The Greater Middle East

edited by Kristina Touzenis

The Greater Middle East Initiative builds on the 2002 Arab Human Development Report in which Arab authors individuated three "deficits": freedom, knowledge, and women's empowerment. These three points are considered essential in order to improve human development in the region. The Report confirmed that as long as the region's pool of politically and economically disenfranchised individuals grows, there will be an increase in extremism, terrorism, international crime, and irregular migration. The report stated that "There is a substantial lag between Arab countries and regions in terms of participatory governance... This freedom deficit undermines human development and is one of the most painful manifestations of lagging political development" An important critique of the GME is that the initiative tries to "export" democracy instead of creating democracy from within the Region thus actually disregarding the popular participation it is said to promote, and perhaps even does so with lack of credibility. Another critique - related to the first - is that the initiative fails to establish a basis for genuine partnership and does little to address the real challenges of Arab democratization, thus there is no real process of genuine consultations to come to an agreement on how the United Stats, Europe and the Arab Countries (plus the countries which are not Arab but are included in the GME) can work cooperatively to address the regional problems that threaten the security of Arab societies and the West. Instead the Initiative comes of as wanting to resolve the Arab countries' problems in their place - that is as a superior and arrogant experiment. Last but not least the initiative is criticised for having only oil and Israel's safety as its objectives and not real democracy.

General

Forum for the Future of the Greater Middle East

Europe

Middle East Partnership Initiative

Syria

Lebanon

Jura Gentium, Rivista di filosofia del diritto internazionale e della politica globale, ISSN 1826-8269