The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) - Regional Bureau for Arab States will host the third round of its Arab Human Development Dialogues, which reflect on the theses and findings of the Arab Human Development Report 2022: Expanding Opportunities for an Inclusive and Resilient Recovery in the Post-COVID Era. The report examined the multi-faceted impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on governance systems, economies, societies, and the environment in the Arab States region, with its varied development contexts. It offered forward-looking directions and recommendations for future development.

First to be hosted in the region, this round will be held at the Phoenicia Hotel in Beirut, Lebanon, on Thursday, 17 November 2022, 09:00 - 12:00 (GMT+2). Deliberations will be livestreamed to a wider audience across the region. The first round of the Dialogues series launched the report on 29 June 2022 through a fully online webinar from UNDP HQ in New York. The second round, held as part of the UNDP Arab States Week in the United States in September 2022, was hosted by the Middle East Studies association, featuring US-based middle east scholars.

Reflections in this round of dialogue will focus on how to navigate current levels of heightened intersecting global and regional uncertainties to be able to identify opportunities for putting development in countries of the Arab States regions back on track, and to build forward better. Discussions will be informed by the thought-provoking propositions of UNDP’s global Human Development Report2021-2022: Uncertain Times, Unsettled Lives: Shaping our Future in a World in Transformation, which was launched in September 2022.

The opening panel, comprising senior United Nations officials, will set the stage, providing insights on how current global and regional intersecting crises and uncertainties are affecting Human Development across the Arab States region, today and in the near future.

The panel will reflect upon

• What are the main impacts of current global and regional crises and uncertainties on the Arab States region?

The world is facing a new complex of uncertainty – climate and biodiversity crises, inequalities and political polarization as well as technological upheavals compounded by a major cost-of-living-crisis and a looming global food insecurity principiated by the invasion of Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic, which has ravaged people’s health and mental wellbeing, devastated economies and exacerbated gender inequality.

• How can the Arab States region arrest and reverse the current backslide in Human Development?

Human development has declining in 90% of countries across the globe, setting us back to levels recorded at the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and of Paris Agreement in 2016.