Strategic Research & Studies Center Multilateral Suffering [Archives:2000/37/Reportage]

Multilateral Suffering
The Research and Studies Center is one the great enlightenment centers that embraces a host of Yemeni intellectuals and scientists whose responsibility is to record history, thought, tradition, economy, politics, etc. Besides, they outline the future plans and strategies for many projects of high concern to Yemeni people.
The Yemen Times staff editor Mohammed Ben Sallam met some of those prominent men who Yemen must be proud of to form a closer idea and information on their situation and reality of scientific research in Yemen. To our astonishment we found them disappointed and pessimistic.
Most of them are seeking other countries to find some attention and respect. Others dream of foreign organizations that would support their researches.
The Research and Studies center is in a very miserable condition and gets no attention as a result of total ignorance of the importance of scientific research in the development of countries.

Dr. Abdul Aziz Al-Maqaleh Chairman of the center, the president of Sanaa University said that the center was established in 1978 in response to the need of a center of historical researches in the first place and to authenticate the national movement besides the historical events that modern Yemen had experienced. The center contains a number of offices, namely, the historical, legal, economic, social, political, literary, translation and supervision on foreign researchers offices.
There used to be an office in charge of traditional arts and dialectal poetry but limited resources did not help this office prosper.
About the financial support the center gets and whether it is enough to cover its needs or not he said: Until two years ago it was enough for researchers and administrative staff salaries. However, Ministry of Finance, began two years ago supporting the center through specific amount to cover researches and symposia organized by the center. The center organizes one to two symposia a year.
In fact, what is allocated for scientific research in the country is not enough to revive research at a school or a college. I will not make a comparison with how much is spent on scientific researches in other Arab and foreign countries but I would like to stress that scientific research in our country does not receive any attention and it is likely to have no existence at all. All presented research centers are no more than gatherings for employees. Dr. Al-Maqaleh hoped that research centers would get their due attention to be able to carry on their duties and to shift the country to the horizons of the 21st century.
In response to a question about the privileges the center enjoys he said there were none. Researchers are entitled to receive salaries equal to what university professors get. However, this has not happened and researchers are still demanding adjustment of their salary scales similar to university professors, he added.

Dr. Al-Maqaleh refuted rumors that say researchers actually do nothing although they receive salaries. You should ask some of them in order to know that they have demands that should be met to continue with their researches. Some of those demands are related to financial resources as mentioned before. The center has made some researches all over the country during the past years, but these were stopped owing to lack of funding. This does not mean that researchers are careless or lazy, he commented. However, and to tell the truth, The center lately did not do its work as it should be. It seems to me that all research centers belonging to ministries are wasting efforts on irrelevant tasks. I have already noted the reason for that which is absence of any attention to scientific research in general. We have not yet reached the stage in which we focus on scientific research and depend on our national cadre to make studies for governmental and non-governmental projects. Feasibility studies are still made abroad, he added
Since its establishment the center managed to organize a number of seminars and symposia of great importance either on modern history, economic or social spheres. Besides, a good number of historical and linguistic books have been published. And the Yemeni studies is still the most important publication in the country.

Qadri Ahmad Haider. Editorial director of Yemeni Studies said that the Researches and Studies Center was the first research center to be ever established in Yemen. Unfortunately, the government is not serious about it and it seems to be careless about scientific researches, he said.
After great efforts by Dr. Al-Maqaleh and researchers a budget of YRs 2 million was allocated to the center last year which is not enough to cover the expenses of one symposium.
Qadri noted that they got some support from the UNESCO. This year we had negotiations with officials of the Ministry of Finance and could get out with YRs 19 million for covering symposia and training courses, he added.
Despite the great number of researchers and their proficiency we have noticed that the state depends on foreign researchers. He attributed that to Political leaders ignorance of scientific research importance.
We encounter many difficulties during the publication process of Yemeni Studies. We have a plan to publish four annual magazines but unfortunately we are in lack of the means, he said.
He added that in cooperation with the UNESCO they had recently completed a research on internal emigration in Taiz, Hadhramaut. About YRs 2.5 million was spent during the research. The research will be published in the form of a 150-page book in the near future.
We have qualified and specialized researchers in economy, sociology, anthropology, law, etc. but the government seems to prefer foreigners who cost it thousands of Dollars. He pointed out to some non-governmental centers which get help from foreign donors. Those work better than us and this is a shame for the government. The government does not pay any attention to the center and researchers and does not seek their help.
We hope that all kinds of creativeness will receive the attention they deserve. Israel allocates USD 3 billion for scientific research in the field of human studies only and 25 billion for technical and industrial research. We are not demanding this. We hope that the government will allocate quarter of what is allocated for a ministry, he concluded.

Dr. Fareed Mohammed Saeed said that many developing countries boast about scientific research they claim to encourage for political purposes. Yemen established the Yemeni Establishment for scientific Research in 1967 to carry out its important role in activating the scientific research in many fields. When it announced that it would support researches, many researchers from universities sent their researches to it. It then sent the researches to Ohio University in the USA which approved 12 researches. My research was one of them according to a letter in 1998. The chosen researches were highly appreciated. However, there has been no support from the establishment. All I got was a letter to chairman of the WHO in 1999 and so far there has been no reply, he said.

Mohammed Hussain Haitham, Vice chairman of the center deplored the situation of scientific research in general and that of the center in particular. Nothing is given to scientific research in our country, he said. We are not demanding or dreaming to do like Japan which allocates USD 50 billion for scientific research, at least we should be similar to other developing countries..
He added that nobody in Yemen cares about scientificresearch and its importance in the development of economy and culture. He pointed out to many symposia which led to nothing. If such symposia had been paid some attention there would have been no water problems, no deterioration in education, population explosion, etc., he said.

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