Today marks the publication of a new Council on Foreign Relations book, Pathways to Freedom: Political and Economic Lessons From Democratic Transitions, which I co-edited with my colleague Terra Lawson-Remer; other CFR colleagues, John Campbell, Joshua Kurlantzick, and Shannon O’Neil contributed chapters, as did scholars from other institutions. The book looks at eight different countries–Mexico, Brazil, Poland, South Africa, Indonesia, Thailand, Ukraine, and Nigeria–that have been through democratic transitions, some successful, others less so.

In a piece on ForeignPolicy.com, Terra Lawson-Remer and I distill the lessons gleaned from these case studies, with an eye to providing useful insights for those countries working their way through transitions today. Here, we provide some excerpts from the article for each lesson learned:

1. Don’t miss the opportunity presented by a good economic crisis.

Many experts once believed that economic growth led inevitably to democracy. Although most rich countries in the world today are relatively democratic, some–such as China and Saudi Arabia–have enjoyed growing economic prosperity without a commensurate increase in political freedoms. Indeed, studies show that it’s not economic growth but rather economic crisis that triggers regime change. Over the past three decades, many democratic transitions have been precipitated by serious economic shocks that ruptured the authoritarian bargain…The bottom line here is the need to recognize how economic crisis can upend the status quo and open the door for fundamental change. In anticipation of that moment, policymakers should pursue strategies to nurture a middle class. Once upheaval hits and democracy begins to take root, a resilient middle class can be the necessary safeguard against backsliding to autocracy.

2. On elections, “Fake it till you make it.”

A clear lesson from our case studies is that elections–even sham elections–lead to greater success in the transition to substantive democracy. International observers often denounce flawed elections as meaningless attempts to dress authoritarian rule in the trappings of democracy, but elections can also sow the seeds of public expectations that over time blossom into democratic demands that cannot be ignored.

3. Be wary of armed rebellions, but back nonviolent, mass mobilizations.

Armed rebellions often fail to lead to democratization, even when regimes are overthrown. History is littered with failed uprisings, coups d’états and violent revolutions that succeeded in nothing more than replacing one form of dictatorship with another. Nonviolent, mass mobilizations, on the other hand, have a stronger track record of laying the groundwork for democratic change. Proponents of nonviolence, from Mohandas Gandhi to Martin Luther King, have long noted that sustained peaceful protests lead to a more engaged citizenry and a better-organized civil society–critical for staying the course during the inevitable challenges of democratic transitions.

4. Encourage Inclusive Growth.

The promise of political freedom raises peoples’ expectations for economic and social opportunities. The success of emerging democracies depends fundamentally on whether democratization can also materially improve people’s lives. When citizens do see improvements in social inclusion and living standards, they reward the politicians who provide them, creating a powerful feedback loop that helps consolidate democracy. On the other hand, if unemployment skyrockets, or if the rich just seem to get richer while nothing changes for the masses, a return to autocracy can begin to look pretty good.

5. Double Down on Rule of Law.

Should I believe in this new government, or not? That is the question confronting someone in a new and often shaky democracy. To answer that question, a new democracy needs to show its citizens that it can protect their core rights and establish fair economic and political rules. It’s not rocket science: If people believe that legal systems and public institutions work for them, rather than against them, it gives them a stake in the system and a greater willingness to tolerate the inevitable turbulence of a transition. An effective, transparent, and predictable legal system also prevents well-connected insiders from amassing wealth and public assets through shady backroom deals.

6. Spread Out the Power.

Spreading power out to local regions has strong benefits. It helps dilute the dangerous concentration of central authority often inherited from authoritarian regimes; it also increases accountability by bringing administration closer to the people…Decentralization of power of course is not a panacea. It requires effective local governance structures, and it can be risky in situations where centrifugal forces threaten the stability of the state. But it can also blunt violent separatist movements. Transitioning countries should therefore decentralize thoughtfully, in ways that help deepen and sustain democratization.

7. Lean on Good Neighbors and Compensate for Bad Ones.

Good neighbors can help fragile democracies succeed through tough times by providing critical economic and technical assistance and exerting constructive political pressure. Conversely, bad neighbors can undermine transitions by fostering power-grabbing and corruption–or simply by failing to provide support for democratic consolidation. Neighborhoods are not merely geographic, although shared borders are an important element of interdependence between countries. Neighborhoods are also economic communities, such as the European Union; political-military alliances, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; and cultural groups based on a common heritage. Neighbors exert a powerful force on the trajectory of countries with which they share interests and destinies.

On the Pathways to Freedom book page, you can view previews of each chapter, which contain relevant graphs, timelines, and suggestions for further reading for each country.

As the graph above makes painfully clear, the Middle East and North Africa face significant challenges when it comes to youth unemployment. A World Economic Forum report from 2012 notes, “Unemployment in the MENA region is the highest in the world…and largely a youth phenomenon.”

I’ve previously highlighted troubling tends in youth employment, including students whose lack of soft skills preclude them from employment, employers’ dissatisfaction with the education levels of the workforce in GCC countries, and young Tunisians’ disillusionment with the opportunities available in their country and accompanying desire to emigrate.

The Middle East and North Africa are not alone in terms of a serious lack of opportunity for many young people. In the second quarter of 2012, the economically troubled European Union had a youth unemployment rate of 22.6 percent, as opposed to the OECD-wide average of 16.2 percent. Portugal had 38.7 percent youth unemployment, and Spain and Greece had staggering rates of 52.4 percent and 54.2 percent respectively. By contrast, the United States had 16.3 percent youth unemployment and Germany’s youth employment was an enviable 8.2 percent.

While some have raised issues with the way that these eye-popping European numbers are calculated (suggesting that the real rate is more like half of the headline numbers–but that’s still very high), there is little doubt that many youth—particularly in the MENA region and the struggling European economies—are losing out on economic opportunities, and consequently, hindering their lifetime earning potential.

How should countries tackle youth unemployment? It’s an immense challenge, requiring solutions that will, at their best, involve private, public, and nonprofit sectors. Germany and Spain’s labor ministers should be praised for their pragmatism in brokering a deal that will give apprenticeships in Germany to some 5,000 unemployed Spanish young people yearly—a move that is also a win for Germany, which needs additional qualified employees as its labor pool shrinks.

Nonprofits are also pursuing interesting innovations with respect to tackling youth unemployment. LivelyHoods in Kenya, for instance, trains young people from Kenyan slums to sell useful products in their communities (e.g. solar lamps); the training includes vital business skills like customer service and financial literacy. In the Middle East and North Africa, Education for Employment connects young people to employers and also trains young people on finding jobs and on the soft skills that employers value. The organization has had particularly impressive results in high-unemployment Tunisia, where it began working in 2012: it has since graduated more than 540 Tunisians from its training programs and found employment for all of those in its job placement training program. The challenge, of course, is scaling up these initiatives.

Programs like these are particularly important because high levels of youth unemployment—in addition to limiting young people’s life prospects—stand to affect political trends, especially in countries that are transitioning to democratic rule. In a forthcoming book that I co-edited, Pathways to Freedom: Political and Economic Lessons From Democratic Transitions, one important takeaway is the critical role that inclusive economic development plays in sustaining democratic transitions. Libya’s plan to put billions of dollars towards funds that small and medium-sized businesses can access—in an explicit effort to create jobs—could help promote democratization there, especially if implemented in a transparent manner.

Last week, my colleague Ed Husain and I hosted a meeting with Rached Ghannouchi—the cofounder and president of Tunisia’s Islamist Nahda party—at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. The audio is available here.

In January 2011, after more than twenty years in exile, Ghannouchi returned to Tunisia to lead Nahda’s revolutionary rise. Nahda went on to win some 40 percent of seats in Tunisia’s transitional parliament. Ghannouchi–who speaks passionately about the compatibility of Islam, democracy, and modernity–is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading Islamic thinkers. At CFR, his comments focused on his efforts to end Tunisia’s more than half century of political polarization by forging a coalition between moderate Islamists and secularists; the economic challenges facing the country’s transition, particularly with respect to stubbornly high unemployment; his hopes that Tunisia, as the first true Arab democracy, will serve as a model for other Muslim-majority countries; and the threat to freedom and democracy posed by violent extremism in Tunisia.

During the meeting, Ghannouchi spoke out strongly against the violence that has marred Tunisia’s transition. Since the early days of the post-Ben Ali period, religious conservatives have mounted protests—sometimes violent and destructive—contesting basic human rights such as freedom of speech, freedom of belief, and women’s rights. Last fall, extremists attacked the U.S. Embassy and burned the American school across the street; Salafi groups have sacked stores selling alcohol; and in the lowest point yet of the political transition, in February of this year a violent Islamist group assassinated one of the country’s leading opposition figures, Chokri Belaid.

Ghannouchi tried to address audience concerns about discrepancies between his strong statements regarding the importance of combating violent extremism and what seems to be happening on the ground. One audience member expressed dismay at the government’s failure to bring those behind the September 2012 attacks on the American embassy and school to justice. (Those convicted recently received a mere slap on the wrist—a suspended sentence.) Zied Ladhari, a Nahda member of parliament traveling with Ghannouchi noted that the judiciary makes independent decisions, but that the government was upset with the decision and was appealing it. Government prosecutors have indeed filed an appeal.

Much of the conversation centered on Tunisia’s efforts to produce a new constitution–a controversial process that has pitted hardline Islamists against determined secularists. Ghannouchi emphasized Nahda’s commitment to compromise in an effort to hold a moderate center together. Nahda agreed early on that despite demands by Salafis and other conservative groups, the country’s constitution would not be grounded in sharia, and in fact makes no mention of it. Ghannouchi also noted that Nahda backed down from its demand for a parliamentary system; the most recent draft of the constitution allows for a “semi-presidential system” with a parliament and prime minister, and also a directly-elected president who has considerable powers in national security and foreign policy.

At the CFR meeting, Eric Goldstein of Human Rights Watch (HRW) raised concerns that the draft constitution still does not sufficiently protect human rights. According to a primer on the organization’s website, HRW’s concerns with the last draft of the constitution include “a provision recognizing universal human rights only insofar as they comport with ‘cultural specificities of the Tunisia[n] people,’ the failure of the constitution to affirm freedom of thought and conscience, and the overly broad formulation of permissible limitations to freedom of expression,” among other issues. Zied Ladhari responded that “all of the critiques [Goldstein] mentioned have been taken into account in the last version [of the constitution].”

Last weekend, the National Constituent Assembly (NCA) essentially completed a final draft and presented it to President Moncef Marzouki for review. Amnesty International recently examined this new draft, which seems to have addressed some of the above critiques, although Amnesty still has concerns over human rights issues. The NCA needs to approve the constitution by a two-thirds majority. The NCA has two chances to approve the constitution with this majority; otherwise, a national referendum will decide the constitution’s fate.

Although Tunisia’s constitution-writing process has come under criticism for its delays, the country has so far avoided the deep polarization that has paralyzed Egypt. But with violent extremism on the rise in Tunisia, it remains to be seen whether a coalition of moderate Islamists and secularists can hold the center.

Ghannouchi closed the meeting by extolling the virtues of Tunisia as a tourist destination. “I think that we can contradict extremism by promoting and developing democracy and developing the economy and developing freedom.” Yes indeed–that is why it’s so important that the constitution clearly protects human rights and freedom and that acts of violence are unambiguously denounced and forcefully prosecuted. Actions must match words.

Imagine life without a bank account. Completing a simple financial transaction can require traveling a distance, incurring expenses, and losing precious income. Savings are more difficult to track and certainly don’t earn interest. Theft or loss of the proverbial “cookie jar” is a constant worry. Indeed, studies show that informal savers lose as much as 25 percent of their hard-earned cash each year due to theft and loss. Yet for over 2.5 billion people globally, this inconvenient, inefficient, and expensive reality is the case.

There are many reasons to believe that the number of unbanked people will shrink significantly in years to come, with important positive implications for economic growth and poverty reduction. First, grassroots and country-level efforts, both nonprofit and for-profit, are already showing how “unbanked” doesn’t have to be the status quo—and these efforts are greatly facilitated by mobile phones. Kenya is well-known for the widespread use of its mobile money system M-Pesa, which allows people to pay for goods and services through cell phones instead of with cash. Started in 2007, M-Pesa has already been used by the vast majority of Kenya’s adults.

Second, major financial institutions are supporting efforts to give more of the world’s population access to bank accounts and standard financial tools. Last summer, I wrote about Visa’s purchase of the mobile payments system Fundamo and the collaboration between USAID and Citi to expand financial inclusion, a promising instance of big financial institutions bringing their resources to bear on closing the financial inclusion gap.

Third, governments–recognizing the value of getting citizens into the financial system–are driving change by increasingly moving to electronic payments. A USAID-backed program in Afghanistan, for instance, has enabled the government to pay civil servants directly through mobile money. Graft was so reduced that some police officers mistakenly believed that they had received a 30 percent raise. Some countries are beginning to migrate their large cash-transfer programs and other socioeconomic support for the poor onto electronic benefit cards and mobile systems. Mexico and Brazil have moved aggressively in this direction. India’s emerging efforts in this area could be a game changer for that country. As of this year, it is now depositing pensions and scholarship money directly into bank accounts for 245,000 people. The real shift could come if and when it is able to achieve its goal of replacing its hugely inefficient subsidy programs with direct cash transfers to the poor distributed electronically through mobile phones and benefit cards. Nonprofits such as GiveDirectly are also experimenting with direct cash transfers through mobile technology.

At a meeting on financial inclusion that I hosted yesterday at the Council on Foreign Relations with Bob Annibale, global director of microfinance at Citigroup, and Shamshad Akhtar, assistant secretary-general for economic development at the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs, we discussed many of these points. You can access the audio here. The speakers noted that the microfinance revolution began the drive for financial inclusion of the world’s poorest some forty years ago. The focus was on credit because extending small, non-collateralized loans was an innovation the nonprofits behind the movement were able to do. Today, due to changes in regulation and technology, microfinance institutions are now able to provide a range of financial services—including savings, insurance and electronic payments—to the very poor, which should speed up the pace of change in financial inclusion around the world. In some sub-Saharan African countries, still upwards of 70 percent of the population has no access to financial services. As Bob Annibale pointed out, even in Mexico, an OECD country with a growing middle class, some 50 percent of the population is still unbanked.

The Center for Financial Inclusion notes that as more developing countries move through their demographic transitions, with larger working-age and smaller dependent populations, greater financial inclusion is critical for realizing the benefits of this “demographic dividend.” Its Financial Inclusion 2020 Campaign aims to help bring about total financial inclusion “using the year 2020 as a focal point to galvanize action.” With partners such as Visa, Citi, MasterCard Worldwide, and the Gates Foundation, it should make great progress in expanding financial services globally. Stay tuned for more about FI2020 in the run-up to their Global Forum in London at the end of October.

A few years ago on a flight from London to Karachi I sat next to one of Pakistan’s leading textile manufacturers who spent several hours discussing the sorry state of his business. The fact that his European clients will no longer visit the country because they view it as too dangerous was not even his biggest problem. His real issue is the constant blackouts his factories face due to a lack of reliable energy. “We can’t compete with the likes of Bangladesh and Vietnam,” he bemoaned. This is the tough economic reality that Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s newly elected prime minister, inherits.

Pakistan’s recent successful election should quiet talk of it as a failed state. For the first time in the country’s history, a civilian government will complete its term and hand power to another, fairly elected, civilian government. Although the Taliban vowed to disrupt the election through suicide bombings, voter turnout approached 60 percent, a significant increase from 44 percent in the last election. As many as 150 people died in political violence during the election, but even more devastating scenarios were possible.

While Pakistan’s fragile democracy has proven resilient in the face of deepening extremism, its economy faces severe and growing challenges. Growth over the past five years has averaged only 3 percent–not enough to keep pace with the country’s rapidly growing population which already exceeds 180 million. It also faces a serious balance of payments crisis. Foreign exchange reserves have declined precipitously over the past years and now cover only two months worth of imports. There is talk of Pakistan negotiating a bailout from the IMF to the tune of $9 billion.

Sharif, who served twice before as prime minister, is a steel magnate whose family has long dominated politics in Punjab, Pakistan’s largest and wealthiest province. He was elected in large part to fix the country’s staggering economy, and he is moving quickly to put in place a strong economic team, many recruited from the private sector. But to succeed, his government must not only resolve Pakistan’s immediate balance of payments problems, but also tackle the structural issues that are undermining competitiveness.

First up is getting the country’s fiscal house in order–its budget deficit for the year is pushing 8 percent. This requires privatizing many large, inefficient public sector companies–including airlines, power companies, and railroads–that together decrease the country’s GDP by as much as 2 to 3 percent each year. Unions will balk at mass layoffs, but the current bleeding is unsustainable and the IMF will no doubt require some restructuring of public sector companies in return for a loan. Increasing tax receipts is also an urgent part of fiscal reform. Just over half of one percent of Pakistanis even pay taxes, according to its own federal board of revenue, and Pakistan’s tax to GDP ratio has dipped below 10 percent in recent years–compared with an average of 15 percent for developing countries. Donor countries such as the UK and the US have warned Pakistan that it must mobilize greater domestic resources for their support to continue. The IMF too will demand a rise in tax receipts.

Addressing the country’s energy crisis is also urgent. As recently as 15 years ago, Pakistan had a surplus of energy and was even exporting electricity to India. But a total lack of investment over the years, combined with rising demand from a growing middle class, has led to the current crisis which by some estimates reduces the country’s GDP by as much as 3 to 4 percent. Creaky infrastructure that wastes as much as a third of energy in transit is part of the problem. Inefficient energy subsidies that skew to the rich are also to blame. The fact that Pakistani households and businesses simply do not pay their energy bills further undercuts the system. Numerous government ministers in Islamabad are themselves on the delinquent list and the national utility estimates it loses over a $1 billion a year in unpaid bills.

Pakistan’s failures in education must also be addressed. According to the 2013 Human Development Report, it ranks 146 out of 186 countries in education, with an adult literacy rate of just 55 percent. Karachi holds the notorious distinction of the largest number of school-aged children out of school–a quarter of its four million children–of any major city in the world. Those who do attend school are subjected to low-quality education, one of the reasons for the country’s high drop-out rate. Pakistan’s failure to get and keep girls in school is particularly shameful; high female illiteracy also impedes efforts to reduce the country’s high fertility rate.

Sharif clearly faces daunting challenges. But his large win gives him something of a mandate to deal with the country’s structural problems. The work his brother Shahbaz Sharif has been leading in recent years in reforming education in populous Punjab points the way on educational reform: a combination of merit-hiring, data-driven accountability, and vouchers has increased teacher and student attendance and led to an additional 1.5 million children now attending school who previously did not. Pakistan’s problems are great, but for the first time in many years, there is reason for some hope.

Today is the first International Day to End Obstetric Fistula. To be honest, I was not very familiar with the tragedy of fistula until about a decade ago, when I met the remarkable Dr. Catherine Hamlin, who has devoted her life to treating the problems of fistula in Ethiopia. More on her work below, but for those of you who don’t know what this terrible condition entails, I refer you to the UNFPA explanation:

One of the most serious injuries of childbearing is obstetric fistula, a hole in the vagina or rectum caused by labour that is prolonged–often for days–without treatment. Usually the baby dies. Because the fistula leaves women leaking urine or feces, or both, it typically results in social isolation, depression and deepening poverty. Left untreated, fistula can lead to chronic medical problems.

Around 50,000 to 100,000 women develop obstetric fistulas every year–a result of poverty and lack of access to maternal healthcare. The majority of these cases are in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Though fistula is usually treatable at low cost (the surgery and aftercare cost an average of $300), some two million women currently suffer from the condition. In the absence of intervention, fistula can destroy a woman’s life: her loss of control over basic bodily functions leads to ostracism from society.

Some particularly determined individuals have strived to bring fistula out of the shameful shadows and treat it as the curable medical condition it is. Dr. Catherine Hamlin founded the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in 1974 with her husband, Dr. Reginald Hamlin. The hospital has performed over 30,000 fistula surgeries with a success rate of above 90 percent. As Hamlin describes in an interview with PBS, women’s husbands often do not understand how prolonged labor caused the fistula in the first place and are unaware of treatment options. Many of these women are cast out of their homes, forced in shame to return to live with their parents or in isolation from the rest of the community. Hamlin tells the story of a woman who had not been out of the mud hut she lived in for nine years as well as of a woman who had suffered incontinence from fistula for four decades before finally being cured by an operation at age sixty.

Women in some countries—often conflict-affected—also experience what is known as traumatic fistula, a consequence of particularly brutal sexual violence. In eastern Congo, for instance, after the 2003 truce in the conflict there came into effect, health experts became aware of widespread traumatic fistula cases caused by the extreme physical trauma of rape, described as a common “weapon of war.” In these cases, psychological and physical recovery can be exceptionally difficult, to say the least.

The United Nations recognizes a wide range of international days, and individual countries add many more. Despite this plethora of official UN occasions, I applaud marking today to highlight the problem of fistula because it is both such a terrible condition and also so treatable.

Today, CFR published a new report, Ending Child Marriage: How Elevating the Status of Girls Advances U.S. Foreign Policy Objectives. The report looks at the scope and causes of this practice, what it means for U.S. foreign policy, and ways the U.S. might tackle child marriage through policy.

Child marriage is a major problem. As the report, written by CFR Fellow Rachel Vogelstein, notes, “the United Nations estimates that in 2011 one in three women aged twenty to twenty-four—almost seventy million—had married before the age of eighteen.” Moreover, each year, almost five million girls who are younger than fifteen are married. And it’s not only absolute numbers: in some countries, the incidence of child marriage is incredibly high. While an estimated 40 percent of the world’s child brides live in India, Niger is the worst offender in terms of incidence of child marriage–nearly three-quarters of women are married by the time they reach eighteen. (India also has a very high child marriage rate, with 47.4 percent of girls married before they turn eighteen). Among other things, child marriage often means that girls’ educational opportunities (and economic prospects) vanish, and that they experience the serious health risks associated with early childbearing, including a much higher danger of maternal mortality.

While there are no easy answers, the report highlights some reasons for optimism, referencing research that suggests that Turkey’s decision to raise the age of mandatory schooling “to age fourteen reduced the proportion of girls married at age sixteen by 45 percent.” Meanwhile, a pilot program in Ethiopia experienced great results by giving girls school supplies and lessening economic burdens on families, one reason parents marry off girls. Namely, the program gave a goat to families who said they would continue their daughters’ educations and not marry them off for two years. The program reduced the likelihood of marriage for young girls in the group by 90 percent.

For more on the problem of child marriage and policy options, you can read the full report as well as Rachel Vogelstein’s “Three Things to Know About Child Marriage” on the Development Channel. As she argues, “Child marriage is undoubtedly a violation of human rights: it truncates girls’ education, robs them of their economic potential, endangers their health, and exposes them to sexual violence and abuse. But child marriage also matters because it undermines U.S. interests in development, prosperity, and stability.”

In light of the ongoing controversy over Benghazi, the New York Times’ Room for Debate asked contributors to weigh in on Hillary Clinton’s record as secretary of state.

Clinton drew significant praise from some contributors. Philip Seib of the Center on Public Diplomacy said, “More than any previous secretary of state, Clinton ‘got it’ in terms of understanding the importance of public diplomacy as a foreign policy tool.” Professor Minxin Pei at the Claremont McKenna College lauded Clinton’s work in Asia, concluding that “despite the growing underlying antagonism in U.S.-China relations, the ties between the U.S. and China are now on a more solid and realistic footing.”

Other views were more mixed. Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Center wrote about Clinton’s generally rocky relationship with Russia’s leaders. When it comes to Israel-Palestine issues, UC-Davis professor Zeev Maoz reasoned, “The gap between the professed goals of the administration and the outcomes of its policies is substantial. But the Obama/Clinton team faced an uphill battle.”

Clinton also attracted sharp criticism. Paul J. Sanders of the Center for the National Interest portrayed Clinton as unstrategic, criticizing her record on Syria and Libya in particular. Meyrav Wurmser of the Hudson Institute claimed that the Obama administration has a “misconceived vision of a new Middle East and the sources of rage against us.” Danielle Pletka for the American Enterprise Institute argued, among other things, that “Women and religious minorities now have fewer freedoms across the Middle East and North Africa.” This view misses the complex impact of the Arab uprisings on women–yes, conservative forces have come to the fore, but women have also achieved new levels of engagement and mobilization to fight for their rights in the new systems. It also misses Clinton’s extensive efforts to advocate for women abroad. As I wrote in my own Room for Debate response:

When Clinton first made an international name for herself on this issue, at the UN’s 1995 Beijing Conference on Women–where she memorably asserted that “women’s rights are human rights”–she framed the challenge in moral terms. But as secretary of state, she persistently connected the dots between women’s rights and major foreign policy concerns such as global economic development, food security, extremism and political stability.

You can read the Room for Debate responses here.

Last summer, I wrote about two young women from Saudi Arabia, Wojdan Shaherkani and Sarah Attar, who were the first Saudi women ever to compete in the Olympics. They had to endure criticism from conservatives at home and lots of discussion about what they would wear to compete, but they served as a powerful symbol of a better future for Saudi women’s athletic participation.

Now, young women in Saudi Arabian private schools have the chance to take part in an activity open to most students all over the world—sports. Currently, women’s sports in Saudi Arabia take place unofficially in private schools or in private “health clubs” (rather than women’s gyms, which are not given licenses). The recent decision to permit sports only applies to private schools, so girls in public schools will be left out, at least initially. However, measures to allow girls’ sports in public schools seem to be in the works, including as of this March; as early as 2011, Saudi Arabia actually said it would establish physical education classes for female students in public (government) schools, although nothing appears to have happened.

Last month, Saudi Arabia’s religious police said that women could ride bikes and motorbikes—but under certain caveats including only riding bicycles for recreation (as opposed to transportation) in “recreational areas.” Reactions to this have been mixed. “[Women] will also have to be dressed in full Islamic body coverings, and–in a darkly comic stipulation that evokes images of tandems–they will have to be accompanied by a male relative,” writes journalist Nabila Ramdani in The Guardian.

The issue of women driving remains unresolved. In April, Prince AlWaleed bin Talal came out in support of women behind the wheel, arguing that it was a smart economic move that would free the country from its dependence on foreign drivers. Practical arguments like these may find some support among those who are ambivalent about giving women more freedom. Even the decision about permitting girls’ sports gives a nod to the question of foreign employment, as Saudi women will be first in line for employment as physical education teachers. The health aspect of the recent sports decision is another obvious practical argument to make, and was one that also came up during Saudi Arabia’s shutting down of women’s gyms a few years ago, when women started an ironically titled campaign, “Let Her Get Fat.” (In March, it was reported that women’s gyms/sports clubs would receive licenses, but an official later corrected this report, saying that this was only in discussion).

History shows the difference that government support for sports can make. In the U.S., the passage of Title IX  expanded opportunities for women’s sports and had a swift impact: in 1972, one in twenty-seven high school women in the U.S. played sports, but by 1978, when schools had to be compliant with the law, one in four high school women did. Saudi Arabia is starting with a much lower baseline of participation than the United States in a social environment that is far more hostile to women’s sports. However, the recent decision on sports in Saudi Arabia is a step in the right direction that might eventually inspire athletic leadership among young women who have yet to even play sports.

While the Arab revolutions were underpinned by a demand for greater political freedom, economic frustrations–particularly among the region’s large youth population–were also a factor. Millions of young people with university degrees languish for years unemployed, with no hope of getting a job that meets their expectations. Millions more are not completing sufficient years of school to master basic literacy and numeracy skills. As the 2002 Arab Human Development Report noted, adult literacy in the Arab world is shamefully low–and lower than the average in developing countries.

However, countries are making efforts to tackle their literacy challenges. The above graph shows that every country has made concrete progress in tackling illiteracy. Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Bahrain all boast youth literacy rates above 96 percent, but Yemen, Egypt, and in particular, Morocco, still have a long way to go.

The solution to illiteracy is not just government spending: it is a matter of implementing effective programs and putting these programs into action for every child. Egypt’s Early Grade Reading Program is one example of the sort of educational innovation that needs to happen.

Beating illiteracy is just the first step in equipping citizens for a productive economic life. Mohamed Bouazizi, the desperate Tunisian street vendor whose self-immolation sparked the region’s uprisings, was not illiterate–he had the equivalent of a high school degree. Inculcating students with critical thinking and soft skills is also a prerequisite. But the burden of some 60 million illiterate adults in the Arab world, most of whom are women, is a heavy weight indeed and one that is only beginning to ease with the current generation.