Middle East / North Africa and the Millennium Development Goals ...

Markus Loewe
Four countries in the MENA region are faced with an especially urgency
to solve their socioeconomic problems: Yemen, Sudan, Mauritania, and
Iraq. Chapter 3 has already pointed out that since 1990 these four countries
have made very little progress in implementing the MDGs: On the one
hand, their values on the MDG indicators have not improved much in relation
to their initial levels. On the other hand, the absolute values for these
countries are also very low. On some MDGs, the situation is somewhat
similar in Egypt, Algeria, Iran, Jordan, Morocco, the Palestinian Territories,
and Syria,– though nowhere near to the same extent as in the three
countries named above.
Yemen, Sudan, Mauritania, the Palestinian Territories and Iraq have very
low capacities in solving problems, as well. Yemen, Sudan, and Mauritania
lack, first of all, the financial resources needed both to implement
measures geared to implementing the MDGs and to acquire the expertise
required for the purpose. In the Palestinian Territories and Iraq, however,
the main bottleneck is not a lack of financial means. Instead, the scopes of
these two countries are restricted by political givens: (i) the Israeli occupation
and the uncertain legal status of the Palestinian Authority in the case
of the Palestinian Territories; (ii) and the continuing presence of US troops
there and the country’s security situation in the case of Iraq.
Chapter 4 was unable to fully answer the question whether and to what extent
the rulers in the MENA region are disposed to effectively solve the
problems of their countries. We can, however, assume that most of them
have no interest whatever in implementing all of the MDGs. This goes,
above all, for the issue of good governance (an aspect of MDG8), but in
part also for MDG1 (eradication of extreme poverty and hunger), MDG3
(gender equality), MDG7 (environmental sustainability), and MDG3 (improved
school education).
Therefore, we limit ourselves at large to assessing the urgency and capacities
within the different MENA countries to solve their socioeconomic
problems when we analyze in what follows the country programming of
German DC with the MENA region.
Within the MENA region, Germany cooperates mainly with four priority
partner countries (Egypt, Yemen, Morocco, and the Palestinian Territories)
and – to a lesser extent – with five partner countries (Algeria, Jordan,
124 German Development Institute