Transcript
KRISTEN LORD: if you did only look at the headlines about the Arab region, what you would see would be conflict, stagnation. Our previous panel talked about all of those indices where the Arab world ranks towards the bottom, but we know that headlines can mislead us, as well, they can overlook incremental progress, they can overlook new developments, so, we tried to delve into the data and see what we found.
And I encourage you to look at the report, it’s packed with data, but the overall picture that we found was far, far more complex than what simple headlines would suggest. What we found was progress, especially when measured against the region’s own history. We found new initiatives that appear promising, but, actually, it’s just too early to assess whether they will end up having a positive outcome or not. And, also, some tantalizing hints that there’s a new willingness, perhaps, to look critically at problems and address them because, of course, until you admit that there is a problem or a challenge, it’s hard to deal with them.
Now, of course, that’s not the whole story, we also found unrealized hopes, unrealized potential, a burgeoning youth population ill prepared for the job market, and a region that, despite progress, is nonetheless being outpaced by other countries and other regions which are just moving far, far more quickly than the region we are looking at today. And whether we looked at education, whether we looked at science and technology, whether we looked at a knowledge culture, we saw this pattern repeated again and again to varying degrees.
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