Food insecurity aggravated by the war in Ukraine and rising inflation is bringing about further instability in the Middle East and North Africa, leading to a need for systemic changes in the region, particularly amongst youth.
The current situation, defined by the United Nations as even worse than before the Arab Spring in 2011 and fuelled by the deterioration of living conditions and the affordability of basic needs, has seen protests in Libya and Iraq throughout the summer.
This situation “in the Arab world can aggravate and prolong conflicts and make it harder to reach and sustain peace,” professor Amr Ezzat Salama, Secretary General of the Association of Arab Universities (AArU), told EURACTIV during a visit to Amman, Jordan.
“Thus, the role of the Arab universities is important to address the above problem by conducting real research on climate change in collaboration with EU higher educations and research institutions to end up with an acceptable swift remedy to this dilemma, ” he said.
For experts from Mediterranean University Union (UNIMED), the answer can be found through systemic changes to empower people in the region, particularly young people, utilising the network of universities.
“In a region that warms 20% faster than the global average, with all the implications in terms of food security, environment, and energy, we need these universities to work together on climate change, food security, energy and health,” Giuseppe Provenzano, a research and innovation expert for the Union for the Mediterranean (UNIMED), told EURACTIV in Amman.
Internationalisation
Professor Salama stressed that Arab universities needed to collaborate with EU academic institutions because “it shows the importance of the derived benefits of study abroad,” such as “program cooperation, partnership, mobility, student exchange, internship, and research collaboration”.
In terms of investments in internationalisation, EU institutions already finance those areas with the programmes like Tempus and Erasmus +. The former promotes cooperation between the EU and partner countries “focused on the reform and modernisation of higher education systems,” Salama explained.
“The Projects funded under the Capacity Building in Higher Education action of the Tempus & Erasmus+ program (CBHE) for 2002-2018 amounted to 759 projects in the Arab countries,” he added.
Between 2015 and 2018, 23,766 Erasmus+ mobility programmes from Arab countries were supported.
UNIMED is currently working on a wide range of CBHE projects that aim to increase, among others, the innovation and digitalisation of its partners.
For instance, a current project called INsPIRE addresses governance weaknesses in Iraq’s higher education systems. Another initiative in Algeria called DIGITAQ aims to set up a federative and collaborative information system to support quality assurance activities by digitalising data, information collection and analysis processes.
But despite current investments in internationalisation, Salama complained that “programmes are still limited and do not significantly affect high education in the Arab countries and develop it to the required level”.
Additionally, the EU budget for CBHE initiatives for the Southern Neighbourhood region has been severely downsized for the 2021-2027 period compared to the 2014-2020 one. Out of more than 170 initiatives, only 61 were included in the current seven-year budget.
A long-term perspective
In the mid-2020s, when EU institutions start negotiating the new multiannual budget, the global supply chain will be changed entirely, and Mediterranean countries will probably assume a more prominent role as energy sources.
“Europe’s long-term objectives have also been achieved thanks to the transformational power of higher education and research programmes such as Erasmus and Horizon Europe,” said Provenzano.
“A Green transition in Europe implies a green transition in the Mediterranean, as we are too interconnected, so moving alone in a vacuum would not work.”
[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic/Alice Taylor]
Source: euractiv.com
