By YASIN ABU TAQIU
DOHA: Majority of Arabs participating in a recent opinion poll has cited lack of security as the biggest threat facing their countries.
This is the first time the respondents to the annual Arab Opinion Index citing these two issues as their major concerns. In all previous polls they had cited unemployment and lack of economic opportunities as the main issues.
Results of the 2014 Arab Opinion Index survey conducted by the Doha-based Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS) were announced here yesterday.
This year’s findings represent the conclusions of face-to-face interviews with 26,618 respondents in 14 separate Arab countries, in addition to a smaller sample of Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey as well as Internally Displaced Syrians living along the Syrian-Turkish border.
The questionnaire also queried respondents’ attitudes towards the policies pursued by China, France, Iran, Russia and the United States in the Arab region.
About 52 percent of respondents said their country’s security was worse while 46 percent said their it was good. Israel and the US were both cited as the biggest threat to the security in the Arab countries; about 25 percent said Israel was the biggest threat while 11 percent said the biggest security threat to their countries came from the US. Also 11 percent of the respondents thought Iran paused a serious security threat to their countries.
About 22 percent of the respondents said they wanted to migrate to another country to improve their economic situation while 5 percent said they would migrate because there was lack of security and stability in their countries.
The survey also found a strong distrust in the region’s institutions like the judiciary and only 21 percent of those polled believed that rule of law applies equally to all citizens, while 53 percent said that the law is in favour of some groups and 22 percent said that there were no equality in the application of law at all.
An overwhelming majority of Arabs believe that corruption is rampant in their countries and that even with the abundant wealth in the region, most of the citizens are still living in poverty and struggling to earn a living.
About 91 percent of the respondents said that corruption was rampant in their countries while only 5 percent of the respondents believed that corruption was not so widespread.
Also 32 percent of the Arab households reported that they live in need, with their income not covering all necessary expenditures, and 42 percent of the respondents said that their income was not enough for them to meet all their expenses and they could not save anything on it. Only 21 percent said that their income was enough for them to live on and support their families.
The poll found that needy Arab families were struggling to provide for their families and about 57 percent resorted to borrowing from friends and financial institutions like banks; 18 per cent said they relied on aid from friends while about 10 percent said they were visiting charitable organizations to seek aid for living or living on government handouts.
Only 38 percent of the respondents thought that their countries’ economic situation was good compared to 60 respondents who said the economic situation was desperate.
The poll carried out by the ACRPS in partnership with its local partners in 14 Arab countries sought to understand attitudes towards social, political and economic issues. These include public attitudes towards democracy, citizenship, and political and civic participation.
Respondents were also asked to evaluate their general well-being; the circumstances which their countries face; and to evaluate their level of confidence in major state institutions in their home countries.The Peninsula
