Mark Malloch Brown has a fair claim to have predicted the Arab Spring.
In 2002, when he was in charge of the United Nations Development Programme, he was responsible for publishing the Arab Human Development Report, which revealed a high level of dissatisfaction among many citizens in the Middle East with regard to education, democracy, jobs, freedom of speech and the role of women - exactly the issues that last year prompted the outburst of regime-changing protests.
"I suppose you could say it was prophetic. It was condemned in the Arab League and by many governments in the Arab world, but it was downloaded 1 million times from the UN website. I was staggered; UN reports don't usually become publishing sensations. So I wasn't surprised when [the Arab Spring] happened last year. I was more surprised it took so long to happen," he says.
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