SOCIAL WELFARE > Essma Ben Hamida, Executive Director, ENDA Inter-Arabe, on the potential of microfinance in regional development

 

Microfinance has a 30-year proven record of success in contributing forcefully to poverty alleviation: Essma Ben Hamida

“Achieving the Summit’s goals will be possible through actions at macro-economic level by governments combined with myriad efforts at local level by actors such as civil society.

One way of fostering economic and social well-being among the poorer members of Arab society is to promote micro-enterprise through access to micro-finance. Micro-finance is best handled by private-sector, not-for-profit organisations (micro-finance institutions). 

The Arab region is already where the micro-finance sector is growing the fastest, with over 100 institutions currently providing services to 3.5 million micro-entrepreneurs with a portfolio approaching $ 2 billion. However, well under 10 per cent of the potential market is being served, leaving considerable scope for expansion and new actors.

Micro-enterprise enables underprivileged people, especially women, to improve their livelihoods independently with dignity, thus reducing the need for government poverty-alleviation programmes, freeing up resources for support to the non-entrepreneurial poor.

Microfinance has a 30-year proven record of success in contributing forcefully to poverty alleviation. It has the advantage of being culturally acceptable and, when well-managed, self-sufficient: what borrowers pay for their loans covers running costs and makes possible refinancing through commercial loans. It does not need to call on financial support from governments, again freeing up scarce resources.

What is required to stimulate micro-finance in the region is an enabling environment (most countries of the region have not yet set up legislation and regulations which promote internationally-recognised microfinance best practices), strong government support and encouragement for the sector, and adequate funding on commercial or subsidised terms which oil-rich Arab countries should be able to provide.

Finally, micro-finance institutions, with direct access to millions of citizens, can contribute directly (through appropriately oriented loans) or indirectly (through advice on increased food security, energy self-sufficiency and sustainable development) to the achievement of the Summit’s goals. Such contributions can include: loans for solar energy, loans for livestock and agricultural production, loans for storage to reduce waste, discussion groups on energy savings and environmental issues in general.”

 

Essma Ben Hamida is a development activist and the Co-Founder and Executive Director of ENDA Inter-Arabe, the first and only best practice microfinance institution operating in Tunisia since 1995. She has also served as the Chairperson of Sanabel, the microfinance network in the Arab Countries, of which she is also the founding member. Born in Tunisia, Essma began her career as a teacher and journalist. She opened the first bureau of the Tunisian Press Agency, TAP, in New York at the United Nations and the Rome bureau of the International Foundation for Development Alternatives (IFDA). She has worked as a senior journalist with the Third World Press Agency, Inter-Press Service (Rome & Geneva). In 1986, she visited the Palestinian Occupied territories and wrote a series of articles on the conditions of the Palestinian people later published as a book ‘The Palestinian Uprising’ by the Third World Network. Essma has worked as a consultant for various UN agencies and is a CGAP/Sanabel certified trainer. ENDA Inter-Arabe has been ranked, by the MIX Market, as 30^th out of the top 100 microfinance institutions in the world. 

 

 

 

 

SOCIAL WELFARE > Dr. Soukaina Bouraoui, Executive Director of the Center of Arab Women for Training & Research, Tunis on the cultural representation of women

 

 

Dr Soukaina Bouraoui, Executive Director, CAWTAR

“ First of all, I would like to congratulate the organizers of this initiative that comes as a translation of a will to team up a large spectrum of the Arab civil society with the official representatives of Arab countries to address an open and seminal topic.

The Arab World is plagued by a host of prejudices forged by the “outside” world, but also by the Arab World itself. In order to fight these prejudices, one has to probe them, subject them to analysis and produce the evidence that will refute them.

Let us cite a topical example of Arab women’s image in the media, be they Western or Arab.

This example refers us to another equally simplistic prejudice – that one which is concealed under the class name of “Arabs”; which in real fact reveals a single-minded and a very simplistic vision.

The media in particular are those responsible for conveying and spreading such a limited perception of “the Arabs”. In fact, what they let you see and perceive is an image that is thoroughly stereotyped, and discrepant from reality – an image that needs to be offset in order to provide the disclaiming proofs.

Indeed we may justifiably wonder, if we consider the broadcasts that have been displayed before us, where is the share of the female leaders in their communities, such as those who championed negotiations and resolutions of conflicts in a given region of Sudan? Why are there not more men who would acknowledge the role that their mothers and grandmothers, or still their spouses have played in order for them to pursue their studies, achieve progress in their career or simply fulfilment in their family lives?

Do we listen in the “serious” debates that are conducted in TV, such as those dealing with war and peace, or the current economic meltdown, to the voices of Arab women and alternatively to their proposals? Must they remain confined to broadcasts that are specifically female-oriented, as though they had never played vanguard roles in our history and as if our future did not also depend on one half of its citizens? 

Let us give voice to our poets, to our creators, to our artists, to our intellectuals, both males and females – even to the most maverick and unconventional amongst them – so that we may prove that the diversity we are upholding is not only the biological diversity of the flora and fauna, nor that of “the Arabs” as distinguished from non-Arabs,  but that this diversity is to be traced in our own selves, that it prevails among us, that it is the basis of what used to be our greatness and of what would provide the source of our strength.

A diversity to be flourished without complex – one which does not contravene the requirements of equal opportunities and treatment of all, irrespective of gender.

Such equality is meant to benefit all those who have been living and working in the Arab countries, no matter their status.

This is one of the aspirations nourished by many of the Arab men and women I have come across… I can vouch for that.”

 

Dr. Soukaina Bouraoui has been Executive Director of CAWTAR, the Center of Arab Women for Training and Research, since 1999. She has a background in both nonprofits and academia, and founded the National Research, Documentation and Information Women Center in 1991. She also taught law at the University of Tunis.

She serves on the board of directors for several organizations, including the Tunisian Association of the Criminal Law, the International Association of Economic Law and the International Comparative Environment Law Association.