Democratization & Human Rights

The MENA region might appear to be a desperate one on the surface, and truly, it has been burdened with the toughest of laws. However, breakthroughs are happening, the landscape is changing and there are more advocates for positive change across the Arab world. Nevertheless, we still have a long way to go.  This article aims to explain the direction we’re moving in, and the strategies that are enabling us to fight for our shared goal to abolish crucial laws and social practices against the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender/Transsexual and Intersexed community (LGBTI) across the Arab region.

Among those most vivid memories of my early childhood, I remember that I had what adults called a ‘healthy appetite’. With pleasure and without second thoughts, I devoured everything served. Then one day, while enjoying a kebda mchermla (lamb liver in sauce), I remember thinking: ‘where did this tasty meat come from?’ I would soon get to know its origin, and this would change the way I looked upon a part of my culinary culture.

Since the end of the Lebanese Civil war in 1990, public spaces in Lebanon, and Beirut in particular, have largely been assimilated into private ones in the name of post-war ‘reconstruction’. Here, I explore how cycling initiatives could empower a re-negotiation of space from private to public.

All citizens, male and female, have equal rights and duties and are equal before the law without any discrimination. The state guarantees freedoms and individual and collective rights to all citizens, and provides all citizens the conditions for a dignified life. (Article 21 of the Tunisian Constitution adopted on January 27, 2014)

If Mr Hammoud were alive today, he would be dismayed by the environmental crime happening in his neighbourhood which has rendered its coast an open-air dumpsite set to reach 600,000 meters square by 2020. The Burj Hammoud landfill, now much bigger and expanding rapidly eastwards, has not only degraded the environment but has had a devastating impact on the city’s Armenian cultural heritage. In 2015, protests erupted in Beirut, over the trash crisis, and the city re-opened the uncontrolled dumpsite in Burj Hammoud. Certain traditions and customs that Armenians of Burj Hammoud have worked so hard to preserve for centuries are now under threat from this protracted and worsening garbage crisis.

The creation of nation states with defined borders, modernization, as well as political and climatic change, have led numerous peripatetic groups, including the Dom people, to abandon their nomadic lifestyle and prompted numerous challenges to their livelihoods and identity.

Mahdi Abdel Jawad, Professor of Arabic Civilization and Literature, delves into childhood memories and games overcoming social borders.

Danyel Reiche, an associate professor for Comparative Politics at the American University of Beirut (AUB), looks into Lebanese politics and major sport events.

This paper seeks to address those circumstances that can make the production of art in the Arab region a first step towards the marginalisation of the artist; not always deliberately, although certainly so at others, but in particular when the artist engages in controversy in their local context.

The façade of Al-Zawiya Al-Afghaniyya, the building that houses a Sufi order in the Old City of Jerusalem, is plain. One enters through the zawiya’s pointed arch portal which is three steps above street level and flanked by stone benches on both sides. Above the entrance is an inscription showing the zawiya’s name, order, founder, and the date in which it was built.