The Daily Star
BEIRUT:
The freer the market, the freer the people, but not without social and
economic equity, speakers at Monday's Socio-Economic Citizenship
workshop said. The aim of the workshop - sponsored by the United
Nations Development Program and the Council of Development and
Reconstruction - was to discuss the background paper of the National
Human Development Report: "Towards a Citizens' State." Both
the workshop and report make the case that citizenship is the
foundation of democracy, and a defining dimension of citizenship is
socio-economic equity. Economic growth alone, however, does not
automatically provide such equity. On
the contrary, "inequality within countries is perceived as being more
pronounced ... than before" said Mounir Rached, a founding member of
the Lebanese Economic Association and senior economist at the
International Monetary Fund. Furthermore,
Rached stated that "inequality among countries is worse ... The gap
between the richer countries and the poorer is worse [today] than
before ... with 1 percent of the world owning 40 percent of the world's
assets. " Globally,
therefore, despite extended periods of robust economic growth, there
remains a worrying democratic deficit, defined by a disenfranchised
citizenry lacking economic rights, equity and equality. This
is particularly apparent within Lebanon itself, the primary focus of
the report, where there has been a notable increase in socioeconomic
inequality. Since the end
of the Civil War in 1990, the Lebanese economy witnessed an
unprecedented increase in government expenditures, with spending rising
from $1.3 billion in 1992 to more than $7 billion in 2003, a near
three-fold increase in real terms. Yet during this same period, the
report found, inequalities have been exacerbated. "Regional disparities
have been accentuated, project quality has deteriorated and the public
deficit has worsened," the study says. The
report noted, for instance, that while Lebanon's general illiteracy
rate has decreased since 1995, in the Bekaa it has actually increased-
rising from 13.5 percent in 1995 to 14.6 percent in 2004. It
also found that between 1995 and 2005 Beirut - with just 8 percent of
total households with low satisfaction of basic needs - received 16
percent of total public investment spending, compared to Nabatiyeh -
home to 11 percent of struggling households - receiving a mere 1
percent of total spending. The
report implies that the reasons for disparities lie within the Lebanese
government and its distribution of public funds, which the report
describes as "at best blind to socioeconomic priorities and at worst a
cause of greater disparities." The
report found that government money goes not where it is most needed,
but where the most politically represented sectarian groups reside,
buttressing many long-held assertions that the post-war power-sharing
structure of Lebanon has reinforced sectarian rifts. The
state, the study found, has allowed sectarian identity to supersede
citizenship, at the expense of economic development and the creation of
an enfranchised citizenry endowed with basic economic rights, a more
equitable distribution of economic opportunity and access to genuine
democracy. The report
recommends that "public expenditures be liberated from the apparent
constraining vector of sectarian balance and be dispersed instead
according to criteria." Even if the confessionally balanced framework
of the Lebanese state is truly indispensable, the report said, it is
still possible to address the country's socioeconomic inequity in a
more balanced and beneficial way.
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