of millions of jobs for the youth in these economies that continue to depend heavily on expatriate labour from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Philippines.

N Chandra Mohan

The Gulf States face the prospect of a demographic dividend of a youth bulge in the population rapidly turning into a curse, thanks to high and rising rates of unemployment for those between 15 to 24 years of age. The highest rates are in Saudi Arabia (28.7 per cent), Bahrain (27.9 per cent), Oman (20.5 per cent) and Kuwait (19.6 per cent). India, too, has double digit rates of joblessness among the young like many of these economies. There was a suggestion at the Bahrain Bay Forum that such high rates of youth unemployment are a proximate factor behind the surge in militant terrorism, exemplified by the rise of the Daesh or ISIS.

The prospect of lower oil revenues certainly will constrain the Gulf States to diversify their economies away from dependence on this commodity. Countries like Bahrain seek to focus on education and training, communications and infrastructure and promoting a start-up ecosystem for fostering entrepreneurship. The level of ambition is also high as they intend to generate high skill jobs and build a knowledge- based economy. The technology sector in the Gulf States is likely expected to grow by 10 per cent per annum over the next five years while the spending on technology in the Middle East as a whole is expected to touch $200 billion.

However, the transition to this brave new world requires bridging the skills gap. The labour market in this region depends heavily on low skilled and low wage earning migrant labour. More than 80 per cent of the workforce in private sector employment in Bahrain is comprised of expatriates. It goes up to 96 per cent and 98 per cent in Kuwait and Qatar respectively. In sharp contrast, the nationals are disproportionately represented in the bloated public sector. So, one form of dualism in the labour market is that the private sector is dominated wholly by expatriates while the public sector is largely for the locals in the Gulf.

Another source of dualism is that women are not adequately represented in the labour market due to pervasive gender discrimination in these conservative economies. Although women’s enrolment in higher educational institutions is rapidly rising of late — a case in point are courses in financial services in Bahrain which attract a lot of women — female labour force participation rates are well below 30 per cent as against the global average of 50 per cent. Jobless among young females is as high as 55 per cent in Saudi Arabia which is three-times higher than that of young males, according to the World Bank’s World Development Indicators.

Gulf’s labour market thus is “locked in a low skills, low wages and low productivity equilibrium” argued Frank Hagemann, deputy regional director of ILO, at one of the sessions at the Bay Forum. This dualism is reflected in a substantial wage gap between the private and public sector. At the lower end, the living and working conditions of migrants is sub-standard and highly exploitative in nature. Dependency-driven employee-employers relations are rife. The big challenge for the Gulf States is to kick-start the transition from this state of affairs to one driven by higher skills, higher wages and productivity.

What is the impact of abundant supplies of low skilled, low productivity expatriate population queried Ausamah Al Absi, chief executive, Labour Market Regulatory Authority in Bahrain? If an entrepreneur were to make an investment in a state-of-the-art printing press in Germany, he has to employ high technology and productivity tools as the cost of manpower is high. But in Bahrain, he can go for lower technology supported by a low skilled workforce. Pursuing a capital-intensive option in a low wage economy is not on. For such demand-side reasons, this entrepreneur will naturally be rendered uncompetitive in this economy, felt Al Absi.

Low oil prices complicate the efforts of the Gulf States to address these distortions without throwing out the baby with the bathwater. If revenues continue to decline, a worry is that it reduces the fiscal space to pay nationals in the public sector. At the same time, there is a compulsion to reduce subsidies on water, electricity and school fees that will disproportionately hit the expatriate workforce. The Gulf economies thus will make it more and more difficult for the expatriates to work in these economies over the near-term Controls on migration appear inevitable, regardless of the heavy dependence on such labour at present.

The transition to a higher skills, wages and productivity equilibrium is far from easy. It entails changes over a generation. For instance, in Saudi Arabia, 40 per cent of the graduates come from humanities or Islamic studies while only 4 per cent are engineers. Stepping up the numbers of engineers takes more time. Yet there is a temptation to look for quick fixes like inviting tech giants in the US to set up cloud computing courses in the Gulf States! At the Bay Forum, Bahrain announced a $100 million venture capital based fund to that will work as the first cloud technology accelerator in the region. Can such moves kick-start hi-tech start-ups? Intermediate steps are perhaps more necessary like vocational and on-the-job training. Only 17 per cent of firms in the Gulf States provide on-the-job training as against the global average of 35 per cent. The best bet for these countries is greater gender empowerment in the labour market than expat-bashing policies to reduce sources of instability.

(End)

Excerpt:

A woman waits with her son outside the registration centre in Kos, just kilometres from the Turkish coast. For Syrians, the process is now easier, thanks to a ship-based registration centre docked at the island. For others, like this woman, the wait continues. So far in 2015, 160,000 migrants have arrived in Greece, already almost four times more than in the previous year. Credit: Photo: Stephen Ryan/IFRC

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 8 2015 (IPS)

As Western and Central European nations seem overwhelmed by the growing refugee crisis – triggered mostly by the inflow of hundreds and thousands of displaced people largely from Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq – one lingering question remains unanswered: why aren’t some of the rich Arab Gulf nations reaching out to help these hapless refugees?

The U.N. Committee on the Protection of Migrant Workers, the lead United Nations body dealing with issues relating to migrants, says millions of people have been forced to migrate from their homeland in search of safe havens abroad due to the on-going war in Syria.“The central question for Europe is: In the coming years will the migrants and their families be successfully integrated into European societies?” -- Joseph Chamie

“While neighbouring States have opened their borders to millions of Syrian migrants, other countries, especially in Europe and elsewhere, notably the Gulf States, should do more to address one of the most tragic mass displacements of people since World War II,” says the Committee.

Joseph Chamie, an independent consulting demographer and a former director of the United Nations Population Division, told IPS some neighbouring countries, such as Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, have accepted very large numbers of refugees (according to U.N. figures, over 3.5 million people).

However, other nearby countries, notably Israel and the Arab Persian Gulf countries, have not been willing to accept the current refugees, he said.

The primary reason for the non-acceptance, he pointed out, is apparently the refugees are viewed as politically destabilising.

“The Gulf countries have admitted large numbers of South Asians and North Africans who are not considered immigrants, but temporary foreign workers who are expected to return to their homes. Also, Israel has accepted refugees in the past, but virtually all have been Jewish,” said Chamie, who has worked at the U.N. on population and migration issues for more than a quarter century and was also a former director of research at the Center for Migration Studies in New York and editor of the International Migration Review.

The Gulf nations which have virtually ignored the refugee crisis include Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

However, in a statement issued Tuesday, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said Kuwait, under the leadership of Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah, has hosted three annual pledging conferences since 2013.

As a result, billions of dollars have been raised in order to support the humanitarian response to the Syrian crisis, with the participation of 78 member states and 38 humanitarian organisations.

In 2015 alone, donors at the Kuwait 3 conference pledged 3.8 billion dollars, IOM said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already declared that Israel is a “very small country that lacks demographic and geographic depth”, but pointed out Israel is not indifferent to the human tragedy of the refugees from Syria and Africa.

“We have already devotedly cared for approximately 1,000 wounded people from the fighting in Syria, and we have helped them to rehabilitate their lives. We must control our borders, against both illegal migrants and terrorism,” he said.

With about eight million people, Israel has been described as a country founded mostly by refugees. But it is now building a new fence, about 18 miles long, along its border with Jordan to ward off “illegal migration and hostile infiltrations.”

“We must control our borders, against both illegal immigrants and terrorism,” Netanyahu said after a Cabinet meeting last week.

His statement drew strong criticism from Isaac Herzog, head of the main opposition Zionist Union party, who recounted the history of the Jewish people seeking safe haven from persecution: “Our people experienced first-hand the silence of the world. You have forgotten what it is to be Jews: Refugees. Persecuted.”

“The prime minister of the Jewish people would not shut his heart and the gates when people are fleeing for their lives, with babies in their arms, from persecutors,” said Herzog.

In a statement released Monday the U.N. Committee said Syrian migrants, pushed to take extreme action in search of secure and decent lives for their families, are literally putting their lives at risk to reach Europe.

“Hundreds of men, women and children have died while trying to reach safe shores. This is unconscionable in the view of the Committee.”

“We are once again shocked and dismayed at the appalling loss of life in the Mediterranean Sea”, Committee Chair Francisco Carrion Mena said following the latest drowning of Syrian migrants off the coast of Turkey last week – even as the Committee was meeting in Geneva.

Chamie told IPS It should come as no surprise that people are migrating. Given the current state of the world, the question should be: “Why aren’t more people migrating?”

In addition to globalisation, communication technologies and social media, powerful push/pull forces are operating to produce the current migration flows: poverty, violence, corruption, unemployment, repression and rapid population growth on the one side versus wealth, jobs, safety, social services, freedom and population decline on the other, he added.

While everyone has the right to leave their country, Chamie said, they do not have the right to enter another country. This paradox is the “Catch-22” that the growing numbers of migrants and destination nations are confronting.

The supply of potential migrants, who are free to leave their homelands, simply greatly exceeds the demand for migrants, which is set by the receiving countries. If people cannot enter a country as legal migrants, then many are choosing to enter illegally or overstay their legal visit, he noted.

“Today many migrants are indeed refugees as they are coming from worn-torn countries. And there are large numbers who are not strictly refugees, but are seeking improved economic opportunities and more secure living conditions for themselves and their families.”

He said many are wondering what will be the consequence of the current migration flows. These migratory flows are not going to stop any time soon and with them will come significant demographic, social, economic, political and cultural changes.

“The central question for Europe is: In the coming years will the migrants and their families be successfully integrated into European societies?” Chamie said.

And for the international community the key question is how to effectively address the root causes of the recent migration surges. In the recent past, the receiving countries have largely been unwilling to address these matters at the global level.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Saudi Arabia is now the world's fifth largest arms importer, moving up from the 18th largest in 2004-2008. Credit: Radio Nederland Wereldomroep/cc by 2.0

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 17 2014 (IPS)

The Middle East continues to be one of the world’s most lucrative arms markets, with two Gulf nations – Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – taking the lead, according to a new study released Monday by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

During 2009-2013, 22 percent of arms transfers to the region went to the UAE, 20 percent to Saudi Arabia and 15 percent to Turkey."The Gulf is the Eldorado for Western arms merchants and governments that want to recycle some of the wealth generated from oil." -- Toby C. Jones

The United States accounted for 42 percent of total arms supplies to the region, SIPRI said.

The rising arms purchases are attributed to several factors, including perceived threats from Iran, the growing Sunni-Shia sectarian strife, widespread fears of domestic terrorism, political instability and hefty oil incomes.

“I definitely think it is a mixture of all of those factors,” said Nicole Auger, a military analyst covering Middle East/Africa at Forecast International, a U.S.-based defence market research firm.

The Middle East defence market, she told IPS, is growing substantially as a result of civil unrest, international instability – especially between Iran and Gulf States – and higher oil prices.

Toby C. Jones, an associate history professor at Rutgers University, told IPS, “The Gulf is the Eldorado for Western arms merchants and governments that want to recycle some of the wealth generated from oil.”

There is no collection of states on the planet with more money and more enthusiasm for purchasing expensive weapons systems than in the Gulf, he pointed out.

Whatever strategic value these weapons have or do not have, it is important to keep in mind these weapons are mostly useless for “actual” war, which is why the United States continues to keep such a huge military presence in the region, he added.

“There is almost literally nothing else states could possibly buy that allow for recycling some of the Gulf’s cash,” he said.

Weapons sales generate a lot of virtual bang for the buck, said Jones, a former fellow at Princeton University’s Oil, Energy and Middle East Project and author of ‘Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia’.

Iran, which is barred from importing most types of major arms due to U.N. sanctions, received only one percent of the region’s arms imports in 2009-2013, according to SIPRI.

During the same period, the UAE was ranked the world’s fourth largest arms importer and Saudi Arabia the fifth largest (having been the 18th largest in 2004-2008).

Both countries have large outstanding orders for arms or advanced procurement plan, SIPRI said.

The top three arms importers, however, were India, China and Pakistan. And the five largest arms suppliers during 2009-2013 were the United States (29 percent of global arms exports), Russia (27 percent), Germany (seven percent), China (six percent) and France (five percent).

Auger told IPS, “I would pin Iran as the number one driver: its ongoing role in supporting rebel Shiite groups, cultivating political-military proxy allies in Hamas and Hezbollah and more recently its effort to keep Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in power.”

The Middle East’s major interest right now in upgrading or purchasing missile defence networks is almost all in preparation to defend against long-range attacks from Iran.

Also, Iran appears to be the major reason behind the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) trying again to form the U.S.-backed joint military command, she added.

These GCC countries include Oman, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE.

Auger said internal security would be a close second following the 2011 uprisings, the ongoing unrest in certain nations and the continuing threat of established and emerging Islamic fundamentalist groups.

“This is evident due to the new focus on special operations, electronic surveillance, and cybersecurity equipment,” she said.

The influx of revenue among the energy-exporting nations and the high oil price trend obviously plays a part as well, she added.

Last year’s 10.5-billion-dollar arms deal, one of the largest in the Middle East in recent years, included the sale of 26 F-16 fighter planes to UAE and sophisticated air-launched and air-to-ground missiles to Saudi Arabia.

These missiles were mostly to arm 154 F-15 fighter planes, to be delivered beginning 2015, purchased from the United States in 2010 at a staggering cost of 29.5 billion dollars.

The missiles were meant “to address the threat posed by Iran”, according to a senior U.S. official quoted in a news report.

The arms contract also included 1,000 GBU-35 “bunker busting” bombs to Saudi Arabia and 5,000 to UAE – bombs ideally suited to destroy underground nuclear installations.

But despite the sale of these weapons to Middle Eastern nations, the United States has always maintained it will continue to “guarantee Israel’s qualitative military edge” over Arab nations.

Jones told IPS the Arab Gulf states are politically vulnerable at home and the last three years have been particularly contentious.

While the region has not seen the kind of unrest that shook other parts of the Middle East, except for Bahrain and Kuwait, the regimes in Riyadh and elsewhere are anxious about the possibility there could be a rise in revolutionary fervour.

“They always have been, but these anxieties are more acute in this particular moment. So buying lots of weapons is often connected to domestic policing and counter-revolutionary concerns,” he said.

These weapons will likely never be used in a serious way in a regional conflict, he added.

Jones pointed out the purchasing of weapons, especially long range and complex weapons systems, has little to do with these states’ interest in going to war with Iran or even defending against it. “They have the United States for that,” he said.

But, in buying weapons like these, Gulf regimes claim they are also looking after U.S. energy concerns in a tough neighbourhood.

“These are specious claims, designed to reinforce American anxieties about dangers in the region in order to keep the U.S. military there,” Jones said.

The Arab states need “crisis” to be a permanent condition in order to maximise the West’s and especially Washington’s security commitment – whether crisis is real or not, he added.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain all recalled their ambassadors from Qatar on Wednesday, citing Qatar’s alleged support for organisations and individuals that threaten “the security and stability of the Gulf states” and for “hostile media.”

This came right on the heels of a U.A.E. court sentencing Qatari doctor Mahmoud al-Jaidah to seven years in prison on Monday, for the crime of aiding a banned opposition group called al-Islah, which the U.A.E. government alleges has operational ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

This was a coordinated move, led by the Saudis, to punish Qatar for supporting Muslim Brotherhood interests around the Middle East (and also for assuming a more prominent role in pan-Arab politics in general), but beyond that it reflects the Saudis’ deep and ongoing concern about an Iranian resurgence in the Gulf.

The North Dome-South Pars Field, straddling Qatari and Iranian waters. Source: Wikipedia

From the Saudi perspective the Qataris have been punching above their proper weight, and making nice with the wrong people.

Qatar’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood are clearly the public justification for this row; it is no mystery why Saudi Arabia followed up Wednesday’s diplomatic swipe at Qatar with a decision on Friday to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation.

The Saudis, while they share certain conservative Islamic principles with the Brotherhood, are more than a bit put off by the group’s opposition to dynastic rule. Despite that feature of Brotherhood’s ideology, though, the very dynastic Qatari monarchy has been a strong supporter of Brotherhood-allied movements throughout the Middle East and North Africa, in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt (especially), and Syria.

Their rationale for doing so has been two-fold: one, they feel that supporting the Brotherhood abroad should insulate them from the Brotherhood at home, and two, Qatar has been predicting that the Brotherhood would be the main beneficiary of the Arab Spring.

Had they been right in their prediction, Qatar’s regional influence would have been significantly increased as a result, but by the looks of things, they were wrong. The Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party is now outlawed in Egypt, its Ennahda Party in Tunisia has voluntarily agreed to give up power, and it has lost most of its influence within the Syrian opposition.

Last November’s reorganisation of Syrian opposition groups from the Qatar-financed Syrian Islamic Liberation Front to the Saudi-backed Islamic Front can be seen as evidence of the Brotherhood’s, and thus Qatar’s, loss of stature.

A related complaint that these countries have with Qatar is with the country’s Al Jazeera television news network (the “hostile media”).

Al Jazeera has continued to provide media access to Muslim Brotherhood figures in Egypt even as that organization was outlawed by the interim Egyptian government, to the extent that several Al Jazeera journalists are currently on trial in Egypt for aiding the Brotherhood.

These countries are also angry about the fact that Al Jazeera continues to give airtime to Brotherhood-affiliated cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Qaradawi is actually wanted for extradition to Egypt over his comments about the coup that removed the Brotherhood from power there, and he recently lambasted, on Al Jazeera’s airwaves, the U.A.E., for “fighting everything Islamic.”

The reported pressure being placed on Saudi and Emirati journalists working in Qatar to quit their jobs and return home undoubtedly has something to do with the overall irritation with Qatari media.

However, there is another factor at play here: Qatar’s close – too close for Saudi comfort – ties with Iran (the real “organisation” that threatens Gulf – i.e., Saudi – security), which has to do largely with natural gas. Qatar shares its windfall natural gas reserves with Iran, in what’s known as the North Dome/South Pars Field in the Persian Gulf.

The International Energy Agency estimates that it is the largest natural gas field on the planet. Qatar has been extracting gas from its side of the field considerably faster than Iran has been, for a couple of reasons.

For one thing, the North Dome side of the field (the part in Qatari waters) was discovered in the early 1970s, whereas the South Pars side was only discovered about 20 years later, so Qatar had a lot of time to get a head start on developing the field.

For another thing, the North Dome field is pretty much the only game left in Qatar, whose Dukhan oil field is clearly on the decline. Qatar has a huge incentive, then, to develop as much of the North Dome as they can as fast as they can in order to fund their numerous development projects.

There is a potential conflict here, though. Natural gas, like any other gas, tends to flow toward areas of low pressure. So when one end of a gas field is being drained of its gas faster than the other end, some of the gas in the less exploited end may flow to the more exploited end.

This is fine when an entire field is controlled by one country, but in this case, one can easily envision a scenario in which, several years from now, the Iranian government is accusing Qatar of siphoning off its gas.

What this means is that Qatar has a strong incentive to maintain friendly relations with Iran, and on this they have considerable disagreement with their Saudi neighbors.

To Saudi Arabia, Iran is a potential regional rival and must be countered at every turn; their opposition to easing international sanctions against Iran, for example, is not so much about the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon as it is about fear of Iran escaping from the economic cage in which those sanctions have trapped it.

The proxy war taking place between Saudi and Iranian interests in Syria is the most obvious example of the rivalry between the two nations, and the Saudi move against Qatar can be seen as another front in that proxy war.

Qatar, although it has backed the Syrian opposition, sees things differently where Iran is concerned; in January, Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid bin Mohammad Al-Attiyah publicly called for an “inclusive” approach to Iran, which he argued “has a crucial role” in ending the crisis in Syria.

There is enough historic tension between the Qataris and the Saudis for this kind of disagreement over foreign affairs to provide the basis for a wider fracturing of relations.

For its part, Bahrain has every reason to go along with a Saudi diplomatic move against a suspected regional ally of Iran; after all, it was Saudi intervention that saved Bahrain’s ruling al-Khalifa family from a Shiʿa-led rebellion in 2011, a rebellion that Bahrain accuses Iran of fomenting.

Look, though, at the two GCC members that did not pull their ambassadors from Qatar: Kuwait, where the Brotherhood’s Hadas Party is out of favour, but whose relations with Iran are “excellent”; and Oman, where Sultan Qaboos has been critical of the Brotherhood, but who is close enough to Iran to have served as a go-between for back-channel U.S.-Iran negotiations.

If the issue were really Qatar’s support for the Brotherhood, and not its relationship with Iran, both of these countries may well have joined the others in recalling their ambassadors.

The one country for which this explanation does not make sense is the U.A.E., whose relations with Iran are improving after the two countries recently reached an accord over the disposition of three disputed Gulf islands. In this case, it may really be that Qatar’s support for the Brotherhood, and especially the Jaidah case and Qaradawi’s criticisms, motivated their action.

Qatar’s failed bet on the Muslim Brotherhood made this the right time for the Saudis to move against them, but Saudi fears about an Iranian resurgence may well have been the real reason for their action.

The UAE's Masdar City, a planned city powered by renewable energy, serves as a model of what green urban development can be. Credit: Nrman Foster/cc by 2.0

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 21 2014 (IPS)

As the concept of South-South cooperation (SSC) continues to strengthen worldwide, some of the richest countries in the Arab world have been reaching out to the poor and the needy in the developing world.

The assistance has come mostly in the form of soft loans, investments, debt-relief, infrastructure building, technical cooperation and experimentation in new technologies and products."The Doha Expo is a showcase for joint creativity in our region." -- Mourad Wahba

At least three funding mechanisms – the Saudi Fund for Development, the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development and the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development – currently finance projects or contribute to debt relief in scores of developing countries, mostly in Africa.

In its latest report on South-South Cooperation, the United Nations singles out the 44-billion-dollar Islamic Development Bank, established by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, whose portfolio of loans and investments has been spread over many Islamic countries in Africa and Asia.

At the same time, the nine-billion-dollar Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development has been providing soft loans to governments and to public and private corporations.

The dramatic increase in SSC was highlighted at the first-ever Arab States Regional South-South Development Expo in the Qatari capital of Doha, which also showcased some of the success stories and shared experiences of more than 500 delegates from 45 countries.

Hosted by Qatar, the Expo was co-organised by the U.N. Office for South-South Cooperation and the U.N. Development Programme’s (UNDP) Regional Bureau for Arab States.

Yiping Zhou, director of the New York-based U.N. Office for South-South Cooperation, told IPS the Expo in Qatar, which concluded Thursday, was a direct response to the requests of member states and institutional partners to bring practical Southern solutions closer to regional contexts.

“With a focus on the exchange of knowledge and experience, stakeholders came together at this Expo to deepen the impact of South-South development cooperation through concrete scaling up and replication efforts,” he added.

Overall, more Arab financial resources have been allocated to poor countries, with 40 percent of total Arab financial assistance to recipients of World Bank’s International Development Assistance programme, according to a report released by the Cairo-based UNDP Regional Bureau for Arab States.

Additionally, some 20 percent of total Arab lending has been directed to countries eligible for heavily indebted poor countries (HIPC), including Afghanistan, Ghana, Cameroon, Mali and Senegal.

When the United Nations held a pledging conference for humanitarian aid to Syria last month, the Kuwaiti government made a hefty contribution of 500 million dollars – far ahead of the 380 million dollars pledged by the United States.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar were also key contributors, with 60 million dollars each.

“No one nation and no one community has all the answers,” said Mourad Wahba, deputy regional director of the UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Arab States.

“This is why the [Doha] Expo is so important, as a showcase for joint creativity in our region,” he added.

He said the Expo brought together “many champions of development policies and technologies that transformed inspiring ideas into everyday reality in countries of the South that have achieved balanced growth and sustainable development.”

The Expo also presented “a strong incentive for all Arab countries to learn from those successful experiences in order to achieve tangible development results across the region,” he noted.

The U.N. system is already incorporating South-South approaches into national and regional development planning and programming, specifically in Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia.

The United Nations has also assisted Saudi Arabia to become one of only five countries worldwide to have a specific country-level outcome related to SSC in its medium-term plan between the government and the world body.

According to the UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Arab States, more than half of the nearly 800 loans and 230 technical assistance grants by the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development have been distributed across 16 Arab states.

In 2010-2011, the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development signed loan agreements with seven Arab countries, primarily in the energy sector.

Also in 2011, the Saudi Fund for Development financed power plants in Egypt and Syria, along with dams in Sudan, while the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development provided Bahrain with a loan to build government and administrative buildings.

Kuwait is also cooperating with the Gulf Organisation for Research and Development, based in Qatar, to promote knowledge transfer on sustainable buildings and promote overall sustainable development.

Similarly, according to the report, the UAE has been particularly active in the field of renewable and alternative energy and clean technology.

Masdar, a subsidiary of the Mubadala Development Company in Abu Dhabi, continues to host the annual World Future Energy Summit, which has provided an important platform for knowledge-sharing among numerous Southern countries.

The UAE has also recently re-established the South-South platform for the High-level Conference on Science and Technology, an important forum for South-South knowledge exchange.

Under the Egyptian Fund for Technical Cooperation with Africa, Egypt has provided more than 250 short- and long-term experts to some 30 African countries for training and facilitation of knowledge-sharing in a variety of sectors, including water resources, health, agriculture and education, according to the report.

Egypt, which has trained more than 1,200 scholars from Kazakhstan through training courses, has also launched the Centre for South-South Industrial Cooperation for transferring technology and promoting innovation-based industrial development among African states.

Led by King Mohammed VI, Morocco has encouraged the deployment of graduates of Moroccan engineering schools to assist in development projects in rural electrification or water management, particularly in Africa.

Meanwhile, the Dubai-based Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation, the largest in the Arab region with a 10-billion-dollar endowment, has been described as a major philanthropic organisation in the Arab world, while Dubai Cares, which supports primary education in developing countries, is armed with an endowment of over one billion dollars.

The houbara bustard is an endangered bird, found in desert habitats of Pakistan’s Balochistan province. Credit: Houbara Foundation International, Pakistan.

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Dec 19 2012 (IPS)

Every year, between November and January, the Indus Flyway bears witness to a migration of an endangered bird species – the houbara bustard – from Central Asia to the deserts of Pakistan.

And every year, planeloads of Arab dignitaries follow suit, turning the desert habitats of Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan into a mini city of hunting ‘camps’, where, in the space of 10 days, they hunt down as many of the protected birds as possible.

This winter, incensed environmentalists and conservationists are wringing their hands in frustration to learn that none other than the highest authority in Pakistan, President Asif Ali Zardari, has invited the son of Qatar’s prime minister to hunt in the protected Kirthar National Park, as well as in the Thatta, Jamshoro and Badin districts in the Sindh province.

“This is quite unprecedented, the president breaking the law with such impunity,” Dr. Ejaz Ahmed of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)-Pakistan, told IPS.

Giving the president and other high level officials the benefit of the doubt, the environmentalist conceded, “It is possible that they may not be aware of the country’s wildlife acts or do not understand the importance of protected areas.”

Spread across 25,000 hectares just outside Karachi, the Kirthar National Park is the only one of its kind in the province and falls under the Sindh Wildlife Protection Ordinance of 1972, which bans hunting and threatens poachers with long prison terms and heavy fines.

This latest hunt has been organised for the Qatari VIP by Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry, and though no details are available, activists who have long protested the annual affair know what will transpire: the illegal hunting of houbara bustard.

Over the last 20 to 30 years, the wild population of the Asian Houbara has come under serious threat, mainly because of unregulated hunting, poaching and habitat loss as a result of human activity.

While locals are strictly prohibited from hunting, the ban is lifted – briefly and blatantly – to accommodate the fancies of Arab guests.

This year 30 special permits were issued to dignitaries belonging to the royal families of Saudi Arabia (two), the United Arab Emirates (12), Qatar (11) and Bahrain (five) to set up camps in 14 districts in three of the four provinces where the birds spend their winters.

“These royal guests are permitted to hunt for ten days, during which time they can hunt down a maximum of 100 birds each,” explained an official at the Sindh Wildlife Department (SWD), speaking to IPS under strict condition of anonymity.

Each dignitary comes with an entourage of over two-dozen of his own guests, along with a brigade of staff – from cooks and waiters to drivers and laundrymen.

They even bring their own vehicles and generators as well as all the “necessary” camp paraphernalia.

“They bring their bedding, crockery, carpets – you name it and they have it,” Muhammad Khalid, a Pakistani who served as a cook for a hunting party last year, told IPS. “Even in the otherwise parched desert, water was in plentiful supply (in their camps).”

An SWD official is assigned by the government to accompany each group, to ensure that the royals’ stay is hassle free, but also to unobtrusively note down violations of national and international wildlife codes.

According to the anonymous source, “Most overstay (their allotted time) and hunt down more than 100 birds.”

Dr. Ali Murtaza Dharejo, a zoologist, says weak implementation of legislation has brought the endangered bird to the brink of extinction.

“Very soon we will be left with nothing – no wildlife, no biodiversity,” lamented Dharejo. “We are destroying the natural habitats of the birds and the animals, there is no vegetation, fewer ponds and hardly any weeds left,” he said.

“Fewer birds are coming to winter here,” the SWD official confirmed, adding, “There is no scientific study to tell us if the numbers have dwindled or whether (the birds) have simply changed their routes. But I’d say (the absence of the birds) is very likely the result of decades of unregulated hunting and severe habitat degradation due to increased human activity.”

Arab kings and princes share these concerns, albeit for very different reasons: many realise that if conservation efforts are not taken seriously, it could mean an end to this ancient Bedouin sport.

Efforts are underway to ensure the survival of the species – but they may be inadequate to withstand the hunting fervour.

This year, the two Abu Dhabi breeding centres set up by the International Fund for Houbara Conservation (IFHC), a global organisation dedicated to restoring and preserving the endangered population, reported the presence of 13,000 new birds, bringing the total to more than 120,000 since the four centres, including two in Morocco, began work in 2006.

According to Brigadier Mukhtar Ahmed, heading the Houbara Foundation International in Pakistan, “Around 2,000 of those birds from the UAE will be released by early 2013. Before being brought to Pakistan, they will be harnessed with satellite transmitters and conventional radio collars to enable scientists to track their habitat preferences; the pattern of their migration; and the rate of survival after release.”

In a further bid to stem illegal hunting, the government here has also imposed a ban on the sale of falcons – also classified as an endangered and protected species – which are used to hunt the houbara bustard. But this, too, has been continuing under the table, according to Ahmed, former president of the Falcon Foundation International in Pakistan.

Earlier this month police seized 32 falcons from a shop in Karachi. These birds, particularly the females, fetch 1,000 to 10,000 dollars, the SWD officer told IPS, while a bustard only fetches between 100 and 150 dollars.

Because of the ban, Gulf royal families are issued permits to bring their own falcons in and out of the country.

“But what actually happens is that the old ones are left here and younger ones caught in Pakistan are transported out instead,” said Ahmed, adding that the swap is easy enough to make, given lax regulations.

A customs official speaking under condition of anonymity told IPS, “Customs and immigration officials are not in a position to question the goods they (the royal hunters) carry back. Those officers who have tried to stop them have been given a rough time later.”

(END)

Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy inaugurates a meeting of non-resident Keralites in Thiruvananthapuram. Credit: K.S. Harikrishnan/IPS

By K. S. Harikrishnan
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India , Oct 8 2012 (IPS)

For the first time in over four decades, the number of people migrating out of the southern Indian state of Kerala, home to 33.3 million people, is on the decline.

A comprehensive study conducted by the Centre for Development Studies (CDS) in Thiruvananthapuram on international migration from Kerala revealed that growth in migration levels will reach zero by 2015.

The report said that the number of Kerala migrants living abroad in 2008 was 2.19 million and 2.28 million in 2011.

Back in the 1970s, a loss of jobs in agriculture, lack of productive ventures and widespread education among the middle class led to an exodus of residents from Kerala, 90 percent of whom headed straight for the Gulf region in search of better jobs and higher wages.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) quickly became the most popular destination, absorbing 40 percent of Kerala’s job seekers, while Saudi Arabia plays host to 25 percent of the migrants.

But now, higher wages at home have begun to stem the outflow of human capital from Kerala. The average wage for unskilled workers increased from 150 rupees (three dollars) to 450 rupees (nine dollars) per day during the first decade of this century, making Kerala an attractive and competitive labour market.

B. Soman, an engineer in the petroleum sector in Oman, said that even unskilled workers already settled in the Gulf are now opting to go back home in search of better salaries.

John Mathew, a 35-year-old driver working in Kerala’s Pathanamthitta district, who recently returned from Qatar where he had spent the last seven years driving taxis, told IPS that comparatively low wages in the Gulf made a strong case for coming back home.

“Now I earn at least ten dollars a day. It is a decent wage, and my family is happy,” said Mathew.

In addition, Kerala has achieved a level of human development comparable with many advanced countries, including the highest life expectancy rates in the country – 75 years for men and 78 years for women.

Ironically, it was remittances from the Gulf that first began to improve the quality of life in Kerala and created a consumer culture in the state.

The purchase of land and construction of houses received priority among expatriate Keralites, followed by the purchase of vehicles, jewellery and imported electronic items.

Banks say the state received remittances totalling 500 billion rupees in 2011 compared with 432 billion rupees in 2008.

Dr. Sreelekha Nair, junior fellow at the Centre for Women’s Development Studies in New Delhi, told IPS, “While migration to the Gulf was dominated by unskilled workers, recent years witnessed a relative increase in the migration of highly skilled personnel to the Gulf.

“Flexible changes in ownership and business rules, at least in some Gulf countries, resulted in a rise in the number of entrepreneurs.  This also boosted the flow of remittances to Kerala,” she added.

According to the Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry of India, remittances from non-resident Indians in the current fiscal year are likely to exceed 75 billion dollars, up from 66 billion in the 2011-2012 period.

Dr. S. Irudaya Rajan, professor at CDS and an expert in international migration, told IPS that structural changes in the state’s population – namely a steadily ageing population coupled with low birthrates – also contributed to this decreasing emigration trend.

Due to a contraction in the supply of young labourers, and a higher standard of living enabled by remittances, wages for construction and manual jobs are relatively high in Kerala compared to other Indian states, making the former an attractive destination for internal migrants, Soman told IPS.

Internal migrants come largely from West Bengal, Orissa, and Assam and take jobs as domestic workers, farm labourers, masons, and shop helpers, among others.

They say economic hardships, caste-based exploitation, a crumbling agricultural sector and dwindling investment in rural infrastructure in their home states propel them towards Kerala in search of decent livelihoods.

Kalka Das, a mason from Murshidabad in West Bengal, told IPS that unskilled workers like him barely earned enough to survive.

“The prices of commodities are increasing day by day and people are constantly in search of decent wages. Today, Kerala is the Gulf (of India) for internal migrants,” he added.

Ram Gopal, a domestic worker hailing from Assam, told IPS that even though migrant workers in Kerala do experience some exploitation, “we at least get better work and a little bit more money”.

(END)