BOSTON — The devastating explosion Tuesday that ravaged much of Beirut’s human and physical infrastructure will rightly generate massive amounts of humanitarian aid from around the world. This happens in the context of a devastated Lebanese economy and citizenry, and a widely discredited political order and government whose negligence, ineptitude, and/or corruption are widely blamed for allowing the thousands of pounds of ammonium nitrate to be stored in the port, when the dangers of this were well known and pointed out to the state several times.
Most Lebanese people will not trust their government to investigate this preventable tragedy, hold accountable all former and current officials who played a role in it, or honestly and efficiently disburse the hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian and reconstruction funds that will flow into the country. I propose to Lebanese officials, organizations, and citizens alike to consider using this critical moment of immense human need combined with enormous distrust of the state that they see this as an opportunity to start on the road of real reform that they all say they wish to pursue.
Real structural, political, fiscal, and administrative reforms are a pressing priority for Lebanon and most Arab governments, whose citizens suffer under similarly low-quality governance systems. Lebanon’s immediate humanitarian emergency could converge with its political and economic crises to make this a moment of innovation, opportunity, and hope for real reforms across a better Arab region.
My suggestion is that the humanitarian and reconstruction funds that flow into Lebanon should be disbursed and overseen by a newly created consortium comprising a few credible and efficient government officials, proven non-governmental organizations and humanitarian foundations, a few credible international aid agencies, and some individuals with respected professional expertise.
This is needed because the governments of the past three decades have proven to be unable or unwilling to serve the Lebanese people equitably and efficiently. A better way must be found to spend public money — and this must happen immediately in Lebanon’ precarious condition.
Lebanese NGOs, universities, professionals, and other private institutions are world-class outfits in most of what they do, and they are already drawing up plans for how to manage the state and society equitably in a future politically reformed system. The leverage of international aid can be used quickly now to speed up this process, force the state to share decision-making with the citizenry, and respond to the country’s dire humanitarian needs in a speedy and fair manner.
Such a shared decision-making system of spending and monitoring aid funds will help donors commit quickly as they become confident that their donations will not be stolen or misused. It will vastly speed up the implementation of urgently needed projects that people need to survive (unlike the state’s years of wasted time and stolen money in not addressing the garbage collection and electricity issues, for example).
It will create a model of fruitful public-private partnerships that genuinely include the views and talents of the private sector. And it will offer a signal of hope to Lebanon and many other Arab countries whose citizens urgently need real political reforms to prevent further slides into mass poverty, marginalization, and helplessness.
This proposal would also shake up a mostly dysfunctional system of international aid and international NGO involvement that offers some assistance to some people in need, but mostly allows the decrepit states to continue their failed policies and widespread corruption, while officials and their cronies amass immense private wealth without earning it.
Donors should require this kind of oversight of how their funds are spent, and if Arab governments refuse they should send aid directly to non-governmental organizations and others in society who will use it properly.
The key benefit of this idea is that it combines Arab citizens’ desires to reform their state with the international community’s often expressed but rarely implemented desire to do the same thing. If the two join hands, the state will have no option other than to go along with this, to the benefit of all concerned. Also, this mechanism would allow the voices of ordinary Arab citizens to impact their countries’ policy-making mechanisms for the first time ever — in ways that Arab parliaments have never done with any credibility.
Here is a way to check Arab state corruption, improve state efficiency, generate state-society collaborative action, expand the citizenry’s participation in decision-making, encourage more international aid and investment, and give the bludgeoned and battered Arab citizens a rare sense of hope that they can fix their dilapidated country and hold their heads high, as they know they can.
I hope that French President Macron and other leaders who are expressing their desire to assist Lebanon consider such new ideas to do what they have failed to do for the past century — promote genuine national development, prosperity, and security in Arab countries based on the consent of the governed and the will and skill of the citizenry.
Rami G. Khouri is journalist-in-residence and Director of Global Engagement at the American University of Beirut, a non-resident senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, and an executive board member of the Boston Consortium for Arab Region Studies. He tweets @ramikhouri
Copyright ©2020 Rami G. Khouri — distributed by Agence Global
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Released: 05 August 2020
Word Count: 819
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