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Terrorism
‘We are all Americans’ claimed Le Monde, shortly after 9-11. But judging the historical impact of any event is difficult and made more so when we live so close to events. Whatever the long term implications of the World Trade Centre attack, societies in the region are changing as they respond to new threats or old threats in new forms, or as they are forced to re-conceptualise security policy and even the defence of civil liberties at home.
Although for many countries in the region terrorism is not a new phenomenon, what the region must now realise is that countries that sponsor terrorism, or harbour them, are in a Faustian pact. Hoping to use terrorism against a world order they despise, terrorists and states that employ terrorism inadvertently get entwined in a vortex of violence from which they are increasingly unable to escape from. This is not only moral dilemma, but fact.
Overcoming this vicious cycle that is another key challenge in our region. However, there is a less obvious flip side to terrorism. Given our increased sense of vulnerability we have to ensure an adequate balance between improving security which may require necessary restrictions on some civil liberties, and ensuring that civil liberties themselves are not compromised. While countries in the region are favourably disposed to an alignment with America against the axis of evil, they nevertheless employ draconian legislation to repress everything from sub-state nationalism to dissident voices.
The hypocrisy has to stop.
Governance – The Good, The Bad
Kishore Mahbubani, in a provocatively titled book ‘Can Asians Think?’ asks whether Asians are capable of managing their own affairs competently and effectively. Judging by the poor governance of many of the countries in the region, it is a fair question. From countries rich in petro-dollars to the world’s poorest, social disparity is never more evident than in the region under consideration.
The four pillars of governance are accountability, transparency, stability, and participation. A political culture which eschews these principles in favour of draconian and authoritarian systems of governance only perpetuates societal grievances. Throughout the region, governments and leaders have to recognise that addressing key challenges requires a decentralisation of power, streamlining public service delivery, creating transparent tender and contract procedures, enabling marginalised groups to participate in development, empowering women and enshrining human rights within a development regime are inescapable facets of real development.
A key challenge facing the region is to reconstitute government and governance to empower the masses. Though much hyped, the promise of e-governance and e-government are still far off. While realising the promise of technology – technology that empowers and liberates, it is also important to realise that technology is in itself not a panacea to the problems besetting the region. Predatory and incompetent governments will doubtless continue to hold some poor countries back, but countries in the region have one great advantage that Western countries cannot match – the abundance of skilled labour and human resources, especially knowledge-workers. To best harness these advantages is a key challenge for the region.
Poverty
Poverty reduction remains the central challenge in the region. Robust, sustainable economic growth is essential for significant gains in poverty reduction, for addressing the diverse problems of underdevelopment, and more generally for improvements in the quality of life. The countries of the region need to address these challenges of growth and sustainability in a systematic manner. Building and upgrading physical and social infrastructure throughout the region is a primary condition for robust, sustained growth, with large investments required in social services such as education, health, water supply, sanitation, and shelter, especially in the poorer countries. Ensuring the environmental sustainability of growth in the region's resource-based economies is essential for development and poverty reduction.
The fight against poverty and the huge developmental challenges facing the region will require the mobilisation of considerable financial resources over the coming years. To an important extent, these resources will have to come first from the people and the governments of the countries themselves. Robust, sustainable growth will be necessary, hence policies to accelerate economic growth need to be reinforced and the management and prioritization of public investment and expenditure must be widely improved.
The development experience of the West has shown that the private sector can contribute significantly to the generation of resources for development. To mobilize such efforts in our region, reforms to remove market distortions, strengthen public institutions and governance, and develop efficient and transparent financial and capital markets must be pursued further at various levels throughout the countries of the region.
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Writer Profile
Sanjana
Sanjana Hattotuwa is a Rotary World Peace Scholar presently pursuing a Masters in International Studies from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. The views expressed here are his own. He can be contacted at hatt@wow.lk.
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