Arabs make development strides, challenges remain

Arabs make development strides, challenges remain: UN

"Arab states make up five of the ten "top movers" in the Human Development Index (HDI) -- countries that have "made the greatest progress relative to their starting points on the HDI over the past 40 years," said a UN briefing on Arab states in the 2010 Human Development Report, which was released Thursday."

"Few Arab states have experienced in-depth democratization," it said, and though some states have multiparty systems, they "do not always equate to competitive multiparty democracy."

But, the briefing said, advances in other areas are still significant -- life expectancy in the Arab world, for instance, has risen from 51 years in 1970 to 69 years in 2010, and overall education enrollment has almost doubled to 64 percent in that period.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101104/wl_mideast_afp/mideastarabsdevelopmentrightsun

i was not able to find the evidence of the Palestinian Authority ("Palestinian People") as a demographic entity at this H.D.I., although it is listed as a member, so i went out and searched.

i will not speak to the depth of democratization but i will about life expectancy and overall education in the Palestinian territories from a credible source.

- life expectancy 73.945

- education 78.3%
http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/PSE.html

given that the "development strides" praised for the Arab world were:

- 69 years life expectancy
- 64 percent for education

it appears the Palestinians are doing better than their Arab brethren