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Routledge Handbook on Human
Rights and the Middle East and
North Africa
Recent events su as ‘Iran’s Green Revolution’ and the ‘Arab
Uprisings’ have exploded notions that human rights are irrelevant to
Middle Eastern and North African politics. Increasingly seen as a
global concern, human rights are at the fulcrum of the region’s on-
the-ground politics, transnational intellectual debates, and global
political intersections.
e Routledge Handbook on Human Rights and the Middle East and
North Africa:
emphasises the need to consider human rights in all their
dimensions, rather than solely focusing on the political
dimension, in order to understand the structural reasons
behind the persistence of human rights violations;
explores the various frameworks in whi to consider human
rights—conceptual, political and transnational/international;
discusses issue areas subject to particularly intense debate—
gender, religion, sexuality, transitions and accountability;
contains contributions from perspectives that span from
global theory to grassroots reflections, emphasising the need
for academic work on human rights to seriously engage with
the thoughts and practices of those working on the ground.
2
A multidisciplinary approa from solars with a wide range of
expertise allows the book to capture the complex dynamics by whi
human rights have had, or could have, an impact on Middle Eastern
and North African politics. is book will therefore be a key
resource for students and solars of Middle Eastern and North
African politics and society, as well as anyone with a concern for
Human Rights across the globe.
Anthony Tirado Chase is a Professor in International Relations at
Occidental College, USA. Professor Chase is a theoretician of human
rights, most oen in the context of the Middle East.
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Routledge Handbook on Human
Rights and the Middle East and
North Africa
Edited by Anthony Tirado Chase
4
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
5
711 ird Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017
Anthony Tirado Chase
e right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the
authors for their individual apters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, meanical, or other means, now known or hereaer invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Chase, Anthony Tirado, editor.
Title: Routledge handbook on human rights and the Middle East and North Africa / edited
by Anthony Tirado Chase.
Other titles: Handbook on human rights and the Middle East and North Africa
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2017. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016021351 | ISBN 9781138807679 (hardba) |
ISBN 9781315750972 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Human rights–Middle East. |
Human rights–Africa, North.
Classification: LCC JC599.M53 R68 2017 | DDC 323.0956–dc23
LC record available at hps://lccn.loc.gov/2016021351
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ISBN: 978-1-13880767-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-31575097-2 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo
by Sunrise Seing Ltd, Brixham, UK
7
anks
Many thanks to my resear assistants Keith Jones and Beebe
Sanders for their invaluable help in editing this volume.
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Dedication
Dedicated to the sweet memory of Ruth Flora Tirado Chase. My
mother passed on the sense that nothing is worth doing unless it is
an epic adventure. is book—and all that led to its creation—is
saturated with that spirit. Death is not an end; the spirit lives on
through the acts it continues to inspire.
Front cover artist: Ganzeer
Cover art: “Of course, Harara, 2014”
Art description: A portrait of Ahmed Harara. Harara is an Egyptian
activist who lost one eye to a bullet during the January 28, 2011
“Friday of Anger” protests. ese protests were part of what led to
Hosni Mubarak’s fall from power on February 11, 2011. Harara lost
his other eye during anti-military protests near the Ministry of
Interior on November 19, 2011. at day’s clashes are known as the
“Bale of the Eyes of Freedom,” as Harara was just one of many
protestors to lose eyes to sniper fire.
Overlaid in red on Harara’s portrait is the o-repeated Egyptian
army slogan “e army has, of course, protected the revolution.”
Designed in Cairo, Egypt, 2013.
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Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
CONTENTS
Editor biography
List of contributors
PART I Frameworks
SECTION I Introduction and overview
1 Human rights and the Middle East and
North Africa: indivisibility, social rights,
and structural ange
Anthony Tirado Chase
SECTION II A conceptual framework: political,
economic, and cultural rights in the Middle East
and North Africa
2 Political legitimacy, contingency, and
rights in the Middle East and North Africa
Hussein Banai
3 Economic rights in the Middle East and
North Africa
Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat
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4 Cultural rights in the Middle East and
North Africa: art, revolution, and
repression
Mark LeVine
SECTION III A political framework: intersecting
human rights and governance crises in the
Middle East and North Africa
5 Genocide in the contemporary Middle
East: a historical and comparative regional
perspective
Martin Shaw
6 e ISIS crisis and the broken politics of
the Arab World: a framework for
understanding Radical Islamism
Nader Hashemi
7 e impact of the AKP on human rights
in Turkey: one step forward, two steps
ba
Turan Kayaoglu
8 e politics of human rights in Iran
since the Green Movement
Shadi Mokhtari and Neda Nazmi
9 Narrating law: Israel and the Occupied
Territories
Kathleen Cavanaugh
10 e United States and Israeli violations
of international humanitarian law
Stephen Zunes
SECTION IV A transnational and international
framework: human rights beyond borders
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11 Rival transnational advocacy networks
and Middle East politics at the U.N.
Human Rights Council
Laura K. Landolt
12 Redefining rights: Organization of
Islamic Cooperation aempts to reshape
values in the U.N. human rights system
Ann Mayer
13 Human rights, youth, and tenology:
agents of ange?
Mahmood Monshipouri
14 Rights, refugees, and the case of Syria:
what do human rights offer?
Kathleen Hamill
PART II Issues
SECTION V Gender and human rights in the
Middle East and North Africa
15 Colliding rights and wrongs: intimate
labor, health, human rights, and the state
in the Gulf
Pardis Mahdavi
16 Turning ba the clo: population
policy and human rights in Iran
Homa Hoodfar
17 Women’s rights in the Middle East:
constitutions and consequences
Anicée Van Engeland
18 e Arab uprisings and the future of
human rights
Micheline Ishay
12
SECTION VI Religion and human rights in the
Middle East and North Africa
19 Shari`ah and human rights
Khaled Abou El Fadl
20 Islam, the principle of subjectivity, and
individual human rights
Barbara Ann Rieffer-Flanagan
21 e OIC, human rights, and religion:
rejection, reconciliation, or
reconceptualization?
Marie Juul Petersen
22 Rhetoric versus reality: American
foreign policy and religious freedom in
the Middle East
Barbara Ann Rieffer-Flanagan
SECTION VII Transitions and accountability in
the Middle East and North Africa
23 Core transitional justice debates in the
Middle East and beyond
Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm
24 Courts as a tool in transitions: lessons
from the special tribunal for Lebanon
Chandra Lekha Sriram
25 Lessons on transitioning from
authoritarianism: pitfalls and promise
from Tunisia’s experience
Rim El Gantri
26 e impact of impunity on violating
cultural rights in Morocco
Osire Glacier
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PART III Conclusions: global theory and grassroots
reflections
SECTION VIII Conclusions from a global
viewpoint: theoretical justifications and
contestations around human rights
27 International human rights at 70: has
the Enlightenment project run aground?
David P. Forsythe
28 On the local relevance of human rights
Koen de Feyter
29 Israel/Palestine, human rights and
domination
Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon
30 e quest for constructive criticism:
critical approaes to human rights
Alison Brysk
31 Making human rights ‘universals’ from
the ground up?
Lisa S. Alfredson
SECTION IX Conclusions from a grassroots
viewpoint: reflections on dynamics around
struggles for human rights in the Middle East
and North Africa
32 Reflections on three decades of human
rights work in the Arab region
Fateh Azzam
33 Egypt 2011–15: how can a democratic
revolution fail to improve human rights
conditions?
Amr Hamzawy
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34 Reflections on human rights before and
aer the Arab Spring
Bahey eldin Hassan
35 Human rights, law and politics: a
reflection on human rights work in the
Middle East and North Africa
Lynn Welchman
Index
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Editor Biography
Anthony Tirado Chase is a Professor in International Relations at
Occidental College, USA. Professor Chase is a theoretician of human
rights, most oen in the context of the Middle East. His most recent
article is “Human Rights Contestations: Sexual Orientation and
Gender Identity” in International Journal of Human Rights (April,
2016). His previous books are Human Rights, Revolution, and Reform
in the Muslim World (2012) and Human Rights in the Arab World:
Independent Voices (co-edited with Amr Hamzawy, 2006).
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Contributors
Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi
Distinguished Professor in Islamic Law at the University of
California, Los Angeles Sool of Law. He is the author of fourteen
books on various topics in Islam and Islamic law, including his most
recent work Reasoning with God: Reclaiming Shari`ah in the Modern
Age (Rowman & Lilefield, 2014).
Lisa S. Alfredson is an Assistant Professor at the University of
Pisburgh Graduate Sool of Public and International Affairs. She
is the author of the book, Creating Human Rights (University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2008), as well as numerous policy reports for
international human rights organizations.
Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat is Professor of Political Science at the
University of Connecticut. Exploring both theoretical and empirical
questions of human rights, with an emphasis on women’s rights and
their interpretation/application in Islamic and Turkish contexts, she
published numerous books and articles on human rights and their
relation to democracy, development and globalization.
Fateh Azzam is the Director of the Asfari Institute for Civil Society
and Citizenship, and Senior Policy Fellow at the Issam Fares Institute
for Public Policy and International Relations, both at the American
University in Beirut. He previously served as the Middle East
Regional Representative of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human
Rights, Director of Forced Migration and Refugee Studies at the
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American University in Cairo, Human Rights Program Officer at the
Ford Foundation in Lagos and Cairo, and Director of the Palestinian
organization Al-Haq. He led the process of establishing the Arab
Human Rights Fund.
Hussein Banai is an Assistant Professor in the Department of
International Studies at the Sool of Global and International
Studies at Indiana University.
Alison Brysk is Melliamp Chair of Global Governance at the
University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author and editor
of ten volumes on international human rights.
Kathleen Cavanaugh is socio-legal solar and currently a Lecturer
in the Faculty of Law, Irish Centre for Human Rights, National
University of Ireland, Galway.
Koen De Feyter is Professor of International Law at the Resear
Group on Law and Development of the University of Antwerp,
Belgium.
Rim El Gantri is a transitional justice expert who is currently head
of office at the International Center for Transitional Justice, Nepal.
She led the ICTJ Tunisia program for about five years. Notable
among her published writings is “Tunisia in Transition: One Year
Aer the Creation of the Truth and Dignity Commission.”
David P. Forsythe is University Professor and Charles J. Ma
Distinguished Professor of Political Science Emeritus, at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He taught various aspects of
International Relations for forty-two years, with special aention to
human rights and humanitarian affairs.
18
Osire Glacier teaes in the Department of Politics and
International Studies at Bishop’s University. She is the author of
Universal Rights, Systemic Violations and Cultural Relativism in
Morocco (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2013); and Political Women
in Morocco, Then and Now (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2013).
Neve Gordon is a Professor of Politics at Ben-Gurion University in
Israel and is the author of Israel’s Occupation (California: University
of California Press, 2008) and co-author of The Human Right to
Dominate (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
Kathleen Hamill is an independent human rights lawyer and
Visiting Solar and Fellow at Harvard’s FXB Center for Health and
Human Rights. Hamill is also affiliated with the Fleter Sool of
Law and Diplomacy at Tus University as an Adjunct Assistant
Professor.
Amr Hamzawy is a Professor at both American University in Cairo,
and Cairo University. Dr. Hamzawy is a former member of both the
Egyptian People’s Assembly and the Egyptian National Council for
Human Rights, as well as author of, A Margin for Democracy in
Egypt – The Story of An Unsuccessful Transition (in Arabic), among
other books.
Nader Hashemi is an Associate Professor of Middle East and Islamic
Politics and the Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the
University of Denver’s Josef Korbel Sool of International Studies.
Bahey eldin Hassan is the Director of the Cairo Institute for Human
Rights Studies. He has authored and edited many books, apters,
and articles on human rights in the Arab region.
Homa Hoodfar is Professor of Anthropology at Concordia
University. Her primary resear and expertise lies in the
19
intersection of political economy, gender and development and
women’s movements and electoral politics in the Middle East.
Mieline Ishay is Professor of International Studies and Human
Rights at the Korbel Sool of International Studies at the University
of Denver. She is the author and editor of numerous books, including
Internationalism and Its Betrayal, The Nationalism Reader, The
History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Era of
Globalization, and The Human Rights Reader.
Turan Kayaoglu is a Professor of International Relations at the
Sool of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of
Washington, Tacoma. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Muslim World
Journal of Human Rights.
Laura K. Landolt is Associate Professor of Political Science at
Oakland University. She examines relationships between state power
and human rights advocacy.
Mark LeVine is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at
University of California, Irvine, and a Distinguished Visiting
Professor at Lund University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. He
is currently helping to lead a resear team with the American
University of Beirut to study the evolution of human rights
discourses in the Arab world.
Pardis Mahdavi, PhD, is Associate Professor at Pomona College and
director of its Pacific Basin Institute. Her resear interests include
gendered labor, human traffiing, migration, sexuality, human
rights, youth culture, transnational feminism and public health in
the context of anging global and political structures.
Ann Elizabeth Mayer is an Emeritus Associate Professor of Legal
Studies and Business Ethics at the Wharton Sool of the University
20
of Pennsylvania. Her resear areas include Islamic law in the
contemporary Middle East and North Africa and international
human rights law, and the fih edition of her book Islam and
Human Rights was published in 2012.
Shadi Mokhtari is an Assistant Professor at the Sool of
International Service at American University. Her resear focuses
on the local and international politics of human rights in the Middle
East.
Mahmood Monshipouri teaes Middle Eastern Politics at San
Francisco State University and University of California, Berkeley. He
is editor, most recently, of Information Politics, Protests, and Human
Rights in the Digital Age (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2016) and Inside the Islamic Republic: Social Change in Post-
Khomeini Iran, (London: Hurst & Company, forthcoming).
Neda Nazmi is an expert in Iranian politics and civil society
development. She holds Masters degrees from American University
and Allameh Tabataba`i University, and a BA in Political Science
from Tehran University.
Nicola Perugini is Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University
and co-author of The Human Right to Dominate (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2015).
Marie Juul Petersen is a sociologist of religion with a PhD from
Copenhagen University. She works at the Danish Institute for
Human Rights as a senior researer.
Barbara Rieffer-Flanagan is a Professor of Political Science at
Central Washington University. Her resear and teaing focus on
the intersection of religion, politics and human rights.
21
Martin Shaw is a sociologist of global politics, war and genocide. He
is Resear Professor at the Institut Barcelona d`Estudis
Internacionals, Professorial Fellow in International Relations and
Human Rights at the University of Roehampton, London, and
Emeritus Professor of the University of Sussex.
Chandra Lekha Sriram is a solar of human rights and peace
processes, and has conducted resear globally, including in
Lebanon. She is Professor of International Law and International
Relations and Director of the Centre on Human Rights in Conflict at
the University of East London.
Bassam Tibi, born in Damascus, was Professor of International
Relations until his retirement in 2009 from the University of
Göingen. He also taught and researed at eighteen further
universities including Harvard, Princeton, Yale and the latest,
Cornell University, where he acted as A. D. White Professor between
2006 and 2010.
Anicée Van Engeland is a Resear Fellow at the Oxford Centre for
Socio-Legal Studies and a Lecturer in law and religious studies at
Cardiff University.
Lynn Welman is Professor of Law in the Middle East and North
Africa at SOAS, University of London. Prior to becoming an
academic she worked with non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
in the Arab human rights movement, mostly in Palestine but also
elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa, an engagement she
has sought to maintain since joining SOAS.
Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm is Assistant Professor of Political Science
at the University of Arkansas at Lile Ro. His resear interests
include transitional justice, human rights, post-conflict
reconstruction, and democratization.
22
Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics and coordinator of Middle
Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco. His resear focus
includes human rights, U.S. foreign policy, strategic nonviolent
action, and Middle Eastern/North African politics.
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Part I
Frameworks
24
Section I
Introduction and overview
25
1
Human Rights and the Middle East
and North Africa
Indivisibility, social rights, and structural
ange
Anthony Tirado Chase
26
Introduction
In conceptualizing this Handbook, I have sought to highlight original
solarship from authors with a record of innovative approaes to
human rights in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). e goal
in doing so is simple: to capture in ways that cannot be done in
traditional solarly approaes the complex dynamics by whi
human rights have had or could have an impact on MENA politics.
is is not an abstract goal. e stakes in this Handbook’s
intellectual conversations are high at a time in whi recent popular
uprisings inflected by human rights principles have been violently
repressed everywhere from Iran, across the Arab world, and in
Turkey. In their place, long dominant authoritarianisms are
resurgent. ese authoritarianisms vary among secular, ethnic,
and/or Islamist justifications, but share a common foundation in
some form of nationalist sectarianism. e region’s resurgent
authoritarianisms show a resilience and ability to morph into
progressively more brutal systems of power that leave many with
the sense that there is no alternative.
is pessimism is quite reasonable given the MENA’s post-
colonial inheritance of despotic power structures, current realities of
failed governance that have exacerbated divisions along many fault
lines, and extra-regional forces that consistently reinforce anti-
pluralistic forces out of a misbegoen sense of “self-interest.”
Nonetheless, it is also worth remembering that human rights have
long been part of informing subterranean articulations of
alternatives to dominant forms of culture, economics, politics, and
society in the MENA. e saliency of these alternatives emerged
quite visibly—in artistic allenge, economic rebellion, political
rebellion, and social resistance—during the popular uprisings that
27
swept the region from 2009 to 2013. But, now that the hope
represented by those uprisings seems a distant memory, there has
been a return by many in academic and policy-making circles to
status quo thinking that assumes the MENA is solely defined by
oices between competing patriaral authoritarianisms. Saudi
monarical Wahhabism or Iranian Shi`a theocratism? Egyptian
secular military rule or anti-pluralist Islamisms? Syrian-style
“stability” or fiefdoms ruled by warlords? ese and other su
binaries are not just false oices, they are dangerously misleading
ones. Lazily taking them as a frame effaces other possibilities,
serving the purposes of elites invested in their perpetuation with
devastating results for the region’s peoples, societies, and states, as
well as the broader regional and global order.
Most specific to this Handbook’s purposes, those frames have
limited thought about even the possibility of alternatives to the
status quo. Su possibilities have, nonetheless, persisted in many
domains. is introduction’s overview of the Handbook’s three parts,
nine sections, and thirty-five apters shows how human rights, in
particular, have become interwoven with discourses that reject false
oices between exclusivist nationalisms. ese human rights-
inflected discourses have sought, instead, to somehow make space in
the MENA’s political, economic, cultural, and social structures for
pluralisms of different sorts. I will conclude this introductory apter
by aempting to show the importance of pluralism in the social
domain, with particular reference to sexual orientation and gender
identity-related (SOGI) rights. I argue that connecting social
resistances to human rights is not just important in isolation; it is
connected to sustaining interconnected resistances in the cultural,
economic, and political rights’ spheres.
In that light, the goal in this Handbook of coming to terms with
human rights’ potential impacts is ambitious, but more realistic than
it might appear at first glance. It is, in essence, an aempt to make
sense of how rights have been part of varieties of resistances against
28
dominant power structures—local, domestic, regional, and
international—and, beyond that, what the variables are that will
determine if they may do so more successfully in the future.
29
Pushing human rights solarship into
indivisibility, intersections,
multidisciplinarity, and beyond
Aempting to accomplish this goal has meant calling on solars
who in diverse ways—sometimes in disagreement with ea other
and, indeed, in disagreement with my own views—are at the cuing
edge in thought about what human rights are, how they can be
relevant to the MENA, and ways in whi specific contexts in the
MENA condition whether human rights will or will not have an
impact. e contributors were osen to represent a range of
disciplines as well as regional and thematic expertise. Part I of the
Handbook includes sections that, aer Section I’s introduction,
further situate the reader within frameworks for thinking about
human rights in the MENA. Section II gives a conceptual framework
inclusive of different categories of human rights—from social rights
to political, economic, and cultural rights. Section III gives a political
framework inclusive of key countries, sub-regions, and the U.S. as an
omnipresent external hegemon. Section IV gives a transnational and
international framework that makes clear the intersecting levels in
global politics through whi dynamics around human rights play
out, and how powerful states increasingly contest human rights at
all of these levels. Part II’s sections focus the reader on issue areas
that have been subject to particularly intense debate. Section V
explores gender as a key baleground in bales over human rights’
relevance in the MENA. Section VI gives different points of view on
the intersections of religion and human rights in the predominantly
Muslim MENA. Section VII takes on transitions and accountability
and the overaring question of whether or not normative demands
30
for ange can be sustained through representative processes and
institutions.
Part III contains two concluding sections that end the Handbook
in a particularly distinctive manner. Section VIII’s Conclusions from
a global viewpoint: theoretical justifications and contestations
around human rights calls on human rights theoreticians with a
global perspective to shed light on human rights in the MENA. e
MENA is not an insular region disconnected from global currents,
including those in academic circles. To the contrary, academic
conversations about human rights’ history, relation to the state, and
their contradictory dynamics in many parts of the world can and
should inform solarship on human rights and the MENA. One
emphasis in recent human rights solarship, as evidenced in these
apters, is a move beyond traditional linear histories of human
rights that see them as having progressively grown out of
Enlightenment thought and post-WWII history. A top down
diffusion of human rights from a singular foundation—philosophical
or historical—is increasingly seen as less important to human rights’
resonance (or la of resonance) than the degree to whi human
rights have been malleable enough to be seized and repurposed as
useful tools to grassroots struggles in many different contexts around
the globe.
is is directly relevant to the MENA and, as su, informs the
conceptualization of Section IX’sConclusions from a grassroots
viewpoint: reflections on dynamics around struggles for human
rights in the Middle East and North Africa. ese apters come
from solar-practitioners who reflect on their decades of work on
human rights in the region. It is a key premise of this Handbook that
academic work on human rights in the MENA should more seriously
engage with the reflections of those working on the ground. is is
all too oen missing in theoretical work on human rights in general
and, most egregiously, on human rights in the MENA. Lynn
Welman pertinently concludes this section and this Handbook
31
with the observation that academics need to be open to being
‘surprised’ —that is to having their theoretical assumptions
overturned by taking seriously the normative commitments and
intellectual analyses of those on the ground. It is my hope that the
Handbook consistently highlights precisely these sorts of unexpected
surprises that flow out of tangible engagements with human rights
in the MENA.
As a starting point in opening the path to finding su surprises,
the Handbook’s approa is one that is informed throughout by
themes of indivisibility, intersections (and, in this apter’s
conclusion, intersectionality), and multidisciplinarity. Indivisibility,
in particular, is key to any serious human rights solarship, yet too
oen we still see human rights in the MENA discussed in segmented
categories. Virtually any rights issue, to the contrary, can and should
be contextualized in multiple dimensions rather than as simply
within one category su as ‘political.’ To understand the structural
reasons behind the persistence of human rights’ violations, it is
essential to recognize that these violations take place in the context
of systems of power that function simultaneously in the cultural,
economic, political, and social spheres. Resistance against su
violations, in parallel, has been most powerful when it has
functioned across these spheres. Intellectual accountings of human
rights must take into account, therefore, all of these dimensions if
they are to make sense of controversies and contestations that
revolve around human rights. As will be seen, this is a recurring
theme throughout the Handbook.
Beyond rights’ indivisibility, this Handbook’s apters are also
informed by a focus on intersections—that is, how it is that human
rights intersect with a range of issues and, more broadly, how rights’
violations on su issues feed into domestic crises in governance and
security. e theoretical assumption in this regard is that human
rights are an urgent maer even from the most realpolitik of
perspectives. Rights’ violations are not discrete and disconnected
32
but, rather, are intimately related to many of the globe’s geopolitical
crises that—from wars without borders to global refugee flows—have
their roots in systematic human rights’ violations. Given the
destructive regional and global impacts of su crises, it is crucial to
shine a light on how rights’ violations are at their heart.
As these themes of indivisibility and intersections came to define
the Handbook, it also became clear that in order to illuminate them
it would be necessary to call on the resources of many academic
disciplines rather than the narrow focus of just one or two fields.
is Handbook’s apters, therefore, come from solars trained in a
variety of solarly traditions. is brings to bear multi-disciplinary
perspectives on human rights and the MENA, helping to bring out
rights’ evolutions in different dimensions and their impacts on
diverse issues.
Aer a review of the conceptual themes and other intellectual
threads through whi this Handbook is organized, as noted I will
conclude this introduction by reference to SOGI-related rights. If we
take seriously both indivisibility and not just intersections but
intersectionality in the light of multi-disciplinary solarship, su
‘social’ rights are clearly not marginal, but rather vital to
envisioning longer lasting structural ange in cultural, economic,
political, as well as social life.
33
emes and threads in conceptualizing
contributions to human rights and the Middle
East and North Africa
Section II
A conceptual framework: political, economic, and cultural
rights in the Middle East and North Africa
I have already noted both this Handbook’s defining organizational
frameworks and recurring themes of indivisibility, intersections, and
multidisciplinarity. ese themes and other conceptual threads were
used to organize and hopefully give coherence to ea of the
Handbook’s nine sections. Section II, for example, is informed by the
notion of indivisibility that I have already started to outline in this
apter (and whi will extend into my closing discussion of social
rights). Most academic discussions of human rights in the MENA
have been focused on human rights’ political dimensions. is
Handbook departs from that by emphasizing human rights in all
their dimensions. is indivisibility of rights’ categories has long
been a key contention in human rights theory. As this literature
makes clear, rights are best conceptualized as mutually constitutive
rather than divisible into categories with some sort of hierary of
importance. e reasons behind their violation are oen
interconnected, as are the reasons behind the gains in
implementation. What is key is identifying the structures of power
whose survival depends on systematic rights’ violations. is can
both reveal the incentives behind their maintenance and why
34
allenging su regimes needs to recognize the interconnections
among a wide range of violations, rather than focus on issues in
isolation.
is introductory apter and Section II’s three apters
conceptually frame the Handbook by making clear how all
categories of rights are essential to thinking about human rights and
the MENA. Huss Banai’s “Political legitimacy, contingency, and
rights in the Middle East and North Africa” notes that the
vocabulary of the Arab uprisings— “cries for freedom, equality,
accountability, respect for rights and dignity, and justice” —is shared
with many other uprisings around the globe. What have to be
recognized, however, are the fundamentally distinct contexts in
whi su claims have been made in the Arab world. ese
contexts reveal that status quo regimes in the region may la
popular legitimacy, but nonetheless have enough political legitimacy
with key sectors (and external allies) to withstand popular calls for
democracy and rights. Zehra Arat’s “Economic rights in the Middle
East and North Africa” shows how issues of economic justice are as
important to peoples in the MENA as political justice. Arat stresses
the interdependency of rights and the necessity of more equitable
economic development in MENA countries if there are to be
solutions to its political crises. e example of corruption makes this
point: economic elites use closed political structures as a shield to
enable both their own enriment and the impoverishment of their
societies. Transparency and accountability to counter that is an
urgent maer in the political and economic spheres equally.
Mark LeVine’s “Cultural rights in the Middle East: art, revolution,
and repression” brings into the discussion MENA governments’
silencing of cultural expression and political spee and how this is
essential to sustaining systems of economic and political exclusion. It
follows that resistance must be as mu cultural as economic and
political. LeVine argues that uprisings across the MENA put this into
stunning relief: art was, in short, an essential constitutive element in
35
uprisings across the region, showing its revolutionary potential. e
counterrevolutions that have followed have taken as their essential
starting point, therefore, cultural repression and suppression of free
spee. ese cultural rights’ violations are problematic in isolation,
but also must be seen as fundamentally about sustaining broader
power structures based in economic hieraries, political elites, and
socially dominant groups.
Lastly, this apter concludes by extending into social rights with
an examination of how (admiedly controversial) SOGI-related
rights are key to conceptualizing identity in a more pluralistic
manner. is social pluralism is inseparable from pluralisms in other
domains, so should not be dismissed as secondary in aempts to
undermine authoritarian power structures. Collectively, Section I
and Section II’s framing of this Handbook with apters on social,
political, economic, and cultural rights makes clear how ea of
these categories are, in themselves, insufficient. It is only by taking
into account how they are mutually constituted—that is, indivisible—
that we can begin to make sense of human rights’ shiing place in
the MENA and their potential to undergird movements for structural
ange.
Section III
A political framework: intersecting human rights and
governance crises in the Middle East and North Africa
is Handbook’s apters represent a depth and breadth in academic
contributions on the intersections of human rights with broader
MENA politics that has not been conceivable until quite recently.
is depth and breadth is a signifier of several important intellectual
developments. Foremost among these developments is, simply, an
36
increasing recognition that these intersections are of vital
importance to regional and global politics. Even casual observers
have noted that Iran’s Green Movement (2009), the Arab uprisings
(2010–11), and Turkey’s Gezi Park protests (2013) exploded notions—
surprisingly common until quite recently—that human rights are
irrelevant to the MENA’s politics. To the contrary, this era of
uprisings across the region has shown that human rights (and their
violation) are at the fulcrum of ongoing governance and security
crises in the MENA.
Intellectual debates and academic explorations of how human
rights intersect with ongoing crises in the MENA are, thus, the
connecting theme of Section III’s six apters. ese apters
collectively give an overview of political dynamics regionally and in
some of its key countries. ese specific political histories make clear
how both general and specific human rights issues are essential to
understanding the reasons behind su ongoing crises. ese
intersections are not just about domestic human rights’ violations,
but extend to an external hegemon su as the United States
pursuing policies that have consistently reinforced a spiral of
despotic, unaccountable governance in the region.
e history of these sorts of intersections is given an overview in
Section III’s first apter by Martin Shaw, “Genocide in the
contemporary middle-east: a historical and comparative regional
perspective.” Shaw argues that well-known genocides—su as those
of Armenians in 1915, Kurds in 1988, and recent Islamic State
atrocities—should not obscure wider paerns of genocidal violence
in the Middle East. Shaw contends that the genocidal agenda of the
Islamic State is exceptional only in its explicit sectarianism. From the
Islamic State to the Syrian and Iraqi civil wars, the divide between
Sunni Gulf states and Shi`a Iran, and Israel’s expansion into the
West Bank, he sees similar sectarianisms defining the MENA’s
politics as part of a wider processes of homogenizing populations
and removing unwanted Others.
37
How these homogenizing processes are at war with pre-existing
pluralisms is developed in specific contemporary contexts in Section
III’s other apters. Nader Hashemi has perhaps the broadest take on
this in his “e ISIS crisis and the broken politics of the Arab world:
A framework for understanding radical Islamism.” Hashemi argues
that ISIS reflects fragmented social conditions that have emerged out
of a long crisis of bad governance in the Arab world. In short, as he
puts it, “human rights and democracy, or rather, their general
absence in the Arab world, can best explain the rise and expansion
of ISIS.” Human rights’ violations and political authoritarianism have
led to a destructive cycle of state failure, civil wars, and the rise of
extremist ideologies. Hashemi points out that during the Arab
uprisings violent Islamist groups were rendered impotent as the
possibility briefly emerged of peaceful political ange through
participatory pluralism. Rolling ba this opening led directly to an
increase in extremist violence—that is, when democratic openings
are closed radicalism thrives. Until this political-social context in the
Arab world is anged, the spiral of worsening state failure and
sectarian conflict will continue.
Turan Kayaoglu’s “e impact of the AKP on human rights in
Turkey: one step forward, two steps ba” reflects a disappointing
turn of history. Turkey’s AKP in its first years in power seemed to
represent an advance both for human rights and for the idea that a
moderate Islamist party and human rights principles are perfectly
compatible. Erdogan’s AKP oversaw a rollba of military power
and openings toward Kurds and a general social openness that
ranged from more freedom for the religiously pious to the
emergence of LGBT organizations in Turkey. e AKP experience
shows, however, that selective gains for human rights without
institutional meanisms and internalization of human rights by
party elites make su gains easily reversible. Recent years have seen
Erdogan increasingly assert one-man power. Despite democratic
mobilizations and the Gezi Park protests, the result has been bier
38
reversals for forces of democratic pluralism, with minorities of all
sorts—ethnic, ideological, and sexual—increasingly targeted by a
government that uses sectarianism to solidify its power.
Shadi Mokhtari’s and Neda Nazmi’s “e politics of human rights
in Iran Since the Green Movement” narrates a similarly depressing
tale. Iran’s 2009 Green Movement represented a high point for
popular aspirations for more open politics in Iran informed by
human rights, one that could only be repressed by brutal methods
and xenophobic nationalist justifications. Since that repression,
Mokhtari and Nazmi find that human rights allenges to the regime
have since been largely sidelined to those forced into exile, with
domestic human rights mobilizations greatly diminished. e result
in Turkey and Iran has been the resurgence of authoritarian
governance, with both states acting internally and externally in
support of the sort of sectarian politics that Shaw’s apter identifies.
Repressing domestic pluralism has gone hand in hand with
projections of singular nationalism into foreign policy, as seen in
Turkish support for Islamist allies in Syria and aas on Kurds both
inside and outside of Turkey, and Iranian support for Shi`a allies
outside its borders.
Kathleen Cavanaugh’s “Narrating law: Israel and the Occupied
Territories” takes a more theoretical turn, one that reflects
Israel/Palestine as a long-time example of the homogenizing
processes that Shaw discusses. Cavanaugh discusses how
international law has become a baleground over different
narratives regarding that process. One legal ‘truth’ regarding
Israel/Palestine is that this is an issue of the Palestinian human right
to self-determination as well as redress of a broad range of other
rights’ violations to whi Palestinians are subject. is narrative,
however, confronts a competing legal truth: that the actual legal
frame is one of Israel’s sovereign right to maintain its national
security, justifying violations of Palestinian rights. is ‘meta-
conflict,’ in Cavanaugh’s term, is not exclusive to Israel/Palestine,
39
but rather epitomizes bales fought in the legal discursive sphere
around the globe.
Cavanaugh’s argument flows directly into Stephen Zunes’ apter
“e United States and Israeli violations of international
humanitarian law,” whi describes how the United States has
shielded Israel from legal sanctions for violations of human rights
and humanitarian law, specifically in regard to treatment of civilians
and selements in the West Bank. Zunes’ point is larger than just a
critique of the U.S.–Israeli relationship or how the United States,
beyond Israel, prioritizes its military–security relationships in the
region over human security concerns. He argues more broadly that
impunity under a U.S. shield from international law harms the
possibility of reversing processes of ethnic conflict that are
reinforced by human rights’ violations justified by national security.
is is well demonstrated by continued spirals of violence between
Israelis and Palestinians.
ese specific case studies reinforce Shaw’s argument regarding
sectarianism: never absent from MENA politics, it is increasingly a
tool used by states and non-state actors, su as ISIS, to advance
their interests. e power of sectarian identity politics—and the
resources of actors who instrumentally deploy them—has clearly
overwhelmed countervailing democratic pluralist politics with
whi human rights are identified. Globally, wars between states
have been in steady decline since WWII. What has been on the rise
are so-called ‘new wars,’ in Mary Kaldor’s phrase: local conflicts
(oen with a transnational dimension) that are less about grand
causes or ideologies and more about using particular identities and
group solidarities as the basis for staking claims to local turf.1
Genocidal conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda to vicious
civil strife from Sri Lanka to Sierra Leone have epitomized su new
wars. For a long time the MENA appeared to be exempt from this
style of warfare as its states were capable of maintaining—at a
bloody cost—the traditional Weberian model of the state
40
monopolizing legitimate authority and violence within a defined
territory. e sorts of crises in the news as I write this in 2016—from
Syria’s refugee crisis to Saudi intervention in Yemen, the
disintegration of state authority across the region, and the rise of the
Islamic State—indicate this is no longer the case. ese sectarian
conflicts have, at their heart, dysfunctions in governance across the
region. ese have spawned instability, civil war, trans-border
conflicts, and a seemingly endless spiral of aos.
Section IV
A transnational and international framework: human rights
beyond borders
e MENA is not an insular region. is Handbook’s apters make
clear that, contrary to how the region is oen portrayed, it is deeply
interconnected with other parts of the world in terms of intellectual
debate, interloing economic structures, transnational political and
social currents, and intersections with both Great Powers and
international organizations. Section IV shows some of the specific
transnational and international factors that impact human rights in
the MENA, with reference to transnational advocacy networks
(TANs), international organizations from the OIC to the United
Nations, and flows of both tenology and refugees. Collectively
they demonstrate how integrated putatively domestic human rights
bales are with larger global politics. More importantly, they
illustrate the multiple levels at whi human rights issues are being
contested and played out, and the conundrums and allenges this
poses.
Laura Landolt’s “Rival transnational advocacy networks and
Middle East politics at the U.N. Human Rights Council,” for example,
41
looks at rival human rights TANs from the MENA—including those
that are allied to or even appendages of states—and how their
contestations are played out at the U.N. Human Rights Council
(HRC). Many MENA states are rhetorically adopting the language of
human rights in ways that are superficially appealing but actually
quite problematic. While this rhetorical adoption may be supportive
of human rights in the abstract (cultural relativist arguments become
immaterial when even MENA states are loudly proclaiming human
rights’ relevance), it is part of a strategic aempt by states to remake
human rights into a tool to serve their own interests, rather than
leaving them to be a tool for the disenfranised. MENA civil society
movements continue to contest this, of course, but have increasingly
lile margin to do so as they are squeezed by states out of both
domestic and international spaces.
Ann Mayer’s “Redefining rights: OIC aempts to reshape values
in the U.N. Human Rights System” makes this point even more
strongly. Mayer discusses the Organization of Islamic Cooperation
(OIC) in the context of its bales at the United Nations over issues
su as free expression and defamation of religion. Mayer shows that
the OIC’s impulses in these bales are primarily political—to justify
internal repression of minorities and dissidents—rather than based in
either human rights or Islamic values. And, more generally, Mayer
makes clear that the real stakes in terms of any acquiescence to the
OIC in this regard is to accept their aempt, in Mayer’s term, to
‘redefine’ human rights in the interests of its leading states.
Mahmood Monshipouri takes on a different element of the
transnational and international context that helps shape human
rights’ realities in the MENA. In “Human rights, youth, and
tenology: Agents of ange?” Monshipouri details how the
increasing acceleration of transnational tenological connections
has allowed disenfranised groups the ability to find a voice. is
evidenced itself during the Arab uprisings with the prominent role
of youth, showing a potential avenue to harness the voices of the
42
disaffected in ways that brought to the fore demands for alternatives
to the status quo. is indicates the intersection of demographic
drivers with pushes for ange. It must be added, however, that this
also evidences itself with the rising appeal of radical Islamisms su
as ISIS, particularly in the wake of the counterrevolutions that
crushed the youthful voices that informed populist uprisings across
the region. Transnational networks have empowered alternatives to
the status quo but, when pluralist alternatives are repressed, it is not
surprising that xenophobic and nihilistic alternatives emerge.
e sour results of that double-edged sword are evidenced in
Kathleen Hamill’s “Rights, refugees, and the case of Syria: What do
human rights offer?” e Syrian refugee crisis is the embodiment of
this Handbook’s concerns: in short, that authoritarianism, mass
human rights’ violations, sectarian rule, and Great Power meddling
and interventions leave in their wake failed states. is spawns on
the ground aos and the transnational spread of both extremism
and refugees. e resulting ill effects are devastating at the state,
regional, and international level. Hamill details the futility as well as
the fragile hope of human rights in this context. Futility in that the
refugee legal regime’s poor definition has been exposed by its
inability to cope with everything from basic protections for refugees
to broader issues of integration, freedom of movement, and access to
services. A fragile hope in that, amid the bleak hopelessness, human
rights norms—while inadequate—have nonetheless been the only
tangible framework for offering a minimum of humane treatment
for Syrian refugees.
is embodies the continued conundrum of human rights norms
and the allenge that they face. In a deeply interconnected world,
the global effects of mass human rights’ violations make clear that,
leaving moral imperatives to the side, there is a self-interested
reason for their implementation. e conundrum is how to make
that self-interest impel sufficient practical action so that there is real
implementation. e allenge lies in Hamill’s argument about the
43
conceptual inadequacy of the refugee regime. Human rights are still
mainly focused on a domestic context—that is, the relation between
a state and those under its jurisdiction. Can the rights regime meet
the allenge to evolve su that it continues to make sense in an
increasingly transnationalized world in whi refugee flows make a
moery of both state legitimacy and notions of an international
community, and in whi a legal regime based in an assumption of
functioning sovereign states seems quaintly out of date? ere is no
doubt about the conceptual relevance of this transnational and
international context; its implementation, however, remains deeply
skety.
Section V
Gender and human rights in the Middle East and North
Africa
Part II includes sections on three particularly contentious issues
regarding human rights and the MENA: gender, religion, and
transitions out of authoritarianism. In terms of multidisciplinarity,
these three sections particularly exemplify how this Handbook draws
from a variety of disciplines in a way that is unprecedented in work
on human rights and the MENA. is multi-disciplinary approa
includes apters by solars from fields as varied as anthropology,
history, international relations, law, philosophy, political science,
religious studies, and sociology. It was only a short time ago that it
would have been difficult to imagine su a multi-disciplinary
approa to these topics. e growth of work across disciplines both
on human rights and on human rights’ intersections with the Middle
East and North Africa, however, has provided the opportunity to
move beyond the intellectual insularity of a discipline-based focus.
44
is multidisciplinarity is particularly relevant to Part II’s focus
on issues, making clear how they can be illuminated by debates in a
range of academic disciplines. Section V on gender and human
rights, for example, includes apters by anthropologists Pardis
Mahdavi and Homa Hoodfar, by socio-legal solar Anicée Van
Engeland, and by historian Mieline Ishay. ese apters are
complementary despite—or perhaps because of—the authors’
differing methodologies and disciplines. Gender is a contested
baleground regarding human rights. is is perhaps especially true
in the MENA, where women are oen constructed as an
undifferentiated symbol of cultural authenticity rather than active
participants in creating their own futures. e section’s two apters
by anthropologists give fine-grained portraits that show how,
beyond stereotypes, women engage in struggles for agency. Section
V’s other two apters take a broader scope to give insight on how
and why ange can happen to further both the rights of women
and, through that, societies as a whole.
Mahdavi’s “Colliding rights and wrongs: Intimate labor, health,
human rights, and the State in the Gulf” brings out the lived realities
of sexual and reproductive health in the context of intimate
ethnographic portraits that show both migrant agency and state
power. Hoodfar’s “Turning ba the clo: Population policy and
human rights in Iran” also has an anthropological perspective that
focuses on close readings of ongoing contestations over reproductive
rights in Iran, connecting more specifically to the ideological reasons
behind the Iran state’s shiing population policies. Van Engeland’s
“Women’s rights in the Middle East: Constitutions and
consequences,” by contrast, takes a broader comparative law
approa to legal frameworks across the Middle East that
systematically disempower women. Mieline Ishay’s “e Arab
uprisings and the future of human rights” has an even broader
sweep. Her apter uses a historical perspective to argue that, despite
the repression of the Arab uprisings, human rights have always
45
progressed out of su setbas to the degree they remain connected
to fundamental freedoms, most accurately gauged by progress in
women’s rights.
ese case studies—whether about micro-realities of migrants and
citizens resisting state power over their sexual and reproductive
agency or broader paerns of legal disenfranisement of women—
show how different disciplines can complement ea other in placing
theoretical debates about gender within lived realities. ey also
make clear both how it is that women are acting to claim agency and
why rights are so essential to making those claims.
Section VI
Religion and Human Rights in the Middle East and North
Africa
Debates about religion and human rights have oen been as intense
as they have been unproductive. is is particularly the case when it
comes to Islam in MENA contexts, where the power of Islamisms
has made religion a point of acute controversy. Section VI’s apters
on religion and human rights bring, again, a multi-disciplinary lens
to this controversy, with contributions from solars grounded in
Islamic Studies, international relations, anthropology, and political
science.
Collectively these apters show how, if sectarian politics are the
dominant issue confronting human rights in the MENA, then
debates about religion need to avoid reifying the notion that Islam
monopolizes the Muslim public sphere. When this sort of reification
occurs—as it oen does in “are Islam and human rights compatible?”
debates—it implicitly reinforces a sectarian assumption that Islam is
the primary variable defining life in the MENA. It must be
46
emphasized, instead, that this tired trope of Islam’s quasi-monopoly
on the public sphere neglects the MENA’s pluralistic normative
environment, one in whi a recent survey shows 52 percent of Arab
youth feel “religion plays too big a role in the Middle East.”2 is is
an environment that continues to be increasingly informed by,
among other factors, heterogeneities, hybrid identities,
intersectionalities, diasporas, local, regional and international
networks, satellite television, cyber spaces, and transnational
currents and normative networks. It is by taking into account these
contradictory currents, rather than denying their complexity, that
space is opened for recognizing how human rights may facilitate
pluralism as a complement rather than a contradiction to Islam.
Khaled Abou El Fadl’s “Shari`ah and human rights” masterfully
dispenses with theological objections to human rights from an
Islamic perspective and, indeed, suggests possibilities for an Islamic
doctrine for realizing a vision of human rights. Abou El Fadl notes
how the human rights movement has gained support in the Muslim
world, coming to be used as a medium for expressing dissent and
making demands on local governments. In particular, he notes that
“the revolutions of the so-called Arab Spring demonstrated the
widespread utilization of the language of rights (huquq)” but that,
nonetheless, there remains tension between traditional Islamic law
and human rights standards in domains su as women’s rights and
freedom of religion. Abou El Fadl argues that, to move beyond that
tension, Muslims must recognize on Islamic grounds that pursuing a
just society includes recognition of the rights due to human beings.
Bassam Tibi takes a very different approa to justifying human
rights in “Islam, the principle of subjectivity, and individual human
rights,” arguing this must be done on cross-cultural foundations as
an Islamic foundation only reifies a notion of Muslim
exceptionalism. Tibi advances a ‘principle of subjectivity’—that is, a
human-centered view of the world rather than a religion-centered
view—as essential to human rights’ expansion in the Muslim world
47
as elsewhere. is brilliantly points to the problem with a simplistic
acquiescence to the normative monopoly of Islam. Tibi points out
that anowledging the importance of religion (whi is, of course,
oen quite important) too oen elides into accepting as
incontestable constructs of Islam projected out by dominant state
elites, su as those in Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Turkey that have the
resources to spread their version of Islam as a form of so power.
is explains why engaging in doctrinal arguments regarding the
place of human rights in Islamic law may be both practically and
theoretically problematic.3 Practically problematic because it risks
reinforcing the centrality of those actors most invested in using
Islam instrumentally to further their interests. And theoretically
problematic because it is unclear that a sear for a theological
foundation for human rights is what is even needed if human rights
are to justify (and, more importantly, expand on) their current
resonance. A sear for a pre-existing foundation in religion may be
a misdirection that makes us miss the everyday cultural, economic,
political, and social reasons that human rights language already
increasingly constitutes many claims for justice around the globe
and in the MENA. It is most likely, in short, that it is those daily
realities that make human rights relevant or irrelevant, not theology.
e last two apters in Section VI put su theoretical arguments
into real world context. Marie Juul Petersen’s “e OIC, human
rights, and religion: Rejection, reconciliation, or
reconceptualization?” returns us to the OIC, now in terms of the
implications of its adopting human rights language. Petersen argues
that the OIC’s establishment in 2011 of its Independent Permanent
Human Rights Commission (IPHRC) could be seen as a shi from its
earlier Cairo Declaration on Human Rights. e Cairo Declaration
declared an Islamic alternative to the rights enshrined in
international human rights documents whereas, rhetorically at least,
the IPHRC represented an evolution toward recognizing
international legal obligations regarding human rights. In practice,
48
however, the OIC has become increasingly insistent on pushing for
‘traditional values’ to be integrated into human rights.
In a narrow sense, this testifies to Saudi Arabia’s use of the OIC as
an instrument to advance its policy preferences—just as Tibi’s
apter indicates states are wont to do. Equally important, it speaks
to a broader point: human rights should not be understood as fixed
concepts, rather they are subject to constant contestations,
allenges, and reconceptualizations. e IPHRC is an important
example in that regard in its aempts to re-make human rights into
a tool to advance exclusivist ideas of religious truth in the service of
Saudi state interests. is illustrates an essential argument from
Carol Vance and Alice Miller: human rights are a not a static entity
but rather, as they say, are both a tool of struggle and a site of
struggle.4 As a site of struggle, human rights are subject to
contesting forces continuing to struggle to define and redefine what
human rights will become. Bales around OIC claims to human
rights language illustrate this, as do other ongoing struggles among
states and non-state actors around how human rights are articulated
and in whose interest.
Barbara Rieffer-Flanagan’s “Rhetoric versus reality: American
foreign policy and religious freedom in the Middle East” connects
these arguments to U.S. foreign policy and broader geopolitical
context around religious freedom or the la thereof. Perceived U.S.
economic or national security interests have led to support for
regimes that violate rights to religious freedom and dissent, most
prominently, once again, Saudi Arabia. Rieffer-Flanagan argues that
this support directly contributes to broader paerns of rights’
violations in the region, violations that are an essential part of the
context that has led to state failure and violent extremism. Insofar as
this has led to domestic, regional, and global instability, it has been
counterproductive to U.S. interests.
Why the United States nonetheless persists in su
counterproductive policies speaks, in part, to the misconceptions
49
about religion to whi ea of the authors in this section refer.
ere is an assumption by U.S. policy-makers that elite-defined
Islam is all-determining in the MENA, rather than an infinitely
diverse entity despite its oen being instrumentally deployed by the
powerful in narrow ways. Contesting these instrumental
deployments by pointing to the MENA’s (religious and non-
religious) diversity is essential to allowing religion to be an
expression of the region’s living pluralism rather than a tool in
repressive efforts to create a mythically united community. Indeed, a
human right to religious freedom and free expression is needed if
religious discourse is to be constituted by pluralistic voices that will
keep it dynamic, rather than static and closed. And human rights
can also be a necessary safeguard ensuring that religion does not
exclude from the public sphere non-religious voices that are an
essential part of the MENA’s diverse mosaic.
Section VII
Transitions and accountability in the Middle East and North
Africa
Post-mortems on the failures of pluralist uprisings across the MENA
oen point to their inability to annel popular support in the streets
into institutional power. is may have been disappointing, but
another thread that runs through this Handbook is that the power of
state institutions (and non-state Islamist institutions) to wait out the
anaric energies released in these uprisings and then return to
power was not at all surprising. Nor has subsequent instability been
terribly surprising, given that one of political science’s few maxims
is that periods of democratic transitions are particularly vulnerable
to conflict and violence.5 Indeed, the problem runs deeper than the
50
return of authoritarian governing structures across the MENA. e
bequest of decades of despotism is ruptured societies with lile basis
for political community, making the failures of democratic hopes
and the emergence of bier sectarian conflict predictable. A true
transformation will require a process both to institutionalize
accountability and, more broadly, to re-create political communities
in traumatically divided state-societies.
is is a tall order. e basic question in transitional justice is how
a state-society can be rebuilt on stable foundations that allow it to
move past the structural and psyological legacy of the previous
order. Processes that have emerged as a means to this end include
lustration (i.e. purges of those associated with the old regime in
order to make possible the emergence of an untainted new regime),
tribunals (i.e. trials for those responsible for human rights’ violations
su that a new order can be based on having done justice for past
wrongs), and truth and reconciliation commissions (i.e. an aempt to
replace retribution with truth-telling as a path to healing bier
wounds).
Section VII concerns these processes in a MENA context, with
apters by authors grounded in political science, international
relations, law, history, and religious studies. e level of human
rights’ violations suffered across the MENA has oen been
downplayed. Beyond a generic recognition that torture and
repression are widespread, there is lile sense of the scope of the
structural violence that exists at the cultural, economic, political, and
social levels. at scope makes clear the difficult path to true
revolutions that reconstitute public spheres in more open, pluralistic
ways. Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm’s “Core transitional justice debates in
the Middle East and beyond” gives an overview of debates in this
field, from philosophical notions of what is justice to more specific
debates about how best to rea both stability and justice. Examples
from the MENA cited by Wiebelhaus-Brahm show that, rather than
seriously engaging in su processes, its governments have favored
51
either retribution or manipulating transitional justice processes for
their own interests, oen to forestall genuine political transitions.
e apters that follow in Section VII give case studies
illustrating different dimensions of these failures—or at best very
limited successes—of transitional justice efforts in the MENA.
Chandra Sriram’s “Courts as a tool in transitions: Lessons from the
Special Tribunal for Lebanon” takes on the hybrid tribunal
established by Lebanon and the United Nations Security Council to
address the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister
Rafik Hariri and several related assassinations. e Tribunal,
however, does not address abuses during Lebanon’s earlier civil wars
or abuses under subsequent Syrian occupation, mu less the
spillover from Syria’s more recent civil war. Sriram finds that it is
unlikely to promote accountability or even truth telling, though
there is some hope that it may facilitate some helpful discussions
about the past.
Rim el-Gantri’s “Lessons on transitioning from authoritarianism:
Pitfalls and promise from Tunisia’s experience” notes that Tunisia is
oen considered the most successful post-Arab Spring state, partly
due to it having initiated transitional justice processes. El-Gantri
finds, however, that delays and la of transparency suggest the
Tunisian state’s reluctance to implement these processes. Civil
society activism hoping to ki-start this process keeps alive the
hope for a more substantive reoning with the past, but fears are
very real that the supposed Tunisian success story is a passing
mirage. Without a true transformation of its political system, Tunisia
risks sliding ba to what it was before Ben Ali’s departure: a less
bad version of the pathologies that ail the Arab political system.
Morocco is an even more difficult case. Its Equity and Reconciliation
Commission was the first transitional process in the region, but
Osire Glacier’s “e impact of impunity for violating cultural rights
in Morocco” indicates not just the Commission’s la of impact, but
also how continuing impunity is part of what has kept Morocco in
52
stasis. Glacier returns us to Mark LeVine’s focus on cultural rights
and how their repression is intimately linked to violations in other
dimensions. She argues that impunity for cultural rights’ violations,
including deliberately depriving Moroccans of education, is part of a
political strategy that impedes cultural, economic, political, and
social development.
Experiences around the globe have demonstrated that simply
having elections or referenda is not a long-term solution to deeply
seated cultural, economic, political, and social divisions. Experiences
around the globe have also shown, however, that processes of
transitional justice—when seriously engaged—have helped many
state-societies in their transition out of authoritarianism. No all-
encompassing model emerges from these experiences, but there is
one unifying principle: the need to recognize and grapple with
authoritarian pasts if more democratic, pluralistic futures are to
emerge. To speak specifically of the Arab uprisings, their anaric
spontaneity gave them their irrepressible power. Ironically, however,
the same anaric impulse that was a strength in gathering together
disparate trends in opposition to the status quo was an Ailles’ heel
when it came to moving beyond that status quo. ere was lile
thought put into envisioning how to deal with responsibility for past
wrongs or the shape of future governing structures.
ere is no single path out of authoritarianism nor is there a
simple transitional justice process that is uniformly appropriate.
What is clear, however, is that, in the aermath of uprisings across
the Middle East, especially in the Arab world, there has been a
general failure to come to terms with responsibility for past
authoritarianisms. If transitions to democracy are inherently
unstable, the result of su instability is the possibility of divided
societies basliding into either despotism or internecine conflicts.
We have seen both in the Arab world. is demonstrates what an
opportunity—fragile but real—was missed when domestic, regional,
53
and global powers conspired to return the Arab world to its ‘stable’
status quo.
Section VIII
Conclusions from a global viewpoint: theoretical
justifications and contestations around human rights
Part III’s two sections conclude the Handbook with theoretical
reflections grounded in global and grassroots perspectives. Section
VIII’s apters put theoretical approaes to human rights in the
MENA in a global context. is is a vexing endeavor. e difficulty
of human rights’ implementation in practice is paralleled by the
contentiousness of theoretical arguments about how to understand
human rights and their global spread. A flourishing human rights
literature allows for contributions from a number of different,
sometimes conflicting, perspectives to illuminate difficult debates
about what human rights are and what explains their resonance or
la of resonance globally and in their intersections with local
particularities, including in the MENA.
e solarly diversity in Section VIII is not just about
multidisciplinarity. A deliberate oice was also made to include
human rights solars who do not specialize in the MENA. It is true
that, as Huss Banai argues in his apter, the MENA has distinctive
contexts that must be taken into account if we are to make sense of
its human rights intersections. ese contextual factors are, indeed,
the focus of most Handbook apters. But this is not meant by Banai
as an argument for MENA exceptionalism in whi the region is
constructed as a case apart. Su exceptionalism is problematic
because it would risk reinforcing insularity in intellectual debate
rather than the exploration of connections across disciplinary and
54
geographic divides. Underlying this Handbook is a critique of su
insularity and a theoretical assumption that moving beyond
disciplinary and regional expertise can be revealing. e logic
behind broadening the Handbook’s academic palate with
contributions by human rights solars who are not necessarily
MENA experts is that ignoring su flourishing human rights
solarship would be intellectually impoverishing. is globally-
oriented solarship sheds valuable light on theoretical issues
regarding the intersection of human rights and locales around the
world, including in the MENA.
David Forsythe’s “International human rights at 70: Has the
Enlightenment project run aground?” gives, as its title indicates, a
broad reflection on how human rights have evolved historically,
with particular aention to recent developments in international
criminal justice, transitional justice, and the Responsibility to
Protect. Forsythe anowledges that, despite these remarkable
advances, the rights regime has a long path before it can make more
than incremental progress in the face of nationalisms and
illiberalisms, especially in the MENA. If Forsythe speaks of the
gradual diffusion of human rights across the globe in what he calls
contingent circumstances, Koen De Feyter’s “On the local relevance
of human rights” takes that focus on contingency and asks, more
specifically, in what contexts it is that peoples on the ground come to
appeal to human rights. De Feyter’s field resear in Africa and Asia
shows that groups around the world, especially in the global South,
appeal to human rights when their human dignity is under threat.
Contrary to usual top-down notions of the global diffusion of rights,
De Feyter makes the argument that the use of human rights at the
local level is the starting point for the normative development of
global human rights. In a phrase he borrows from Upendra Baxi,
people are the ‘primary authors’ of human rights. is is a
remarkable departure from an assumption in mu of the literature
that human rights flow from on high out of Enlightenment era
55
civilizational thought and traditions. is assumption is highly
problematic and, in a MENA context, makes lile sense of the ways
in whi human rights have come to resonate with lived realities.
Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon’s “Israel/Palestine, human
rights and domination” takes a critical theory perspective on human
rights, insightfully arguing that the rights regime can reinforce state
power in a problematic manner. A new generation of contemporary
historians—Samuel Moyn, Jean ataert, and Steven Jensen, most
prominently—have put into question the common story that the
human rights regime flowed out of WWII. Perugini and Gordon,
however, accept the more traditional story, assuming the birth of the
human rights regime in the wake of the Holocaust. ey argue that,
when this new regime emerged, it did so in order to bestow on the
state primary responsibility for protecting human rights. is had
the effect, ironically, of reinforcing the state’s power. In
Israel/Palestine they see an unfortunate result of this, arguing that
this is a case in whi the human rights movement has functioned to
normalize colonial relations between the Israeli state and
dispossessed Palestinians.
is critique points to a troubling issue with the reformist human
rights project. Human rights’ synergistic relationship with the state
creates a sort of mutual dependency; counter-intuitively, this risks
empowering the very states that human rights are meant to limit.
David Forsythe’s broad historical overview makes clear, however,
that human rights are too narrowly pigeonholed if they are seen
only through that one problematizing prism. Indeed, while far from
a panacea, Forsythe gives a cogent overview of how human rights
have developed in ways that, at least at times, have effectively
limited state power to violate the rights of individuals and social
groups. One should also be skeptical, per De Feyter’s contribution, of
making too exclusive an identification of human rights with state
power. ere are simply too many cases where marginalized peoples
—from the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa to indigenous
56
peoples in South America—use their agency to engage with human
rights as a tool in their struggles against states. Human rights can be
instrumentally appropriated by states, as Perugini and Gordon point
out, but that does not exhaust their potential.
Alison Brysk’s “e quest for constructive criticism: Critical
approaes to human rights” is a sharp assessment of critical
theorists on human rights. Brysk argues that su theorists too oen
rely on monolithic, ahistorical notions of human rights that are, in
her words, “undisciplined by empirical reality.” Using the example of
activism around women’s rights, Brysk shows how to understand
human rights as a “contested, constructed, and evolving basis for
mobilization and empowerment with the capacity for counter-
hegemony in a liberal world order.” is is a key insight that moves
discussion of human rights beyond predetermined theoretical
templates and more toward being informed by empirical realities
that explain human rights “expansion and vernacularization.”
Human rights are, as noted before, both a potential tool of struggle
for the dispossessed and a site of struggle within whi various
actors—state and non-state alike—contest how human rights develop
and are re-imagined. To see human rights as a singular monolith is
to miss their problems, their possibilities, and their transformations.
Lisa Alfredson is, like De Feyter, a solar at the cuing edge of
work to re-orient understandings of human rights toward a localized
approa. eir apters’ emphases on boom-up approaes to
understanding human rights speak to how solarship on human
rights and the MENA is enried by emerging human rights
solarship. Alfredson’s “Making human rights ‘universals’ from the
ground up?” emphasizes, in particular, the need to recognize, rather
than deny, the agency of peoples in claiming human rights,
converting them to their own purposes and, in that process,
anging what human rights are. In describing this process of
human rights creation by globally diverse actors, Alfredson argues
that human rights’ adaptations in response to new claims shows that
57
the human rights status quo itself can be allenged and anged
rather than becoming stagnant in its own notion of ‘universality.’
Indeed, the emergence of new sets of human rights in recent years—
regarding sexual orientation and gender identity, for example—
demonstrates how human rights are, at their best, in a dynamic
process of becoming rather than static.
ese contributions in Section VIII indicate how human rights
relevance in diverse parts of the world flows from the degree to
whi they have (or have not) resonated at the grassroots. is is a
conscious allenge to the prevailing notion that human rights have
only become important to the region from a top-down global
diffusion, whi remains a far too common assumption in mu of
the literature on human rights and the MENA.
Section IX
Conclusions from a grassroots viewpoint: reflections on
dynamics around struggles for human rights in the Middle
East and North Africa
Section IX brings the Handbook to a close with apters by four
authors who have been inspirations to many who have worked on
human rights in the MENA, including myself. e riness of their
reflections is a testament to the interplay of long experience,
consistent integrity, and intellectual wisdom. It is a clié to talk of
bridging the gap between theory and practice. How beer, however,
to describe these apters? Decades grappling with theoretical and
practical issues revolving around human rights and grassroots
struggles in the MENA inform reflections that astutely recognize the
structural allenges, normative opportunities, and intellectual
58
surprises that make human rights and the MENA su a ri but
difficult topic.
Fateh Azzam’s “Reflections on three decades of human rights
work in the Arab Region” gives a magisterial overview of all this
Handbook encompasses. Azzam meditates on both the growth of the
human rights movement since the late 1970s in the MENA and its
consistent frustration by structures of power that are both local and
global. Dely describing the interplay of the moral, legal and
political in human rights discourse leads Azzam to decry “a cycle of
tilting at windmills by human rights proponents: now it’s the
culture, now it’s the law, now it’s the politics.” Azzam argues,
instead, for considering culture, law, and politics in an integrated
manner. is extends in a very practical manner theoretical
arguments about indivisibility that, as I have noted, inform from the
start this Handbook. Azzam’s practical concern is how su an
integrated approa can beer inform a societal movement that
meaningfully impacts local and global structures of power. Azzam
finds a compelling model for this in the Boyco, Divestment and
Sanctions (BDS) movement, saying its strategies are “human rights-
based and well known: to bring pressure on states, commercial
companies, universities and other institutions, to desist from
activities that support the continuing Israeli occupation and
violations of international law and Palestinian human rights.
Initiated by Palestinians, it has grown exponentially in the past 10
years and has garnered significant global support, scored many
successes and is beginning to have tangible effect.”
Amr Hamzawy foregrounds the experience of Egypt in his “Egypt
2011–15: How can a democratic revolution fail to improve human
rights conditions?” As with Azzam, Hamzawy is both an engaged
intellectual and a grizzled practitioner whose reflections flow out of
events in whi he has been a key player. His reflections begin by
recalling an intellectual environment in the Arab world at the start
of the twenty-first century that was informed by a sense of urgency
59
to confront long-standing authoritarianism and the “pseudo-rational
discourses” of apologists for ruling regimes and Islamism as its only
alternative. Hamzawy evokes the prevailing optimism that Arab
societies were bound to transition to democracy and the rule of law.
In making these arguments at the time, intellectual elites and human
rights defenders were reaing out to considerable segments of Arab
populations looking for alternatives to a stagnant and repressive
status quo. Hamzawy argues this was key to empowering a younger
generation of Arab activists to discover the street as a peaceful arena
to allenge autocracy, as eventually came to fruition in the Arab
uprisings. is optimistic badrop and the energy it engendered
make the counterrevolutionary tide that swamped these uprisings all
the more bier to Hamzawy. True to human rights principles,
Hamzawy has been Egypt’s most consistent critic of Mubarak, of
Muslim Brotherhood rule, of the 2013 coup that overthrew
Muhammad Morsi, and of al-Sisi’s rule since then. He describes ea
of these phases as sharing an idea of a savior from above that
justifies mass violations of human rights, sacrificing both the blood
and the hopes of Egyptians.
Bahey eldin Hassan’s “Reflections on human rights before and
aer the Arab Spring” betrays a similar discouragement about
current events and, yet, a continued engagement with how to create
ange. e head of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies,
Hassan argues that military elites in Arab countries are the variable
that explains the counterrevolutionary turn that repressed popular
hopes aer the Arab uprisings. As with Hamzawy, Hassan focuses
on Egypt. He uses Egypt’s recent history as a case study
demonstrating a regional trend of military power as the determining
factor in reversing calls for democratization and pluralism by Arab
publics. e apter concludes by discussing the role of human
rights activists who have moved from being popularly lionized as
revolutionary leaders to being hunted as the foremost enemies of the
state. Nonetheless, the underlying claim raised by these activists—
60
that violations of human rights result in interloing local, regional,
and global instability—has only grown more acute. Hassan concludes
that addressing these systemic violations, however unlikely, remains
the only hope to ending the impetuses that make the Arab world a
source of conflict, terrorism, and refugee flows.
Lynn Welman’s “Human rights, law and politics: a reflection on
human rights work in the Middle East and North Africa” is a
response to academic critiques of human rights. Welman indicates
how disconnected su abstract critiques can be from the reflective
commitments of grassroots human rights activists who “act on
human rights in the daily grind as well as in the bigger picture.”
ose in the front line of thought and action around human rights
organizations in the MENA—su as Azzam, Hamzawy, and Hassan
—are well aware of the problematics surrounding human rights law
and politics in the region. (Amusingly, Welman cites the mo
horror of a Tunisian activist at yet another academic tome invoking
the “endtimes” of human rights—but “we’ve hardly had a ance to
get started!” the activist exclaims.) Welman borrows from
Christine Bell to make her point: “e law’s possibilities are oen
sought out by those in struggle as one of the few resources
available.” It may be that simple. In events that range from ongoing
struggles by Palestinians and Kurds for the right to self-
determination to contemporary demands for cultural expression,
economic opportunity, political voice, and social pluralism, human
rights have been invoked when they are perceived as a useful tool—
legal and normative—of the marginalized to contest hegemonic
power. It is ironic, to say the least, when su agency is derided by
Western academics from their position of privilege.
e aptness of De Feyter’s and Alfredson’s apters come to mind
when Welman writes that
ere is a real gap in solarship on the impact of local human rights organizations in
the Middle East and North Africa on their partners in the international movement, as
well as the intensification of regional initiatives. Now, here is an extremely interesting
61
area of exploration for those who wish perhaps to uncover a different kind of human
rights story.
Indeed, whether in writing of human rights “endtimes” or their “rise
and fall” among Palestinians, what seems to be missing from too
mu solarship on human rights and the MENA is a substantive
engagement with local contexts and a willingness to take seriously
grassroot actors’ reflections and commitments. What is missing is an
openness, in Welman’s terms, to a story different than what is
presupposed.6 Could there be serious reasons that human rights
continue to undergird struggles in the region to find an alternative to
governance that serves the power of cultural, economic, political,
and social elites, despite the dismissiveness of some observers?
Welman pertinently concludes her apter with an observation
that underlies the premise of this Handbook as a whole: the
allenge of solarship on human rights and the MENA is to be
informed “with the possibility of … surprise, puing aside for that
moment theoretical templates that suggest human rights can be
constructed only in certain limited ways.”
62
Conclusion
e wave of uprisings from 2009–13—from Iran’s Green Revolution
to the Arab uprisings and Turkey’s Gezi Park protests—were both a
high and low point for human rights in the MENA. e Arab
uprisings took this high point the furthest, forcing long-entrened
rulers to step down in response to demands from massive street
mobilizations for greater cultural, economic, political, and social
freedoms. ese demands indicated anging normative
expectations in the region regarding democracy, human rights, and a
recognition of the Other’s place in a political community. As
Challand convincingly argues,
e Arab uprisings shared a common sociological novelty, that of expressing the new
massive adherence of the people, ash-sha`b, to the notion of citizenship and the
collective will to underwrite a new, more inclusive type of social contract. is amounts
to a call for the precedence of citizenship over the nation as opposed to previous
aempts of token nationalism devoid of full citizenship rights.7
e popular resonance of these demands should not be forgoen.
Even if the Arab uprisings’ hopes have been frustrated, their
underlying normative currents represent a continuing potential to
allenge the status quo. ey are, in Huss Banai’s phrase,8 a
“hidden Liberalism”—that is, a desire for liberal ends even if an
illiberal political context blos their accomplishment.
e Arab uprisings also represented a low point, however.
Counterrevolutionary forces quily overcame these uprisings’
animating calls for more representative, accountable politics. In the
midst of revolutionary aos, the warm appeal of exclusivist identity
politics and strongman stability returned as a powerful mobilizing
force, justifying a return of authoritarian politics in new modes. In
some sense this reversal was inevitable given the powerful
63
institutional and ideological forces arrayed against populist uprisings
in countries like Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen. It is also
true, however, that calls during the Arab uprisings for cultural
vitality, economic justice, political democracy, and social pluralism
were too superficial to be translated from rhetoric into plans of
action. Even Tunisia’s limited success in continuing its democratic
transition is tenuous, as many old guard figures have returned to
power and slowed transitional justice processes (as el-Gantri
discusses in her apter) as well as broader processes of
democratization and empowerment. Why these failures? e
anaric forces behind the uprisings did not have the institutional
foundations to withstand deeply embedded structures of power.
Neither, however, did they ever have a fully articulated vision of
how to build their own institutions or how to allenge and move
beyond the nationalisms and other forms of identity-based politics
that have been and continue to be mobilized against democratic
politics.
e Arab uprisings were an example of both human rights’
unanticipated impacts and their continued shortcomings. In regard
to the former, human rights language has oen been powerfully
invoked against specific rights’ violations and authoritarianism in
general; its normative and political relevance to the Arab uprisings is
another example of how human rights can be a useful tool in
struggles by the disempowered. In regard to the laer, human rights
have not consistently done enough to inform a structural critique of
the status quo; this is true in the MENA and elsewhere. e inability
of the Arab uprisings to be translated into representative,
accountable institutions is one example of human rights not reaing
their potential.
at does not mean that human rights do not have the possibility
of being part of more thorough structural critiques. Su structural
critiques are fundamental to human rights and need to be made
more deeply and more explicitly. In order to point toward this
64
possibility, I will conclude this introduction with a few thoughts on
why SOGI-related rights, even if a particularly controversial part of
social rights, are central to this argument. If we are to take seriously
the themes of human rights’ indivisibility and intersections that run
through this Handbook, it is essential to see how the struggle for
SOGI-related rights is intimately linked to broader struggles for
cultural, economic, and political empowerment. Social resistances in
the domain of sexuality and gender are not just important in
isolation. Rather, they provide an example that goes to the heart of
how human rights can constructively inform articulations of
political futures that are more inclusive and pluralistic.
So, how is it that SOGI-related rights can point us toward taking
into account rights’ indivisibility and their intersections in ways
essential to rights’ long-term relevance? In regard to indivisibility,
the apters in Section II discuss categories of cultural, economic,
and political rights and their importance. Social rights are equally
important and, per rights’ indivisibility, interwoven with the
possibility of implementing all categories of rights. In specific regard
to social constructs of sexuality and gender, feminist and eer
studies solarship allows us to see the politically radical effects of
boundary-breaking phenomena, from feminism to alternative gender
expressions and sexual orientations. ese social resistances,
whether perceived as mildly or wildly outrageous, can be part of
subverting a mutually reinforcing status quo in the cultural,
economic, political, and social domains.9 is is demonstrated by
how the Arab uprisings were heralded by under-the-radar shis in
social and cultural aitudes—from sexual and gender expressions to
cultural rebellions evidenced in rap music, heavy metal, and various
other artistic subversions.10 is irrepressible social and cultural
energy constitutes a continued defiance against the status quo.
Keeping this in mind explains why it is not surprising that
counterrevolutions in the Arab world (as well as in Iran and
increasingly in Turkey) have taken as a necessary task brutally
65
repressing alternative social and cultural expressions. is is not out
of morality. It is out of an implicit sense of rights’ indivisibility: that
the emergence of su social alternatives feeds into undermining
patriary in all of its domains—cultural, economic, political and
social—and therefore must be crushed.
In regard to intersections, it is essential to push beyond what was
noted earlier in this apter—how human rights intersect with a
range of issues and crises—and toward a more truly intersectional
approa to identity. Challand argues, perhaps a bit too broadly, that
the era of uprisings in the MENA flowed out of “overt support for
intersectionality politics” whi he defines as “sensitivity toward the
limit of dominant identity binaries.”11 Authoritarian patriary, be it
monarist, Islamist, secular, and/or military, is based in essentialist
identity constructs; it imposes, among other things, singular notions
of appropriate ethnicity, sexuality, and gender roles. If this is, indeed,
the case, then to allenge su authoritarianism at its core it is
necessary to more directly allenge these narrow conceptions of
identity. SOGI-related rights have particular potential toward this
end insofar as they emphasize that sexual and gender identities must
be recognized as multiple, overlapping, and coexisting, rather than
singular. Movements for SOGI-related rights are powerful in
upseing patriaral binaries by being, in Momim Rahman’s words,
“focused on the uncertainties of identity.”12 Dennis Altman argues
that, in so doing, they “interrogate identity as a fixed point and a
central reference.”13 is is not just a sideshow. It is central to calling
into question structures of patriaral identity that are a key impetus
behind human rights’ violations and sectarian violence one sees
around the world, including in the MENA.
Indivisibility and intersectionality, thus, are not merely abstract
theorizing; they show how human rights can be beer
conceptualized in order to allenge the status quo. e Arab
uprisings showed the potential of human rights-inflected popular
movements but also exhibited their limits. In the wake of sobering
66
experiences in Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Libya, and Tunisia, it is clear
how difficult it is to translate the Arab uprisings’ impulses into
pluralistic political communities. While SOGI-related rights may
seem improbable to contemplate in currently dire circumstances, it is
also worth contemplating if it may only be in the context of multi-
dimensional ange that rights—even those that are supposedly less
controversial—can be sustainably implemented. In short, there is an
interdependency among rights that must be recognized if real
ange is to occur; ange that is not just incremental but truly
revolutionary. Surface improvements on structures that are
authoritarian to their core are insufficient. In theses contexts, human
rights must indeed aim to be revolutionary rather than merely
reformist.
e apters in this Handbook either implicitly or explicitly
remind us to keep in mind three realities as we think about how
human rights may contribute to su ange in the MENA. First is
that, even in a reactionary period, rebellious contestation will
continue. A key lesson of the Green Revolution, Arab uprisings, and
Gezi Park protests is how the disorganized, incoherent, yet inevitable
pluralism of peoples unpredictably explodes. No maer how stable
the surface, contestation is irrepressible and ange inevitable. e
current status quo in the MENA is particularly precarious given its
ruling elites la of popular legitimacy and how their bad
governance feeds into widening cycles of violence and instability.
Second, these rebellious contestations need to focus on the structural
causes of human rights’ violations if they are to sustain the ange
they seek. ese structures are institutional—governmental and non-
governmental—and they are grounded in patriaral forms of
authority. If human rights are to beer inform resistance to these
forms of authority, then they need to be “multilingual”14—that is,
owned at the local level by agents of ange who desire to be the
subject of politics rather than its object. ese agents adopt rights
not due to one universal heritage, but rather due to human rights’
67
utility as a tool that evolves according to context, speaking to varied
resistances against human rights violators.15
Lastly, in that light there needs to be less focus on if human rights
are inherently relevant or irrelevant, but rather on how human
rights can continue to evolve in order to tangibly become relevant to
the claims and demands made by peoples. at is where human
rights live or die. Just as historians tea us that human rights are
not a static entity, but rather have been continuously re-imagined
and repurposed,16 so too do rights need to continue to be open to
su re-imaginings. Human rights are oen discussed as if they are
in and of themselves a goal, and in and of themselves an ideological
worldview. is is not the case. To the contrary, human rights are
more about processes than ends—processes that can restrain state
dominance, empower peoples and social groups, and advance
individual and group agency. What is accomplished with that
empowerment and agency is not determined by human rights; it is
determined by those who claim, use, and transform human rights.
In the short-and even medium-term there is every reason to be
pessimistic about human rights in the MENA. In the long-term,
however, making space for forms of political community that are
fluid and open enough to represent cultural, economic, political, and
social pluralism is the only alternative to authoritarianisms that are
inherently unable to come to terms with diversity within the Middle
East and North Africa. Despite the structural, institutional, and
ideological obstacles to creating alternative forms of political
community, human rights remain relevant to that struggle in the
many domains addressed in this Handbook and beyond.
68
Notes
1 Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Palo Alto:
Stanford University Press, 2012).
2 Asda`a Burson-Marsteller, Arab Youth Survey, available at:
www.arabyouthsurvey.com/en/home. Accessed on May 2, 2016.
3 Anthony Tirado Chase, “Liberal Islam and ‘Islam and human rights’: A sceptic’s view,”
Religion and Human Rights vol. 1, no. 2 (2006), 1–19.
4 Alice M. Miller and Carol S. Vance, “Sexuality, human rights, and health,” Health and
Human Rights vol. 7, no. 2 (2004), 5–15.
5 Linz and Steppan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern
Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1998).
6 Stephen Hopgood, The Endtimes of Human Rights (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University
Press, 2013).
Lori Allen, The Rise and Fall of Human Rights. Cynicism and Politics in Occupied
Palestine (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013).
7 Benoît Challand, “Citizenship against the grain: locating the spirit of the Arab uprisings
in times of counterrevolution,” Constellations vol. 20, no. 2 (2013), 170.
8 Huss Banai, Hidden Liberalism in Modern Iran (forthcoming).
9 Desiree Lewis, “South African feminism, Lady Gaga, and the flight toward ‘eer
Utopia’” in Los Angeles Review of Books (Sept. 2015). Available at:
hps://lareviewoooks.org/essay/south-african-feminism-lady-gaga-and-the-flight-
toward-queer-utopia. Accessed on May 2, 2016.
10 Asef Bayat, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Palo Alto,
CA: Stanford University Press, 2010).
11 Challand, p. 175.
69
12 Momim Rahman, “eer as intersectionality: eorizing gay Muslim identities,”
Sociology vol. 44 no. 5 (2010), 951.
13 Dennis Altman, “Global gaze/global gays,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies
vol. 3, no. 4 (1997), 430.
14 Lynee Chua, Mobilizing Gay Singapore: Rights and Resistance in an Authoritarian
State (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2014).
15 Anthony Tirado Chase, “Human rights contestations: sexual orientation and gender
identity,” International Journal of Human Rights vol. 21 (2016), 1–21.
16 Samuel Moyn, “On the Genealogy of Morals” in The Nation [online]. Available at:
www.thenation.com/article/genealogy-morals#. Accessed on May 2, 2016.
70
Selected Bibliography
Aerly, Brooke. Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Afshari, Reza. “On historiography of human rights discourse” in
Human Rights Quarterly vol. 29 (2007), 1–67.
Bayat, Asef. Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle
East. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010.
Beitz, Charles. The Idea of Human Rights. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2009.
Benhabib, Seyla. Dignity in Adversity: Human Rights in Troubled
Times. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011.
Burke, Roland. Decolonization and the Evolution of International
Human Rights. Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania Studies in Human
Rights, 2010.
Chase, Anthony Tirado. “Human rights contestations: sexual
orientation and gender identity” in International Journal of
Human Rights vol. 21 (2016), 1–21.
Chua, Lynee. Mobilizing Gay Singapore: Rights and Resistance in
an Authoritarian State. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University
Press, 2014.
De Feyter, Parmentier, Timmerman and Ulri eds. The Local
Relevance of Human Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2011.
Goodhart, Miael. Human Rights: Politics and Practice. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2009.
Grabham, Cooper, Krishnadas and Herman, eds. Intersectionality
and Beyond: Law, Power and the Politics of Location. London:
Routledge, 2009.
71
Jensen, Steven. The Making of International Human Rights, 1945–
1993. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Merry, Salley Engle and Goodale, Mark, eds. The Practice of Human
Rights: Tracking Law Between the Global and the Local.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Moyn, Samuel. The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.
ataert, Jean. Advocating Dignity: Human Rights Mobilizations in
Global Politics. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2010.
Rahman, Momim. “eer as intersectionality: theorizing gay
Muslim identities,” Sociology vol. 44 (2010), 944–61.
Rajagopal, Balakrishnan. International Law from Below:
Development, Social Movements, and Third World Resistance.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Risse, omas, Sikkink, Kathryn, and Ropp, Stephen eds. The
Persistent Power of Human Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2013.
72
Section II
A conceptual framework: political,
economic, and cultural rights in the
Middle East and North Africa
73
2
Political Legitimacy, Contingency,
and Rights in the Middle East and
North Africa
Hussein Banai
74
Introduction
Very few governments in the contemporary Middle East enjoy
popular legitimacy. e coercive powers of most states in the region,
in the main, are exercised by fiat rather than sanctioned by their
citizenry. According to Freedom House surveys of civil and political
liberties around the world, of the twenty-one countries in the Middle
East and North Africa (MENA) region, only Israel and Tunisia are
free (encompassing only five percent of the region’s 410 million
populace—but even counting Israel and Tunisia as free is contentious
to many experts).1 ese findings are confirmed by issue-specific
reports su as Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom
Index,2 Amnesty International Annual Reports on myriad abuses of
human rights, the United Nations Human Development Index3, and
a host of other (non/inter)governmental reports. e consistency of
these reports over the course of the last two decades, combined with
myriad failed efforts at reform and liberalization in the region, help
to explain why the so-called ‘third wave’ of democratization
sweeping across central and eastern Europe, Latin America, and
parts of central Asia and the Caucuses has largely eluded the MENA
region.
At the time of the successive popular uprisings in Iran, Tunisia,
Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, Jordan, Iraq, and Yemen (to name the
most prominent between 2009 and 2011), there was mu hope that a
new trajectory had at long last come to replace the puzzle of
‘persistent’ and ‘robust’ authoritarianism in the Middle East.4 But
the Green Movement in Iran and the so-called ‘Arab Spring,’ while
helping to expose multiple and intersecting crises of legitimacy
across the region, also underlined the difficulties inherent in
confronting powerful interests and established practices that have
75
long shaped social relations under longstanding regimes of
repression.5 In ea case, the failure to either replace or gain
significant concessions from the status quo revealed important
insights about the differences between popular and political
legitimacy, and the implications for human rights and democratic
reforms. For my purposes, I define (and later justify) political
legitimacy as a mere modus vivendi between ruling parties, their
support networks, and the general population. Popular legitimacy, by
contrast, is legitimacy gained through the free and fair participation
of citizens in the public sphere, and especially in maers of
governance. Very few recent works on the determinants of
legitimacy do not either confuse or conflate popular and political
antecedents in their analyses. is has been to the detriment of
constructive thinking about the prospects for democratic reform and
fulfillment of human rights in the region.
is apter is a reflection on the relationship between political
legitimacy and rights in light of the conjoined domestic and foreign-
induced convulsions that have set the Middle East upon a most
uncertain trajectory. It may reasonably be asked just what is to be
gained from su a survey under ever-mutating conditions. I offer
two related reasons. First, the socio-economic and political factors
that for so long conditioned the terms of political legitimacy have
either been anged or rearranged. e sound and fury of the
current moment notwithstanding, the uprisings across the region
have in fact broken some significant taboos and slain more than a
few sacred idols. It is, therefore, important to pause and take
measure of the salience of the new political landscape aer the
collapse of the previous order. Second, this new political seing has
revealed the underlying pluralism of values, grievances, interests,
and strategies that serve as reference points for struggles over and
debates about basic rights and freedoms. Put simply, there is a great
deal of variation in the terms of political discourse, as well as the
substance of political claims on offer, from Tunis to Tehran.
76
Political legitimacy aer civil uprisings
Max Weber’s definition of the state as a political entity whose
“administrative staff successfully upholds a claim on the monopoly of
the legitimate use of violence in the enforcement of its order within
a given territory”6 is an instructive starting point for thinking about
the determinants of political legitimacy. In Weber’s influential
formulation, legitimacy stems from the unmatched capacity of the
state to exercise its coercive powers. In other words, to the extent
that no other authority can allenge the state’s coercive powers,
then su a ‘monopoly’ forms the basis of political legitimacy.
Weber’s definition is instructive here because it links the normative
concept of legitimacy directly to the material capacity of the state to
bring about desired outcomes. Legitimacy, therefore, is gained once
the agents of state—that is, ‘the administrative staff’ carrying out
executive functions—can demonstrate their ability to thwart
allenges to their authority, maintain order within their territory,
and to secure the elementary security needs of subject populations.
To be sure, this capacity does not by itself render the state’s exercise
of power just or unjust; rather, it signifies a key (for Weber, perhaps
the) aribute of the sovereign state.
It is important to be mindful of this fine distinction from the
outset because far too oen what merely testifies to the political
legitimacy of the state is confused or conflated with what makes the
ruling regime or a given system of rule legitimate. is is especially
important in the case of Middle Eastern countries where, as the
catalogue of measurements of popular legitimacy cited in the
introduction make clear, explanations for the persistence of
authoritarian regimes can easily neglect overlapping areas of
political legitimacy between the state and the regimes in power.
77
Popular legitimacy corresponds more closely to a representative
system of government, whereby ruling elites are not only responsive
to the claims of their citizens but also reflect the preferences of
majorities while protecting the rights of minorities. Although
democratic institutions and procedures are the most optimal means
of aieving popular legitimacy, alternative pathways to popular
legitimacy su as consultative assemblies and benevolent
monaries—more prevalent among Persian Gulf countries and in
Morocco—also exist.
In any event, muddled understandings of political legitimacy as
regards Middle Eastern states and societies are primarily due to the
contingent nature of its determinants, and not because the concept
itself is inherently enigmatic. More importantly, the prevalence of
authoritarianism in the region does not necessarily entail that
considerations of political legitimacy are any less variable or in flux
than under other systems of rule. As Lisa Anderson has recently
suggested,
Rather than assume the stability and legitimacy of the state, political scientists of the
Middle East must treat it as a variable: the state is stronger, more widely accepted, and
beer institutionalized in some places than others or, conversely, it is more hotly
contested, routinely ignored, or otherwise weaker in some places than others.7
e spectrum of authoritarian state capacities, in turn, affects the
aracter and form of the relationships or coalitions upon whi the
ruling elites come to rely.8 Correspondingly, political repression must
be viewed more as a means of ensuring the material and ideological
interests of authoritarian coalitions than a mere blunt instrument of
power. e longevity of authoritarian regimes, then, is determined to
a significant degree by their leaders’ ability to construct and
successfully maintain, as one influential study has argued, a
‘winning coalition’ among the ‘selectorate,’ a cohort of individuals,
institutions, and powerful entities baing the leadership of an
authoritarian state.9 Indeed, the variable fate of uprisings and
78
popular movements across the region since 2009 further confirm this
reality.
Iran
In Iran, the cradown on the leaders and notable supporters of the
Green Movement,10 however harsh and draconian in the short-term,
did not result in a state-of-emergency-like power grab by ultra-
conservative factions seemingly enjoying the support of the Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Instead, the regime recalibrated by
re-drawing its ‘red lines’ around new, more acceptable public
criticisms of officials and policies. With the terms of political
discourse once again redefined, the opposition responded by electing
President Hassan Rouhani in 2013, a moderate pragmatist with
subliminal appeal to embaled reformists, as well as to conservatives
wary of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s costly hostile posture and actions.
Rouhani’s election was made possible due in large part to the
diffused, but inextricably linked, networks of commercial, religious,
and political interests that make up the support base of the regime.
Highly invested in the stability of the Islamic Republic, these
constituencies were more interested in reaing an equilibrium point
—aer the tumult brought on by Ahmadinejad’s polarizing agenda—
than rethinking the structure of power. As su, the political
legitimacy of the regime was secured once again.
Tunisia and Egypt
Considerations of political legitimacy in the case of Arab countries
have been demonstrably different, however. Prior to the start of the
uprisings in late 2010, nearly all of the Arab republican states—
primarily, Egypt, Syria, and Tunisia, but also Algeria and Libya—
79
were run by comparatively more rigid, top-down authoritarian
regimes. e regimes, in turn, were supported by highly selective (in
terms of their loyalty and personal relations with the security
establishment) networks of cronyism, whi benefited from
repressive policies that limited public accounting of state practices.
“Increasingly,” one especially perceptive study notes, “fragile
coalitions governed through divide-and-rule strategies based on a
combination of blanket subsidies, repression, and fear mongering
about political Islam.”11 As a result, far fewer constituencies were
included in the authoritarian coalitions across these states, rendering
the ruling elites more vulnerable to sudden shos and sustained
allenges to their authority.12
e so-called ‘Jasmine Revolution’ in Tunisia was largely a
response to the culture of corruption cultivated and nurtured by
President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his network of cronies.
Although the Ben Ali regime had been among the most repressive as
regards civil and political rights, Tunisia was nonetheless among the
most advanced Arab countries in socio-economic terms. Yet, the
imperatives of political survival on the part of Ben Ali, and of
favoritism and access on the part of the cronies benefiting from his
rule, turned Tunisia into one of the most unequal, economically
corrupt, and politically repressive countries in the region. In
retrospect, it is lile wonder that a mere spark could set the entire
façade ablaze, whi quite literally arrived in the form of the public
self-immolation of a Tunisian street vendor, Mohammad Bouazizi.
Indeed, Bouazizi’s plight—routinely harassed and humiliated by
corrupt, rent-seeking local police and civil administrators—
symbolized, beer than any independent audit of the country ever
did, the corrupt basis of Ben Ali’s tenuous political legitimacy.13
Suddenly, the convenient alibis of impending Islamist terror and
takeover no longer seemed to have mu credence in the minds of
millions of unemployed youth and under-employed and
marginalized working professionals.14 To be sure, many other non-
80
instrumental factors related to the popular legitimacy of Ben Ali’s
rule also played an important role in bringing down his regime.15
But from the standpoint of political legitimacy, the tapering of the
authoritarian coalition due to rampant cronyism was the decisive
factor in the swi transfer of power to the opposition.
e case of Egypt is more complicated in that there are many
areas of overlap between the determinants of political and popular
legitimacy that not only help explain the swi fall of one of the
purportedly most stable political regimes in the region, but also the
country’s gradual reversion ba to status-quo ante. Central to the
political legitimacy of any Egyptian government since the dawn of
Arab nationalism has of course been the outsized role of the military,
the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). e sheer scale of
the popular protests against the government of Hosni Mubarak
greatly surprised the network of cronies around him, and especially
exposed their complacency. A key constituency in that network
included the top ranks of the SCAF itself, for whom striking a
balance between anowledgement of the corruption of the political
class and the preservation of its massive commercial and political
interests was absolutely essential. As Owen observed, foremost in
the minds of the military leadership
was the desire not only to protect the military’s own lucrative economic interests—its
factories, commercial farms, its link with the wider business community—from public
scrutiny, but also what might be called its own ‘guilty’ secret that for all the huge (and
hidden) defense budget, its ability to put on even the smallest military exercise, let alone
confront a major enemy on the balefield, had been seriously impaired.16
Given the depth of SCAF’s entrenment in the political economy of
Egypt, it is lile wonder, in hindsight, about its active role in
fomenting a systematic counterrevolution that resulted in the
ousting and vengeful prosecution of the democratically-elected
government of Mohammad Morsi (and the Muslim Brotherhood)
and the return of the ancien régime.17
81
It is important to note that restoring the political legitimacy of the
old order in Egypt has by no means resolved the quite ronic crisis
of popular legitimacy that is bound to destabilize the country in the
foreseeable future. is is because popular support for the Muslim
Brotherhood and other Islamist parties had less to do with
Egyptians’ preference for Islamic governance than actually
mitigating mutually inclusive problems of corruption and mass
inequality. On this point, Tarek Masoud’s comprehensive study of
the basis of support for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and
Justice Party confirms that “citizens voted for that party not because
of its stance on the application of Islamic law, but because they
believed it would pursue economic policies on behalf of the poor.”18
e measure of popular legitimacy leading up to the elections,
therefore, was more economic and material in nature than religious.
is also helps explain how, when Morsi and the Brotherhood
undertook undemocratic steps to thwart the constitution in favor of
ideological commitments, the basis of their popular legitimacy
quily dwindled. Laing coercive powers, and excluded from the
networks of patronage apoplectic about its redistributive and
political agendas, the Brotherhood were easily purged by the SCAF
from the political scene.
Perhaps the most notable implication of the swi rise and fall of
the Muslim Brotherhood was what it revealed: the very thin
purase of Islam on either political or popular legitimacy. As
Masoud aptly notes,
If religious purity were the thing voters thought they were purasing with their
suffrages, we would expect those voters to insist on keeping Islamists in office,
regardless of the slowing of the economy, the decay of public services, or the steady
erosion of public order. If religion were truly possessed of the totemic power that
observers of the Muslim world have long assigned to it, then it would take a great deal
more than a few months of fuel shortages, blaouts, or inflation to cause the faithful to
turn their bas on it.19
82
Indeed, the same can be observed in Tunisia, whi also saw the rise
to power of the Islamist Ennahda Movement aer Ben Ali’s fall.
ere, the slogan ‘Islam Is the Solution’ soon had to be jeisoned in
favor of more earthly labels that would not needlessly alienate the
majority’s preference for practical solutions to root out corruption
and fix the country’s ailing economy. Consequently, Ennahda
entered into power-sharing agreements with the center-le Congress
for the Republic and the social-democratic Eakatol political parties
to aain the requisite legitimacy needed to shepherd the transition
process to constitutional democracy in Tunisia.20 At any rate, what
these disparate experiences suggest thus far is that even Islamists
have to grapple with the imperatives of political legitimacy, their
purported claims to ideological, cultural, and even metaphysical
authenticity notwithstanding.
Syria and Libya
e aermath of the Arab uprisings also has been instructive in the
two countries that have suffered—and whi at the time of this
writing continue to suffer—most significantly from near-total state
collapse and intractable civil conflict: Syria and Libya. Syria’s slide
into civil war was a direct consequence of Bashar al-Assad’s vicious
military response (including the alleged use of emical weapons) to
what by all accounts had been a widespread and pluralistic (in
sectarian and political terms) uprising to his rule. From the outset,
however, the Syrian uprising was qualitatively different from those
elsewhere, given the sectarian and highly stratified composition of
the Assad family’s system of rule that included the army, myriad
security and intelligence services, and the Ba`ath Party. e
hereditary rule of the Assads, in turn, is tied closely to the status and
security of the Shi`a minority Alawi sect whose members
predominate in the legislature and the cabinet, rubberstamp
83
institutions both. is peculiar arrangement has been termed a
‘presidential monary’ by Raymond Hinnebus,21 but the basis of
its legitimacy harkens ba more to its self-generating network of
support than mere loyalty to kinship or dynastic rule. In fact, similar
to other authoritarian republics in the region, a critical component of
the regime’s support are its networks of businessmen and capital
with access to resources outside of Syria. As Bassam Haddad has
explained,
Beginning in the 1970s, the regime has forged networks of capital that bind elite
business actors to state officials as the laer, and their offspring, venture into the
commercial realm. ese ties have paid dividends in times of crisis, both in the past and
in the present.22
e outbreak of the uprisings—whi soon turned into an armed
resistance—exposed the geographical limitations of Assad’s rule. e
Alawite population is mostly concentrated in the northwest region
of Syria adjacent to the Mediterranean Sea, and although the seat of
the Assad regime’s power is based in Damascus and its surrounding
areas, the rest of the country is predominantly populated by Sunnis,
Christians, Druze, and the Kurds. is demographic spread was not
an insignificant determinant of the regime’s political legitimacy,
since the ability to execute and project coercive power in these
regions was how Hafez al-Assad first cemented his grip on power.23
e metamorphosis of the uprising from civil to ongoing armed
resistance—with considerable military support by Western and
Persian Gulf countries—tipped the balance of power and effectively
eliminated the Assad regime’s monopoly of violence in mu of the
country. Armed resistance by itself, however, did not manage to
allenge the regime in its sectarian and military strongholds. e
resulting civil war has produced the most acute humanitarian crisis
of the twenty-first century (while estimates of the fatalities vary
between 250,000 and 500,000, the exodus and forced migration of
nearly 4.5 million people is indisputable).24
84
Although the composition and method of Muammar Qaddafi’s
rule also could be said to have resembled that of a ‘presidential
monary,’ the stratification of power based on tribal affiliation and
kinship render Libya qualitatively different from Syria. e base of
Qaddafi’s power was strictly composed of networks of patronage
bound by ties of kinship. As su, Libyan government was devoid of
any shared institutions or civil spaces that Libyans with different
tribal lineage could participate in. According to Anderson,
In the absence of any public-sector bureaucracy, including a reliable police force, kin
networks provided [sic] safety and security as well as access to goods and services. It
was along su networks that Libyan society fractured when the regime’s capacity to
divide and rule began to unravel at the beginning of the protests.25
e blithe manner in whi Qaddafi and his sons publicly vowed to
exact revenge on the opposition—Saif al-Islam Qaddafi warned of
‘rivers of blood’ in a televised spee26—was indeed representative of
the rigid basis of political legitimacy in Libya at the time of the
uprisings. All the same, the crucial factor in the fall of the regime
was no doubt the NATO-led military intervention that swily and
decisively ended Qaddafi’s four-decade-long monopoly of violence
in Libya.
As a result of the failure of the transitional process in Libya to
produce a united path toward shared governance, the country has
plunged into civil war between rival groups and zones of authority.
As in the case of Syria, the inability of any single political actor to
establish uncontested claims on the means of coercion is iefly the
reason behind the persistence of anary in Libya. On this account,
seing aside the legitimacy of the military intervention by NATO
countries, there is no doubt that mu of the violence and instability
in the country is due to the ill-conceived manner in whi the
distribution of weaponry and intelligence assets in the lead up to the
toppling of Qaddafi was managed. is has led some observers to
declare post-intervention Libya a ‘stateless country,’ whi is neither
85
possessive of the formal institutions of a state (in the Weberian
sense) nor even torn between disparate but stable zones of authority
(as has been the case in conventional civil wars su as in the
Balkans, Iraq, or in Syria).27 In contrast to ea of the
aforementioned cases, therefore, political legitimacy in Libya is
simply non-existent at the time of this writing.
e Arab monaries
It would perhaps seem counter-intuitive that among the different
types of autocratic regimes in the Arab world hereditary monaries
should fare beer than republican states. Aer all, su regimes
seem to rely more on entrened networks of patronage, la of
robust institutions, rampant corruption, and ineffectual ruling
personalities. Indeed, none of these regimes was at first immune
from popular protests that filled city squares and streets from
Manama to Rabat. But two factors, in retrospect, seem to have
played to the advantage of monaries: resource wealth (primarily
oil) and regional rivalry. It is a well-established observation in
comparative studies of Middle Eastern politics that resource-ri
countries prove more resilient in the face of popular pressures for
ange than those with lower or even medium levels of resource
rents.28 Simply put, oil rents endow resource-ri countries with the
capability to alleviate political pressures through economic
incentives. As Camme, Diwan, Riards, and Waterbury have
argued, “In the oil-ri countries with low populations, high oil rents
keep the autocratic bargain—or the exange of material benefits for
political quiescence—functioning.29
Evidence of su dynamics was on full display soon aer the
outbreak of popular protests in the Persian Gulf countries. In Saudi
Arabia, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz responded to the uprisings by
announcing a $110 billion economic paage to be spent on social
86
welfare, new housing, and new jobs; the Kingdom later amended
this initiative with minor but symbolic reforms. In Kuwait, more
concrete political steps were taken, including dissolving the
rubberstamp parliament altogether, replacing the premier, and
holding new elections. But here too the offering of economic
incentives and promises of greater inclusion of hitherto marginalized
constituencies were ultimately instrumental in halting what
threatened to be a regional contagion. Although the scale and shape
of protests in Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Oman were
comparatively too small to be even moderately threatening to the
respective ruling families there, in ea case the government cited its
diversified economy and relative wealth to explain its stability.30 As
the determinant of political legitimacy, therefore, oil wealth did
indeed have an appreciable effect on the ability of the ruling families
to respond quily and effectively to the outbreak of popular
protests.
All the same, a fairly robust counter-revolutionary response by
the riest Persian Gulf monaries—but primarily led by Saudi
Arabia—was also prompted by a renewed sense of rivalry with Iran.
In this sense, the pretext of an ascendant Iran, as a Shi`a power bent
on regional hegemony, was exploited to prop up otherwise weak and
unpopular autocratic regimes in Bahrain and Yemen.31 In Bahrain,
where the majority Shi`a population is ruled by the Sunni al-Khalifa
family, although persistent public protests were brutally crushed by
the security forces, the government made a point of inviting Saudi
troops to demonstrate its resolve in the face of possible assistance
from Tehran. e result was the fortification of the al-Khalifa
dynasty, and the restoration, for the time being, of the regime’s
political legitimacy.
A far more violent and uncertain case is the ongoing civil war in
Yemen that initially began as a mass uprising against the rule of
former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. ere, the Iran-baed Houthi
opposition is engaged in a bloody armed conflict against the forces
87
loyal to the government of Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who came to
the presidency as a result of a transitional process brokered by the
Gulf Cooperation Council. Although the ebb and flow of the conflict
is consistent with the dynamics of a sectarian civil war, there is no
denying that the direct military involvement of a Saudi-led coalition
has effectively divided the country into three separate zones of
authority among the Houthis (in the West), pro-Hadi forces (in the
East and the center), and the Al Qaeda affiliate, Ansar al-Shari`ah (in
the center). In sum, a counter-revolutionary measure born out of the
anxieties of popular revolt has, as of this writing, devolved into a
full-blown civil war with no end in sight. In this regard, Yemen
demonstrates the ineluctable constraints placed on regime stability
and political legitimacy by outside forces struggling to aieve a
favorable balance of power. But just as importantly, it demonstrates
the lengths to whi discomfited regimes endowed with considerable
financial and military resources will go to counteract any external
developments that might conceivably affect their legitimacy at
home.
As the preceding brief illustrates, the variable outcomes of the
popular uprisings across the Middle East over the past few years
have largely been determined by the capacities of ruling elites to
maintain their respective authoritarian coalitions. While in some
states (e.g. Iran and Egypt) the informal networks of patronage and
clientelism have simply proven too ‘deep’ to be susceptible to
periodic popular shos, in other cases (e.g. Tunisia) the appearance
of total control seems to have deluded even the rulers about the
extent of their marginality. Still, in states with persisting divisions
along sectarian and kinship ties (i.e. Syria, Libya, and Yemen), the
outbreak of civil unrest was merely a symptom of yet more
trenant and deeply historical grievances that continue to maim,
kill, displace, and impoverish. To be sure, the riddle of political
legitimacy in ea of these societies is determined by any
combination of the following factors: demography, ecology, political
88
economy, human rights, external support and/or interference,
regional dynamics, transnational Islamist politics, sectarian identity,
kinship, and transitional politics. My aim in the preceding, however,
has been to demonstrate in whi cases, and broadly for what
reasons, political legitimacy—defined as the monopoly over the ways
and means of violence—has either been maintained, lost,
reestablished, or hangs in the balance since the outbreak of popular
protests in December 2010. e remainder of this apter examines
the implications of these variable outcomes for thinking about the
future of democracy and human rights in the region.
89
Contingency and rights
Given the rather parsimonious Weberian definition of political
legitimacy employed above, it would seem that struggles for basic
rights and freedoms are somehow of second-order relevance in
discussions of political ange. Su a conclusion would be mistaken
for two reasons. First, as I mentioned from the outset, there is an
important distinction between what enables a regime to stay in
power and what justifies its claims to rule. In the previous section, I
endeavored to describe the contours of the former in order to simply
show how and where authoritarian rulers maintained, lost, or
regained power in spite of mass discontent about the legitimacy of
their claims to rule. What I did not provide an explanation for or
explore was why su allenges to the political legitimacy of
resilient autocrats sprung up seemingly out of nowhere in the first
place. e implication here is that the normative content of the
uprisings—that is, the calls for basic rights, political agency, and
recognition of human dignity—still very mu remains a pivotal part
of the drive behind ange across the Arab and Muslim worlds.
Second, popular struggles for human rights and democratic
representation cannot singularly be treated as either symptoms or
causes of crises of legitimacy for the simple reason that they are by
nature immanent in social life, perpetually fought for, always in flux.
Even in the most stable and established democracies su struggles
are ever present and ongoing. erefore, due to the contingent
nature of social life (i.e. the absence of certainty in life events),
rights-based claims and abuses form the very threads out of whi
the fabric of social and political ange is weaved together.
In countries where the monopoly of violence does not rest on
democratic claims to governance—su as, in all of the states
90
surveyed above—the struggle for rights is necessitated, on the one
hand, by the contingency of everyday life, and on the other, by the
formal as well as informal denials of agency by the state. To
complicate maers further, in moments of crisis or transition the
boundaries between these domains are blurred by a combination of
perceived threats to physical or economic security, identity conflicts,
monistic pursuits of ideals, and sheer greed, on whi a bountiful
literature in social science already exists.32 A good illustration of this
point as regards the Middle East are the results of the Arab
Barometer (AB) surveys that have been fielded in twelve countries
across the Arab world. To date, three different waves of AB surveys
have been conducted, with the last round completed soon aer the
outbreak of uprisings in the region. Reading through the results
before and aer the protests, it is striking to observe the shi in
emphasis by respondents away from political grievances to more
socio-economic and security concerns. Egypt is an instructive case in
point. A key question in the survey asks of respondents to rank six
features of democracy in order of significance to them.33 In Egypt, in
a survey conducted soon aer the outbreak of uprisings that toppled
the Mubarak regime from power, a sizable majority of Egyptians (76
percent) ranked socio-economic features above political ones, whi
only 23 percent ranked first. Moreover, in the same survey a
majority of Egyptians (66 percent) also object to any violations of
human rights in the name of security. ese results lead the
surveyors to conclude, “that the definition of democracy in the eyes
of Egyptians does not correspond with many traditional definitions.
Instead, Egyptians understand democracy to be primarily associated
with socio-economic affairs, or redistribution.”34 Similar conclusions
are reaed about other countries in the region as well, albeit with
variable emphasis on security in addition to socio-economic factors.
But as I have demonstrated thus far, the contingency and the
variable nature of both popular and political legitimacy recommend
a more reflective interpretation. Crises of legitimacy, precisely
91
because they allenge or even supplant longstanding monopolies of
power over the ways and means of violence, naturally engender
feelings of fear, suspicion, anger, resentment, and insecurity. Under
su conditions, it is more than understandable that the sacrifice,
once again, of democratic aspirations for the sake of political
stability and legitimacy should lead to expressions of despondency
and resentment reflected by the third wave of AB surveys. In light of
the heightened sense of general instability and insecurity, worsening
economic conditions, and rise in sectarian conflicts, it is perhaps not
surprising that a sizable majority of respondents in Egypt, Lebanon,
Jordan, Kuwait, and even in Tunisia believe that their fellow citizens
might not be ready for democracy; or that any su system worthy
of its underlying values must first and foremost deliver on economic
equality and prosperity.35
e important question to ask at this juncture, however, is not
what preexisting templates for democracy citizens subscribe to
(insightful though su inquiries might be in illuminating common
anxieties and preoccupations of a public). Answers to su questions
would nearly always be at the mercy of contingent factors bearing
on the commitment level of respondents. Rather, a more salient
approa would account for the denial or recognition of specific
rights-based claims amid conditions of political turmoil and
instability. For instance, whi freedoms and rights have been
enhanced or further diminished in Egypt aer the fall of Mubarak
and before the restoration of the status quo ante by SCAF? What
lessons may we glean from the way political transitions across the
Arab world failed to deliver on popular demands for more
representation and freedoms? What institutional es and balances
are needed to ensure underlying democratic values su as equal
respect for persons, autonomy, freedom of spee, and minority
rights protections in a moderately successful case like Tunisia? Are
civil and political rights merely nominal without a fairly robust set
of welfare and economic protections? Is the absence of the laer the
92
reason for the qui resort to kinship ties and sectarian identity in
Libya, Syria, and Yemen? What is the role of inter-governmental,
non-governmental, and aid agencies in facilitating the neutral
political space in whi political legitimacy is established on
democratic foundations?
ese are just some broad and basic sample questions; but the
point I am making here with this set is that questions about the
status of struggles for rights and democratic processes must tou on
those specific conditions that were/are part of the historical record.
We call the aggregate of these context-specific factors the fruits of
‘contingency;’ but the ever-dynamic nature of these factors need not
detain us from empirical investigations of, and also engagement
with, ongoing normative struggles to render public institutions and
governments more representative of the irreducible plurality of
human lives conditioning social relations. Furthermore, we must
recognize that this effort entails a two-level—national and global—
understanding of rights-based claims that goes beyond the concerns
and purview of nation-states. Miael Ignatieff summarizes the
allenge well in his Tanner Lectures on Human Values:
Most human beings depend for their rights on the states they live in; those who do not
have states of their own aspire to one and in some cases are fighting for one. Yet even
though the nation state remains the ief source of rights protection, international
human rights movements and covenants have gained significant influence over national
rights regimes. Although the ‘default seings’ of the international order continue to
protect state sovereignty, in practice the exercise of state sovereignty is conditional, to
some degree, on observance of proper human rights behavior. When states fail in this
regard, they render themselves subject to criticism, sanction, and, as a final resort,
intervention.36
Indeed, there have been no shortages of criticisms, sanctions, and
interventions in the name of human rights and democracy
promotion in the Middle East in the last decade alone. Some of these
actions (mostly through conditional aid and symbolic criticisms)
have induced authoritarian states to become more responsive to the
needs and rights of their citizens, while others (i.e. interventions in
93
Iraq and Libya, for instance) have been abject failures in terms of
both securing rights and spreading democracy. e reasons for these
failures have been well explored and reflected on by solars, but
critical assessments of great power militarism are not a substitute for
ethical and pragmatic prescriptions that also take seriously the
imperatives of political legitimacy.37
Although the trajectory of anges underway—let alone the
prospect for democracy—in the Middle East are far from certain at
this point, there is lile doubt what the animating grievance behind
the uprisings has been: the basic democratic idea that citizens’
fundamental rights and dignity are to be respected by governments.
e brave and dignified protests that engulfed the region in the
aermath of Mohammed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in Tunisia
demonstrated this point perfectly. As Anthony Chase has aptly
argued, the multiple and intersecting waves of boom-up protests
prove that “human rights have come to inform, in part and in
interesting ways, how significant issues in some parts of the
transnational Muslim world are contemplated, debated, and acted
upon.”38 In contemplating the prospects for democratic ange in
these societies, therefore, we must concentrate our analyses more on
the formal and informal obstacles in the path of rights-seeking
citizens than on their putative expectations from democratic
institutions (should they ever arrive). is is not to say that we must
credulously accept the whims and desires of any individual or group
—or even of majorities—in the name of freedom of expression and
democratic agency. For without critical dialogue and reflective
understanding the core democratic principle of equal respect for
persons is nothing but a hollow trope. Rather, by revealing the
barriers to representative institutions, and hence to meaningful
citizenship, reflective solarship would accurately portray civil
protests for what they truly embody: in Chase’s words, “the desire of
the people to be subjects of politics rather than objects of politics.”39
94
Conclusion
e long-term implications of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ for the
peoples, cultures, and institutions of the Middle East will be studied
by solars for many years to come. But the significance of the
present moment—in all its sound and fury—ought to be of special
interest to democratic theorists. For despite the seemingly ubiquitous
propensity to compare the current uprisings to those preceding the
fall of communism in Eastern and Central Europe in 1989, or to the
wave of progressive revolutions engulfing mu of Europe and Latin
America in 1848,40 the local and global contexts both enabling and
working against the revolts in the Middle East are mu different
from pro-democracy upheavals of previous eras. Simply put, the
circumstances surrounding the laer involve a different cohort of
individuals and groups, ideas, beliefs, geopolitical factors, economic
and historical paerns, and social imperatives. is is not to say that
the grievances registered are not familiar ones: cries for freedom,
equality, accountability, respect for rights and dignity, and justice
would be instantly recognizable to anyone as universal calls for
democracy. But shared vocabularies oen belie fundamentally
different obstacles in the way of boom-up revolts in different
seings and time-periods.
Since the birth of modern democracy, people of different
bagrounds have assembled and mared together to insist on their
right to have rights and basic freedoms; but once free, the struggle to
define the scope and substance of rights and freedoms begins anew.
e nature and aracter of su second-order struggles, in turn, are
conditioned by the contextual seing from whi disagreements
spring. Indeed, this dynamic is currently evident in Tunisia, as
liberal, secular, religious, and a host of other parties vie for power
95
and present to the public their respective plans for revising national
constitutions, managing contentious politics, jumpstarting the
economy, and dealing with political violence. In ea case, as in
others explored above, it is the capacity of the new political order to
be responsive to the needs and input of a diversity of viewpoints that
will put to test its claim to legitimacy.
96
Notes
1 Freedom House scores are based on a seven-point scale, with 1 signifying the most
freedom and 7 the least freedom. Lebanon, Kuwait, and Morocco are classified as
“partly free,” but their scores (4.5, 5, and 4.5, respectively) remain high. All data
pertaining to the MENA region can be accessed at
hp://freedomhouse.org/regions/middle-east-and-north-africa. Last accessed September
20, 2015.
2 World Press Freedom Index ranks 180 countries from best to worst. Only Kuwait (90),
Lebanon (98), and Israel (101) rank in the top 100, but just barely. Some of the most
pivotal and highly populated countries su as Egypt (158), Saudi Arabia (164), Iran
(173), and Syria (177) rank among the worst in the world. e 2015 World Press Index
can be accessed at: hps://rsf.org/en/ranking_table.
3 Although some Persian Gulf countries su as Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United
Arab Emirates rank high in HDI metrics, as the U.N. Arab Human Development reports
have consistently demonstrated, the raw ingredients for democratic participation and
representation—inequalities in gender, income, education, and access to health, and
persistent poverty—remain elusive compared to other developing regions. For key Arab
HDI indicators, see: www.arab-hdr.org/data/indicators/. For general U.N. HDI reports,
see: hp://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi.
4 Eva Bellin, “e robustness of authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in
comparative perspective,” Comparative Politics, vol. 36, no. 2 (Jan. 2004), 139–57, and
“Reconsidering the robustness of authoritarianism in the Middle East: Lessons from the
Arab Spring, Comparative Politics, vol. 44, no. 2 (Jan. 2012), 127–49. For a critical
treatment of Bellin’s approa, see Raymond Hinnebus, “Authoritarian persistence,
democratization theory and Middle East: An overview and critique,” Democratization,
vol. 13, no. 3 (2006), 373–95.
5 For critical reflections on the uprisings, see Fawaz A. Gerges, ed., The New Middle East:
Protest and Revolution in the Arab World (New York: Cambridge University Press,
97
2014), and Jason Brownlee, Tarek Masoud, and Andrew Reynolds, The Arab Spring:
Pathways of Repression and Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
6 Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York: e Free Press,
1966), 154. Emphasis in the original.
7 Lisa Anderson, “Authoritarian legacies and regime ange,” in Fawaz A. Gerges, ed., The
New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2014), p. 46. For an earlier iteration of the same point see Anderson’s
“e State in the Middle East and North Africa,” Comparative Politics, October 1987.
8 at authoritarian states come in different forms, and behave different across time and
space is not a new revelation in social science. For the most influential study in political
science, see Juan J. Linz, Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes (Boulder, CO: Lynne
Rienner Publishers, 2000).
9 Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, et al, The Logic of Political Survival (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 2003).
10 For an excellent summary of the variety of claims, counter-claims, and compromises
leading to and emerging out of the 2009 presidential election, see Nader Hashemi and
Danny Postel, eds The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran’s
Future (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2010).
11 Melani Camme, Ishac Diwan, Alan Riards, and John Waterbury, A Political Economy
of the Middle East, 4th Edition (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2015), p. 5.
12 As Roger Owen has recently explained, “Arab republican presidents in states with lile
or no oil were always closely associated with only a small number of individuals or
groups of men and women. ese included, on occasion, members of their own close or
extended families who used their privileged access to obtain favorable business terms in
exange for various political or economic services.” Roger Owen, The Rise and Fall of
Arab Presidents for Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), p. 49.
13 Fadhel Kaboub, “e making of the Tunisian revolution,” Middle East Development
Journal, vol. 5, no. 1 (2014), pp: 1–21.
14 It is important to note, as Habib Ayeb has shown, that the concentration of wealth and
political power also had a distinct political geography: “Since independence and even
98
before it, the south, center and west of the country have suffered from the economic and
social consequences of the unbalanced and unequal developmental policies that were
particularly concentrated on the capital Tunis, the Sahel, some big coastal cities, su as
Bizerte and Sfax, and tourist zones, including Djerba and Hammamet-Nabel … this is a
large part of the country that observes its resources being transferred to the other part
without any real compensation or benefits in exange.” Habib Ayeb, “Social and
political geography of the Tunisian Revolution: e Alfa Grass Revolution,” Review of
African Political Economy, vol. 38, no. 129 (2011), p. 471.
15 Hayat Alvi makes the argument that human rights principles and the pursuit of social
justice played definitive roles in bringing about the revolution. “e human rights and
development impetuses for Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution,” Contemporary Review of the
Middle East, vol. 1, no. 1 (2014), pp. 25–51.
16 Roger Owen, “Egypt and Tunisia: From the revolutionary overthrow of dictatorships to
the struggle to establish a new constitutional order,” in Fawaz A. Gerges, ed., The New
Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2014), p. 264.
17 For a clear-eyed explanation of the SCAF’s counter-revolutionary rationale and actions,
see Adam Shatz, “Whose Egypt?” London Review of Books, vol. 34, no. 1 (January 5,
2012), 15–17; for more on the SCAF’s place in the network of patronage, see Issandr El
Amrani, “Sightings of the Deep State,” MERIP Online, January 1, 2012. Last accessed
September 20, 2015: www.merip.org/mero/mero010112.
18 Tarek Masoud, Counting Islam: Religion, Class, and Elections in Egypt (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 6.
19 Ibid, p. 210.
20 It must be said—and this a point that I shall expand on further in the next section—that
in the case of Tunisia the role of civil society groups, professional guilds, and human
rights organizations was just as mu, if not more, consequential in ensuring the
democratic trajectory of the transitional process. Indeed, so significant was the role of
these disparate groups that in 2015 the Norwegian Nobel commiee recognized the so-
called Tunisian National Dialogue artet—comprised of unionists, employers, lawyers,
99
and human rights activists—with its Peace Prize. e full citation for the prize can be
found here: www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2015/press.html.
21 Raymond A. Hinnebus, Authoritarian Power and State Formation in Ba`athist Syria:
Army, Party and Peasant (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990), pp. 145–9.
22 Bassam Haddad, “e Syrian regime’s business babone,” MERIP, vol. 42, no. 262
(Spring 2012). Last accessed October 10, 2015: www.merip.org/mer/mer262/syrian-
regimes-business-babone.
23 Owen, The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life, pp. 80–8.
24 According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, “e exodus from
Syria is the highest recorded since 1992 when the number of refugees from Afghanistan
hit a staggering 4.6 million. In reality, the figure is even higher as it does not include
more than 270,000 asylum applications by Syrians in Europe, and thousands of others
not reseled in regional neighbors.” Last accessed October 12, 2015:
www.unrefugees.org/2015/07/total-number-of-syrian-refugees-exceeds-four-million-for-
first-time/.
25 Lisa Anderson, “Demystifying the Arab Spring: Parsing the differences between Tunisia,
Egypt, and Libya,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 90, no. 3 (2011): 5.
26 “Gaddafi’s son warns of ‘rivers of blood’ in Libya,” Al Arabiya News, February 21, 2011.
Last accessed October 12, 2015: www.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/02/21/138515.html.
27 Hugh Roberts, “Libya and the relessness of the West,” London Review of Books,
September 22, 2012. Last accessed October 20, 2015:
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2012/09/22/hugh-roberts/libya-and-the-relessness-of-the-west/.
28 See Miael L. Ross, “Does oil hinder democracy?” World Politics, vol. 53, no. 3 (April
2001): pp. 325–61. For a critical analysis of the arguments for and against, see Steven
Haber and Victor Menaldo, “Do natural resources fuel authoritarianism? A reappraisal
of the resource curse,” American Political Science Review, vol. 105, no. 1 (February 2011),
1–26.
29 A Political Economy of the Middle East, p. 7.
30 King Mohammed VI of Morocco went even further by holding a popular referendum on
the constitution that constrained his powers (albeit more symbolically than in practice)
100
and obliged him to more meaningful reforms still. But civil protests were very limited in
size and scope to start, and did not persist mu longer aer the forward momentum of
other large-scale protests in Egypt, Jordan, and Syria had been halted.
31 Sean L. Yom and Gregory Gaus III, “Resilient royals: how arab monaries hold on,”
Journal of Democracy, vol. 23, no. 4 (October 2012), 74–88; and Mehran Kamrava, “e
Arab Spring and the Saudi-led counterrevolution,” Orbis, vol. 56, no. 1 (2012), 96–104.
32 Two especially influential studies are: Mats Berdal and David M. Malone, eds, Greed &
Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers,
2000); and Paul Collier and Hoeffler Anke, “Greed and grievance in civil war,” Oxford
Economic Papers vol. 56, no. 4 (2004), 563–95.
33 As the surveyors explain, “ree of these features are political (elections, freedom of
expression, and equal political rights) and three are socio-economic (reduction of
inequality, provision of basic necessities su as food, clothing, and shelter, and the
elimination of financial and administrative corruption).”
34 Gamal Abdel Gawad Soltan, Ahmed Nagui Qamha, and Subhi ‘Asila, “Public opinion
report on the most important political and social issues in Egypt,” The Arab Barometer
Project, Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, Cairo, Egypt (June 2011).
Last accessed November 13, 2015:
www.arabbarometer.org/sites/default/files/Egypt%20ABII%20Country%20Report%20Eng
lish.pdf.
35 Khalid Shikaki, “Arab Barometer 3: has Arab support for democracy declined due to the
Arab Spring?” presentation at the United States Institute for Peace, Washington, DC,
October 31, 2014. Last accessed November 13, 2015:
www.arabbarometer.org/sites/default/files/Shikaki%20USIP%20presentation.pdf.
36 Miael Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2003), p. 297.
37 I have offered my own analytical framework in “Democratic solidarity: rethinking
democracy promotion in the new Middle East,” Security Dialogue, vol. 44, no. 5–6
(October–December, 2013), 411–29. Also see, Amaney A. Jamal, Of Empires and
Citizens: Pro-American Democracy or No Democracy At All (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2012).
101
38 Anthony Tirado Chase, Human Rights, Revolution, and Reform in the Muslim World
(Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012), p. 6.
39 Ibid.
40 See the symposium on “Comparing the Arab revolutions,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 22,
no. 4 (October 2011); Miael Zantovvsky, “1989 and 2011: compare and contrast,” World
Affairs, July/August (2011); and Marc Morjé Howard, “Similarities and difference
between Eastern Europe in 1980 and the Middle East in 2011,” The Monkey Cage, May
30, 2011. Last accessed September 20, 2015:
hp://themonkeycage.org/2011/05/30/similarities-and-differences-between-eastern-
europe-in-1989-and-the-middle-east-in-2011/.
102
Selected Bibliography
Bellin, Eva. “Reconsidering the robustness of authoritarianism in the
Middle East: Lessons from the Arab Spring,” Comparative
Politics, vol. 44, no. 2 (January 2012), 127–49.
Brownlee, Jason, Tarek Masoud, and Andrew Reynolds. The Arab
Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2015.
Chase, Anthony T. Human Rights, Revolution, and Reform in the
Muslim World. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012.
Fawaz, A. Gerges ed. The New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in
the Arab World. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Jamal, Amaney A. Of Empires and Citizens: Pro-American
Democracy or No Democracy At All. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2012.
Linz, Juan J. Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes. Boulder, CO:
Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000.
United Nations Development Programme. “Arab Human
Development Index,” Human Development Reports. New York,
2015.
103
3
Economic Rights in the Middle East
and North Africa
Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat
104
Introduction1
Human rights issues in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
are usually discussed in relation to authoritarian governance and
state repression of political rights. However, as demonstrated by the
Arab Spring, social and economic rights and issues of economic
justice are equally important to the population living in the MENA
region.2 Public opinion surveys show people’s emphasis on economic
rights and related issues:
A 2005 poll conducted by Zogby International found that expanding employment
opportunities, improving health care and educational systems, and ending corruption
were the most important priorities of citizens across the region. Democracy and civic
and political rights, though also cited, were ranked lower than socioeconomic concerns
… Similarly, the 2010 Arab Youth Survey found that the greatest perceived allenge
and concern of Arab youth was the cost of living, followed by unemployment and then
human rights.3
is apter focuses on economic rights, whi can be defined
differently. In the international human rights law they are blended
with social rights and mentioned under the heading of economic and
social rights, including: the freedom and right to form a family; the
rights to food, housing, shelter, clothing, education; the right to
health and health care; the rights to work, livable wages, rest, join
unions, collective bargaining, strike; and the right to social security,
among others. While the interrelatedness of economic and social
issues makes a neat classification of rights as ‘economic’ and ‘social’
difficult in practice, the philosophical framework employed in the
international forums on human rights has also led the members of
the United Nations and supporters of human rights to repeatedly
stress the interdependency and indivisibility of rights, along with
their universality.4 In this apter, I focus on the rights to
105
employment, livable wage/income, and food, as the central economic
rights and address the rights to education and health care, water,
housing and social security as most closely related to those rights.5
Despite this selection, however, I subscribe to the sool of thought
that endorses the interdependency and indivisibility of not only
social and economic rights but all rights, including the civil and
political rights. In fact, in my discussion of the above-mentioned
rights in the MENA context, I intend to show that the violations of
rights in one domain are linked to the violations in others, and
military conflicts and warfare, whi involve violence and are
discriminatory by default, aggravate them all.
e data and analyses presented here should be received with two
caveats. First, although they display some distinct aracteristics as a
region, the MENA countries’ aitude toward and record of
economic rights are not mu different from the rest of the world.
Second, within the region there are significant differences in
government policies and human rights experiences of people. In
addition to the discrepancies between the oil-ri countries and
poorer/aid-dependent countries,6 people’s experiences within ea
country show variation depending on their class, citizenship, sex,
and other aracteristics. As is the case everywhere, lower classes,
women, migrants, ildren and refugees encounter more problems
and are less likely to enjoy economic rights. Although I approa the
discussion of rights in the region as cognizant of the diversity and
different experiences, this apter inevitably includes some sweeping
statements and generalizations due to the concerns of space and for
the sake of parsimony.
106
Participation in the international human
rights regime
Within the United Nations-led human rights regime, economic
rights were articulated first in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (UDHR), adopted by the General Assembly (GA) of the
United Nations (U.N.) in 1948. ey were then elaborated on in the
International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
(ICESCR), whi was adopted on December 16, 1966, and entered
into force on January 3, 1976, in accordance with Article 27, when 35
countries ratified the treaty.
e aitude and behavior of the MENA countries in these
processes were not different from those of other countries. Several
MENA countries actively participated in the draing process of
these two documents, and many became a party to the ICESCR. A
key intellectual contributor to the draing of the UDHR at the U.N.
Commission on Human Rights was Charles Malik of Lebanon, who
also aired the ird Commiee that finalized the dra before it
was submied to the GA for voting. e minutes of the ird
Commiee discussions show interventions by Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon,
Saudi Arabia and Syria.7 When the Declaration was adopted with
only eight abstentions, only one MENA country, Saudi Arabia
abstained. Saudi Arabia’s main objections were related to Article 18
on freedom of thought and religion and to some provisions on
family.8,9,10
Economic and social rights were widely supported by the MENA
countries, particularly by Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria, whi also
opposed having two separate covenants.11 Draing the Covenants
involved more countries, since the process of decolonization,
accelerated in the 1950s and 1960s, expanded the U.N. membership.
107
ose who were actively involved in discussions included men and
women from the MENA region: Charles Malik (Lebanon), Jamil
Baroody (Saudi Arabia), Karim Azkoul (Lebanon), Halima Embarek
Warzazi (Morocco), Omar Loutfi (Egypt), Bedia Afnan (Iraq), Jawaat
Mui (Syria), and Mahmoud Azmi (Egypt).12
At the time of voting for the ICESCR, 15 MENA countries were
represented at the GA (Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait,
Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia,
Turkey, and Yemen). Except Syria, whi did not participate in the
voting, all voted for the Covenant. As seen in Table 3.1, about half of
these countries also ratified the Covenant before December 1976,
thus helping it to enter into force.
Although many of these countries placed declarations or
reservations on the Covenant in most cases the content of the
declaration/reservation is not consequential for the fulfillment of the
state’s human rights obligations. ey are either interpretive
(Algeria) or political, stressing that the ratification of the treaty does
not entail the recognition of Israel (Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen).
Only those placed by Bahrain, Kuwait, and Turkey comprise some
restrictions on obligations.
Table 3.1 MENA Countries’ Position on the ICESCR
Country Date of Signature Date of Ratification
Algeria 1968 1989 a
Bahrain 2007 a
Djibouti 2002
Egypt 1967 1982
Iran 1968 1975
Iraq 1969 1971 a,b
Jordan 1972 1975
108
Country Date of Signature Date of Ratification
Kuwait 1996 a,b
Lebanon 1972
Libya 1970 a
Morocco 1977 1979
Oman
Qatar
Saudi Arabia 1986
Sudan
Syria 1969 a
Tunisia 1968 1969
Turkey 2000 2003 a,b
United Arab Emirates
Yemen 1987 a
Palestine N/A N/A
Source: Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights,
hps://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=IV-
3&apter=4&lang=en (Accessed June 11, 2015).
Notes: a Declaration at the time of signature or ratification.
b Reservation placed at the time of signature or ratification.
A systematic comparison of the MENA with other regions is not a
purpose of this paper, but it is reasonable to conclude that the
participation, ratification and reservation rates by the MENA
countries are not significantly different from others. An exceptional
cluster may be the Gulf countries, but ratifications by Bahrain and
Kuwait spoil su a categorization, as well.
109
e right to employment
e causes of the protest movements that swept several countries in
the MENA region in 2011 and came to be known as ‘the Arab
Spring’ were multiple and simmering for a long time. e triggering
event, however, took place on December 17, 2010, when Mohamed
Bouazizi, a 26-year-old unemployed Tunisian engineer, protested the
police’s confiscation of his fruit stand—his last resort to make a
living—through self-immolation. His act resonated in many
countries, because long—term unemployment, especially among the
youth, has been a major problem in the region. With the rapid
population increase, the work force in the region has been increasing
at the fastest rate in the world, without a comparable increase in
demand for labor.13
Unemployment rate can be taken as a crude indicator of the
violation of the right to employment. Based on 2005 figures, the
International Labour Organisation delineated the MENA as the
region with the highest unemployment rate.14 While it tends to be
higher among rural, young, educated and female populations, the
scope of unemployment and the affected population varies from
country to country.
Since the economic structure of oil-exporting ri countries is
very different from that of aid-dependent poorer countries, the labor
markets of these two groups differ, as well. In the former, petro
dollars have allowed significant improvements in the standard of
living, but the dependency on a single capital-intensive sector has
not created many employment opportunities. However, the wealth
generated from oil fueled some other sectors su as construction
and tourism in some countries, but the jobs were filled by workers
imported first from other countries in the region and later from
110
South Asia.15 e consequence became “segmented labor markets”
that include “two separate employment regimes: one for nationals
who are primarily absorbed in the public sector and the other for
migrants who end up in private sector jobs.”16 While some oil ri
countries need to import labor due to their labor shortage, others
prefer foreign workers for their higher skills, lower cost, or docility.
e Sultanate of Oman, for example, is noted for its relatively high
unemployment rates, especially among women and youth, yet it still
employs imported labor.17
us, while unemployment haunts citizens, the other employment
related human rights violations affect the migrant workers most. In
addition to laing access to several social services available to the
citizens, their work environment and conditions tend to be unsafe,
especially for the unskilled laborers. Domestic workers, usually
women from Asian countries and preferred for their docility, are
particularly vulnerable. Moreover, migrant workers la job security.
Following the 1991 Gulf War, for example, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait
punished the countries that were sympathetic to Iraq, or did not side
with them, by expelling their citizens who had been working within
their borders.18 When the expelled Jordanians returned to their
country, unemployment in Jordan jumped from 16 percent to 25
percent.19
e right to employment and other related rights are most
severely violated in countries that are more populated and poorer.
Many of these countries export workers and rely on their
remiances as a major source of foreign currency and as a
substantial part of their national income.20 ese countries have
large, but increasingly shrinking and impoverished agricultural
sectors. Limited arable land, irrigation problems, unequal
distribution of land, and la of investments in the agricultural
sector push the rural population to migrate to the cities to seek
employment or beer earnings.21,22,23,24 Failing to absorb the
111
increasing population—due to both migration from rural areas and
high birth rates—cities produce large informal economies where jobs
are insecure and earnings are low.25
In the formal economies of the MENA, the public sector is larger.
Offering more secure and beer-paying jobs with more benefits, it is
also more aractive than the private sector.26 Dominated by capital-
intensive firms, the formal private sector offers fewer jobs. us,
most of the unemployed are absorbed by informal economies,
usually for entry-level jobs.27 e informal sector also employs
higher proportions of women, young, and ildren.28 e gap
between the public and private sector jobs, in terms of skill, pay,
benefits and security, is observed in oil-ri countries, as well.29 e
public sector in Kuwait, for example, accounts for 75 percent of the
GDP and 95 percent of the national labor force. Combined with a
liberal migrant labor policy, this situation causes the private non-oil
sector to rely heavily on less expensive and sometimes beer-trained
foreign workers.30
e bloated public sector generates disguised unemployment, on
the one hand,31 and serves as a form of welfare system, on the other.
e economic liberalization policies, implemented starting in the late
1970s have, however, crippled the employment and welfare function
of the state.32 As a result of anges in economic and social policies,
in Egypt the employment rate in the informal sector jumped from 4
percent in 1970 to 40 percent in 2000.33
Employment opportunities for women have been relatively
limited in the MENA region. Female participation in the economy
and the type of jobs that women can have, however, vary from
country to country and according to the class and education status
of individual women within ea country. As a result of a “dramatic
growth in the number of women who aained higher education in
the 1970s and 1980s,”34 well-educated upper-or middle-class women
enjoy more opportunities in the formal sector. Teaing, health care,
112
welfare, and manufacturing industries have become relatively more
open to women in most countries.35
However, higher economic participation rate for women is not
always caused by increased opportunities but also occurs due to
increased economic hardship.36 us, neither the wealth of the
country nor the educational aainment rate for women makes a
reliable predictor of the female participation in the workforce. e
strength of patriaral norms, acceptance of conservative
interpretations of Islam, and their codification into the law of the
country seem to be beer indicators.37 Although the oil economy is
oen linked to the marginalization of women in the labor market,38
the recent data do not support that claim. According to the 2014
Human Development Report, female labor participation rate ranged
from 13.4 percent in Syria to 50.8 percent in Qatar.39 As the trend has
not been always upward, the declining rates in Iraq and Syria during
the last few years can be aributed to the obstacles created by the
ongoing wars.
113
e right to livable wages/income
Following the establishment of the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC) in October 1973, the MENA region
entered an era that is referred to as the ‘oil decade,’ 1973–82. e
flow of petrodollars and labor migration stimulated the economy
both in oil ri and poorer countries, except for those that depended
on imported oil (e.g. Turkey). e economic boom allowed the wages
to increase. Wages were higher, usually by a factor of two or three,
in the MENA countries compared to many countries in East Asia.40
In the 1980s, however, “income growth in the region collapsed as a
whole and turned negative for many countries,”41 and social
programs have become targets for cuts.42 e structural adjustment
policies (SAPs), imposed on Egypt, Iran, Morocco, Tunisia and
Turkey as conditions for desperately needed loans involved various
austerity measures,43 lowered wages and increased the out of poet
expenses. e neo-liberal economic paradigm, imposed by the IMF
and the World Bank in the 1970s and 1980s, continued to be followed
in Turkey in the subsequent decades in its effort to meet the
economic conditions of European Union membership.44 e negative
impact of these ‘economic reforms’ and the steady decline in public
welfare institutions was felt by “all segments of the population
beyond the wealthy elite, but it has been particularly damaging for
the poor.”45,46
Although the agricultural sector has been neglected in favor of
industry and manufacturing, the growth in these areas could not
compensate for the loss in agricultural earnings. e fastest growing
sector in many countries has been the service sector,47 where the pay
tends to be lower. While wage gaps within MENA countries are no
higher than the gaps observed in other regions, the gaps between oil
114
ri and other countries in the region are significant. Although the
capital-intensive oil industry does not create many jobs, it pays well,
especially for skilled jobs. Moreover, depending on modern services
in the formal sector, capital-intensive firms stay in the formal sector.
Consequently, oil ri countries not only benefit from the wealth
generated from oil exports but also the large tax revenues obtained
from businesses operating in the formal sector. In other countries,
where modern services and infrastructure are modest, on the other
hand, private investments are aracted to the informal sector where
the labor practices are more relaxed and taxes can be avoided.48 e
result is not only lower wages and violation of labor rights but also
circumscribing the state’s ability to tax and use tax revenues for
social services.49 Moreover, income tax rates have been relatively
low, and the government reliance on indirect taxes (e.g. sale taxes),
whi are inherently regressive for applying the same flat rate
regardless of people’s income level, has been punitive for low-
income people.50
On the other hand, large capital-intensive companies enjoy a close
relationship with the government and benefit from a system that can
be aracterized as corporate welfare. For example, in Egypt, in 2010,
politically connected firms in capital-intensive industries (e.g.
pharmaceuticals), received 92 percent of government loans, enjoyed
60 percent of net profits, but accounted for only 11 percent of
employment.51
Inadequate earnings and poverty, both in rural and urban areas,
cause another problem: ild labor. While the scope of ild labor in
the MENA region does not rea the levels noted in South Asia and
sub-Saharan Africa, in some countries it is not only sizeable but also
directly or tacitly supported by the government. Egypt, whi is
estimated to have the largest ild labor rate in the region, had about
1.5 million ildren under the age of 14 working in the 1990s. ese
ildren comprised 9 percent of the age group and 7 percent of the
country’s total labor force, and eight out of ten of these working
115
ildren were employed in agriculture or related areas. It is noted
that the Ministry of Agriculture, whi owned about 10 percent of
Egypt’s coon fields, not only overlooked the regulations that
restrict ild employment but relied upon ildren as young as five
years old to pi coon in the state-owned fields.52
e la of employment opportunities for and the meager
earnings by adults result in a paradoxical situation in whi
unemployment co-exists with ild labor, because ild labor is not a
response to labor shortage but an outcome of poverty.53 us, not
different from the global paern, poorer countries in the MENA
region tend to appear with higher rates of ild labor. No maer
how small, ildren’s earnings are crucial to the survival of poor
households. Yet, ild labor not only violates the working ildren’s
social and economic rights but also denies them their ildhood.
116
e right to food
A persistent problem in the MENA region is food insecurities,
particularly in poor Arab-majority countries. e class biases within
ea country have been decisive, as well. According to a 2005 study,
malnourishment among poor Egyptian ildren was three times
higher than the wealthy ones.54
Most countries buy food from abroad55 and the level of
dependency on imported food has increased over time.56 Turkey is
the sole cereal exporter of the region but is still dependent on
imports for some food items.57 us, when the world food prices
rise, these countries are hit the hardest. Governments try to deal
with food insecurities and avoid mass starvation by devoting a
significant part of social welfare provisions to food subsidies.
Although the primary goal of food subsidies is to make food
affordable for the poor, inefficiencies prevent the poor form receiving
in proportion to their needs. Despite the program design and
delivery problems, subsidies offer considerable relief. When the
staple crops doubled in price and caused the local food prices in Egyt
to rise 37 percent, from 2007 to 2010,58 the government deflated the
consumer cost and made food affordable by investing 8.5 percent of
the GDP in subsidies.59
Subsidies can be explicit or implicit. Explicit subsidies use
identifying cards, coupons or vouers, while implicit subsidies
adjust market prices, tariffs, and currency. States in the MENA
region use different methods. Some employ universal subsidies,
whi apply to the entire population. Usually universal subsidies are
implicit, but some countries employ them explicitly. For example, the
Iraqi government offers rations—including rice, cooking oil, flour,
and milk powder—to every household as a basic safety net.
117
Implicitly applied universal subsidy systems usually include support
systems for producers, increased imports and price ceilings. While
some analysts support universal subsidies for their effective delivery
and avoiding stigma caused by targeted subsidies, others criticize
them for inefficiencies, for being regressive and causing inequitable
distribution, since the wealthy can afford to purase larger shares of
the supply and cause a shortage for the less wealthy.60,61,62 Until the
1990s, Tunisia implemented subsidies largely implicitly, through
price controls and tariffs, but as the program grew more expensive,
the country swited to programs that target poorer populations.63
e Egyptian government issues subsidy coupons, in ‘green books’
or ‘red books’ that carry different statuses.64 International lending
agencies, su as the International Monetary Fund and the World
Bank, pressure countries into eliminating universal subsidy systems.
Although the elimination of subsidies, without an effective
alternative, would be devastating for the majority of the population
in poorer countries, it is also a fact that these policies do not address
the root causes of food insecurities and poverty. Moreover, subsidy
programs are used for the purposes of social stability and control,
rather than to fulfill people’s economic rights.65 For example, it is
argued that the former Egyptian President Mubarak implemented
subsidies, along with other social programs, to promote support for
his government.66
118
e right to education
Modernization projects of post-independent governments involved
wide-ranging social policies that included subsidized staples and
public utilities, health care, pension plans for state employees, and
free sooling.67,68 Recognizing education as an important catalyst
for development, political socialization, and nation building,
nationalist governments invested in the public education system
considerably.69 us, by the 1970s the MENA region managed to
close the gap with other developing regions su as Latin America
and Asia. e increased oil revenues allowed further investment in
education in the 1970s, and educational expansions were particularly
impressive in higher education.70 While increased access to higher
education allowed for social mobility, this was mostly aieved
through government hiring, “resulting in high rates of hidden
unemployment during the 1970s and 1980s.”71,72 e la of
employment opportunities, however, engendered a discontented
educated population, whi ended up being unemployed or
underemployed.
Without increases in employment opportunities, education
stopped serving as a meanism of social mobility. In fact,
educational systems in the region are continuously criticized for
subsidizing higher education for the wealthy and neglecting primary
and secondary education that would help lower classes.73 Poor
quality of instruction, run-down and overcrowded buildings,
unhealthy and inadequate learning environments, and inadequate
aention to producing students with ‘employable skills’ are also
frequently cited by critics.74,75,76
e educational expansion in oil ri countries has been relatively
more successful than in aid-dependent countries. Governments in
119
Qatar, UAE, and Saudi Arabia aracted some prestigious universities
of the United States to establish campuses in their country. While
quality education in these institutions may help students to be more
employable, it is noted that many of these new universities enrolled
a limited number of nationals.77 us, analysts tend to agree that
while education was emphasized, it was never established as a
human resource towards employment.78 We may add that it was
never approaed as a human right. Class, rural-urban and gender
gaps have been wide, though several countries have managed
closing the gender gap for younger generations (i.e. Algeria, Jordan,
Kuwait, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and UAE).79
120
e right to health and health care
All MENA countries have improved health conditions and
accomplished significant reductions in infant and maternal mortality
rates, and increases in life expectancy.80 e oil boom and
investments anneled to social welfare and health care allowed the
region to close the gap with other developing regions in the 1970s.81
However, economic liberalization, volatile revenues, and the
hardship imposed by military conflicts in several countries stalled
the progress and pushed the MENA below Latin America and East
Asia on health indicators.82 Even those countries that continue to
invest in health care and show rapid increases in health spending
suffer from insufficient health care systems and shortage of medical
personnel.
e division between the oil ri and aid-dependent countries is
most profound in regard to the health allenges that they face and
solutions that they offer.83 Non-communicable diseases su as
obesity, diabetes, and heart diseases are more common and acute in
wealthy countries, while poorer countries struggle with
communicable diseases. Governments in the former group managed
to solve basic health care problems, at least for their nationals, by
offering a higher standard of living and shiing significant funds to
address health issues.84 ese countries have been consistently
ranked higher on the U.N.’s human development index, whi
includes life expectancy at birth, along with income levels and
education aainment rates.85 Despite the increases in spending,
however, they la proper infrastructure, adequate numbers of
hospitals, and educated medical personnel. us, they rely on
migrant labor. Some of these countries also enforce mandatory
medical insurance.86
121
e increasing dependence on insurance companies reduces the
less wealthy populations’ access to health care. Mu of the MENA
region las adequate public health care systems and depends on
private providers and insurance companies. Public health care
systems cover only about 30–40 percent of the population in MENA;
moreover, they are typically limited to citizens working in the public
sector.87 Access enabled through employment leaves out the
majority of the population and practically the entire rural sector.
Health care is another problem: the poor quality, long waits for the
service, and old tenology that aracterize many public health
care systems force large segments of the population to turn to
private providers and insurance companies.88
Communicable diseases continue to be a problem because
preventive health care has not received enough aention, and poorer
countries and rural areas la proper sanitation, as well as access to
clean water.89 Rapid and uneven urbanization, whi led to the
growth of shantytowns with substandard housing,90 aggravated the
situation. Water constitutes a major problem, both in terms of
quantity and quality. Since the water demand exceeds the water
supply, water has been heavily subsidized in the region.91
122
Internally displaced people and refugees
Internally displaced people (IDP) and refugees are not only among
the most vulnerable populations but they also experience many
human rights violations by default. e MENA region has
encountered many conflicts with varying degrees of severity. It is
best known for ‘the Arab-Israeli conflict,’ whi has had the most
devastating impact on Palestinians, who became permanent refugees
in their own land, as well as in several other countries in the region.
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for
Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), “some 5 million
Palestine refugees are eligible for UNRWA services” and “Nearly
one-third of the registered Palestine refugees, more than 1.5 million
individuals, live in 58 recognized Palestine refugee camps in Jordan,
Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Gaza Strip and the West
Bank, including East Jerusalem.”92 241,000 Palestinians are registered
in Saudi Arabia.93
Other internal and international conflicts, su as recurring civil
wars in Yemen, Lebanon, and Sudan, the conflict over the Western
Sahara, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the repression of Kurds
and the PKK insurgency in Turkey, and the three Gulf Wars,94
uprooted many more people who became IDP or refugees. As the
protest movements of the Arab Spring turned into armed conflicts in
Libya and Syria, the number of the displaced in the region increased
significantly. While the IDP or refugee status entails enormous
hardship under the best circumstances, the massive population flows
into unprepared and relatively poor countries engender living
conditions and local hostilities that violate human rights and human
dignity on a daily basis.
123
Conclusion
Although the state of economic rights in the MENA has been
problematic, the region does not fare any worse than other
developing regions, except in terms of unemployment. In fact, the
proportion of population living in poverty tends to be lower than it
is in other regions, and the income inequality levels are “relatively
modest, with GINI coefficients ranging between 0.32 and 0.41” in
Arab countries,95 0.40 in Turkey, and 0.44 in Iran.96 Yet, it is
particularly difficult to accept the poor economic rights conditions in
countries that are wealthy. We may aribute the problems in those
countries to mismanagement of resources and la of political will.
However, the roles of external interference, both economic and
military, and the la of cooperation among the countries within the
region cannot be underestimated. Conflicts and militarization of the
region absorb a good portion of the wealth, and both in ri and
poor countries governments divert significant funds to arms exports
and to sustain large defense forces and institutions. Instability in the
region also triggers capital flight because the affluent tend to secure
their wealth by banking and investing their money in other
countries.
In 1992, some 20 international solars met to discuss the
economic impact of the Arab–Israeli conflict and laid out the
possible economic benefits of peace and cooperation.97 A few years
later, their sentiments were reiterated by others, who addressed
possible development outcomes of cooperation with a greater
optimism.98 While the continuation of conflicts addressed in those
studies prevented the realization of their proposals,99 since then the
region has been drawn into further conflict and has experienced
both international and civil war more widely. us the prospect of
124
economic rights in the region remains grim for the majority of the
population, at least in the near future.
125
Notes
1 I would like to thank my assistants Nellie Binder, Abdullah Hasan, and Rubayet Lasker
for their library resear and preparatory work.
2 ere is no agreed definition of the MENA region. For the purposes of this paper, it is
defined to include all North African countries and the narrowly defined Middle East,
whi includes Turkey, Iran and Arab-majority countries. Although geographically a
part of the Middle East, Israel is le out due to its rather unique position in the region.
See Table 1 for the list of countries.
3 Alan Riards et al., A Political Economy of the Middle East, 3rd ed. (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 2013).
4 e interdependency of rights was affirmed in outcome documents produced at the two
Human Rights Conferences held by the United Nations. In addition to the Proclamation
of Teheran, issued in 1968, the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action of 1993
stresses that human rights are not only universal but also “indivisible and
interdependent and interrelated” and of equal importance for human dignity. See,
Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, U.N. GAOR, World Conf. on Hum. Rts.,
48th Sess., 22d plen. mtg., part I, U.N. Doc. A/CONF.157/24 (1993), reprinted in 32 I.L.M.
1661 (1993). For some other references on interdependency of rights at international
forums, see Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat. “Human rights and democracy: expanding or
contracting” in Polity vol. 32, no. 1 (1999): 119–144.
5 Right to property is excluded due to its ambiguous treatment in the Universal
Declaration of Human rights and omission in the International Covenant on Economic
Social and Cultural Rights. For a discussion of the implication of these and
complications related to property rights, see Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat. “Human rights
ideology and dimensions of power: the state, property, and discrimination” in Human
Rights Quarterly vol. 30, no. 4 (2008): 906–932, especially the sections on economic
dimension of power.
126
6 It is noted that “the average Arab state derives greater aid rents than the average low-
income country or than a state in sub-Saharan Africa. Over the last fiy years, the
MENA region received roughly three times more net aid per capita than Latin America”
(Malik 2014, 100).
7 Susan Waltz, “Universal human rights: e contribution of Muslim states,” Human
Rights Quarterly 26, no. 4 (2004): 801–844.
8 Ibid.
9 Mary Ann Glendon, A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (New York: Random House Publishing Group, 2001).
10 Johannes Morsink, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting, and
Intent (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1999).
11 Waltz, “Universal human rights.”
12 Ibid.
13 Riards et al., A Political Economy of the Middle East.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Adeel Malik, “A requiem for the Arab developmental model,” Journal of International
Affairs vol. 68, no. 1 (2014): 93–115.
17 Mojca Zerovec and Marike Bontenbal, “Labor nationalization policies in Oman:
implications for Omani and migrant women workers,” Asian and Pacific Migration
Journal vol. 20, no. 3–4 (2012): 365–387.
18 Riards et al., A Political Economy of the Middle East.
19 Hani Abu-Jabarah, “Economics of Peace: Jordan,” in The Economics of Middle East Peace:
Views from the Region, ed. Stanley Fiser, Dani Rodrik, and Elias Tuma (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1993), 181–199.
20 Riards et al., A Political Economy of the Middle East.
21 Ibid.
127
22 Pierre-Riard Agenor et al., “Labor market reforms, growth, and unemployment in
labor-exporting countries in the Middle East and North Africa,” Journal of Policy
Modeling vol. 29, no. 2 (2007): 277–309.
23 Gad G. Gilbar, The Middle East Oil Decade and Beyond: Essays in Political Economy
(London: Frank Cass, 1997).
24 Alan Riards, “Food problems and state policies in the Middle East and North Africa,”
in Pursuing Food Security: Strategies and Obstacles in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and
the Middle East, ed. W. Ladd Hollist and F. LaMond Tullis (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner
Publishers, 1987), 287–311.
25 Agenor et al., “Labor market reforms, growth, and unemployment in labor-exporting
countries in the Middle East and North Africa.”
26 Riards et al., A Political Economy of the Middle East.
27 Malik, “A requiem for the Arab developmental model.”
28 Riards et al., A Political Economy of the Middle East.
29 Mohamed Chemingui, “Petroleum revenues in Gulf Cooperation Council Countries and
their labor market paradox,” Journal of Policy Modeling vol. 30, no. 3 (2008): 491–503.
30 Ibid.
31 Gilbar, The Middle East Oil Decade and Beyond.
32 Jane Harrigan and Hamed El-Said, Economic Liberalisation, Social Capital and Islamic
Welfare Provision (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
33 Malik “A requiem for the Arab developmental model.”
34 Gilbar, The Middle East Oil Decade and Beyond.
35 Valentine Moghadam, “Women’s economic participation in the Middle East,” Journal of
Middle East Women’s Studies 1, no. 1 (2005): 110–146.
36 Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat, “Women’s rights and the UN: would aieving gender equality
empower women? Feminisms,” American Political Science Review 109, no. 4 (2015): 674-
689.
128
37 Valentine Moghadam and Farzaneh Roudi-Fahimi, Reforming Family Laws to Promote
Progress in the Middle East and North Africa (Population Reference Bureau, May 5,
2005), accessed June 11, 2015.
38 Tyra Murielle Bouhamdan, “Religion, the law and the human rights of women in the
Middle East: a quantitative analysis,” 2009.
39 See Human Development Report (New York: UNDP, 2014). Syria is followed by Iraq,
Algeria, Palestine, Jordan, Iran and Saudi Arabia, with rates in teens; Lebanon, Egypt,
Tunisia, Yemen, Oman and Turkey, with rates in twenties; Libya, Sudan; Djibouti,
Bahrain in thirties; and Morocco, Kuwait, and United Arab Emirates with over 40
percent.
40 Moghadam, “Women’s economic participation in the Middle East.”
41 Riards et al., A Political Economy of the Middle East.
42 Massoud Karshenas, Valentine Moghadam, and Randa Alami, “Social policy aer the
Arab Spring: states and social rights in the MENA region,” World Development 64
(2014): 726–739.
43 Riards et al., A Political Economy of the Middle East.
44 Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat and omas Smith, “e EU and human rights in Turkey:
Political freedom without social welfare?,” in European Institutions, Democratization,
and Human Rights Protection in the European Periphery, ed. Henry Carey (Lanham,
Maryland: Rowman and Lilefield, 2014), 31–65.
45 Riards et al., A Political Economy of the Middle East.
46 Riards, “Food problems and state policies in the Middle East and North Africa.”
47 Riards et al., A Political Economy of the Middle East.
48 Roger Gordon and Wei Li, “Puzzling tax structures in developing countries: A
comparison of two alternative explanations,” in Fiscal Policy and Management in East
Asia, ed. Takatoshi Ito and Andrew K. Rose (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2007), 9–35.
49 Riard Grabowski, “Implicit taxation of agriculture in Egypt: e cause of development
failure in Egypt,” African Development Review vol. 24, no. 2 (2012): 183–193.
129
50 Riards et al., A Political Economy of the Middle East.
51 Malik, “A requiem for the Arab developmental model.”
52 Emad Mekay, “An economic essential? (Child labor in Egypt),” The Middle East vol. 272
(1997): 38–40.
53 Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat, “Analyzing ild labor as a human rights issue: Its causes,
aggravating policies, and alternative proposals,” Human Rights Quarterly vol. 24, no. 1
(2002): 177–204.
54 Riards et al., A Political Economy of the Middle East.
55 Ibid.
56 Riards, “Food problems and state policies in the Middle East and North Africa.”
57 Riards et al., A Political Economy of the Middle East.
58 “Let them eat baklava,” The Economist (Mar 17, 2012).
59 Karshenas, Moghadam, and Alami, “Social policy aer the Arab Spring.”
60 Anshul Jain, “Revolution, resilience and the pirates’ paradox: Food subsidies, economic
complexity and regime durability across the Middle East and North Africa,” Journal of
Asia Pacific Studies 3, no. 3 (2014): 367–384.
61 Carlo Sdralevi et al., Subsidy and Reform in the Middle East and North Africa: Recent
Progress and Challenges Ahead (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, 2014).
62 Malik, “A requiem for the Arab developmental model.”
63 Jain, “Revolution, resilience and the pirates’ paradox.”
64 Ibid.
65 Karshenas, Moghadam, and Alami, “Social policy aer the Arab Spring.”
66 Hu-ju Kwon, andika Mkandawire, and Joakim Palme, “Introduction: social policy
and economic development in late industrializers,” International Journal of Social
Welfare 18, no. 1 (2009): S1–S11.
67 Karshenas, Moghadam, and Alami, “Social policy aer the Arab Spring.”
68 Pension plans for the state employees were later expanded in some countries to include
other social security and welfare benefits su as disability, work injury and
130
unemployment insurance, siness and maternity leave, and family allowances
(Karshenas, Moghadam and Alami 2014, 734).
69 Riards et al., A Political Economy of the Middle East.
70 Gilbar, The Middle East Oil Decade and Beyond.
71 Ibid.
72 Ingo Forstenlener and Emilie Rutledge, “Unemployment in the Gulf: Time to update
the social contract,” Middle East Policy 17, no. 2 (2010): 38–51.
73 Riards et al., A Political Economy of the Middle East.
74 Malik, “A requiem for the Arab developmental model.”
75 Karshenas, Moghadam, and Alami, “Social policy aer the Arab Spring.”
76 Riards et al., A Political Economy of the Middle East.
77 Ingo Forstenlener and Emilie Rutledge, “Unemployment in the Gulf: Time to update
the social contract,” Middle East Policy 17, no. 2 (2010): 38–51.
78 Kwon, Mkandawire, and Palme, ‘Social policy and economic development in late
industrializers.’
79 Riards et al., A Political Economy of the Middle East.
80 Ibid.
81 Karshenas, Moghadam, and Alami, “Social policy aer the Arab Spring.”
82 Riards et al., A Political Economy of the Middle East.
83 Karshenas, Moghadam, and Alami, “Social policy aer the Arab Spring.”
84 Peter Feuilherade, “GCC healthcare spending surges as demand soars,” The Middle East,
2015, accessed June 11, 2015.
85 e 2013 rankings are: 31 Qatar; 34 Saudi Arabia; 40 UAE; 44 Bahrain; 46 Kuwait; 55
Libya; 56 Oman; 65 Lebanon; 69 Turkey; 77 Jordan; 90 Tunisia; 93 Algeria; 107 Palestine;
110 Egypt; 118 Syria; 120 Iraq; 129 Morocco; 135 Iran; 154 Yemen; 166 Sudan; and 170
Djibouti (Human Development Report 2014).
86 Feuilherade, “GCC healthcare spending surges as demand soars.”
131
87 Karshenas, Moghadam, and Alami, “Social policy aer the Arab Spring.”
88 Ibid.
89 Ibid.
90 Riards et al., A Political Economy of the Middle East.
91 Ibid.
92 See the official website of the UNRWA, www.unrwa.org/palestine-refugees (Accessed
June 18, 2015).
93 Riards et al., A Political Economy of the Middle East.
94 ey include: Iran–Iraq in 1980–8; Iraq–Kuwait and its international allies in 1991; and
the United States-led war against Iraq that started in 2003.
95 Malik, “A requiem for the Arab developmental model.”
96 Turkey’s figure is for 2011 and reported by the World Bank.
hp://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI (Accessed June 19, 2015). e statistics
for Iran is for 2006 and posted by the CIA. See, www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-
world-factbook/rankorder/2172rank.html (Accessed June 19, 2015). Some of these figures
should be interpreted with caution, because they may not be comparable and indicators
tell partial stories. For example, while only 17.5 percent of the population in Yemen is
aracterized as living in poverty by the PPP$1.25/a day measure, nearly 53 percent is
listed as multi-dimensionally poor (Malik 2014, 105).
97 Stanley Fiser, Dani Rodrik, and Elias Tuma, eds, The Economics of Middle East Peace:
Views from the Region (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993).
98 Ali Çarkoglu, Mine Eder, and Kemal Kirisci, The Political Economy of Regional
Cooperation in the Middle East (London: Routledge, 1998).
99 is should not mean that their proposals geared toward fulfilling economic rights. In
fact, some of the proposed policies, su as economic liberalization and cuing
subsidies, would have likely to had detrimental impacts on economic rights, even if they
helped stimulating economic growth. On the negative impact of warfare and military
spending and possibility for a ange with a more reserved optimism, see William B.
132
andt, “e Middle East on the brink: Prospects for ange in the 21st century” in
Middle East Journal vol. 50, no. 1 (1996): 9–17.
133
Selected Bibliography
Arat, Zehra F. Kabasakal. “Analyzing ild labor as a human rights
issue: Its causes, aggravating policies, and alternative proposals.”
Human Rights Quarterly vol. 24, no. 1 (2002): 177–204.
Arat, Zehra F. Kabasakal, and Smith, omas. “e EU and human
rights in Turkey: Political freedom without social welfare?” In
European Institutions, Democratization, and Human Rights
Protection in the European Periphery, edited by Henry Carey, 31
–65. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Lilefield, 2014.
Chemingui, Mohamed. “Petroleum revenues in Gulf Cooperation
Council Countries and their labor market paradox.” Journal of
Policy Modeling vol. 30, no. 3 (2008): 491–503.
Feuilherade, Peter. “GCC healthcare spending surges as demand
soars.” The Middle East, 2015. Accessed June 11, 2015.
www.themiddleeastmagazine.com/wp-mideastmag-
live/2014/11/business-healthcare-spending-surges-demand-soars.
Gilbar, Gad G. The Middle East Oil Decade and Beyond: Essays in
Political Economy. London: Frank Cass, 1997.
Jain, Anshul. “Revolution, resilience and the pirates’ paradox: Food
subsidies, economic complexity and regime durability across the
Middle East and North Africa.” Journal of Asia Pacific Studies
vol. 3, no. 3 (2014): 367–384.
Karshenas, Massoud, Valentine Moghadam, and Randa Alami.
‘Social policy aer the Arab Spring: States and social rights in
the MENA region.’ World Development vol. 64 (2014): 726–739.
Malik, Adeel. “A requiem for the Arab developmental model.”
Journal of International Affairs vol. 68, no. 1 (2014): 93–115.
Moghadam, Valentine. “Women’s economic participation in the
Middle East.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies vol. 1, no.
134
1 (2005): 110–146.
Riards, Alan, John Waterbury, Melani Camme, and Ishac Diwan.
A Political Economy of the Middle East. 3rd ed. Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 2013.
Waltz, Susan. “Universal human rights: e contribution of Muslim
States.” Human Rights Quarterly vol. 26, no. 4 (2004): 801–844.
135
4
Cultural Rights in the Middle East
and North Africa
Art, revolution, and repression
Mark LeVine
136
Introduction
e dynamics surrounding freedom of cultural and artistic
expression are part of a set of intertwined issues related to the place
of human rights in contemporary societies in the Middle East and
North Africa (MENA). is apter explores the nature and
dynamics of cultural and artistic rights in the context of
governments’ silencing and censorship of cultural expression and
spee more broadly across the MENA. is context brings into play
human rights discourses, the constitutional and legal framework in
whi these rights (and their curtailment) are situated, and finally
the specific experiences of some of the region’s most important
political and revolutionary artists during the half decade of the ‘Arab
Spring era’ (whi here includes the Iranian Green movement of
2009 and the Turkish Gezi protests of 2013). More broadly, this
apter recognizes the transformative and even revolutionary
potential of art, whi is why governments both aempt to
instrumentally use it to their benefit and to repress art that
allenges its systems of control.
It is not surprising that censorship is a core meanism of
controlling populations in highly authoritarian societies, for the act
of silencing human expression is the epitome of how states “control
and intervene in the liberal subject’s absolute right to free
expression.”1 Most aention is paid to press and internet censorship.
Far less aention is paid, however, to the way governments aempt
to control and censor artistic production, despite the long and oen
illing history of repression of cultural and particularly artistic
expression across the region. As the U.N. Special Rapporteur on
Cultural Rights describes it, “Artistic voices have been or are being
silenced by various means and in different … political, religious,
137
cultural or moral, or … economic ways.”2 Yet to this day there have
been few analyses of the dynamics by whi su silencing has
occurred, despite the powerful role of the arts in the protests, revolts
and uprisings.
Indeed, despite the move towards greater political freedoms in
some countries in the wake of the Arab uprisings of the last half-
decade, censorship and government repression regarding freedom of
expression and artistic freedom have continued and in many cases
worsened in most every country, including already democratic
Turkey and newly democratic Tunisia.3 To understand why it is
important to focus on these rights, even as other political, economic
and social freedoms and rights also continue to be trampled upon,
we need first to discuss precisely how culture and cultural rights fit
into the larger framework of human rights.
138
Cultural freedom and expression in the era of
neoliberal globalization
Any discussion of cultural rights and freedom of expression in the
MENA has the unenviable task of bringing together arguments and
aitudes derived from fieen centuries of Islamic thinking about art,
culture and freedom of thought, three centuries of post-
Enlightenment philosophical and political discussions of ‘culture’
and ‘rights,’ more than half a century of post-1945 international law
regarding human rights, a quarter century (at least) of neoliberal
globalization and its unprecedented transformation in the ways in
whi culture is produced, circulated and consumed, and more than
half a decade of political unrest across a region streting from
Morocco to Iran.
Like most great epistemological and discursive systems, Islamic
beliefs, practices and cultures have long had an ambivalent
relationship to cultural expression and freedoms. Islamic history has
witnessed some of humanity’s most innovative and aesthetically
complex and hybrid cultural and artistic creation, as well as some of
the most intensive aempts to limit and circumscribe both. Su
contradictory impulses remain today; as I explain below, most
Muslim majority countries censor or otherwise restrict artistic
production on the justification of specific conservative
interpretations of Islamic law or morality. Yet these same countries
are home to some of the most powerful and original cultural
productions of the global era.4 Here I will deal with the
contemporary situation as it’s evolved in the era of neoliberal
globalization.
139
Globalization and cultural expression and freedom
A discussion of how freedom of cultural/artistic expression has been
experienced in the MENA region necessitates first a discussion of
how cultural rights and freedom of expression fit into the wider
discourse of human rights. In the MENA’s revolutionary and post-
revolutionary periods (late 2010 to the present) we can delineate
three stages in struggles for cultural rights: those where protests led
to significant constitutional anges (Tunisia, Egypt, and Morocco),
those where protests were successfully pacified by either significant
state violence or various forms of cooptation, or both (Bahrain and
the other Gulf countries, Jordan, Iraq, Palestine, and Iran), and
countries where these struggles have been subsumed by broader civil
wars (Syria, Libya, and Yemen).
Turkey merits separate mention in su a sema because its Gezi
Park protests, while resembling and to a significant extent inspired
by the so-called Arab Spring protests (and the global Occupy
movement that emerged soon aer their outbreak), occurred in a
functioning parliamentary democratic (if increasingly allenged)
system. Additionally, we need to assess the relationship between
constitutional and legal regimes relating to cultural and artistic
freedom, censorship and similar issues, and the practices on the
ground in whi su regimes have varying degrees of impact. at
is to say, sometimes existing prohibitions can be effectively ignored
by artists and at other times existing or newly enshrined freedoms
are ignored by governments or conservative social forces.
e era of ‘globalization’ is oen identified with political
beginnings in the Eastern European revolutions of 1989, the demise
of the Soviet Union soon thereaer, and the rise of the unipolar,
American-dominated ‘New World Order.’ A core component of the
1989 revolutions was, for many solars, the rise of independent civil
societies and public spheres, whi increasingly succeeded in
operating outside government control. is helped shape public
140
consciousness around fundamental human rights that provided the
intellectual and epistemological foundations for aaing the
authoritarian states of Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, in the MENA
maers moved in the opposite direction, as neoliberal policies led to
greater corruption and inequality in what had previously been one
of the world’s more egalitarian regions, as well as the rise of
‘security states’ (cf. Amar 2013) that depended on greater
surveillance and repression of citizens in the absence of improving
their human development.
On the other hand, during the 1990s new tenologies associated
with globalization—computers, satellite televisions, mobile phones
and the internet and social media—would begin penetrating the
region, exploding in their usage and importance in the 2000s. ey
enabled the allenge of authoritarian governments at a moment in
whi the old ‘patrimonial bargains’ between states and societies
were breaking down in response to ‘structural adjustment’ policies
that cut government spending on social spending su as health and
education, as well as states’ abilities effectively to generate
employment for rapidly expanding populations.
As the promised benefits of economic globalization passed by the
majority of the MENA’s inhabitants (even as it enried elites), it
was culture that became the most powerful vehicle for the
incorporation of the region into the anging global system.5 Here it
is important not to understand culture in static terms, as simple
aesthetic products, but rather as the performance of people’s
identities. e notion of performance is crucial. Performing culture is
an inherently public act, puing the individual or group in direct
contact, and thus at some point conflict—with other members of
society. And of the performative components of culture it is art—
from music to painting, theater to poetry—that is the most
inherently public. is is true even when the public in question is
limited, by censorship or other laws or customs, to a small number
of people consuming the art more or less clandestinely.
141
Cultural rights, and as part of them freedom of expression, have
always been ‘bound closely’ to the broader discourse of human
rights.6 Articles 16, 18, and 22 through 27 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) specifically treat cultural
issues, declaring in Article 22 that “everyone is entitled to the
realization of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable
for his dignity.” Other culture-related rights dealt with in the UDHR
include the right to marry (Art. 16), the right to “freedom of thought,
conscience and religion” (Art. 18), the right to work and form labor
unions (Art. 23), to rest and leisure (Art. 24), to a decent standard of
living (Art. 25), to education (Art. 26) and “to freely participate in the
cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts, and to share in
scientific advancement,” as well as to “the protection of the moral
and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or
artistic production of whi he is the author” (Art. 27).
Even more broadly, Articles 28 and 29 lay out the right of
everyone to live within a “social and international order in whi
the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully
realized.” What is more, ‘cultural development’ is directly tied to the
right to self-determination—from Western Sahara to Palestine,
peoples who are denied their right to self-determination rarely have
a full measure of cultural freedom and rights either, whi is in turn
tied to the ‘development,’ ‘diffusion,’ and ‘openness’ of culture to
everyone (ICESCR, Part 1, Arts. 1, 15). ere is thus not merely the
individual right to core cultural freedoms but also the societal level
obligation of states and citizens alike to ensure ea member of their
society can exercise these rights, as further elaborated in treaties
su as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the
Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, among
others.
142
e increasing penetration of globalized culture profoundly
impacted societies around the world. What Arab critics have
referred to as the ‘cultural invasion’ (ghazu thaqafi) from the West
began with satellite television, whi exploded in the 1980s and
1990s across the region, bringing everything from first run
Hollywood films to soap operas and pornography to an
unprecedented share of the Arab public with lile effective
censorship. And yet despite intense criticisms, the people of the
region also absorbed, integrated, and retooled the most important
tenologies and cultural products emerging during this era.
e most profound phenomenon was the rise of alJazeera as the
first broadly independent Arabic-language news source in the Arab
world. is opened up the public sphere to unprecedented levels of
criticism of Arab leaders and the existing order more widely.
AlJazeera was a turning point because its most popular shows
allowed the audience to call and express uncensored views that
would easily land them in jail if uered openly in their home
countries. But alJazeera was not the only annel to profoundly
impact segments of the local population. Another network—MTV—
also fundamentally anged the viewing habits, and culture, of a
crucial segment of the population, as shows like “Headbangers Ball”
and “Yo! MTV Raps” brought heavy metal and hiphop to an
emerging generation of Arabs at precisely the time the region’s
“unprecedented youth bulge” exploded.7
is kind of interaction between media and audience became a
core experience with the rise of the internet and social media.
Indeed, the explosion of internet-driven social media gelled perfectly
with the do-it-yourself (DIY) aitude at the core of music and arts
scenes like heavy metal, hiphop, and graffiti. Beginning with email
listservs and blogs before moving to Myspace, Facebook, Twier and
other interactive social media, these media provided unprecedented
abilities for alienated young people with no investment in the
existing systems and lile hope for a beer future to communicate
143
outside the control of authoritarian and conservative political and
social orders. At the core of these social media tenologies was the
creation of communities of solidarity—subcultures that would
become counter cultures and ultimately, in some cases and for a
time, politicized revolutionary cultures with whi existing regimes
of control could not cope.8 ese emerging subcultures eventually
came to be at the core of the Arab uprisings.
144
Censorship as a constraining and
constructive force
Censorship has constrained and even defined the production of
culture across the MENA region since the colonial era, despite being
a direct violation of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of
Human rights and of the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights. At the same time, not all types or rationales for
censorship are equal or operate on the same dynamics. Broadly
speaking, we can delineate two types of censored spee—moral and
political, and three forces involved in it—governments, social
pressure, and market forces. ese then are expressed in two modes,
active and passive, or self-censorship.
Moral censorship involves censoring spee, including and oen
particularly artistic spee, that is perceived to violate social norms
and mores and threaten the social and moral order of society.
Sexually related or explicit spee is the most common example of
this type of motivation for censorship, along with spee that mos
or allenges religious or cultural beliefs and/or identities. is
motivation for censoring freedom of expression or broader cultural
rights (for example, the right to marry whomever one wants) can
remain in force to various degrees, and even intensify, aer
transitions to democratic rule.
e second type of censorship involves silencing political spee.
In our cases, this involves silencing artistic expression that criticizes
governments or elites. is is the censorship that is most relevant to
the immediate context of the uprisings in Iran, the Arab world and
Turkey, although all Arab/Muslim countries also have fairly
extensive moral censorship regimes that in fact under normal
145
circumstances constitute the bulk of the active censorship of artistic
production.
For both types of censorship, the silencing of spee usually
occurs through a combination of legal, administrative, juridical, and
police actions by governments, social pressure by religious and other
social movements, and economic pressure through the refusal of
economic entities su as record companies, radio stations, music
video annels or programs, and advertisers to produce, broadcast or
finance their music. Finally, active censorship results from the
actions or directives of those in political, social and/or economic
power against artists. It can vary in intensity from merely
aempting to prevent the distribution of censored artistic works to
imprisoning, torturing and/or killing artists (as happened, for
example, with the brutal murder of Syrian protest singer Ibrahim
Qashoush, who was killed almost certainly by government assassins
who slit his throat and ripped out his vocal ords). Passive self-
censorship, as the term suggests, occurs when artists censor their
own work because they fear what state, social or corporate/market
forces might do to them if they do not.
is matrix helps us understand the complexity of the dynamics
surrounding censorship and the broader denial of freedom of
expression for artists across the MENA region. Under normal
conditions censorship does not work merely through repression.
While we tend to conceive of censorship in zero-sum terms, in
reality negotiation between the censor and the censored is crucial to
the process fulfilling one of its essential functions, not so mu to
exclude people or ideas as to shape and incorporate them into the
broader social body in a disciplined manner. Indeed, in countries like
Egypt or Morocco negotiations can and do occur with state censors
over issues related to sexuality in videos or lyrics, while even the
most conservative of countries, Saudi Arabia, is home to the
purveyors of some of the Arab world’s most hyper-sexualized pop
music.
146
On the other hand, by definition, revolutionary artists are seeking
to radically ange the system. eir art becomes a “key means of
revolution,” as the revolutionary Egyptian hiphop artist Deeb
explains it as they become truly “political” artists.9 e goal of most
governments, then, is where possible to co-opt potentially
revolutionary artists before they can allenge them, or at least
redirect their activities away from directly allenging the system
through various combinations of incentives. ese include
everything from direct or indirect patronage, to either threats of or
actual censorship and repression.
As internet usage skyroeted and more citizens took up social
media in the early 2000s, the dynamics surrounding censorship
anged. Direct censorship by governments was no longer a primary
concern for many musical artists because the internet afforded them
opportunities to rea unprecedented numbers of people more or less
outside of government control. e religious extremism of the
previous decade, whi had led to aas and even murder of artists
and was accompanied by arrests and prosecution of artists and fans,
gave way to a more laissez faire aitude towards most forms of
popular music, both by governments and many socio-religious
movements.
However, other arts were not as positively impacted by the
internet as music, whi was uniquely able to take advantage of the
manner in whi new tenologies allowed for low-cost and even
free production, distribution and consumption to an
unprecedentedly wide audience, almost completely outside the
control of any government or social group. In comparison, art forms
su as theater or graffiti are mu more dependent on control over
specific spaces, whi gives governments the upper hand in
authoritarian societies except at moments of intense political
upheaval or revolution, su as occurred in Iran in 2009, the Arab
world in 2010–12 and Turkey in 2014.
147
Constitutions versus laws
In looking at the legal regime under whi censorship has operated
across the region, three main areas need to be differentiated. e first
are the broad principles outlined in constitutions, whi have tended
to offer statements of support for media, press and artistic freedom
as well as freedom of spee. e second layer is that, even where
constitutions offer generic free spee protections, specific laws in
force can remain quite restrictive. Unless courts rule that these laws
are unconstitutional they remain the arbiter of spee in legal and
political practice. Finally, normatively there are the administrative,
political, economic, and social (especially religious) meanisms of
control that can effectively control most spee through the forms of
pressure they exert.
A full review of the MENA’s legal and constitutional
environments regarding freedom of expression and artistic freedom
is beyond the scope of this apter. e dynamics in operation in
Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, and Iran offer a good sampling of
the broader dynamics in operation across the region. ey
demonstrate the wide gaps between rhetoric and loy ideals on the
one hand, and practice on the other, while also highlighting the
more recent trend for governments to use anti-terror and cyber-
crime legislations as a way to circumscribe rights at the legislative
and then judicial levels even as constitutions protect freedom of
expression at the broadest level.10
Case studies of the constitutional-legal context
148
If we begin with Egypt, Articles 47 and 48 of the Mubarak-era
constitution prohibited censorship of the press and guaranteed
“every individual … the right to express his opinion and to publicize
it verbally or in writing or by photography or by other means within
the limits of the law.” And that was and remains precisely the
problem, as some three dozen articles in numerous laws directly
imposed, and today even aer two major constitutional revisions
continue to impose, censorship, fines and/or imprisonment for
opinions, views or other content deemed to violate laws or
morality.11 What is more, the ‘state of emergency’ in place since the
assassination of President Sadat in 1981 allowed detention without
trial and without explicit reasons, allowing for even more leeway in
repressing dissident spee.
e situation continues today even though the January 2014
Constitution, like the 2012 dra shepherded by the Muslim
Brotherhood government of Muhammad Morsi, includes explicit
protection for freedom of the media, forbids prior censorship and
licensing or registration of the print media or journalists (cf. Article
19).12 e main focal point where the promises of free spee meet
the realities of censorship are at the level of key laws regarding
media, specifically Law 430/1955 of 1955, whi authorizes the
Ministry of Culture to censor audio and audiovisual works, prohibit
recording, filming, copying, or adapting audio or audiovisual works,
or—and this is crucial—screening, performing, or broadcasting them
publicly without a permit from the ministry. Other laws, su as the
Minister of Culture Decree 222/1976, the 1980 dra Law on
Protecting Values from Shameful Conduct and Prime Ministerial
Decree 162/1993, have added layers to the complex system through
whi censorship—and indeed, ‘a regime of prior censorship’—
functions and continue to provide the pretext for censorship and/or
detention of artists. And to these we can add the administrative,
political and social meanisms of control through whi religious
forces like al-Azhar, can become involved in censoring art, while
149
professional syndicates whi should support artists in fact act on
behalf of the government against them (in Egypt, Law 35/1978).13 In
addition, religious bodies like al-Azhar that are not legally mandated
to participate in censorship regimes are still routinely sent works of
art for approval or censor.14
Turning to Morocco the variety of experiences across the MENA
comes immediately into view. e 2011 revised Constitution did
incorporate human rights language including greater aention to
protecting free spee. Articles 10, 25 and 28 guarantee freedom of
opinion, thought, expression, and assembly and prohibited “any
form of prior censure.” e right to life, security of person, physical
and moral integrity, protection of privacy, and the presumption of
innocence are also supported. Yet ultimately, the Constitution can be
said to deal with rights and freedoms “in a contradictory way.”15
ese have not, however, been translated into action. As one
Moroccan artist explained,
We are too limited by our mode of expression because there isn’t the right to say what
you want in the media. ere are certain taboos whi one can’t aa… e King,
religion, the government quite simply. It’s not advisable to cite the names of ministers
in your words if you want to be on the radio, and not just in the music, in interviews as
well.16
For example, Article 29 of the press code still empowers the
communications minister to ban the import of publications that
“inflict harm to the Islamic religion, the monarical regime,
[Morocco’s] territorial integrity or the respect due the King or the
public order.” e government has used this provision frequently in
recent years to prohibit issues of foreign publications. Constitutional
proclamations guaranteeing free expression are worth lile until
lawmakers revise the penal code and press code provisions that the
government is using to restrict spee.17
If a primary focus of state censorship in Egypt surrounds
sexuality-related issues in films and music (especially videos), in
Morocco the primary arena of censorship has been the media itself.
150
Independent media sites on the internet are more of a focus of
censorship or aas than in Egypt. Numerous sites have been fined,
bloed or pressured to close, including Moroccan-run sites,
Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and other social media sites and
independent media platform like Mamfakine, Lacome.com the
most noticeable recent bloage in 2013 (its Arabic-language editor
was jailed for over a year awaiting trial).18 At the same time, the rise
to power of political forces like the Islamist ‘Party of Justice and
Development’ have coincided not only with an upti in censorship
of political issues but also of so-called moral and religious
sensibilities as well.19
And yet, despite su restrictions, Moroccans continue to express
their dissent in multiple media, from online publications to protests
on the streets, indicating that the regime’s alleged ‘path toward
reforming’ is long and winding.20 What both the case of Egypt and
Morocco demonstrate more generally is that music and other artistic
forms are inseparable from other forms of spee and their
repression. It is also worth noting that all the levels of censorship
that one sees in the MENA are present to various degrees in most
societies, including those of the West.
For its part, Tunisia has today what is no doubt the Arab world’s
—and in many ways one of the world’s—most progressive
constitutions. From the start of the post-Ben Ali era, the transitional
government proclaimed freedom of information and expression
‘foundational principle for the country’ (Freedom House 2015 report
on Tunisia) with significant protections for women’s rights, freedom
of belief, and various types of artistic and political expression. What
made that accomplishment possible was the lengthy and very public
debate over its content as well as the successful consensus of
progressive, liberal and Islamist forces represented by the document.
Specifically, Articles 31 through 33, 27 and 42 explicitly guarantee
‘freedom of opinion, thought, expression, information and
publication’ as well as unrestricted access to information, academic
151
freedom, the right to assembly and to culture (described as “the
freedom of creative expression”), all without the kind of ‘subject to
the law’ caveats that enable other governments to honor their
commitments only in the brea.
Nevertheless, the government has retreated on implementing
crucial laws surrounding issues like access to information, while
anti-terror laws passed in the wake of mass terrorist aas in 2014
and 2015 have threatened constitutional guarantees surrounding
freedom of expression, at least at the political level. At the same
time, the more conservative Ministry of Interior continued to
prosecute and imprison journalists and bloggers for criticizing the
military or government.21More specifically related to artistic
freedom, Tunisian Rapper Weld El 15 was imprisoned for insulting
the police with his song (clearly inspired by Morocco’s El Haqed ‘El
Boulisia Kleb’ (Cops Are Dogs)). And while the main Islamist
movement, Ennahda, has taken a fairly moderate position vis-a-vis
freedom of expression, more conservative Salafi forces have staged
major riots, threatened and aaed artists, and burned down
theaters accused of displaying or performing ‘insulting’ and ‘un-
Islamic art.’22
For mu of the 2000s, Turkey seemed to be on a path towards
unprecedented democratization, including greater freedom of
political expression (its cultural spheres have always been broadly
freer given the secular foundation of the Turkish state), as
guaranteed in Articles 26 through 28 and 33 through 34 of the
Constitution.23 But a series of laws, including Articles 301 and 314 of
the Turkish Penal Code, as well as a ‘draconian’ internet law, reveal
the ‘difference between what is said and what is done’ when it
comes to real freedom of expression and undermining constitutional
guarantees, especially when it comes to press freedoms.24 As of 2015
Turkey has one of the worst records for imprisoning journalists, and
the situation is quily becoming similarly worrying for musical
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artists who are in any way political or making ‘dissident comments,’
particularly surrounding the Kurdish question.
Iran is in a fundamentally worse position when it comes to
freedom of expression since its constitution expressly limits su
freedom by prohibiting anything that is detrimental to the
fundamental principles of Islam or the rights of the public (Articles
24, 175). is includes cultural and artistic/aesthetic production as
well, whose creation, performance and/or distribution is controlled
by the Ministry of Culture (cf. LeVine 2008, . 6). When the (now
former) President Ahmedinejad argues, “Is there art that is more
beautiful, more divine, and more eternal that the art of martyrdom?,”
it is clear that rappers and metalheads are not going to have an easy
time of it in the Islamic Republic.25 Nor will musicians working in
more traditional genres who allegedly allenge religion, as the
virtuoso setarist and singer Mohsen Namjoo discovered when he
was prosecuted, convicted and forced into exile for ridiculing the
r`an in 2009.
Yet even with su sentiments among the leadership, the situation
on the ground is more complicated than the texts of religiously
grounded laws would suggest. Despite official restrictions, millions
of Iranians have full access to the global cultural ecumene through
satellite dishes and access the internet. Indeed, as of the summer of
2015, the government was actually working with some of the
country’s most well known (and previously censored) rap artists to
help raise public support for its nuclear program.26
e popularity of heavy metal and hiphop among Iranian youth
during the last thirty years aests to Iran’s openness to global
culture, while the many accolades garnered by Iran’s locally rooted
film industry point to the ability of artists to allenge official limits
on cultural expression. And yet at any moment, the conservative
judiciary, clerical class and paramilitary units known as the basiji
(who act among other things as morality police, harassing young
people who publicly violate official norms), can harass, arrest and
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prosecute artists and fans (and impose travel bans on the former)
because of what they deem to be ‘un-Islamic’ art.27
It should be clear that any aempt to generalize about struggles
over freedom of cultural and artistic expression in the countries of
the MENA is bound to fail. e specific nature of ea government
and its constitutional and legal systems, the role and power of Islam
and Muslim religious forces in the legal and social structures of the
country, its relationship with the United States and Europe (whether
friend, ally, client or adversary), and the particularities of cultural
production, distribution and consumption, all played a role in
determining the dynamics involved.
In looking at cultural performance in the MENA in the context of
the Arab uprisings, Green Movement, and Gezi Park protests we
must delineate them into two broad categories. First are political
actions and events whi had very strong aesthetic components. e
protests in Tunis, Tahrir Square and many other locations epitomize
this phenomenon; they are ‘theater of immediacy,’ auratic and
transformative cultural (oen, but not necessarily artistic) creation
and performance for an intended audience that is not merely
emergent—that is, in the process of formation—but ‘emurgent’
(emergent + urgent); developing rapidly and in the context of intense
sociopolitical struggle that destabilizes and even reconfigures
previously dominant, congealed structures and networks of power
and identity.28
Second, beyond inherently aestheticized and affective protests,
artists themselves deliberately created extremely political art that
came to play an outsized role in the unfolding protests and uprisings.
Perhaps the most well known artistic symbols of the Arab uprisings
are two musical artists, Tunisian rapper El Général and Egyptian
singer Ramy Essam. But music was not the only artistic form central
to the Arab uprisings. Poets and photographers, playwrights and
graffiti artists, in their home countries and exile, all played a
prominent role. Not only that, the form and content of the art
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produced by Arab activist artists has continuously anged during
the last five years, as have conditions on the ground, the political
situations, and the goals, dreams and expectations of the artists.
e Arab world has seen an explosion of creative energy since the
self-immolation of Muhammad Bouazizi, in su varied areas as
Tunisian rap, Libyan literature, Moroccan experimental theater,
Yemeni protest music, and Egyptian graffiti.29 e artistic production
and the theater of protests are of course intimately related. What
made Tahrir su a powerful space was all the forms of art—music,
graffiti, posters, humor, song, photography, poetry—that occurred
within it.30 All of these forms have historically ‘thrived on conflict’
while at the same time pushed the boundaries of moral, political and
cultural freedom by giving vent to frustrations, especially of youth.
Studying these cultural performances is crucial to understanding the
transformation from traditional to a more progressive, innovative set
of cultural norms.31 e problem that we must explore is to what
extent this release meanism went from having revolutionary
power to erase fear, claim public space (especially streets and
squares) and set off protests and even uprisings to merely offering a
‘festivalisation of dissent,’ as Aomar Boum describes it, containing
and dissipating (or at least redirecting) anger and calls for social
justice to less threatening ends.32
Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti famously declared that music
would be the weapon of the future. In late 2010 Tunisia it had
become the weapon of the present—not merely the soundtra of the
revolution that caught fire in the ashes of Muhammad Bouazizi, but
a motivating factor in bringing people into the streets and reshaping
their basic political subjectivity—a core process of any revolutionary
ange in a country’s social and political structures.33 Perhaps the
most famous—and certainly first—exemplar of the role of music in
the Arab uprisings is the song “Rais Lebled” (President of the
Country) by the then largely unknown rapper El Général. Arriving
in the Arab world in the mid-1990s, rap music quily established
155
itself as a major force for aesthetic expression and innovation among
Arab youth from Morocco to Iran.34 While most rappers steer clear
of politics (if not social issues) and some—from Morocco to Iran—are
actually supported by their governments, it is the region’s politically
grounded hiphop that most powerfully defines the genre for the
generation that has grown up with it.
With a brooding tempo and hiphop beat and minor key piano
melody, the grim mood of “Rais Lebled” sets up El Général’s at turns
plaintive and excoriating missive to then President Ben Ali that
declares: “Mr. President, you told me to speak without fear/I spoke
here but I knew that my end would be palms [i.e. slaps and beatings]
… How long [must] the Tunisian live in illusions?”35 It is hard to
overstate the power of “Raid Lebled,” not least because su words
could in fact get a person killed, or at least imprisoned and tortured
for a very long time. But in speaking about overcoming fear, El
Général captured the essence of the Arab uprisings: the loss of fear
of a generation.
ere are dozens of revolutionary hiphop songs in the ‘Arab
Spring canon.’ Most every country from Morocco to Bahrain
produced at least one song that helped unite and motivate people,
reflecting their pains and dreams, and bringing them out onto the
streets. Whether Arabian Knightz’s “Rebel” (Egypt), Ibn abit’s
“Ben Ghazi” (Libya), L’7a9ed’s “Klab ad-Dawla” (Dogs of the State),
or the anonymous Syrian song “Bayan raqam wahid” (Statement
Number One), hiphop was truly at the heart of the soundtra to the
protests, demonstrating a courage and forthrightness that began
with the seminal Palestinian-Israeli rap group DAM, whose song
“Min irhabi?” (Who’s the Terrorist?) was one of the most powerful
accusations ever put to music against the Israeli occupation.36
Perhaps the most politically engaged rapper in the Arab world
and broader Middle East today is Morocco’s El Haqed (a.k.a. L7a9ed;
‘the Enraged One’), who represents the ubiquitous power of hiphop
as the world’s most politicized musical form today.37 Mouad
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Belghouat (his legal name) came onto the Moroccan scene in the late
summer of 2011, as a February 20 activist aer the protests had
reaed their apex and were already fading in the wake of passage of
a Constitutional referendum put forward by King Muhammad. His
stage name can be translated as either the enraged, the ‘spiteful’ or
the indignant.
From the start Moroccan rap has been implicitly political, and
became more so in the last decade. L7a9ed came to the authorities
aention by September 2011, when he was first arrested aer an
altercation with a member of the Royalist youth. As with most
rappers, L7a9ed’s prison stint only increased his street credibility,
especially among Morocco’s poor and disenfranised young people,
from whose midst he’d risen in the slum of Oukaa, in the outskirts
of Casablanca. Indeed, as he rose to fame L7a9ed’s depictions of the
worst aracteristics of young Moroccans’ lives earned him the
sobriquet the ‘Gavroe of the Moroccan revolution’—Gavroe was
a minor but important aracter in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables.38
He has since spent two more stints in jail, but refuses to ba down
from his political stances.
One might imagine the situation would be beer in newly
democratic Tunisia. However, even there rappers are harassed by the
security forces, and one, Weld El 15, actually served time in jail for a
song similarly excoriating police brutality. e situation remains
allenging for rappers in Egypt as well, while in Iran the
government has adopted a more sizophrenic approa towards
hiphop—continuing to harass some artists even as it convinced one
of the country’s most well-known underground rappers to do a
video supporting their nuclear power program.
While hiphop gets most of the aention, the roots of the youth
music scenes in the Arab and larger Muslim worlds lie as mu if
not more in heavy metal and ro. e original musical subcultures-
turned-countercultures in the Arab world are the extreme metal
scenes of the region, whi were already threatening enough to
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laun ‘Satanic metal scares’ from Morocco to Iran during the late
1990s and early 2000s.39 ese foreign-born music scenes were
important because they served as incubators for marginalized youth
to express themselves and create relationships and solidarities. Just
as importantly, they impacted the spread of do-it-yourself skills in
distributing their music and message, particularly via the burgeoning
internet and social media. is would prove crucial for the
revolutions that would later erupt.40
One direct musical heir to the Arab metal scenes is Ramy Essam,
the ‘singer of the Egyptian revolution’ whose song “Irhal” is
considered along with “Rais Lebled” the most important tune in the
revolutionary Arab canon and one of the most influential songs of
this century. Like Mathlouthi, Essam started off as a metalhead and
fan of su groups as Slipknot, Korn and System of a Down, an edge
he clearly brought to the sound of “Irhal.” No artist beer symbolizes
the anging—and in many ways, waning—fortunes of political
music in the Arab world than he does. It is difficult to overstate
Essam’s impact on the protests in Tahrir Square’s uprising. Arriving
with nothing but an old acoustic guitar and a sleeping bag on
January 31, 2011, within twenty-four hours he had absorbed the
words, and as important, the rhythms of the protesters’ ants in
Tahrir, and composed “Irhal!” (Leave!), the song that quily became
the anthem not just of the Egyptian Revolution, but of the Arab
uprisings from Morocco to Bahrain.
Whereas “Rais Lebled” was never performed live during the
Tunisian Revolution by El Général, “Irhal” emerged out of hours of
strumming along to the ants of the protesters in Tahrir Square. By
the time that Mubarak was forced from power Essam had performed
it literally hundreds of times for hundreds of thousands of people
(and as many YouTube views from a grainy video shot of the
audience at one of his first performances of it), ea time gathering
more crowds until its popularity was su that the majority of the
crowd knew the words. While he had become the ‘voice’ of the
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Revolution in the two years aer Mubarak’s ouster—“My job is to
take the essence of what people are feeling and reflect it ba to
them,” he explains (LeVine, interview 2011)—Essam was in fact
increasingly persecuted both under Morsi’s rule and particularly
aer the military coup of 2013. His situation became so precarious
that he could no longer perform, while his music was banned from
the airwaves. In October 2014 he le Egypt for a two year musical
residency in Sweden. He fears for his safety if he is forced to return
home.
However powerful the music and political presence of
revolutionary musical artists like L7a9ed and Essam, without a
constant physical presence in and control over space that power will
diminish over time. L7a9ed and Essam, one in professional exile
inside his country and the other physically removed from his
homeland, can continue to make videos that are accessible at home
and travel abroad spreading the stories of their struggles. But while
su activities keep the revolutionary embers glowing, their inability
to perform locally is symptomatic of these movements’ current
inability to allenge the balance of power on the ground in
Morocco or Egypt.
ere is no denying the roots of hiphop in the poetic form, but
poetry itself was at the heart of the revolutions; a natural
development given the prominent role of poetry in Arab and Islamic
traditions. As the poet Mazen Maarouf points out, “We should not be
surprised that in these revolutions ordinary Arabs are capable of
su poetry. In sools across the Arab world, poetry precedes other
forms of art.”41 Indeed, the Yemeni poet Ibtisam Mutawakkil captures
the essence of poetry’s power in the Arab world (and similarly in
Iran, whi has an equally ri poetic tradition), when he argues,
Yemeni society is still a society audibly. For this reason, the spirited rhythm and phrases
move the people … In the history of the Arab revolutions poets have always been at the
forefront of awareness led the revolutionary action, and this action is still present in
Yemen to the day since the revolutions of 1962 and 1963.42
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Poetry was in fact central to the Arab revolutions from the start. e
most famous slogan of the revolutions, anted in Tunisia, Egypt,
Yemen, Libya, Bahrain, Syria, and beyond, is an adaptation of the
poem “Izza ash-sha`b yowman arada al-haya” (“If the People One
Day Will to Live”), wrien in 1933 by the Tunisian poet Abou el-
Kasem Chebbi (1909–34), whi aer the revolution became
incorporated as the closing lines of Tunisia’s national anthem.43
Moreover, poetry provided the rhythm of the Arab protests, both
visually and aurally. e speed and flow of a mar in Tahrir, down
Bourguiba Boulevard, or around Manama’s Pearl roundabout would
be determined by the poetry being anted. Banners featured poetic
slogans dozens of meters long at times. Songs, whether “Rais Lebled”
or “Irhal” were nothing if not extremely poetic. As the Moroccan
poet Mohammed al-Ash`ari explained of the Arab Spring’s poetry,
“Poets have the capabilities to enable them to escort civilian
movements and educate consciences in the midst of significant
anges in today’s world.” In particular, they help people want life—
perhaps the most important function of any art form, “But even the
poetry of the revolutions and beyond is weak and modest when
compared with what happened in the street or in the fields or the
actions of the rebels,” Egyptian poet Girgis Shukri explains.44
As with hiphop, in Arab revolutionary poetry, Palestine stands
above most other Arab countries, as the unending symbol of all that
has been lost to Arab culture as the result of foreign and internal
imbalances and distortions of power, ideology and identity. One of
the “songs of the revolution” (ughniyat al-thawrah), “Raji’ libladi”
(Returning to my country), is directly influenced by the Palestinian
narrative of return. Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry was particularly
crucial to the broader Arab Spring project—one writer called him
“the conscience of the Arab revolutions,” just as Palestine itself
remained symbolically central.45
Not surprisingly, the historical and political power of Arab(ic)
poetry increases as it is incorporated into other art forms, perhaps
160
none more so than theater. Su is the affective power of theater as it
has been experienced across the region that one of Egypt’s foremost
poets, Girgis Shukri, has declared that “the language of drama and of
theater is mu stronger than that of poetry or wrien texts” alone.46
e Arab/Muslim world has centuries-old theater traditions. Most
countries’ theater scenes became highly ideological in the wake of
the Nasser-era revolutions and coups, but they also developed strong
traditions of worker’s and avant-garde theater. Cairo, for example,
has been home to the International Festival of Experimental eater
since 1988;47 Palestine has been home to companies su as the Jenin
Freedom eater and El Hakawati that have been (and remain) at
the forefront of cultural resistance against Occupation and
oppressive regimes across the region. And countries where one
might not expect a strong theatrical tradition, su as Yemen, in fact
boast a powerful history going ba a century in whi foreign
influences su as Shakespeare and Shaw have blended with
extremely sophisticated and critical poetic traditions among the
tribal heartlands to create one of the region’s best kept artistic
secrets.48 In Morocco, experimental theater influenced by eater of
the Oppressed or less confrontational styles su as “l`khbar fi
masrah” (“the news through theater”) has both encouraged and
diffused potentially explosive social and political tensions.49
Dramatists su as Egypt’s Sondos Shabayek and Laila Soliman or
Tunisian Loi Aour, have used both classical themes and
teniques (su as storytelling) and references to and direct
engagements with the immediate, pre-revolutionary past, to great
affect with local and (increasingly) international audiences.50 At the
same time, some of the most relevant pre-Arab Spring plays, su as
Fadhel Jaibi’s Amnesia-Yahia Yaish (whi dealt with the fall of a
despotic Tunisian minister of state), have received even more
enthusiastic reactions from crowds aer the revolutions, when its
implications could be appreciated more openly.51 e broader
question that remains for theater makers, like other artists across the
161
region, is whether their art can help foster “a radically new mindset
and a new thought until all this is reflected on the culture and art in
general.”52
Red lines continue to exist, even in the most democratic of Arab
countries. Tunisian actors have been arged with ‘public indecency’
and ‘indecent acts,’ and physically aaed by audience members, as
happened to members of the street theater company, Fanni Raghman
Anni (in Tunisian dialect, “My Art In Spite of Myself”) in response
to the perception that actors were wearing too lile clothing during
a performance.
e Arab uprisings might have been televised (as Gil Sco-Heron
predicted they would not be) and disseminated via many other
communications media. But they were even more so drawn—by
cartoonists, caricaturists, everyday people, and particularly graffiti
artists. It was impossible to aend a protest anywhere, from Rabat to
Manama, without being inundated with the artwork of everyone
from small ildren to major artists of the day. In fact, the most far-
reaing and bloody revolution of the region, Syria, was sparked by
the arrest and torture of fieen ildren for painting anti-
government graffiti on the wall of their sool.
Arab graffiti is directly inspired by 1,400 years of Arabic and
r`anic calligraphic traditions. Indeed, in a very profound sense,
r`anic calligraphy and the newest street art are “daughters of the
same parents.”53 But however deeply rooted, graffiti cannot be
appreciated outside of the broader context of cartoons and other
forms of graphic images, whether created by professionals and
published in newspapers or other media, or drawn by ordinary
people and brought to protests. Finally, graffiti is also deeply related
to paintings, videos, sculptures and installations that have been
exhibited in galleries, museums, and revolutionary spaces.
In the revolutionary era, Palestine, Egypt and Bahrain are home to
the most developed, organized and belligerent graffiti movement in
the region.54 Equally important, Yemen, understood mostly in the
162
West as a bastion of feudalism and extremism, quily saw the
emergence of one of the most sophisticated public graffiti scenes in
the region that epitomized the unprecedented and almost entirely
non-violent grass-roots protests in the country. Verbal messages of
the graffiti have been complex and multifarious; from simple
repetition of revolutionary slogans—Dégage!, Irhal!, Yasqut hukma-l
‘askar!—to the ubiquitous turns at humor (“Game Over!” “Doctor,
it’s your turn”—i.e. one-time optometrist Bashar al-Assad will see
himself out of power soon), and references to Facebook, Google and
Twier. Images of all types have “play[ed] a central part in processes
of political struggle” by conveying mediated and mediating political
messages and ideologies.55 More than just art, su visual messages
were the “war paint” of the revolutions and a weapon in the hands
of civil resistance against authoritarian regimes.56 Aesthetic quality
alone was not the most important reason for the impact of visual
arts in the uprisings and revolutions. Even the simplest drawings—
like those of Daraa’s sool kids—can spark a civil war.
Yet it is also clear that graffiti remains the signal visual icon of the
Arab uprisings (more so than in Iran or Turkey, for example),
distinguished both by its power as well as its vulnerability and
ephemerality. Its ability to move so many people is precisely why
governments across the region—and indeed, globally—consider it
vandalism and sabotage.57 As the Egyptian artist Ganzeer explains,
graffiti has the power to “plant a flag” in the public sphere in a
manner that directly undermines the state’s sense of public security.
It does so precisely because its presence (especially when prolonged)
clearly marks a location’s transformation into a revolutionary space,
or at least one outside of real government control. Even more, as the
artist Mohsen Al-Ateeqi points out, graffiti helps “encircle the
hegemony” of regimes that have spent decades ‘containing’ their
societies by its offering of highly visible counter-hegemonic
meanisms for producing public opinion—beer, of publicness and
being public. Graffiti marks space, at least momentarily, as a
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revolutionary place, enabling the public to encounter messages and
motivations that have been censored in more ‘legitimate’ media and
in so doing becomes “in itself a form of public power to resist the
ruling power.”58
Whatever the historical importance of wrien graffiti, images
have always played crucial components of Arab graffiti. In the
uprisings era, su imagery oen has portrayed or represented
people or events occurring on the ground. is has included
everything from murals featuring the faces of martyred protesters to,
in one well-known case, a stencil of a nude self-portrait by the
young Egyptian photographer Aliaa Magdy Elmahdy—an elaborate
defense of her (in)famous photo that contextualizing it vis-a-vis
rampant assaults on women by regime forces. Also frequent are
more elaborate murals of revolutionary heroes, hated regime figures,
or various revolutionary scenes. ese were composed in a variety of
styles, from stenciled images of ‘anarist pharaohs’ (the image a
pharaoh in the guise of Guy Fawkes with an iconic headdress) to
mixed-media transdisciplinary works by artists su as Hanaa El
Dagham and highly stylized ‘neo-pharaonic’ tableaus—epitomized
by the work of the Luxor-based fine artist Alaa Awad, that bring the
far past and the immediate present into intense dialog.59 In Tunisia
and Egypt cartoon figures also became—and remain—central
symbols of political graffiti, as aracters like Nadia Khiari’s Willis
the Cat in Tunis, and Sad Panda in Cairo have rendered some of the
most powerful—and in Sad Panda’s case, almost always mute—
judgments on the oppressiveness and even absurdity of the ancient
and post-revolutionary regimes.60
If graffiti is the most celebrated form of the revolutionary era’s
visual art, it was by no means the only one or isolated from other
forms. Both visually and in terms of satirical wit, cartoons have
played a crucial role, not just in the Arab uprisings, but for a century
of Arab journalism and media. Arab(ic) graffiti would be as
impossible to imagine without the history and presence of Arab
164
cartoons as it would be without Arabic calligraphy. Indeed, the
importance of cartoons or cartoon-inspired artwork, su as Willis
the Cat and Sad Panda, in the graffiti of the uprisings points to the
difficulty of fixing boundaries between these media.
Cartoons in the Arab world, as they are elsewhere, are ‘vivid
primary sources’ for understanding larger events and the broader
public mood.61 As cartoons have migrated from newspapers and
books to social media and the internet their subjects have
increasingly focused on regional and international subjects, while
leaving aside domestic issues that could lead to censorship or worse.
Exceptions to this rule include Palestine and Lebanon, both of whi
retained relatively more freedom of expression for artists compared
with other Arab countries (although Palestinians have been jailed
and even killed by Israel for their art).62 But while the majority of
cartoonists were staying clear of local politics in the years leading up
to 2010, some (Egyptian cartoonist Andeel, for example) have been
consistently political since the early 2000s, aaing Mubarak then
and Sisi now with the same la of concern for the consequences.63
Lastly, it is Egypt that has been home to the groups that have
most boldly and effectively blended visual art and activism. Two
media collectives in particular have played an important role in this
process since 2011, the Mosireen collective and Kazeboon (liars).
Together they epitomize how the internet has influenced art’s
impact. Mosireen (a combination of the words ‘Egypt’ and
‘determined’ in Arabic) is a Cairo-based media collective created
during the 18 days of the January 25 revolution. Its goal has been to
circulate (via the internet or public showings) citizen-produced art—
in particular short films based on documentary footage of events
that contradict government claims about who was responsible for
acts of violence against citizens. When effective these films
constitute politically inspired art possessing the power to ‘wrong-
foot censorship and empower the voice of a street-level perspective.’
Mosireen’s focus has been auned particularly to ariving the
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visual record of the revolution and showing revolutionary inspired
films to the public, oen on the street in order to rea the most
people.
e Kazeboon, or ‘liars’ campaign, was founded by some of the
same people as Mosireen in December 2011 when military police
aaed protesters at a sit-in at the Cabinet headquarters. e name
pertains to the penant for the military (at that time, SCAF, the
Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) to lie when accused of using
violence against protesters. is time, protesters had recorded video
of the aa, whi activists used to produce a video, uploaded onto
YouTube, that directly allenged the lie. So successful was this
campaign, and so ubiquitous was the violence and the lies about it
by the military and then the Morsi government, that the group’s
modus operandi became using video to confront the lies of the
regime (the Muslim Brotherhood would adopt a similar strategy
during the Raba al-`Adawiyya sit-in, but with far less success). Like
Mosireen, Kazeboon would sometimes hold events in public at
revolutionary-friendly locations (su as the Sawi Culture Wheel in
Zamalek, whi had long sponsored edgy and even subversive
cultural events and political meetings). But its primary means of
communication has been the internet, whi has made it mu
harder for the government to censor.
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Conclusion: art and/as religion in the Arab
Spring
Art, like religion, encourages liminal, transformative experiences.
And like religion, that makes artistic production both useful and
dangerous to those in power (including those in religious power,
who can simultaneously use art for their own ends while
condemning some artists for transgressing religious norms). It is for
this reason that this apter has analyzed the importance of cultural
rights as a way to protect art’s potentially powerful role. And it is
why art has been a particularly key site for the impulses that both
led to the Arab uprisings and why governments, in repressing those
uprisings, have also sought to repress art that identified with that
transformative movement. In the wake of the eruption of the
protests and uprisings, and in the midst of seeming transformations
towards democracy, Egyptian artists have been sued, Moroccan and
even Tunisian musicians, graffiti artists, and actors have faced
harassment and arrest, for ‘moral’ as well as political ‘crimes.’ In
Syria throats have been slit, tongues cut out and hands cut off
(depending on the offending artist’s specific mode of work). Perhaps
Tunisian artist Jalila Baccar best captured the dynamic at work when
she explained a year aer Ben Ali’s ouster: “During Bourguiba and
Ben Ali’s regimes, political content was censored from any artworks.
During the current regime, political content is still forbidden, only
under the guise of ethics and religion.”
Ultimately, while it is not difficult to spot ‘religious’ versus
‘secular’ art in the post-uprisings Arab world, the main distinction
between various forms of artistic production is not centered on
religion, ethics or morality. It is centered around the contentious
question of whether the region and individual countries are still
167
living in revolutionary or normal time, whether artists should and
can continue to motivate citizens into the streets to fight for a
wholesale ange in their societies, or should either support the
status quo or ignore politics all together. It is undeniable that the
Arab uprisings and revolutions of the last five years have produced
some of the most politically as well as aesthetically powerful and
innovative art the world has seen in generations. e question that
remains is whether the aura of revolution can continue to inspire
artists and ordinary people to continue the struggle for ‘bread,
freedom, and social justice’ that half a decade ago helped laun the
Arab Spring, and what role su struggles will play in the broader
and longer term struggle for human rights across the region.
168
Notes
1 Hafid Gafaiti, “Between God and the President: Literature and Censorship in North
Africa,” Diacritics vol. 27, no. 2 (1997): 59–84.
2 Farida Shaheed, UNO-Report on Culture Rights (Online: United Nations, 2013).
3 For the purposes of this apter, I define censorship as a regulatory and legal process of
regulating artistic production in order to ensure that art of all types adheres to
applicable legislation, statutory regulations, the political imperatives and ideological
narrative of the state and/or ostensibly shared community mores.
4 Jonas Oerbe, “Baling over the public sphere: Islamic reactions to the music of
today,” Contemporary Islam vol. 2, no. 3 (November 1, 2008): 211–228.
5 Mark LeVine, Why They Don’t Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil, Oxford, UK:
Oneworld Publications, 2005.
6 LeVine, Why They Don’t Hate Us, s. 1, 3, 5; OHCHR, Universal Declaration of Human
Rights–In Six Cross-Cutting Themes, (n.p.: Office of the High Commissioner for Human
Rights, 2015); Janusz Symonides, “Cultural Rights: a Neglected Category of Human
Rights,” International Social Science Journal vol. 50, no. 158 (December 1, 1998): 559–
572; Elizabeth Willmo-Harrop, “e Universal Declaration’s Bias Towards Western
Democracies,” Liberty and Humanity 2003.
7 Henrik Urdal, “A Clash of Generations? Youth Bulges and Political Violence,”
International Studies Quarterly vol. 50, no. 3 (September 2006): 607–629; Middle East
Youth (In Brief: Brookings Institute, n.d.); M. Chloe Mulderig, “An Uncertain Future:
Youth Frustration and the Arab Spring,” The Pardee Papers 2013; NATO Parliamentary,
The Implications of the Youth Bulge in Middle East and North Africa Populations,
(NATO, 2011).
8 Mark LeVine, Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam
(New York: Random House, 2008).
169
9 Muhammad Deeb, Wasilati Fi Ihtijaj Hia Al-Aghani Wa-L-Sha`r’ (My Means of Protest
Are Music and Poetry), 2011; Tejumola Olaniyan, Arrest the Music!: Fela and His Rebel
Art and Politics (African Expressive Cultures), 1st ed. (United States: Indiana University
Press, 2004), 2–3.
10 Ma Duffy, “Arab Media Regulations: Identifying Restraints on Freedom of the Press in
the Laws of Six Arabian Peninsula Countries,” Berkeley Journal of Middle Eastern and
Islamic Law vol. 6, no. 2 (2014): 1–31.
11 ANHRI, Articles That Restrict the Freedom of Expression in the Egyptian Laws, (e
Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, 2012); CIHRS, Freedom of Expression in
Egypt and Tunisia, (Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, n.d.).
12 And still to this day sometimes censorship can be vague or unexplained to artists, su
as the Egyptian singer Ali El-Haggar ready to issue a new album in the Gulf during the
next few days, aer it refused to permit it negotiable Egyptian censorship in Egypt. e
album features 14 songs but does not address political affairs.
13 United Nations. UN Report on the Right to Artistic Expression and Creation, (United
Nations, 2013); Omar El Adl, “Musicians Syndicate Cradown Disproportionately
Affects Underground Music,” Daily News Egypt, 2012; Moroccan musician and journalist
Reda Allali, interviewed by author Mar 2014; Ahmed Ezzaq, Sally al-Haqq, and
Hossam Fazulla, “Censors of Creativity,” Association for Freedom of Thought and
Expression 2014,: 1–20; Basseem Sabry, “Egypt Sends Movie Ba to Censorship Board
for Review,” Al Monitor, 2014.
14 In particular, advocating drug use or sex, insulting Abrahamic religions, the positive
depictions of crime, improper depiction of funerals, or any depiction or use of the
Prophet’s voice, are prohibited. It also prohibits any art that allegedly insults the
president or armed forces or other state institutions, incites to the overthrow of the
Egyptian government or promotes sools of thought that seek to ange basic
principles of the constitution or the social order by force or terrorism.
15 In Article 28, for example, immediately aer stipulating the guarantee of freedom of the
press, there is a caveat that stipulates su freedom is circumscribed by “the sole limits
expressly provided by the law” Samia Errazzouki, “Spin Cycle: Morocco’s Forgoen
Reform Movement,” Sada Carnegie Endowment, 2012.
170
16 Pascal de Gend, “Le Rap Au Maroc, Malgré La Censure,” La Libre, 2012.
17 “Morocco: Weeklies Censored for Depicting God, the Prophet Muhammad,” Human
Rights Watch, 2010.
18 “Au Maroc, La Censure Est Royale,” Liberation, 2009. Rayna St, “Morocco Censors the
Web: Collateral Damage Allowed,” Global Voices Online, 2013; “Morocco: Pioneer of
Independent Press Silenced amid Censorship Worries,” Los Angeles Times, 2010.
19 Karim Boukhari, “Courage, on Censure!,” Telquel, 2012.
20 “Freedom of the Press,” Freedom House, 2012; “Hiwar Ma`a Al-Fanan Ma`a Rafa`il Al-
Qantara: Al-Mashhad Al-Musiqi Fi-L-Qahira Bayna Al-Raqaba Wa-L-Intilaq
(‘Conversations with Artists by Rafael Al-Qantara: e Music Scene in Cairo between
Censorship and Taking Off’),” al-Qantara, 2007.
21 “Tunisia: Freedom of Expression Must Be Protected in the Fight against Terrorism,”
Article 19, 2014; “Blasphemy, Freedom of Expression, and Tunisia’s Transition to
Democracy,” Human Rights First, 2015.
22 Dorra Medgdie Meziou, “Tunisie–Retour de Vacances Pour Les Salafistes,”
Businessnews.com, 2012; Tarek Amara and Lin Noueihed, “Tunisian Salafi Islamists Riot
over ‘Insulting’ Art,” Reuters, 2012.
23 “Freedom of the Press and Expression in Turkey,” Center for American Progress, 2013;
Suzy Hansen, “e Strongman,” The New Republic, 2012.
24 “Turkey: e Disconnect between What Is Said and What Is Done,” Freemuse, 2015;
“Music Video Under Criminal Investigation,” Freemuse, 2015; Raziye Akboc, “Turkey’s
Cradown on Freedom of Spee Intensifies,” The Telegraph, 2015.
25 “P24 Joins ARTICLE 19, CPJ, English PEN, Freedom House and PEN International in
Submiing Universal Periodic Review of Turkey to the United Nations,” Platform 24,
2014; “Freedom of the Press—Turkey,” Freedom House, 2013.; “Journalists Concerned
about Freedom of Expression in Turkey,” Today’s Zaman, 2014; Riard Horowitz, “A
Detailed Analysis of Iran’s Constitution,” World Policy Blog, 2010.
26 Hanif Kashani, “Iranian Rapper Drops Bomb with pro-Nuke Video,” Al Monitor, 2015.
27 “Violations of Artistic Freedom of Expression in 2014,” Arts Freedom, 2015.
171
28 Mark Levine and Bryan Reynolds, “eater of Immediacy: Performance Activism and
Art in the Arab Uprisings,” in Islam and Popular Culture, ed. Karin van Nieuwekerk,
Mark Levine, and Martin Stokes (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2016).
29 Kamran Rosen, “5 Incredible Art Movements at Exploded Aer the Arab Spring,”
World Mic, 2013.
30 Diana al-Rifai, “Anatomy of a Revolution through Art,” alJazeera, 2015; Cathrin Saer,
“Syrian Refugees: Making Sense of War through Art,” Der Spiegel, 2013.
31 Hawas Mahmoud, “Al-Rabi`a Al-Arabiya Wa Al-aqafa Al-Taqlidiya (e Arab Spring
and Traditional Culture),” Minhbar al-Huriya, 2012.
32 Kamran Rosen, “5 Incredible Art Movements at Exploded Aer the Arab Spring,”
World Mic, 2013.
33 Mark Levine, “eorizing Revolutionary Practice: Agendas for Resear on the Arab
Uprisings,” Middle East Critique 22, no. 3 (September 2, 2013): 191–212.
34 Mark LeVine, Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam
(New York: ree Rivers Press (CA), 2008), Chap. 1.
35 “El Général–Rais Lebled,” Revolutionary Arab Rap: The Index, August 30, 2011.
36 “Babylon and Beyond,” Los Angeles Times Blog, 2011; “La Mémoire Créative de La
Révolution Syrienne,” Creative Memory, creativememory.org.
37 e 7 and 9 in L7a9ed are Arabic at aracters representing the leers “ḥā” (ح) and
“qaf” (ق).
38 Solidarité Maroc, “Un Pouvoir Marocain Inquiet Mais i Ne Lâe Rien,” Solid Mar,
2012.
39 Cf. LeVine, Heavy Metal Islam.
40 LeVine, Heavy Metal Islam; interviews with Tunisian and Egyptian revolutionary
leaders, February 2011–June 2012, Tunis and Cairo.
41 Mazen Maarouf, “e Poetry of Revolution,” alJazeera, 2012.
42 Reem Najami, “Ma Huwwa Dawr Ash-Shi`r Fi--awrat Al-`Arabiyya? (What Is the
Role of Poetry in the Arab Revolutions?),” Qantara, 2012.
172
43 Cf. John Lundberg, “e Poetry of the Revolution,” Huffington Post, 2011.
44 Reem Najami, “Ma Huwwa Dawr Ash-Shi`r Fi--awrat Al-`Arabiyya? (What Is the
Role of Poetry in the Arab Revolutions?),” Qantara, 2012.
45 Amr Sa`d Eddin, “Shi`r Mahmoud Darwish Fi Wajdan Ath-awrat Al-`Arabiyya (e
Poetry of Mahmoud Darwish in the Conscience of the Arab Revolutions),” Majalat al-
dirasat al-falastiniyya 91 (2012): 52–68; Reem Abou-El-Fadl, “e Road to Jerusalem
through Tahrir Square: Anti-Zionism and Palestine in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution,”
Journal of Palestine Studies vol. 41 (2012): 6–26.
46 Reem Najami, “Ma Huwwa Dawr Ash-Shi`r Fi--awrat Al-`Arabiyya? (What Is the
Role of Poetry in the Arab Revolutions?),” Qantara, 2012.
47 “e Honor of the 18th of e Cairo International Festival for Experimental eater,”
Egypt Ministry of Culture, 2006. Online.
48 Sa`id Aulaqi, Aaman Min Al-Masrah Fi Al-Yaman (Seventy Years of Theatre in Yemen)
(Aden: Warizat ath-thaqafa wa-l siyaha, 1983); Katherine Hénnessey, “e Ri History
of eater in Yemen,” La voix du Yémen, 2013.
49 Kamran Rosen, “5 Incredible Art Movements at Exploded Aer the Arab Spring,”
World Mic, 2013.
50 Cleo Jay, “Staging the Transition in North Africa: eatre As a Tool of Empowerment,”
Ibraaz 004 (2012).
51 Ibid.
52 Moncef Karimi, “al-Mahrajan ad-dawli lil-masrah an-nisa`i” (e International Festival
of Women’s eater), undated article at lemaghreb.tn. Available at
www.startimes.com/f.aspx?t=35144621, accessed July 10, 2015.
53 Dave Stelfox, “Arabic Graffiti: Dances with Walls,” The National, July 15, 2011, available
at www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/arabic-graffiti-dances-with-walls,
accessed December 20, 2015.
54 Charloe Sriwer, “Graffiti Arts and the Arab Spring,” in Routledge Handbook of the
Arab Spring, ed. Larbi Sadiki (London: Routledge, 2014), 376–391; Judran 14 Fibriar:
Ghrafiti Thawrat Al-Bahrain (The Walls of 14 February: Revolutionary Graffiti in
Bahrain) (Dhaka: Awal Centre, 2013).
173
55 Lina Khatib, Image Politics in the Middle East: The Role of the Visual in Political
Struggle, London: IB Tauris, 2012.
56 Waleed Rashed, “Egypt’s Murals Are More an Just Art, ey Are a Form of
Revolution,” Smithsonian Magazine, May 2013. Available at
www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/egypts-murals-are-more-than-just-art-they-are-
a-form-of-revolution-36377865/#DvuzGHgjTZ5455bv.99, accessed July 10, 2015; amer
Mekki, “Fann graffiti fi Tunis” (Graffiti Art in Tunis), Qantara.de, September 2, 2012.
Available at hps://ar.qantara.de/content/fnw-ljrfyty-fy-twns-ljrfyty-fy-twnsslh-fy-yd-
lmqwm-lmdny, accessed July 10, 2015.
57 Noor Ahmed Said, “al-Graffiti al-`Arabi” (Arab Graffiti), Watny News, January 5, 2015.
Available at hp://watny-news.com/new_top/12759, accessed August 2, 2015.
58 Nicola Tama, “Ar-rassam `ala-l-judran: risa`il ash-shabab bi-lubnan” (Drawings on
Walls: Messages of the Youth in Lebanon), alJazeera, May 17, 2012. Available at
www.aljazeera.net/news/cultureandart/2012/5/17/-الرسم-على-الجدران-رسائل-الشباب
.accessed July 29, 2015 ,بلبنان
59 Sherif Boraie, ed., Wall Talk: Graffiti of the Egyptian Revolution, Cairo: Zeituna Press,
2012; Mia Gröndahl, Revolution Graffiti: Street Art of the New Egypt, Cairo: AUC Press,
2013.
60 Fatma Ibrahim and oraia Abou Bakr, “e Melanoly of Sad Panda,” Daily New
Egypt, 2013.
61 Gisele El Khoury, “Understanding Politics in the Arab World through Naji al-Ali’s
Cartoons,” Muah.org, October 16, 2003. Available at hp://muah.org/understanding-
politics-in-the-arab-world-through-naji-al-alis-cartoons/#.VcEZ42CiKBI, accessed
August 1, 2015.
62 Andreas Qassim, Arab Political Cartoons: The 2006 Lebanon War, MA esis presented
at Lund University, 2007. Available at
hp://andreasqassim.com/download/MA_thesis.pdf, accessed July 25, 2015.
63 Barney ompson, “Why Cartoons and Comics are Flourishing in the Middle East,”
Financial Times, July 25, 2015. Available at www..com/cms/s/0/26a80334-31fa-11e5-
91ac-a5e17d9b4cff.html, accessed August 2, 2015.
174
Selected Bibliography
Boraie, Sherif, ed., Wall Talk: Graffiti of the Egyptian Revolution,
Cairo: Zeituna Press, 2012.
El Khoury, Gisele. “Understanding Politics in the Arab World
through Naji al-Ali’s Cartoons,” in Muftah.org, October 16, 2003.
Available at hp://muah.org/understanding-politics-in-the-
arab-world-through-naji-al-alis-cartoons/#.VcEZ42CiKBI,
accessed August 1, 2015.
Gröndahl, Mia. Revolution Graffiti: Street Art of the New Egypt,
Cairo: AUC Press, 2013.
Khatib, Lina. Image Politics in the Middle East: The Role of the Visual
in Political Struggle, London: IB Tauris, 2012.
Mekki, amer. “Fann graffiti fi Tunis” (Graffiti Art in Tunis), in
Qantara.de, September 2, 2012. Available at
hps://ar.qantara.de/content/fnw-ljrfyty-fy-twns-ljrfyty-fy-
twnsslh-fy-yd-lmqwm-lmdny, accessed July 10, 2015.
Nippard, Cinnamon. “al-Ghrafiti fi-l-`alam al-`arabi” (Graffiti in the
Arab World), in Qantara.de, June 17, 2011. Available at
hps://ar.qantara.de/content/lgrfyty-fy-llm-lrby-lgrfyty-lrby-
khtwt-rby-bhbr-lmtlb-lsysy, accessed June 30, 2015.
Rashed, Waleed. “Egypt’s Murals Are More an Just Art, ey Are
a Form of Revolution,” in Smithsonian Magazine, May 2013.
Available at www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/egypts-
murals-are-more-than-just-art-they-are-a-form-of-revolution-
36377865/#DvuzGHgjTZ5455bv.99, accessed July 10, 2015.
Said, Noor Ahmed. “al-Graffiti al-`Arabi” (Arab Graffiti), Watny
News, January 5, 2015. Available at hp://watny-
news.com/new_top/12759, accessed August 2, 2015.
175
Tama, Nicola. “Ar-rassam `ala-l-judran: risa`il ash-shabab bi-
lubnan” (Drawings on Walls: Messages of the Youth in Lebanon),
alJazeera, May 17, 2012. Available at
www.aljazeera.net/news/cultureandart/2012/5/17/-الرسم-على .accessed July 29, 2015 ,الجدران-رسائل-الشباب-بلبنان
ompson, Barney. “Why Cartoons and Comics are Flourishing in
the Middle East” in Financial Times, July 25, 2015. Available at
www..com/cms/s/0/26a80334-31fa-11e5-91ac-a5e17d9b4cff.html,
accessed August 2, 2015.
176
Section III
A political framework: intersecting
human rights and governance crises
in the Middle East and North Africa
177
5
Genocide in the contemporary
Middle East
A historical and comparative regional
perspective
Martin Shaw
178
Introduction
e targeted atrocities of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
aer its emergence in 20141 drew widespread accusations of
genocide. Adama Dieng, Special Advisor of the United Nations
Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide, and Jennifer
Welsh, Special Advisor on the Responsibility to Protect, issued a
statement on the situation in Iraq in whi they pointed to a ‘risk of
genocide.’2 e same month an ‘Open Leer from Concerned
Genocide Solars Regarding the Situation in Syria and Iraq’ also
warned of genocide commied by Islamic State and the Al-Nusra
Front.3 Although both statements apparently concerned the
situations in Iraq and Syria generally, accusations of genocide were
directed only at Islamists. However, in Iraq the army and Shi`ite
militia were also accused of grave atrocities against particular
groups of civilians, and in Syria the Assad regime was then
responsible for far more targeted killings of civilians. Yet the
advisors’ and solars’ reminders to states of the ‘responsibility to
protect’ populations from Islamic State, including in the laer case
an explicit call for ‘military force’, by implication endorsed the move
towards U.S.-led bombing in conjunction with the Iranian-baed
ground counter-offensives of the Iraqi and Syrian governments.
ese offensives predictably entailed more atrocities on their parts,
but with Islamists labelled the genocidal actors, scrutiny of others’
acts within the scope of genocide was bloed.
is selectivity, both in applying the term ‘genocide’ and in
demanding intervention to protect civilians, illustrates the difficulties
of the political uses of ‘genocide’ whi critics have noted in other
contexts.4 We might be tempted to conclude that ‘genocide’ is an
impossibly contested concept whi it would be beer to replace.5
179
Yet there is a considerable literature,6 building on Raphael Lemkin’s
original work (1944) as well as the United Nations’ Convention
(1948),7 whi has developed the idea as a coherent sociological
concept whi can be applied impartially across cases. Since violence
targeted to destroy particular population groups—the core of the
genocide idea in most definitions—has been a feature of both
historical and contemporary conflict in the Middle East, it is
appropriate to ask how far the idea can illuminate the extensive
violations of human rights whi have recurred in the region over
the last century and what kind of analytical explanation can be
proposed for the paerns of genocide whi we can identify.
ese are the questions of this apter. e author is a
theoretically-oriented historical sociologist and comparative solar
of genocide, rather than a specialist in the Middle East. I aim, using
secondary literature, first to examine how analyses of genocide have
been and could be made concerning Middle Eastern situations, and
second to consider the Middle Eastern paerns so identified in a
comparative perspective on genocide in world-regions during the
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. I propose this analysis as
a preliminary exploration of the scope of genocide in the Middle
East and the extent to whi genocide theory (developed principally
in relation to other world-regions) can help us to explain issues in
this region.
180
e scope of the genocide concept
Since the genocide idea is theoretically as well as politically
contested, I begin with a brief exploration of its scope. e
mainstream of thinking about genocide has never restricted this to
the physical extermination of whole ethnic or national groups, as it
is oen popularly understood. When Lemkin invented the word,8 he
defined its modalities in terms of group ‘destruction,’ understood as
the crippling of culture, ways of life and social relations as well as
physical and biological harm. e core of his idea was maintained, if
more narrowly, in the U.N. definition whi listed five types of
genocidal act (not just killing),9 and has been upheld by later
academic definers, even if some have narrowed the phenomenon to
mass murder. However, the U.N. draers deliberately excluded
specific mention of the prime means through whi groups are
destroyed, the forcible removal of populations, whi has come to be
known by the euphemism ‘ethnic cleansing.’10
e U.N. expanded the list of group types, the destruction of
whi was considered genocide, to include racial and religious as
well as ethnic and national groups. However, solars have widely
argued that the destruction of other types, su as ‘political
groups’—excluded from the Convention for political reasons—and
also class and gender groups, should also be included. Moreover they
have pointed out that group types are not stable; that the content of
‘group’ destruction is similar regardless of how groups are defined;
that what counts is the oen arbitrary subjective definition of the
perpetrators;11 and that what the targets of genocide have in
common objectively is that they are predominantly civilian
populations, not armed actors.12
181
e U.N. definition also introduced the idea that action could
constitute genocide whether a group was targeted ‘in whole or in
part.’ is idea was amplified by Leo Kuper,13 who introduced the
idea of localized ‘genocidal massacres,’ an approa whi can be
generalized to consider other forms of ‘genocidal violence’ su as
expulsions and mass rape.14 While some definitions consider
genocide only in terms of the action of the perpetrators, so that their
targets are assumed to be pure (passive) victims, others emphasize
the possibilities of resistance, the involvement of third parties and
the interactive, conflictual nature of the phenomenon. Hence, in this
paper I will define genocide as ‘a form of violent social conflict or
war between armed power organizations that aim to destroy civilian
social groups, and those groups and other actors who resist this
destruction,’ and genocidal action as ‘action in whi armed power
organizations treat civilian social groups as enemies and aim to
destroy their real or putative social power by means of killing,
violence and coercion against individuals whom they regard as
members of the groups.’15
Sco Straus argues that there is a consensus in some recent work,
resting on a narrow definition whi models genocide in general on
the exceptional physical extermination of episodes like the Holocaust
and Rwanda, that genocide is a ‘rare’ phenomenon.16 However, this
is rather as though war was equated with its maximum cases, the
world wars, and therefore regarded as rare, excluding most lesser
wars from the scope of the phenomenon. e aims of destroying
societies and groups are mu more common than maximal cases
like the Holocaust suggest, and so it makes sense to analyze genocide
as a more extensive phenomenon. A broad concept recognizes
variation in the methods and targets of genocide, and leads to
recognizing genocide as a more widespread phenomenon than if we
define it narrowly as the physical extermination of whole groups. I
aim to show that this approa enables us to illuminate the paerns
182
of targeted anti-civilian violence in world-regions like the Middle
East.
183
A historical and international/regional
approa
Genocide is widely regarded as a ‘domestic’ phenomenon, in whi
states, particularly those controlled by totalitarian regimes, target
population groups within their territories. However, few genocides
fit this model, and cases typically occur through international
processes like colonization, war and occupation, whether totalitarian
or other types of regime are involved. Several solars have
theorized this aspect: Mark Levene argues that the ‘international
system’ generates genocide, Magnus Midlarsky that ‘international
context’ is crucial, and Donald Bloxham that regional paerns of
international conflict generated paerns of genocide in Europe in the
first half of the twentieth century.17
In recent work, I have generalized the laer case to examine the
role of regional paerns more generally in the ‘international
relations of genocide.’ I argue that different kinds of regional
paerns have developed: post-Cold War genocide in the African
Great Lakes region, for example, differs radically from genocide in
East Asia in the period of the Cold War.18 Both specific regional
social/political relations and anging global structures of
international power impact on paerns of genocide. ‘Regions’ are
not, moreover, given structures within the international system, but
are constructed and reconstructed in anging international politics,
including practices of genocide. For example, Timothy Snyder
identifies an eastern European region whi he calls ‘the bloodlands,’
between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, as the crucible of
genocide in the Second World War.19 Yet this is not ‘Eastern Europe’
as it was known during the Cold War, nor the ‘eastern’ Europe,
184
within and between the European Union and Russia, whi we
know today.
e Middle East exemplifies this dynamic aracter of
regionalism. A century ago, when the Oomans still held sway over
most of the area and oil was not yet a central economic reality, the
region as we understand it did not exist. e decay of the old empire,
the arrival of European powers and new economic dynamics,
creating opportunities for state-building and the emergence of
nationalism, created new regional realities. However, as elsewhere,
the Middle East ‘region’ has indeterminate boundaries, whi shi
in our imaginations as political realities and connections with
neighboring ‘regions’ ange.
185
e regional history of genocide
One of the seminal modern genocides, the destruction of Armenian
society in 1915, occurred in this ‘region,’ not only in eastern Anatolia
where most of the estimated million victims lived but also in the
deserts of modern Syria and Iraq where many were taken to die.
ere is now an extensive literature on this case.20 While mu treats
it as an internal maer of the Ooman Empire, it is also understood
in a larger global and regional context. It is widely anowledged
that First World War rivalries, especially between the Ooman and
Tsarist Empires, were catalysts. However, Bloxham analyzes the
Armenian genocide as part of a regional paern conditioned by the
larger system of imperial rivalries—a ‘great game of genocide.’21 e
regional context is of course the decline of the Ooman Empire and
the rise of what he calls ‘subject Christian nationalisms,’ primarily in
the Empire’s European provinces, accompanied by systematic great-
power involvement, whi stimulated Muslim flight into the Turkish
heartland and the nationalism of the Turkish core. He notes that ‘the
quintessentially Western ideology of nationalism was the import
that drove the genocide.’22
Bloxham’s account stands out in depicting genocide as a product
of interactions, not only between empires, between Christian and
Turkish nationalisms, and between Christian and Muslim migrants
and refugees, but also between multi-authored episodes of violence.
e Armenian genocide was not only accompanied by genocides of
other Christians, particularly Assyrians and Greeks, in the later
stages of the empire, as Hannibal Travis describes.23 It was, Bloxham
suggests, the outcome of extensive conflicts within both the Ooman
and Russian empires in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, involving forced population movements of Muslims as
186
well as Christians, provoked by the violence of insurgent nationalists
as well as imperial authorities. It was followed, not only by the
establishment of a Turkish nation-state whi consolidated the
outcomes of Ooman genocide (and still denies it a century later)
but also by episodes like the Greco-Turkish ‘war of extermination’ of
1921–2 in whi, Bloxham contends, ‘both sides far surpassed’ their
earlier atrocities.24
e Armenian genocide was not, therefore, a stand-alone major
genocide, but the nadir of extensive genocidal processes, in contexts
of both local and world wars, whi destroyed many local
communities of different ethnicities and religions. Bloxham sees
these as part of a ‘European history of violence,’ whi continued far
beyond the denouement of the Balkan wars in the early 1920s, and
culminated in Stalinism, Nazism and the ‘final solution.’25 Its major
sites were not only in Snyder’s ‘bloodlands’ of north-eastern Europe,
but once more in the Balkans.
is literature gives mu less aention to today’s ‘Middle East,’
the Arab world and North Africa, although clearly the conflicts of
the late Ooman period ramified into these zones, and not only in
the siting of Armenian murder. e national claims of the empire’s
Christian nationalities were eoed by emergent claims su as those
of the Kurds, notoriously recognized in the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920
but never realized in practice. Generally, however, nationalist
movements developed later than in eastern Europe, the
homogenization of populations did not develop so far, and genocide
was not a comparable issue in the first half of the twentieth century.
e question that arises, however, is whether the genocidal
experiences of eastern Europe in the early twentieth century, in
whi the destruction of the Armenians was su a defining
moment, can be seen as a precedent for recent and contemporary
developments in the wider Middle East.
187
Genocide in the Middle East during the Cold
War period
In Europe, the 1940s were the culmination, Bloxham suggests, of
three-quarters of a century of genocide.26 However, the Second
World War not only saw the greatest atrocities but also produced a
resolution of the combined inter-imperial and nationalist conflicts
that had produced genocide over the longer period. e Soviet Union
was able, with the acquiescence of the Western powers, to suppress
nationalism across eastern Europe and impose a new population and
border disposition whi the subsequent Cold War froze in place.
However, as genocide ended in Europe, five types of situations
generated new genocidal conflicts outside Europe during the Cold
War period.27 First, Cold War polarization (soon piing China
against the USSR, as well as the West) saw class-targeted violence,
both by the Mao Zedong and Pol Pot regimes and by anti-
Communist dictatorships in Indonesia and later in Latin America.
Second, wars of decolonization in the former European empires saw
genocidal episodes in insurgency and counterinsurgency. ird,
conflicts over control of the post-colonial state saw genocidal
massacres, for example in Rwanda and Burundi. Fourth, secessionist
wars from larger post-colonial states saw genocidal violence in
places su as Bangladesh, Biafra, Indonesia, and Sudan. Finally,
seler colonization continued to lead to the destruction of
indigenous peoples in Latin America.
e Middle East was not prominent in this new history of
genocide, and only some of these types of situation occurred in the
region in the second half of the twentieth century. e genocide
literature has mainly considered Iraq, whi therefore appears as
exceptional to the main paern of politics in the region. Aer the
188
rise to full power of Saddam Hussein in 1979 and his aa on Iran
in 1980, the Ba`athist regime carried out massacres of Kurds and
other minority groups in 1983, and in the Anfal campaign of 1986–
9,28 thousands of Kurdish villages were razed, tens of thousands of
civilians killed—most notoriously in the emical bombing of
Halabja—and hundreds of thousands displaced.29 Violence was also
directed at Shi`a, Assyrians and Yezidis. However, these policies
represented a radicalization of earlier Ba`athist policies aimed at
Arabizing the Kurdish-dominated north, partly because of security
concerns related to regional conflicts as Human Rights Wat
summarizes:
In the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, Iraqi central governments aempted to ange the ethnic
composition of northern Iraq by expelling hundreds of thousands of Kurds and other
minorities from their homes, and repopulating the areas with Arabs transferred from
central and southern Iraq. e government policy, known as “arabization” (ta`rib),
intensified in the second half of the 1970s with the aim of reducing minority
populations whom authorities considered to be of questionable loyalty in this strategic
area. e government responded to Kurdish insurgencies by mounting a concerted
campaign to alter the demographic makeup of northern Iraq, especially in areas
bordering Turkey and Iran. e government used military force and intimidation as the
primary methods. ese policies completely depopulated entire non-Arab villages that
authorities then bulldozed. By the late 1970s the Iraqi government had forcibly
evacuated as least a quarter of a million Kurds and other non-Arabs.30
Nor were the extensive Iraqi population forced removals the only
su developments. e emergence of the Israeli state had seen the
removal and flight of over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs during the war
of 1948, and the resulting societal destruction has also begun to be
discussed within a genocide frame.31 However, since the violent
‘ethnic cleansing’ involved a relatively small ratio of killed (about
5,000) to the population removed, some do not regard it as
genocide.32 Pappé presents compelling evidence that the Zionist
leadership pre-planned the emptying of Palestinian towns and
villages, and in any case Israel consolidated the destruction of most
of Palestinian society in its territory by refusing to allow refugees to
189
return.33 In this sense the erasure of Palestinian society was clearly
intentional. Yet Palestine can also appear as an outlier: an
exceptionally late case of seler colonization, an atypical projection
of a European nationalist project, and an unusual decolonization in
whi the colonizers succeeded in thwarting indigenous nationalist
claims.
erefore, Middle Eastern regimes have not been seen as widely
genocidal in this period. In an influential study, Miael Mann
explores the impact of regime type on what he calls ‘murderous
ethnic cleansing’ (whi I consider here within the scope of
genocide).34 He argues that neither established democracies nor
stable authoritarian regimes are prone to genocide, but unstable and
democratizing regimes (and also seler democracies) are. It could be
argued that the Middle East’s relative insulation from global
democratizing processes during the Cold War, when many regimes
approximated to stable authoritarianism, helped ensure that the
genocidal processes whi affected some parts of Asia, Africa, and
Latin America in this period were less evident.
e key analytical issue in exploring the role of genocide is the
relationship between the generally repressive aracter of Middle
Eastern regimes and specifically genocidal tendencies. e region’s
regimes, monarical and republican, Islamist and Zionist,
proclaimed ‘national’ values while resting on the support of specific
communal groups and discriminating against and repressing others.
Excluded population groups suffered more everywhere, amidst
general repression, especially of political opponents, whi was oen
brutal and violent. e question is why this paern of rule
radicalized in some countries, at specific moments, into aempts to
partially destroy out-groups, either in the sense of removing them
from specific locales and/or through physical violence against large
numbers of members of these groups.
It would be easy to link genocide to the exceptionally brutal
aracter of regimes like Saddam Hussein’s, Hafez al-Assad’s in
190
Syria (responsible for the Hama massacre of 1982) and Muammar
Ghadaffi’s in Libya (the Abu Salim prison massacre of 1996).
However, population displacement and mass violence continued
under other types of regime. In Turkey, under both military and
democratic rule, three thousand Kurdish villages were wiped off the
map and hundreds of thousands displaced; Turkey also expelled the
Greek population from the areas of Cyprus whi it occupied in
1974. Israel gradually extended its removal of Palestinian habitants
aer it occupied the West Bank in 1967, and Lebanese militia allied
to it carried out the 1982 massacre in the Sabra and Shatila refugee
camps.
us, explanations based on regime type are not sufficient. Clearly
counterinsurgency motives were oen important: massacres were
extreme forms of repression, oen in response to resistance. Forced
population movements showed the role of nationalist ideology and
(in the case of some Iraqi Arabization) economic security interests.
International conflict was also crucial: Saddam’s more radical
policies were conditioned by the conflicts resulting from his
aggressive international policies (the invasions of Iran and Kuwait)
as well as by his despotic type of rule.
Following the regional-international approa, we also need to
consider the role of the rival U.S. and Soviet hegemonies in
maintaining regime stability. Another widely accepted
generalization is that war is the harbinger of genocide, and the
Middle East was hardly without wars.35 Yet the wars between the
Arab states and Israel, for example, were brief and did not
fundamentally threaten regional or regime stability. Even the Iran-
Iraq war, whi was long and brutal, was regionally contained: the
revolutionary Iranian regime was isolated, since both superpowers
and most Arab states baed Iraq. Iraq’s atrocities against the Kurds
might then be seen as exceptions conditioned both by a uniquely
‘totalitarian’ regime and the international indulgence towards it,
because of its role in containing Iran.
191
From the end of the Cold War to genocidal
civil war in Iraq
If instability conditions genocide, then (geo)political upheavals may
be expected to create conflict and violence. Globally, the end of the
Cold War saw huge international and domestic political anges, not
just in Europe, but across Asia, Africa and Latin America in the
1980s and 1990s. In central Europe, ‘velvet’ revolutions accompanied
the transition, but elsewhere this was far from the case: in some
post-Soviet areas (Georgia, Armenia-Azerbaijan) as well as in
Yugoslavia, wars involving widespread genocidal violence and
expulsions took place. Democracy was generally associated with
national assertiveness, and where conflict developed, genocidal
violence was oen directed against out-groups, whose presence was
regarded as incompatible with the new nation-states.
For a quarter of a century, the Middle East appeared remarkably
immune to these democratic upheavals and the conflicts they
precipitated. However, another effect of the end of the Cold War, the
emboldening of U.S. military power–projection whi accompanied
first the marginalization and then the disintegration of Soviet power,
had major consequences in the region. e U.S.–led war to reverse
Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, in 1991, provoked Shi`a and
Kurdish rebellions whi the regime brutally repressed with
extended violence against civilian populations. e consequent U.S.–
U.K.–Fren intervention in Kurdistan was not only a notable
precedent for 1990s ‘humanitarian’ responses to genocide. It also
began a decade of containment of the Saddam regime, with U.N.
sanctions also seen as raising questions of genocide against the Iraqi
population.36
192
e U.S.–led war over Kuwait had another fateful consequence:
the turning of armed Sunni Islamism, whi had allied with U.S.
power against the USSR in Afghanistan in the 1980s, against the
United States with the formation of al-Qaeda and the series of
aas that culminated in the terrorist massacres in New York and
Washington in 2001. ese in turn would embolden the George W.
Bush administration to its 2003 invasion to overthrow Saddam
Hussein. Hyped as promoting a democratic Middle East, the formal
democratization of Iraq passed power to parties of the Shi`a majority
and allowed al-Qaeda to organize among the Sunni minority. e
‘resistance’, especially al-Qaeda in Iraq, found it easier to aa so
civilian targets among the Shi`a, Kurds, Yezidis and others than to
frontally confront U.S. forces.37 Shi`ite militia, newly linked into
state power, responded in what became a low-level civil war by
2005.38 However, this was not merely a war between two sets of
militia: both sides targeted the ‘other’ population in the areas of
Baghdad and other centers whi they controlled, in order to render
them homogeneous, carrying out extensive executions, spreading
terror and forcing large numbers to leave. e civil war added
hugely to the numbers of displaced people and refugees in
neighboring countries, already swollen aer the Iran war, sanctions,
and the U.S. invasion.
A new genocide advocacy whi emerged in North America aer
the 1994 Rwandan genocide had found, at this point, a major focus
in the Darfur crisis. Mahmood Mandani pointed out at the time:
e similarities between Iraq and Darfur are remarkable. e estimate of the number of
civilians killed … is roughly similar. e killers are mostly paramilitaries, closely linked
to the official military, whi is said to be their main source of arms. e victims too are
by and large identified as members of groups, rather than targeted as individuals. But
the violence in the two places is named differently. In Iraq, it is said to be a cycle of
insurgency and counterinsurgency; in Darfur, it is called genocide. Why the difference?
Who does the naming? Who is being named? What difference does it make?39
193
Mamdani raised these questions in order to question the ‘genocide’
appropriation of Darfur, but the refusal of a genocide frame for the
Iraqi war is equally striking. Clearly, linkage with the U.S. invasion
that provoked the violence aer 2003 had bloed genocide
recognition by solars and activists who take for granted the
essentially anti-genocidal aracter of the U.S. world role. A decade
later, however, those who make these assumptions are recognizing
genocide in Iraq and Syria, but only, we have seen, on the part of
Islamic State.
194
From the Arab Spring to wider genocide in
the Middle East
If it was anaronistic that authoritarian rule survived across the
Middle East aer the end of the Cold War, it could not last forever.
With the democratic movements of 2009–12 (the Green movement in
Iran followed by the Arab Spring), the worldwide trend appeared in
the region. Not only is it, therefore, also unsurprising that
democratization led to civil war, extreme repression and genocidal
violence in a number of cases, since similar outcomes followed
previous waves of democratization in the former Soviet and
Yugoslav regions, in Rwanda, and elsewhere in Africa. e
entrened aracter of most Middle Eastern regimes meant that
resistance to ange was particularly likely to be strong. It is
important, however, to distinguish different genocidal dynamics
from the general repressive responses of the authoritarian regimes.
Most existing regimes whi have retained power, including those of
Iran and the Arab monaries, have mainly responded with
repression, even oen brutal, but without aempts to partially
destroy populations, whi we may term genocidal violence.
Genocide appears to have been an issue in four main cases. First,
the Syrian Assad regime has systematically deployed extensive
violence (bombardments and emical aas) against opposition-
supporting populations since 2012, as well as extensive torture
against political prisoners. (Similarly, atrocities have been commied
against Sunni populations in Iraq by government forces and Shi`ite
militia.) Second, the counterrevolutionary Sisi regime in Egypt,
whi came to power through a coup following anti-Muslim
Brotherhood demonstrations, systematically massacred Brotherhood
supporters while repressing their demonstrations in late-2013, and
195
then used the courts to impose mass death sentences on hundreds of
its supporters. ese forms of extreme violence went far beyond the
measures adopted by the existing dictatorships. ird, the Israeli
government launed widespread aas on Gaza in 2009 and 2014,
in the laer case killing two thousand Palestinians in the systematic
destruction of neighborhoods. Finally, Islamic State has massacred,
expelled, enslaved and forcibly assimilated large numbers of non-
Sunnis from the areas of Syria and Iraq that it controls, and its
affiliates have carried out similar acts in other areas.
As noted at the beginning of this apter, mu commentary has
seen only Islamic State’s policies as genocidal. Clearly it openly
projects a genocidal ideology, proclaiming its intentional destruction
of non-Sunni groups. In contrast, the other actors do not formally
identify specific communities as enemies: indeed they deny this, and
claim to be fighting only political enemies. Whereas Islamic State
specifically identifies individuals by their religious identities, the
Syrian and Israeli governments target populations en masse by
virtue of their presence in areas controlled by their armed enemies,
and like the Egyptian regime target those involved in enemy
political, administrative and communal organizations. Yet similar
tactics can be seen in apparently divergent campaigns: for example,
al-Qaeda in Iraq, forerunner of Islamic State, concentrated many of
its suicide bombings on the new Iraqi police, and Israel, in its 2009
assault on Gaza, also systematically aaed police stations and
their personnel, whi it saw as extensions of Hamas. We can
consider all these policies and actions genocidal, however, to the
extent that they manifest aempts to destroy particular civilian
communities or groups as well as armed opponents.
196
Conclusion
is apter has explored the extent and implications of genocidal
tendencies in Middle Eastern politics, especially in the period since
the Second World War, in the light of a global perspective on
regional paerns of genocide. It has argued that the problem of
genocide has been more widespread in Middle Eastern history than
sometimes recognized, and has been exacerbated by the new
conflicts of the twenty-first century arising from the emergence of
democratic allenges to authoritarianism, in the radicalization of
regime repression as well as the policies of insurgents like Islamic
State.
In a global perspective, we need to ask whether these recent
developments represent longer-term historical dynamics as well a
specific region-wide crisis of rule. e comparative literature
suggests the importance of linkages between two sets of processes:
nationalist homogenization of populations and geopolitical rivalries.
Heather Rae sees genocide as a ‘pathological’ form of a general
homogenization of populations within nation-state boundaries.40
Mann argues that ‘murderous cleansing’ arises with democratization
because the ‘demos’ becomes identified with a particular ethnic or
religious identity.41 Bloxham argues that twentieth-century Europe
saw a ‘great unweaving’ of formerly ethnically mixed populations in
the context of the two world wars and other conflicts.42 While these
authors all consider ‘homogenization’ at the national level, Gerard
Toal and Carl Dahlmann show how in Bosnia in the early 1990s,
‘ethnopoliticization’ was followed by ‘ethnoterritorialization’ at a
municipal level, through a stalemated genocidal civil war.43 A
corresponding local homogenization of populations was reinforced,
197
despite the strongest U.N.-sponsored ‘return’ process for refugees yet
seen.
In the Middle East, the period aer the Second World War saw the
establishment of formal nation-states and the rise of secular
nationalism, although states like Saudi Arabia, Israel and (aer 1979)
Iran were based on a dominant religious ideology. Yet despite
nation-state formation, populations remained mostly mixed and
there was only limited population ‘unweaving.’ ere were some
significant movements in addition to those in Iraq and Palestine
noted above: Jewish populations were expelled or migrated to Israel,
non-Sunnis were forced out of key oil areas in Iraq, populations on
both sides concentrated aer Lebanon’s civil wars. However states
mostly repressed rather than expelled or massacred their ‘other’
communal groups. Meanwhile, although geopolitical rivalries
between regional states were manifest—Gulf Arab states feared
Iranian dominance even before the Islamic Revolution—they were
largely contained by Cold War alliances.44
e civil wars in Iraq, since 2003, and Syria, since 2011, have seen
huge population flows whi, like those in former Yugoslavia, have
seen local minorities forced out of territories controlled by all sides.
e genocidal sectarian agenda of Islamic State is exceptional only in
its explicitness: as actors controlling the various areas are
increasingly identified with particular communal identities, non-
members have widely been compelled to move. e result may be,
historian Joshua Landis has speculated, a ‘great sorting out’ of
Middle Eastern populations similar to that whi occurred earlier in
Europe.45 e centrality to the Syrian conflict of the open
geopolitical polarization between the Gulf Arab states and Iran only
deepens the sense of a historic turning-point. In this context, Israel’s
expansion into the occupied West Bank and the increasing assertion
of its right to undivided control of ‘the land of Israel’ appear as part
of a wider process whi is homogenizing populations and removing
the unwanted. Some regimes whi profess to protect some
198
minorities, as Assad does Syria’s Shi`as and Sisi Egypt’s Coptic
Christians, do so in order to create alliances against more important
out-groups, and so the security whi they provide may well prove
temporary.
Events in the Middle East are moving fast and the trends
discussed in this apter will undoubtedly be modified by new
developments. However, the analysis suggests that genocide is a
significant factor in contemporary Middle Eastern politics whi
may be contributing to profound social anges. Comparisons with
other world regions and periods suggest that the crisis will not end
soon or without further genocide.
199
Notes
1 Amnesty International. Ethnic cleansing on a historic scale: Islamic State’s systematic
targeting of minorities in Northern Iraq, 2014.
www.es.amnesty.org/uploads/media/Iraq_ethnic_cleansing_final_formaed.pdf;
Amnesty International. Escape from Hell: Torture and sexual slavery in Islamic State
captivity in Iraq, 2014. www.amnesty.org.uk/sites/default/files/escape_from_hell_-
_torture_and_sexual_slavery_in_islamic_state_captivity_in_iraq_-_english_2.pdf
(accessed September 4, 2016).
2 “Statement by Adama Dieng, Special Adviser of the Secretary-General on the Prevention
of Genocide, and Jennifer Welsh, Special Adviser of the Secretary-General on the
Responsibility to Protect, on the situation in Iraq,” United Nations, August 12, 2014.
www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/adviser/pdf/2014-08-
12.Statement%20of%20the%20Special%20Advisers%20on%20Iraq.pdf (accessed September
4, 2016).
3 “Open leer from Concerned Genocide Solars regarding the situation in Syria and
Iraq,” Genocide Wat, August 26, 2014. hp://genocidewat.net/2014/08/28/open-
leer-from-concerned-genocide-solars-regarding-the-situation-in-syria-and-iraq/
(accessed September 4, 2016).
4 A. Dirk Moses, “Toward a theory of critical genocide studies,” Online Encyclopedia of
Mass Violence, published on 18 April 2008, www.massviolence.org/Toward-a-eory-of-
Critical-Genocide-Studies (accessed September 4, 2016); A. Dirk Moses, “Paranoia and
partisanship: Genocide studies, holocaust historiography and the ‘apocalyptic
conjuncture,’” The Historical Journal vol. 54, no 2 (2011): 553–83; Martin Shaw, Genocide
and International Relations: Changing Patterns in Upheavals of the Later Modern World
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 15–27.
5 Christian Gerla, Extremely Violent Societies: Mass Violence in the Twentieth Century
World. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
200
6 Leo Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1981); Helen Fein, “Genocide: A sociological perspective,” Current Sociology
vol. 38, no. 1 (1990): 1–126; Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, The History and Sociology
of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991);
Martin Shaw, What is Genocide, 2nd Ed. (Cambridge: Polity, 2015).
7 Raphael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (New York: Carnegie, 1944); United
Nations. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948.
hps://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/U.N.TS/Volume%2078/volume-78-I-1021-
English.pdf (accessed September 4, 2016).
8 Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.
9 United Nations, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
10 Shaw, What is Genocide? 66–83.
11 Chalk and Jonassohn, (1991), The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case
Studies, 23.
12 Shaw, What is Genocide?
13 Kuper, Genocide, 32.
14 Martin Shaw, Genocide and International Relations: Changing Patterns in Upheavals of
the Later Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) 6.
15 Shaw, What is Genocide? 193.
16 Sco Straus, “Second-generation comparative resear on genocide,” World Politics vol.
59 (2007): 476–501.
17 Mark Levene, The Meaning of Genocide. Volume 1 of Genocide in the Age of the Nation
State (London: IB Tauris, 2005) 156–9; Manus Midlarsky, The Killing Trap (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005) 18; Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Donald Bloxham, The Final Solution: A
Genocide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Donald Bloxham, “e great
unweaving: e removal of peoples in Europe, 1875–1949”, in Removing Peoples: Forced
Removal in the Modern World, Riard Bessell and Claudia Haake eds., (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2009) 167–208.
201
18 Shaw, Genocide and International Relations.
19 Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books,
2010).
20 Riard Hovanissian, ed., The Armenian Genocide in Historical Perspective (New
Brunswi: Transaction, 1987); Robert Melson, Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins
of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1996); Taner Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian
Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2012); Hannibal Travis, Genocide in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire, Iraq
and Sudan (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2010) 173–226.
21 Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide.
22 Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide, 59.
23 Travis, Genocide in the Middle East, 237–92.
24 Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide, 164.
25 Bloxham, The Final Solution: A Genocide.
26 Bloxham, “e great unweaving: e removal of peoples in Europe, 1875–1949.”
27 Shaw, Genocide and International Relations, 124–44.
28 Travis, Genocide in the Middle East, 389–416.
29 Joost R. Hiltermann, A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
30 Human Rights Wat, On Vulnerable Ground: Violence against Minority Communities
in Nineveh Province’s Disputed Territories (New York: HRW, 2009).
31 Martin Shaw, “Palestine in an international historical perspective on genocide,” Holy
Land Studies 9, No. 1 (2010): 1–24.
32 Martin Shaw and Omer Bartov, “e question of genocide in Palestine, 1948: An
exange between Martin Shaw and Omer Bartov,” Journal of Genocide Research vol. 12
(2010): 3–4, 243–59. Bartov’s opinion.
202
33 Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (New York: Oneworld, 2006); Mark Levene,
“Review of I. Pappé; e ethnic cleansing of Palestine,” Journal of Genocide Research
vol. 9, no.4 (2007): 675–81.
34 Miael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005).
35 Shaw, Genocide and International Relations; Levene, The Meaning of Genocide; Mann,
The Dark Side of Democracy, 32.
36 Joy Gordon, Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2010).
37 M.J. Kirdar, AQAM Futures Project Case Study Series. Al Qaeda in Iraq, 2011.
hp://csis.org/files/publication/110614_Kirdar_AlQaedaIraq_Web.pdf (accessed
September 4, 2016).
38 J.D. Fearon, “Iraq’s Civil War,” Foreign Affairs vol. 86, no. 2 (2007): 2–15; Anthony
Cordesman and Emma Davies, Iraq’s Insurgency and the Road to Civil Conflict
(Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2008).
39 Mahmood Mamdani, “e politics of naming: Genocide, civil war, insurgency,” London
Review of Books vol. 29, no. 5 (2007): 5.
40 Heather Rae, State Identities and the Homogenisation of Peoples (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002).
41 Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing.
42 Bloxham, “e great unweaving: e removal of peoples in Europe, 1875–1949”.
43 Gerard Toal and Carl Dahlman, Bosnia Remade: Ethnic Cleansing and its Reversal
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
44 Fred Halliday, Iran: Dictatorship and Development (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978).
45 “e great sorting out: Ethnicity and the future of the Levant,” Joshua Landis, December
18, 2013, hp://qifanabki.com/2013/12/18/landis-ethnicity/ (accessed September 4, 2016).
203
Selected Bibliography
Akçam, T. The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The
Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman
Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012.
Amnesty International. (2014). Ethnic Cleansing on a historic scale:
Islamic State’s systematic targeting of minorities in Northern
Iraq. Available at:
www.es.amnesty.org/uploads/media/Iraq_ethnic_cleansing_final
_formaed.pdf (accessed July 7, 2016).
Bloxham, D. The Great Game of Genocide. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2005.
Bloxham, D. “e great unweaving: the removal of peoples in
Europe, 1875–1949” in Bessell, R. and Haake, C., eds. Removing
Peoples: Forced Removal in the Modern World. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2009.
Gordon, J. Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.
Hiltermann, J. R. A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing
of Halabja. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Hovanissian, R., ed. The Armenian Genocide in Historical
Perspective. New Brunswi, NJ: Transaction, 2007.
Mamdani, M. “e politics of naming: genocide, civil war,
insurgency” in London Review of Books, (2007) 29(5): 5–8.
Pappé, I. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. New York: Oneworld,
2006.
Shaw, M. What is Genocide? Cambridge: Polity, 2007/15.
Shaw, Martin. “Palestine in an international historical perspective on
genocide” in Holy Land Studies, (2007) 9(1): 1–24.
204
Shaw, Martin. Genocide and International Relations: Changing
Patterns in Upheavals of the Later Modern World. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Straus, S. “Second-generation comparative resear on genocide”.
World Politics, (2007) 59: 476–501.
Travis, H. Genocide in the Middle East: The Ottoman Empire, Iraq
and Sudan. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2010.
205
6
e ISIS Crisis and the Broken
Politics of the Arab World
A framework for understanding Radical
Islamism
Nader Hashemi
206
Introduction
When future historians of the Middle East look ba on the early
twenty-first century, the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
(ISIS) will be discussed as a key turning point in the politics of the
region.1 As a result of the expansion of ISIS in 2014, the boundary
between Iraq and Syria has effectively dissolved. e one-hundred-
year-old colonial borders of the Middle East have not faced su a
radical restructuring since Gamal Abdel Nasser aempted to unify
Egypt and Syria (1958–61), and Saddam Hussein’s aempt at
annexing Kuwait (1990).2 While these prior aempts to re-fashion
borders were short-lived, the phenomenon of the Islamic State will
not disappear as quily. In part, this is because the forces that have
produced ISIS are driven not from above, as in the aforementioned
cases, but are a result of social conditions that have emerged from
below and whi have been brewing in the region for some time.3
us, ISIS can be understood as a product of these dire social
conditions whi has produced a broken politics for the Middle East.
One of the defining features of ISIS is its brutality. Rarely has the
world been exposed to su sadistic violence from an armed
insurgency: its tactics include mass executions, public beheadings,
the immolation of prisoners and sexual slavery, mu of whi is
videotaped and publicized on social media as a recruiting tool. A
New York Times investigation revealed the “systematic rape of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority has become
deeply enmeshed in the organization” in the form of a “theology of
rape.” As a consequence, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human
Rights has arged ISIS with genocide, specifically with respect to its
persecution of Iraq’s Yazidi minority.4
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e ISIS crisis, however, is not merely a regional problem: it has
quily morphed into a global security allenge as well. Aer the
capture of Mosul (Iraq’s second largest city) and its expansion to the
outskirts of Baghdad, ISIS at its height controlled an area roughly
the size of Great Britain, ruling over five to eight million people. In
response, an international coalition of 65 countries, led by the United
States, was assembled to “degrade, and ultimately to destroy, ISIL,”
according to President Obama, “through a comprehensive and
sustained counterterrorism strategy.”5 As the war against ISIS
entered its second year, and aer approximately 8,000 airstrikes at a
cost of 5.36 billion US dollars, US General Martin Dempsey, the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, observed that the conflict was
“tactically stalemated.”6
During this time ISIS was able to recruit 1,000 new fighters per
month. e overall number of foreign recruits from 100 different
countries doubled from 15,000 to 30,000 in one year, including
approximately 4,500 fighters from the West. ISIS-related aas also
took place during this period in 26 countries, while loyalist groups in
ten countries proclaimed their allegiance and announced the
creation of ISIS wilayats or provinces.7 It was perhaps for these reasons that the Director of the FBI proclaimed ISIS a bigger threat
to the US than Al Qaeda.8
Prominent Western military and political leaders now speak of a
long-term struggle against ISIS. Upon his retirement, General Ray
Odierno, the US Army ief of staff, observed that in “my mind, ISIS
is a ten to twenty year problem, it’s not a two years problem.” Leon
Panea, who headed both the CIA and the Pentagon, noted that “I
think we’re looking at kind of a 30-year war,” while British Prime
Minister David Cameron described the war against ISIS as “the
struggle of our generation.”9 All of this suggests that ISIS will remain
a global security problem for the foreseeable future.
e critical question that emerges from this picture is: what is the
best framework of analysis to explain the rise and expansion of ISIS?
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Is the problem with ISIS fundamentally due to something inherent in
Islam or in Arab culture? Riard Haass, the President of the Council
on Foreign Relations, hinted at this when he observed that the
Middle East “is a deeply flawed part of the world that never came to
terms with modernity.”10 Similarly, President Obama on several
occasions has spoken about “ancient sectarian differences” between
Sunnis and Shias, observing that the turmoil in the region is “rooted
in conflict that date ba millennia.”11 His implication is that today
we are witnessing a Muslim version of Europe’s wars of religion in
the sixteenth century, and there is lile the international community
can do to ameliorate the problems facing the region; these conflicts
must burn themselves out. Or is the problem with ISIS
fundamentally connected to the legacy of US intervention in Iraq in
2003? Did a failed US policy toward the Middle East inadvertently
create ISIS, as some have argued?12 What is the best entry point or
point of departure to understand this problem?
is apter argues that the twin themes of human rights and
democracy, or rather, their general absence in the Arab–Islamic
world, can best explain the rise and expansion of ISIS. High levels of
state-sanctioned human rights violations and political
authoritarianism have been core features of the politics of the region
for several decades, and it is the consequences of these policies that
have fomented the growth of radical Islamist militancy. e political
vacuum that these crises have produced—engendered by war, state
collapse, and breakdown—has provided a fertile soil for the
emergence and expansion of salafi-jihadi Islam for whi ISIS is the
most recent iteration. Until these social conditions are anged, there
is no reasonable expectation that the ISIS crisis can be ameliorated.
209
e destructive legacy of political tyranny
and war
ere are many dimensions to the ISIS crisis. Structurally speaking,
the roots of this problem can be situated at the intersection of two
sets of political developments that have been brewing in the region
for decades. ese developments have quietly corroded the societies
and politics of the Middle East, and have converged at the present
moment to produce a set of social conditions conducive to the rise of
the Islamic State. e first development, whi has a longer history,
is a direct byproduct of political authoritarianism. e second
development, whi is more recent, is the destabilizing effects that
flow from war and state breakdown.
For most of its modern history, political authoritarianism has been
a key feature of the politics of the Middle East. Survey data has
consistently revealed that among the regions of the world that are
least democratic, the Arab Middle East has repeatedly topped the
list.13 e roots of this go ba to the colonial era and the rise of
modern states: an institutional legacy of colonialism was bequeathed
to the region, where the military, the police, and the bureaucracy
emerged as the strongest state institutions during the post-
independence period.14 An explanation on the persistence of
authoritarianism in the Middle East is a vast topic beyond the scope
of this apter. One thing, however, can be asserted with certainty:
the weakness of democratization and liberalization in the Arab-
Islamic world cannot be explained by Orientalist theories about the
sui generis nature of the Islamic world and its alleged problem with
modernity.15
Authoritarian regimes are not monolithic. ere is considerable
variation in terms of the nature of state–society relations and the
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extent of political tyranny. At the extreme end of the spectrum, there
are those regimes that Eqbal Ahmad has called ‘neofascist.’ e
survival of these regimes is dependent on
widespread repression of political opposition and social institutions outside of state
control (religious, educational, and professional associations, labor and peasant
organizations). e 1960s and 1970s witnessed a hardening of the authoritarian arteries
of these states, the systematization of terror, the ‘modernization’ and ‘rationalization’ of
their repressive institutions.16
As a result, one of the enduring aracteristics of these neofascist
regimes is that they are “the most blatant contemporary violators of
human rights in both [a] substantive and procedural manner.”17
Eqbal Ahmad’s analysis of these political systems was in the
context of the early 1980s with a view toward the entire global
south. By the late twentieth century, however, these paerns of
repressive rule further intensified in some countries and several of
the worst forms of neofascist regimes could be found in the Arab
world. ey were effectively “national security state[s]” where the
ruling elites viewed the “state as absolute, the individual as
unimportant.” e armed forces were the most important institution
in the country, and were viewed by ruling elites as a “major force for
constructive social ange.” Beyond the armed forces, there exists a
vast network of “secret political organizations … [that] permeate
society. eir highest officials rank among the countries’ most
powerful men.”18 Iraq and Syria under their respective Ba`ath parties
most closely approximate this description.19
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a human rights catastrophe. Upon
seizing power, Hussein expanded the institutions of violence and
ruled the country through a combination of lies, fear, show trials,
and a vast network of secret police and intelligence organizations.
e Shia population suffered persecution, and minorities like the
Kurds were harshly repressed. When they resisted these forms of
oppression, they were subjected to what Human Rights Wat called
“a campaign of extermination” that amounted to the “crime of
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genocide.”20 In 1990, Iraq ranked number one in the world for the
number of disappeared people. e U.N. aracterized the human
rights situation in the 1990s as being “of an exceptionally grave
aracter—so grave that it has few parallels in the years that have
passed since the Second World War.”21 Syria has suffered the same
fate under the rule of the House of Assad.
In his novella, The Silence and the Roar, the Syrian writer Nihad Sirees paints a vivid portrait of life under the Assad regime. “You
beer be careful,” the lead protagonist, Fathi Sheen, tell his mother.
“A joke about the Leader costs whoever cras it six months hard
time.” Parallels with North Korea abound: political life revolves
around the cult of personality of the noble Leader.
If ever it became necessary to play a song about love, it would have to be a song about
love of the Leader. All feelings must be oriented toward the Leader. Love, ardor and
rapture, infatuation and affection, passion and ecstasy: they must all be reserved for the
Leader. Wasting su emotion on a worthless young woman is nothing less than moral
decay itself.22
A comparison of the human rights records of Arab League
member states places Syria at the extreme end of a spectrum of
repression. Arguably, only Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was worse. e
1982 massacre in Hama killed roughly 20,000 people in one week and
is frequently mentioned to highlight the depredations of the Assad
regime. Less well known are the horrors of Syria’s vast prison
system. Tens of thousands have passed through its doors. Untold
numbers have disappeared. A 1996 Human Rights Wat report on
the notorious Tadmor prison describes “deaths under torture” and
“summary executions on a massive scale.” One former inmate
described the place as a “kingdom of death and madness” and
emaciated prisoners were compared to “survivors of Nazi
concentration camps.”23
But this was just one jail in a veritable torture aripelago. e
full story of Syria’s prison system and internal human rights
nightmare under the Assads has yet to be told. e horrors of Syria’s
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prison system have grown exponentially since the Arab Spring
revolt of 2011. e 55,000 photographs of torture victims smuggled
out of Syria by a military defector code-named Caesar, authenticated
by Human Rights Wat, have given us a glimpse. When the full
truth emerges, it may well rival the horrors of the Soviet Union’s
prison system ronicled in Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag
Archipelago.24
e key point that has a bearing on the rise of ISIS is that this
legacy of despotism and tyranny has destroyed the social fabric of
Iraq and Syria. is process was set in motion long before the
American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the 2011 Syrian uprising, both
of whi exacerbated a process of social decay. e concept of social
cohesion is relevant here. Social scientists have long recognized that
stable polities are rooted in a dense network of voluntary citizen
associations that help to sustain civil society and community
relations. is generates social capital and social trust, and produces
cooperation between citizens of diverse bagrounds. Over time
conditions are created that enhance social integration, cultivating
ties that bind society together, thus promoting peace and internal
stability.25
e legacy of political authoritarianism in the Arab world has
produced the opposite of these trends. Instead of social cohesion,
there has been social disintegration, instead of social trust there is
widespread fear and distrust of others. Suspicion of paid informants
of the state’s intelligence services is a normal part of life. ‘e walls
have ears’ phenomenon is a common feature of police states. e net
result of the habituation of these paerns of social and political life
over the course of decades is the creation of a culture of fear,
paranoia, and deceit replete with conspiracy theories and the desire
to exact revenge. When society is subjected to a calamitous sho,
via war or state collapse, collective disorientation sets in and the
doors to radicalization are opened.26
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Consider the case of Iraq. For the last thirty-six years, Iraq has
been deeply traumatized by ongoing war. e Iran–Iraq War (1980–
8) killed and wounded approximately one million people on both
sides. It destroyed Iraq’s main oil terminals, refineries, and
petroemical plants and cost Iraq approximately US$452 billion.
ere was a short respite before the onset of the Iraq–Kuwait war
(1990–1). During this second war, most of Iraq’s remaining economic
infrastructure was destroyed, and severe economic sanctions were
imposed by the United Nations, under the infamous “Oil for Food”
program. Shortly thereaer, there was a sharp increase in
malnutrition, infant mortality, and disease that devastated Iraqi
society during the 1990s. is was followed by the 2003 Anglo-
American invasion and occupation of Iraq whi quily produced
an armed insurgency, a partial collapse of the state, a sectarian civil
war, and the fragmentation of the country. Several hundred
thousands of Iraqis were killed and wounded.27 A January 2016 U.N.
Report noted that violence suffered by civilians “remains staggering,”
with at least 18,800 killed between January 1, 2014 and October 31,
2015. More than 3.2 million people were displaced during the same
period.28
Syria’s story is similar with two critical differences: the war has
been of shorter duration, but its social effects have been more
devastating. Since Mar 2011, an expanding war has engulfed the
entire country producing a mass exodus whi the U.N. has called
the “worst refugee crisis since World War II.”29 e war has included
an extreme human rights crisis that is near genocidal in its
dimensions (more on this later). As the conflict entered its fih year,
two reports established that 2014 was the deadliest year of the Syrian
conflict, with 250,000 deaths and close to a million wounded, a figure
that reflects six percent of Syria’s population. During this period, life
expectancy dropped by 27 years and more than half of Syria’s 23
million population became internally displaced or fled the country as
refugees. 82 percent of Syrians now live in poverty.30
214
One comprehensive U.N. report noted that the “future growth of
the Syrian economy has been compromised by the systematic
collapse and destruction of its economic foundations as its
infrastructure and institutions, human and physical capital, as well
as the wealth of the nation [have] been obliterated.”31 e future
viability of Syria as a cohesive nation-state is now in question.
e Internal Displacement Monitoring Center noted that as of
2015, Syria and Iraq have the largest number of displaced people in
the world. Collectively, 14 million people have been forced to flee
their homes. “One thing is clear: the situation in the region has
become uerly unsustainable,” observed António Guterres, the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He called this
crisis “a cancer that risks spreading and metastasizing.”32
It is precisely for these reasons of state breakdown and collapse,
that ISIS has been able to establish its state in parts of Syria and Iraq
and not in other parts of the Islamic world. Iraq and Syria are unique
in the sense that these states have been most adversely affected by
the twin legacies of political authoritarianism and the consequences
that flow from war and state collapse, thus creating a vacuum that
has been filled by radical Islamism.
e political illegitimacy of the state in Iraq and Syria has also
exacerbated these trends. e sectarian policies of the ruling regimes
in Baghdad and Damascus have alienated Sunni communities,
allowing ISIS to exploit their grievances to generate support and
claim the mantle of leadership among persecuted Sunni populations.
In the case of Iraq, Nuri al-Maliki’s government exploited a de-
Ba`athification law to marginalize and discriminate against Sunni
politicians. His majoritarian and authoritarian style of rule as prime
minister (2006–14) exacerbated communal tensions and bred Sunni
alienation whi ISIS successfully exploited. Peaceful protests by
Iraqi Sunnis were repressed. One example was the Al-Hawija
massacre on April 23, 2013 that killed 50 people and injured over 100,
enflaming Sunni public opinion across Iraq.33
215
In the case of Syria, the problem is measurably mu worse. e
House of Assad has been in power for more than 45 years. In
contrast to Iraq, no elections are held, and there is neither a free
press nor a functioning civil society. e key positions of power and
the senior officer corps are staffed by Assad loyalists, many of them
from the same Alawite minority as Bashar al-Assad. Aer the 2011
Syrian uprising, the base of support of the Syrian regime narrowed
to a core Alawite constituency, enhancing the perception among 70
percent of Syrians who are Sunni that Assad’s minority-led regime is
willing to retain power at all costs. Strong regional support from Iran
and Hezbollah to sustain the Assad regime has only deepened this
conviction.
Summarizing the connection between Sunni alienation and an
affinity for ISIS, the New York Times astutely observed that by “employing a mix of persuasion and violence” ISIS has expanded its
influence in the Arab world. It has been able to
present itself as the sole guardian of Sunni interests in a vast territory cuing across
Iraq and Syria. Ideologically unified, the Islamic State is emerging as a social and
political movement in many Sunni areas, filling a void in the absence of solid national
identity and security.
In the face of highly sectarian regimes, “some Sunnis [are] willing to
tolerate the Islamic State in areas where they la another defender,
especially in conservative communities like the ones in western Iraq
and eastern Syria, where the group is strongest.” According to one
analyst, as a result of the spread of sectarianism in the region,
“under the skin of every single Sunni there is a tiny Daesh [ISIS
supporter].”34
216
Why all roads lead to Damascus
e conflict in Syria is essential to understanding the rise and
expansion of ISIS. Without it, there would be no global ISIS crisis as
we understand it today. is relationship between Syria and ISIS
highlights a key argument of this apter: the regional turmoil
plaguing the Middle East is the byproduct of a severe human rights
crisis caused by the war in Syria (now into its sixth year). Syria is
like a “geopolitical Chernobyl,” that continues to “spew radioactive
instability and extremist ideology over the entire region.”35 ese
issues are deeply interlinked and cannot be over-emphasized:
resolving the political conflict within Syria is an essential
precondition to solving the ISIS crisis.36
ISIS is connected to Syria in several important ways that are
under-appreciated in the global debate on the topic. e dominant
narrative suggests that ISIS is most deeply linked to Iraq. Most
mainstream accounts locate the origins of ISIS in its parent
organization, Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), founded by Abu Musab al-
Zarqawi, whi surfaced aer the 2003 US invasion and
occupation.37 is is undoubtedly true, but to leave the story here
ignores critical subsequent developments.
Aer an impressive start, by 2008, the salafi–jihadi movement in
Iraq, for whi AQI was its most extreme representative, was in
decline. By 2010, AQI was beaten down, reduced to a few hundred
core followers. Its demise was due to a combination of factors: the
indiscriminate violence that AQI unleashed on Iraqi society, an
American troop surge, the creation of the “Sunni Awakening”
(Sahwa) councils that fought against AQI, along with promises of Sunni inclusion in a Shia-dominated Iraq. By the time American
combat troops were withdrawn in 2011, most of AQI’s senior leaders
217
and field operatives were eliminated and both Abu Musab al-
Zarqawi and Obama Bin Laden had been killed.38
ese events overlapped with the Arab Spring. When the Arab
Spring began in Syria in Mar 2011, no ISIS or Al Qaeda presence
existed in Syria. Nonviolent protesters anting nonsectarian slogans
formed the bulk of the opposition to the Syrian regime, who like
their counterparts in other Arab countries, were demanding
democracy, dignity, and social justice. e Assad regime (baed by
Iran and Russia) responded with criminal brutality. As a direct
result, a set of social conditions were created that gradually
militarized a peaceful uprising and then radicalized it.39 As the
cradown continued and the violence increased to near genocidal
levels, a political and ideological vacuum ensued. It was soon filled
by salafi-jihadis, many of whom were supported by regional powers,
who benefited from the ensuing aos and devastation. Many of the
top leaders of these radical Islamists groups were deliberately
released from Assad’s prison as part of a strategy to sectarianize the
uprising and remove the global spotlight on the Assad family’s 41
year rule.40 Radical Salafism rose from the ashes of the internal
conflict in Syria and was given a new lease on life. It continues to
expand to this day.
By the end of the first year of the Syrian uprising, all leading
human rights organizations—Amnesty International, Human Rights
Wat and the U.N. Independent International Commission of
Inquiry on Syria—had arged the regime in Damascus with state-
sanctioned “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity.”41 By a wide
margin, the Assad regime has been responsible for the vast majority
of civilian deaths during the course of this war. According to the
Syrian Network for Human rights, from Mar 2011 to October 2015,
regime forces were responsible for 96 percent of civilian deaths; ISIS
was responsible for approximately one percent.42 As the conflict
continued and deepened, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human
Rights, Navi Pillay, repeatedly called on the U.N. Security Council to
218
refer the Assad regime to the International Criminal Court; a move
bloed by Russia and China. During this time, the U.N. Secretary-
General Ban Ki-moon issued repeated global warnings that “Syria is
now the biggest humanitarian and peace and security crisis facing
the world.”43 e human rights catastrophe that has engulfed Syria
worsens with every passing year. Syria is the primary moral and
humanitarian catastrophe of the twenty-first century.
is conflict has produced the world’s worst refugee crisis since
World War II, a emical weapons crisis, a rape crisis, a health crisis,
a hunger crisis, a torture crisis, a cultural heritage crisis—and, as a
consequence of all the foregoing—an ISIS crisis. ese quasi-
genocidal conditions have created a fertile soil for the rebirth and
expansion of radical Islamist militancy in the heart of the Arab
world.44
ISIS is connected to Syria in other distinct ways that tie their
futures together. According to US intelligence, two-thirds of ISIS’
military assets are located in Syria.45 Were ISIS to be defeated in
Iraq, it could entren itself in eastern Syria where it feeds off local
support and where no local military force or bombing campaign can
easily dislodge it. e Syrian town of Raqqa is the de facto capital of
ISIS. Most executions of foreign hostages have taken place in Syria.
ISIS was reborn in Syria; its future will be determined in Syria.
e argument that the conflict could be ‘contained’ within Syria’s
borders is easily exposed now as a fallacy. From the start, the
question of how the international community should respond to
Syria led to divisive debate. e prominent American international
relations theorist and foreign policy analyst John Mearsheimer,
invoking realpolitik arguments, argued that the conflict in Syria did
not affect core strategic interests of the West and was of “lile
importance for American security.”46 e 2015 ISIS-inspired terror
aas in three NATO countries (in the cities of Paris, San
Bernardino and Ankara), and the wave of ISIS-related aas in
219
early 2016 in Jakarta, Istanbul, Baghdad, Philadelphia, and Burkina
Faso suggest otherwise.
Similarly, Stephen Walt has argued publicly that the quiest way
of ending the conflict would be for the Syrian people to surrender to
the Assad regime.
What may be best for the Syrian people in terms of ending human suffering is to say [to
them] we are not going to drive him from power … but that ultimately if what you
want is fewer people dying … you might have to anowledge that he will remain in
power. … is is at least a possibility we will have to begin to reconcile ourselves to.47
Walt’s proposal is undoubtedly correct, but only in the same sense
that the conflicts in Rwanda and Bosnia twenty years earlier could
have been ended sooner if opposition forces surrendered to the Hutu
and Serbian governments. e Obama Administration, informed by
the legacy of the Iraq invasion, has been persuaded by these
arguments.48
Syria clearly demonstrates, as Bosnia did twenty years earlier, that
wars whi involve massive human rights violations on a near
genocidal scale cannot be contained or ignored. eir destabilizing
affects eventually pose a direct threat to international peace and
security. In an age of globalization, the ripple effects are felt around
the world.
None of this “was inevitable,” observes Rania Abouzeid in her
forensic investigation on the rise and expansion of ISIS.
e Syrian revolution—and the hesitant, confused international reaction to it—paved the
way for the resurrection of a militant Islam that would turn vast regions of Iraq and
Syria into borderless jihadi strongholds and in closer to redrawing the map of the
Middle East.49
e airperson of the U.N. Independent International Commission
of Inquiry on Syria, the distinguished jurist Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro,
similarly observed that the inaction of the international community
“nourished the violence” consuming Syria and “its most recent
beneficiary [has been] ISIS.”50
220
e crushing of the Arab Spring and the rise
of ISIS
ere is a longstanding and widely recognized inverse relationship
between democratic societies and violence. e more that
democracy advances, in the form of political accountability, public
transparency and the peaceful transfer of power, the less the
likelihood of violence. is is a variation of the famous democratic
peace theory that recognizes that democratic societies are more
internally peaceful and less likely to go to war than their non-
democratic counterparts.51 is theory is pertinent to understanding
the rise of ISIS.
Observing the general turmoil in the Middle East today, it is easy
to forget that a few years ago, the region looked quite different. e
2011 Arab Spring brought hope to people of the region. Starting in
North Africa and moving in qui succession across the Middle East,
pro-democracy revolts swept three longstanding dictators from
power and came close to removing another two. e Arab Spring
shook the foundations of Middle Eastern authoritarianism while
capturing the imagination of the entire world.
Al Qaeda’s response to the Arab Spring was revealing. It was
shoed by a turn of events that produced ideological confusion and
organizational incoherency. In an important study, Jihadi Discourse
in the Wake of the Arab Spring,52 the authors note that during the Arab Spring salafi-jihadi groups were both impotent and unpopular.
e reasons for this are self-evident. For a moment it appeared that
political ange could be aieved via peaceful protest rather than
violent revolution. is undermined one of the central ideological
claims of Al Qaeda whi had long argued that dictators could only
be removed via armed struggle; democratic elections and nonviolent
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protests could never work. As Ayman Al-Zawahiri put it: “What is
truly regreable is the rallying of thousands of duped Muslim youth
in voter queues before ballot boxes instead of lining them up to fight
in the cause of Allah.”53 As a result, the ideological appeal of Islamic
militancy during this period fell precipitously throughout the Arab-
Islamic world.
e Arab Spring was rolled ba due to a counter-revolution led
by the previous ruling elites, the deep state, and its regional allies
(primarily Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates).54 e
promise of peaceful political ange and the door to democratization
was slammed shut. As a direct result, there was an increase in
violence and extremism across the region. is demonstrates another
important relationship that is central to the politics of the Middle
East: when democratic openings are closed and moderate forms of
political Islam are crushed, radical Islam thrives as a consequence.
e case of Egypt aer the 2013 military coup demonstrates this
point.
General Abdel Faah El-Sisi came to power by toppling Egypt’s
first democratically elected President, Mohammad Morsi. e
badrop to his seizure of power was an orgy of violence that
Human Rights Wat described as a “likely crime against humanity”
and “what may have been the worst single-day killing of protesters
in modern history.”55 e reference is to the Rab`a al-adawiya
massacre on August 14, 2013 that killed 1000 people in downtown
Cairo in a few hours. ese events unofficially brought an end to the
Egyptian democratization process that began with the ouster of
Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. Since then, there has been a
significant rise in violence and political extremism across the
country.
In the twenty-two month period since Egypt’s July 2013 coup,
there have been more than 700 aas across Egypt compared to 90
aas in the previous twenty-two months. Human Rights Wat
has reported a figure of 41,000 political prisoners (mostly members of
222
the Muslim Brotherhood), many of whom have been tortured.
According to Amnesty International, Egypt issued 509 death
sentences in 2014, the second highest number in the world.56
e number of young people radicalized by these events is
difficult to measure. To the extent that anecdotal evidence, media
reports, and trends on social media are a reflection of this tendency,
it is accurate to state that Egypt has become a breeding ground for
radical Islamism. Marc Lyn has argued that, notwithstanding the
Muslim Brotherhood’s social conservatism and illiberalism,
historically they performed an important role as a “firewall against
extremism.”57 A politically active Egyptian with a religious identity
could find expression in the public sphere by joining the Muslim
Brotherhood and participating in electoral politics. Since the coup
and the aempt to eradicate the Muslim Brotherhood, this option no
longer exists. e two oices that remain for Egyptian youth are: 1)
to remain silent and accept the current neofascist order, or 2) to
contemplate joining a utopian revolutionary political project su as
ISIS. ere is no third alternative.58 Tales from Egypt’s notorious
prison system confirm this argument.
Mohammad Soltan, an Egyptian-American, was twenty-five years
old when he was arrested in the summer of 2013. He spent twenty-
one months in jail; during sixteen of these months, Soltan was on a
hunger strike. He lost 160 pounds, risking organ failure. When he
emerged from prison he could not walk. In a special New York Times profile, he discussed the torture and brutality he faced but also
revealed details of the internal political debates among prisoners;
several of his cellmates were ISIS supporters.59
“ey walked around with a victorious air,” he recalled. ey
would frequently point to supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood
and state: “look, you idiots, your model doesn’t work.” e ISIS
supporters would then proceed to “make very simple arguments
telling us that the world doesn’t care about [democratic] values and
only understands violence.” He also noted that because “of the
223
gravity of the situation [we] were all in, by the time the ISIS guys
were finished speaking, everyone, the liberals, the Brotherhood
people, would be le completely speeless. When you’re in that
type of situation and don’t have many options le, for some people
these kinds of ideas start to make sense.”60
Tunisia, the one Arab Spring country that did undergo a
successful democratic transition, provides an alternative model to
that of Egypt. Raed Ghannoui, the leader of Ennahda, has
observed that the “only way to truly defeat ISIS is to offer a beer
product to the millions of young Muslims in the world.” It is called
“Muslim democracy.” He noted that that most “young people don’t
like ISIS—see how many millions flee from it—but they won’t accept
life under tyrants either.” is “beer product” must be a political
system that is democratic, that respects human rights, and that gives
Islamic values political space.61
It is not a coincidence that ISIS emerged and aracted followers
aer the crushing of the Arab Spring, highlighting the relationship
between democratization and violence. e simplest formulation of
this insight into modern politics was perhaps best articulated by
John F. Kennedy in 1962: “ose who make peaceful revolution
impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”62
224
e political theology of ISIS
A significant part of the ISIS crisis is related to the development and
mainstreaming of a particular Sunni interpretation of Islam. is
interpretation is deeply sectarian, misogynistic, authoritarian,
intolerant, anti-democratic, puritanical, ultraconservative and most
importantly—it legitimates the use of violence against others,
particularly fellow Muslims. is brand of Islam has a specific
intellectual genealogy and political history, including a history of
collusion with Western powers, whi has not received sufficient
aention in the global debate on ISIS. Any comprehensive
understanding of the ISIS crisis would be incomplete without
examining this dimension of the problem.
Khaled Abou El Fadl has described this phenomenon as the “rise
of the culture of ugliness in modern Islam.” In the context of Islam’s
1400 year history, it is a recent development but it has obtained a
critical mass, sinking deep roots in Muslim societies in the laer half
of the twentieth century. Its spread has had a corrosive effect on
Muslim communities and it “continues to be the single most
important obstacle to articulating reasonable narratives of legitimate
possibilities of Islam’s contribution to human goodness.”63 e
dissemination and proliferation of this intolerant interpretation of
Islam can be traced to the heart of the Arab-Islamic world and is
linked to the internal policies of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and
the rise of Wahhabism.
Wahhabism, is a puritanical interpretation of Islam associated
with the teaings of the eighteenth century evangelist Muhammad
bin ‘Abd al-Wahhab (d.1792). Concerned with the decline of Islamic
civilization, he developed a theology that was a reflection of the
austere desert surroundings he came from, the Najd region of central
225
Arabia. e galvanizing power of his message was rooted in an
uncompromising belief that the moral renewal of Islam could only
take place by the cleansing of kufr (unbelief) from the ummah
(Islamic community).64
His analysis of the problem of civilizational decline was that
Muslims have forgoen God and the unity of his message (tawheed) because of the reliance on heretical innovations and the infiltration
of corrupt rituals and beliefs associated with Shiism, Sufism, and
other deviant Sunni practices. His writings rejected mu of the
classic Islamic jurisprudential tradition and the plurality of sools
of thought connected to this tradition. Orthodoxy was narrowly
defined in pursuit of an absolutist and insular reading of Islam.
Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab demonstrated hostility toward all forms
rationalism and intellectual thought. He viewed fields of knowledge
related to the humanities, especially philosophy, as a unique
corruption connected to “the sciences of the devil.”65 Most forms of
human creativity and artistic expression su as music were
repudiated. He also preaed hostility toward non-Muslims, who
should never be befriended or taken as allies. Arguably his most
destructive teaing was the promotion of the practice of takfir— accusing another Muslim of apostasy, thereby sanctioning violence
against her or him.
In justifying takfir, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab developed a methodology that was to be emulated by radical Islamist groups in the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. He would scour “the vast
annals of the [Islamic] tradition in sear of cruel anti-humanistic
reports that have long been dead and then rehabilitat[ed], [spread],
and empower[ed] them so that they [could] justify the commission
of acts of ugliness.”66 is would give these acts of violence an aura
of Islamic authenticity and sanctity that ordinary Muslims, unversed
in the details of their religious tradition, would find difficult to
repudiate.
226
Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab’s views would have remained marginal were
it not for several critical developments that allowed them to expand
globally. e first issue is the overaring allenge of modernity
facing Muslims in the late nineteenth century in terms of the rise of
the West, especially the intellectual, moral, and political issues
associated with this allenge. is produced a variety of responses
both radical and reformist, and staunly secular or traditionally
conservative.67 Within this context, a Salafist theological orientation
emerged.
At its inception in the late-nineteenth century, Salafism was a
broad reformist intellectual response that sought to negotiate the
tensions between tradition and modernity by going ba to the
origins of Islam for inspiration and answers. Specifically, it elevated
the moral example of the early Muslim community (al-salaf al-salih) as one to be emulated in order to meet modern allenges. In this
sense, all Muslims are Salafists by default, given the central
importance of the life of the Prophet Muhammad and the early
Muslim community for believers. During the mid-twentieth century,
however, Salafism moved in a more conservative direction and
gradually became infused with Wahhabism in part because of the
methodological similarity between these two currents of thought.
Today the two are synonymous terms. e core aracteristics of
Salafism include: (1) an emphasis on the purity of the early Muslim
community and a rejection of anything that came aerward in
Islamic history; (2) an obsession with the problem of shirk (polytheism) that has allegedly infused itself into Muslim societies
due to rituals and practices that are innovations (bid`a) that must be purged; and (3), a sincere belief that the r`an and the traditions of
the Prophet Muhammad (sunnah) are clear in meaning and possess
the answers for every conceivable circumstance.68
e second development that guaranteed the survival of
Wahhabism was its embrace by Muhammad Ibn Saud, a local tribal
ief who lived in the late eighteenth century. is produced a
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religious-political movement that gradually subdued the other tribes
of the Arabian peninsula and formed the foundations of the social
contract that shaped the modern state of Saudi Arabia.69 e House
of Saud supplied the military muscle, while Wahhabism provided the
underlying ideology. In areas where they expanded during the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Wahhabis would engage in
extreme acts of brutality that shoed local Muslims. Public
floggings for crimes su as listening to music, shaving their beards,
wearing silk or gold (for men), smoking, playing ess, bagammon
or cards or failing to uphold strict rules of gender segregation were
common. All shrines and most historical monuments in Arabia were
also destroyed.70 ese practices, justified in the name of a literalist
reading of Islam, would have been limited to the Arabian peninsula
had it not been for another critical development—the discovery of
oil.
e marriage of Saudi petrodollars to Wahhabi Islam gave this
specific ideological orientation a global rea. Muslim societies
around the world were affected through the financing of mosques,
the dissemination of Wahhabist literature, and the provision of
generous solarships for the training of imams in Saudi Arabia.
Billions of dollars were poured into this endeavor. Aer the 1979
Iranian Revolution, more funds were invested to undermine Iran’s
revolutionary appeal. e Wikileaks documents “indicate an
extensive apparatus inside the Saudi government dedicated to
missionary activity that brings in officials from the Foreign, Interior
and Islamic Affairs Ministries, the intelligence service and the office
of the king.” Projects that have been funded include “puing foreign
preaers on the Saudi payroll, building mosques, sools and study
centers, and undermining foreign officials and news media deemed
threatening to the kingdom’s agenda.” 71
e consequences of these policies le their mark on Muslim
societies. As Saudi Arabia emerged as a major regional power and
oil exporter baed by Western powers, the pluralism and relative
228
tolerance that once existed in Muslims societies were gradually
undermined as Saudi funding extended Wahhabi influences across
the Muslim world. Existing tensions related to problems of
development, modernity and identity were exacerbated. A rise in
sectarianism was one result of these policies.
Arguably, the most toxic effect of Wahhabism has been the
mainstreaming of a puritanical interpretation of Islam masquerading
as normative Islam by hijaing the symbols of Islamic authenticity
and legitimacy. Commenting on the global spread of Wahhabism,
Khaled Abou El Fadl observes:
Today nearly all of the issues and problematics that interested and pre-occupied
Wahhabi theology and thought have been injected into the Muslim mainstream, and in
fact, have come to permeate Muslim social interactions and debates. What were at one
time considered imprudent fixations upon minutiae marginal to the faith by an
intemperate group of Bedouins now [have] become at the center of Muslim debates.72
e radicalization of Muslim youth today and the use of violence in
the name of religion also have direct Wahhabi links. Several of the
most dramatic acts of terrorism in the West in recent years illustrate
this point. Consider the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing. e
perpetrators of this crime were Tamerlane and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev,
young men from the Dagestan/Chenya region of the northern
Caucasus. Aer the breakup of the Soviet Union, religion was freed
from state control and a new Salafist-Wahhabi interpretation of
Islam, baed by Saudi Arabia, moved in to fill the void. On a trip
ba to Dagestan in early 2012, Tamerlane Tsarnaev was reportedly
radicalized. Among his favorite videos on Youtube, for example, was
one that denounced Dagestan’s traditional Sufi interpretation of
Islam in favor of the more hardline Salafist interpretation that had
arrived on the scene.73
e 2015 Paris aas also have drawn aention to the problem of
radicalization in Muslim immigrant communities. Belgium has
featured prominently in this story and according to an investigation
229
by The Independent, some “of the answers may lie in the implanting
of Saudi Salafist preaers in the country from the 1960s.”74
In 1967, keen to secure oil contracts, the Belgian government
hosted the King of Saudi Arabia. Part of the expansion of relations
included the establishment of mosques and the hiring of Gulf-
trained clerics. is coincided with the arrival of North African and
Turkish workers whose main places of worship were these Saudi-
supported mosques. “e Moroccan community … comes from the
Maliki sool of Islam, and are a lot more tolerant and open than the
Muslims from other regions like Saudi Arabia,” noted George
Dallemagne, a Belgian member of parliament. “However, many of
them were re-Islamified by the Salafist clerics and teaers … Some
Moroccans were even given solarships to study in Medina, in
Saudi Arabia.”
Mr. Dallemagne says these Salafist clerics have been a huge
obstacle to the integration of Moroccan immigrants. He observed
that:
We like to think Saudi Arabia is an ally and friend, but the Saudis are always engaged
in double-talk: they want an alliance with the West when it comes to fighting Shias in
Iran, but nonetheless have a conquering ideology when it comes to their religion in the
rest of the world.
A Wikileaks document confirmed this story:
[It] revealed that a staff member of the Saudi embassy in Belgium was expelled years
ago over his active role in spreading the extreme so-called Takfiri dogma. e cable—
between the Saudi King and his Home Minister—referred to Belgian demands that the
… Saudi director, Khalid Alabri, should leave the country, saying that his messages were
far too extreme.75
A similar story can be told about the December 2015 terrorist aa
in San Bernardino, California. e assailants, Syed Rizwan Farook
and Tashfeen Malik, had Saudi connections. Not only did the couple
meet and marry in Saudi Arabia, but press reports reveal that the
Malik family, aer moving to Saudi Arabia when Tashfeen was a
230
toddler, internalized a Wahhabi form of Islam that led to an
estrangement with their family ba in Pakistan. “From what we
heard, they lived differently, their mindset is different. We are from a
land of Sufi saints … this is very shoing for us,” said soolteaer
Hifza Bibi, the step-sister of Malik’s father.76 People who knew the
family claim that, “aer some years in Saudi Arabia, Ms. Malik’s
father, Gulzar, rejected the more tolerant Barelvi sool of Sunni
Islam that his family had traditionally practiced, and turned to the
stricter (neo-Wahhabi) Deobandi sool.” Family ties were broken as
a result. “‘ere was a lot of friction within the whole family as they
adhered to different sects,’ said Zahid Gishkori, a journalist based in
Islamabad who is from the same district as the family.”77 When
Tashfeen Malik returned to Pakistan to study pharmacy, she earned
a reputation as that ‘Saudi girl’ from sool administrators who
noted she had troubling fiing in due to her strict practice of
Wahhabi Islam.78
231
ISIS and Saudi Arabia compared
In the summer of 2014, ISIS caught the aention of the world as they
captured the city of Mosul. Soon aerward, the public beheadings of
five foreign hostages took place in qui succession and were
broadcast on social media. e story dominated headlines for weeks.
Unbeknownst to most people, however, was that during the same
period in Saudi Arabia, nineteen people were beheaded.79 No
Western government issued a protest. According to Amnesty
International, this was part of a trend in Saudi executions that had
reaed a 20-year high by the end of 2015. Saudi Arabia began the
year 2016 with a mass execution of 47 prisoners, including a
prominent Shia cleric, drawing further rebuke from human rights
groups.80 e behavioral similarities between Saudi Arabia and ISIS
run deep.
On December 16, 2014, ISIS issued a communiqué listing
punishments that would now be enforced in Islamic State territory.
It justified these punishments by invoking a traditional
interpretation of hudud provisions stipulated in Islamic law. e crimes and punishment list included: treason (death), homosexuality
(death), the (amputation of hand), adultery (death by stoning),
murder, treason and blasphemy (death), and so on.81 is is nearly
identical to the crime and punishment provisions routinely
implemented in Saudi Arabia.82
When ISIS needed textbooks for its sool curricula, it
downloaded books from the Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia.
Wahhabi texts were a perfect ideological mat for its theology
given the shared Salafist theological bases between the two political
entities. A study that followed Saudi twier conversations on the
topic reported statements that confirmed that this symmetry was
232
“normal” because as one person noted “all our life we have lived
with [ISIS] and its thoughts, its sools and its curriculum.” Adil al-
Kalbani, a Wahhabi cleric, who had led prayers as an Imam at the
Holy Shrine in Mecca, stated that “[ISIS] is a Salafi [fundamentalist]
offshoot … a reality we should confront with transparency.”
Commenting on this admission, Abu Hamza al-Masa`ary added that
ISIS is the fruit of “the tree of Wah[h]abi preaing.”83
Notwithstanding these shared theological underpinnings, there is
a critical difference that sets ISIS apart from Saudi Arabia. e
Salafist strain of Wahhabism preaed in Saudi Arabia promotes
obedience to the monary while the ISIS’ version rejects this notion
and seeks to topple existing political regimes and replace them with
a Caliphate. is poses a deep political dilemma for the future of
Saudi Arabia. e House of Saud “now has a foe that is so close it its
own religious interpretation of Islam, that Saudi Arabia cannot be
seen to be fighting ISIS very strongly because it would undermine its
authority at home.”84
Proof of this ISIS–Saudi connection has been produced in a
Brookings Institution study. Based on a sample size of 20,000, the
report concluded that ISIS supporters on Twier disproportionately
come from Saudi Arabia.85 Saudi Arabia also tops the list of foreign
fighters who have joined this organization, and Saudi fighters have
undertaken many of the suicide operations in ISIS-controlled
territory as well.86
In summary, reflecting on the impact of Wahhabism on Muslim
societies today, Khaled Abou El Fadl concludes that because of its
“puritanical and idealized, and thoroughly mythologized, view of the
past, the Wahhabi orientation cannot reconcile between its
understanding of this idealized view of the past and the complexity
and diversity of cultures” that constitute our modern world. e
final result is that “Wahhabi influence has added a dimension of
oppressiveness and vehemence to contemporary Muslim life that
frequently borders on the morbid.”87
233
Karen Armstrong reaes a similar conclusion. She notes that a
whole generation of Muslims, therefore, [have] grown up with a maveri form of Islam
that has given them a negative view of other faiths and an intolerantly sectarian
understanding of their own. While not extremist per se, this is an outlook in whi
radicalism can develop.88
And it has. If you are a young Muslim in Karai, Cairo, Toronto, or
London today, keen on connecting with your religious heritage, the
likelihood of exposure to a Wahhabi-influenced version of Islam is
high. Conversely, the possibility of exposure to an ethical and
humanistic interpretation of Islam, a form that dominated most of
Islamic history allowing it to expand and aract new followers, is
low. Part of the allenge of combating ISIS is to reverse this
equation.
234
Conclusion
e ISIS crisis is a manifestation of the broken politics of the Middle
East. ese broken politics are a direct result of an ongoing series of
human rights crises and democracy-deficits that have plagued the
region for decades. ese social and political conditions have
contributed to the rise and expansion of radical Islamist
insurgencies, of whi ISIS is the most recent iteration.
In this context, Iraq and Syria are unique. Among the 22 members
of the Arab League, these two countries have been most adversely
affected by the consequences that flow from political despotism, war,
and state collapse. It is precisely for these reasons that ISIS was able
to set up its “Islamic state” in this specific part of the Islamic world
and not in other regions.
e war in Syria, now into its sixth year, has been a key
contributing factor in the rise of ISIS. Without a resolution of this
war, it is difficult to envision an end to the ISIS crisis. us, it is in
this sense that all roads lead to Damascus. ISIS was reconstituted in
the context of the horrors of the Syrian war, and its ultimate fate will
be determined in Syria.
But ISIS also has intellectual and theological roots that can be
traced ba to a specific part of the Arab-Islamic world—the
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. e cultivation of a specific puritanical
interpretation of Sunni Islam, known as Wahhabism, by the Saudi
state is a core feature of the ISIS crisis that is oen ignored. We are
witnessing today the consequences of the promulgation and
mainstreaming of Wahhabi Islam on a global scale. Masquerading as
normative Islam, this ultraconservative interpretation of religion has
produced an ethical crisis in Muslim societies that has been
exacerbated by the Middle East’s broken politics. Exposure to more
235
humanistic interpretations of Islam could have could limited ISIS’
rea. Young Muslims frustrated by the dire social conditions of
their societies have anneled their anger and frustration into
Wahhabi Islam, whi claims to provide utopian solutions to the
problems of the modern world. Rising Islamophobia in the West and
the double standards of Western foreign policy, particularly with
regard to the Israel-Palestine conflict, has allowed religious
extremism to flourish.
e crisis now facing the Arab-Islamic world was to be expected.
Sixteen years ago, a series of U.N. Arab Human Development
Reports, wrien by a team of leading Arab social scientists, forecast
and predicted the deep crisis facing the region while hinting at a
coming political explosion.
e Arab Human Development Report 2002: Creating Opportunities for Future Generations observed that the Arab world was at a crossroads. “e region is hampered by three key deficits
that can be considered defining features: the freedom deficit; the
women’s empowerment deficit [and] the human
capabilities/knowledge deficit relative to income.” Compared with
the rest of the world,
e Arab Countries had the lowest freedom score in the 1990s and when measured by
indicators su as political process, civil liberties, political rights and a free media the
Arab region … [had] the lowest value of all regions of the world for voice and
accountability.89
In terms of the status of women, “applying the UNDP gender
empowerment measure (GEM) to Arab countries [revealed] that the
laer suffer[ed] a glaring deficit in women’s empowerment. Among
the regions of the world, the Arab region ranks next to last as
measured by GEM; only sub-Saharan Africa has a lower score.”90
e Arab Human Development Report 2004: Towards Freedom in the Arab World, focused on the themes of good governance, political reform, and civil liberties. It concluded that political and civil rights,
236
popular participation, representative institutions, the political
accountability of leadership, the rule of law, the equal treatment of
citizens and the existence of an independent judiciary, were all in
short supply. As a result, the “Arab development crisis has widened,
deepened and grown more complex.”91 Its main beneficiary has been
religious extremism.
One day ISIS might be defeated militarily. But as long as the social
conditions that gave rise to ISIS remain in place, future instability
and violence can be expected. As the journalist and public
intellectual Rami Khouri has presciently observed:
ere is only one antidote in the long run to eliminating the Islamic State and all it
represents. at is to stop pursuing the abusive and criminal policies that have
demeaned millions of decent Arab men and women and shaped Arab countries for the
past half a century. Bombing Iraq and Syria will gain some time and probably must
happen in combination with serious military action by local Arab and Kurdish forces.
However, if the ways of the corrupt modern Arab security state is not radically
reversed, the mass desperation and hysteria that the Islamic State represents will only
re-emerge again in more extreme forms, in the years to come.92
237
Notes
1 For a succinct baground see Charles Lister, The Islamic State: A Brief Introduction
(Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2015); William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse:
The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2015); and Fawaz Gerges, ISIS: A History (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2016).
2 Malcolm Kerr, The Arab Cold War: Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasir and His Rivals, 1958–1970
(London: Oxford University Press, 1971) and Majid Khadurri and Edmund Ghareeb,
War in the Gulf, 1990–1991: The Iraq-Kuwait Conflict and its Implications (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2001).
3 Yezid Sayigh (2014) “Are the Sykes-Picot Borders Being Redrawn?” Carnegie Middle East
Center, June 26, 2014, hp://carnegie-mec.org/publications/?fa=56007 (accessed
September 4, 2016).
4 Rukmini Callimai, “ISIS Enshrines a eology of Rape,” New York Times, August 13,
2015; Ni Cumming-Bruce, “United Nations Investigators Accuse ISIS of Genocide over
Aas on Yazidis,” New York Times, Mar 19, 2015; United Nation Human Rights
Council, “Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human
Rights on the human rights situation in Iraq in the light of abuses commied by the so-
called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and associated groups,” Mar 13, 2015,
A/HCR/28/18.
5 U.S. State Department, “e Global Coalition to Counter ISIL,” www.state.gov/s/seci/
(accessed September 4, 2016).
6 Eric Smi and Miael R. Gordon, “U.S. Aims to Put More Pressure on ISIS in Syria,”
New York Times, October 4, 2015. Military figures from August 8, 2014 to November 30,
2015 from U.S. Department of Defense, “Operation Inherent Resolve,”
www.defense.gov/News/Special-Reports/0814_Inherent-Resolve (accessed September 4,
2016).
238
7 Karen Yourish, Derek Watkins, Tom Giratikanon, “Where ISIS Has Directed and Inspired
Aas Around the World,” New York Times, August 20, 2015,
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/17/world/middleeast/map-isis-aas-around-
the-world.html and Ash Gallagher, “IS Growing in numbers, money,” Al Monitor, June
8, 2015, www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/06/islamic-state-expand-influence-
africa-iraq-syria.html?utm_source=Al- and e Soufan Group, Foreign Fighters: An
Update Assessment of the Flow of Foreign Fighters into Iraq and Syria, December 2015,
hp://soufangroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/TSG_ForeignFightersUpdate1.pdf
(accessed September 4, 2016).
8 Gretel Kauffman, “FBI Director: Why ISIS is a Bigger reat to the US than Al Qaeda,”
Christian Science Monitor, July 23, 2015, www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-
Update/2015/0723/FBI-Director-Why-ISIS-is-a-bigger-threat-to-the-US-than-Al-Qaeda-
video (accessed September 4, 2016).
9 Aaron Mehta, “Odierno: ISIS Fight Will Last ‘10 to 20 Years’,”
www.defensenews.com/story/defense/2015/07/17/odierno-isis-fight-last-10-20-
years/30295949/ (accessed September 4, 2016); Susan Page, “Panea: ‘30-Year War’ and
Leadership Test for Obama,” USA Today, October 6, 2014,
www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/10/06/leon-panea-memoir-worthy-
fights/16737615/ (accessed September 4, 2016) and Stephen Castle, “Tunisia Aa Will
Get ‘Full Spectrum’ Response, British Leader Vows,” New York Times, June 29, 2015
(accessed September 4, 2016).
10 CNN Documentary, The Long Road to Hell: America in Iraq, October 26, 2015,
www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1510/26/csr.01.html. He also observed that: “Islam never
experienced something akin to the Reformation in Europe; the lines between the sacred
and the secular are unclear and contested.” See Riard Haass, “e Next irty Years
War,” Project Syndicate, July 21, 2014, www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/riard-
n–haass-argues-that-the-middleeast-is-less-a-problem-to-be-solved-than-a-condition-
to-be-managed#YctL2boFJBv61EjZ.99 (accessed September 4, 2016).
11 “Statement by the President on Syria,” August 31, 2013 and “Remarks of President Bara
Obama – State of the Union Address,” January 12, 2016. Both are available at:
www.whitehouse.gov (accessed September 4, 2016).
239
12 Ezi Basaran, “Former CIA officer says US policies helped create IS,” Al Monitor,
September 2, 2014, www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2014/09/turkey-usa-iraq-syria-
isis-fuller.html#ixzz3wrjQVDyG (accessed September 4, 2016).
13 See the annual reports by Freedom House, hps://freedomhouse.org/reports (accessed
September 4, 2016).
14 S.V.R. Nasr, “European Colonialism and the Emergence of Modern Muslim States,” in
John Esposito ed., The Oxford History of Islam (New York: Oxford University Press,
1999), 549–600.
15 Rex Brynen, Bahgat Korany and Paul Noble, “eoretical Perspectives on Arab
Liberalization and Democratization,” in Rex Brynen, Bahgat Korany and Paul Noble eds,
Political Liberalization & Democratization in the Arab World, Volume 1 (Boulder:
Lynne Rienner, 1995), 3–27; Alfred Stepan and Graeme B. Robertson, “An ‘Arab’ More
an a ‘Muslim’ Democracy Gap,” Journal of Democracy 14 (2003), 30–44; Eva Bellin,
“e Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in
Comparative Perspective,” Comparative Politics 36 (January 2004), 139–157; Larry
Diamond, “Why Are ere No Arab Democracies?” Journal of Democracy 21 (January
2010), 93–104.
16 Eqbal Ahmad, “e Neofascist State: Notes on the Pathology of Power in the ird
World,” in Carollee Bengelsdorf, Margaret Cerullo, and Yogesh Chandrani eds, The
Selected Writings of Eqbal Ahmad (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 142.
17 Ibid., 143.
18 Ibid., 146.
19 Libya under Qaddafi and Tunisia under Ben Ali would also fit this description. For more
on the general theme of authoritarian regimes in the Arab World, see Roger Owen,
State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East, 3rd edition (New
York: Routledge, 2004), 22–78.
20 Human Rights Wat, Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign against the Kurd, July
1993, www.hrw.org/reports/1993/iraqanfal/ANFALINT.htm.
21 Statement by Max van der Stoel, Special Rapporteur for the United Nations on Iraq
before the U.N. Human Rights Commission on Mar 2, 1993. Cited by Kanan Makiya,
240
Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq, updated edition (Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press, 1998), xiii. Also see Kevin M. Woods, David D. Palkki and Mark E.
Stout eds, The Saddam Tapes: The Inner Workings of a Tyrant’s Regime 1978–2001
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) and Aaron Faust, The Ba`athification of
Iraq: Saddam Hussein’s Totalitarianism (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2015).
22 Nihad Sirees, The Silence and the Roar, translated by Max Weiss (New York: Other Press,
2013), 32, 53.
23 Human Rights Wat, Syria’s Tadmor Prison, April 1, 1996,
www.hrw.org/reports/1996/04/01/syrias-tadmor-prison. For baground see Miel
Seurat, Syrie: l’ É`tat de Barbarie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2012), Alan
George, Syria: Neither Bread nor Freedom (London: Zed Books, 2003) and Yassin al Haj
Saleh, Récrits d`une Syrie Oubliée: Sortir la mémoire des prisons (Paris: Les Prairies
Ordinaires, 2015).
24 Human Rights Wat, If the Dead Could Speak: Mass Deaths and Torture in Syria’s
Detention Facilities, December 16, 2015, www.hrw.org/reports/1996/04/01/syrias-
tadmor-prison and Amnesty International, “Between Prison and the Grave: Enforced
Disappearance in Syria,” November 5, 2015,
www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde24/2579/2015/en/ (accessed September 4, 2016).
25 Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Italy (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1994), 121–85 and Sonja Zmerli and Ken Newton, “Social Trust and
Aitudes Toward Democracy,” The Public Opinion Quarterly 72 (Winter, 2008), 706–24.
26 On the nature of the Arab state and its fundamental weakness, see Nazih Ayubi, Over-
stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East (New York: I.B. Tauris,
2009), 447–59.
27 Pierre Razoux, The Iran-Iraq War, trans. Niolas Ellio (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2015), 569, 573; Joy Gordon, Invisible War: The United States and Iraq
Sanction (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 86–102 and John Tirman,
The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America’s War (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2012), 192–267.
28 United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, Report on the
Protection of Civilians in the Armed Conflict in Iraq, 1 May–31 October 2015,
241
www.ohr.org/Documents/Countries/IQ/UNAMIReport1May31October2015.pdf
(accessed September 4, 2016).
29 Griff Wie, “New U.N. Report says World’s Refugee Crisis is Worse than Anyone
Suspected,” Washington Post, June 18, 2015.
30 Failing Syria: Assessing the Impact of UN Security Council Resolutions in Protecting and
Assisting Civilians in Syria (2015),
www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_aaments/bp-failing-syria-unsc-
resolution-120315-en1.pdf and United National Development Report, Alienation and
Violence: Impact of Syria Crisis Report 2014 (UNDP/Syria Center for Policy Resear,
Mar 2015),
www.unrwa.org/sites/default/files/alienation_and_violence_impact_of_the_syria_crisis
_in_2014_eng.pdf (accessed September 4, 2016).
31 United National Development Report, Alienation and Violence: Impact of Syria Crisis
Report 2014 (UNDP/Syria Center for Policy Resear, Mar 2015), 6 and Strategic
Needs Analysis Project, Regional Analysis: Syria, www.acaps.org/img/reports/p-
regional-analysis-for-syria—part-a-overview-and-sectoral-analysis-oct-dec-2014.pdf
(accessed September 4, 2016).
32 Ri Gladstone, “U.N. Refugee Official Calls Situation in Syria and Iraq ‘Unsustainable’,”
New York Times, April 24, 2015 and Internal Displacement Monitor, Global Overview
2015, www.internal-displacement.org/global-overview (accessed September 4, 2016).
33 Hasan Abu Hanieh and Mohammad Abu Rumman, The “Islamic State” Organization:
The Sunni Crisis and the Struggle for Global Jihadism (Amman: Friedri Ebert Stiung,
2015), 164; Sarah Leah Whitson, “Why ISIS is Winning,” February 18, 2015,
www.hrw.org/news/2015/02/18/why-fight-against-isis-failing; William McCants, The
ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State (New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015), 125. For baground see Fanar Haddad, “Shia-Centric
State Building and Sunni Rejection in Post-2003 Iraq,” Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, January 7, 2016 (accessed September 4, 2016).
34 Ann Barnard and Tim Arango, “Using Violence and Persuasion, ISIS Makes Political
Gains,” New York Times, June 3, 2015.
242
35 Liz Sly, “Petraeus: e Islamic State Isn’t Our Biggest Problem in Iraq,” Washington Post,
Mar 20, 2015.
36 is point has been belatedly anowledged by President Obama, “Goal is to Shrink
Islamic State Operations: Obama,” Reuters, November 15, 2015.
37 e Editors, “On ISIS,” Middle East Report, no. 276 (Fall 2015),
www.merip.org/mer/mer276/isis (accessed September 4, 2016).
38 William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy and Doomsday Vision of
The Islamic State (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015), 42–5 and Fawaz Gerges, ISIS: A
History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, forthcoming, 2016), apters two and
three. Aas on civilians were at their lowest levels during this time period.
39 Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami, Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and
War (London: Pluto Books, 2016), 35–76; Samer Abboud, Syria (London: Polity Books,
2015), 48–82 and Paolo Gabriel Hilo Pinto, “Syria,” in Paul Amar and Vijay Prashad eds,
Dispatches from the Arab Spring: Understanding the New Middle East (Minneapolis,
MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 204–42.
40 William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy and Doomsday Vision of
The Islamic State, 85–86 and Peter Neumann, “Suspects into Collaborators,” London
Review of Books, April 3, 2014, www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n07/peter-neumann/suspects-into-
collaborators (accessed September 4, 2016).
41 ese reports, covering the first three years, can be found here:
www.du.edu/korbel/middleeast/syria.html (accessed September 4, 2016).
42 Syria Network for Human Rights, “e Main Conflict Parties Who are Killing Civilians
in Syria: Civilian Death Toll up to End of October 2015,” November 19, 2015,
hp://sn4hr.org/wp-content/pdf/english/Who_Are_Killing_Civilians_in_Syria_en.pdf
(accessed September 4, 2016).
43 U.N. Secretary-General, “Statement on Syria,” Mar 12, 2014, www.un.org/sg/
statements/?nid=7520 (accessed September 4, 2016).
44 On Syria’s under reported Rape Crisis see Lauren Wolfe, “Syria Has a Massive Rape
Crisis,” e Atlantic, April 3, 2013,
243
www.theatlantic.com/international/arive/2013/04/syria-has-a-massive-rape-
crisis/274583/ (accessed September 4, 2016).
45 U.S. Department of Defense, “Secretary of Defense Testimony: Statement on Iraq, Syria,
and ISIL Before the Senate Armed Services Commiee,” September 16, 2014,
www.defense.gov/News/Speees/Spee-View/Article/605607/statement-on-iraq-syria-
and-isil-before-the-senate-armed-services-commiee (accessed September 4, 2016).
46 John Mearsheimer, “America Unhinged,” The National Interest, no. 129 (January–
February 2014), 10.
47 Interview on Radio Open Source with Christopher Lydon, February 28, 2014. For a more
detailed critique of realism and Syria see Roger Cohen, “e Limits of American
Realism,” New York Times, January 11, 2016 and Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, “Syria and
Surrealism,” Los Angeles Review of Books, December 22, 2015.
48 Mark Lander, “Rice Offers a More Modest Strategy for Mideast,” New York Times,
October 26, 2013 and Marc Lyn, “Obama and the Middle East: Rightsizing the U.S.
Role,” Foreign Affairs 94 (September/October 2015), 18–27.
49 Rania Abouzeid, “e Jihad Next Door: e Syrian Roots of Iraq’s Newest Civil War,”
Politico Magazine, June 23, 2014, www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/al-qaeda-
iraq-syria-108214.html#.VPpI5fnF9qV (accessed September 4, 2016).
50 Ni Cumming-Bruce, “U.N. Investigators Cite Atrocities in Syria,” New York Times,
September 16, 2014.
51 is draws upon a long tradition going ba to the Enlightenment where thinkers su
as Immanuel Kant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, omas Paine and Alexis de Tocqueville
have advanced variations of this argument. According to George Kateb, the goal of
Rousseau’s democratic project is justice. “Rousseau’s Political ought,” Political Science
Quarterly 76 (December 1964), 519–43.
52 Nelly Lahoud with Muhammad al-`Ubaydi, Jihadi Discourse in the Wake of the Arab
Spring (Combaing Terrorism Center at West Point, 2013).
53 Cited by Mona El-Ghobashy, “e Metamorphosis of the Egyptian Muslim Brothers,”
International Journal of Middle East Studies 37 (August 2005), 390–1.
244
54 Jean-Pierre Filiu, From Deep State to Islamic State: The Arab Counter-Revolution and its
Jihadi Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 177–83 and Guido Steinberg,
Leading the Counter-Revolution: Saudi Arabia and the Arab Spring (Berlin: SWP
Resear Paper, German Institute for International and Security Affairs, June 2014).
55 Human Rights Wat, “Egypt: Establish International Inquiry into Rab`a Massacre,”
August 14, 2015, www.hrw.org/news/2015/08/14/egypt-establish-international-inquiry-
raba-massacre and “Egypt: Rab`a Killings Likely Crimes against Humanity,” August 12,
2014, www.hrw.org/news/2014/08/12/egypt-raba-killings-likely-crimes-against-
humanity (accessed September 4, 2016).
56 Robert Kagan and Mielle Dunne, “Obama embraces the Nixon Doctrine in Egypt,”
Washington Post, April 3, 2015; Human Rights Wat, “Egypt: Human Rights in Sharp
Decline,” January 29, 2015, www.hrw.org/news/2015/01/29/egypt-human-rights-sharp-
decline; Amnesty International, “Death Sentences and Executions 2014,” Mar 31, 2015,
www.amnestyusa.org/resear/reports/death-sentences-and-executions-2014 (accessed
September 4, 2016).
57 Marc Lyn, “e Endless Recurrence of the Clash of Civilizations,” The Monkey Cage
(Washington Post blog) November 20, 2015, www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-
cage/wp/2015/11/20/the-endless-recurrence-of-the-clash-of-civilizations/ (accessed
September 4, 2016).
58 Borzou Daragahi, “e Arab Idealist who dies for ISIS,” Financial Times, December 2,
2014; Emad Shahin, “Four Traits, Sisi, Hitler and Mussolini Have in Common,” Middle
East Eye, June 6, 2015, hp://emadshahin.com/?p=1916 (accessed September 4, 2016).
59 David Kirkpatri, “U.S. Citizen, Once Held in Egypt’s Cradown, Becomes Voices for
Inmates,” New York Times, August 28, 2015.
60 Samira Shale, “Mohammad Soltan, the Egyptian Activist who spent 400 Days on
Hunger Strike in Prison,” The New Statesman, October 28, 2015,
www.newstatesman.com/world/middleeast/2015/10/mohamed-soltan-egyptian-activist-
who-spent-400-days-hunger-strike-prison and Murtaza Hussain, “ISIS Recruitment
rives in Brutal Prisons Run by U.S.-baed Egypt,” The Intercept, November 24, 2015,
hps://theintercept.com/2015/11/24/isis-recruitment-thrives-in-brutal-prisons-run-by-u-
s-baed-egypt/ (accessed September 4, 2016).
245
61 Fareed Zakaria, “From Tunisia, a Voice of Hope from the Muslim World,” Washington
Post, October 29, 2015. Also see Raed Ghannoui, “Fight ISIS with Democracy,” The
Atlantic, February 1, 2016, www.theatlantic.com/international/arive/2016/02/tunisia-
democracy-ennahdha-isis/458703/ (accessed September 4, 2016).
62 John F. Kennedy, “Address on the First Anniversary of the Alliance for Progress,” Mar
13, 1962.
63 Khaled Abou El Fadl, Reasoning with God: Reclaiming Shari`ah in the Modern World
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Lilefield, 2014), 115.
64 Miael Crawford, Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2014), 47–71
and Khaled Abou El Fadl, Reasoning with God, 227–51.
65 Khaled Abou El Fadl, Reasoning with God, 229.
66 Ibid., 232.
67 Muhammad Masud, Armando Salvatore, Martin van Bruinessen eds, Islam and
Modernity: Key Issues and Debates (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009).
68 Bernard Haykel, “On the Nature of Salafi ought and Action,” in Global Salafism:
Islam’s New Religious Movement in Roel Meijer (London: Hurst, 2009), 38–9; Khaled
Abou El Fadl, Reasoning with God, 251–70.
69 Madawi Al-Rasheed, A History of Saudi Arabia, 2nd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), 13–68 and Ben Hubbard, “Saudis Turn Birthplace of Wahhabism
Ideology into Tourist Spot,” New York Times, May 31, 2015.
70 Khaled Abou El Fadl, Reasoning with God, 237.
71 Ben Hubbard and Mayy El Sheikh, “Wikileaks Shows Saudi Obsession with Iran,” New
York Times, July 16, 2015. Also see David Commins, The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi
Arabia (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009), 158–78.
72 Khaled Abou El Fadl, Reasoning with God, 243.
73 Masha Gessen, The Brothers: The Road to An American Tragedy (New York: Riverhead
Books, 2015), 48–50 and her interview on National Public Radio, “Tracing the Roots of
‘e Brothers’ and the Roots of the Boston Marathon Bombing,” April 7, 2015. Also see
246
Alissa de Carbonnel and Stephanie Simon, “Special Report: e radicalization of
Tamerlane Tsarnaev,” Reuters, April 23, 2013.
74 Leo Cendrowicz, “Paris Aas: How the Influence of Saudi Arabia Sowed the Seeds of
Radicalism in Belgium,” The Independent, November 23, 2015.
75 Ibid. Also see Odile Leherte, “Dossier Alabri: la Belgique a fait pression sur l`Arabie
Saoudite,” August 12, 2015, www.rtbf.be/info/societe/detail_mosquee-du-
cinquantenaire-la-belgique-a-fait-pression-sur-l-arabie-saoudite?id=9052178.
76 Mehree Zahra-Malik, “Pakistan in California Shooting became hardline in Saudi Arabia:
relations,” Reuters, December 5, 2015.
77 Declan Walsh, “Tashfeen Malik Was a ‘Saudi Girl’ Who Stood Out at a Pakistani
University,” New York Times, December 6, 2015.
78 Ibid.
79 Human Rights Wat, “Saudi Arabia: Surge in Executions,” August 21, 2014.
80 “Executions in Saudi Arabia at a 20-year high, says Amnesty International,” The
Guardian, November 9, 2015 and Human Rights Wat, “Saudi Arabia: Mass Execution
Largest since 1980,” January 4, 2016.
81 A translation of the document can be found at:
hps://pietervanostaeyen.wordpress.com/2014/12/16/an-official-islamic-state-statement-
on-shari-punishments/ (accessed September 4, 2016).
82 Rori Donaghy and Mary Atkinson, “Crime and Punishment: e Islamic State vs Saudi
Arabia,” January 20, 2015, www.middleeasteye.net/news/crime-and-punishment-
islamic-state-vs-saudi-arabia-1588245666 (accessed September 4, 2016).
83 Patri Coburn, “Isis Militants: Twier Provides one of the Few Forums in whi
Saudis can Discuss What ey Really Feel - and it says they Blame the Clergy for Isis,”
The Independent, October 4, 2014 and Karen Armstrong, “Wahhabism to ISIS: How
Saudi Arabia Exported the Main Source of Global Terrorism,” New Statesman,
November 27, 2014. Also see Madawi Al-Rasheed, “e Shared History of Saudi Arabia
and ISIS,” November 28, 2014, www.hurstpublishers.com/the-shared-history-of-saudi-
arabia-and-isis/ (accessed September 4, 2016).
247
84 Toby Mahieusen, “e West’s Alliance with Saudi Arabia Fuels Islamism,” New York
Times, December 8, 2015 and William McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse, 151.
85 J.M. Berger and J. Morgan, “e ISIS Twier Consensus: Defining and Describing the
Population of ISIS Supporters on Twier,” Brookings Institution, Mar 2015,
www.brookings.edu/resear/papers/2015/03/isis-twier-census-berger-morgan
(accessed September 4, 2016).
86 “Saudis Most Likely to Join ISIS, 10 Percent of Group’s Fighters are Women,” Middle East
Monitor, October 20, 2014 and Munira Ahudab, “Saudis Carried Out 60 Percent of
Suicide Aas for ISIS in Iraq,” Al Hayat, October 16, 2014.
87 Khaled Abou El Fadl, Reasoning with God, 217.
88 Karen Armstrong, “Wahhabism to ISIS: How Saudi Arabia Exported the Main Source of
Global Terrorism,” New Statesman, November 27, 2014.
89 United Nations Development Program, Arab Development Report 2002: Creating
Opportunities for Future Generations (New York: United Nations Development
Program, 2002), 27.
90 Ibid., 28.
91 United Nations Development Program, Arab Development Report 2004: Towards
Freedom in the Arab World (New York: United Nations Development Program, 2004), 5.
92 Rami Khouri, “Antidote to the Islamic State reat,” August 27, 2014,
www.agenceglobal.com/index.php?show=article&Tid=2763 (accessed September 4,
2016).
248
Selected Bibliography
Abou El Fadl, Khaled. Reasoning with God: Reclaiming Shari`ah in the Modern World. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Lilefield, 2014.
Al Haj Saleh, Yassin. Récrits d`une Syrie Oubliée: Sortir la mémoire des prisons. Paris: Les Prairies Ordinaires, 2015.
Al-Rasheed, Madawi. A History of Saudi Arabia, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Armstrong, Karen. “Wahhabism to ISIS: How Saudi Arabia Exported
the Main Source of Global Terrorism.” New Statesman, November 27, 2014.
Filiu, Jean-Pierre. From Deep State to Islamic State: The Arab Counter-Revolution and its Jihadi Legacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Gerges, Fawaz. ISIS: A History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016.
Khouri, Rami. “Antidote to the Islamic State reat.” Agence Global, August 27, 2014. Available at www.agenceglobal.com/index.php?
show=article&Tid=2763 (accessed February 3, 2016).
Lister, Charles. The Islamic State: A Brief Introduction. Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2015.
McCants, William. The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015.
Makiya, Kanan. Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq, updated edition. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
1998.
Nasr, S.V.R. “European Colonialism and the Emergence of Modern
Muslim States.” In The Oxford History of Islam. John Esposito, ed., 549–600. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
249
Owen, Roger. State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East, 3rd edition. New York: Routledge, 2004.
United Nations Development Program. Arab Development Report 2004: Towards Freedom in the Arab World. New York: United Nations Development Program, 2004.
Yassin-Kassab, Robin and Leila Al-Shami. Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War. London: Pluto Books, 2016.
250
7 e Impact of the AKP on Human Rights in Turkey
One step forward, two steps ba
Turan Kayaoglu1
251
Introduction
e Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP), a moderate Islamist party, has ruled Turkey since 2002. e party emerged as a splinter party from the (Islamist) Virtue Party in 2001, whi was dissolved by the Turkish Constitutional Court for alleged anti-secular activities and some of its leaders were banned from politics. Frustrated with the old guard, the Virtue’s Young Turks established the AKP. e new party won three subsequent elections and ruled Turkey from 2002 to 2015 – the period focused on in this apter – in a single-party government. In 2015, the party lost its majority, but still remained the biggest party in parliament.
From economy to ideology and from foreign policy to civil- military relations, AKP rule has transformed Turkey; a ange that is comparable to the Kemalist transformation of the country in the early decades of the republic. e Kemalist top-down revolution
created resentment and caused a reaction from below, especially among the pious and Kurds. Turning the tables against Kemalists, these groups brought the AKP into power and set the stage for a
revolution from below.2 e impact of this revolution on human
rights has received surprisingly lile aention.3
is apter examines the impact of AKP rule on human rights in Turkey in order to assess whether the AKP has fostered or hindered human rights and democracy in Turkey. e apter investigates this issue in several ways. First, it describes the human rights framework and situation in Turkey in the decade before the AKP. Second, it assesses the AKP’s reforms with a particular focus on Kurdish rights and religious freedom during the AKP’s 2002–7 rule, linking these reforms to Turkey’s human rights and democracy problems in the decade previous to AKP rule. ird, it discusses how the AKP lost its
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appetite for reform in its second term but still managed to limit the influence of the military in Turkish politics and combat military impunity. Finally, the apter examines the AKP’s third and most controversial term when the party diminished protections for human rights and democracy. All this presaged and made unsurprising the more explicit authoritarianism that emerged in the wake of 2016’s unsuccessful coup.
is apter will show that the AKP’s human rights record has been on a downward spiral even before 2016: in its first term, it was progressive; in the second, stagnant; in the third, repressive. On some issues, su as minority rights, Sunni Muslims’ religious rights, and economic and social rights, the party was progressive; on other broader issues, su as women’s rights, freedom of spee, and the rule of law, it was regressive. As many political scientists might have predicted, the AKP’s aitude towards human rights and democracy was motivated more by political interest rather than by a genuine commitment to human rights or democracy. Its human rights reforms mostly helped its constituencies; when the reforms were not in the interest of the party, the AKP quily jeisoned its human rights agenda.
e ups and downs of human rights in Turkey under the AKP show the selective acceptance and tactical use of human rights by Islamist parties. e AKP’s authoritarian turn questions the inclusion-moderation thesis for whi AKP once was a poster-ild. is theory suggested that the inclusion of Islamist political parties in the political process would moderate them. Electoral pressures would lead them to avoid extremes and push them to embrace basic rights and pluralism. Moreover, the need to solve everyday problems —fixing the potholes—would force them to shi their focus away from radical social and political agendas. While many solars stopped short of predicting long-term ideological transformation, the implication of the inclusion-moderation literature was clear: learning from their experience of exclusion and repression and
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playing with the rules of electoral politics, these Muslim democrats would take positions to expand freedom and human rights for everyone.
e AKP experience, however, shows that Islamist parties’ electoral success may lead to tactical and selective gains for human
rights but without institutional meanisms and internalization of human rights by party elites these human rights gains are easily reversible. As Shadi Hamid argues, while electoral success can lead to a majoritarian rule, it does not necessarily lead to liberal democracy, especially when the rights of minorities are unpopular
among the majority.4 In the case of the AKP, populism combined with Islamism trumped human rights concerns, whi were priorities for liberal elites, minorities, and international actors. e AKP has used the rhetoric of human rights when it needed to rea liberal elites, minorities, and international actors not only to win elections but also to strengthen its position vis-à-vis other domestic actors, su as the military whi has been anti-Islamist and has significant formal and informal influence over state institutions and part of civil society. Once the AKP and its allies effectively curtailed the influence of the military, the party jeisoned its human rights agenda, reversed some of its own reforms, and introduced policies limiting human rights. Apart from the interests of its core constituencies—Islamists—the AKP was not interested in human rights in general and merely adopted the language of human rights and democracy tactically to win the elections and to gain the support of liberal domestic and international actors and thus gain the upper hand over unelected but powerful groups, su as the military.
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e rights framework in Turkey
Turkey has a strong rights framework grounded in internal and external protections. Internally, aer the basic principles, the Turkish constitution specifies rights in three lengthy sections, protecting fundamental rights (Articles 12–40), social and economic rights
(Articles 41–65) and political rights (Articles 66–74),5 seing an expansive understanding of rights. e constitution also recognizes the authority of international human rights treaties over domestic jurisdiction (Article 90). Additionally, Turkey has ratified all of the
major international treaties on human rights.6 By recognizing the legitimacy of the international human rights framework the constitution strengthens Turkey’s rights protections.
Turkey has a strong civil society in whi several human rights organizations have played major roles in advancing human rights discourse and practices. e Human Rights Association (İnsan Hakları Derneği, IHD), whi focuses on le-wing political prisoners and Kurdish rights, is the most influential human rights NGO in
Turkey; it has 29 branes and over 10,000 members and activists.7
Among other important NGOs are the Association for Human Rights and the Oppressed (İnsan Hakları ve Mazlumlarla Dayanışma
Derneği, Mazlumder),8 whose 28 branes focus on right-wing political prisoners and the religious rights of Sunni Muslims, and the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (Türkiye İnsan Hakları Vakfı, TIHV), whi focuses on combating torture and helping torture
victims.9 Unlike similar NGOs in the West, these organizations work closely with social movements rather than relying on litigation. For example, IHD works in tandem with Kurds and Mazlumder cooperates with Islamists; the organizations also rely on media affiliated with these social movements. e extent to whi these
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groups and social movements are able to make ange oen depends
on finding support among politicians and officials.10
It is not Turkey’s internal meanisms for human rights, however, that set it apart in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), but, rather, its external ones. Turkey is party to the European Convention on Human Rights and is thus under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Hoping to burnish the country’s Western image on the eve of the Cold War and to secure the country’s secular aracter, Turkish leaders participated in the
discussions that led to the creation of the Council of Europe.11 In 1987, Turkey assented to the right of individuals to petition the ECtHR when their complaints exhausted the remedies available in the Turkish domestic legal system. Turkey has consistently had a high number of cases in the court’s doet although its effect remained limited until 1989 when Turkey accepted the compulsory
jurisdiction of the ECtHR.12
Turkey’s membership application to the European Union provides a second European dimension for human rights protections in Turkey. While the Turkish membership process has been uneven— alternating between periods of excitement and activity and periods of skepticism and stalemate—the European Union’s demands have triggered or facilitated the advancement of human rights in Turkey. is was especially true in the years following 1999, when Turkey was officially named an EU candidate country. Concerns about human rights and democracy have played a significant role in advance of membership negotiations and the EU asked Turkey to fulfill a set of prerequisites known as the Copenhagen Criteria, whi include expectations about democracy and human rights, before these negotiations could begin. e EU is particularly sensitive to minority rights, especially as concerns the Kurds’ freedom of thought, expression, assembly, and due process rights. However, the EU’s influence on economic and social rights has been
256
limited—in fact, when the EU pushes for economic liberalization, its
effect may be harmful to labor rights.13
e U.S. is another external actor with influence on human rights in Turkey. Turkey became a NATO member in 1952. is close alliance has allowed the U.S. to have leverage, albeit limited, over Turkey on issues related to democracy and human rights although paradoxically, it has also meant U.S. administrations are hesitant to criticize Turkey’s human rights publicly. Nevertheless, this alliance has been instrumental in seing the expectation that the military will transfer authority to civilian governments aer military coups
in Turkey. Unlike the hesitancy of U.S. presidents, the U.S. Congressional reports and the State Department’s International Religious Freedom Reports and Human Rights Reports have been more critical in assessing Turkey’s human rights record.
Despite these supportive internal and external conditions for the protection of human rights, human rights violations have been rampant in Turkey and Turkey’s modern history has been punctuated by four military interventions during whi human rights protections were sidelined. As discussed below, the military’s ‘February 28 Dictates’ shaped the second half of the 1990s. Weak coalition governments and a culture of impunity concerning the military gave the military free rein to pursue what it saw as two
existential threats to the Republic: Kurds and Islamists.14
Regarding the Kurds, the military engaged in an aggressive counterinsurgency campaign against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê, PKK) in southeast Turkey, resulting in significant and wide spread human rights abuses, including the burning of villages, the torture of PKK militants and sympathizers, the disappearance of Kurdish activists, the jailing of Kurdish intellectuals, the suppression of Kurdish media, and extrajudicial killings aributed to the Gendarmerie Intelligence and Counter- Terrorism Unit (Jandarma İstihbarat ve Terörle Mücadele Teşkilatı, JITEM). Although the capture of PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan in
257
Kenya in 1999 temporally diminished the violence in the region, tension and occasional clashes between the security forces and PKK militants—as well as between the PKK and Hizbullah (of Turkey; not to be confused with Hezbollah in Lebanon) militants—continued into the early 2000s and flared up again in 2015.
Regarding the Islamists, the military issued a series of demands to the civilian government to eliminate the Islamist ‘threat,’ resulting in widespread discrimination against pious Muslims. e military has always been suspicious of religious activism, but its concerns reaed new heights when the 1995 election returns made the Islamist Welfare Party the largest party in parliament. e party then established a coalition government. e military used the National Security Council, whi included civilian and military members, to impose the ‘February 28 Dictates’ in 1997. Labeling the Islamists, including the Welfare Party, as the biggest threat to national security, the Dictates required the government to impose wide-ranging measures in education, the economy, and the bureaucracy to combat Islamist influences. Under pressure from the military, the Welfare Party government collapsed and a new three- party coalition government was established to implement the Dictates. During this period, the Welfare Party was closed by the Turkish Constitutional Court for its alleged anti-secular activities, women with headscarves were dismissed from universities, the middle sools of the religious Imam Hatip organization were closed, and bureaucrats suspected of having Islamist sympathies were fired from their jobs.
In sum, despite some elements of a strong rights framework, Turkey’s weak coalition governments, the military’s tutelage over civilian authorities, and the militarization of political conflicts with Kurds and Islamic groups worsened the human rights record of Turkey in the 1990s. ese tensions and the 2001 economic crisis created the conditions for the rise of the AKP. Distancing itself from the Milli Görüş (National Outlook) of earlier Islamist parties, the
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AKP tactically and successfully expanded the traditional Islamist base and won support from apolitical Sufi movements, Kurds, liberals, and those hurt by the economic crisis.
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2002–7: democratic reforms and the
expansion of rights
From 2002 to 2005, the AKP appeared to emerge as a force for democracy and human rights, prompting Zehra F. K. Arat and her collaborators to expect a ‘brighter future’ for human rights in
Turkey.15 Although a religious cadre formed the AKP babone, the party enjoyed wide support, particularly among those who felt it represented the aspirations of groups whi had also experienced state repression since the early years of the Republic for not fiing
Kemalist ideas of the nation-state.16 A significant portion of Kurds, who comprise 18 percent of the Turkish population and who have faced either assimilation or repression for the majority of modern Turkish history, supported the AKP. e party also garnered support from other ethnicities, including Arabs, Lazs, Circassians and even, to a limited extent, Turkey’s dwindling religious minorities, su as Jews, Greeks, and Armenians. Most liberal intellectuals, long critical of the Turkish state and military, supported the party due to the
AKP’s rhetoric of pluralism, human rights, and democracy.17 e reaction against the politics of the Kemalist-dominated earlier eras was a revolution from below, and the AKP was able to annel these sentiments, capitalizing on the appeal of human rights, democracy, development, and EU membership.
Despite its strong mandate from the electorate, the AKP refrained from directly allenging administrative tutelage—the formal and informal limitations imposed by the bureaucracy, especially the military, on civilian government. e February 28 Dictates continued, even if the balash they created was partly responsible for the rise of AKP. Facing this restrictive political environment, the AKP relied on a strong rights, democracy, and economic
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development discourse, legitimized as part of the EU membership criteria, and thereby sidestepped potentially polarizing cultural and social agendas. is strategy also appealed to liberals and others concerned about economic welfare, rather than ideology. Essentially, the AKP seemed to present a new identity for and vision of Muslim democracy, blending political and economic liberalism with social conservativism, akin to European Christian democrat parties.
e AKP, empowered and led by a boom-up coalition, strategically used the EU membership process to open Turkish
political space to the marginalized segments of society.18 Joost Lagendijk, former air of the EU–Turkey Joint Parliamentary Commiee, called 2003 and 2004 the “golden years” in Turkey–EU
relations.19 In 2004, the EU anowledged that Turkey had sufficiently fulfilled the Copenhagen Criteria for EU membership, standards whi include the “stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and
protection of minorities.”20 e EU then allowed the formal membership negotiations to start.
At this point, pleasing liberals and assuaging the fears of the secularists, the AKP pushed a series of impressive political and economic liberalization reforms. Rather than imposing sharia, the AKP sought to align the Turkish legal system with the Copenhagen criteria. Four areas of reform are especially noteworthy:
Kurdish Rights:e Kurdish problem has plagued most of Turkey’s modern history. When in the 1980s the military took the lead in addressing the situation, the issue became a law and order problem. e military’s counterinsurgency tactics in the 1990s resulted in the alienation of most of Turkey’s Kurds. Asserting its authority on the issue and by extension asserting its right over the military to deal with the Kurds, the AKP recognized the Kurdish problem as a political and cultural problem, and offered a democratic solution. e government recognized the Kurds’ right to speak, publish, and
broadcast in Kurdish21 and removed the prohibition on Kurdish
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names. Kurdish names can now appear on birth certificates as legal names. e ban on the use of the leers q, w, and x, whi are part of the Kurdish alphabet but not the Turkish alphabet was lied with the ‘democratization paage’ of September 2013. Moving beyond civil and political rights, AKP initiatives expanded to include cultural rights. Although the government stopped short of making Kurdish an official language, private sools and universities were allowed to tea Kurdish language, whi is also available as elective
in some public sools.22
Religious Freedom:e AKP’s core constituency has been Islamic groups, appealing not only to the former Welfare Party’s Nakshibendi-based and political Islamists but also to others, su as followers of the Gülen movement, whi had previously supported central-right parties rather than Islamists. e AKP expanded its appeal by allowing greater flexibility in religious education and also by permiing female students to wear headscarves to universities. e laer policy was established through new regulations rather than through a constitutional amendment, reflecting the party’s deference to administrative tutelage in this period.
Non-Muslim Minorities:Unlike Kurds and other Muslim minorities, non-Muslim groups—Greeks, Armenians, and Jews—were afforded official minority status in Turkey, whi was recognized in the Lausanne Treaty (1924) between Turkey and the WWI Allied Powers following the Turkish War of Independence (1920–3). Despite their official status however, these minorities have suffered widespread discrimination throughout Turkish history. Under the AKP, some grievances of non-Muslim minorities remain, su as the unrealized desire to re-open the Greek Orthodox eological Sool of Halki, the la of government action to combat pervasive anti- Semitic discourse in media and politics, and the failure to recognize the Armenian genocide. e AKP did, however, seek to address some of the entrened problems, motivated in particular by three factors: its perception that some of the problems of religious minorities were
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due to the Kemalist legacy, its desire to show a commitment to EU principles, and its aempt to signal a commitment to pluralism in order to woo liberal domestic allies. Among the AKP reforms enacted to address non-Muslim minority grievances, for example, was a removal of the ban on minority foundations acquiring, disposing of, or transferring property and the ban on opening places
of worship.23
Economic rights:e Turkish economy has expanded significantly since the 2001 economic crisis, growing an impressive 6.8 percent
annually between 2002 and 2007.24 e government funneled new revenue into expanding the social safety net, supporting the poor and middle class through affordable housing, universal healthcare, and other social spending. ese social reforms proceeded in tandem with a program of economic liberalization. is economic liberalization had a darker side however, as it undermined the rights of labor and resulted in decreased protections for labor (resulting in a decline in real wages and increasing economic inequalities—and
increased negative environmental impacts).25
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2007–2011: taking on administrative tutelage
and the culture of impunity
Increasing its share of the vote to 47 percent, the AKP won a second term in office in 2007. As the party became more powerful, reform efforts diminished. During this period, the AKP and its allies, most significantly the Gülen movement, fought administrative tutelage and the culture of impunity enshrined in key parts of the state bureaucracy. In particular, state officials who saw themselves as the guardians of the Kemalist regime had directly or indirectly crippled the earlier aempts to open the political system to Kurds, leist, and
Islamists.26 Seeing these groups as threats to national security, the police, military, and intelligentsia formed a ‘deep state’ and engaged in gross violations of human rights. For example, concerning the Kurds, the operatives of the deep state are suspected of torture, extrajudicial killings, and disappearances in the 1990s. ese operatives acted with impunity, confident they would never be held accountable in a court of law and secure in the knowledge that their human rights violations would not be met with retribution or punishment. As a result, “Due process rights have been frequently violated in Turkey, and abuse in detention or prison, including
torture, have been endemic.”27 A 2010 Human Rights Wat report stated that “Turkish courts are notoriously lenient towards the members of the security forces who are arged with abuse or misconduct, contributing to impunity and the persistence of torture
and the resort to lethal force.”28
Combatting the Culture of Impunity:e Ergenekon trials, starting in 2008 and the 2010 Sledgehammer trial targeted not only high- ranking military personnel but also their allies in the civilian bureaucracy and, most controversially, in the media, civil society,
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and the academy. Allegedly, these groups had collaborated to undermine—and possibly to overthrow—the AKP government in the early 2000s. While most AKP allies supported these mass trials, some, especially liberals, questioned whether the police and prosecutors were themselves disregarding the rights of the accused. Many suspected that the police and prosecutors, acting with a similar level of impunity as the behavior they claimed to be fighting, violated due process and used fabricated evidence and secret witnesses in order to keep the accused in jail.
Kurdish Rights:Overtures to Kurds continued throughout this period. In an effort to arrive at a long-term solution to Kurdish grievances, the government decided to talk with Kurdish leadership and jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan and also unveiled a ‘Democratic Initiative’ offering a set of major reforms to address Kurdish demands. In January 2009, in an unprecedented move, the state broadcasting agency (TRT) launed TRT 6, a TV annel broadcasting in Kurdish around the clo. ese moves elicited reactions from Turkish nationalists and parliamentary resistance however, and the AKP slowed down and has failed to push these
mu-anticipated reforms.29
Freedom of Expression:During the first two periods, AKP governments expanded freedom of expression on some issues. Compared to pre-AKP days, it became easier to discuss once-taboo subjects su as the Kurdish problem, the Armenian genocide, the military’s place in politics, and Atatürk’s legacy. Freedom of the
press was likewise strengthened.30 Several problematic laws, however, su as Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) whi bans ‘insult to Turkishness,’ remain on the books and prosecutors have used this article alongside existing anti-terror laws to stifle pro- Kurdish and anti-AKP voices.
Alevi Rights:An estimated 15–25 percent of the Turkish population considers themselves Alevi, a variant of Shi`ite Islam. Alevis, who have historically been discriminated against and persecuted by the
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Sunni majority, have been staun supporters of secularism and secular parties and are thus suspicious of the AKP. Alevi demands called for the recognition of cemevis as places of worship; the restructuring—if not abolition—of the Directorate of Religious Affairs to accommodate non-Sunnis; and making religious education, whi emphasizes Sunni Islam, an elective subject in sools. e AKP launed its “Dialogue with Alevis” initiative in 2008 and 2009, but eventually abandoned this initiative having made
lile progress in this area.31
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2011–15: AKP authoritarianism and rolling
ba of rights
e AKP came to power a third time in 2011 with a landslide victory, capturing 50 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections. As AKP’s electoral success increased, its reformist spirit waned and its latent authoritarian tendencies emerged. In this period, human
rights and democracy experienced major setbas.32
What accounts for this ange in the AKP’s appetite for human rights reform? Five factors—three external and two internal—seem significant. First, the momentum for EU membership has slowed. Vetoed by Cyprus, spurned by then Fren President Nicolas Sarkozy, scared by the Greek economic debacle, and having seen the rise of anti-Muslim parties across the EU, the Turkish public and government have lost hope for EU membership. is apathy, or Euro-fatigue, has made the human rights agenda, an EU-inspired project, a hard sell.
Second, the tumultuous events of the Arab Spring and the AKP’s desire for regional leadership moved the government’s focus away from mu-needed domestic reforms. With the regional rise of groups affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, AKP leaders have become more concerned with polishing their religious—rather than human rights—credentials. e Arab Spring, in particular, ignited the AKP’s pro-Muslim Brotherhood orientation and empowered the Islamists in the AKP coalition at the expense of centrists and liberals. As a result, the AKP shied its foreign policy vision toward the MENA region as opposed to Europe. e government’s activism in keeping the border open for Syrian refugees, providing protection to these refugees, and loudly demanding that the Assad regime end its
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brutal cradown is arguably mu more related to its foreign policy goals than to its commitment to human rights.
ird, mistrust between the U.S. and the AKP has grown. In shiing its focus on the MENA region, the AKP took a mu harsher rhetorical stand against Israel—a position crystalized when Prime Minister Erdoğan interrupted Israeli President Shimon Peres in Davos in 2009, calling out: “Killers.” Likewise, tensions increased with the 2010 Israeli Defense Forces interception of the Turkish ship, Mavi Marmara, while carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza. e Obama administration’s reluctance to further engage with the MENA region has also allowed the AKP to art a new foreign and domestic course.
Internal factors also explain the AKP’s move away from reform: economic and electoral success emboldened AKP leaders, making them overconfident. Economically, Turkey was in a growth cycle until 2013. is success is notable in light of the global economic slowdown and the economic problems in Europe, Turkey’s biggest export market. And politically, opposition to the AKP remains weak. e AKP has won the last five major elections, including three parliamentary elections and two municipal elections; its victory in 2011 garnered a historic 50 percent of the vote. ese successes have turned the AKP into the party of the status quo rather than reform. In June 2015 elections, the party lost some support but still won 40 percent of the votes. e parliamentary configuration resulted in a hung parliament led to a snap election sedule in November 2015.
Finally, the AKP has anged its approa to the Kurdish issue, Turkey’s thorniest human rights problem. In its first term, Party leaders saw the Kurdish issue from the perspective of civil, political, and cultural rights. However, since 2007, the party has viewed the Kurdish issue from the perspective of PKK-violence and political competition with the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (Barış
ve Demokrasi Partisi, BDP).33 With this shi in perspective, the AKP no longer promotes human rights or democratic reforms as a
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solution to the Kurdish problem, replacing this approa with a proposed political deal with the PKK and initiated direct talks with the imprisoned Kurdish leaders, Öcalan, rather than elected Kurdish officials. is is unfortunate: A major breakthrough in human rights in Turkey will not come without the government directly addressing the Kurdish problem. Treating the PKK, an armed group that the Turkish state considers terrorist, as the sole representative of Kurds in Turkey will be a dangerous and risky path, as flaring up violence between PKK and Turkish security forces in the Summer of 2015 has shown.
During this period, human rights in Turkey suffered major setbas and the AKP has faced increasing criticism regarding its human rights record. e 2012 Report of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom recommended that the U.S. State Department categorize Turkey as a ‘Country of Particular Concern,’ a category reserved for countries su as Iran, China, and Saudi
Arabia.34 In its 2013 report, Freedom House downgraded Turkey’s civil liberties rating from three to four (one is the most free; seven the least free) for the “detention of thousands of individuals— including Kurdish activists, journalists, union leaders, students and military officers—in campaigns that many believe to be politically
motivated.”35
Policy Brutality in Gezi Protests:e AKP clearly demonstrated its new authoritarian face and its movement away from liberals and urban, educated youth in the government’s handling of the Gezi protests. Popular reaction against the government’s plan to allow construction of a shopping mall in Gezi park, one of the few remaining green spaces in the city center, erupted in protest in Istabul’s Taksim Square in May, 2013. Regarding this as another AKP move to privatize public areas, a wide range of liberal, leist, and anti-AKP groups joined environmentalists to occupy Gezi park and prevent the removal of the park’s trees. Protests grew as some saw an opportunity to force Erdoğan from office, even if that was
269
unlikely to happen. Erdoğan’s harsh reaction against any allenge to his authority and his vitriolic denunciation of the protesters gave the green light to a violent police cradown on the largely peaceful protest and ignited protest elsewhere in Istanbul and the country.
Eight people were killed and many were injured in the clashes.36
Gülen Movement:Among all the alliances the AKP abandoned in this period, its falling away with the Gülen movement was the most acrimonious. In its first two terms, the AKP and Gülen movement were close collaborators. Most speculate that the Gülen movement likely engineered the Ergenekon and Sledgehammer cases that AKP used to rein in the military. But ideological allenges (the Gülen movement’s pro-West orientation put it at odds with political Islamists), material concerns (competition over staffing positions in the state bureaucracy), and distrust between Gülen and Erdoğan made it clear that the alliance was faltering. e relationship was further soured by the corruption arges—known as the December 17 and December 25 cases—whi named ministers’ ildren as well as businessmen close to the AKP’s inner circle. Although denied by followers of Gülen, Erdoğan and his allies accused the Gülen movement of being behind these arges. In response, Erdoğan has used state authorities to unleash a war on the Gülen movement, both domestically and internationally, using courts, tax agencies, and formal and informal coercion to place pro-AKP individuals in important positions within the movement. When that failed, the AKP moved to cripple the movement so it would pose no further
danger to Erdoğan and the AKP government.37
Freedom of Speech:Prosecutors still arge people for offenses that would likely be protected by free spee provisions in other countries. e AKP government has increasingly targeted social media and the internet, denying access to websites critical of the government and has even imposed temporary restrictions to YouTube and Twier access in retaliation for the sites allowing users to post leaked phone conversations suggesting corruption on the part
270
of AKP government members and Prime Minister Erdoğan’s inner
circle.38 In 2015, Reporters Without Borders ranked Turkey 149 out of
180 countries in its World Press Freedom Index.39
Women’s Rights:ere have been some hopeful signs regarding women’s rights. e 2011 elections increased women’s representation in parliament from 50 to 78 seats (out of 550). Turkey also became the first country to sign the Council of Europe’s 2014 Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. But the government has taken few tangible measures to advance the lives of women and gender inequality and violence against women remain endemic. Women’s economic participation is a low 27 percent. Police and courts oen fail women who apply for help under the Family Protection Law and domestic violence and the murder of women by family members continue to
be major issues.40 President Erdoğan’s own anti-female aitudes—as exemplified his 2014 comment that “Women shouldn’t be considered as equals”—for example, have further legitimized discrimination against women in areas su as education, work, and reproductive
rights.41
Failure to Combat Impunity:Police continue to beat and to use excessive force against protestors and have even used firearms against unarmed suspects. Too oen, prosecutors do not pursue these cases; rather than prosecuting the police for the abuse, they blame the protestors. Police, members of National Intelligence Agency, and the military remain unaccountable for their actions—unless these actions conflict with AKP interests. e security paage the Parliament passed in Mar 2015 provided additional powers to
police in detaining people and quelling protests.42
Kurdish Rights:Turkey’s principal human rights problem remains the Kurdish situation. While the government advanced Kurdish rights on several fronts in its first two terms, during its third term the government ignored further Kurdish demands. e Kurdish minority wants constitutional recognition, public sools’ teaing
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in Kurdish language in predominantly Kurdish regions, the acceptance of Kurdish as an official language, and the removal of the 10 percent nationwide electoral threshold that the parties need in order to gain a seat in parliament. In 2012, thousands of Kurdish activists were arrested for alleged links to the KCK. Prosecutors have used anti-terrorism laws to suppress non-violent pro-Kurdish and leist political activity and activist members, party officials, and politicians from the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP)
have all been imprisoned.43 In June 2015 parliamentary elections, the main pro-Kurdish party, e Peoples’ Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi, HDP), surpassed the electoral threshold by geing 13 percent of nationwide votes, ushering a new page for Kurdish politics in Turkey.
Syria:ite possibly, the only bright spot in the AKP’s human rights record in its third term is foreign policy, particularly as related to Syria. e AKP government emerged as an early and strong supporter of anti-Assad efforts in Syria. By June 2015, the ensuing civil war had killed nearly a quarter million people and created about four million refugees. Turkey stepped in to provide shelter to Syrian refugees, hosting about 1.8 million refugees—almost half the total—as of July 2015. ese efforts, however—AKP’s entanglement in Syrian civil war and support of wide-ranging Islamist, anti-Assad forces—have poisoned AKP’s relations with Turkish Kurds in Turkey who support Syrian Kurdish efforts to create their own areas of control in Syria rather than fight Assad.
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Conclusion
e AKP’s impact on human rights in Turkey between 2002–2015 was mixed. e government initiated and implemented some major reforms in its first term, slowed the pace of reform during its second term and has now seemingly abandoned human rights reforms altogether in its third term. Four areas saw improvement under AKP rule: Kurdish rights, the religious freedoms of Sunni Muslims, the enlargement of the social welfare system, and the expansion of healthcare. In the process, the government broke down the bureaucracy’s resistance to government initiatives and sent the military ba to the barras.
Yet, the government did lile to improve the rights of women and Alevis and economic liberalization undermined labor rights and environmental protections. Especially in its third term, the AKP began to suppress its opposition, using formal and informal means to squel opposing viewpoints in print or on social media. Human rights gains aieved in its first term were thus eroded. While beyond the scope of this apter, these “two steps ba aer one step forward” presaged the government’s harsher cradown against human rights that was to take place in 2016.
Although it slowed down, the EU membership process had been critical for the advancement of rights in Turkey. e AKP’s introduction of policies protecting human rights oen came as a response to EU demands. Skeptics might ask to what extent was the AKP genuinely motivated by EU membership or was the EU membership process merely a platform that allowed the AKP to push for reforms that were in the party’s political interest? For example, despite longstanding EU requests for ange, the AKP took lile action on issues su as gender equality, rights for LGBT
273
individuals, and rights for Alevis—all issue areas that are unpopular among the AKP’s core constituencies.
e AKP between 2002–2015 effectively used the language of human rights and democracy to keep its broad coalition, including liberals, intact until it consolidated power. Once the party came to dominate the political space and control state bureaucracy, particularly the military, it tried to assert itself as a hegemonic power akin to the Kemalists, but with an Islamist orientation. As su, it became an obstacle for human rights and democracy. Most of the AKP long-term reforms can be directly linked to its political and ideological interest; when an issue was not in the party’s interest, it did not work to advance human rights on this issue. Worse still, as AKP policies in the third term show, it rolled ba its own progress on human rights and democracy in order to advance the party’s interests and protect its leader, Erdoğan.
274
Notes
1 I thank Hannah Coae, Edel Hughes, Brandon Green, Ramazan Kılınç, and Kate
Marshall for their comments on earlier versions of this apter.
2 Baskin Oran, “e minority concept and rights in Turkey”, in Zehra F. K. Arat (ed.),
Human Rights in Turkey (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).
3 e major exception is Zehra F. K. Arat (ed.), Human Rights in Turkey (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007) whi covers the first term of AKP’s
government.
4 Shadi Hamid, Temptations of Power: Islamists and New Illiberal Democracy in the
Middle East (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014).
5 Constitution of the Republic of Turkey,
hps://global.tbmm.gov.tr/docs/constitution_en.pdf (accessed on June 25, 2015).
6 e International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (r. 2003), the International
Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (r. 2003), the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (r.1985), the Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (r. 2002), the Convention against
Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (r. 1988), and
e Convention on the Rights of the Child (r. 1995). See Füsun Türkmen, “Turkey’s
participation in global and regional human rights regimes,” in Zehra F. K. Arat (ed.),
Human Rights in Turkey (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).
7 IHD provides the most comprehensive human rights violations in Turkey in its annual
reports, www.ihd.org.tr/ (accessed on September 4, 2016).
8 www.mazlumder.org/tr/ (accessed on September 4, 2016).
9 hp://tihv.org.tr/ (accessed on September 4, 2016).
10 Margaret E. Ke and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in
International Politics (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2014); Zehra F. K. Arat,
275
“Conclusion: Turkey’s prospects and broader implications,” in Zehra F. K. Arat (ed.),
Human Rights in Turkey (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).
11 Turan Kayaoglu, “Trying Islam: Muslims before the European Court of Human Rights,”
Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs vol. 34 (2014), 345–64.
12 Füsun Türkmen, “Turkey’s participation in global and regional human rights regimes;”
omas W. Smith, “Leveraging Norms: e ECHR and Turkey’s human rights reforms,”
in Zehra F. K. Arat (ed.), Human Rights in Turkey (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2007).
13 Zehra F. K. Arat, “Conclusion: Turkey’s prospects and broader implications.”
14 Ahmet T. Kuru, “e rise and fall of military tutelage in Turkey: Fears of Islamism,
Kurdism, and Communism,” Insight Turkey vol. 14 (2012), 37–57.
15 Zehra F. K. Arat (ed.), Human Rights in Turkey (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 15.
16 Ilter Turan, Turkey’s Difficult Journey to Democracy: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).
17 Ihsan Dagi, “Islamist parties: Turkey’s AKP in power,” Journal of Democracy vol. 19
(2008), 25–30.
18 Ramazan Kılınç, “International pressure, domestic politics, and the dynamics of religious
freedom: evidence from Turkey,” Comparative Politics vol. 46 (2014), 127–45.
19 Joost Legendijk, “Turkey’s accession to the European Union and the role of Justice and
Development Party,” in Ahmet T. Kuru and Alfred Stepan (eds) Democracy, Islam, and
Secularism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). Also, see Demet Y. Mousseau,
“Is Turkey democratizing with EU reforms?: an assessment of human rights, corruption
and socio-economic conditions,” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies vol. 12
(2012), 63–80.
20 hp://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/glossary/accession_criteria_copenhague_en.htm
(accessed on September 4, 2016).
21 Mary L. O’Neill, “Linguistic human rights and the rights of Kurds,” in Zehra F. K. Arat
(ed.), Human Rights in Turkey (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).
276
22 Ibid.
23 Ramazan Kılınç, “International pressure, domestic politics, and the dynamics of religious
freedom: evidence from Turkey;” Ali Soner, “e Justice and Development Party’s
policies towards non-Muslim minorities in Turkey,” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern
Studies vol. 12 (2010), 23–40.
24 hp://data.worldbank.org/country/turkey (accessed on September 4, 2016).
25 Edward Weisband and Sera Öner, “So near, yet so far: freedom of association and
workers’ rights,” in Zehra F. K. Arat (ed.), Human Rights in Turkey (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).
26 Ahmet T. Kuru, “e rise and fall of military tutelage in Turkey: Fears of Islamism,
Kurdism, and Communism.”
27 Zehra F. K. Arat, “Conclusion: Turkey’s prospects and broader implications,” 281.
28 www.hrw.org/world-report-2010/turkey (accessed on September 4, 2016).
29 Kathleen Cavanaugh and Edel Hughes, “A democratic opening? e AKP and the
Kurdish le,” Muslim World Journal of Human Rights vol. 12 (2015), 53–74.
30 Dilruba Çatalbaş, “Freedom of press and broadcasting” in Zehra F. K. Arat (ed.), Human
Rights in Turkey (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).
31 Melih U. Erol, “estioning non-discrimination, equality, and human rights in
contemporary Turkey from the perspective of the Alevi religious community,” Muslim
World Journal of Human Rights vol. 12 (2015), 75–97.
32 Hugh Pope, “Erdogan’s decade” (2012) The Cairo Review of Global Affairs.
www.aucegypt.edu/gapp/cairoreview/Pages/articleDetails.aspx?aid=149 (accessed on
September 4, 2016).
33 Kathleen Cavanaugh and Edel Hughes, “A democratic opening? e AKP and the
Kurdish le.”
34 Access the report at www.uscirf.gov/reports-briefs/annual-report.
35 hps://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2013/turkey#.VZlTbhtViko (accessed on
September 4, 2016).
277
36 Henri Barkey, “Turkish democracy: two steps forward, two steps baward,” Harvard
International Review vol. 34 (2014), 75–8.
37 Fait Muedini, “e politics between the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the
Gülen movement: issues of democratization, human rights abuses and rising
authoritarianism,” Muslim World Journal of Human Rights vol. 12 (2015), 99–122.
38 Batu Kinikoglu, “Evaluating the regulation of access to online content in Turkey in the
context of freedom of spee,” Journal of International Law and Technology vol. 9
(2014), 36–55.
39 hp://index.rsf.org/#!/; Also see Oray Egin, “Silence of surrender: Erdogan’s war on
independent Media,” World Affairs vol. 176 (2013), 47–56.
40 www.hrw.org/world-report/2012/country-apters/turkey (accessed on September 4,
2016).
41 Sebnem Arsu, “Turkish President says women shouldn’t be considered equals,” (2014)
The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/world/europe/turkish-president-
says-women-shouldnt-be-considered-equals.html (accessed on September 4, 2016).
42 www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/03/turkey-gives-police-broad-powers-to-repress-
dissent/ (accessed on September 4, 2016).
43 Aliza Marcus, “e Kurds’ evolving strategy,” World Affairs vol. 175 (2012), 15–22.
278
Selected Bibliography
Arat, Zehra F. K. (ed.). Human Rights in Turkey. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.
Cavanaugh, Kathleen and Hughes, Edel. “A democratic opening? e AKP and the Kurdish le” in Muslim World Journal of Human Rights vol. 12, no. 1 (2015), 53–74.
Erol, Melih U. “estioning non-discrimination, equality, and human rights in contemporary Turkey from the perspective of the Alevi religious community,” Muslim World Journal of Human Rights vol. 12, no. 1 (2015), 75–97.
Hamid, Shadi. Temptations of Power: Islamists and New Illiberal Democracy in the Middle East. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Kılınç, Ramazan. “International pressure, domestic politics, and the dynamics of religious freedom: evidence from Turkey” in Comparative Politics vol. 46 (2014), 127–45.
Kuru, Ahmet T. “e rise and fall of military tutelage in Turkey: fears of Islamism, Kurdism, and Communism,” Insight Turkey vol. 14 (2012), 37–57.
Kuru, Ahmet T. and Stepan, Alfred eds. Democracy, Islam, and Secularism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.
Mousseau Demet Y. “Is Turkey democratizing with EU reforms? An assessment of human rights, corruption and socio-economic conditions” in Southeast European and Black Sea Studies vol. 12 (2012), 63–80.
Muedini, Fait. “e politics between the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Gülen movement: issues of democratization, human rights abuses and rising authoritarianism” in Muslim World Journal of Human Rights vol. 12 (2015), 99–122.
279
Turan, Ilter. Turkey’s Difficult Journey to Democracy: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
280
8
e Politics of Human Rights in Iran
Since the Green Movement
Shadi Mokhtari and Neda Nazmi
281
Introduction
e popular aspirations of the historic 1979 Islamic revolution, and
the arges of rights violations from both within and abroad ever
since, have given rise to a spectrum of rights-based debates and
discourses in and in relation to Iran. Mass protests spurred by
accusations of election fraud in the 2009 presidential elections, and
the subsequent cradown on the so-called ‘Green Movement,’
represented a watershed moment in the rights contests of post-
revolutionary Iran. is dramatic episode in Iranian history
encompassed both heightened repression by the regime—including
detentions, systematic torture and rape of detainees, and severe
restrictions on the media—and substantial resistance—including
political contestation, mobilization, and heightened rights
consciousness by popular, opposition and civil society forces.
is apter considers the state of human rights politics and
contestation within Iran and in the Iranian diaspora since the
unraveling of the Green Movement in early 2010. It puts forth two
conclusions. First, it finds that, while the human rights paradigm has
become highly present in opposition and particularly exiled and
diaspora-based allenges to the regime, its immediate impact on the
Islamic Republic’s politics and policies since the Green Movement
has been modest. is indicates that conservatives in power have
been relatively successful in managing arges of human rights
violations deployed against the state. Second, there are clear
indications that the 2009–10 cradown and on-going repression
continue to occupy public consciousness, while simultaneously
public appetite for engaging in rights contestation has diminished
relative to the time of the Green Movement and the Khatami reform
era whi preceded it.
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Before proceeding, it is important to note that, although Iran is no
longer in the midst of a concerted cradown on an active popular
protest movement, political repression has remained at some of the
highest levels experienced since the 1980s. Even aer the election of
moderate Hassan Rouhani as president in 2013, hundreds of political
and civil society activists have been arrested or remain in detention.
Additionally, space for even limited allenges to the regime via the
formerly vibrant reformist media and activist sphere has shrunk
considerably compared to the 1997–2003 Khatami reform era and
even the first Ahmadinejad presidency. During this period, Iran has
also set dismal global records for the number of executions carried
out and the number of journalists jailed. Even the mu celebrated
women’s movement is largely in disarray with prominent activists
silenced through prison sentences, and key publications and
advocacy groups shut down.
283
e trajectory of human rights dynamics in
post-revolutionary Iran
In the lead up to Iran’s historic 1979 revolution, the Shah’s
repression—including torture and restrictions on political expression
and participation—constituted a major grievance for virtually all of
the ideologically disparate groups participating in the revolution. A
leading slogan of the revolution was “esteghlal, azadi, jomhuri-e
Islami” (independence, freedom, Islamic Republic). is slogan,
along with the inclusion of a host of civil and political rights in the
Islamic Republic’s constitution (though encumbered by many
qualifications, limitations, and contradictions), spoke to the
significance of aspirations for increased liberties and rights at that
time. Following just a few months of relative political openness, the
1980s were a decade of high levels of repression, including mass
executions of thousands of supporters of the mujahedin-e khalq and
leist groups. At this time, any significant criticism of the regime’s
repression could only be waged from abroad and it was oen done
so through the language of human rights violations, making it easy
for the regime to associate the paradigm with ‘enemies of the
revolution,’ in addition to labeling human rights a Western,
imperialist and un-Islamic framework. is le virtually no space for
explicit allenges to the regime’s repression from within the
country, mu less for the deployment of human rights discourses
internally.
e 1990s saw the emergence of ideas whi allenged the key
tenets underpinning the state’s conservative brand of Islamist
ideology. e decade saw the prominence of Islamic intellectual
Abdulkarim Soroush’s theories of diversity, tolerance, and pluralism
in Islam.1 is decade also witnessed the emergence of “Islamic
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feminism,” spearheaded from above by women related to the Islamic
Republic’s male elite and from below by activists, women’s circles,
and a general heightening of gender consciousness among women
from all social strata, religious and secular. Su currents set the
stage for the surprise landslide election of reformist Mohammad
Khatami, who campaigned and aempted to govern using a
discourse largely centered on the compatibility of Islam with notions
of rights, tolerance, citizenship and improving conditions for
women. While ‘people’s rights,’ ‘the nation’s rights,’ and ‘citizen’s
rights’ were frequently invoked, reformists in Khatami’s camp
largely steered clear of using the term ‘human rights’ for fear of the
consequences of hardliners’ arges they were furthering Western
agendas. e Khatami era was also aracterized by rising civil
society activity. Reformist publications tested the established
boundaries of tolerated criticism and women’s rights activists
undertook advocacy campaigns, including initiatives promoting
Iran’s accession to CEDAW (the U.N. Women’s Rights Convention),
and reform of the Islamic Republic’s family laws derived from Shi`i
jurisprudence. At this time, rights claims were predominately
coued in Islamic discourses. us the accomplishment of the 1990s
and early 2000s was the creation of an expanded space to redefine
rights as rooted in Islam, and the ability to talk about ‘rights
violations’ within that medium.
e government’s apparent election fraud and subsequent
cradown on public protests and opposition mobilizations following
the 2009 elections constituted a significant rollba of the space
created during the Khatami years. At the same time however, the
regime faced an unprecedented allenge to its legitimacy from four
sources: the de facto leaders of the Green Movement, including
Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Moussavi, and Islamist political
allies in the reformist camp; a handful of clerics sympathetic to their
cause; jailed political and civil society activists; and a politicized
public for large segments of whom the brutal cradown became a
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major societal grievance, prompting a new round of rights discourses
and heightened rights consciousness.2 Rights allenges were
frequently put forth by ea of these groups coued in Islamic or
revolutionary discourses, but increasingly also in a self-standing
secular way. Mir Hossein Moussavi invoked human rights directly
on several occasions and even allenged the state’s association of
the human rights paradigm with Western political agendas and
culture, writing in his statement #15:
Don’t you claim that expressions su as human rights, women’s rights, minority rights
and the like are excuses world powers hypocritically use to beautify themselves. Why
are they who are supposedly the original and primary proprietors of these values then
far from [realizing] them? Is it that they seek to taint their sool [of thought]? Why do
you curse these concepts and render them the standard for heresy? A religion that has
gied a bushel of flowers for humanity with its mild teaings whi are compatible
with human nature. God forbid, we turn it in a bushel of thorns so that anyone who has
contact with any corner of it is wounded—wounds like those our youth see in the
streets.3
Concurrently, despite hardliner’s rhetoric to the contrary, at the
popular level notions of Islam and human rights being competing
frameworks, or of human rights being nothing more than a tool of
Western power politics, were increasingly rejected. In short, the
human rights paradigm’s resonance, legitimacy, and indigenous
credentials seemed to grow. us, while the Khatami reform era
expanded the space for invoking rights but for the most part only
through Islamic discourses, the Green Movement inaugurated both
more secular formulations of human rights claims being put forth,
and more prominent use of the human rights idea by former Islamic
Republic insiders.4
286
Human rights politics since the Green
Movement
By February 2010 it was clear that security forces and regime
supporters had devised effective ways of physically preventing
people from accessing major squares, a common seing for protests.
In addition, potential organizers were either arrested or under su
strict surveillance as to render them fully paralyzed. A few months
into the Arab uprisings of 2011, Mir Hossein Moussavi, his wife
Zahra Rahnevard and Medhi Karroubi were placed under house
arrest. Fearing similar fates, dozens of prominent Islamist political
figures allied with the former candidates and reformist camp, as well
as journalists and civil society activists, le Iran for exile during the
cradown. e combination of shrinking space for domestic
allenges, and the departure of a significant number of political and
civil society activists, many of them reform-minded Islamists, moved
a new wave of political dissent coued in human rights language
abroad. While internally, human rights once again became a
discourse most political and social activists felt compelled to keep
some distance from, it became a ubiquitous feature of political and
social justice activism abroad. During this period, conservatives
continued to simultaneously co-opt and discredit the international
human rights framework. At the popular level, while the violence
and victims of the 2009–10 cradown had not been forgoen, the
impetus for rights contestation, seen at the height of the Green
Movement, had dimmed. With the passage of time, public interest
shied to everyday life, new political contests (su as the 2013
elections), and the nuclear standoff with the West.
287
Human Rights and the reform camp inside Iran
In the wake of the 2013 presidential election, the reformist camp
within Iran slowly began to regroup and, ultimately, to support the
presidential candidacy of Hassan Rouhani, with hopes of reigniting
the interrupted project of political reform. ere was a heated debate
over whether Iranians should participate or boyco the elections,
waged extensively on social media and among diaspora Iranians.
Boyco proponents pointed to the post-2009 cradown and
continued detentions of political opponents as evidence that the
ruling regime was simply too morally bankrupt to make engagement
worthwhile. Ultimately, however, 72 percent of Iranian citizens
turned out to vote, electing Hassan Rouhani.
In his election campaign Rouhani took up familiar reformist
themes, including: government accountability, strengthening the rule
of law (within the framework of the Islamic Republic’s constitution),
strengthening the voice of the people in politics, and greater
realization of rights. In the realm of rights, he was most comfortable
referring to women’s rights, the rights of Iran’s ethnic and religious
minorities, and the notion of ‘citizenship rights.’ ese were invoked
in mostly general terms, while occasionally freedom of thought,
expression and criticism were mentioned. When pressed in several
instances by audiences anting “political prisoners must be freed,”
Rouhani promised to work to free political prisoners, including the
Green Movement’s de facto leaders remaining under house arrest
whom he referred to explicitly by name. Videos of Election Day
celebrations in the streets included ants of “Rouhani remember,
Moussavi must be [freed]” and “My martyred brother, I reclaimed
your stolen vote.” For many reformers—inside Iran and in exile—the
very fact hardliners allowed Rouhani to run and to win was directly
related to them feeling the weight and potential peril of the popular
discontent produced by the 2009–10 cradown.
288
Despite the hope placed in his presidency, Rouhani’s first two
years were marked by only tentative and token steps towards
improving rights conditions, with few tangible gains. In October
2013, during his first 100 days in office, Rouhani put out a “Dra
Charter of Citizens’ Rights.”5 e arter included some overlap with
conventional human rights documents, namely in its recognition of
certain due process rights, freedom of expression and press, and a
host of social and economic rights. Women’s rights were also
mentioned, but largely in relation to their social and economic rights
and with virtually no mention of legal discrimination stemming
from Shari`a-based laws operating in the country. e Dra Charter
offered lile by way of concrete legal protections, and, aer
presenting a brief opportunity for the embaled reformist media and
civil society to once again safely take up rights issues, it faded from
the political scene.
Beyond the Dra Charter, Rouhani took up human rights-and
women’s rights-related themes from time to time, but rarely in any
sustained way. Soon aer his election some prominent jailed
activists su as Nasrin Sotoudeh were freed. He made statements
contradicting Khamenei’s assertions of traditional fiqh notions of
complementarity of men and women’s duties and rights, by
speaking of gender equality (even using the hashtag #genderequality
in a tweet) in relation to women’s participation in the public sphere
and professional life. When faced with the same ants of “political
prisoners must be freed” at post-election speees, he has urged his
supporters to remain patient, signaling at the very least that he
retained some commitment to the issue. Within his administration,
Shahidokt Molaverdi, who Rouhani appointed his Vice President for
Women’s Affairs, has oen been highly vocal in her allenges to
conservatives, largely in relation to hejab policing and the presence
of women at sporting events. She has also advocated for women’s
social and economic rights, including combating poverty and
homelessness. In the summer of 2015, Rouhani gave a spee to the
289
Judiciary urging it to cooperate with him in pushing for a law to
finally define what constitutes political crimes; a definition whi he
asserted should follow the example of the first Shi`a Imam, Imam
Ali, by tolerating even the most stinging verbal criticism as long as
there was no violence deployed.6 Su stances taken by Rouhani can
be viewed at best as a broad endorsement of the spirit of upholding
certain rights, but fall short of a willingness to invest substantial
political capital to guarantee them.
To date, most reformist allies have given Rouhani the benefit of
the doubt, assuming he has had lile oice but to sideline the
domestic political reform agenda in order to concentrate his political
capital on bringing a deal on the nuclear issue to fruition. Comments
on the international stage by his popular Foreign Minister Javad
Zarif denying the existence of political prisoners and politically-
motivated executions in Iran, and insisting that Iran’s human rights
conditions are not particularly worse than elsewhere7, as well as a
2014 assertion by Rouhani himself that in Iran there are no jailed
journalists, have been viewed by many allies against this badrop.
While giving rise to some criticism, the statements are widely
interpreted by reformist allies as the Rouhani administration’s
strategy to tread lightly on rights issues on the international stage in
order to maintain hardliners reluctant acquiescence to a nuclear
arms deal. Conservative cleric Ayatollah Mokarem Shirazi and even
Khamenei himself have warned that, once nuclear negotiations have
been concluded, Western actors will want to bring forth the issue of
human rights, but that an arms deal will not lead to any opening up
of political space. e reform camp and even many Iranian human
rights activists, however, oose to believe that geing the
distractions and excuses presented by the nuclear energy standoff
out of the way is a prerequisite for again addressing rights issues. A
recent study of Iranian civil society activists reflected overwhelming
support for the conclusion of a deal with the West on the nuclear
issue and the removal of sanctions, whi some viewed as
290
contributing to social and economic rights violations.8 Some exiled
activists belonging to the reformist camp at times even lobbied
Western officials to refrain from inserting human rights into the
negotiations.
A small group of dissident clerics also continued to allenge
hardliners in power, oen going farther than Rouhani, and most
reformists, in this regard. is cohort, led by Ayatollah Bayat
Zanjani, Ayatollah Ali Mohammad Dastgeib and Grand Ayatollah
Mousavi Ardabili, have made stinging critiques of the government
revolving around state repression and denial of rights. A few
examples are instructive of their discourse. Following his bold
indictments of the 2009 cradown, Ayatollah Bayat Zanjani has
spoken out against what he has called the “the political treatment”
and targeting of workers, ruling hardliners’ limiting of “God-given
freedom”, the misguided view that there is a contradiction between
human rights and Islam, and the authorities’ failure to implement
rights provisions laid out in the Islamic Republic’s constitution. In
October 2013, Ayatollah Ali Mohammad Dastgeib targeted not only
the state’s repression, but also Rouhani’s reluctance to take up the
plight of political prisoners:
We say … Dr. Hasan Rouhani …, other people and I, based on the slogans that we use,
conditionally voted for you. Our condition first of all was that you try to free political
prisoners particularly Mr Mousavi and Karrubi. People who were against this view
voted for other candidates. You need to try your best as you see fit. Even if you need to
go to sources of emulation and ask for their views based on shari`a … If you evaluate it
from the standpoint of shari`a … the issue is completely clear.9
In December 2012, Grand Ayatollah Mousavi Ardebili addressed
conservative discourses discrediting the human rights idea:
Today it is a duty of the ulama to incorporate discussion and the realization of human
rights in their solarly undertakings, placing it at the fore of and expanding it through
ijtihad and jurisprudence and in this way supporting modern humanity. It is incumbent
upon speakers, writers and Islamic missionaries with a correct understanding and
expression of human rights issues to not only resolve the misgiving about any conflict
between human rights and Islam but also to highlight the significant role of religion in
291
promoting all aspects of human rights. It is the duty of those at the fore of public
opinion to promote rights issues and human rights until they become common values of
and serious demands in Islamic societies. It is the duty of the rulers and those running
Islamic societies to follow human rights’ laws and accepted standards … to make a
beer world for the Islamic ummah and create a more beautiful face for Islamic
societies and government in the world. Let us believe not only that human rights values
are not imported or imposed but rather it is our own great heritage.10
ough these dissident clerics’ numbers are small, their willingness
to continue to employ rights discourses, and pose relatively bold
rights-based allenges to a self-styled Islamic state built around the
“Rule of the Jurist” thesis, remains a thorn in the side of the
hardliners in power, and lends an air of religious legitimacy to the
rights claims against the regime.
e state of human rights and women’s rights activism
in Iran aer the Green Movement
During the life of the Islamic Republic, organizations whi could be
considered the Iranian corollary to independent domestic human
rights and women’s rights organizations have always been forced to
navigate a precarious terrain traversing domestic and international
politics. Typically, they have been small groups, modestly funded by
members and perpetually faced with the prospects of being shut
down and their leadership subjected to prison sentences. Although
the targeting of these groups began in the first Ahmadinejad
presidency, the cradown on the Green Movement further shrunk
their ability to pursue rights activism beyond safer areas, su as
ildren’s rights and the rights of the disabled. Instead the rights
related work being done has largely gone underground, sometimes
facilitated by foreign funding received through informal annels.
To the extent that they are able to operate, these groups now largely
focus their efforts on regaining the ground lost since the 2009
elections rather than expanding on past gains. is is particularly
292
true of the women’s rights groups, whi had previously made
significant gains in the areas of violence against women, custody
rights for mothers aer divorce, and raising the legal age of
marriage. Now, they limit their activities to arguably less ambitious
fights over hijab patrolling or women’s aendance at sporting
events. It is also evident in the website of the Defenders of Human
Rights Center, an NGO created by now exiled Nobel Peace Prize
winner Shirin Ebadi, whi devotes most of its content to
allenging current repression, including the imprisonment of its
own members. As Ali Fathollah-Nejad has argued, not only have
su advocacy groups been further weakened by the excuse for
securitization presented by American threats of military
confrontation but they have also suffered from the stringent
economic sanctions imposed in recent years.11 Despite also facing
considerable repression, in 2015 the labor movement remained the
most visible and perhaps most active segment of Iranian civil
society, staging protests with relatively sizable numbers of
participants.
In the years preceding the Green Movement, while there were few
domestic civil society organizations with ‘human rights’ in the title
of their organizations, there was a steady rise in the number of
individuals who self-identified as ‘human rights defenders,’
‘women’s rights defenders,’ ‘human rights activists,’ ‘women’s rights
activists,’ or ‘human rights lawyers.’ At the same time, the post-2009
election cradown brought ‘the political prisoner’ to the fore of
public discourse and consciousness. A number of individuals
belonging to these oen overlapping categories came to acquire
considerable status, becoming household names and the subject of
political conversation among disaffected citizens, particularly in the
Middle and educated classes. Members of this group—including
Nasrin Sotoudeh, Bahar Hedayat, Narges Mohammadi and
Abdolfaah Soltani—frequently highlighted the injustices stemming
from the regime’s repression, invoking the language of human rights
293
in numerous public leers from jail and in public statements and
interviews upon their release. For example, in December 2014 Soltani
and four other political prisoners put out a statement to
commemorate Human Rights Day.12 Both the presence of the
dissident ‘human rights activists’ within political discourse, and
societal reverence and concern for the plight of the political prisoner,
have endured beyond the Green Movement.
Press freedom has also declined during the current era, with the
state’s tight grip on journalism and journalists leading to the decline
of a sector whi led the reform movement during the Khatami
presidency. Reformist publications that pushed the limits of tolerated
spee, su as Mardom Emrooz or Zanan-e Emrooz (both a
women’s rights and reformist publication), have been shut down.
Only a few reformist publications, su as Etemad and Sharq,
remain in circulation. e clampdown on su publications has been
particularly devastating because, as Benjamin Staursky has noted,
more than the underdeveloped NGO sector, publications with
women’s rights and reform agendas have served as the springboard
for rights activism in post-revolutionary Iran.13 us, as has been the
case since the early 2000s, in the face of repression, expression of
political dissent and rights demands have largely moved online. To
the extent that they can break barriers of bloed websites and
turtle-paced internet speeds, Iranians have unrestricted opportunities
for expression and access to information online. Beyond the
thousands of political and activist blogs, publications born out of the
Green Movement continue to be available electronically. As
elsewhere, social media including Facebook and Viber serve as an
important medium for transmiing everything from news of the
regime’s human rights violations to jokes with sociological insights
into rights consciousness.
294
Invoking human rights from abroad: exiled activist,
expatriate and diaspora discourses on human rights
Before the Green Movement, human rights had become a language
widely deployed by diaspora Iranians who actively opposed the
Islamic regime in power. Members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq,
monarists and leists all deployed human rights discourses in
highly politicized ways to aa the moral legitimacy of the Islamic
Republic. For many adherents of these ideologies, there was lile
difference between Iran’s Islamists, whether they identified as
hardliner or reformer. us, these groups refused to engage with
Islamic reformers and, at the same time, Islamic reformers (as well as
secular rights activists operating within the country) preferred to
keep their distance from these groups in order to evade arges of
conspiring against the regime. ese dynamics produced a glaring
distinction between the cautious, incremental, and oen religiously-
based rights claims being put forth within Iran and the loud, hyper-
politicized and oen sensationalized human rights discourses being
waged abroad.
With the considerable barriers to activism in place following the
2009 elections, combined with the large number of Islamist
reformers and civil society activists who went into exile in its
aermath, a significant amount of internally-based activism moved
abroad. Tapping into their networks inside the country (and now
abroad), these exiled political and civil society activists aempted to
spearhead initiatives to put pressure on conservatives in power and
aid fellow activists still operating within Iran. ese activists who
regularly identified as ‘human rights defenders’ and/or invoked the
language of human rights in interviews, worked on initiatives su
as compiling and updating information about the numbers, status
and conditions faced by political prisoners in Iranian jails. Exiled
Islamists, many of whom previously enjoyed regime insider status,
began meeting and collaborating with a new generation of secular
295
diaspora Iranians who, having spent formidable years abroad, did
not have the same highly arged ideological commitments of their
parents’ generation.
us, the post-2009 election era produced some fascinating
developments in diaspora-based human rights discourses and
advocacy. Namely, it has given rise to forms of diaspora human
rights activism that are typically less politicized, less polarizing, less
ideological, more inclusive and more closely aligned with what has
come to be known as professional human rights advocacy
internationally. In line with the flurry of rights activism spurred by
the 2009 cradown and the Green Movement,14 these initiatives
tend to bridge longstanding secular–Islamist and internal–diaspora
divides. A notable example of this type of an initiative is the
International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, directed by
former Human Rights Wat Iran researer Hadi Ghaemi. is
advocacy group with its ties to both Iranian-Americans and recent
reformist exiles, as well as impressive connections with activists and
victims inside Iran, is non-ideological and successfully incorporates
religious and secular actors and issues into its work. Despite these
impressive developments, the degree to whi su foreign-based
human rights initiatives have impacted the behavior of the regime,
though difficult to gauge, appears modest to date.
One area in whi the human rights politics of the Iranian
diaspora has had a more manifest impact has been in the realm of
human rights norm diffusion. Human rights and political activists
living abroad oen diffuse human rights norms and discourses inside
Iran’s borders via foreign-based (and oen Western government
funded) Farsi language media. roughout 2012 and 2013, in its
“Sixty Minutes” newscasts, BBC Persian frequently featured news
and interviews in whi the human rights frame was used,
sometimes on several separate occasions in the same hour-long
broadcast. e frame could appear in news of the findings of a U.N.
or NGO human rights report, BBC correspondents’ own reporting on
296
the plight of political prisoners, restrictions on press freedom or the
state of women’s rights. ese reports are frequently followed by an
interview with an Iranian human rights activist inside Iran or in
exile. e U.S.-funded Radio Farda even broadcasts a weekly
program called “Human Rights” in whi the host largely ronicles
news of recent detentions, releases or summons of political
prisoners, executions and limits on press freedom among other
human rights developments and features interviews with victims’
families. Manoto TV, a London-based satellite TV annel also
includes human rights reporting in its news coverage and regularly
takes up human rights related topics in its social programming. In
light of the severe restrictions and state control of domestic
television annels, su foreign-based television and to a lesser
extent radio programs enjoy large audiences inside Iran. For
example, in Mar 2012, BBC Persian announced that its TV
audience has doubled from three million to six million viewers in
Iran since 2009, noting that the numbers are likely deflated due to
the reluctance of many to admit to a surveyor that they wat
banned coverage, and the fact that the number does not include their
internet audience.15 Another avenue for human rights norm
diffusion has been through diaspora-produced songs addressing the
plights of political prisoners, Iran’s executions, or the Islamic
Republic’s repression more broadly. Due to restrictions on pop music
following the revolution, music produced in the diaspora has always
been widely consumed through underground sales inside Iran.
Hardliner/conservative responses to human rights
allenges
Conservatives in power continue to take a variety of contradictory
positions on the human rights paradigm and arges of human
rights violations waged against them. e most prevalent discourse
297
simultaneously assert both that human rights are being fully
respected and realized in the Islamic Republic and that international
human rights allenges are baseless because they are rooted in
Western political interests. Human rights allenges are labeled
Western political tools (abzarha-ye gharbi) or Western propaganda
(tablighat`e ghrabi). ey also arge human rights allenges with
undermining Islamic values and the foundations of the Islamic
Republic, highlighting, for example, gay rights as demonstrative of
the incompatibility of the framework with Islamic mores.
ey further aempt to delegitimize human rights by pointing to
violence or discrimination in Western countries. For example,
compare Iran’s willingness to close down the Kahrizak prison, where
some of the worst cases of post-2009 election torture and deaths
surfaced, to the U.S.’ unwillingness to close the Guantanamo Bay
detention facility.16 Additionally, they almost exclusively respond to
international human rights critiques, rather than those made by
Iranians within the country or abroad, finding those allenges
easier to dispose of through anti-imperialist discourses and the
highlighting of Western double standards. For example, in reference
to the criticisms put forth by the U.N. Special Rapporteur for Iran,
Mohammad Javad Larijani, the head of the judiciary’s Human
Rights Commiee, puts forth a favorite conservative refrain:
We are not against the Special Rapporteur system. In fact, we support a non-
discriminatory Special Rapporteur system and were among the founders of the system
at the United Nations … We consider the designation of a Special Rapporteur [for Iran]
invalid. Westerners have friends in the region who have not held elections even once, or
in Bahrain, the people protest for fair elections, but no one is concerned about them.17
Internal incidents, whi activists label as human rights violations,
are oen blamed on foreign intelligence and sabotage. For instance,
when a series of acid aas took place in Esfahan in the fall of 2014,
some conservative officials aributed the incidents to British
intelligence or other “foreign hands.”18 ey also defamed human
rights critics abroad through state-run or affiliated media. In one
298
example, state television aired fabricated news that Masih Alinejad
who had spearheaded the “My Stealthy Freedom” Facebook
campaign featuring pictures of women without a hijab in Iran, had
been raped by three men in front of her son. In another case, a
conservative allied newspaper reported that WikiLeaks had revealed
that Ahmad Shaheed, the U.N. Special Rapporteur for Iran, had
received funding from Saudi Arabia—a report that WikiLeaks
quily denied.
roughout the life of the Islamic Republic, while conservatives
and hardliners aempted to delegitimize human rights claims as
foreign and a product of Western political agendas, they felt enough
of the normative force of international human rights criticisms to
create a number of ‘human rights’ institutions with the clear intent
to co-opt the framework. e Islamic Human Rights Commission
created in 1995, the Judiciary’s Human Rights Council created in
2005, and the Parliament’s Human Rights Commiee created in 2008
are institutions closely linked to the state whi have been designed
to manage and co-opt the human rights frame, with occasional signs
of some (mainly the Islamic Human Rights Commission) developing
more independent institutional cultures. e Judiciary’s Human
Rights Council for example was comprised of the Interior Minister,
Intelligence Minister, the Aorney General and the Foreign Minister.
In 2014, it held a series of “Expert Conferences on Human Rights”
with themes whi included “e rights of the accused” and
“promoting human rights.”19 While su window-dressing is typical
of authoritarian regimes’ aempts to co-opt the human rights
framework, these measures are minimalist in nature compared to
other authoritarian contexts. Perhaps this is reflective of the regime’s
sense that the human rights allenges it faces are manageable and
currently pose lile threat.
Popular rights consciousness and contestation
299
In any society, the degree to whi citizens come to view themselves
as rights-bearing, adopt the view that their rights or other
individuals’ rights are being violated, and find the violation of theirs
or others’ rights so unjust that it warrants engaging in public
contention is in constant flux. In the aermath of the 2009 Iranian
presidential elections, rights claims put forth by Green Movement
leaders, victims, and sympathetic clerics all infused Iranian society
with heightened rights consciousness. is gave impetus to
allenges to the state’s excesses. e Green Movement’s
incorporation of women’s rights, religious minority rights, and social
and political rights further expanded the scope of this rights
consciousness.
Ascertaining the precise level of rights consciousness and rights
subjectivities of Iranians since the Green Movement, however, is a
more difficult task. On the one hand, it is natural that, with the
passage of time, the population did not maintain the same intense
politicization and urgency to reclaim lost rights as it had in the
summer of 2009. With months turning into years, the demands of
everyday life and survival (particularly under sanctions), and the
emergence of new political dramas, su as the 2013 elections or the
nuclear standoff with the West, came to dominate the public’s
aention. It became easy to push aside the emotions whi
motivated political contestation and rights claims. Mir Hossein
Mousavi himself seemed to have foreseen the need for the
population to return to the demands of life and survival when he
stated in 2010 that “Resistance is a holy endeavor, but it is not
perpetual. What is perpetual is life.”20 Further, while the widespread
human rights frame in diaspora-based discourses and media likely
results in considerable human rights norm diffusion and helps to
retain the regime’s repression within public consciousness, this, is
not necessarily reflective of popular views inside Iran. It may be that
those who le Iran in 2009 remain immersed in the events that led to
their exile, while Iran’s population has to a greater extent moved on.
300
Finally, given their traumatic experiences with repression, violence,
and war in the 1980s, coupled with the violent turn of many of the
Arab world’s 2011 uprisings, Iranians have signaled a willingness to
coexist with hardliners’ repression while continuing to seek the only
avenue for ange that does not carry with it a substantial risk of
being subject to state violence, namely: pursuing incremental rights
gains through continued support for the Islamist reform project.
At the same time, the fact that protesting populations have
retreated from Tehran’s streets does not mean that a significant—
even if dormant—rights consciousness does not endure. To the
contrary, there are many indications that the 2009 cradown and
ensuing state of repression remains a widespread grievance within
popular political consciousness. is awareness can be seen in the
ants demanding the release of Mousavi, Karroubi and ‘the political
prisoner’ whenever opportunities for mass public gatherings surface.
is was seen in the street celebrations following Rouhani’s 2013
election victory and even the announcement of a nuclear agreement
between Iran and world powers in July 2015, whi led again to
videos of crowds anting “Moussavi, Karroubi, must be freed.”
What cannot be seen may serve as an even beer indication of the
extent to whi grievances continue to be understood as rights
violations. As Asef Bayat’s analysis of street politics and the political
street in the contemporary Middle East makes clear, in authoritarian
seings grievances are expressed, and resistance takes shape, not in
formal public gatherings su as protests or organized meetings, but
in the conduct of everyday life’s interactions. Bayat calls this the
expanding public sphere, including within this site everything from
street vendors, corner grocers, taxicabs, or other places where people
informally interact.21
is analysis sheds important light on segments of the population
whi have not forgoen the 2009–10 cradown and whi
continue to experience the diffusion of human rights norms and
discourses via foreign-based and social media. eir rights
301
consciousness and the willingness to contest rights may simply be
dormant until a safer opening for contention presents itself or a new
incident of repression serves as a spark. e regime’s aempts to
discredit human rights, human rights allenges, and human rights
advocates are staples of authoritarianism in the region. is carries
significant weight mainly with the regime’s ideological support base
while the minimalist state institutions created to co-opt the human
rights framework are largely for foreign consumption. Neither is
likely to detract from the increased acceptance of the notion of
human rights among a sizable segment of the population, whi
holds deep grievances against the government and its repression.
302
Conclusion
As an enduring legacy of the Green Movement, the language of
human rights has become a key fixture of opposition and civil
society discourses allenging a range of policies and actions of the
state in Iran. While being more widely deployed by exiled and
diaspora figures, the human rights framework has also increased its
domestic presence and legitimacy in the Islamic Republic. e fact
that so many highly regarded Iranian political and civil society
figures self-identify as ‘human rights activists’ is reflective of a
normalization of the human rights paradigm. is has come to be
largely unencumbered by questions of Western double-standards,
cultural imposition and Islamic authenticity whi have, in the past
oen produced ambivalence about human rights among significant
segments of the population. Similarly, the continued centrality of
‘the political prisoner’ within public consciousness serves as a
constant reminder of the regime’s repression, while providing
frequent opportunities to invoke human rights, either through
religious analogy or in a more self-standing and secular manner. At
the same time, the dynamics set in motion by the Green movement,
including the wave of exiles produced by the cradown, have
contributed to a significant transformation of diaspora human rights
discourses and activism. Iranian diaspora discourses can be
considered increasingly more inclusive, both in its range of rights
recognized and its ability to traverse religious–secular divides, as
well as being more professional and depoliticized in its tenor. ese
developments may pave the way for potentially more serious human
rights allenges to the regime being waged from abroad in the
future.
303
Despite these gains, the future of human rights contestation in
Iran is uncertain. Organized human rights and women’s rights
activism and social movements inside the country have been forced
to retreat. Additionally, there are limits to the activism that has
moved abroad or online. While a case for relatively high levels of
rights consciousness can be made, there are few indicators that there
is an appetite for mass public contention in the name of claiming
rights in the present moment. Further, other than their acquiescence
to the Rouhani presidency, whi itself has yet to bear any fruit, to
date the human rights allenges posed to the ruling Islamist regime
appear to have had lile tangible impact on the country’s political
practices. Finally, the standoff with the West over the nuclear issue
provided the regime with ample excuse for securitization of the
state, further weakened Iran’s fledgling civil society, and produced
social and economic rights violations. One can only hope that once
that issue is resolved, Iran’s reformers and activists will find
themselves in an expanded space to further their rights agenda.
304
Notes
1 Shadi Mokhtari, “e Sear for Human Rights Within an Islamic Framework in Iran,”
The Muslim World vol. 94, no. 4 (October 1, 2004): 469–79, accessed September 4, 2016,
doi:10.1111/j.1478-1913.2004.00069.x.
2 Shadi Mokhtari, “‘is Government is Neither Islamic nor a Republic’: Response to the
2009 Post-election Cradown,” in Power and Change in Iran: Politics of Contention and
Concilliation (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2016), 251–82.
3 Mir Hossein Mousavi, “Statement Number Fieen” (June 16, 2010).
4 For a discussion of the secularization of political discourse spurred by the Green
Movement see Farhad Khosrowkhavar, “e Green Movement: Democratization and
Secularization from Below,” in Civil Society and Democracy in Iran (New York:
Lexington Books, n.d.), 39–77.
5 “Ahmed Shaheed English Translation of Dra Citizenship Rights Charter,” accessed
August 26, 2015, hp://shaheedoniran.org/english/sources/documents/citizenship-
rights-arter/.
6 “Hassan Rouhani Calls for Distinguishing between Political Crimes and Security
Crimes,” BBC Persian, January 28, 2015, accessed September 4, 2016,
www.bbc.com/persian/iran/2015/06/150628_l39_rowhani_political_crimes.
7 “Zarif in the Austrian Parliament: In Iran We Do Not Have Politically Motivated
Executions,” accessed July 16, 2015, www.radiofarda.com/content/f10-iran-austria-zarif-
parliament-human-rights-executions/25303031.html.
8 “High Hopes, Tempered Expectations: Views from Iran on the Nuclear Negotiations”
(International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, June 2015), accessed September 4,
2016, www.iranhumanrights.org/wp-content/uploads/Briefing-ICHRI-
NuclearNegotiations-June2015.pdf.
9 “Ayatollah Seyed Ali Dasgheib’s Visit with Reformers in Fars Province,” Tribun-E
Zamane, November 5, 2013.
305
10 “e Issue Is Human Dignity and Faith-Based Rights,” December 27, 2012, accessed
September 4, 2016,
www.jamaran.ir/fa/n23361/%D8%B3%D8%B1%D9%88%DB%8C%D8%B3_%D9%87%D8%A
7%DB%8C_%D8%A7%D8%B5%D9%84%DB%8C/%D8%AC%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%B9%D9
%87/%D9%BE%DB%8C%D8%A7%D9%85_%D8%AD%D8%B6%D8%B1%D8%AA_%D8%A2
%DB%8C%D8%AA_%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%84%D9%87_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D8%B
8%D9%85%DB%8C_%D9%85%D9%88%D8%B3%D9%88%DB%8C_%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%
AF%D8%A8%DB%8C%D9%84%DB%8C.
11 Fathollah-Nejad, Ali, “Iran’s Civil Society Grappling with a Triangular Dynamic,” in
Civil Society in Syria and Iran: Activism in Authoritarian Contexts, Paul Aarts and
Francesco Cavatorta eds, (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2013).
12 “Statement of Five Jailed Political Prisoners on the Occasion of International Human
Rights Day,” Saham News, accessed August 27, 2015,
hp://sahamnews.org/2014/12/271783/.
13 Benjamin Staursky, The Promise and Perils of Transnationalization: NGO Activism
and the Socialization of Women’s Human Rights in Egypt and Iran, Routledge Advances
in International Relations and Global Politics 102 (New York: Routledge, 2013) 129.
14 Khosrowkhavar, “e Green Movement: Democratization and Secularization from
Below.”
15 “BBC Persian Audience Doubles to Six Million.” BBC (February 29, 2012) accessed
September 4, 2016, www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-17200494.
16 “Mohammad Javad Larijani in the Expert Gathering of the Human Rights Commiee:
We Do Not Have a Problem with a Non-Discriminatory Human Rights Special
Rapparteur,” accessed July 16, 2015, hp://dadiran.ir/Default.aspx?
tabid=2351&articleType=ArticleView&articleId=75636.
17 Ibid.
18 “Maslahi: British Intelligence Is Behind Esfahan’s Acid Aas,” October 30, 2014,
www.bbc.com/persian/iran/2014/10/141030_nm_acid_aa_moslahi_isfahan; “What
Do Iranian Officials Say About Esfahan’s Acid Aas,” accessed August 27, 2015,
www.bbc.com/persian/iran/2014/10/141021_nm_acid_aas_isfahan_authorities.
306
19 “e Sixth Expert Conference on Human Rights Was Held,” accessed July 16, 2015,
www.bibaknews.com/%D8%B5%D9%81%D8%AD%D9%87-%D8%A7%D9%88%D9%84-
%D8%B9%D9%85%D9%88%D9%85%DB%8C/%D9%85%D9%87%D9%85%D8%AA%D8%B1%
DB%8C%D9%86%E2%80%8C%D8%B9%D9%86%D8%A7%D9%88%DB%8C%D9%86/374574-
%D8%B4%D8%B4%D9%85%DB%8C%D9%86-%D9%86%D8%B4%D8%B3%D8%AA-
%D8%AA%D8%AE%D8%B5%D8%B5%DB%8C-%D8%AD%D9%82%D9%88%D9%82-
%D8%A8%D8%B1%DA%AF%D8%B2%D8%A7%D8%B1. “Fih Expert Gathering on
Human Rights with the Topic of ‘Rights of the Accused,’” accessed July 16, 2015,
www.yjc.ir/fa/news/4935775/%D9%BE%D9%86%D8%AC%D9%85%DB%8C%D9%86-
%D9%86%D8%B4%D8%B3%D8%AA-%D8%AA%D8%AE%D8%B5%D8%B5%DB%8C-
%D8%AD%D9%82%D9%88%D9%82-%D8%A8%D8%B4%D8%B1-%D8%A8%D8%A7-
%D9%85%D9%88%D8%B6%D9%88%D8%B9-%D8%AD%D9%82%D9%88%D9%82-
%D9%85%D8%AA%D9%87%D9%85.
20 Mir Hossein Mousavi, “Statement Number irteen.”
21 Asef Bayat, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Redwood
City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 11–14.
307
Selected Bibliography
Aarts, Paul, and Francesco Cavatorta, eds. Civil Society in Syria and
Iran: Activism in Authoritarian Contexts. Boulder, CO.: Lynne
Rienner Publishers, 2013.
Abbasgholizadeh, Mahboubeh. “‘To Do Something We Are Unable to
Do in Iran’: Cyberspace, the Public Sphere, and the Iranian
Women’s Movement.” Signs vol. 39, no. 4 (June 1, 2014): 831–40.
doi: 10.1086/675722.
Ghamari-tabrizi, Behrooz. “Women’s Rights, Shari`a Law, and the
Secularization of Islam in Iran.” International Journal of Politics,
Culture, and Society vol. 26, no. 3 (September 2013): 237–53. doi:
hp://dx.doi.org.proxyau.wrlc.org/10.1007/s10767-013-9143-x.
Hashemi, Nader, and Danny Postel, eds. The People Reloaded: The
Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran’s Future. Brooklyn,
NY: Melville House Pub, 2010.
Hoodfar, Homa, and Fatemeh Sadeghi. “Against All Odds: e
Women’s Movement in the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Development vol. 52, no. 2 (June 2009): 215–23. doi:
hp://dx.doi.org.proxyau.wrlc.org/10.1057/dev.2009.19.
Jahanbegloo, Ramin, ed. Civil Society and Democracy in Iran. Global
Encounters: Studies in Comparative Political Theory. Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books, 2012.
Khosrowkhavar, Farhad. “e Green Movement: Democratization
and Secularization from Below.” In Civil Society and Democracy
in Iran, 39–77. New York: Lexington Books, n.d.
Kurzman, Charles. “e Arab Spring: Ideals of the Iranian Green
Movement, Methods of the Iranian Revolution.” International
Journal of Middle East Studies vol. 44, no. 1 (February 2012): 162
308
–5. doi:
hp://dx.doi.org.proxyau.wrlc.org/10.1017/S0020743811001346.
Mokhtari, Shadi. “e Sear for Human Rights Within an Islamic
Framework in Iran.” The Muslim World vol. 94, no. 4 (October 1,
2004): 469–79. doi: 10.1111/j.1478-1913.2004.00069.x.
Mokhtari, Shadi. “‘is Government Is Neither Islamic Nor a
Republic’: Response to the 2009 Post-Election Cradown.” In
Power and Change in Iran: Politics of Contention and
Concilliation. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2016.
Osanloo, Arzoo. The Politics of Women’s Rights in Iran. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.
Staursky, Benjamin. The Promise and Perils of
Transnationalization: NGO Activism and the Socialization of
Women’s Human Rights in Egypt and Iran. Routledge Advances
in International Relations and Global Politics 102. New York:
Routledge, 2013.
309
9
Narrating Law
Israel and the Occupied Territories
Kathleen Cavanaugh
310
Introduction
e case of Israel–Palestine is best aracterized as a ‘metaconflict,’1
enveloping not one, but two conflicts.2 ere is the conflict itself, one
based on a question of territorial control that has, to date, claimed
6,942 Palestinians and 1,127 Israeli victims (whi includes 350
members of the security forces).3 ere is also a conflict about the
nature of the conflict; narratives and counter-narratives wrestling for
the hegemonic control on how the history of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict is told—a Rashômon effect.4
Explaining the badrop to the conflict in Israel and the Occupied
Territories is to constantly engage in the push and pull of these
distinct and oen conflicting historical narratives that inform (and
underpin) how international law has been enlisted to support (or
deny) competing claims to territory. For Israelis, land claims to
Palestine are based on religious, historical and cultural preservation
arguments,5 and in undertaking military operations, they argue that
they are exercising their right of self-defense. Palestinians argue that
they have territorial entitlement over the land where they have lived
for centuries, and in exercising a right to resist, they are in pursuit of
their legitimate right to self-determination.6
Creating a memory of state has become critical to the state-
building project for both Israelis and Palestinians. As Refaat Alareer
has reflected, “[s]ometimes a homeland becomes a tale. We love the
story because it is about our homeland and we love our homeland
even more because of the story”.7 Within official Israeli state
discourse, one aspect in constructing that story has been to allenge
Palestinian national identity (and therefore the legitimacy of claims
to territory). As I have noted elsewhere, “[e]ndeavors to allenge
the rootedness of the Palestinian national identity have become part
311
of the ‘official history’ of the state. e intent is clear; de-link the
peoples from the territory (and, therefore, their self-determination
claims) by suggesting an imagination of community.”8 Challenging
Palestinian national identity, therefore, serves two purposes. It
reinforces Israel arguments that at the time Israel seized the territory
it was sui generis.9 Arguing an imagination of community also
serves a second critical function: it allows Israel to shed its status as
occupier.
Su historical resurfacing propels certain ‘truths’ whilst
discarding other (and oen conflicting) aspects or accounts that
allenge the official state narrative. e significance of this
resurfacing becomes clear as we turn to the political struggle over
how (and what) international legal regimes apply to the Occupied
Territories. While Israeli state policies and practices give rise to a
number of issues that engage the international legal regimes, it is the
Israeli selement policy that so “dramatically expose[s] the
dissonance between government policies and the formal legal
framework of belligerent occupation.”10 It is also where the religious,
historical and cultural preservation arguments converge.
is apter will, therefore, examine how the historical-legal
contestations over Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza
shape the official state policies and practices on the issue of
selements. e first section will begin by examining the official
Israeli history-telling of Balfour Agreement, the 1948 and 1967 Arab
–Israeli wars and, more recently, the failed peace initiatives and the
Israeli ‘withdrawal’ in Gaza. e official state view of these
historical events is not just performative but these partial history-
tellings also provide a narrative aritecture from whi the States’
arguments as to its international legal obligations (on selements,
land expropriation, human rights obligation) are built. e second
half of the apter will then examine how the state has used a
broader legal contestation over the meaning of occupation and
contested history-tellings in order to create an occupation/non-
312
occupation indeterminacy that underpins Israel’s selement policy
in the Occupied Territories.
313
History-telling
In creating a memory of state, the official Israeli history-telling of
the British Mandate period recognizes the 1917 ‘Balfour’ agreement,
in whi British Foreign Minister, Arthur Balfour declared British
government support for “a Jewish national home in Palestine.”11
What is not recognized is an earlier agreement made between the
British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, and
Husayn ibn `Ali. In a series of correspondence, dated 1915–16, the
British promised to establish an independent Arab state (in the Arab
provinces of the Ooman Empire, whi included the region of
Palestine) in exange for support in its war effort against the
Ooman Empire. Limiting the historical context to the contents of
Balfour, the State recognizes “only the ‘civil and religious’ rights of
the inhabitants of Palestine are mentioned as rendering protection
[with] no mention of the national rights of the Arab people.” is
plays out, as detailed later in this apter, when turning to the
question of land and law where this partial history telling has
become part of the State’s arguments for a legal ‘right to sele.’12
Central to Israel’s official State narrative of the 1948 Arab–Israeli
war is the reproduction of a “particular way of knowing and a
particular kind of knowledge, one that served certain needs and
furthered certain goals” (including the appropriation of land and
property). 13 e State enlisted political, educational, and cultural
apparatus14 in order to narrate a particular Zionist memory about
the events of 1948 (referred to by Israelis as ‘Milhemet Ha-atzma`ut,’
or ‘War of Independence’) one in whi Palestinians were not
expelled, but rather le what had been British-mandate Palestine,
whi allowed Israel to gain control over significant tracts of land,
including approximately 500 villages.15 is, in turn, “enabled most
314
Israeli Jews to ‘forget’ what they once ‘knew’—that during the 1948
Arab–Israeli war a large number of Palestinian Arabs were
ethnically cleansed from the territories that became the state of
Israel.”16
In contrast, that Palestinian Arabs were the victims of the 1948
war is a central element found in Palestinian narratives around ‘al-
Nakbah’ or ‘the Catastrophe.’ Palestinians draw their historical
memories of 1948 from the oral testimony of those who fled (or were
expelled) as well as the physical remnants of villages destroyed and
Arab homes and neighborhoods now occupied by Jews.17 In the
Palestinian narration of ‘al-Nakbah,’ approximately 900,000–1
million Palestinians either fled or were expelled from their homes,
Palestinian lands were annexed and over 500 Palestinian villages
were destroyed by Israel.18 is narrative was given legal legs
through U.N. resolutions and other texts of international law, whi
recognized Palestinians as victims and stipulated meanisms for
rectification and restitution, most notably a ‘right to return.’
Contrasting narratives also lier accounts of the 1967 Arab–Israeli
war. Israelis refer to this period as the ‘Six Day War’ whi resulted
in a transfer of control over disputed territory and the establishment
of selements in ‘Judea and Samaria,’ considered to be the biblical
lands of the Jewish people. Israeli officials claim that the status of
these areas was sui generis because, at the time of conquest, they
were controlled by, but not sovereign to, Egypt and Jordan,
respectively;19 a point that will resurface as we turn to Israel’s
position on the applicability of international legal regimes in the
Occupied Territories. In contrast, Palestinians argue that in the ‘al-
Naksah’ (or ‘the setba’), Israel seized Egyptian, Syrian and
Jordanian territory and established selements in the West Bank,
Gaza, and the Sinai Peninsula in violation of international law. e
international community response was to pass U.N. Security Council
Resolution 242 that requires,
315
[…] withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories20 occupied in the recent conflict;
termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and anowledgement
of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every state in the
area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from
threats or acts of force.21
More contemporaneously, failures to move the interim Oslo Accords
to a final negotiated agreement are either framed as generous
concessions to facilitate peace (official Israeli discourse) or aempts
to permanently disenfranise and fragment Palestinians from
territory (for Palestinians). is is particularly true for Camp David
II, the July 2000 negotiations convened by U.S. President Bill Clinton
and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Barak had wanted to bypass
the interim steps outlined under the Wye Agreement22 and push for
a final agreement, whi would result in a two state solution. e
negotiations failed to rea an agreement and a very public
contestation over the reasons for its failure followed. Israel argues
that it was generous in handing over 95 percent of the West Bank
and Gaza to Palestinian control and that in the interest of national
security it had to maintain control over selements and security
zones in the West Bank. In contrast, the Palestinians claim that, if
accepted, the agreement would have le them with only 22 percent
of the territory of what was originally Palestine. ey argue that the
maintenance of selements and security zones within the Occupied
Territories would have divided the Palestinian state into
disconnected regions, a situation that would not free them from
Israeli occupation and would not make for a truly independent
state.23
Finally, in September 2005, Israel evacuated selements and
withdrew military personnel from Gaza but maintained border, sea,
and air control.24 Israel has argued that in removing Israeli military
bases and Jewish selers, Gaza was no longer Occupied Territory, a
point of legal contestation between Israel and the international
community.25 is position sits uneasily with one that Israel had
316
adopted earlier, that Gaza and the West Bank were never occupied.
Israel’s position, as noted earlier, is that as the West Bank and Gaza
were previously controlled by, but not sovereign to Egypt and
Jordan, these territories were sui generis. erefore, Israel has stated
that these are ‘administered,’ but not occupied territories. Had Israel
accepted its status as occupier, rather than administrator, it would
have been constrained from permanently seizing or seling in
territory acquired by force.
What emerges from this brief examination of these historical
markers is that if history has provided the grounding for creating
memories of state, then law has become an essential tool in
providing legitimacy to how it is constructed and protected. is is,
of course, not unique to the Israeli–Palestinian case; trying to de-link
international law from its political roots is, as Koskenniemi has
remarked, “pointless:”
… as international actors routinely allenge ea other by invoking legal rules and
principles on whi they have projected meanings that support their preferences and
counteract those of their opponents. In law, political struggle is waged on what legal
words su as ‘aggression,’ ‘self-determination,’ ‘self-defence,’ ‘terrorist’ or jus cogens
mean, whose policy will they include, whose will they oppose. To think of this struggle
as hegemonic is to understand that the objective of the contestants is to make their
partial view of that meaning appear as the total view, their preference seem like the
universal preference.26
erefore, in examining the approa to international law in the
occupied territories, the first question we must ask is “what or whose
view of international law is meant.”27 Political forces and states’
interests have endeavored to frame how we understand the
underpinning of the conflict, with national security discourse
displacing the language of occupation. e conflict is now narrated
as either an international conflict between two States, ea
employing different tactics to stake a claim over the ‘disputed
territories,’ or as an internal dispute between the State of Israel and
‘terrorist’ groups that seek to undermine the very existence of the
317
State. In examining just how international law has evolved against
this badrop, what emerges is a hegemonic contest, a performance
of sorts where law has become the surface over whi political (and
territorial) struggles are waged. Su public performances are part of
a larger political project where Israel shis its status from
“benevolent occupier”28 to sovereign. Within this political project,
law is best understood as,
[…] a surface over whi political opponents engage in hegemonic practices, trying to
enlist its rules, principles and institutions on their side, making sure they do not support
the adversary. In order to bring that perspective into focus, analysis must be shied
from rules to broad themes of legal argument within whi hegemonic contestation
takes place.29
Yet this refocusing and shiing from the legal to the political arena
has obfuscated the very core of the conflict itself—the military
occupation. In this historical resurfacing, captured so brilliantly in
the Levy Report,30 Israel has endeavored to shed its occupier status
and the international legal obligations aaed to it. Pulling the
discourse ba to the language of occupation poses a second
allenge. As Eyal Benvenisti has argued, until recently, discussions
related to occupation law were confined to Israel in the Palestinian
territories.31 Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, however, there
has been an explosion of solarly work, state practice, judicial
opinions, U.N.-sponsored activity, and emerging cognate doctrines
all of whi relate to the laws of occupation. While this body of
work has gone some way to develop international law on
occupation, it is also riddled with inconsistencies. Without a
coherent roadmap, these varying legal arguments have allowed
political opponents in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict to make their
partial reading of a particular meaning appear as the total view.
318
Lawfare32
is political struggle over how (and what) international legal
regimes33 apply to the Occupied Territories34 is complex and
contested. e first point of contestation relates to the question of
occupation itself. Israel’s position with regard to its obligations
under the laws of belligerent occupation in the Occupied Territories
is threefold. First, although Israel had initially accepted the
applicability of the Geneva Conventions, in 1968 Israel adopted the
‘missing reversioner’35 argument, whi states that ‘belligerent
occupation’ presumes the displacement of a ‘High Contracting Party’
within the meaning of common Article 2 of the Geneva
Conventions. Lawful control of contested territory would then
‘revert’ to this party upon cessation of hostilities.36 Israel’s argument
here is that neither Jordan nor Egypt37 had a lawful territorial
entitlement to either the West Bank or Gaza Strip because this
territory was seized in an act of aggression against Israel in the 1948
–9 War of Independence. Accordingly, Israel is not bound by the
rules governing belligerent occupation as expressed in the Fourth
Geneva Convention.38 As Aeyal Gross has noted, despite this official
position that Palestinian territory is not occupied in the sense of
international humanitarian law, Israel did assume aspects of a
military administrator, including assuming some of the duties and
authorities of an occupying power. In short, he argues, “Israel has
been trying to have it both ways.”39
A second position, whi has found support amongst some
academics and advocated by the Israel High Court, is that the laws
of belligerent occupation apply to occupations of a short duration.
e regulations were not conceived for and therefore do not
accurately reflect situations of prolonged occupations, su as the
319
case of the Occupied Territories. In su circumstances, the rules
governing conduct and administration must reflect what has been
termed an evolutive approa. at is, the rules envisioned by the
Hague Regulations must develop to reflect accurately the prolonged
nature of Israeli occupation/administration in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip. is interpretation is found in a number of Israeli High
Court decisions.40
A third position, whi the Israeli government has adopted post-
Oslo, allenges fundamental concepts of belligerent occupation.
Israel has determined that belligerent occupation is based on the
boundaries of areas under Israeli Civil Administration
Administrative control. erefore, post-Oslo, Israel’s position is that
in areas turned over to the Palestinian Authority (whi includes
Gaza, Areas A and H1, and perhaps some of Area B) it is no longer a
belligerent occupier.
With regard to international human rights treaties, Israel has
argued that the laws of war supersede international human rights
law, and that the laer therefore does not apply. e State aributes
this position to a classification by the ICJ, whi describes the laws
of war as lex specialis that takes priority over international human
rights law, whi assumes a general law status.
e Israeli High Court position on application of the Fourth
Geneva Convention in the Occupied Territories is irresolute.
However, it has generally reflected the Israeli Government’s position;
that it is ‘constitutive’ rather than customary. e Court’s general
opinion is that while the Geneva Conventions may be binding on the
State of Israel they have not been adopted by the Israeli Knesset and
could not be considered part of internal Israel law. As a result, the
High Court has considered domestic application of the Conventions
to fall outside of the Court’s authority and refused to allow
individual petitioners to the High Court to rely on the Geneva
Conventions in their arguments.41
320
Narrating law, occupying justice
ese contestations over the nature and applicability of
contemporary occupation law is at the center of some of the most
polarized (and politicized) debates on the human rights violations
associated with Israeli policies and practices in the Occupied
Territories. It is a performance of sorts; violations are routinely
reported and condemned by the international community and Israel
responds, not by ignoring international law, but endeavoring to
shape it. In official state narratives, formulistic interpretations and
partial readings are applied to key legal provisions whi oen la
determinacy or strip the intent of legal provisions (especially with
regard to what constitutes military necessity or what is meant by
absolutely necessary) by streting the interpretations beyond what
they can bare. In the language that emerges, a partial view of what is
required under the laws of belligerent occupation is presented as the
total view.
At the domestic level, the Supreme Court of Israel plays a role in
creating and sustaining the legal and historical aritecture of the
State. As David Kretzmer has argued in his review of Israeli High
Court rulings on the Occupied Territories:
Given [the Court’s] perception of the political context [that of wartime], Israeli judges
will not be neutral in judging the conflicting claims of the government and Palestinians
subject to military rule. In the struggle between government policies and Palestinian
arguments of rights based on justice, international legal standards, or loy legal
principles, the Court has shown a marked preference for “state arguments.” e
dominant narrative holds that the state is being aaed, the authorities are trying to
protect it, and the ultimate duty of the Court is to assist them in this task.42
at international law has become firmly embedded in the wider
political struggle is particularly acute in the issues of land
expropriation and selements. Palestinians argue that Israeli
selement policies in the Occupied Territories is not only in
contravention of humanitarian and human rights law (a point Israel
321
contests) but, moreover, fails to comply with the Oslo agreements.
Fundamental to the debate as to whether Israeli policies in this area
are in contravention of international law are two primary questions.
First, do the rules of international law apply in the Occupied
Territories, or is there merit to the argument proffered by the Israelis,
whi contests that the length of time of occupation and the
uncertain previous tenure of Jordan and Egypt amount to a situation
of sui generis? Second, if we argue that the international law
governing belligerent occupation does apply, then do the current
Israeli practices, as outlined, create ‘facts on the ground’ whi
amount to de facto annexation of land in contested territories?43
e answer to these questions returns us ba to the question of
‘what or whose view’ of international law we accept. e
predominant view taken by the international community is that
under Article 49, paragraph 6 of the Fourth Geneva Convention “the
Israeli selements in the West Bank are unlawful.”44 In this reading,
the laws of belligerent occupation require that until final political
negotiations take place, the status quo of the occupied territories
must be maintained. Israel’s approa to selements has been
twofold. Firstly, within the public domain, it has graed together a
broader legal contestation over the meaning of occupation with
historical narratives that endeavor to uproot their status as occupier.
Secondly, it has created “facts that will predetermine the outcome of
any negotiations by making Israeli withdrawal from the seled parts
of the Territories politically unfeasible.”45
e establishment of Israeli selements in the Occupied
Territories has been the subject of a series of allenges to the Israel
High Court, with mixed results. e Court has, thus far, ruled on the
requisition of private land for selement use (allowing if the State
could demonstrate a military/security necessity46 and finding it
unlawful if the Court found the motivation was political47), but has
refused to rule on the general legality of establishing selements for
nationals of the Occupying Power in occupied territory.
322
While these legal points and counterpoints play out in the legal
and political sphere, what is without question is that,
e existence in the Territories of a large number of selers, who enjoy the full
democratic rights of Israeli citizens and for whose benefit scarce land and water
resources have been harnessed, has made the regime there mu closer to a colonial
regime than one of belligerent occupation.48
Occupying justice: land and law
Despite the terms of the Oslo agreements, it has been during the
‘peace process’ that the rate of selement growth has accelerated.
Whilst the exact number of selers living in contested territories
varies, current statistics provided by the Israeli Information Center
for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, B`Tselem, indicates
that there are approximately 547,000 selers in the West Bank and
the population of Israeli neighborhoods in East Jerusalem numbered
196,890 people at the end of 2012.49 Most of these selements are
located in and around Jerusalem.
e “territorial and ideological base”50 for what would become a
large scale Israeli selement program in the Occupied Territories can
be traced to the 1967 Allon Plan.51 is plan was underpinned by
two primary principles. First, that Israel should retain direct control
over strategic areas of the Occupied Territories. Second, in addition
to establishing military sites in the Occupied Territories, Israel
should implement a plan of Jewish selement.52 From 1967–74,
under the leadership of Levi Eshkol and Golda Meir, 11 selements
were established. A majority of selements (nine or 82 percent) were
situated in the Jordan Valley and in the Gush Etzion area and
maintained a secular composition. Of the remaining two, one
selement was located next to the Latrun Road, and the other,
Kiryat Arba, was situated near Hebron. At this time, there were no
selements in either Gaza or in the northern part of the West Bank.
323
From 1974–7, under the Labor leadership of Yitzhak Rabin, nine new
selements were constructed. Again, a majority (six) were
established in either the Jordan Valley or the Gush Etzion Bloc. Of
the remaining three, two selements were located in ‘greater’
Jerusalem and one in the south of the West Bank.53
e election of the conservative Likud Party in 1977 would mark a
ange, both in ideology and practice in selement development.
Previously, according to Israeli policy, selements were the result of
state security needs and, in principle at least, were not to be
constructed in areas where there was a significant Arab community.
e Jewish population in these selements was mostly secular.
Under Menaem Begin and then Yitzhak Shamir, this policy, both
stated and applied, anged. e rate of selements increased. e
locations of selements oen brought new developments in close
contact with Arab villages. e composition of the selers would
also ange from one that was largely secular, to an increasingly
politicized Jewish community.54 e 1980 publication of a five-year
selement plan of the Occupied Territories (1980–5) by the
Selement Department of the World Zionist Organization highlights
the selement policy and objectives of this period:
e best and most effective way of removing every shadow of doubt about our intention
to hold on to Judea and Samaria55 forever is by speeding up the selement momentum
in these territories. e purpose of seling the areas between and around the centers
occupied by the minorities [e.g. Palestinians] is to reduce to the minimum the danger of
an additional Arab state being established in these territories. Being cut off by Jewish
selements, the minority population will find it difficult to form a territorial and
political continuity.56
From 1967 to late 2012, 125 Israeli selements were established in the
West Bank and 16 selements in the Gaza Strip and four in the
northern West Bank (both of whi were dismantled in 2005 in the
course of the Disengagement Plan).57 Additionally, 100 ‘outposts’
were built in the West Bank without official authorization but with
support and assistance from government ministries.58 In Hebron,
324
Jewish selements were established and, although these are not
considered ‘official’, they receive government support and military
protection. e government and Jerusalem Municipality have also
supported the establishment of 12 neighborhoods in areas of the
West Bank annexed by Israel in 1967 and has, since, funded a
number of ‘seler enclaves’ in Palestinian neighborhoods in East
Jerusalem.59
As competing claims to territory lie at the heart of the Israeli–
Palestinian conflict, the issue of selements is, at least in part, key to
its resolve. Yet the failure by the international community to hold
Israel accountable for its continued land expropriation for selement
expansion (and new constructions) is anging the facts on the
ground and, as Kretzmer argues, is renovating the legal aritecture
from that of a belligerent occupation to a colonial regime.
e Levy Report
In the wake of an Israeli High Court decision in 2012,60 in whi the
Court ordered the demolition the 30 apartments in a West Bank
selement that was constructed on private Palestinian land, Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu established the Commiee to
Examine the State of Building in Judea and Samaria, led by retired
Supreme Court of Israel Justice Edmund Levy.61 In its July 2012
report (hereaer the Levy Report), the Commiee both reflects and
contests existing Israeli policies and practices.62 On the one hand, the
arguments of the Levy Commission adopt earlier state narrations of
international law, whi conclude that Israel’s selement policy
conforms to its international legal obligations. On the other, the
report goes mu further than previous Israeli state discourse and
calls upon other states to [re]evaluate their understanding of Israel’s
legal status in the Palestinian territory. Whilst the Netanyahu
government has not formally adopted the report (although there are
325
indications that the government has begun to secretly implement its
findings63), what is important to take away from the report’s
language is how the draers have projected a particular meaning on
to the concept of occupation. It is a view that sits uneasily in law,
but captures a political struggle for the hegemonic control of how
this concept is understood.
In contesting the notion of Israel as an occupier, the draers have
renovated two arguments noted earlier—the ‘missing reversioner
thesis,’ whi argues that the West Bank was never under the
authority of a sovereign state, and the notion that belligerent
occupation only applies to occupations of a short duration.64 e
report also revisits the British Mandate period but limits its reading
to the contents of the 1917 Balfour Declaration and Article 6 of the
British Mandate where it finds that in conferring to the Jewish
people a lawful “right to sele in the Land of Israel,”
… the original legal status of the territory was restored, namely, a territory designated
as a national home for the Jewish people, who had a “right of possession” to it during
Jordanian rule while they were absent from the territory for several years due to a war
imposed on them, and have now returned to it.
e report then concludes that, “from the perspective of
international law” the establishment of Jewish selements in the
West Bank is lawful.
326
Conclusion
Although the Levy report was set up specifically to determine the
legality of Israel’s selement policy, it goes mu further. Its
fractured historical reading excludes both Palestinian self-
determination claims and the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan, whi sought
to create two states for two nations in the territory of Mandatory
Palestine. It also uproots the notion of occupier and adopts,
e designation sui generis [that] literally places the West Bank and Gaza and their
populations into a state of exception, outside the rea of IHL and thus open to any and
all policies Israel may oose to impose, without fear of violating—at least according to
Israel’s interpretations—international human rights and humanitarian norms.65
at the substance of the Levy Commiee’s arguments contradicts
both international and Israeli established legal opinion, as well as the
findings of both the International Court of Justice and Israel’s
Supreme Court, is unlikely to deter proponents of this particular
narration of law. In this ‘zone of occupation’ the State can argue that
the West Bank and Gaza are not occupied territories, whilst at the
same time justify its restriction on the rights of Palestinians actions
in the occupied territories based on the law of occupation. e effect
of this occupation/non-occupation indeterminacy on the human
rights landscape in the Occupied Territory is all too clear. As the
concluding paragraphs to a 2015 Report to the Human Rights
Council summarized,
[…] the protection that international humanitarian law and international human rights
law should be providing for civilians, including ildren, across the Occupied
Palestinian Territory is distressingly absent. It is especially deplorable that Palestinian
ildren are suffering the brunt of occupation policies and practices of Israel, whether as
a result of the bloade and hostilities in Gaza, the excessive use of force by Israeli
security forces in the context of legitimate protests and peaceful demonstrations, as well
as sear operations in the refugee camps, and abuse and ill-treatment in Israeli prisons
327
[…] If another round of deadly violence is to be avoided, the underlying problems
perpetuating the conflict and the almost daily violation of the human rights of the
Palestinian people must be addressed and those responsible brought to justice.66
ere will continue to be, as there has been in the past, a hegemonic
contestation between the various ‘truth’ tellers of this region. ose
pressing for human rights and accountability may (as they have
begun to do) move with the story, shiing the language from
occupation to apartheid.67 ose supporting Israeli policies will
frame their external discourse with national security on one side and
this newly remodeled perspective of international law on the other.
In this epic bale of historical truth telling, law has become part of
the conflict—both its aggressor and its victim.
328
Notes
1 It is worth noting that this aracteristic is not unique to this case study and can be
found in other cases of protracted social conflicts. See, Brendan O’Leary and John
McGarry (eds), The Politics of Ethnic Conflict Regulation: Case Studies of Protracted
Ethnic Conflict (Abingdon: Routledge, 1993) and B. O’Leary, M. Heiberg and J. Tirman
(eds), Terror, Insurgency and the State: Ending Protracted Conflict (Philadelphia, PA:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).
2 K.A. Cavanaugh, “Selective justice: the case of Israel and the Occupied Territories,”
Fordham International Law Journal vol. 26 (2003), 934–60.
3 ese figures do not include the number of Palestinians killed by Palestinians (684),
foreigners killed by Palestinians (58) or foreigners killed by Israeli security forces (12).
ese figures are current as of Mar 2015. See www.btselem.org/statistics. Last
accessed September 4, 2016.
4 See Christian Davenport, Media Bias, Perspective and State Repression: The Black
Panther Party (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Here Davenport’s
reference to the Rashômon effect derives from a 1950 film by Akira Kurosawa in whi
one event is witnessed by three different persons, all of whom see it from a different
perspective. Davenport has adopted this term (and we apply it here) to the tendency for
events to be perceived and reported in different ways, depending on who is telling the
story and to whom and how this relates to violence, protest, repression and peace.
5 Zionists refer to the promise by Abraham to his descendants in the Bible (Genesis 17:8),
the historic ties that the Jews have to Israel, and the need to provide a refuge to ensure
the survival of the Jewish culture in the face of European anti-Semitism.
6 For a comprehensive historical review, see Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History
of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–2001 (New York: First Vintage Books, 2001) and for a
review and analysis of the various peace accords, see Christine Bell, Peace Agreements
and Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
329
7 Refaat Alareer, Gaza Writes Ba, 2014.
8 See K. Cavanaugh, “e aritecture of exclusion”, forthcoming in F. de Varennes and C.
Gardiner (eds) Routledge Handbook of Human Rights in Asia (Abingdon: Routledge,
exp. 2016).
9 suis generis is a Latin phrase used in many different contexts and is generally used when
referring to something that possesses unique aracteristics that are not easily
categorized. In the context of the Occupied Territories, it has come to be used to argue
that the territories were unique in that they were under the control of but not sovereign
to Egypt and Jordan, respectively. Israel argues that to be an ‘occupation’, the areas
must be recognized sovereign territory of the displaced states. For a detailed discussion
on this see, Yuval Shany, “Forty years aer 1967: reappraising the role and limits of the
legal discourse on occupation in the Israeli-Palestinian context,” 41 Is.L.Rev. 6, 7 (2008).
10 D. Kretzmer, The Occupation of Justice: The Supreme Court of Israel and the Occupied
Territories (New York: State University New York Press, 2002) 75.
11 The Balfour Declaration, (London: Foreign Office, November 2, 1917) reprinted in A.
Gerson, Israel, the West Bank and International Law (London: Frank Cass, 1978) 246–
252.
12 See the 2012 report of the Commiee to Examine the State of Building in Judea and
Samaria. Only the conclusion and recommendations of the report have been translated
from Hebrew to English. An English version of the first part of the report can be found
at: hp://elderofziyon.blogspot.ca/2012/07/english-translation-of-legal-
arguments.html#.Vb-hnkvyHwI
13 Z. Loman, Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine,1906–1948
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998) 36.
14 See S Hazkani and Chris Gratien, “e Politics of 1948 in Israeli Arives,” Ooman
History Podcast, No. 166 (July 19, 2014) www.oomanhistorypodcast.com/2014/07/the-
politics-of-1948-in-israeli-arives.html. Last accessed September 4, 2016.
15 See Avi Shlaim, The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007).
330
16 See J. Beinin, “No more tears: Benny Morris and the road ba from Liberal Zionism,”
Middle East Report vol. 230 (Spring 2004) 39.
17 See E. Shoufani, “e fall of a village,” JPS vol. 1, no. 4 (Summer 1972), 109–21; N.
Nazzal, The Palestinian Exodus from Galilee, 1948 (Washington: Institute for Palestine
Studies, 1978); Salim Tamari, ed., Jerusalem 1948: The Arab Neighborhoods and Their
Fate in the War (Jerusalem: Institute of Jerusalem Studies, 1999).
18 See B. Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988) 252. e number of Palestinians living in Jordan is
estimated at 1.3 million. Other Palestinians seled in Lebanon, Kuwait and Syria. Only
Jordan has granted Palestinians citizenship. It is, as Joel Beinin right argues, possible to
‘reasonably’ examine how many Palestinians were expelled and how many fled from
fear or whether the actions taken by Zionist leaders was a ‘preconceived plan’ and if
ethnic cleansing is the ‘best term to describe’ the events of that time period. What is not
part of ‘legitimate debate’ is “whether or not some 700,000 indigenous inhabitants were
expelled or fled from the territories that became the State of Israel aer the 1948 War
and that Palestinian Arab society was devastated in the process.” See J. Beinin,
“Destruction and appropriation of Palestinian history and cultural property: the
responsibilities of historians” (Paper presented at January 2015 American Historical
Association Annual Meeting, NYC).
19 For a discussion on this see, N. Gordon, Israel’s Occupation (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 2008) 26 and L. Hajjar, Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court
System in the West Bank and Gaza (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of
California Press, 2005) 56.
20 In official U.N. languages other than English the article “the” preceded “Territories,” thus
implying that Israel has to return all the seized territory.
21 S. C. Res. 242 (1967) November 22, 1967.
22 In October 1998, e Wye River Memorandum was signed between Israel and the
Palestinian Authority. e Agreement aimed to resume the implementation of the 1995
Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (Oslo II Accord).
23 For an excellent discussion on the negotiations, see Morris (n. 7) 652–75.
331
24 For a fact sheet on the extent of these controls, see B`Tselem, “e Scope of Israeli
Control in the Gaza Strip,” January 5, 2014. Available at:
www.btselem.org/gaza_strip/gaza_status. Last accessed August 10, 2015.
25 In 2007, the then U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the
Occupied Palestinian Territory, John Dugard, stated that “Israel remains an occupying
Power in respect of Gaza” as it retains “effective control over Gaza by means of its
control over Gaza’s external borders, airspace, territorial waters, population registry, tax
revenues and governmental functions.” Determining whether a party to a conflict
continues to exercise effective control over an area is one element in determining if
there is an occupation. See e report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of
human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, John Dugard, A/62/275,
August 17, 2007.
26 M. Koskenniemi, “International law and hegemony: a reconfiguration,” Cambridge
Review of International Affairs vol. 17, no. 2 (2004), 197–218, 199.
27 Ibid.
28 Kretzmer, The Occupation of Justice, 64–72.
29 Koskenniemi, “International law and hegemony,” 197.
30 A Commiee set up in 2012 by Benjamin Netanyahu and led by retired Supreme Court
of Israel Justice Edmund Levy to examine the legality of Selement building in the West
Bank.
31 See E. Benvenisti, The International Law of Occupation (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2nd ed., 2012).
32 Whilst I use this term, it is worth noting that this concept is used both by those who see
it as “a means by whi to contest the legality of a state’s wartime behavior vis-à-vis
enemies on and off the balefield” and others who argue that this is a tool specifically
developed to promote a particular position (anti-Israeli) or to support terrorism. See Lisa
Hajjar, Lawfare and Targeted Killing: Developments in the Israeli and U.S. Contexts,
Jadaliyya, January 15, 2012. Available at:
www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/4049/lawfare-and-targeted-killing_developments-in-
the-i. Last accessed August 3, 2015.
332
33 It is generally held that there are three international legal regimes that apply to the
Occupied Territories—International Humanitarian Law, International Human Rights
Law and International Criminal Law. Under international humanitarian law, rules
governing the conduct of an occupying power are laid down in the Fourth Geneva
Convention to whi Israel is signatory, as well as the 1907 Hague Regulations. Israel is
not a signatory to the Fourth Hague Convention of 1907 or its annexed Regulations, but
the Israeli position has been to regard the Hague regulations as customary international
law. With regard to international human rights law, Israel is required to respect and
protect human rights under its obligations enumerated in a number of U.N. treaties,
whi it has ratified. ese treaties include: the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ICCPR); the International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural
Rights (ICSECR); the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or
Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT); the Convention on the Rights of a Child
(CRC); and the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination
(CERD). ese treaties are accompanied by other international human rights standards
whi are binding on members of the U.N. and include guidelines and guiding
principles that regulate the code of conduct of law enforcement officials, and the
preventive and investigative requirements in disputed killings, the use of force and
firearms, detention and imprisonment, and victim’s rights.
34 Palestinians are subject to Israeli rule that has been jurisdictionally divided into three
areas, ea of whi has a distinct legal status. e first is the sovereign territory of
Israel, located within the 1949 armistice line (oen referred to as the ‘Green line’). e
second consists of those units/parts of the Occupied Territories, whi have been, de
facto, annexed (e.g. East Jerusalem, confiscated lands, Jewish selements and military
installations). Finally, there is the Israeli military administration that was originally
established to govern Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. In 2005, Israel ‘withdrew’
from the Gaza strip and, since August 2005, the Military legal administration (whi
includes the Military Courts) only applies to citizens of the West Bank.
35 See Y. Blum, “e missing reversioner, reflections on the status of Judea and Samaria,”
Israel Law Review (ISRL) vol. 3 (1968), 279.
36 An excellent discussion on these points can be found in Riard Falk, Weston H. Burns,
“e relevance of international law to Israeli and Palestinian rights in the West Bank
333
and Gaza,” in E. Playfair (ed.), International Law and the Administration of Occupied
Territories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 130–6, 131.
37 Egypt administered the Gaza Strip from 1948–67 but never claimed sovereignty over this
area. Jordan did establish territorial rule over the West Bank during its tenure from 1948
–67.
38 e Israeli position on the applicability of International Law in the Occupied Territories
is articulated in a paper presented by former aorney general Meir Shamgar, “e
observance of international law in the Administered Territories,” published in Israel
Yearbook on Human Rights (IYHR) vol. 1 (1971), 262–77. A copy of this text is provided
by Al Haq. Israel’s position has been to apply what it has termed ‘humanitarian
provisions’ of the Geneva Convention to the Occupied Territories although definition of
what constitutes humanitarian provisions is unclear.
39 See A. Gross’, If there are no Palestinians, there’s no Israeli occupation, Haaretz, July 10,
2012, available at: www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/if-there-are-no-
palestinians-there-s-no-israeli-occupation-1.449988. Last accessed October 8, 2015.
40 is is particularly evident in the wide-scale anges in local law in contravention of
Article 43 of the Hague Regulations.
41 See HC 393/82, IYHR 14, 1984, 303, 793.
42 Kretzmer, The Occupation of Justice, 196.
43 Article XXXI(7) of Oslo II states: “Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will
ange the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the
permanent status negotiations.”
44 See Juan Pedro Saerer, head of ICRC delegation for Israel and the Occupied
Territories, in a piece published in Haaretz in reaction to the publication of the Levy
Report (November 4, 2012). See full statement at: www.haaretz.com/beta/the-levy-
report-vs-international-law-1.474129. Under Article 49, paragraph 6 of the Fourth
Geneva Convention Israel is prohibited from the transfer of all or part of its civilian
population into occupied territory. is is the view consistently stated by various U.N.
bodies as well as local based and international human rights organizations. See, e.g.
UNSC Resolution 446, Mar 22, 1979, U.N. Doc. S/RES/446 (1979); UNSC Resolution
334
452, July 20, 1979, U.N. Doc. S/RES/452 (1997); and UNSC Resolution 465, 1 Mar 1980,
U.N. Doc. S/RES/465 (1980). It must be said that whilst international community
condemnation over Israeli policies and practices in the Occupied Territories is routine
(with the notable exception of the United States) there is, in reality, very lile effort to
enforce international law or hold Israel accountable for the numerous violations it has
engaged in since 1967.
45 Kretzmer, The Occupation of Justice, 75.
46 HCJ 606/78, Ayyub v. Minister of Defence, 33(2) PD, p. 113, 1978. For more on this see M
Karayanni, Conflicts in a Conflict: A Conflict of Laws Case Study on Israel and the
Palestinian Territories (OUP, 2014) 33–40.
47 See HCJ 390/79, Dweikat et al., v. Government of Israel et al., 34(1) PD, p. 1, 1979.
48 Kretzmer, The Occupation of Justice, 75.
49 ese figures are current to May 2015 and drawn from B`Tselem’s Statistics on
Settlements and Settler Population, available at: www.btselem.org/selements/statistics.
Last accessed September 4, 2016.
50 See W.W. Harris, Taking Root: Israeli Settlement in the West Bank, the Golan and Gaza-
Sinai 1967–1980 (Chiester: Resear Studies Press, John Wiley, 1980) 36.
51 Devised by the then Minister of Labour, Yigal Allon.
52 Full translated text of this plan can be found in L. Fabian and Z. Siff (eds), Israelis
Speak About Themselves and the Palestinians (New York and Washington, D.C.:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1977), 207.
53 Statistics obtained from LAWE report, “Evaluation of Israeli selement policy and the
protest movement against selement expansion,” February 13, 1995, 2–3.
54 See D. Shipler, Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promise Land (New York: Times
Books, 1989) 144–55.
55 Biblical term used by the Israelis to denote the West Bank.
56 See M. Drobles, Master Plan for the Development and Settlement of Judea and Samaria,
Jerusalem, 1980 cited in International Law and the Administration of Occupied
Territories, Emma Playfair (ed.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) 446.
335
57 ese statistics are derived from B`Tselem who draw their information from the Israeli
Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) and Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. See
www.btselem.org/selements/statistics. Last accessed October 15, 2015.
58 For more on this, see Yesh Din’s report, Under the Radar: Israel’s silent policy of
transforming unauthorized outposts into official selements, Mar 2015.
59 For more on the selement policy, see Report of the U.N. Secretary General to the
General Assembly on Israeli selements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including
East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan, A/HRC/28/44, Mar 9, 2015.
60 e selement was located in the Ulpana neighborhood of the West Bank. For more on
this case, see: www.haaretz.com/beta/rejecting-state-request-high-court-orders-
demolition-of-west-bank-outpost-to-go-forward-1.428776. Last accessed September 4,
2016.
61 e two other commiee members were retired District Court Judge Teia Shapiro, and
Alan Baker, a former legal advisor to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and
Ambassador to Canada.
62 Only the conclusion and recommendations of the report have been translated from
Hebrew to English. An English version of the first part of the report can be found at:
hp://elderofziyon.blogspot.ca/2012/07/english-translation-of-legal-
arguments.html#.Vb-hnkvyHwI. Last accessed September 4, 2016.
63 See www.haaretz.com/beta/.premium-1.595479. Last accessed September 4, 2016.
64 e report argues that this does not apply to Israel’s control over the West Bank
(referred to as Judea and Samaria), as “no one can predict its termination, if at all.”
65 See L. Hajjar and M. Levin, International law, the Gaza war, and Palestine’s state of
exception, Al Jazeera, 21 November 2012. Available at:
www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/11/20121121103831534612.html. Last accessed
August 10, 2015.
66 Statement by Makarim Wibisono, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human
rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 available at: A/HRC/28/78 at §73.
Earlier U.N. reports and reports by local and international NGOs also detail the use of
collective punitive measures including the demolition of houses, outside that whi is
336
required for military operations, the razing of agricultural land (and the use of
bulldozers to facilitate the operations), the encircling of towns and villages, and curfews
and closures; the erection of a barrier wall and the building of selements in to
occupied territory. For a list of all U.N. reports related to the Occupied Palestinian
Territories see: www.ohr.org/EN/Countries/MENARegion/Pages/PSIndex.aspx. For
NGO reporting on Israel and the Occupied Territories see: reports on Israel and the
Occupied Territories see: Amnesty International (amnesty.org) Human Rights Wat
(hrw.org) and B`Tselem (btselem.org).
67 See J. Reynolds and J. Dugard, “Apartheid, international law, and the Occupied
Palestinian Territory,” European Journal of International Law vol. 24, no. 3 (2013), 867–
913.
337
Selected Bibliography
Beinin, J. “No more tears: Benny Morris and the road ba from
liberal Zionism” in Middle East Report vol. 230 (2004), 38–45.
Benvenisti, E. The International Law of Occupation. 2nd ed. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2012.
Blum, Y., “e missing reversioner, reflections on the status of Judea
and Samaria” in Israel Law Review (ISRL) vol. 3 (1968), 279.
Boyle, FA.. Palestine, Palestinians and International Law. Atlanta,
GA: Clarity Press 2003.
Cavanaugh, KA.. “Selective justice: e case of Israel and the
Occupied Territories” in Fordham International Law Journal vol.
26 (2003), 934.
Gocek, FM. Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire: Ottoman
Westernization and Social Change. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1996.
Gordon, N. Israel’s Occupation. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA:
University of California Press, 2008.
Hajjar, L. Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the
West Bank and Gaza. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University
of California Press, 2005.
Kretzmer, D. The Occupation of Justice: The Supreme Court of Israel
and the Occupied Territories. New York: State University New
York Press, 2002.
Kretzmer, D. “e law of belligerent occupation in the Supreme
Court of Israel,” International Review of the Red Cross vol. 94, no.
885 (2012), 207–36.
Loman, Z. Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in
Palestine, 1906–1948. Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 1998.
338
Morris, B. Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict,
1881–2001. New York: First Vintage Books, 2001.
Morris, Benny. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–
1949. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
339
10
e United States and Israeli
Violations of International
Humanitarian Law
Stephen Zunes
340
Introduction
Violations of international humanitarian law and other human
rights abuses by governments in the Middle East and North Africa
are tragically common. ose commied by the government of Israel
are certainly not the worst in this regard. However, there is no
country engaged in su breaes of these widely-accepted legal
norms for whi the United States—whi oen sees itself as a
defender of human rights—has gone to su extent to support and
defend in the face of international criticism. Excusing Israeli
violations of international humanitarian law has overwhelming
bipartisan support in both Congress and successive administrations.
is is part of a longstanding consensus within Washington that war
crimes by U.S. allies, particularly in the strategically important
Middle East, must be ignored, downplayed, defended, and/or
covered up.
is apter looks at how the United States has played an active
role in defending Israeli violations of international humanitarian law
and in discouraging the United Nations from addressing Israeli
violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention and other human rights
and humanitarian law treaties and customs, specifically in regard to
the illegal Israeli selements in the occupied West Bank (including
East Jerusalem) and aas against civilians in the besieged Gaza
Strip. Given the international norm of the illegality of colonizing
lands seized by military force, as well as longstanding principles
regarding the protection of non-combatants in time of war, the
issues at stake go well beyond the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. e
United States has, quite appropriately, condemned acts of terrorism
and related war crimes by Hamas and other hostile Arab militia.
However, as this apter explores, the failure to hold its ally Israel
341
accountable to international legal norms has created a climate of
impunity by the region’s most powerful country to the detriment of
not just Palestinians but also for the legitimate long-term security
interests of Israel and the United States, as well as the enforceability
of international law. is is particularly problematic since, while a
just resolution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is a complex and
oen contentious topic, international humanitarian law and its
applications are well-established, even if oen ignored. Indeed, as
Riard Goldstone, the respected South African jurist who aired a
2009 investigation into war crimes by both Israel and Hamas, noted
in presenting his report before the U.N. Human Rights Council, “A
culture of impunity in the region has existed for too long. e la of
accountability for war crimes and possible war crimes against
humanity has reaed a crisis point.”1
342
U.S. support for illegal settlements
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention—to whi both Israel
and the United States are signatories—prohibits any occupying
power from transferring “parts of its civilian population into the
territory it occupies.”2 e United Nations has on several occasions
recognized that Israel is in violation of this critical international
treaty, including Security Council resolutions 446, 452, 465, and 471,
whi were passed without U.S. objections. e official State
Department position, in effect since 1978 and never formally
repealed, states categorically that,
While Israel may undertake, in the occupied territories, actions necessary to meet its
military needs and to provide for orderly government during the occupation, for the
reasons indicated above the establishment of the civilian selements in those territories
is inconsistent with international law.3
In addition, a landmark 2004 decision by the International Court of
Justice confirmed the illegality of the selements, noted the
illegitimacy of “any measures taken by an occupying Power in order
to organize or encourage transfers of parts of its own population into
the occupied territory.”4 Despite the fact that the World Court
decision also enjoined the United States and other signatories to
“ensure compliance by Israel with international humanitarian law,”
and despite the State Department position recognizing that the
selements are a violation of international humanitarian law, there
has been a longstanding bipartisan consensus to not force Israeli
compliance with its legal obligations.
As part of an annex in the 1978 Camp David Agreement between
Israel and Egypt, Israeli Prime Minister, Menaem Begin, promised
a five-year selement freeze. When the Israelis resumed construction
aer only three months, President Jimmy Carter refused to hold
343
Begin to his promise, even though Carter anowledged that these
selements were illegal and the United States had been given the
role of guarantor of the peace treaty. is was not the last time the
Israeli government would promise to freeze selements only to
break that promise with the understanding there would be no
serious consequences from Washington.
In 1991, President George H.W. Bush insisted on a selement
freeze as a condition to granting a controversial $10 billion loan
guarantee to Israel. In response, leading members of Congress—
including the leading candidates for the 1992 Democratic
presidential nomination—aaed Bush from the right by calling on
the president to grant the loan guarantee unconditionally. Under
pressure from the Democrats—who then controlled both houses of
Congress—as well as incipient Democratic presidential nominee Bill
Clinton, Bush capitulated. He approved the loan guarantee with
Israel in July 1992, though with the proviso that Israel would limit
new construction to the “natural growth” of existing selements
(su as building new units for adult ildren.) By the following
year, however, it became apparent that Israel, with the acquiescence
of the new Clinton administration, interpreted this restriction so
liberally that the number of new Israeli colonists in the occupied
territories grew faster than ever. Indeed, this infusion of billions of
dollars’ worth of U.S.-baed loans were critical in enabling Israel to
embark on the dramatic expansion of Israeli selements in the
coming years.
When the Oslo Accords were signed in September 1993, the
Palestinians pressed to address the selements issue immediately.
e Clinton administration, however, insisted that su discussions
be delayed. By puing off su a fundamental issue as the
selements as a ‘final status issue,’ the United States gave the Israelis
the ability to continue to create facts on the ground whi would be
hard to reverse even as the peace process slowly moved forward.
Despite their illegality, the Clinton administration refused to insist
344
that Israel stop the expansion of Jewish selements and confiscation
of land that the Palestinians and others had assumed was destined to
be part of a Palestinian state. It is only because of these selements
that the boundaries for a future Palestinian state envisioned by
Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in the July 2000
summit at Camp David took its unviable geographic dimensions,
leading Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to reject it. Even top Clinton
administration officials like Robert Malley anowledged that the
United States had not been tough enough on Israel for its selement
drive and this failure to do so was a major factor in the collapse of
the peace process.5
Clinton did not just tolerate the expansion of selements,
however, he actually encouraged it. Under pressure from peace and
human rights groups, Congress had aaed a provision to the 1992
loan-guarantee agreement requiring the president to deduct the costs
of additional selement activity from the $2 billion annual
installment of the loan. In October 1993, the Clinton administration
officially announced to Israel that there would be a $437 million
deduction in the next year’s loan guarantee due to selement
construction during the 1993 fiscal year. However, State Department
Middle East peace talks coordinator Dennis Ross immediately let the
Israeli government know that the United States would find a way to
restore the full funding. Within a month, Clinton authorized Israel to
draw an additional $500 million in U.S. military supplies from NATO
warehouses in Europe. A similar scenario unfolded the following
year. Aer deducting $311.8 million spent on selements from the
1995 loans, Clinton authorized $95.8 million for help in redeploying
troops from the Gaza Strip and $240 million to facilitate withdrawal
from West Bank cities. is was based on the rather dubious
assertion that it costs more to withdraw troops than to maintain
them in hostile urban areas. Clinton explicitly promised the Israelis
that aid would remain constant regardless of Israeli selement
policies. What resulted, then, was that the United States began in
345
effect subsidizing the selements since the Israelis knew that, for
every dollar that they contributed to maintaining and expanding
their presence in the occupied territories, the United States would
convert a loan guarantee into a grant.
Given the gross asymmetry in power between the Palestinians
under occupation and the Israeli occupiers—whose primary military,
economic and diplomatic supporter was also the ief mediator in
the negotiations—it was rather obvious that the U.S.-led peace
process would be unable to stop selement expansion. It appears,
then, that the Clinton administration’s insistence on sidelining the
United Nations was to enable Israel to do just that. It was during this
period that the Israelis began building a massive highway system of
29 roads totaling nearly 300 miles, designed to perpetuate effective
Israeli control of most of the West Bank. As part of what Clinton
referred to as ‘implementation funding’ of the 1998 Wye River
Agreement, in whi Israel agreed to withdraw from an additional
14 percent of the West Bank, the United States offered $1.2 billion in
supplementary foreign aid to the Israeli government. Most of the
funding was reserved for armaments but mu of the nonmilitary
funding was apparently earmarked to build these ‘bypass roads’ and
security enhancements for Israeli selers in the occupied territories.
Su direct subsidies for Israeli selements placed the United States
in violation of Article 7 of U.N. Security Council Resolution 465,
whi prohibits member states from assisting Israel in its
colonization drive. So, not only has the United States allowed Israel
to violate U.N. Security Council resolutions in continuing to
maintain and expand its illegal selements but Clinton also placed
the United States itself in violation of a U.N. Security Council
mandate. Israel also refused to abide by the call in Phase I of the
2003 Roadmap for Peace, whi required Israel to freeze “all
selement activity, including natural growth of selements,” and to
dismantle all selements erected since Mar 2001. Despite being the
346
key sponsor of the Roadmap, the United States refused to press Israel
to do so and blamed the Palestine Authority for its failure.
e Obama administration’s 2011 veto of an otherwise-unanimous
dra U.N. Security Council resolution opposing the expansion of the
illegal selements raised serious questions as to whether his public
criticism of Netanyahu’s construction of additional illegal
selements was sincere. Just weeks earlier, scores of traditionally
pro-Israel and decidedly mainstream leaders of the political
establishment—including solars, journalists, and former officials—
signed a leer to the president encouraging him to support the dra
resolution stating,
e time has come for a clear signal from the United States to the parties and to the
broader international community that the United States can and will approa the
conflict with the objectivity, consistency and respect for international law required if it
is to play a constructive role in the conflict’s resolution.
Noting how the resolution “would in no way deviate from our
strong commitment to Israel’s security,” they warned that “deploying
a veto would severely undermine U.S. credibility and interests,
placing us firmly outside of the international consensus, and further
diminishing our ability to mediate this conflict.”6 Similarly, following
the veto, Human Rights Wat noted how it “undermines
enforcement of international law,” adding that, “President Obama
wants to tell the Arab world in his speees that he opposes
selements, but he won’t let the Security Council tell Israel to stop
them in a legally binding way.”7
Similarly, in December 2012, the Obama administration bloed a
U.N. Security Council vote on a resolution condemning Israel’s
announcement of the planned construction of new selements. e
U.S. then bloed an effort for a joint statement by the Security
Council president. As a result, all fourteen other members of the
Security Council had to issue individual statements condemning the
illegal Israeli actions. Given that the 2004 ruling by the International
347
Court of Justice enjoined the United States and other signatories to
“ensure compliance by Israel with international humanitarian law,”
these actions have effectively put the United States in defiance of the
World Court, as well.
348
Attas against civilians
Another area in whi the United States has sought to undermine
international humanitarian law is in regard to Israeli aas on
civilians. For example, on December 27, 2008, following an increase
in Hamas roet aas into civilian areas in Israel, Israeli armed
forces launed a massive assault on the Gaza Strip. Six days into
the Israeli assault, Amnesty International USA sent a leer to
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice noting its dismay “at the
lopsided response by the U.S. government to the recent violence and
its laadaisical efforts to ameliorate the humanitarian crisis in
Gaza.” e Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization went on to note,
“Without diminishing the responsibility of Hamas and other
Palestinian armed groups for indiscriminate and deliberate aas
on Israeli civilians, the U.S. government must not ignore Israel’s
disproportionate response and the longstanding policies whi have
brought the Gaza Strip to the brink of humanitarian disaster.”8
Congressional leaders of both parties, however, rushed to defend
the Bush administration’s position. As the international outcry over
the high number of civilian casualties in Israel’s assault on the Gaza
Strip grew during the second week of fighting, Congress formally
went on record supporting Bush’s position that the Israeli armed
forces bore no responsibility for the large and growing numbers of
civilian casualties. e bipartisan resolutions in the Democratic-
controlled Congress put forward an extreme reinterpretation of
international humanitarian law, apparently designed to exonerate
nations with superior firepower from any liability for inflicting
large-scale civilian casualties. e Senate resolution,9 primarily
wrien and sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, passed
the Senate by unanimous consent on a voice vote. An even stronger
349
House resolution,10 sponsored by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-
CA), passed the House by a lopsided 390–5 roll call vote (with 22
members voting present). Both resolutions placed the blame for the
death and destruction exclusively on the Palestinian side, and were
widely interpreted as rebukes to the international human rights
community and the United Nations, ea of whi had cited
evidence that both Hamas and the Israeli government were engaged
in war crimes. In subsequent months, there were a series of detailed
investigations of violations of the laws of war by both Israel and
Hamas, whi directly contradicted assertions made by Congress in
these resolutions. Among these were reports by Amnesty
International,11 Human Rights Wat,12 the National Lawyers
Guild,13 the Israeli group B`Tselem,14 and the United Nations
Human Rights Council (UNHRC).15
During the 2014 conflict whi began that July, close to 1,500
Palestinian civilians in Gaza were killed in the Israeli aas—more
than 500 of whom were ildren—and 18,000 homes were destroyed,
leaving over 100,000 people homeless. Despite this devastating
civilian toll, both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill went
on record claiming that Israel’s actions were legitimate acts of self-
defense against military targets, dismissing reports by reputable
Israeli and international human rights groups saying otherwise. In
July and August, the two houses of Congress passed four resolutions
and forwarded a series of leers providing unqualified baing for
the massive Israeli air and ground assault. is eoed the Israeli
government’s justifications for the war and directly contradicting
findings by United Nations officials on the ground, as well as
investigations by both Israeli and international human rights groups.
What is significant is not just the enthusiastic support for a
military operation condemned by most of the international
community, but that this was done despite contradictory evidence.
While Hamas was guilty of terrorism in the deaths of the five
civilians killed by Hamas roets inside Israel, the resolutions and
350
leers seem to assume that the Israeli government bore absolutely
no responsibility for the deaths of nearly 1,500 Palestinian civilians
killed by Israeli ordnance inside the Gaza Strip. Indeed, members of
Congress repeatedly asserted that the Palestinian side was somehow
responsible for the deaths of its own people at the hands of Israeli
forces.
On July 25, Amnesty International reported that “Israeli forces
have carried out aas that have killed hundreds of civilians, using
precision weaponry su as drone-fired missiles, as well as
munitions su as artillery, whi cannot be precisely targeted, on
very densely populated residential areas.” Israeli forces “directly
aaed thousands of homes,” including high-rise apartment blos,
killing whole families. Observing that civilians in the Gaza Strip had
“nowhere to escape military operations by Israeli forces,” Amnesty
provided ample evidence that Israeli forces were engaging in
“indiscriminate aas on urban areas using artillery and bombs.”16
In a particularly serious brea of international law, Amnesty
further reported that “ambulances and medical personnel on their
way to collect the wounded appear to have been deliberately
targeted on several occasions, and hospitals have been destroyed by
shelling from tanks and missiles.” Similarly, an investigation by an
Israeli veterans group concluded that Israeli policies “led to massive
and unprecedented harm to the population and the civilian
infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. Policymakers could have predicted
these results prior to the operation and were surely aware of them
throughout,” and that heavy weapons fire on a “massive scale [was]
directed into neighborhoods and populated areas, while disregarding
the necessary safety ranges from the civilian population.”17 Human
Rights Wat cited evidence of Israel “blatantly violating the laws of
war designed to spare civilians,” including by aaing heavily
populated neighborhoods, bombing U.N.-run sools, and shooting
at fleeing civilians.18 e Israeli human rights organization B`Tselem
allenged its government’s claims that it had “no intention of
351
harming civilians,” noting that “aer more than three weeks of lethal
bombardments by Israel in the Gaza Strip, whi have killed
hundreds of civilians and wiped out dozens of families, this claim
has become meaningless.”19 U.N. officials also arged Israeli forces
with engaging in serious violations of international law following a
series of aas against U.N. sools where Palestinians were
seeking refuge.20
Despite this, the U.S. House of Representatives, with more than
100 co-sponsors from both parties, passed a resolution by unanimous
consent insisting that the Israeli aas were exclusively “focused on
terrorist targets,” and that Israel “goes to extraordinary lengths to
target only terrorist actors.”21 Senate majority leader Harry Reid
introduced a resolution, also pushed through by unanimous consent,
claiming that, “the Government of Israel has taken significant steps
to protect civilians in Gaza,” and that “Israel’s aas have focused
on terrorist targets.”22 ese were just two in a series of similar
bipartisan resolutions and public leers that went through Capitol
Hill as part of a concerted campaign to discredit human rights
groups, journalists, medical workers, U.N. officials, and any other
eyewitness who documented Israeli violations of international
humanitarian law.
During and following both the conflicts, Congressional resolutions
accused Hamas of “using innocent civilians as human shields.”
Subsequent human rights reports criticized Hamas for less-severe
violations of international humanitarian law, su as not taking all
necessary steps it should to prevent civilian casualties when it
positions fighters and armaments too close to concentrations of
civilians.23 ey found no evidence, however, of Hamas engaging in
the more serious war crime of using human shields, whi is defined
as deliberately holding civilians against their will as a deterrent from
enemy aas. Without su evidence, Congress decided to radically
broaden the definition of what constitutes human shields. A 2009
House resolution passed with only five dissenting votes called “on all
352
nations … to condemn Hamas for deliberately embedding its
fighters, leaders and weapons in private homes, sools, mosques,
hospitals and otherwise using Palestinian civilians as human
shields.”24 Su a sweeping redefinition asserts that if a Hamas leader
lives in his own private home in a residential neighborhood, aends
a nearby mosque and seeks admiance in a local hospital, Hamas is
thereby using “human shields” and Israel therefore is not responsible
for the civilian deaths from bombing those areas. is has dangerous
ramifications when one considers that the vast majority of leaders of
most governments and political parties live in private homes in
civilian neighborhoods, go to local houses of worship and e in to
hospitals when si or injured, along with ordinary civilians.
Furthermore, given that the armed wing of Hamas is a militia rather
than a standing army, virtually all of their fighters live in private
homes and go to neighborhood mosques and local hospitals as well.
In short, a large bipartisan majority in the U.S. Congress has
advanced a radical and dangerous reinterpretation of international
humanitarian law that would allow virtually any country with
superior air power or long-range artillery to get away with war
crimes.
It is also important to note that, even if Hamas had used human
shields in the narrower legal definition of the term, it still does not
absolve Israel from its obligation to avoid civilian casualties. e
Geneva Conventions make it clear that even if one side is shielding
itself behind civilians, su a violation “shall not release the Parties
to the conflict from their legal obligations with respect to the civilian
population and civilians.”25 Similarly, as Human Rights Wat noted,
even the presence of armed personnel and weapons near civilian
areas “does not release Israel from its obligations to take all feasible
precautions to minimize harm to civilians and civilian property
during military operations.”26
e bipartisan resolution not only appeared designed to
undermine international humanitarian law, it sought to resurrect a
353
fallacy that has long been rejected by Western legal thought. In an
effort to absolve Israel for the hundreds of civilian casualties it was
inflicting with U.S.-supplied weaponry, the House resolution called
on all nations “to lay blame both for the breaking of the calm and for
subsequent civilian casualties in Gaza precisely where blame
belongs, that is, on Hamas. [emphasis added]”27 Hamas can certainly
be faulted for its decision to not renew the 2008 ceasefire, along with
its own war crimes. at does not, however, absolve Israel of its
responsibility under international humanitarian law for the far
greater civilian deaths its armed forces had inflicted upon the
Palestinians in Gaza. Indeed, it has long been a principle of Western
jurisprudence that someone who is the proximate cause of a crime
cannot claim innocence simply because of the influence of another
party. e goal of this resolution, apparently, is to reverse this
longstanding legal principle.
354
U.S. opposition to a U.N. role in upholding
human rights
While the majority of Middle Eastern governments engage in serious
human rights violations, the fact that most of Israel’s human rights
abuses take place in non-self-governing territories outside of its
internationally-recognized borders places these violations of
international humanitarian law under special scrutiny of
international organizations, particularly the United Nations.
Nonetheless, the United States has made it a priority to limit the
U.N.’s ability to address international concerns regarding Israeli
violations of international humanitarian law. In the United Nations
General Assembly, the United States has repeatedly found itself as
the only country except for Israel itself (sometimes joined by
countries economically dependent on the United States, su as the
three countries whi emerged from the former U.S. Pacific Island
Trust Territories) to vote against resolutions condemning Israeli
human rights violations.28 Resolutions critical of Israel passed by the
U.N. Security Council have been more problematic for the United
States since su resolutions are legally binding and enforceable. As
a result, the United States has used nearly half of its eighty-four
vetoes cast since 1984 to blo resolutions critical of Israeli violations
of international humanitarian law. Recent examples have included
resolutions criticizing ongoing Israeli violations of the Fourth
Geneva Convention in the occupied West Bank (1997), the
establishment of an unarmed human rights observer force in the
occupied Palestinian territories (2001), deploring the killing of U.N.
employees and destruction of a World Food Program warehouse by
Israeli occupation forces (2002), calling on Israel to cease
construction of a security barrier inside occupied territories (2003),
355
deploring Israeli assassinations of alleged Palestinian militants
(2004), and opposition to Israel expanding its illegal selements on
the West Bank (2011).
Successive U.S. administrations supported a number of resolutions
requiring Israel to comply with provisions of the Fourth Geneva
Convention following the 1967 Israeli conquest of the Palestinian
West Bank, su as a call to withdraw from selements. However,
U.S. policy since the Clinton Administration has been that the
United Nations should no longer have any independent role in the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict, arguing that the U.N. resolutions have
been superseded by the Oslo Accords, signed by Israel and the
Palestine Liberation Organization in 1993. As a result, according to
this argument, the United Nations no longer has the power to
address su human rights issues as the fate of Palestinian refugees,
Israeli selements, and the status of Jerusalem.29 is aempt to
unilaterally negate the authority of the United Nations, however, is
not shared by the international community. No U.N. resolution can
be rescinded without a vote of the body in question. Neither the U.N.
Secretary General nor any other member of the Security Council
agrees with the U.S. assessment discounting the relevance of the
resolutions. Furthermore, no bilateral agreement between two
parties can supersede the authority of the United Nations Security
Council. is is especially true when one of the two parties (in this
case, the Palestinians) has made it clear that su resolutions are still
very relevant.
For example, in defending the Obama administration’s veto to the
2011 resolution against the expansion of Israeli selements,
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—who, as a senator, was an
outspoken defender of Israel’s colonization efforts and a critic of the
United Nations30–insisted that while the Obama administration
supported the idea of a selement freeze, “We have consistently over
many years said that the United Nations Security Council – and
resolutions that would come before the Security Council – is not the
356
right vehicle to advance the goal.”31 Similarly, U.S. ambassador to the
United Nations Susan Rice expressed concern that, if they allowed
the resolution to pass, it would encourage parties seeking redress to
violations of international humanitarian law “to return to the
Security Council whenever they rea an impasse.”32
is is part of a broader effort by successive U.S. administrations
to allenge the U.N.’s jurisdiction regarding international
humanitarian law in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. e United
Nations has jurisdiction over the human rights situation in the West
Bank and the Gaza Strip because, as territories under belligerent
occupation, they fall under international humanitarian statutes su
as the Fourth Geneva Convention. As a result, beginning early in the
Clinton administration, the U.S. government began referring to these
occupied territories, as well as the Golan Heights, as ‘disputed
territories.’ Not only does the term ‘disputed territories’ imply that
both sides have an equally valid claim to territories conquered by
Israel in the June 1967 war, disputed territories—unlike occupied
territories—do not fall under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
e United States also has sought to undermine the authority of
the International Court of Justice in addressing international
humanitarian law. When the United States vetoed a 2004 U.N.
Security Council resolution against Israel building a separation
barrier deep inside the occupied West Bank, the General Assembly
voted to place the question before the World Court for an advisory
opinion. e court ruled in July that while the Israeli government
could build su a barrier along its internationally-recognized
border, the construction of a separation wall running through the
occupied Palestinian West Bank was illegal.33 e Bush
administration denounced the World Court’s 14–1 advisory ruling,34
arguing that the wall’s route should only be determined through the
U.S.-managed negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israeli
government.35 is is despite the fact that substantive negotiations
had been unilaterally suspended by the Israeli government since
357
early 2001 and, when negotiations have taken place, the United
States has sidelined consideration of international humanitarian law.
Support for the Bush administration’s opposition to the World Court
was bipartisan. e U.S. House of Representatives—by an
overwhelming bipartisan 361–45 majority—voted to deplore the
World Court’s decision and commended President Bush for “his
leadership in marshaling opposition to the misuse of the ICJ.”36 e
resolution also warned against the international community utilizing
international humanitarian law in regard to the occupied West Bank,
stating that nations would “risk a strongly negative impact on their
relationship with the people and Government of the United States
should they use the ICJ’s advisory judgment as an excuse to
interfere” with the U.S.-managed peace process.” 37
A particular target of the U.S. government has been the United
Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). e UNHRC found itself
the target of the Obama administration and Congress in 2014 when
it voted to establish a commission of inquiry looking into “all
violations of international humanitarian law and international
human rights law” in the hostilities in Gaza.38 e United States was
the only one of the UNHRC’s 47 members to vote against
establishing the commission. In response to its establishment, nearly
150 members of the House signed a leer to U.N. High
Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, protesting the
UNHRC’s decision “to unjustly probe alleged war crimes” by a
nation simply “defending its citizens from roet aas and terror
tunnels.”39 Similarly, a Senate leer to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki
Moon denounced the UNHRC for investigating possible Israeli war
crimes, insisting that Israel has “worked assiduously to minimize
civilian casualties.” e full ambers of both the House40 and
Senate41 also went on record condemning the U.N. investigation as
well, with Democratic leader Reid, on the Senate floor, declaring he
was “disgusted” that the UNHRC would adopt a resolution “accusing
Israel of human rights violations in the ongoing Gaza conflict,”
358
calling su accusations “anti-Israel.”42 e findings of the
Commission, aired by former New York Supreme Court judge
Mary McGowan Davis, were released in June 2015 and cited
extensive violations of international humanitarian law by both sides,
confirming findings by other international and Israeli human rights
groups.43
Part of the U.S. effort to undermine international humanitarian
law is through insisting that documentation of Israeli war crimes is
part of an effort to deny Israel’s right to self-defense and even its
right to exist. For example, in 2015, Secretary of State John Kerry
insisted that su UNHRC investigations were designed to
“arbitrarily and regularly delegitimize and isolate Israel.” Similarly, a
2009 Congressional resolution, passed by a wide bipartisan majority,
claimed that a UNHRC report citing evidence that both Israel and
Hamas violated international humanitarian law was somehow
designed “to delegitimize the democratic State of Israel and deny it
the right to defend its citizens and its existence,” warning that the
report “can be used to delegitimize other democracies and deny
them the same right.”
Despite the fact that the U.S. government has long accused the
UNHRC—despite recent publications of highly-critical reports of
human rights abuses by Syria, Sudan, and other countries—of an
anti-Israel bias, both the Obama administration and Congress have
insisted that the issue of possible war crimes by Israeli and Hamas
forces documented in the 2009 and 2014 investigations stay confined
to the UNHRC. e reason for this apparent contradiction is that if
the maer was taken to the U.N. Security Council, as recommended
by the investigations, it would place debate on violations of
international humanitarian law by a key U.S. ally before a body that,
unlike the UNHRC, has an enforcement meanism. It would also
allow far greater media exposure of Israeli war crimes, the bulk of
whi were implemented using U.S. weapons systems and
ordinance. And, since neither Israel nor Hamas are parties to the
359
International Criminal Court, Israelis and Palestinians suspected of
war crimes could not face justice at the ICC unless it was authorized
by the Security Council. e apparent intent, then, was that su
war criminals be allowed to escape prosecution.
360
Conclusion
In certain respects, the efforts by the U.S. government to undermine
the enforcement of international humanitarian law are not unique to
Israel. During the 1980s, for example, the Reagan administration and
Congress also tried to undermine the credibility of the U.N. and
human rights organizations when they provided evidence of war
crimes by U.S. allies in Central America. In recent decades,
successive administrations and Congresses of both parties have also
ignored, downplayed, rationalized, and covered up for violations of
international humanitarian law by allied governments in Saudi
Arabia, Indonesia, Turkey, Colombia, Morocco, and elsewhere. Yet,
while U.S. support for human rights and international law has
always been uneven, the vehemence with whi the U.S.
government has in recent years aempted to undermine
international humanitarian law, particularly in the case of Israel, has
never been greater.
ere is certainly an exceptionally high degree of political
polarization regarding Israel. For example, ideological and
geopolitical factors have played a role in the disproportionate
aention Israeli violations of international humanitarian law have
received in certain U.N. bodies, su as the UNHRC, compared with
some other countries. Similarly, ideological geopolitical factors,
along with domestic politics, have certainly played a role in U.S.
defense of Israeli violations of international humanitarian law.
However, the primary motivation for U.S. policy may not simply
be that of defending Israel, particularly since su violations of
international humanitarian law and killing of civilians by the Israeli
government arguably hurts Israel’s legitimate security needs in the
long run. Instead, U.S. policy may be based in part from a desire to
361
prevent the kind of precedents whi could serve as a deterrent
against violations of international humanitarian law by the United
States in its ‘global war on terrorism.’44 Insisting that large-scale
killings of civilians is legitimate as long as you are fighting
‘terrorists,’ that the World Court has no jurisdiction regarding
questions of international humanitarian law in occupied territories,
and reputable international jurists and human rights investigators
cannot be trusted provides greater latitude for the United States to
engage in su violations of international humanitarian law as well.
Similarly, mu of the U.S. opposition to the 2004 World Court
ruling on the Israeli separation barrier could be rooted in its
reiteration that member states of binding treaties, conventions and
arters su as the Fourth Geneva Convention and the U.N. Charter
are obliged to ensure that other member states live up to their legal
obligations under those agreements. Specifically, the court insisted
that every country that is party to the Fourth Geneva Convention
must “ensure compliance by Israel with international humanitarian
law as embodied in that Convention.”45 is principle of universality
may be what is particularly troubling for U.S. policy makers. Any
su strict and uniform application of international law would
interfere with U.S. policy objectives in the region, whi rely heavily
on the use of military force, including conquest and occupation,
subjecting the United States to principles of international legal
principles related to human rights. is is why any aempt to
enforce international humanitarian law must be met by slander,
condemnation and other aas against the credibility of the
international organizations, non-governmental organizations, or any
other body whi suggests that the United States and its allies are
not somehow exempt from su legal obligations.
By encouraging impunity, as it does when allowing Israel to
continue its illegal colonization of the occupied West Bank and
defending its aas on civilian targets in the Gaza Strip and
elsewhere, U.S. policy undermines the prospects for peace. As long
362
as there is no peace, there will likely be an increase in support for
extremist groups that thrive in situations of war, instability, and
deprivation.46 Support for impunity also helps excuse extremist
tactics of targeting civilians, as it can be justified by arguments that
if countries as powerful as Israel and the United States are not bound
by international legal norms, why should less powerful actors be
constrained? It is therefore in the long-term interest of Israel, the
United States, and every other nation to recognize and uphold
international humanitarian law, for there is ultimately no
contradiction between upholding international human rights norms
and defending national security—indeed, they should be seen as
mutually constitutive.
363
Notes
1 www.ohr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=134 (accessed
September 4, 2016). Goldstone later disclosed that he could no longer categorically stand
by some conclusions of a five-page section of the 450-page report as a result of his
reviewing subsequent evidence, but he stood by the rest of the commission’s findings.
2 International Commiees of the Red Cross, Convention (IV) Relative to the Protection of
Civilian Persons in Time of War. Geneva, 12 August, 1949.
3 hp://fmep.org/resource/u-s-state-department-legal-advisor-on-israeli-selements/
(accessed September 4, 2016).
4 International Court of Justice, “Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the
Occupied Palestinian Territory,” July 9, 2004.
5 www.nybooks.com/articles/arives/2001/aug/09/camp-david-the-tragedy-of-errors/
(accessed September 4, 2016).
6 Steve Clemons, “Piering, Hills, Sullivan, Beinart, Dobbins, More Ask Obama
Administration to Support U.N. Resolution Condemning Illegal Israeli Selements,”
Washington Note, January 19, 2011 hp://washingtonnote.com/piering_hills/. Obama
also placed himself to the right of the liberal and mainstream Jewish community, the
majority of whom—according to public opinion polls—believe the United States should
take a harder line against illegal selements. Moderate pro-Israel groups like J Street
and Americans for Peace Now had encouraged President Obama not to veto the
resolution, but the president rejected their pleas, instead allying himself with su right-
wing groups as the American Israel Public Affairs Commiee (AIPAC).
7 Human Rights Wat, “Israel: U.S. Veto on Selements Undermines International Law,”
February 18, 2011.
8 Leer, Curt Goering, Senior Deputy Executive Director, Amnesty International, to
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, January 2, 2009.
9 Senate Resolution 10, 111th Congress, 1st session, January 8, 2009.
364
10 House Resolution 34, 111th Congress, 1st session, January 9, 2009.
11 “Operation ‘Cast Lead:’ 22 Days of Death and Destruction,” Amnesty International, July
2, 2009.
12 See, for example, “Rain of Fire: Israel’s Unlawful Use of White Phosphorus in Gaza,”
Human Rights Wat, Mar 25, 2009.
13 “Onslaught: Israel’s Aa on Gaza and the Rule of Law,” National Lawyers Guild, 2009.
14 “B`Tselem’s Investigation of Fatalities in Operation Cast Lead,” B`Tselem, September 9,
2009.
15 United Nations Human Rights Council, “Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding
Mission on the Gaza Conflict,” A/HRC/12/48 September 25, 2009.
16 www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2014/07/israelgaza-conflict-questions-and-answers/
(accessed September 4, 2016).
17 Breaking the Silence, “is is How We Fought in Gaza: Soldiers’ Testimonies and
Photographs From Operation ‘Protective Edge’ (2014)” pp. 16, 20.
18 www.hrw.org/news/2014/08/04/gaza-israeli-soldiers-shoot-and-kill-fleeing-civilians
(accessed September 4, 2016).
19 www.btselem.org/press_release/20140801_a_dali_building_bombing (accessed
September 4, 2016).
20 www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/unrwa-strongly-condemns-israeli-
shelling-its-sool-gaza-serious (accessed September 4, 2016).
21 www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-concurrent-resolution/107/text (accessed
September 4, 2016).
22 www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-resolution/526/text (accessed September 4,
2016).
23 As human rights investigators anowledged, however, the nature of urban warfare,
particularly in a territory as densely populated as the Gaza Strip, makes the proximity
of retreating fighters and their equipment to civilians unavoidable in many cases.
24 www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-111hres34ih/pdf/BILLS-111hres34ih.pdf (accessed
September 4, 2016).
365
25 Protocol I, Geneva Conventions, Part IV, Section 1, Chapter 1, Article 51.
26 “Lebanon/Israel: Israel Must Allow Civilians Safe Passage,” Human Rights Wat, July
20, 2006. e argument by those defend the killing of civilians who are allegedly being
used as human shields is comparable to claiming that it would be legitimate for a SWAT
team, in order to kill some bank robbers shooting at them, to also kill bank employees
and customers who were being held hostage.
27 www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-111hres34ih/pdf/BILLS-111hres34ih.pdf (accessed
September 4, 2016).
28 Other resolutions, while still passing by comfortable margins, have been joined by a
sizable number of negative or abstaining votes—primarily from European nations—
because, even when the resolutions themselves were in most part valid, they were most
strongly supported by some of the world’s most tyrannical governments whi were
guilty of even worse human rights abuses. is is certainly not a unique phenomenon,
however. During the Cold War, repressive right-wing dictatorships would oen join the
U.S.-led efforts to condemn human rights violations by Communist governments and,
likewise, various le-wing dictatorships would join the Soviet Union in condemnation
of rightist regimes.
29 U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations Madeleine Albright, leer to the
United Nations General Assembly, August 8, 1994.
30 hp://fpif.org/hillary_clinton_on_international_law/ (accessed September 4, 2016).
31 www.voanews.com/content/negotiations-continue-at-un-on-palestinian-selements-
resolution-116429859/172722.html (accessed September 4, 2016).
32 hp://usun.state.gov/briefing/statements/2011/156816.htm (accessed September 4, 2016).
33 International Court of Justice, “Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the
Occupied Palestinian Territory,” July 9, 2004.
34 U.S. judge omas Buergenthal was the only dissenter, largely cited a tenical
argument, but joining the majority in anowledging the West Bank’s status as a
territory under foreign belligerent occupation.
35 Office of the Press Secretary, White House, “Press Gaggle by Sco McClellan,” July 9,
2004.
366
36 U.S. House of Representatives, 108th Congress, 2nd session, H. Res. 713.
37 Ibid. In the fieen years between the commencement of the U.S-led negotiations and the
resolution, the number of illegal Israeli selements on occupied Palestinian land had
more than doubled, raising questions as to whether there was any hope in stopping the
colonization drive under U.S. auspices.
38 www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/11/us-mideast-gaza-un-inquiry-
idUSKBN0GB1QR20140811 (accessed September 4, 2016).
39
hp://israel.house.gov/sites/israel.house.gov/files/wysiwyg_uploaded/UN%20HRC%20Le
er%20on%20Hamas%20Human%20Shields%20-%20FINAL%20SIGNATURES.pdf
(accessed September 4, 2016).
40 www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-concurrent-resolution/107/text (accessed
September 4, 2016).
41 hp://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c113:S.RES.526 (accessed September 4, 2016).
42 www.reid.senate.gov/press_releases/2014-30-07-reid-remarks-condemning-the-united-
nations-human-rights-council-resolution-against-israel#.U9pEabHML2o (accessed
September 4, 2016).
43 www.ohr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/CoIGazaConflict/Pages/ReportCoIGaza.aspx
(accessed September 4, 2016).
44 For example, Democratic Congressman Gene Green of Texas claimed that the ICJ ruling
“sets dangerous precedents in international law that hinder and impede United States
antiterrorism efforts.” (Congressional Record, 108th Congress, 2nd session, p. H5774.)
45 International Court of Justice, op. cit.
46 Sriram, Martin-Ortega, and Herman, “War, Conflict, and Human Rights” in The
International Studies Encyclopedia (2010).
367
Selected Bibliography
Akram, S., Dumper, M., Lynk, M., and Scobbie, I. eds. International
Law and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Rights-Based
Approach to Middle East Peace. London: Routledge, 2011.
Amnesty International. Operation Cast Lead: 22 Days of Death and
Destruction, 2009. Available at:
www.amnesty.org/en/documents/MDE15/015/2009/en/ (accessed
September 4, 2016).
Aruri, N. Dishonest Broker: The Role of the United States in Palestine
and Israel. Boston: South End Press, 2003.
Bennis, P. Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Primer. New York: Olive
Bran Press, 2012.
Bisharat, G. “Israel’s invasion of Gaza in International Law,” in
Denver Journal of International Law and Policy vol. 38 (2009), 41
–114.
Bisharat, G. “Violence’s Law: Israel’s Campaign to Transform
International Legal Norms,” in Journal of Palestine Studies vol.
XLII, no. 3, (Spring 2013): 68–84.
Falk, R. Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope. Charloesville, VA: Just
World Books, 2014.
Horowitz, A., Ratner, L., and Weiss P., eds. The Goldstone Report:
The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict.
Washington D.C.: e Nation Books, 2001.
Human Rights Wat. Why They Died: Civilian Casualties in
Lebanon during the 2006 War, 2003. Available at:
www.hrw.org/report/2007/09/05/why-they-died/civilian-
casualties-lebanon-during-2006-war (accessed September 4,
2016).
368
Human Rights Wat. “Israel/Palestine: Unlawful Israeli Airstrikes
Kill Civilians,” 2014. Available at:
www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/15/israel/palestine-unlawful-israeli-
airstrikes-kill-civilians (accessed September 4, 2016).
International Court of Justice. “Legal Consequences of the
Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,”
2004. Available at: www.icj-cij.org/doet/files/131/1671.pdf
(accessed September 4, 2016).
United Nations Human Rights Council. “Report of the Independent
International Fact-finding Mission to Investigate the Implications
of the Israeli Selements on the Civil, Political, Economic, Social
and Cultural Rights of the Palestinian People roughout the
Occupied Palestinian Territory, Including East Jerusalem,” 2012.
Available at:
www.ohr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/RegularSessio
n/Session19/FFM/FFMSelements.pdf (accessed September 4,
2016).
Stephen Z. “Congress’s War on Lebanon,” Middle East Policy vol.
XVII, no. 4 (Winter 2010), 53–66.
Stephen Zunes, “Congress, the Gaza War, and International
Humanitarian Law,” Middle East Policy, Vol. XVII; No. 2 (Spring
2010), 68–81.
Stephen Zunes, “e United States Reaction to the International
Court of Justice Ruling on Israel’s Separation Barrier,” Middle
East Policy vol. XII, no. 1 (January 2005), 72–84.
369
Section IV
A transnational and international
framework: human rights beyond
borders
370
11
Rival Transnational Advocacy
Networks and Middle East Politics at
the U.N. Human Rights Council
Laura K. Landolt
371
Introduction
is apter examines conflict between and within rival human
rights transnational advocacy networks (TANs) over political and
civil rights in Middle East and North African (MENA) states at the
U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC). Since the HRC’s 2006 creation,
domestic and international human rights NGOs initiated and/or
deepened their U.N. advocacy as a result of political opportunities at
the HRC’s new meanism, Universal Periodic Review (UPR).1
Although most NGOs at the UPR/HRC are critical of government
practices, a surprising number appear sympathetic to governments—
even governments that openly abuse human rights.
e apter identifies competing sets of ‘critical’ and
‘government-sympathetic’ NGOs and their respective partners
(states, donors, U.N. officials), as rival TANs. Identifying and
analyzing rival networks at the HRC is important because it
illuminates the dynamics of political struggles over human rights,
helps explain the durability of repressive regimes, and suggests that
past advances in human rights protections may be reversible.
e conflict between rival human rights TANs is perhaps most
dramatic in relation to the reviews of MENA states. During
negotiations over the new HRC, throughout the institution-building
period and in every UPR focused on the region, MENA states were
conspicuous in their coordinated efforts to obstruct critical NGOs.
Failing to prevent critical NGOs from participating at the HRC/UPR,
MENA states collaborate with government-sympathetic NGOs in
order to undermine and impede them. is government-sympathetic
TAN presents a serious obstacle to domestic and international
pressure for human rights protections in MENA states, and is
working hard to deinstitutionalize human rights norms at the U.N.
372
e following pages first examine theoretical debate over NGO
and TAN advocacy at the international and domestic levels, and then
consider some of the causes, dynamics and effects of political conflict
within and between rival human rights TANs focused on MENA
states at the HRC.
373
eory: human rights and transnational
advocacy
Identification and analysis of rival TANs fills gaps in constructivist
resear. e constructivist “spiral model” drew valuable aention to
the dynamic in whi domestic human rights NGOs join TANs to
encourage intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and sympathetic
states to pressure abusive governments to implement human rights
protections.2 Constructivists defined TANs as “INGOs and
foundations whi are loosely connected to officials working for
human rights IOs as well as for national governments,” all of whom
were “bound together by shared values, a common discourse, and
dense exanges of information and services.”3 Constructivists
legitimized aention to NGOs as actors facilitating an “international
‘norms cascade,’ as … human rights norms spread rapidly” beginning
in 1985, when state officials increasingly adopted human rights
language, ratified international treaties, and institutionalized
domestic protections.4
As the human rights ‘norms cascade’ dwindles or even reverses in
the MENA and elsewhere, however, international relations solars
(including contemporary constructivists5) identify shortcomings in
early constructivist analysis. First, constructivism suffered from
selection bias in that it typically considered the successful diffusion
of liberal norms. As a result, constructivists fostered durable
assumptions that norm cascades are inevitable, and that NGOs and
TANs are innately and homogenously progressive, motivated by
‘principled beliefs’ rather than material interests.6
Constructivists’ assertion that state ‘socialization’ into new norms
begins with officials’ adoption of human rights discourse also
underestimated the possibility of indefinite instrumental use of the
374
language.7 Indeed, authoritarian resistance to human rights
protections includes elite learning about how to manipulate human
rights discourse, while states may also instrumentally ratify human
rights treaties and superficially institutionalize sham human rights
protections.
Finally, constructivists rarely examined political struggles within
and between TANs (or between states and NGOs) at IGOs like the
U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC). is is because they emphasized
social factors (power of ideas) over material factors (power of states)
in explanations of norm diffusion, and because they conceptualized
IGOs mainly as unitary actors or as individual officials and not also
as sites of political struggle and/or as agents of states.8 As a result,
constructivists did not aend to authoritarian state resistance to
liberal norms in IGOs.
Lingering assumptions about the aracteristics and practices of
NGOs and TANs are also subject to revision. Recent resear on
conservative and rival TANs complicates the notion that TANs are
innately progressive, or that liberal norm diffusion is inevitable. is
apter loosely adopts Clifford Bob’s ‘rival network’ approa by
identifying a ‘government-sympathetic’ human rights TAN that
opposes the critical human rights TAN originally identified by
constructivists. Applying countermovement theory to the analysis of
transnational networks, Bob considers “competing networks” as
“ideologically opposed blocs rather than seeing one side as reactive
or ‘counter’.”9 By viewing networks as ideological competitors, he
gains purase on the competing interests that animate and prolong
these political struggles.
In addition, TAN members do not necessarily share values and
can behave opportunistically. Recent resear using organization
theory and/or historical institutionalism recasts analysis of NGOs as
actors that are “motivated by both principled beliefs as well as
instrumental concerns.”10 Indeed, NGOs compete for “resources,
375
visibility, prestige, and the claiming of success” as well as aention
to particular NGO issues.11
Because NGOs are both principled and instrumental actors, TANs
also exhibit internal conflict. For William DeMars, a network exists
where NGOs “share any common partners” including “parts of
governments, U.N. agencies, regional intergovernmental
organizations, foundations, solars, religious communities,
professional associations, journalists, and even warlords and private
corporations.”12 DeMars and Dijkzeul encourage solars to “follow
the partners” to detect internal political conflict, contending that
NGO networks, encompassing partners with potentially dissonant
agendas, both institutionalize and structure international
cooperation and conflict.13
Cooperation and conflict within the critical human rights TAN
occurs not just between domestic and international, Northern and
Southern NGOs, but also between NGOs and states.14 At the
HRC/UPR, critical I/NGOs have strong connections with liberal
states through whi they share information and material resources
(from states to NGOs). Still, critical NGOs confront the divided
loyalties of liberal states, whi usually refuse to take a critical stand
on an abusive state when that state is geostrategically important
(discussed below).
Nevertheless, over the past several decades critical NGOs utilized
conflicts between liberal and authoritarian states to strengthen U.N.
human rights meanisms, expand NGO participation and bring
aention to state abuses at the old Commission on Human Rights
(CHR).15 When the Human Rights Council (HRC) replaced the CHR
in 2006, critical NGOs and liberal states also collaborated to build a
new meanism, the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), whi
reviews all U.N. members’ human rights practices every 4.5 years.
During the UPR institution-building period, critical NGOs and
liberal states expanded and deepened NGO participation against
coordinated opposition by MENA and other authoritarian states. As
376
a result, NGOs gained the opportunity to submit one of three
foundation documents in ea state’s review.
While regular reviews of all U.N. members and greater NGO
space at the HRC/UPR encouraged increased participation by critical
domestic and international NGOs, it also aracted government-
sympathetic NGOs (GSNGOs).16 According to the Cairo Institute for
Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), domestic MENA GSNGOs increased
in numbers in 2009 and subsequently expanded their presence at the
HRC/UPR.17 If the CIHRS timeline is correct, authoritarian state
experiences with critical NGOs in the UPR’s first year (2008) may
have encouraged them to foster and collaborate more frequently
with GSNGOs—thus strengthening a nascent government-
sympathetic network within and beyond the MENA.
Elsewhere I argue that Egypt’s 2010 UPR contributed to the Tahrir
Uprising.18 Whether this is true or not, authoritarian MENA states
take the UPR very seriously. One diplomat observed that “[t]en
years ago the Commission on Human Rights was not so developed
that states saw it as a threat. Now [at the HRC/UPR] states see that
civil society can have an impact and are being [listened to] by other
states.”19
377
Critical and government-sympathetic NGOs
Although Government Organized Nongovernmental Organizations
(GONGOs) are nothing new, systematic aention to them appears
infrequently in comparative resear, and even less so in
international relations. Interview respondents who discussed
GONGOs invariably emphasized the shortcomings of that term and
fluidity of the category. e common understanding is that an NGO
sympathetic to state abuses may not actually be ‘government-
organized’. As an OHCHR official aptly noted, GONGOs are a
“legitimate expression of certain feelings … Even GONGOs exist in
Western countries—you can find NGO leaders who have a clear
political perspective supporting one side or a party. You can’t avoid
this phenomenon.”20
e term ‘government-sympathetic NGOs’ (GSNGOs), respects
this ambiguity and emphasizes their ideas and practices, rather than
origins. is term was developed by Landolt and Woo, who identify
five types of NGO statements about states at the UPR: 1)
systematically critical, 2) critical, 3) reformist, 4) sympathetic, and 5)
laudatory.21 ‘Reformist’ NGOs occupy a grey area separating critical
from sympathetic NGOs. Reformists are ‘insiders’ who work with
government, but also criticize some government abuses. One
respondent described that grey area as constantly shiing according
to political circumstance, requiring reformists to ask themselves:
“When are you corrupted, and when are you using your influence
[on government] for positive ange?”22
In this apter, ‘GSNGOs’ refers to NGOs taking sympathetic and
laudatory positions toward states. GSNGOs may only lightly critique
and more oen praise their home government, whereas critical
NGOs critique their home government as mu as they criticize
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other states.23 By this definition, liberal states also create and aract
GSNGOs. Freedom House, whi respondents identified as a US
GSNGO because it does not criticize the US government, is different
in degree but not in kind from U.N. Wat. Critical NGO
respondents identify U.N. Wat as an Israeli GSNGO for its refusal
to report Israeli abuses, but also because it seeks to discredit critical
NGO information about Israeli abuses and related HRC action.
All NGOs, including human rights NGOs, contain a latent or
overt political program—whether critical of, or sympathetic to,
government. DeMars views an NGO as both an actor and a site of
“dynamic cooperation and conflict among its partners” arguing that
“NGOs are at least as mu partner-driven as principle-driven.”24
Most states aract sympathetic NGOs at the HRC/UPR, but this
apter focuses narrowly on the conflict between and within rival
TANs over the human rights practices of MENA states. Although
Freedom House sponsored the participation of government-
sympathetic Egyptian NGOs at Egypt’s 2010 UPR, liberal state
GSNGOs may also join the critical TAN on reviews of MENA
states.25 is observation underscores the dynamic and historically-
contingent nature of TANs, but does not disprove the existence of
rival network conflict examined here. Critical NGOs far outnumber
GSNGOs in the critical TAN focused on the MENA, while there are
no critical NGOs in the government-sympathetic TAN.
If an NGO is constituted by the ‘latent agendas’ of network
partners, then critical NGOs and GSNGOs in their respective TANs
are influenced by partner states, NGOs, IGOs, donors, business, and
other interests.26 Referring to liberal state funding of critical NGOs
and the question of autonomy, one diplomat asked, “If you’re a
purist about it, how many NGOs working in the Human Rights
Council don’t receive any money from governments? … Some have a
large or small donor base … an independent course [is] easier when
you have a larger donor base”, meaning that an NGO can play
donors off against ea other and/or avoid single donor pressure by
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diversifying funding sources.27 While relative autonomy enhances
critical NGOs’ influence on states, it is as yet unclear how mu
influence over states GSNGOs might enjoy.
Both networks identify human rights as a valuable goal—but ea
gives it a different priority. e most striking difference between
them is a ‘rights versus security’28 calculus: the government-
sympathetic network conceptualizes national security as
oppositional to, and prioritizes it over, human rights; while the
critical network views human rights as essential to human security
and compatible with national security—although the US and other
liberal states have openly equivocated on the prioritization of human
rights since 2001. e government-sympathetic TAN can be viewed
as ‘framejaing’ critical NGOs’ message that human rights are
inviolable, and instead substituting a message that domestic security,
stability, sovereignty and/or other goals are (at least temporarily)
more important than human rights.29
e government-sympathetic TAN works very hard to
institutionalize this alternative ideological framework at the
HRC/UPR. As a result, the critical network’s past success at drawing
international aention to government human rights abuses and
institutionalizing human rights protections at the HRC is not
irreversible. One critical INGO respondent insisted that, aside from
advocating on specific human rights issues at the U.N., “we’re also
here to protect normative frameworks and meanisms … and
strengthen them [because] … the normative framework of human
rights is under constant aa. ere’s no guarantee that it will be
the same in ten years.”30
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NGOs in authoritarian MENA states
Authoritarian MENA states and GSNGOs externalize domestic
human rights politics at the HRC. At the domestic level a few states
refuse to allow independent NGOs to operate (e.g. Syria, Saudi
Arabia), and most practice heavy-handed repression su as banning
or closing down critical NGOs; diverting their resources to GSNGOs;
arging critical activists as spies; and imprisoning, torturing and/or
disappearing activists. To reduce external criticism, states also
practice more ‘subtle’ methods against critical NGOs.
Subtle repression includes threatening, imprisoning and/or
physically harming individual critical activists, since a single
example can intimidate domestic NGOs and external allies, and the
regime can argue that ill-treatment is not systematic.31 Subtle
methods also include defaming NGO activists as ‘foreign agents’ in
the media. Bob describes su action as “unbuilding” and
“deauthenticating” the rival network by intimidating “groups from
joining, accusing them of ‘treason!’ for taking comfort or mere ideas
from foreigners.”32 Authoritarian states also interfere in critical NGO
operations by “penetrating existing NGOs and modifying their
objectives and/or recruiting … politically influential elements of the
activist community.”33
Furthermore, states obstruct domestic NGO meetings and restrict
representatives’ ability to travel to external NGO or IGO events.
When they do leave the country, critical MENA human rights
activists:
… say that reprisals [for external work] are [now] more subtle … [Activists returning
from the HRC] might later be called in for interrogation or criminal arges—obscure,
unrelated [arges] months later—[even] basic administrative [questions for] … no good
reason …, and you can’t link it to [their] contact with the U.N… . Mostly there’s a
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massive effect of knowing what might happen. e threat [of reprisals at home] is only
a threat, but it has a illing effect. It’s preemptive repression.34
Institutional isomorphism across the MENA indicates that
authoritarian states share repressive practices.35 NGO laws duplicate
restrictive registration, reporting and foreign funding regulations.36
Rather than denying critical NGOs legal status, governments also
delay or fail to rule on NGO applications, leaving critical NGOs
vulnerable to government threats.
As critical NGOs emerged and became more politically prominent
in MENA states in the 1980s, and as external donors simultaneously
diverted development funding from states toward some of those
NGOs, state officials either established or fostered GSNGOs.
According to CIHRS, GSNGOs sometimes focus on “gaining
financial profits from international [donors] by claiming to be of
influence on the governments’ agenda” and, in doing so, divert
external donor funds and domestic human resources (paid and
voluntary) away from critical NGO competitors.37
Domestic GSNGOs undermine critical counterparts by diluting
domestic human rights discourse; presenting authoritarian states as
sincerely working to improve human rights practices (in their
information about and ‘tolerance’ by the state); intimidating critical
NGO representatives at public meetings; and providing a friendly
partner to satisfy the UPR requirement that states consult with
NGOs before preparing the national report.38 At the same time,
authoritarian states and GSNGOs collaborate to externalize these
practices at the U.N.39
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Government-sympathetic TAN practices
If the government-sympathetic network is gaining strength in the
MENA, Egypt is its fulcrum. Egypt distinguishes itself by domestic
innovations in NGO repression, but also by external efforts to
‘export repression’.40 At the CHR Egypt built a leadership position in
the African Group and the OIC, and during the HRC institution-
building process led, along with Algeria (African Group), Saudi
Arabia (Asian Group) and Pakistan (OIC), efforts by MENA and
other authoritarian states to limit NGO participation.41
Because they failed to blo NGO participation in the HRC,
MENA authoritarian states utilize formal and informal actions to
obstruct critical NGO participation. Indeed, the Arab Group may be
the “only [informal U.N. regional] group that [regularly] aas
NGOs at the HRC as a unit.”42 Since the UPR’s inception, Egypt and
Algeria lead MENA state efforts to disrupt critical NGO statements
by calling repeated points of order against them.43 To weaken the
critical TAN, authoritarian states also seek to replace critical officials
with government sympathizers in the OHCHR and treaty body
offices.
Even more dramatically, authoritarian states collaborate on the
ECOSOC Commiee on Non-Governmental Organizations to delay,
prevent and even suspend consultative status (and independent
access to U.N. proceedings) for critical NGOs, while hastening
approval for GSNGOs.44 Bob describes these activities as “activating
and deactivating institutions”—a process by whi networks “tilt the
institution’s rules in their favor–and against their enemies. If
possible, they maneuver to exclude or expel the rival [and] … pa …
[institutions] with stalwarts or sympathizers.”45
383
e most notorious instance of NGO Commiee repression of
critical MENA NGOs occurred when Algeria engineered the
suspension of consultative status for the Arab Commission for
Human Rights (ACHR) in 2009, and then obstructed an associated
Swiss NGO focused on Arab states, AlKarama, from acquiring the
same.46
Mr. Raid Mesli, Alkarama’s Director of the Legal Department, had … been appointed
as the [ACHR] representative in Geneva and was speaking on its behalf to the [HRC],
in a statement supported by Alkarama. Algeria argued that Mr. Mesli had … ‘been
convicted by an Algerian court on criminal arges of association with a terrorist
organisation’. Clearly, these accusations … against Mr. Mesli aer he was recognised as
a political refugee in Switzerland are nothing but a result of his work as a human rights
lawyer in Algeria, documenting human rights violations and defending political
prisoners. In addition, in 2013, Algeria, present at the [NGO] Commiee’[s] session as
an observer, made a very hostile declaration calling [on] the Commiee not to grant
Alkarama … consultative status as it would ‘allow terrorists to operate within the
U.N.’.47
Increasing numbers of GSNGOs at the UPR/HRC obstruct critical
NGO participation by taking up limited speaking time, and
presenting laudatory accounts of authoritarian states’ human rights
records.48 One respondent emphasized the ways that GSNGOs
misdirect aention to domestic human rights abuses:
[GONGOs] make the whole landscape … blurry. ere are a lot of them. at’s the
objective—states establish them to drown everyone. You’re one among many GONGOs
… Arab states’ real motive is to keep a good image. ey’re willing to put a lot of money
in these GONGOs … [S]ome GONGOs [appeared at a presession briefing by NGOs for
states on Iraq’s UPR.] … I want[ed] people to talk about sensitive issues [but w]hen
talking about Iraq—one of the [most repressive] countries in the region—[some
GONGOs brought up] issues that don’t maer so mu … [For example,] one
[GO]NGO brought up having an educational program in prisons. Are people not
tortured? [Torture] is more important [than la of education] … [On the issue of]
torture or no torture, [states say] the “real problem is overcrowding.” ey try to reshi
the focus on[to] issues that are more easily solved and not politically too sensitive. ey
can ask for money to build a new prison. Do they want to stop torture? No. A year ago
Mauritania was reviewed by the Commission against Torture—GONGOs were sent by
government. During the NGO briefings with experts there was a man from an ‘NGO’
called something like the ‘No Torture Network’. He said during the briefing that there
was ‘no torture in Mauritania’.49
384
A critical INGO respondent mentions increased competition with
GONGOs for speaking time and even being:
aaed by a GONGO. We had [lined up] since 7:30[am] to get on the speakers’ list.
When the gate opened we were … running to the U.N. building … like we were in a
race. An Iranian GONGO woman … was running—I was jostling for position with [her]
and … g[o]t in front of her on the escalators. A … GONGO man grabbed me by the arm
to pull me aside. [Critical NGOs activists] moved to my defense.50
HRC/UPR side events are also a place where NGOs can present
information to state officials and other NGOs, but can be especially
dangerous to critical domestic NGOs. One respondent recounted that
at critical NGO side events:
You see more permanent mission [state] representatives [who are] not happy. e
permanent missions … [take] photos of everyone in the room. Not just panelists but the
public. is is worrying for people going ba to the Arab world … e U.N. doesn’t do
anything. You can’t call security and say ‘No photos!’ States … always try to push the
other way.51
Authoritarian MENA states and associated GSNGOs are also known
for approaing and threatening critical NGOs in the HRC itself.52
One respondent noted that there were:
Several cases of NGO activists approaed in the Human Rights Council by hostile
states. Incredible! Who would believe that a state could threaten an NGO on the floor of
the U.N.? But it happens … the room can [also] be filled with GONGOs to intimidate
NGOs … with the possibility of reprisals.53
e Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful
assembly and of association has documented reprisals against critical
domestic NGOs working at the HRC su as “threats from State
officials for delivering statements at the Council (e.g. Bahrain, … and
Yemen); acts of torture and ill-treatment (e.g. Israel and United Arab
Emirates); … acts of surveillance (e.g. … United Arab Emirates); and
confiscation of passport/travel bans (e.g. … Israel, Saudi Arabia,
[and] United Arab Emirates).”54 Bahraini activists “have had their
names and pictures taken by State representatives and reproduced in
385
local newspapers and social media, and been accused of tarnishing
the image of their respective countries.”55 Finally, Saudi activists who
reported “human rights violations [to the U.N.] have been labelled as
‘terrorists’ or acting against Islam.”56
386
From reformism to government sympathy
Aention to conflict within TANs, NGOs and even individual
activists highlights the relative fluidity and contingency of TAN
membership, particularly among reformists. At Egypt’s 2014 UPR,
domestic political polarization and aversion to the Muslim
Brotherhood (MB) encouraged some reformists to sympathize with
the Sisi government. is position is most poignantly illustrated by
Hafez Abu Seada, Chairman of the Egyptian Organization for
Human Rights (EOHR), one of the oldest Egyptian human rights
NGOs. Now calling the EOHR a ‘GONGO’, some NGO respondents
question its membership in the critical network. According to one
respondent:
e EOHR was a leading organization in Egypt. ey [now] come to the Council—not
complaining about—but the reverse—defending government! … EOHR … say[s]: ‘What
INGOs and the media are saying [about the Sisi government’s human rights abuses
aer Morsi’s overthrow] is fabricated.’ is problem is most worrying—[because under
the current cradown in Egypt] the number of independent NGOs is shrinking—their
financial resources are shrinking … But the regime is always legitimating the process
with some NGOs … [it] finds some members of the human rights movement [to use] as
tools.57
By contrast, a number of critical Egyptian NGOs argued that the
deadline issued by the Sisi regime for NGO registration under
repressive Law 84/2002, five days aer Egypt’s 2014 UPR, signaled
that critical NGOs would suffer “reprisal or possible persecution” if
they aended the review.58 As a result, these critical NGOs
announced that they would not aend.
At an EOHR-organized side event aended by the author, Abu
Seada appeared on a panel that included an NGO representing
Egyptian police. While a person photographed audience members
(some of whom also photographed the photographer), the panel
387
detailed MB violence. Its primary talking point was an impassioned
plea to ‘go easy’ on judging the Sisi government’s human rights
practices because Egypt’s very existence required a violent response
to MB ‘terrorists’, and that Egypt was undertaking this task on
behalf of the world.
Abu Seada appeared vaguely uncomfortable or impatient with
more extreme GSNGO appeals. Meanwhile, panelist Mona Zulficar,
Egyptian feminist lawyer and human rights activist, former Vice
Chair of the HRC’s Advisory Commiee and current National
Council for Human Rights (NCHR)59 Board member (along with
Abu Seada), insisted that Egypt’s Minister of Social Solidarity
(MoSS) had assured her that the impending deadline for NGO
registration represented “no threat against NGOs.”
e next day I met with Abu Seada60 at a U.N. cafeteria. During
our conversation Zulficar and representatives of at least one other
reformist NGO and at least one government official stopped by or sat
at our table. Because of Egypt’s post-Morsi political polarization,
Abu Seada’s past bridging practice, as reformist ‘insider’ working
with both a repressive regime and critical NGO ‘outsiders’, has now
streted to the limit. Indeed, Abu Seada is positioned precisely
where NGOs diverge on the human rights/security dimension, while
liberal and authoritarian states oen converge. Liberal states,
particularly the U.S., are as unwilling as Abu Seada and other
secular reformist NGO activists to prioritize human rights over
regime security if the alternative is an MB (rather than secular)
dictatorship.
Domestic polarization has opened a yawning gap between
reformist and critical human rights NGOs, and at Egypt’s 2014 UPR
Abu Seada collaborated with GSNGOs. Abu Seada’s words
encapsulate this political position. Referring to the critical NGOs
who did not aend Egypt’s UPR for fear of government reprisals,
Abu Seada noted that there:
388
… is a allenge now facing NGOs in Egypt … I understand their fear. If they came [to
the UPR], they could face a critical situation in Egypt. ey have the right to feel this
fear [because of the deadline to register by] 10 November … Mona and me [sic] and
other NCHR groups are working hard on that issue and talked with the MoSS … to stop
proceedings against NGOs until the new law is passed … Government does not agree
with us and has its own … strategy to deal with NGOs … [is] means that all
organizations must register under Law 84 …, but I don’t know if [government] will …
[make] arrests or only pressure NGOs to register.61
During our conversation he emphasized, as do all GSNGOs, that
critical NGO language is “too harsh … I’m not willing to adopt the
spee of an opposition group … In my view NGOs … have to
pressure the government to ange, not use … revolutionary
language. We’re reformist, not revolutionary … government has to
fight against terrorism, and we have to fight for human rights.”62 I
replied,
is is the language used by the Egyptian government since the 1980s—that it can’t
conform to human rights standards because of its fight against terrorism. When you use
this language, you don’t leave yourself mu space for maneuver as a human rights
activist, do you?
Abu Seada responded:
We didn’t believe there was a terrorist war [under Mubarak], but now we believe there
is a terrorism [sic] war … I don’t agree with the government … using [the] discourse of
war to lose our freedom or … our rights … I have to work hard to ange … government
[policies]. I have no hope. Wait, I don’t mean I have no hope, but I don’t expect
government to agree. I’m optimistic. ere are voices inside government against NGOs,
opposition parties—[who] see journalists as enemies of the state … Every day the
government aas me and human rights groups … I want to construct a strategy that
isn’t a zero [sum] game.63
When I asked Abu Seada about accusations that the EOHR was now
a GONGO, he responded:
[T]he situation in Egypt is totally different aer 3 June [Morsi’s overthrow] … we have
a big clash about what happened … e [Sisi] government … commied to follow
international recommendations. At the same time I have a very strong position against
the [MB] and all extremists—they are more dangerous than even the Mubarak regime—
389
and I say this aer I was in prison for six months [under Mubarak] and was kied out
of the country for one year.64
Minutes aer Egypt’s UPR Working Group session, Sisi’s
government signaled its position on future autonomy for domestic
NGOs by appointing Fayza Abul Naga as national security advisor.
Abul Naga gained notoriety for opposition to external funding for
critical and reformist NGOs as Minister of International Cooperation
under Mubarak and the SCAF. Her 2012 prosecution of U.S.
democracy-promotion and human rights GSNGO65 personnel—both
U.S. and Egyptian, shoed the international diplomatic community
and precipitated a crisis in Egypt-U.S. relations.66 It also augured
poorly for critical Egyptian NGOs, who cannot hope to employ U.S.
pressure (or that of any other state) on Egypt to li domestic NGO
repression, if the U.S. cannot even dissuade Egypt from aaing
U.S. GSNGOs.
390
Notable internal TAN dynamics
Aention to conflict within rival TANs illuminates the fact that
network partners may work together opportunistically—sometimes
prioritizing values differently depending on time, context and issue
area. For example, liberal states’ participation in the critical TAN
does not mean that they are free of human rights abuses or
consistent in their loyalty to the network. When liberal states are not
threatened by highlighting the human rights abuses of a particular
state, they are energetic members of the critical TAN.67 As
mentioned above, liberal states allied with critical human rights
NGOs to expand NGO participation in the CHR and HRC. When
liberal states are critically examined by NGOs or U.N. human rights
bodies, however, they protect themselves. One respondent observed
that the “most ‘democratic’ governments aren’t always enamored of
what NGOs do. Sometimes those [states] are screaming the loudest
[against NGO information critical of themselves] … When it comes
to [domestic] policy, they’re not perfect.”68
Liberal state action on human rights abuses in allied MENA states
also has clear limits. According to one INGO respondent, the:
UPR’s main purpose is to make blatant abuses visible … [T]his led to an increase in risks
for NGOs from reporting countries—reprisals—and to the point where governments are
not afraid to be seen as indulging in reprisals against NGOs … Bahrain is engaged in
really cruel reprisals against the Shi`ite majority. e royal family is Sunni. It’s related
to Saudi Arabia—and we have information, file reports, go to the U.N., lobby
governments. [A f]ew countries … don’t say anything [in response to our efforts to get
them to address reprisals]. e U.S., UK are bad about this because of oil. [Because]
Saudi Arabia … [has] assets that no one wants to talk about.69
Similarly, critical activists were dismayed by the U.S. and EU refusal
to:
391
confront Egypt concerning [human rights] violations [during Egypt’s transition] within
any U.N. rights meanisms … As a result of this la of political will, large scale rights
violations against protestors and the pro-democracy movement in Egypt has not been
dealt with by any U.N. political body, including the HRC.70
It is thus not surprising that Sisi and other regional dictators have
been emboldened.
Liberal states may cooperate with authoritarian states not just
because of geostrategic considerations, but because of their own
domestic political conflicts. For example, one respondent addressed
Algeria’s strenuous efforts to silence AlKarama (discussed above),
arguing that the U.S. was complicit in Algeria’s actions because it
placed the name of AlKarama’s president on the U.S. Treasury list of
terrorists in response to encouragement by “Arab states close to the
U.S. government.”71 According to this respondent, the U.S. was
motivated by displeasure at AlKarama’s work with (critical domestic
NGO) CODEPINK on publicizing information about U.S. drone
strikes in Yemen.
On the issue of external pressure on states for human rights
compliance, authoritarian states may potentially be more cohesive in
their resistance than liberal ones are in its application. A 2004
study72 of the CHR concluded that “non-democratic regimes voted
as a unified bloc against most resolutions critical of human rights
violations,” while democracies were mu less unified in voting for
su resolutions. If critical TAN influence on authoritarian MENA
states is weakened by liberal states’ unwillingness to apply pressure
for human rights compliance, however, the government-sympathetic
TAN is also weakened by conflicts between MENA states and
GSNGOs’ la of legitimacy.
One respondent notes that “there are conflicts in the region. Some
countries don’t dare [directly initiate] conflict with a neighbor—it’s
like a Cold War—they bring the conflict outside [to the international
level].”73 For example, Qatar and the UAE created GSNGOs to divert
aention from their own domestic human rights abuses and to
392
highlight those of the other state. is respondent says that “both are
based in Geneva … Everyone knows [that they are GONGOs],
including the U.N. system … Because they’re not credible
organizations.”74
Recognizing their la of credibility, and the relative power of
critical NGOs, GSNGOs and MENA authoritarian states oen seek
legitimacy through public association with critical NGOs. One
respondent mentions planning a 2014 HRC side event on Palestine,
whi GSNGOs sought to join and authoritarian states sought to
sponsor, because Palestinian rights “is a noble cause—it’s a way to
tou more of the public, [a way to] clean [themselves], so that they
can clean the image of their organizations.”75 By contrast critical
NGOs, whose continued existence depends on protecting and
maintaining organizational and network legitimacy, assiduously
avoid public association with GSNGOs.
393
Conclusion
Investigating conflict within and between rival TANs can offer
valuable insights into human rights politics at the HRC/UPR. In the
MENA and beyond, human rights norms are not diffusing to
authoritarian states because officials are becoming ‘socialized’ into,
and ‘learn’, these norms—as optimistically predicted by early
constructivists. One means by whi authoritarian states thwart
internal and external pressure for human rights compliance is by
strengthening and expanding a nascent government-sympathetic
TAN. is apter identifies that government-sympathetic TAN, and
explores some of the ways in whi authoritarian MENA states,
GSNGOs, some U.N. officials and other members of that network
actively resist human rights protections and advance an alternative
set of ideas emphasizing state security and sovereignty at the HRC.
Political struggle within and between critical and government-
sympathetic TANs should figure prominently in explanations of
HRC/UPR (in)action on human rights abuses in the MENA and the
durability of authoritarian regimes in the region. Government-
sympathetic TAN efforts, combined with liberal state inconstancy,
threaten past advances in human rights protections aieved and
long protected by the critical TAN. Solars and activists should
aend carefully to the unfolding conflict between rival TANs at the
HRC because of its direct impact on human rights in the MENA.
394
Notes
1 is resear draws from Fall 2014 open-ended exploratory interviews with 30 NGO and
state representatives in Geneva, and information gathered at side events and Working
Group sessions related to the UPRs of Egypt and Iraq. e open-ended interview
questions were: Can you think ‘out loud’ about NGO space and/or GONGOs at the
HRC/UPR? e author interviewed one or more representatives of: the African
Assembly for the Defenses of Human Rights (RADDHO); AlKarama; Amnesty
International; Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA);
BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights; Cairo Institute for
Human Rights Studies; CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation; Egyptian
Organization for Human Rights; Franciscans International; Friedri Ebert Stiung;
Frontline Defenders; Geneva for Human Rights; Geneva International Centre for Justice;
Human Rights Wat; International Commission of Jurists; International Federation for
Human Rights (FIDH); International Service for Human Rights; Permanent Missions of
the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland; Reporters without Borders; UPR Bran,
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights; UPR Info; and Women’s
International League for Peace and Freedom.
2 omas Risse and Kathryn Sikkink, “e Socialization of International Human Rights
Norms into Domestic Practices,” in The Power of Human Rights, eds, omas Risse,
Stephen C. Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999),
18.
3 Risse and Sikkink, “Socialization,” 21, 18.
4 Risse and Sikkink, “Socialization,” 20.
5 Constructivists are currently grappling with and addressing many of these
shortcomings. See omas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink, eds. The
Persistent Power of Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
6 Laura K. Landolt, “(Mis)constructing the ird World? Constructivist Analysis of Norm
Diffusion,” Third World Quarterly vol. 25, no. 3 (2004): 579–91; Laura K. Landolt,
395
“Supporting Dictatorship and Promoting Human Rights? U.N. Tenical Assistance to
Egypt,” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 6, no. 2 (2012): 145–66.
7 Landolt, “Supporting Dictatorship.”
8 Landolt, “(Mis)constructing?”; Laura K. Landolt, “Externalizing Human Rights: From
Commission to Council, the Universal Periodic Review and Egypt,” Human Rights
Review vol. 14, no. 2 (2013): 107–29.
9 Clifford Bob, The Global Right Wing and the Clash of World Politics (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2012), 20.
10 Aseem Prakash and Mary Kay Gugerty, eds, Advocacy Organizations and Collective
Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Emily B. Rodio and Hans Peter
Smitz, “Beyond Norms and Interests: Understanding the Evolution of Transnational
Human Rights Activism,” The International Journal of Human Rights vol. 14, no. 3
(2010): 442–59.
11 CIVICUS:World Alliance for Citizen Participation, State of Civil Society Report 2014,
accessed July 27, 2015, hp://tinyurl.com/ptany9w, 56.
12 William E. DeMars, NGOs and Transnational Networks (London: Pluto Press, 2005), 50.
13 William E. DeMars and Dennis Dijkzeul, eds, The NGO Challenge for International
Relations Theory (London: Routledge, 2015) 17, 5.
14 Although it is more accurate to describe ‘parts of governments’ rather than unitary
states as TAN partners, I simplify discussion by describing state partners as having
potentially divergent interests in different policy domains (DeMars 2005, 50).
15 Landolt, “Externalizing.”
16 Laura K. Landolt and Byungwon Woo, forthcoming; Landolt, “Externalizing.”
17 Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), Bastion of Impunity, Mirage of
Reform: Annual Report 2009 (Cairo: CIHRS, 2010), 28–9; CIHRS, Roots of Unrest:
Annual Report 2010 (Cairo: CIHRS, 2011), 266.
18 Landolt, “Externalizing.”
19 Interview with author, October 2014.
20 Interview with author, November 2014.
396
21 Landolt and Woo, forthcoming.
22 Interview with author, October 2014.
23 Bob, The Global Right Wing, 18.
24 DeMars, NGOs and Transnational Networks, 45.
25 Landolt, “Externalizing.”
26 DeMars, NGOs and Transnational Networks, 45–8.
27 Interview with author, November 2014.
28 Bob, The Global Right Wing, 18.
29 Bob, The Global Right Wing, 29.
30 Interview with author, November 2014.
31 DeMars, NGOs and Transnational Networks, 31.
32 Bob, The Global Right Wing, 24.
33 CIHRS, From Exporting Terrorism to Exporting Repression: Annual Report 2008 (Cairo:
CIHRS, 2009), 28.
34 Interview with author, October 2014.
35 CIVICUS, State of Civil Society Report 2014, 26, 42.
36 International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL), “Survey of Arab NGO Laws,” Global
Trends in NGO Law 1, no. 4, accessed July 21, 2015,
www.icnl.org/resear/trends/trends1-4.html.
37 CIHRS, Exporting Terrorism, 28.
38 CIHRS, Roots of Unrest, 262.
39 United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), “Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly
and of Association,” September 1, 2014, A/69/365.
40 CIHRS, Exporting Terrorism, 20.
41 CIHRS, Exporting Terrorism, 180–1; Landolt, “Externalizing.”
42 CIHRS, Bastion of Impunity, 265.
397
43 CIHRS, Bastion of Impunity, 215.
44 CIHRS, Bastion of Impunity, 221.
45 Bob, The Global Right Wing, 25.
46 CIHRS, Bastion of Impunity, 222.
47 AlKarama, “ematic Report on Multilateral Organisations and Freedom of Peaceful
Assembly and Association,” July 15, 2014, Photocopied.
48 UNGA, “Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly,” 20.
49 Interview with author, October 2014.
50 Interview with author, October 2014.
51 Interview with author, October 2014.
52 CIHRS, Roots of Unrest, 268.
53 Interview with author, October 2014.
54 UNGA, “Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly,” 16.
55 UNGA, “Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly,” 16.
56 UNGA, “Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly,” 16–17.
57 Interview with author, October 2014.
58 CIHRS, “Egyptian Human Rights Organizations Have Decided Not to Participate in
Egypt’s UPR before the UN,” November 5, 2014, accessed July 20, 2015, www.cihrs.org/?
p=9836&lang=en.
59 e NCHR links government and human rights NGOs and is modeled on OHCHR
recommendations. Critical Egyptian NGOs reject membership as potential cooptation,
while reformists join to foster influence. For Zulficar’s views on state-NGO
collaboration, see Landolt 2007.
60 I identify Abu Seada because he suggested that I do so, to convey his responses to
detractors and because, as he noted in our conversation, he regularly expresses these
views in the media.
61 Interview with author, November 2014.
398
62 Interview with author, November 2014.
63 Interview with author, November 2014.
64 Interview with author, November 2014.
65 e International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom
House.
66 Kirkpatri, David D., “Egypt Elevates an Official Hostile to U.S.,” New York Times,
November 5, 2014, accessed July 20, 2015, hp://tinyurl.com/ptcdqqu.
67 Landolt, “Externalizing.”
68 Interview with author, October 2014.
69 Interview with author, October 2014.
70 CIHRS, Fractured Walls … New Horizons: Annual Report 2011. (Cairo: CIHRS, 2012), 55.
71 Interview with author, October 2014.
72 Democracy Coalition Project, “Voting at UN Human Rights Body Shows Lile
Improvement,” 2004, accessed July 14, 2012,
www.democracycaucus.net/pdf/dcp_press_release_04.pdf.
73 Interview with author, October 2014.
74 Interview with author, October 2014.
75 Interview with author, October 2014.
399
Selected Bibliography
Bob, Clifford. The Global Right Wing and the Clash of World Politics.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS). From Exporting
Terrorism to Exporting Repression; Annual Report 2008. Cairo:
CIHRS, 2009.
Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS). Bastion of
Impunity, Mirage of Reform: Annual Report 2009. Cairo: CIHRS,
2010.
Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS). Roots of Unrest:
Annual Report 2010. Cairo: CIHRS, 2011.
Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS). Fractured Walls
… New Horizons: Annual Report 2011. Cairo: CIHRS, 2012.
CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation. State of Civil
Society Report 2014. Accessed July 27, 2015.
hp://tinyurl.com/ptany9w.
DeMars, William E. NGOs and Transnational Networks. London:
Pluto Press, 2005.
DeMars, William E. and Dennis Dijkzeul, eds. The NGO Challenge
for International Relations Theory. London: Routledge, 2015.
International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL). “Survey of Arab
NGO laws.” Global Trends in NGO Law vol. 1, no. 4. Accessed
July 21, 2015. www.icnl.org/resear/trends/trends1-4.html.
Landolt, Laura K. “(Mis)constructing the ird World? Constructivist
analysis of norm diffusion.” Third World Quarterly vol. 25, no. 3
(2004): 579–91.
Landolt, Laura K.. “USAID, population control, and NGO-led
democratization in Egypt: e fate of the ICPD Programme of
Action.” Democratization vol. 14, no. 4 (2007): 706–22.
400
Landolt, Laura K.. “Supporting dictatorship and promoting human
rights? U.N. tenical assistance to Egypt.” Journal of
Intervention and Statebuilding vol. 6, no. 2 (2012): 145–66.
Landolt, Laura K.. “Externalizing human rights: from commission to
council, the universal periodic review and Egypt.” Human Rights
Review vol. 14, no. 2 (2013): 107–29.
Prakash, Aseem and Mary Kay Gugerty, eds. Advocacy
Organizations and Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010.
Rodio, Emily B. and Hans Peter Smitz. “Beyond norms and
interests: understanding the evolution of transnational human
rights activism.” The International Journal of Human Rights vol.
14, no. 3 (2010): 442–59.
Risse, omas and Kathryn Sikkink. “e socialization of
international human rights norms into domestic practices.” In
The Power of Human Rights, edited by omas Risse, Stephen C.
Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink, 1–38. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999.
Risse, omas, Stephen C. Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink, eds. The
Persistent Power of Human Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2013.
United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). “Rights to Freedom of
Peaceful Assembly and of Association.” September 1, 2014.
A/69/365.
401
12
Redefining Rights
Organization of Islamic Cooperation
aempts to reshape values in the U.N.
human rights system
Ann Mayer
402
Introduction
e Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), originally known as
the Organization of the Islamic Conference, has worked hard to
reshape aspects of international human rights law, as this review of
some of its stances on freedom of expression will illustrate. It is
striking that it has never managed to articulate one consistent vision,
sometimes conveying the impression that it means to endorse
secular values and at other times according obvious priority to
upholding Islamic law and related values. Following a brief
introductory overview of the OIC’s record, specific aspects of the
OIC’s stances will be considered whi together paint a picture of an
organization motivated more by inconsistent political impulses than
a commitment to either human rights or Islamic values.
Muslim states have both endorsed the U.N. system of human
rights and sporadically also pressed the idea of Islamic particularism,
contending that they are obligated to follow distinctive Islamic
cultural standards for human rights that clash with ones in the U.N.
system, whi they frequently dismiss as ‘Western.’ e OIC has
been similarly ambivalent. Despite having previously professed
support for the U.N. human rights system, the OIC made a public
commitment to upholding Islamic values at the expense of human
rights when it issued the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in
Islam in 1990. As of that point, the OIC aligned itself with non-
Muslim countries like China that claimed to find international
human rights law culturally objectionable and called for respect for
‘Asian values.’
Far from expressing pure, undiluted Islamic doctrine, the Cairo
Declaration was actually a legal hybrid—a product of ambivalence.
Its provisions on civil and political rights borrowed heavily from
403
aspects of the UDHR but it curtailed the menu of rights and
employed vague, overriding Islamic criteria that effectively
eviscerated the rest. us, for example, expression offensive to Islam
was prohibited. OIC members, many of whose constitutions had
strikingly dissimilar human rights provisions, did not revise their
laws in consequence. is disparity showed that, although both the
OIC and many of its members were disposed to claim that Islam
determined their stances on human rights, they were not in fact
guided by any firm consensus on Islamic doctrine in this area.
Having produced the Cairo Declaration, the OIC did not sti by
the position that Islam clashed with human rights, oen claiming to
support international law. At times it tried to persuade the U.N. that
incorporating Islamic values would serve the cause of human rights.
us, among other things, the OIC called for international law to
adopt a rule prohibiting expression that would be insulting to Islam
or its Prophet. In 1999 the OIC began aggressively promoting the
idea that provisions banning ‘defamation of Islam’ belonged as part
of the U.N. human rights system, meaning that international law
would have to criminalize religious offenses su as blasphemy or
sacrilege. It regularly put forward resolutions in the U.N. in aempts
to aieve this, winning considerable baing but not ultimately
succeeding in rewriting international law to incorporate a ban on
defamation of Islam.
In 2011 in the U.N. the OIC anged ta. With its sponsorship of
U.N. Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18, it began endorsing
U.N. resolutions that called for “combating intolerance, negative
stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to
violence and violence against, persons based on religion or belief.”1
Taken at face value, these resolutions seemed to promote the secular
values of the U.N. human rights system, and they aracted
substantial support from non-Muslim states. Faced with skepticism,
OIC officials expressly denied that these resolutions were merely
substitutes for its earlier resolutions on banning defamation of
404
Islam.2 Upon scrutinizing OIC statements, however, one found
indications that the resolutions implicitly had the same aim as the
previous banning of ‘defamation of Islam’ campaign. In the area of
freedom of expression the OIC read these resolutions as laying the
groundwork for an international ban on blasphemous or sacrilegious
expression—that is, expression that offended religious values as
opposed to violating human rights. To justify its stance, the OIC
claimed that it was not Islam per se that it was trying to defend but
the human rights of Islam’s adherents, whi, it maintained, were
being adversely affected by insults to their religion. at is, it argued
that it was reasonable to read Res. 16/18 and its progeny as
comprising a ban on defamation of Islam even though no su
wording was in the resolutions.
e way that the OIC mixes religious and secular categories
invites criticism. One would expect an organization like the OIC that
courts the international spotlight as it promotes its views on human
rights to follow one clear philosophy. Instead, it has accumulated a
record of muddled and incoherent positions. One deduces that the
OIC’s stances have likely been adopted and refashioned in an ad hoc
manner to serve various political ends without mu aention being
paid to whether they are logically consistent.
405
estions regarding the OIC’s assumption of
Islamic authority
e adjective “Islamic” in the OIC’s name could mislead observers
into thinking that the organization claims to have a religious
aracter, as could the fact the OIC frequently presumes to possess
an authority to declare Islamic doctrine. Looking at the OIC’s
original 1974 arter and its significantly revised and updated 2008
arter, the reader finds nothing that could account for this
presumption. Instead, the OIC is conceived of as a conventional
inter-governmental organization that fits in the U.N. system, whi
would place it on a par with other secular entities like the
Organization of American States or the European Union, whi
could not plausibly claim to possess religious authority. e original
1974 arter asserted in its preamble that the OIC was commied to
“the U.N. Charter and fundamental Human Rights, the purposes and
principles of whi provide the basis for fruitful co-operation
amongst all people.” OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu,
who headed the organization 2005–2013 and who took a particular
interest in promoting the OIC’s positions on Islam and human rights,
expressly affirmed in a 2013 interview that OIC was not a religious
institution.3 His successor made a similar affirmation.4 Showing
disregard for its la of qualifications for doing so, the OIC
nonetheless oen speaks as if it were the official custodian of Islamic
orthodoxy.
e OIC’s belief that it could pronounce on religious maers was
demonstrated when it effectively approved Ayatollah Khomeini’s
1989 death edict calling for killing Salman Rushdie to punish him for
his novel The Satanic Verses, whi Khomeini claimed was ‘against
Islam.’ e question as to whether a British citizen of Muslim
406
ancestry in writing a particular work of fiction had blasphemed or
repudiated Islam could only be resolved within the confines of
Islamic jurisprudence. is fact did not deter the OIC from impliedly
endorsing Khomeini’s death edict and speaking as if Islamic criminal
law—not international human rights law—governed expression in
Britain. e OIC proclaimed that Rushdie had commied blasphemy
and that he was classed as an apostate.
In the same vein, aer intervening in the Rushdie case, when the
OIC foreign ministers shortly thereaer issued the 1990 Cairo
Declaration, they effectively assumed that they were entitled to
proclaim that Islamic criteria governed the right to freedom of
expression. e OIC’s endorsement of Islamic censorship, involving
the assumption that expression offensive to Islam should be
prohibited, can be seen in Art. 22 of the Cairo Declaration:
Article 22:
(a) Everyone shall have the right to express his opinion freely in su manner as would
not be contrary to the principles of the Shari`ah …
(c) Information is a vital necessity to society. It may not be exploited or misused in su
a way as may violate sanctities and the dignity of Prophets, undermine moral and
ethical values or disintegrate, corrupt or harm society or weaken its faith.
ese broad religious restrictions on freedom of expression clash
sharply with their secular counterparts in the ICCPR, where Article
19 stipulates only a few secular grounds for restricting freedom of
expression su as ones necessary “for respect of the rights or
reputations of others” or “for the protection of national security or of
public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals.” In
addition, Article 20 provides in subsection 2: “Any advocacy of
national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to
discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.” In a
peculiar development, starting in 2011, the OIC would subsequently
speak as if it had moved away from calling for Islamic censorship
407
and strain to convince the U.N. that its views on freedom of
expression coincided with ICCPR principles.
e Cairo Declaration was submied to the U.N., whi should
have condemned and rejected it for curtailing and enfeebling human
rights. Under pressure from the large voting bloc that the OIC could
muster, the U.N. agreed to treat the Cairo Declaration as a legitimate
human rights document, and it was included in the U.N. documents
issuing from the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna
that were published by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for
Human Rights.5 If one takes this as a sign that the U.N. recognizes
the validity of the Cairo Declaration, one could say that the OIC did
manage to get the U.N. to anowledge its prerogative to reshape
human rights to fit Islamic values. ere is, however, lile indication
that within U.N. corridors the Cairo Declaration in practice enjoys
any real authority.
408
e OIC’s attempts to insert its Islamic
censorship criteria into international law
e Islamic censorship criteria in the Cairo Declaration initially
seemed only to apply to expression in Muslim states. is anged,
however, with the growth of the OIC’s ambitions to insert Islamic
limits on freedom of expression into international law. is effort
correlated with a line in the revised OIC 2008 arter, whi calls on
the OIC “to protect and defend the true image of Islam, to combat
defamation of Islam … ” e OIC sought to make international law
into a vehicle for the extraterritorial extension of Islamic censorship,
envisaging an outcome where the duty to combat defamation of
Islam would become part of international law. If the OIC succeeded,
it would mean that the same expression that would be criminalized
as blasphemous in a country like Iran would likewise be criminalized
in a country like Britain. In consequence, the OIC could claim that
Britain was violating international law if it resisted punishing future
Salman Rushdies.
What was the motivation behind this? Obviously, the OIC shared
its members’ belief in tough censorship, but there was also another
reason. An organization like the OIC whose members were routinely
pilloried by Western governments and by NGOs based in the West
for their egregious human rights violations had reason to want to
retaliate by finding ways to portray Western democracies as being
remiss in their human rights obligations. A review of the OIC’s
behavior substantiates the conclusion that the OIC was looking for a
way to put Western democracies on the defensive. Under the OIC’s
plan, once international law incorporated rules of Islamic censorship,
with whi Western democracies would predictably fail to comply,
they could be aaed for violating international human rights law.
409
In 1999 the OIC began pressuring the U.N. to incorporate into
international human rights law the duty to criminalize what it called
defamation of Islam, proposing many resolutions to this effect but
neglecting to clarify the scope of the crucial term ‘defamation.’
Reviewing the OIC’s actual usage of the term, one gets the
impression that for the most part it corresponds to religiously-based
concepts like blasphemy or sacrilege. It can, however, have a broader
rea.
On its face, this English legal term seems inapposite, because in
common law defamation claims can be brought by natural persons,
not juristic persons. Moreover, claims and cannot be brought on
behalf of dead persons, su as a long deceased prophet. at
defamation was osen could be explained by the fact that the OIC
worried about employing terms like blasphemy or sacrilege that
were too obviously linked to specific religious categories. e OIC
was hoping in this period to win U.N. approval for its aempt to
insert Islamic censorship criteria into international law, whi made
it prefer a term that was not directly tied to religion. e term
defamation already figured in some secular international human
rights instruments, as in concepts like group defamation and
defamation as a violation of the human right to reputation. us, by
using defamation rather than blasphemy, the OIC could maintain a
pretense of staying within the confines of secular international law.
Because the OIC sought to portray itself as operating within the
confines of international human rights law at the same time that it
was ampioning Islamic censorship, the various resolutions on
combating defamation of Islam are studded with references to
human rights principles. e 2007 Human Rights Council Resolution
4/9 Combating defamation of religions could be offered as an
example.6 Far from highlighting its aims to impose Islamic
censorship, the resolution repeatedly seeks to portray its goal as
upholding human rights and prohibiting defamation of all religions,
portraying this as a problem that is causing human rights violations
410
and as “an aggravating factor that contributes to the denial of
fundamental rights and freedoms of target groups, as well as their
economic and social exclusion.”(Art. 4).
e resolution seeks to portray the call for punishing defamation
of Islam as being compatible with ICCPR provisions on freedom of
expression. To do this Art. 7 of the resolution cites ICCPR Article
20/2—but only with a major modification to the original, whi
provides: “Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that
constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall
be prohibited by law.” Significantly, the resolution adds new wording
that calls for prohibiting “material aimed at any religion or its
followers.” is added phrase widens the grounds for censorship far
beyond the limits originally contemplated, showing how the OIC
seeks to reshape human rights law by adding principles prioritizing
Islamic concerns. e resolution in Art.10 also adds wording
permiing curbs on freedom of expression necessary for “respect for
religions and beliefs” and expands the potential grounds for
censorship by banning expression “aimed at any religion,” a principle
that is so vague that it would allow far reaing censorship. As
critics have noted, the U.N. human rights system aims to protect
human beings, not institutions like religion, so this proposed
alteration is of great magnitude. e range of spee that might be
classed as not showing respect for religions is potentially expandable
to the point where freedom of expression could be nullified—a result
that many OIC member states, whi are wedded to draconian
censorship policies, would be disposed to welcome.
e OIC resolutions were vigorously denounced by NGOs
commied to upholding international human rights law as well as
by states that take human rights law seriously.7 A central objection
was that demands to curb the right to freedom of expression by
imposing religious censorship embody a philosophy directly at odds
with the ICCPR, whi, as noted, specifies only a few secular
conditions that may be invoked to restrict freedom of expression.
411
e OIC response to the Danish cartoons
e Danish Cartoons case aptly illustrates how the OIC seeks to
portray Western democracies as being seriously deficient in their
human rights performance and also how it confuses purely religious
offenses like insults to Islam with secular offenses like hate spee
that are classed as human rights violations under international law.
Cartoon depictions of the Prophet Muhammad were published in
September 2005 in Jyllands-Posten, a Danish-language newspaper
with a small circulation. e cartoon that was later singled out as
most offensive was a drawing by Kurt Westergaard of the head of
the Prophet with a bomb poking out of his bla turban. e
announced objective of the newspaper in publishing the cartoons
was to assert the principle of freedom of expression in the face of
mounting pressures for the self-censorship that some were arguing
was needed to avoid offending Muslims. e paper indicated that it
wanted to break with the political correctness that did not allow
treating Muslims like any other religious group.8 Of course, because
there were right wing political movements in Europe that pandered
to growing anti-immigrant sentiment, many viewed the cartoons as
being connected to xenophobia and, more specifically, to
Islamophobic trends.
Professing outrage, the OIC undertook to mobilize worldwide
Muslim opinion against the cartoons.9 When its demands for
censorship and punishing the cartoonists were rejected by the
Danish government, OIC Secretary General Ihsanoglu protested,
revealing the kind of harsh censorship regime that he wanted Europe
to implement. He complained of European baing for Denmark’s
failure to prosecute Jyllands-Posten, condemning the decision by
Danish courts to dismiss a defamation lawsuit brought by Muslims
412
who tried to sue Jyllands-Posten and scoffing at the Danish
government’s explanation that Danish laws guarantee the freedom
of the press.10
Significantly, the OIC asserted that the Danish government was
violating international human rights law when it failed to censor the
cartoons and to punish those involved in their publication. at is,
even though its campaign to have international law formally adopt a
principle criminalizing defamation of Islam had not succeeded, the
OIC spoke as though the past support of many states for its U.N.
resolutions had signaled an international endorsement of bans on
insulting Islam and the Prophet. In January 2006, the OIC espoused
the cause of the Muslims condemning the Danish cartoons at the
U.N. and asked the U.N. for a binding resolution “banning contempt
for religious beliefs and providing for sanctions to be imposed on
contravening countries or institutions.”11 Again one had a clear
indication of how dramatically the OIC’s preoccupation with
sacrilege reflected values that differed from those in international
law, a secular law that does not ban people from expressing
contempt for religious beliefs or require states to impose criminal
penalties on people who express su aitudes.
e OIC’s criticisms of Denmark demonstrated its inability to use
defamation of religion consistently; not for the first nor for the last
time, it used the term as if it covered both religious offenses and
human rights violations—and as if the two were interangeable. e
OIC’s merger of religious and secular offenses was exemplified in
how Ihsanoglu spoke in a June 2013 interview with al Jazeera, where
he complained about the cartoons on the grounds that they insulted
a prophet who was venerated by Muslims.12 Of course, this would
mean that the cartoonists’ offense was like blasphemy or sacrilege,
the parameters of whi can only be determined within a given
religious tradition. In saying this, Ihsanoglu seemed to have lost
tra of the fact that the OIC’s position was that the duty to ban
defamation of Islam should be accepted as a secular human rights
413
principle. In the same interview, Ihsanoglu also spoke as if his
objections to allowing the cartoons to be published were grounded
in international human rights law—whi suggested that he believed
that international law embraced the principle set forth Cairo
Declaration in Article 22/c, whi bars expression that “may violate
sanctities and the dignity of Prophets.”13
Showing how amorphous his concept of defamation of Islam was,
in an interview with Jyllands-Posten in October 2008 he had
previously spoken as if his objections to the cartoons were not at all
religiously based but concerned instead a violation of the ICCPR ban
on hate spee. In this 2008 interview, he lectured Denmark, a
country with a particularly fine human rights record, about its
supposed human rights deficiencies and positioned the OIC as the
defender of human rights. Ihsanoglu struggled to associate insults to
Islam and blasphemy with secular hate spee, insisting on a causal
link between hate spee, by whi he meant the cartoonists’
offensive depiction of the Prophet, and aas on Muslims and
discriminatory treatment that Muslims suffered in the West.
Heedless of the sharp self-contradictions that this entailed, Ihsanoglu
disingenuously protested that curbing freedom of expression or
criticisms of religions was not at all the OIC’s objective. Instead, he
maintained that its concern was deterring spee that was
intentionally sowing hatred against a group of people and causing
harm to them:
I am quite surprised to see in the Danish press insinuations that I or the OIC are
opponents of freedom of expression who are endeavoring to stifle this freedom by
calling for banning of criticism of religions. Everybody is entitled to criticize anybody
or anything … We have no problem whatsoever with this. However, when freedom of
expression is abused to ridicule and demonize with the intention to sow seeds of hatred
against a group of peoples or citizens, then problems start because the rights of the
victims of this incitement comes to the fore.14
As a critical observer would note, if the OIC’s concern were actually
preventing the harms that hate spee caused to targeted groups, the
414
OIC’s repeated efforts to win U.N. support for its resolutions on the
duty to combat defamation of Islam would not have made any sense.
e resolutions would have been totally superfluous, because hate
spee had already been prohibited under ICCPR Art. 20/2 since
1966. It therefore strained credulity to have the OIC protesting that it
was not seeking to impose religious censorship but was merely
aiming to aieve the same objectives as those already served by the
secular principles set forth in ICCPR Art. 20/2, whi had been in
force for decades.
How in OIC parlance the crucial distinctions between religious
and secular categories were collapsed was also shown in Ihsanoglu’s
2006 lecture in Moscow.15 According to the transcript of the lecture,
he complained that the Danish Cartoons were “blasphemous
cartoons whi offended the image of the Prophet of Islam.” at is,
under Islamic law they constituted criminal acts, a conclusion that
could only be reaed by reference to Islamic doctrine. But he also
tried to squeeze them into the category of ICCPR Art. 20/2 hate
spee, claiming that they “depicted him in a way to arouse hatred
to Islam and Muslims,” claiming without any evidence that the
cartoonists’ intended objective was “inciting hatred against Muslim
population in Denmark and elsewhere and exposing them to
prejudice and threats.” at is, aer employing a religious category,
“blasphemy,” to indicate why the cartoonists’ drawings were
objectionable, he offered the unsupported conclusion that in drawing
the Prophet the cartoonists were intentionally engaged in expressing
“advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred” that would be
prohibited under the secular rules of the ICCPR. e goal was
obviously to persuade the audience that insults to Islam should be
equated with hate spee with the corollary that Islamic censorship
should be imposed in the interests of protecting human rights.
Contributing to the confusion about what it thinks are grounds for
censorship, the OIC oen swites terms, using defamation of Islam
and Islamophobia interangeably. Like ‘defamation,’ in the OIC’s
415
parlance ‘Islamophobia’ is an offense that the OIC uses in more than
one sense. e incoherence that aracterizes the OIC’s discussions
of human rights was embodied in Ihsanoglu’s stumbling aempt to
define Islamophobia when asked about it in 2013 by an interviewer
in an al-Jazeera program. His muddled comments proved that, even
though he had regularly denounced Islamophobia, he had no secure
grasp of its definitional parameters. Ihsanoglu initially seemed at sea
when the interviewer asked him what Islamophobia consisted of,
flailing about for a bit before tossing out various ideas about what it
would cover. Some were purely offenses against religion like
desecrating tombstones, defaming religion, and writing a book
insulting the Prophet. is last was most likely a reference to
Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, whi the OIC had once condemned
as constituting blasphemy, that is, on religious grounds.
Significantly, as of 2013 it seemed that the OIC preferred to reclassify
Rushdie’s offence as being Islamophobia, a term that it had not
originally used. Because by 2013 the OIC was making efforts to
prove that its concerns fit in mainstream secular categories, it had
every reason to present its objections to Rushdie’s novel as being
based on its abhorrence of Islamophobia, a rubric that, as applied to
Rushdie, involved gross distortions. Rushdie’s autobiography shows
his long engagement with Islamic history, dating ba to his studies
at Cambridge, as well as his affinity for Islamic culture and its
distinguished thinkers like the rationalist philosopher Ibn Rushd,
from whom his father took the family name.16 It also describes his
bafflement and horror at being suddenly demonized as an enemy of
Islam based on egregious misrepresentations of the story actually
told in his novel.
In aempts to nail down the concept of Islamophobia in the same
interview, Ihsanoglu mentioned other secular offenses like politicians
using xenophobic rhetoric (presumably directed at Muslims) and
discrimination against immigrants (presumably against Muslims) in
the name of social and economic concerns.17 at is, he continued to
416
mix up offenses like blasphemy or sacrilege and the secular offense
of hate spee that leads to bad treatment of immigrants. From his
confused perspective, both types of offenses could be classed as
Islamophobia, whi again revealed a disinclination to recognize the
significant differences separating religious crimes from secular
human rights violations.
417
e OIC’s preoccupation with insults to
Islam in the West
Aer failing in its aempts in the U.N. to have defamation of Islam
formally prohibited under international law, the OIC decided to
ange tactics. As of 2011 the OIC elected to pose as being
supportive of the ICCPR, sponsoring the U.N. Human Rights Council
Resolution 16/18, the first of a series of resolutions baed by the
OIC on combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and
stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence and
violence against, persons based on religion or belief. e OIC’s
ange from advocating Islamic particularism to professing support
for the ICCPR was only superficial, however. Instead of actually
embracing secular human rights principles, the OIC continued to
show a determination to see the West condemned for failing to curb
defamation of Islam. In this connection, it sought to define the
principles in Res. 16/18 as endorsing the duty to combat defamation
of Islam, a problem that the OIC insisted was causing grievous
harms to Muslims in the West. In this connection the OIC made
many complaints about the West’s wrongful failure to clamp down
on Islamophobia, Islamophobia being so loosely defined that it
comprised blasphemy and sacrilege. e OIC acted as if purely
religious offenses should be seen as violating Res. 16/18—even
though the actual wording of the resolution gave no grounds for
doing so. Again, lurking behind the OIC’s ostensible move to
endorse secular principles was a continued commitment to imposing
Islamic censorship.
In this connection, the OIC faced a problem in dealing with real
world evidence, whi showed that its complaints about the harms
caused to Muslims by Islamophobia that was allegedly centered in
418
the West were grotesquely unbalanced. Muslims were suffering from
far more egregious human rights violations in the OIC’s allies China
and Russia, where expressions of Islamophobia were condoned and
where Muslims were harshly persecuted on religious grounds,
without provoking vigorous denunciations by the OIC. Moreover,
within OIC member states the kind of hate spee prohibited under
ICCPR Art. 20/2 and condemned by Res. 16/18 was commonplace.
Religious invective, oen abeed by governments, was exacerbating
sectarian antagonisms and socio-religious tensions to the point that
mu of the region from North Africa to Bangladesh was wraed
by religiously-based turmoil that regularly exploded into violent
aas and lethal conflicts. It was particularly telling that the OIC
did not make a commitment to denounce and combat the vitriolic
aas targeting Muslims launed by other Muslims that were
proliferating in Muslim countries—frequently with the acquiescence
if not with the approval of the local regimes. One has only to
consider the clashes and killings involving antagonistic Islamic sects
during bier sectarian conflicts on the territories of OIC members
su as Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya,
Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen to be reminded of
how extensive religiously-motivated violence has been inside the
OIC. Aer traing religious restrictions and religious hostilities
around the world since 2007, the Pew Resear Center reported in
2014 that the level of social hostilities involving religion was
increasing, with the Middle East and North Africa being the region
most afflicted by sectarian violence, showing the sharpest rise in
incidents in 2012. In contrast, su hostilities had not increased in
the Americas.18
Given its posturing as a supporter of the goals of Res. 16/18 in a
period when Muslims within OIC member states were being
subjected to vilification, discrimination, persecution, abductions,
murderous assaults, and terrorist bombings by other Muslims on the
basis of their religious affiliations and beliefs, the OIC should
419
logically have placed these acute problems in the spotlight. When
the OIC instead pretended that it was in Western democracies that
Muslims were suffering particularly badly from religious intolerance,
it sacrificed its credibility.
Having repeatedly made arguments in the U.N. to the effect that
defamation of Islam in the West harmed Muslims, the OIC had a
particular reason to try to divert aention away from the destructive
religious violence inside OIC countries where Islamic censorship is
rigid and where blasphemy and sacrilege are criminalized. is
reality undermines the causation theory that the OIC proposals at
the U.N. have relied on. According to this theory, imposing Islamic
censorship and criminalizing defamation of Islam are essential
prerequisites for protecting Muslims’ human rights. e OIC
apparently cannot find a way to reconcile this theory with the on the
ground reality that precisely the kinds of human rights violations
that Res. 16/18 condemns plague Muslims living in OIC countries
where any insults to Islam are severely punished with penalties that
may even include execution.
Ostensibly, the OIC’s aas on Western Islamophobia and related
evils like Western toleration of defamation of Islam are aimed at
protecting Islam and Muslims, but the real purpose, placing the West
on the defensive, and the OIC’s political biases were displayed in
remarks made by Ihsanoglu at a Geneva meeting on the
implementation of Res. 16/18 in June 2013. He asserted: “Combating
discrimination and intolerance forms a most daunting allenge of
our times. It constitutes a maer of vital concern at the OIC.”19 In
reality the OIC’s record suggested a preference to downplay that
“daunting allenge” in cases where discrimination and religious
intolerance harmed millions of people living in OIC member states—
or in states allied with the OIC like China and Russia. us,
Ihsanoglu continued to complain about relatively minor or
peripheral incidents in the West, including ones that he placed under
the label of Islamophobia but that were actually more redolent of
420
sacrilege. His blinkered perspective was mu in evidence in his
complaints about Islamophobia in the Geneva meeting, a meeting
that was supposed to focus on Res. 16/18:
e increasing trend of Islamophobia is indeed ominous in a globalized world. ere
has been an alarming increase in intolerance and discrimination against Muslims. It
must be appreciated that there is mounting public pressure on OIC Member States to
take concrete action. Alarming increase in Islamophobic incidents like the Utoya
massacre in Norway, the burning of ran by the Florida Pastor [meaning Terry Jones]
and release the reprehensible trailer [meaning Innocence of Muslims] on You tube
continue to hurt the religious sentiments of over 1.5 billion Muslims.[sic]20
It is noteworthy that when purporting to discuss the secular civil
and political rights central to Res.16/18, Ihsanoglu ignored the dire
conditions plaguing Muslims living in OIC member states in 2013.
Instead, he spoke as if the outstanding problems facing Muslims in
the area covered by Res. 16/18 lay in two U.S. incidents and a highly
unusual mass murder in Norway, whi did tie in with Islamophobic
trends in the West but the practical impact of whi on Muslims was
trivial in comparison to the contemporaneous sufferings of Muslims
afflicted by human rights violations in OIC member states. In the
U.S. cases Islam’s Scripture and Prophet had been insulted by the
acts of obscure, hate-fueled individuals, and in Norway Anders
Breivik, an isolated and deeply disturbed misfit who imagined that
he was a commander of the revived order of the Knights Templar,
had killed eight Norwegians by detonating a bomb in Oslo and then
had slaughtered seventy seven Norwegians on Utoya Island.
It was true that all three perpetrators had Islamophobic aitudes,
but singling out their acts for special condemnation made no sense
in this context, where logically the focus should have been on
problems of far greater magnitude that were having devastating
consequences for Muslims. Not only did the OIC grotesquely
exaggerate the significance of these incidents, but citing the Anders
Breivik case was particularly inapposite—unless the sole aim was to
find a pretext to aa Norway, a democracy with a stellar human
421
rights record. As in other cases where it reflexively aributed
Islamophobic motives to Westerners whom it singled out for
condemnation, in citing Breivik’s actions to illustrate the nefarious
impact of Islamophobia, the OIC failed to investigate the facts. e
West is beset by hardcore Islamophobes like Pamela Geller and Gert
Wilders, but they differ from deluded persons like Breivik. Breivik
had concocted an eccentric and tangled ideology. e dangerous
forces against whi he imagined himself leading an heroic crusade
included feminism, multiculturalism, and Marxism—with his fury at
feminists being particularly powerful. A detailed study of Breivik’s
life indicates that, having become embiered by his failures with
women, he imagined that feminism was emasculating Norwegian
men. He harbored fierce hatred for former Prime Minister Gro
Harlem Brundtland, an outspoken feminist. Inspired by videos of al-
Qaeda beheadings, he had intended to capture, humiliate, and
behead her when he went to Utoya.21 With his twisted mentality, he
was far from being a poster boy for Islamophobia, whi was only
one of the phobias beseing him.
No entity with any genuine concern for realizing the aims of Res.
16/18 and protecting Muslims’ human rights would have highlighted
these three cases as deserving aention at a time when millions of
Muslims were acutely suffering from the kinds of abuses that Res.
16/18 condemned. at the OIC, being determined to put Western
democracies on the wrong foot, ose to portray the United States
and Norway as standing out in terms of violating the principles in
Res. 16/18 was a sign of its distorted priorities and bias. Moreover,
singling out two U.S. incidents where sacrilege was the offense and
the precepts of Cairo Declaration Art. 22/c were violated
demonstrated the OIC’s ongoing preoccupation with insults to Islam.
In sum, the comments discredited the OIC’s claims to be commied
to the principles in Res. 16/18.
422
Conclusion
e OIC has tried repeatedly to insert rules into international human
rights law that will have the effect of superimposing Islamic values
on human rights principles. It has not, however, articulated
consistent positions on the relationship of Islamic law to
international human rights law. e OIC’s contradictory positions
are exemplified in its clinging to the 1990 Cairo Declaration on
Human Rights in Islam, whi inserts vague Islamic qualifications to
eviscerate civil and political rights, while proposing measures and
making many public statements that are designed to convey the
impression that it has moved beyond the declaration. Although some
may imagine that the Cairo Declaration is passe, the current
Secretary General Iyad Ameen Madani in 2014 endorsed it as “the
OIC’s most complete statement on human rights in Islam,”
complaining that “current international human rights laws are based
on Western values.”22
Despite clinging to the Cairo Declaration, where issues of freedom
of expression are concerned, the OIC wants the international
community to accept that, based on measures like its formal baing
for Res. 16/18 and pretenses of support for related ICCPR principles,
it has abandoned its campaign for Islamic censorship and is instead
pursuing the goal of protecting Muslims from harmful hate spee.
e record reveals, however, that, to the extent that the OIC
endorses the ICCPR, it is only because it reads Cairo Declaration
principles that restrict freedom of expression into that covenant,
where they patently do not fit.
As the foregoing discussion indicates, the OIC has shown a blithe
disregard for the gap separating religious offenses like insults to
Islamic sanctities and offenses that constitute violations of
423
international human rights law. Demonstrating palpable political
biases, the OIC has failed to articulate logical and plausible lines on
how Islamic values should figure in human rights or even to use its
own terminology in a consistent fashion. It has le a record that is
so confused that observers, if asked to pinpoint the OIC’s exact
position on human rights, would encounter great difficulty in doing
so. e OIC wants to make out a persuasive case that incorporating
Islamic values will enhance human rights, but the disarray in its
policies stands in the way.
424
Notes
1 Since 2011 numerous resolutions on this topic have been passed in the Human Rights
Council and the General Assembly. For the first in the series see Resolution adopted by
the Human Rights Council 16/18 Combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and
stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence and violence against,
persons based on religion or belief, accessed July 17, 2015,
www2.ohr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/16session/A.HRC.RES.16.18_en.pdf.
2 See “OIC commends resolution on religious discrimination,” Arab News, Mar 26, 2011,
accessed July 17, 2015, hp://arabnews.com/middleeast/article330915.ece
3 Al Jazeera, “Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu: Combating Islamophobia. e Secretary General of
the OIC discusses discrimination, freedom of expression and religious persecution in the
West,” Talk to Al Jazeera, June 1, 2013, accessed July 17, 2015, www.youtube.com/wat?
v=fv0DarFDgHY.
4 See Habib Shaikh, “OIC seeks rights debates based on Islamic values,” Arab News,
February 4, 2014, accessed July 17, 2015, hp://oiumanrights.wordpress.com/.
5 See Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Human Rights: A Compilation
of International Instruments: Volume II: Regional Instruments (Geneva: OHCHR, 1997),
475–476.
6 Human Rights Council. Resolution 4/9. Combating defamation of religions, Mar 27,
2007, accessed July 17, 2015, hp://ap.ohr.org/documents/E/HRC/resolutions/A-HRC-
RES-4-9.doc.
7 See e.g. e U.N. Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression et al,
“International Meanisms for Promoting Freedom of Expression. Joint Declaration on
Defamation of Religions, and Anti-Terrorism and Anti-Extremism Legislation,”
December 9, 2008, accessed July 17, 2015, www.osce.org/fom/35639?download=true
Article 19, “ARTICLE 19 and e Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS)
Joint Wrien Statement submied by ARTICLE 19, a non-governmental organisation
425
on the Roster, and the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), a non-
governmental organisation in special consultative status,” September 11, 2008, accessed
July 17, 2015, www.article19.org/pdfs/press/un-resolutions-on-combating-defamation-
of-religions.pdf, Women Living Under Muslim Laws, “Women Living Under Muslim
Laws Demands the U.N. Resolution on Combating Defamation of Religions be revoked,”
April 7, 2009, accessed July 17, 2015, www.cwgl.rutgers.edu/docman/cwgl-news/308-04-
07-09-wluml/file.
8 Jye Klausen, The Cartoons That Shook the World (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2009), 15.
9 See ibid, 39.
10 Organization of Islamic Cooperation, “Statement of Secretary General at the first
International Conference Organized by (OIC) under the eme: ‘Challenging
Stereotypes in Europe and the Islamic World,’” February 5, 2006, accessed July 19, 2015,
www.oic-oci.org/oicv2/topic/?t_id=2318&ref=1020&lan=en.
11 P.K. Abdul Ghafour and Abdul Hannan Faisal Tago, “OIC, Arab League seek U.N.
resolution on cartoons,” Arab News, January 30, 2006, accessed July 17, 2015,
www.arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&article=77052&d=30&m=1&y=2006.
12 See “Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu: Combating Islamophobia.”
13 Ibid.
14 Organization of Islamic Cooperation, “e Full text of the interview of the Secretary
General with the Danish Daily Jyllands Posten, published on October 28, 2008,” accessed
July 17, 2015, www.oic-oci.org/english/article/Jyllands%20Posten%20Interview.pdf.
15 See LITTEREF.RU, Lecture of His Excellency Prof. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary
General of e Organization of e Islamic Conference, at e Mgimo University,
Moscow, on Islam and Dialogue Among Civilizations, June 8, 2006, accessed July 17,
2015, hp://lierref.ru/yfspolujgyfsrnabew.html.
16 See Salman Rushdie, Joseph Anton (New York: Random House, 2013).
17 See “Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu: Combating Islamophobia.”
18 Pew Resear, “Religious hostilities rea six-year high,” January 14, 2014, accessed July
17, 2015, www.pewresear.org/fact-tank/2014/01/17/key-findings-about-growing-
426
religious-hostilities-around-the-world/.
19 Organization of Islamic Cooperation, “Statement by His Excellency the Secretary
General at the 3rd Istanbul Process Meeting on the follow-up of Implementation of HRC
Resolution 16/18,” accessed July 17, 2015,
hps://oiumanrights.wordpress.com/tag/tolerance/.
20 Ibid.
21 See Asne Seierstad One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway,
trans. Sarah Death (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015).
22 Habib Shaikh, “OIC seeks rights debates based on Islamic values,” Arab News, February
4, 2014, accessed July 17, 2015, hp://oiumanrights.wordpress.com/.
427
Selected Bibliography
Article 19. “ARTICLE 19 and e Cairo Institute for Human Rights
Studies (CIHRS). Joint Wrien Statement submied by ARTICLE
19, a non-governmental organisation on the Roster, and the Cairo
Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS), a non-governmental
organisation in special consultative status,” September 11, 2008
www.article19.org/pdfs/press/un-resolutions-on-combating-
defamation-of-religions.pdf (accessed July 17, 2015).
Human Rights Council. “Resolution 4/9. Combating defamation of
religions,” Mar 27, 2007
hp://ap.ohr.org/documents/E/HRC/resolutions/A-HRC-RES-
4-9.doc (accessed July 17, 2015).
Human Rights Council. “Resolution adopted by the Human Rights
Council. 16/18 Combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and
stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence and
violence against, persons based on religion or belief,” April 12,
2011
www2.ohr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/16session/A.HR
C.RES.16.18_en.pdf (accessed June 29, 2015).
Klausen, Jye. The Cartoons That Shook the World. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2009.
Organization of Islamic Cooperation. “Statement by His Excellency
the Secretary General at the 3rd Istanbul Process Meeting on the
follow-up of Implementation of HRC Resolution 16/18,” June 20,
2013 hps://oiumanrights.wordpress.com/tag/tolerance/
(accessed July 17, 2015).
Pew Resear. “Religious hostilities rea six-year high,” January 14,
2014 www.pewresear.org/fact-tank/2014/01/17/key-findings-
428
about-growing-religious-hostilities-around-the-world/ (accessed
July 17, 2015).
Rushdie, Salman. Joseph Anton. New York: Random House, 2015.
Seierstad, Asne. One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the
Massacre in Norway. Translated by Sarah Death. New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.
e U.N. Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression,
the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, the OAS
Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and the ACHPR
(African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights) Special
Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Access to
Information. “International meanisms for promoting freedom
of expression. Joint declaration on defamation of religions, and
anti-terrorism and anti-extremism legislation,” December 9, 2008
www.osce.org/fom/35639?download=true (accessed July 17,
2015).
Women Living Under Muslim Laws. “Women Living Under Muslim
Laws demands the U.N. resolution on combating defamation of
religions be revoked,” April 7, 2009
www.cwgl.rutgers.edu/docman/cwgl-news/308-04-07-09-
wluml/file (accessed July 17, 2015).
429
13
Human Rights, Youth, and
Tenology
Agents of ange?
Mahmood Monshipouri
430
Introduction
In the pre-digital era, the expression of dissent took the form of
spreading anonymous pamphlets and sharing of information and
banned books, meeting underground, or even organizing
associations outside the country. Speaking on the phone and
communicating through mail or formal media in order to express
anti-regime sentiments, mobilize anti-government opposition, or
simply criticize the government more generally, were activities
considered far too dangerous. e presence of retaliatory constraints
on protest in authoritarian regimes was intensified by the absence of
information. e rise of networked communication, along with
growing numbers of educated individuals, generated a massive
internal implosion in the wake of a spontaneous trigger.1 Yet the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the ensuing uprisings in
Eastern and Central European satellite states in the 1990s occurred
under su circumstances and there is no denying the fact that
young people were the most common advocates of ange in street
politics throughout the region.
Economic hardship and state repression caused a new wave of
revolutionary movements that plunged the region into tumultuous
ange. Nowhere was this shi more blatantly obvious than in
Egypt, where a combination of economic and political factors proved
critical in further consolidating opposition to the Mubarak regime.
e emergence of Kefaya movement (2004), whi brought together
an amalgam of political proclivities ranging from nationalist to
communist to Islamist, led to a united front around demands for
electoral reform. Defining itself as a loose movement, the Kefaya
movement used social media to organize demonstrations and
worked in tandem with working class (su as textile workers in
431
Mohalla al-Kubra) to broaden the movement’s base and to ensure
inclusiveness. Although Kefaya movement lost its luster years before
the uprising, one of the founders of the April 6 Movement, whi
played a key role in organizing the January 2011 protests, came from
Kefaya’s youth movement.2
Two other important factors—endemic corruption and ethnic
identity—proved crucial to creating solidarity among protesters.
Under Mubarak, corruption and embezzlement of public funds
became rampant, as the privatization programs were boosted to the
detriment of the shrinking public sector. e resulting degradation of
the Egyptian economy in the 2000s, along with the removal of
subsidies, hurt the nation’s large working classes—a development
that could very well explain the emergence of Kefaya-textile workers
alliance and the significant role it played in undermining the
Mubarak rule. Arguably, ethnic identity—an important element of
the Arab uprisings—came to serve as the driving organizing
principle in mu of Arab politics. Most notably, however, an
extraordinary spirit of youth solidarity transcended regional and
ethnic divides, and soon brought in the older generation, families,
and others far beyond the traditional opposition.3
With the rise of cyber-activism in the 2000s, a new form of civic
and political engagement for the youth of su regimes flourished.4
Empowered by modern communication tenologies, connected to
the globe through new social networks, and equipped with the
opportunity to exercise their imaginations, young people throughout
the world have risen in opposition in the face of constant threat of
instability, economic turmoil, and a mu less receptive political
environment. Aer growing up learning that they could trust no
one, social media have made it possible for them to come together in
a meaningful ways.5 Increasingly, young people have converted their
discouragement and rage into an enormous reservoir of social and
political activism by becoming agents of ange both in symbolic
and substantive ways.6 While modern tenologies are morally
432
neutral—that is, they can either sustain the status quo or alter the
rules of the game—they have given the youth movement an
unprecedented momentum to enter into the political arena, seek new
economic opportunities, and redefine new norms of accountability.
Guarding against cyber-optimism, many observers concede that
even in countries where access to social media is relatively high,
cyber-activism alone evidently cannot fully account for mass
mobilizations of dissent. Building grassroots support to sustain
significant uprisings hinges upon establishing linkages within local
communities and domestic social networks.7 Without su local
connectivity and interactivity, new tenologies are unlikely to
conjure up any practical results. But as access to mobile and modern
tenology has increased, cyber movements and other forms of
online activism have risen in importance, creating new possibilities
and allenges that need to be taken seriously. It is within these
dynamic, shiing, and new contexts that youth movements across
the globe have drawn media and popular aention.
At the same time, tenologically led movements have their own
limits, as experts remind us, in part because they do not necessarily
translate into enduring movements or robust political parties or
platforms capable of posing a formidable allenge to entrened
authoritarian regimes. e Internet-driven youth movements against
the Mubarak regime in Egypt lost badly in the ensuing
parliamentary elections to the far more organized and broadly based
Islamist movements. e members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood,
for example, were skilled at taking advantage of electoral gaps, as
their social welfare programs were arguably the method by whi
they manifested electoral successes.
It is worth noting that these same tenological tools have equally
strengthened the surveillance and coercive capabilities of the
authoritarian state now in power in Egypt.8 Hence the assumption
that these newly empowered and informed citizens will be unlikely
to surrender to a dictatorship remains as yet untested.9 is apter
433
examines the relationship between demographic trends and revolt,
and the spread of tenology and democratization with a view
toward demonstrating the possibilities and limits to human rights-
related youth movements as agents of ange in the Middle East and
North Africa (MENA).
434
Tenology upends traditional politics
In a shrinking world, with new modes of communications available,
ideas transcend borders and are carried over the airwaves or in the
universe of the virtual world, where many minds come together and
interact. In response to lingering economic and sociopolitical
problems, an intriguing trend in the contemporary Muslim world
has emerged in whi the increasing interplay between human
rights and Islamic discourses has become an inescapable part of the
region’s political dynamic. In Egypt, the Kefaya movement (2004)
drew in both Islamist and liberal elements. In Yemen in 2005, the
Islamist party Islah entered into an electoral coalition with the
Yemeni socialist party—a cooperation that continued to some degree
in 2011 in the street protests against President Ali Abdullah Saleh. It
is important to avoid the temptation to see the world in simplistic,
culturally determined binaries. Instead, we should be mindful of a
diversity of political and social trends, including grassroots-level
human rights movements influenced by global norms and laws.10
Members of both the ‘April 6 Youth Movement’ and Kefaya were
behind the creation of another popular Facebook group, one
supporting Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who returned to Egypt in 2010. In
June 2010, activists, led by Wael Ghonim, a Google executive,
created a Facebook page called Kullena Khaled Said (“We are all
Khaled Said”) in memory of a young man whose cell phone
contained images of political brutality and drug use and was beaten
to death on June 6, 2010, by two secret police officers in Alexandria.
is page aracted more than one million supporters and became
the focal point for a number of large protests against state abuses in
the summer of 2010. Ghonim, Abdel Rahman Mansour, and many of
435
their colleagues brought the Khaled Said case into the public
consciousness by organizing several “Silent Stands” on June 18 and
25, and July 9, 2010, mainly organized at the cornie in Cairo and
Alexandria by online activists, while also posting on the Kullena
Khaled Said Facebook page. ese online activists, as well as many
bloggers, brought out more than eight thousand people on June 25,
2010, when ElBaradei, who at the time was running as a presidential
candidate, took part. It was evident that the fear barrier was broken
and virtual activism had been transferred into real-world action.11
Solidarity with the Khaled Said cause transcended national
borders, as groups from Tunisia and Yemen began creating Facebook
pages in support of Egyptian online activists. Khaled’s Tunisian
Facebook page drew over one thousand members within two days of
its laun.12 e triggering event for the 2011 uprisings in Egypt
happened some 1,300 miles away in Tunisia, when Mohammad
Bouazizi—a street fruit vendor whose cart was confiscated by the
police—set himself on fire in protest on December 17, 2010. He died
on January 4, and shortly thereaer on January 14 Tunisian
President Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia.13 What happened in Tunisia
encouraged and enabled Egyptians to follow suit. Wael Ghonim took
the Egyptians to task by posting on the Kullena Khaled Said
Facebook page on January 14, 2011, the following message: “Today is
the 14th … January 25 is Police Day and it’s a national holiday … If
100,000 take to the streets, no one can stop us … I wonder if we can?” 14
e interaction of organized groups, networks, and social media
was crystallized in nonviolent anti-Mubarak protests that removed
the long-reigning autocrat from power on February 11, 2011. ese
protests, some experts contend, showed that Egyptian society, mu
like Western societies, has transformed away from traditional
organizations and media—su as TV, radio, and newspapers—and
toward more loosely structured “networked societies,” where there is
less group control and more individual autonomy.15 ere is no
436
denying that social media provided affordable access to social
movements by reducing the costs of mobilization and organization,
while accelerating the dissemination of information. Young men and
women in Egypt were able to use social networks, the Internet, and
mobile phones “to access large and diversified networks, rea
beyond physical and social boundaries, and exploit more resources
to potentially bring about social ange.”16 Yet it is important to be
aware of the euphoria about social networking. e fact remains that
Twier alone is unlikely to generate successful uprisings. While new
media tools have a catalytic role, as experts remind us, it is the
symbiosis between off-line activity on the ground and online
activism that is critical to how protests aieve their goals.17
In the cases of Iran and Egypt, the governments resorted to
Internet cradowns, shuing down Internet and cell phone
communications, before starting a violent cradown against
protesters. According to one source, a U.S. company—Boeing-owned
Narus of Sunnyvale, California—had sold Egypt [Telecom Egypt, the
state-run Internet service provider] ‘Deep Paet Inspection’ (DPI)
equipment that could have been used to help the Mubarak’s regime
tra, target, and crush political dissent over the Internet and mobile
phones. e same company is selling this spying tenology to other
regimes with lamentable human rights records. Before DPI becomes
more widely used, both abroad and at home, the U.S. government
must establish transparent and legitimate guidelines for preventing
the use of su surveillance and control tenology.18
New forms of Internet-based activism proved to be a central factor
leading to the ouster of President Morsi. Tamarod—or the ‘revolt’
movement—used all tools of grassroots mobilization, including the
Internet, formal media, and the street protests, to collect signatures
demanding Morsi’s resignation. Created by the members of Kefaya,
nearly 22 million signatures were collected in a maer of weeks. is
widespread campaign became a catalyst for the 2013 protests that
culminated in Morsi’s ouster by a military coup.19
437
Demographics of protests
Many factors have contributed to the uprisings throughout the
world, from Latin America to Europe, and from the Middle East and
North Africa to Asia. ese factors include, but are not limited to,
high unemployment rates, la of basic freedoms, poor governance,
absence of food security, and falling real wages. e problem of the
demographic youth bulge and unemployment has put enormous
pressure on the region’s education and health care systems, natural
resources, and labor markets. Ultimately, however, the greatest strain
is in the labor market, as in some cases, like Egypt, it takes five years
before 75 percent of all university graduates obtain work.20 On
balance, however, Tunisians are beer educated and more urbanized
than their neighbors. With 7.2 percent of their GDP spent on
education, Tunisians are steadily ranked among the most
modernized countries in the Middle East and North Africa. In
contrast, Algeria spends 4.3 percent of its GDP on education, Egypt
at 3.8 percent, Libya at 2.7 percent, Jordan at 4.9 percent, and Yemen
at 5.2 percent.21
e fact remains that, like Iran, Tunisia has become a middle-class
society imbued with rising expectations and demands for political
freedoms. e façade of stability in these countries is misleading and
the preservation of the status quo ante is no longer sustainable as
long as their citizens cannot freely express their economic and
political grievances. In Iran, the youth movement, also known as the
‘Green Movement,’ emerged during the disputed 2009 presidential
elections. It initially shook the foundations of the Islamic Republic
but was subsequently squashed by the regime. One of the most
dramatic aspects of the Green Movement was the split within the
Islamic Republic. One observer aptly captured this development:
438
“Iran suffered political fissures in 2009 precisely because the
establishment (and most anyone in the opposition could be
considered a part of the establishment) has split so openly, not
because dissidents had burst onto the scene.”22
e ‘Green Movement’ was also indicative of larger problems
with whi young Iranians were struggling. One study demonstrates
that four major problems contributed to deep frustration and
political dissent: (1) unemployment, (2) independence, (3) sexual
crisis, and (4) drugs. Because of the large numbers of unemployed,
especially among college graduates, according to the International
Monetary Fund, Iran has experienced one of the world’s highest
rates of brain drain.23 Almost three-quarters of Iranians in their
twenties still live with their parents, partly because they cannot
afford to live on their own. Social interaction among young males
and females who are not married is formally prohibited. Su stiff
restrictions have resulted in an underground social culture, whi
has led to widespread promiscuity, despite stiff penalties. Alongside
this illicit social culture, the use of narcotics has become a serious
problem among youth.24
A qui glance at the demographics behind the resurgence of
Iran’s Green Movement in 2009 explains why educated young
women were at the forefront of this reformist movement. In the
1970s, toward the end of the Pahlavi monary, nearly 5 percent of
college-age youth went to college. By 2009, the figure had reaed 31
percent.25 e girls outnumbered boys in secondary sools (1996),
primary sools (1999), and higher education (2001).26
e women’s participation in both Iran’s Green Movement and
the broader Arab uprisings should, therefore, come as no surprise,
even as throughout the MENA region, as experts find, women’s
organizations have historically remained relatively weak owing to
state restrictions on their activities in civil society. Yet, across North
Africa, variations in gender relations, women’s legal status, and
women’s collective action before the 2011 uprisings, as well as the
439
nature of the transitions and sociopolitical forces involved, help to
account for the divergent outcomes. e women’s rights movements
in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, for example, have had an
advantageous position over those in Egypt and Libya in terms of the
composite measure of women’s legal status, women’s organizations,
and the institutional legacy of the previous regime. In Morocco,
thanks to the activities of I`Union de I`Action Feminine (UAF), the
family law was replaced in 2004 with a more egalitarian set of laws
and norms for marital life and family affairs. In 2007, the Nationality
Code gave women and men equal rights to transfer nationality to
their ildren.27
Although both men and women were equally active in the 2011
uprisings in Egypt, the absence of an organized democratic protest
movement and the impotence of the secular political parties allowed
the Muslim Brotherhood and military to assume control. e dra
constitution approved by the country’s first Constituent Assembly
proved woefully inadequate to protect women’s rights and the rights
of religious minorities, for it restricted freedom of expression in the
name of protecting religion; it allowed for the military trial of
civilians, and it blatantly failed to protect the rights of ildren,
especially those of young girls, who are subjected to early
marriage.28
440
e unemployment crisis
A combination of a suffocating political climate and rising
unemployment rates in the aermath of these uprisings have caused
great concerns and disillusionment on the part of youth, who see
lile or no hope for the future.29 In the wake of recent and rapidly
unfolding economic pressures, massive brain drain is all but
inevitable in the region. One study showed that an astounding 26
percent of young people, aged 15 to 29, across the MENA region
have expressed the desire to migrate and leave the Middle East in
sear of beer educational and career opportunities.30
e unemployment rates throughout the MENA region are
depressingly high. Youth unemployment rates for 2011 were
noticeably high in Tunisia (42.3 percent), Palestine (35.7 percent),
and Egypt (29.7 percent).31 Having successfully won the right to free
and fair elections, young people still could not earn a decent living
or start a family. ey have become disillusioned with the long-term
results of the Arab uprisings.32 is explains why in a country like
Tunisia, where positive moves toward democracy have enabled
young people to express their dissident views, uncertainty, and
mistrust have led a disgruntled minority to embrace the Islamic State
in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). According to one report, nearly three
thousand Tunisians have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the
group.33
e region’s high youth unemployment rates, coupled with poor
economic conditions and local job prospects, discrimination, and
insufficient investment in work-related skills, as well as exclusive
access to tertiary education, have le many young people with mu
dismay and distrust in their political systems’ ability to grow.34
Today, in the MENA region, two-thirds of the population is under
441
eighteen. is part of the population faces one of the highest
unemployment rates in the world, as the region ranks among the
worst for youth unemployment,35 approximately 30 percent, high
population growth, and poor education.36
It would be far too facile to conclude, however, that the 2011 Arab
upheavals were caused simply by the youth bulge. Rather, a
combination of bleak employment prospects, elitist power structures,
and repression contributed to revolutionary upheavals.37 is
explains why youth demands during the Arab Spring were
encapsulated in four concepts: ange, bread, liberty, and social
justice—aspirations largely based on secular motivations. It is
important to remember that these uprisings were driven just as
equally by causes relating to economic justice and security as by the
demands for liberty. Despite the fact that the prevailing mantra in
Tahrir Square was Hiya thawrat karama (“is is a revolution of
honor and dignity”), the underlying socioeconomic causes were
decades in the making and led young protesters to take to the streets
to express and demonstrate their anger and frustration.
Just as the secular orientation of these demands called for a fresh
need to scrutinize the failure of regimes in power, so did the all-too
familiar language of human rights and personal dignity that stood at
the heart of newfound desires of the youth population. In Tunisia,
Ben Ali was forced to flee the country as his youthful population
staged huge demonstrations with new and old modes of
communication to topple his regime. Likewise, in Egypt, the vibrant
April 6th Youth Movement played a significant role in utilizing
social media and the Internet to mobilize the opposition against the
Mubarak rule. is group, however, was quily sidelined by the
military, whi accused the Youth Movement’s members of taking
U.S. funding.38
Across the region, young people face similar pressures and
restraints on their life prospects, aspirations, and living conditions.
Today, the Middle East is home to a large number of young people
442
who are more educated and plugged into social media than ever but
la the economic opportunities and possibilities for social mobility
that older generations enjoyed.39 A key pressure point in the
controversy over democratic reforms in the Middle East today is that
many leaders still show an obstinate refusal to admit the necessity
for socioeconomic ange. e fact remains that political reforms are
unlikely to be sustained over time if they are not shored up by social
and economic development. With absent policies to tale structural
problems that cause inequality, exclusion, and disempowerment, the
future of democratic reforms remains problematic.
443
Cyber-activism
e development of new digital tenologies, especially online social
networking, has enhanced the level of youth participation in
cyberspace in a wide variety of ways, including access to
information and participation in informal and formal groups.40
Marked by the elements of anonymity, speed, wider rea, and
connectivity, these new tenologies have become the most effective
tools of organizing and instigating uprisings, making the sear or
the need for a populist leader unnecessary and making mass
mobilization and protest possible.41 ese elements have enhanced
young people’s capacity to effectively engage and participate in
mobilizing civic movements as well as to advocate for human rights
and social ange. For the region’s many young people, especially
females, Information and Communication Tenologies (ICTs) and
social networking tenology are enabling tools.
By prompting interactivity and participation, where one becomes
not only consumer but also creator of online content, and where
sharing ideas and exanging feedba becomes the norm, these new
digital tenologies enable youth to redefine paerns of
participation, civil involvement, and self-expression.42 Access to new
media has transformed communications throughout the Middle East
and North Africa region and, together with the emergence of a wide
variety of new satellite television annels (e.g. al-Jazeera and al-
Arabia), is likely to help its citizens form public discourse around
notions of accountability, justice, and freedom.43 is has led to the
emergence of a new political culture informed by modern ideas,
ideals, and values, oen known as “tenological citizenship.” is
form of citizenship emphasizes inclusive rights of an individual as a
“citizen” of social justice and pursuit of modern global norms as
444
opposed to those of exclusive prerogatives su as sectarian and
ethnic identities.
e year 2011 began with the social media–driven uprisings and
protests in the Middle East and North Africa, toppling the two
regimes of Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni
Mubarak that had seemed firmly entrened. is peaceful
democratic ange has posed the most formidable allenge to the
rule of autocrats and monars throughout the region. By way of
comparison, as one observer writes, these peaceful revolutions were
reminiscent of popular uprisings 162 years earlier that began in
Sicily and France. e revolutions of 1848 keenly resemble, in mood,
recent developments in the MENA region. e badrop then, as
now, was a recession and rising food prices. e monaries—araic
and resistant to ange—were allenged by the young. Mass
newspapers at the time connected the crowds. e difference
between those movements and today’s is that while the old regimes
subsequently reconstituted themselves, these new waves of ange
in the MENA region seem irreversible.44 Especially in authoritarian
regimes, where freedom of expression and assembly are non-
existent, a combination of the demographic youth bulge and new
tenological resources and digital social networks on the Internet—
Twier, YouTube, Facebook, and other tools of communication—has
created new dynamics of ange in the region, making it possible for
the virtual and actual participation of people in the affairs of their
communities.
e digital world has drastically altered the face of the Middle
East and North Africa. Social networks have practically replaced the
old public sphere, occupied by the traditional meeting places su as
suq (bazaar or marketplace) and mosques, where the general public
used to gather for the exange of ideas and social intermingling, as
well as for many other types of interactions. As modernizing and
globalizing forces allenge traditional identities, experts note,
newer forms of identities based on individual oice and
445
accountability arise. Increasingly, young people view their own
decisions as a oice rather than an unmitigated force imposed by
cultural traditions and social norms.45
With few exceptions, teen life in the MENA region is generally
aracterized as informed by cultural impulses from many different
directions. Turkish teens hold onto old beliefs, values, and cultural
traditions while also vividly exposed to new tenology, Western
ideas, and anging social norms.46 Increasingly, throughout the
region, especially in the case of Iran, young people have become
more pragmatic, more autonomous, less conformist, and more
conscious of the outside broader global community.47
More and more young people in the MENA region have come to
express their opposition to the repressive regimes under whi they
have lived through the larger strategies of nonviolence, non-
cooperation, and civil disobedience. A survey in Egypt conducted in
2009 demonstrated that 75 percent of the young Egyptians
considered “protecting freedom of spee” as an important issue to
them.48 In the same study, 63 percent of the youth regarded
“protecting political rights” as amongst their key demands. Contrary
to the widely held view that Arab youths are oen raised in an
environment of religious radicalism and anti-Americanism and that
these values thus have “become the formative elements of a new and
dispossessed generation,” in reality, these protests have illustrated
that young people “were a big part of the silent, moderate majority.” 49
446
e April 6 Youth Movement
As noted above, the roots of social media–driven uprisings can be
traced ba to the Kefaya movement that was in solidarity with
textile workers who were planning a strike on April 6, 2008. Hence
the origin of the name: ‘April 6 Youth Movement,’ whi referred to
a loose coalition of many groups of activists, opposition parties,
lawyers, professors, and student protesters. In 2008, workers at Al-
Mahalla Textiles in the Egyptian city of Mahalla called a strike on
April 6. Although no major protests ensued, two activist workers
were killed, and the city became, albeit briefly, a site of violent
confrontation between workers and security forces.50
Ahmed Maher, 30, gained prominence in 2008 as one of the co-
founders of this movement—a solidarity group launed to support
protests. Organizing mostly online, especially on Facebook, it was a
decentralized network of activists who used the tools of social media
to broadcast economic and political grievances against the Mubarak
regime, mobilize support, evade the government’s ubiquitous
security forces, and, later, help bring down the Mubarak regime.
Ahmed Maher and Ahmed Salah, young members of the Kefaya
opposition group, braned off and helped laun a Facebook group
to promote a protest planned for April 6, 2008.51 e movement
aracted 70,000 members on Facebook, making it the largest youth
movement in Egypt at the time.52
Given the limits of social networking as a tool of democratic
revolution, leaders of the “April 6 Youth Movement” sought to study
and learn from both post-communist democratic ange in Eastern
Europe and NGOs in the West. In the summer of 2009, Mohamed
Adel, a 20-year-old blogger and April 6 activist, traveled from Egypt
to Belgrade, Serbia, where he received training at the Center for
447
Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS)—an
organization that was vociferously involved in the mass mobilization
against Slobodan Milošević in the late 1990s. CANVAS helped Adel
to figure out how to turn a cynical, passive, and fearful public into
activists.53 By aending several workshops, Adel learned how to use
new media and tenology to galvanize and mobilize a large-scale,
nonviolent revolutionary effort by stressing unity, seing clear goals,
and keeping members engaged.54
In early 2010, Bassem Samir, the 28-year-old director of the
Egyptian Democratic Academy, led a small delegation to the United
States for media training. A U.S.-based NGO, with funding from the
State Department, oversaw training sessions led by digital journalists
from Time magazine and documentary filmmakers affiliated with
human rights organization Witness, in whi the Egyptian activists
were taught camera operation and ways of using effective online
videos.55 During the 2011 uprisings, Samir used his office for the
purposes of feeding images taken by the activists on the ground to
the international media. e way these young activists used new-
media tools and methods proved crucial in fanning the flames of
protest into the streets during those 18 days of uprisings (January 25
–February 11, 2011), where it was then propelled by people who
were not particularly familiar with su social networking sites as
Facebook and Twier. 56
448
Arab hip-hop culture
Arab hip-hop culture and its relevance to the 2011 Arab uprisings is
key to understanding newly emerging identities among the Arab
youth.57 A new generation of Muslim playwrights and filmmakers
has turned protest into an art form, proving that the pen is more
potent than the suicide bomb.58 As in the rest of the world, hip-hop
culture in the Muslim world, represented by rap music and
popularized by public graffiti, has come to mobilize the youth’s
defiance against their governments and create a sense of solidarity—
both inside their country and across the border—with those defying
the status quo. Rap music has become a tool for venting
longstanding and pent-up frustrations and grievances as people
throughout the Arab world have sought to redefine their relationship
with the state and their rights as citizens. Increasingly, hip-hop songs
have become anthems of protests and rebellion against autocrats and
extremists across the Arab world. Just as rap initially provided an
alternative to gang violence for young blas in the Bronx (New
York City), as Robin Wright has observed, hip-hop culture has
offered an alternative to suicide bombs and Molotov cotails among
Palestinians.59
Likewise, the lyrics of rappers have linked feelings and
frustrations of diasporic communities with their homelands. One
observer notes that
It has been hip-hop that has become the most iconic and widespread soundtra of the
Arab Spring and, interestingly, it is having the double effect of helping to mobilize
activists in the countries directly impacted by the pro-democracy movements while also
solidifying links between Arab diasporic communities in the West with those still
residing in the homeland.60
449
is dynamic became apparent with the popularity of protest songs
by Chicago-based artist Khaled M. Libyan. By birth, Khaled M. is the
son of a Libyan dissident whose father was tortured and jailed under
the Qaddafi regime. Khaled’s father died when he was nine. Aer
protests broke out in Libya on February 17, 2011, Khaled M. released
the haunting single “Can’t Take Our Freedom,” whi reads like an
open leer to both Qaddafi and the people of the MENA region:
Can’t take our freedom and take our soul/can’t take our freedom, take our soul/you are
not the one that’s in control/you are not the one that’s in control/lā ilāha illallāh, there
is no power greater than God/go ahead and divide your plans/at the end of the day you
are just a man.61
e song powerfully employs the shahada and a common humanity
to decapitate the Qaddafi regime while encouraging protesters from
all over the Arab world to rise up against oppression. It also points to
a strengthening of familial, political, and identity ties and interests
between diasporic Arabs who have long lived abroad and younger
generations who may have never visited the countries their parents
originally migrated from. is sense of connectedness, renewed by
the song “Can’t Take Our Freedom,” has prompted a collaboration of
sorts between diasporic communities in the rewriting of history with
those who never le the country of origin but nevertheless felt
disenanted and dispossessed by the repressive regimes under
whi they lived. Khaled’s story, as a multilingual Libyan-American
with a dual identity and global popularity, demonstrates that the
Arab Spring has become a multifaceted, globalized movement
transcending the MENA region.62
Similarly, a young Tunisian rapper—known as El General, whose
real name is Hamada Ben Amor—posted a song on his Facebook
page and YouTube annel. e song was entitled “Rais Lebled”
meaning “President of the Country.” It expressed through music a
youth culture of defiance and outrage against prevailing
socioeconomic ills, including unemployment, poverty, and social
450
injustice in Tunisia, placing the blame squarely on the Tunisian
government. El General’s video was pied up by Al Jazeera aer
whi it went viral. e lyrics of this song quily and forcefully
resonated with many young people who lived under the repressive
regime of Ben Ali for so long.63
is song had a transformative influence, as it set the stage for the
‘Jasmine Revolution’ that broke out subsequently. It did what many
Tunisians dared not do: speak out.64 Western media labeled su
peaceful democratic uprisings throughout the region as the Jasmine
Revolution in keeping with the geopolitical nomenclature of “color
revolutions” that had transpired in Georgia and Ukraine in the
previous years. What singled out the uprisings in Tunisia, however,
was that Mohammad Bouazizi’s self-immolation on December 17,
2010, together with the powerful lyrics of the young rapper El
General, became two symbols that, in Wright’s words, “had
transformed political activism in Tunisia—and in turn the entire
Arab world.”65
In Yemen, Hagage “AJ” Masaed, known as the godfather of
Yemeni hip-hop, places a high value on hip-hop music, arguing that
it can be “a tool to effect social ange.” One of the bales he has
taken on is education and trying to keep young Yemenis in sool.
“Youth listen to me. I’m puing out positive messages in hip-hop
form. ey like what I’m doing and I’m flipping it in Arabic and in
English,” said Masaed. “e sools, the tools/You have to believe/If
we live, learn, love/Defeat enemies,” are a few of the lines from his
song “Biladee” (in English, “My Country”) whi advocates for
education to combat terrorism. It continues, “too many followers we
need more leaders to lead … so no terrorists please.”66
Palestinian hip-hop rappers, su as Tamer Nafar, have expressed
their rage with a microphone—not a weapon—and have repeatedly
condemned extremism and violence by both Israelis and
Palestinians, even as their songs have contextualized the civil
disobedience and suicide bombings of the 1987 and 2000 intifada
451
uprisings, respectively. For a new generation of Palestinians, hip-hop
has filled a social and communications void, capturing the popular
sentiment that has largely turned against violence and jihadists.67
452
Conclusion
Nearly five years aer the Arab Spring, the people’s hope for
democratic reforms in the Arab world has been all but shaered. e
frustrations experienced by young educated people who have been
unable to fulfill their aspirations in societies that have laed the
capacity to accommodate them continue in the aermath of the
uprisings. e increasing acceleration of tenology has noticeably
allowed disenfranised groups the ability to find a voice. While the
MENA region has anged, in some cases for the beer, it is not
clear where the broader trajectory of the region is going. e Arab
Spring revolts have become “a strange mixture of revolution,
counterrevolution and foreign intervention.”68 In su a context,
counterrevolution may prove as difficult to solidify as revolution
itself.69
Young men and women, who spearheaded massive peaceful
demonstrations in 2011, are still eager to talk about new politics.70
With the exception of Tunisia, a reversion to the repressive tactics of
the past and heavy-handed policies enacted by the military-led
Egyptian government, coupled with the continuing political tensions
in Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, and Syria, have all cast their dark
shadows over the optimistic view that only recently engulfed the
region. e phrase “demography is destiny” may be an old adage
and somewhat overstated, but demographic realities cannot be
ignored.
ese young people are not driven by religious beliefs, but instead
are determined to confront the underlying structural conditions of
their society that leave them with lile hope of improvement.
According to one report, although Tunisia’s steps toward democracy
have enabled young people to express their dissident views,
453
impatience with and skepticism regarding the prospect for
employment opportunities have evidently led a disappointed
minority to join the insurgent Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Tunisian officials have said that at least 2,400 Tunisians have
traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the group.71
Unless the Arab world’s leaders put in place effective economic
policies addressing structural problems that their countries face,
their bankrupt politics are certain to lead to more instability. e
pressure cooker of Arab societies, whi most recently exploded
under economic insecurity and suffocating repression, has been
defused for the time being, but is unlikely to prevent steam from
flaring up in coming years.
454
Notes
1 Vlerie Bunce, “Rebellious Citizens and Resilient Authoritarians,” in Fawaz A. Gerges, ed.,
The New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World, New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2014, pp. 446–68; see p. 451.
2 James L. Gelvin, The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs to Know, New York: Oxford
University Press, 2012, p. 48.
3 Marc Lyn, The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East,
New York: Public Affairs, 2012, p. 78.
4 Melani Camme, Ishac Diwan, Alan Riards, and John Waterbury, Fourth Edition, A
Political Economy of the Middle East, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2015, p. 427.
5 Miael Hoffman and Amaney Jamal, “Political Aitudes of Youth Cohorts,” in Marc
Lyn, ed., The Arab Uprisings Explained: New Contentious Politics in the Middle East,
New York: Columbia University Press, 2014, pp. 273–95; see p. 275.
6 I have drawn several arguments of this apter from my work elsewhere, Democratic
Uprisings in the New Middle East: Youth, Technology, Human Rights, and US Foreign
Policy, Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2014.
7 Camme, Diwan, Riards, and Waterbury, op. cit., p. 429.
8 Marc Lyn, “Media, Old and New,” in Marc Lyn, ed., The Arab Uprisings Explained:
New Contentious Politics in the Middle East, New York: Columbia University Press,
2014, pp. 93–109; see p. 94.
9 Ibid., p. 94.
10 Ibid., pp. 17–19.
11 Wael Ghonim Wael, Revolution 2.0: The Power of People Is Greater than the People in
Power: A Memoir, Boston: Houghton Miffline Harcourt, 2012, p. 80.
12 Ibid, p. 85.
455
13 Dina Shebata, “e Fall of the Pharaoh: How Hosni Mubarak’s Reign Came to an End,”
Foreign Affairs, vol. 90, no. 3, (2011), pp. 26–32; see p. 29.
14 Wael Ghonim, op. cit., p. 134.
15 Xiaolin Zhuo, Barry Wellman, and Justine Yu, “Egypt: e first Internet Revolt?”
available at hp://peacemagazine.org/arive/v27n3p06.htm. Accessed on July 13, 2011.
16 Ibid.
17 Jina Morre, “e Revolution Will be Blogged,” The Christian Science Monitor, July 4,
2011, pp. 26–31; see especially p. 28.
18 David DeGraw, “Analysis of the Global Insurrection Against Neo-Liberal Economic
Domination and the Coming American Rebellion–We Are Egypt [Revolution
Roundup#3],” available at hp://daviddegraw.org/2011/03/analysis-of-the-global-
insurrection-against-neo-liberal-economic-domination-and-the-coming-american-
rebellion-we-are-egypt-revolution-roundup-3/. Accessed on June 27, 2011.
19 Melani Camme, Ishac Diwan, Alan Riards, and John Waterbury, op. cit., p. 428.
20 Edward Sayre and Samantha Constant, op. cit.
21 Kristen Chi, “Why Tunisia? Why Now?” The Christian Science Monitor, January 31,
2011, pp. 8–10; see especially p. 10.
22 Hooman Majd, The Ayatollahs’ Democracy: An Iranian Challenge, New York: W. W.
Norton & Co., 2010, pp. 59–60.
23 Omid Memarian and Tara Nesvaderani, “Iran’s Youth: Agents of Change,” United States
Institute of Peace, Peacebrief 51, September 9, 2010, available at
hp://permanent.access.gpo.gov/gpo34803/Iran%20Youth.pdf. Accessed on July 1, 2015.
24 Ibid.
25 Charles Kurzman, “Cultural Jiu-Jitsu and the Iranian Greens,” in Nader Hashemi and
Danny Postel, eds, The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for
Iran’s Future, Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2010, pp. 7–17; see especially p. 8.
26 Ibid., p. 8.
27 Valentine M. Moghadam, “Democratization and Women’s Political Leadership in North
Africa,” Journal of International Affairs vol. 68, no. 1, (2014), 59–78; see pp. 61–4.
456
28 Ibid., p. 69.
29 e discussions in this section are based on Mahmood Monshipouri, “Tahrir’s Legacy:
Opportunities and Hazards for the Future of Youth Movements in the Middle East,”
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, December 1, 2014. Available at
hp://journal.georgetown.edu/tahrirs-legacy-opportunities-and-hazards-for-the-future-
of-youth-movements-in-the-middle-east/. Accessed on September 4, 2016.
30 See www.silate.com/docs/silate-index/silate-index-january-2010.pdf?sfvrsn=20.
Accessed on September 4, 2016.
31 Marilena Stoenescu, “Youth statistics - North Africa and Eastern Mediterranean,”
European Commission: Eurostat, October, 2014. Available at
hp://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Youth_statistics_-
_North_Africa_and_Eastern_Mediterranean. Accessed on November 8, 2014.
32 M. Chloe Mulderig, “An Uncertain Future: Youth Frustration and the Arab Spring,”
Boston University, e Papers/No. 16, April 2013, pp. 1–33; see p. 24. Available at
www.bu.edu/pardee/files/2013/04/Pardee-Paper-16.pdf?PDF=pardee-papers-16-arab-
spring. Accessed on November 7, 2014.
33 David D. Kirkpatri, “New Freedoms in Tunisia Drive Support for ISIS,” The New York
Times, October 22, 2014, pp. A1 and A8; see especially p. A8.
34 Yara al-Wazir, “Brian Drain: Why a arter of Young Arabs Want to Leave eir
Countries,” Al-Arabia News: Middle East, April 25, 2014. Available at
hp://english.alarabiya.net/en/views/news/middle-east/2014/04/25/Brain-Drain-why-a-
quarter-of-young-Arabs-want-to-leave-their-countries.html. Accessed on November 7,
2014.
35 See: www.makingitmagazine.net/?p=6094. Accessed on September 4, 2016.
36 Mahmood Monshipouri, Democratic Uprisings in the New Middle East: Youth,
Technology, Human Rights, and US Foreign Policy, Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers,
2014, p. 27.
37 Juan Cole, The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East,
New York: Simon & Suster, 2014, p. 26.
457
38 Mar Lyn, The Arab Uprisings: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East,
New York: Pacific Affairs, 2012, p. 134.
39 Melani Camme, Ishac Diwan, Alan Riards, and John Waterbury, Fourth Edition, A
Political Economy of the Middle East, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2015, p. 425.
40 Mahmood Monshipouri, Democratic Uprisings in the New Middle East: Youth,
Technology, Human Rights, and US Foreign Policy, Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers,
2014, pp. 58–9.
41 Wael Ghonim, Revolution 2.0, op. cit., p. 59.
42 Council of Europe, “Training Course: New Media in Youth Work,” European Youth
Center, Strasbrug, Budapest, July 5, 2011, DJS/TC Media (2011) 1.
43 Pamela Ann Smith and Peter Feuilherade, “Now, the Media Revolution,” The Middle
East, Issue 427, November 21, 2011, pp. 35–8; see p. 38.
44 Fareed Zakaria, “Why It’s Different is Time,” Time, February 28, 2011, pp. 30–1; see
especially p. 31.
45 Ali Akbar Mahdi, “Introduction: Teens, Islam, and the Middle East,” in Ali Akbar Mahdi,
ed., Teen Life in the Middle East, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003, pp. 1–12; see
especially p. 9.
46 Meral Kaya, “Turkey,” in Ali Akbar Mahdi, “Introduction: Teens, Islam, and the Middle
East,” in Ali Akbar Mahdi, ed., Teen Life in the Middle East, Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 2003, pp. 209–28; see especially p. 226.
47 Malihe Maghazei, “Iran,” in Ali Akbar Mahdi, “Introduction: Teens, Islam, and the
Middle East,” in Ali Akbar Mahdi, ed., Teen Life in the Middle East, Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 2003, pp. 13–32; see especially p. 29.
48 Farzaneh Roudi-Fahimi, Shereen El Feki, and Tyjen Tsai, “Youth Revolt in Egypt: A
Country at the Turning Point,” Population Reference Bureau. Available at
www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2011/youth-egypt-revolt.aspx. Accessed on July 30,
2015.
49 Bobby Ghosh, “Rage, Rap, and Revolution,” Time, February 28, 2011, pp. 32–7; see
especially p. 34.
458
50 Wael Ghonim, Revolution 2.0, op. cit., p. 36.
51 David Wolman, “All Posts Tagged Ahmed Maher: Did Egypt Detain A Top Facebook
Activist?” Wired, February 2, 2011. Available at
www.wired.com/dangerroom/tag/ahmed-maher/. Accessed on June 21, 2001.
52 Dina Shebata, “e Fall of the Pharaoh: How Hosni Mubarak’s Reign Came to an End,”
Foreign Affairs, vol. 90, No. 3, May/June 2011, pp. 26–32; see especially p. 28.
53 Tina Rosenberg, “Revolution U,” in Marc Lyn, Susan B. Glasser, and Blake Hounshell,
eds, Revolution in the Arab World: Tunisia, Egypt, and the Unmaking of an Era,
Washington, D.C.: Foreign Policy, 2011, pp. 127–42; see especially pp. 127–9.
54 Ibid., p. 141.
55 Maryam Ishani, “e Hopeful Network,” in Marc Lyn, Susan B. Glasser, and Blake
Hounshell, eds, Revolution in the Arab World: Tunisia, Egypt, and the Unmaking of an
Era, Washington, D.C.: Foreign Policy, 2011, pp. 127–42; see especially pp. 143–8.
56 Ibid., p. 148.
57 e discussions in this section are based on Mahmood Monshipour, Democratic
Uprisings in the New Middle East: Youth, Technology, Human Rights, and US Foreign
Policy, Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2014.
58 Robin Wright, Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the Islamic World, New York:
Simon & Suster, 2012, p. 215.
59 Ibid., p. 127.
60 Lara Dotson Renta, “Hip-Hop & Diaspora: Connecting the Arab Spring,” Arab Media &
Society, Issue 13, Summer 2011. Available at www.arabmediasociety.com/?article=777.
Accessed on January 10, 2012.
61 Ibid.
62 Ibid.
63 Robin Wright, op. cit., p. 116.
64 Ibid., pp. 116–17.
65 Ibid., p. 118.
459
66 Rose Haman, “Hip-Hop the Soundtra of Arab Spring,” e dailynewsegypt.com,
January 12, 2012. Available at hp://thedailynewsegypt.com/music/hip-hop-the-
soundtra-of-the-arab-spring.html. Accessed on January 12, 2012.
67 Robin Wright, op. cit., pp. 128–32.
68 Patri Coburn, The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution, London:
Verso, 2015, p. 132.
69 Ibid., p. 150.
70 Mahmood Monshipouri, “Tahrir’s Legacy: Opportunities and Hazards for the Future of
Youth Movements in the Middle East,” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs,
December 1, 2014. Available at hp://journal.georgetown.edu/tahrirs-legacy-
opportunities-and-hazards-for-the-future-of-youth-movements-in-the-middle-east/.
Accessed on September 4, 2016.
71 David D. Kirkpatri, “New Freedoms in Tunisia Drive Support for ISIS,” The New York
Times, October 21, 2014. Available at www.nytimes.com/2014/10/22/world/africa/new-
freedoms-in-tunisia-drive-support-for-isis.html?_r=0. Accessed on July 30, 2015.
460
Selected Bibliography
Coburn, Patri, The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni
Revolution, London: Verso, 2015.
Cole, Juan, The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is
Changing the Middle East, New York: Simon & Suster, 2014.
Gelvin, James L., The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs to
Know, New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Ghonim, Wael, Revolution 2.0: The Power of People Is Greater than
the People in Power: A Memoir, Boston: Houghton Miffline
Harcourt, 2012.
Ishani, Maryam, “e hopeful network,” in Marc Lyn, Susan B.
Glasser, and Blake Hounshell, eds, Revolution in the Arab World:
Tunisia, Egypt, and the Unmaking of an Era, Washington, D.C.:
Foreign Policy, 2011, pp. 127–42.
Kirkpatri, David D., “New freedoms in Tunisia drive support for
ISIS,” The New York Times, October 22, 2014, pp. A1 and A8.
Kurzman, Charles, “Cultural Jiu-Jitsu and the Iranian Greens,” in
Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel, eds, The People Reloaded: The
Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran’s Future, Brooklyn,
NY: Melville House, 2010, pp. 7–17.
Lyn, Marc, The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the
New Middle East, New York: Public Affairs, 2012.
Mahdi, Ali Akbar, ed., Teen Life in the Middle East, Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 2003.
Majd, Hooman, The Ayatollahs’ Democracy: An Iranian Challenge,
New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2010.
Moghadam, Valentine M., “Democratization and women’s political
leadership in North Africa,” Journal of International Affairs vol.
68, no. 1 (2014), 59–78.
461
Monshipouri, Mahmood, Democratic Uprisings in the New Middle
East: Youth, Technology, Human Rights, and US Foreign Policy,
Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2014.
Shebata, Dina, “e fall of the Pharaoh: How Hosni Mubarak’s reign
came to an end,” Foreign Affairs vol. 90, no. 3 (2011), 26–32.
Wright, Robin, Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion Across the
Islamic World, New York: Simon & Suster, 2012.
462
14
Rights, Refugees, and the Case of
Syria
What do human rights offer?
Kathleen Hamill
Whether in camps or in urban areas, Syrian refugees in the region are steadily losing
hope and becoming more desperate each day. Access to food, shelter, education,
healthcare, and livelihoods are unreliable and uncertain. Abject poverty is becoming the
norm, and refugees are becoming prisoners of their own fate. What we need is for
refugees to be able to live and work in a decent environment. Children need to go to
school. We need hope and a plan for the future. Syrian refugees need to be able to realize
their human rights.
— Maha Kaaa, Syrian Refugee Response Coordinator, International Labor
Organization, October 20151
463
Introduction
e war in Syria has created one of the worst humanitarian and
refugee crises in recent history, with far-reaing consequences for
human security, economic development, public health, ild
protection, and sheer survival, both in the Middle East and beyond.2
By the end of 2015, over 6.5 million Syrians were internally
displaced, and more than 13.5 million people were in need of
humanitarian assistance inside Syria.3 e crisis has reverberated far
beyond Syria’s borders, impacting Europe, the Americas, and the
wider Middle East. Fierce debates continue to rage over host
countries’ refugee and immigration policies, as well as human rights
and humanitarian protections.
e refugee crisis has been most acute for Syria’s neighbors—
Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey—where more than 90 percent of the
refugees have fled, but where international legal standards for
refugee protection do not necessarily apply to displaced Syrians.4 By
2016, nearly 4.2 million Syrians were seeking refuge in these three
countries; almost half a million Syrians had fled into Europe.5 Given
the prolonged nature of the crisis, the limits of humanitarian aid and
the prevailing conditions in neighboring countries, the vast majority
of Syrian refugees have not had adequate means or resources to
access appropriate education, shelter, food, healthcare, water or
sanitation in any long-term, sustainable way.
In this context, what do human rights offer: implementable
minimum standards and tangible protections, or just illusory
rhetoric? It is clear that human rights concerns are at stake, whether
Syrian refugees are seeking to cross national borders, sheltering
inside neighboring countries, or in transit ba to Syria or to another
country. is apter will argue that human rights remain largely
464
unfulfilled both for reasons of internal inconsistencies and for
reasons of national self-interest. Yet domestic and international
human rights commitments offer the most realistic path toward
taking into account the interests of states and Syrian refugees in
addressing an enormous humanitarian crisis that can no longer
simply be wished away.
465
Before entry: contested status, contested
legal frameworks
One of the vexing problems that has undergirded the refugee crisis is
that Syria’s closest neighbors had no applicable refugee and asylum
frameworks in place before 2011. is means they did not have
policies or procedures governing the entry, stay, and protection of
Syrian refugees and asylum seekers, instead reserving the right to
treat displaced Syrians as irregular or illegal migrants. As a result,
the terms ‘refugee’ and ‘asylum seeker’ have remained very mu
contested with respect to Syrians and their legal status in Jordan,
Lebanon, and Turkey. From the outset, neighboring governments did
not conceive of incoming Syrians as refugees per se. Instead, they
were guests, migrants, displaced civilians, or, eventually—in the case
of Turkey—persons under temporary protection. is reflected not
only the ongoing absence of applicable domestic refugee
frameworks, but also a set of misplaced assumptions that the conflict
would end quily and that Syrians would soon return home.
As in other situations of mass population movements, the influx
of Syrians into Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey has not fit neatly into
narrow legal categories especially given the la of applicable
refugee frameworks under domestic law. e accepted definition of a
refugee derives from the 1951 Refugee Convention. It encompasses
people fleeing from individualized persecution in their home
countries, or countries of habitual residence, on account of one of
five protected grounds: race, religion, nationality, political opinion,
or membership in a particular social group.6 As su, the 1951
Convention definition of a refugee neither explicitly includes
protection for civilians fleeing war——as is the case for many Syrians
466
—nor explicitly guarantees the right of entry or access to territory
across borders, even to people seeking refuge from persecution.7
is Convention definition is relevant because it provides an
authoritative point of reference and the baseline legal understanding
of a refugee under international law, regardless of whi states have
signed onto the Convention. e definition of a refugee, however,
has been interpreted more broadly by the United Nations Refugee
Agency (UNHCR) and by a number of states. As a result, the
application of the term ‘refugee’ has been disputed in the Syrian
context on multiple levels. Unlike the 1951 Convention refugee
definition, UNHCR has explicitly recognized war and violent conflict
as causal factors driving people to seek refugee status and protection
across borders.8 In neighboring countries, Lebanon, Jordan, and
Turkey, the U.N. Refugee Agency has extended blanket recognition
to displaced Syrians as refugees, doing so on a prima facie basis by
virtue of their nationality. It is important to note that neighboring
host governments have not officially registered displaced Syrians as
refugees under their domestic legal systems. Official UNHCR and
government positions have diverged on this maer, yet millions of
displaced Syrian civilians have sought protection and refuge in the
neighboring countries of Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.
Key questions and debates
In response to the evolving situation and shiing refugee flows,
policy debates have emerged around contentious issues related to
protection, survival, development, and livelihood strategies for
Syrian refugees. ese debates have focused on appropriate
responses to the refugee crisis by governments, U.N. agencies, NGOs,
and refugees. Neighboring governments have had to make a series of
rapid judgment calls on myriad issues requiring short-and long-term
planning. ese government responses, in turn, have been informed
467
by competing interests and by conflicting interpretations of
applicable human rights standards. Among these have been
decisions about open-or closed-door policies, camps or no camps,
registration or no registration, integration or no integration, freedom
of movement or no freedom of movement, and access or no access to
public education, healthcare, and the formal labor market.
Likewise, U.N. agencies and NGOs have grappled with similar
questions and decisions. Should they defer to host governments on
controversial human rights issues or push ba against host
governments when human rights standards are compromised?
Should they provide short-term aid and longer-term development
assistance simultaneously. If so, then how? In addition, U.N. agencies
and NGOs have sought to assess the vulnerability of Syrian refugee
communities and individuals in order to ensure that local and
international humanitarian assistance reaes those who need it
most. ese agencies and organizations have engaged in continuous
dialogue about how to allocate limited resources in the most
effective, efficient, and sustainable ways. Yet there have been no easy
answers.
While host governments, U.N. agencies, and NGOs have debated
appropriate responses, refugees have remained at the center of the
crisis, le to make stark decisions about their own survival and the
well-being of their families and communities. ey have wondered
what the future will hold if they stay in host countries, return home
to Syria, or move somewhere else altogether. ey have weighed the
pros and cons of living inside or outside of refugee camps, and they
have asked themselves about the possibility of surviving on
humanitarian aid alone, or of working to supplement aid by seeking
employment in the formal or informal sectors. ey have pondered
the impact and financial trade-offs of their ildren aending sool
versus working to help support the family or geing married at a
young age.9 ese and countless other dilemmas have become
critical as so many lives have been upended and so mu human
468
insecurity and uncertainty has prevailed. Amid multifaceted and
intertwining debates about these questions, human rights standards
offer, if not a complete solution, a framework for thinking about
refugee protection and for individual agency, even as the responses
of governments, NGOs, U.N. agencies, and refugees remain
contested and inconsistent in practice.
Rights, reliance, and self-reliance
With their personal security and human rights severely
compromised, Syrian refugees have straddled an existential divide,
relying for survival on their own resilience and tenacity while also
relying on the promise of protection from U.N. agencies, foreign
governments, NGOs, relief organizations, and host communities.
One snapshot of two-year-old Alan Kurdi’s lifeless body washed up
on a Turkish bea in September 2015 was enough to show the uer
desperation of the Syrian refugee crisis to the world. With su grim
reality es, it has become obvious that Syrians cannot easily
realize their human rights. Syrians have not only suffered the
compounded impact of years of political upheaval, violence, and
persecution, they have also endured threats related to displacement,
la of access to basic necessities, and tenuous legal status oen
exacerbated by unmet requirements, insufficient documentation, and
expired permissions, leading to the prospect of detention,
deportation, and also death.
On paper, Syrian civilians seeking refuge in neighboring countries
have numerous human rights, beginning with the customary
international legal principle of non-refoulement, whi protects
refugees from being sent ba into situations where their lives or
freedom would be at risk whether through torture or otherwise.10
Beyond non-refoulement, numerous other protections are set forth in
multilateral treaties, domestic legislation, national constitutions, and
469
memoranda of understanding (MOUs) between host governments
and U.N. agencies.11 In addition, there are refugee-specific rights as
well as more general rights that apply to all human beings present
within a state’s jurisdiction, su as the right to education, to
freedom of movement, to work, and to an adequate standard of
living.
Refugees do not automatically have all of the same rights afforded
to citizens, su as the right to vote. Nevertheless, they can make
claims to human rights on the basis of human dignity, host country
commitments, and their physical presence within host state
jurisdiction.12 According to international law, the 1951 Refugee
Convention does not apply to Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan,
and Turkey, but non-refoulement does apply. Also applicable to
displaced Syrians are the core U.N. human rights treaties, including
the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention Against
Torture, the Convention on Civil and Political Rights, and the
Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights—all of whi
Syria’s neighbors have ratified. International labor law also offers
protection to Syrian refugees under the auspices of relevant
International Labor Organization (ILO) treaties su as the
Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labor (ILO No. 182) and
the Convention on Minimum Age for Work (ILO No. 138).
At the national level, the legal guarantees—again, on paper—that
apply to displaced Syrians vary by country. Constitutional
provisions in host states, for example, make loy commitments to
respect the rights and dignity of nationals and non-nationals alike.13
MOUs, meanwhile, commit states to providing refugees with
protection in cooperation with UNHCR. Relevant domestic
legislation includes Turkey’s 2013 Law on Foreigners and
International Protection, Jordan’s 1973 Residency and Foreigners
Law, and Lebanon’s 1962 Law of Entry and Stay. But Syrians in
transit between different localities and countries confront legal and
practical barriers that have affected the realization of their rights.
470
Hence, the application of human rights standards to the predicament
of Syrian refugees has been riddled with ambiguity and complexity.
It is strikingly clear that refugees’ rights on paper have oen been
unfulfilled in practice. Before approaing more detailed questions of
application, however, it is expedient to examine several key policy
debates that have embroiled the rights of Syrian refugees.
Right to access territory
A core controversy over the appropriate policy response to the crisis
has related to access to territory. Do Syrians have the right to seek
refuge in neighboring countries on a short-term, long-term, or
permanent basis? Does it violate international law for neighboring
governments to blo them from entry and force them ba into
Syria? When displaced Syrians have managed to seek refuge across
borders, neighboring governments and host communities have
generally withheld official legal recognition of their status as
refugees. As a result, geographic location (in Lebanon, Turkey, or
Jordan) has been a significant factor in restricting the viability and
realization of their human rights. To what extent was Jordan’s
Minister of Labor, Dr. Nidal Katamine, correct when he said,
“Human rights should be based on needs and not on geographic
location”?14
e debate about this question within the international
community includes conflicting perspectives on the right to seek
asylum, authority over sovereign borders, and the principle of non-
refoulement. For the first several years of the refugee crisis, Syria’s
neighbors largely maintained open-door entry policies. However,
neighboring governments have since implemented inconsistent
policies, discriminating in particular against Palestinian refugees
from Syria.15 On one hand, officials have referred to their ‘open’ or
‘managed’ border policies. At the same time, neighboring
471
governments have restricted entry at official border crossings and
they have oen bloed Syrians’ access altogether,16 using physical
barriers, administrative roadblos, and the outright exclusion of
Palestinian refugees from Syria by the governments of Jordan and
Lebanon.17
Although the Universal Declaration of Human Rights sets out the
right of every person “to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum
from persecution” (Article 14),18 this right actually has no
corresponding legal guarantees under international law for civilian
victims of war or persecution. For example, even the 1951 Refugee
Convention and its 1967 Protocol do “not impose any obligation to
allow refugees to enter and reside in the territory of a state party.”19
Lebanon and Jordan are not signatories to the treaty in any case, and
are not legally obliged by the 1951 Convention to open their doors to
Syrian refugees.20 Arguably, their open-door policies early in the
crisis reflected a combined sense of moral responsibility, self-interest,
and maer-of-fact convenience when the influx was still
manageable and violence had not yet reaed border areas. But
Turkish, Jordanian, and Lebanese border policies have shied
considerably since mid-2014, with doors increasingly closed due to
security concerns, limited resources, insufficient infrastructure to
support refugees, and the perception of adverse pressure on host
communities and local economies.21
Access to territory: the case of Lebanon
e Lebanese government implemented a new border policy with
stricter entry requirements for Syrians starting in 2015.22 As directed
by Lebanon’s Cabinet of Ministers, this entry policy required all
Syrians to provide clarification of their entry status and
documentation to prove it. ose wishing to enter Lebanon had to
demonstrate that they qualified for one of several categories, ranging
472
from tourism to authorized employment to urgent medical needs.
ere was no category, however, for refugee or asylum seeker, but
only for “displaced” Syrians who would be permied to cross the
border only in the very narrow exception of “extreme humanitarian”
cases.
Lebanon’s Ministry of Social Affairs retained the power to
personally review these exceptional and extreme humanitarian cases
on an ad hoc basis to determine compliance with one of the
government’s four entry criteria for displaced Syrians: (1)
unaccompanied or separated ildren under 16 years with parents or
legal guardians in Lebanon; (2) individuals with disabilities
dependent upon family or relatives in Lebanon; (3) individuals
needing life-saving medical treatment not available in Syria; and (4)
individuals pursuing reselement or transitioning through Lebanon
to a third country with proof of travel (e.g. airline tiets).23
Lebanon’s border policy led to sharp public disagreements
between the government and U.N. agencies about the right to seek
refuge on Lebanese territory and who should qualify for protection.
Prior to Lebanon’s tighter border regulations, UNHCR registered all
Syrians seeking protected refugee status on a prima facie basis as
part of a broad group designation.24 is meant that Syrians would
qualify as refugees with UNHCR without going through an
individual interview or refugee status determination procedure with
the government or with UNHCR. As part of Lebanon’s revised
border policy, as of 2015 Syrians were no longer eligible for UNHCR
registration on a prima facie basis. e government border policy
barred UNHCR from registering any incoming Syrians as refugees in
Lebanon, and it required any outgoing Syrians to automatically
forfeit their UNHCR refugee status. No longer would Syrians be
allowed to re-enter Lebanon under the auspices of their previous
UNHCR-recognized refugee status, although the Lebanese
government had never recognized displaced Syrians as refugees
under domestic law anyway. But the revised policy and
473
corresponding border regulations marked a decisive effort to reduce
the overall number of Syrians in Lebanon and to bring cross border
transit of displaced Syrians to a halt. Presumably, those who faced
genuine risk in Syria, would not dare to cross ba and forth across
the border.
For those exceptional cases among the new arrivals from Syria,
the Lebanese government required UNHCR to petition the Minister
of Social Affairs for explicit approval to permit registration of
individual refugees on a case-by-case basis only. In April 2015, in
fact, Lebanon’s Minister of Social Affairs directed UNHCR to
deregister all Syrian refugees who had entered Lebanon aer
January 5, 2015 but before strict implementation of the new
regulations had begun, a move that affected 2,600 registered Syrian
refugees and their families.25 Lebanon’s new rules denied these
refugees UNHCR-registered status and also bloed access to
territory for Syrian refugees more broadly.26
Local NGOs, utilizing human rights arguments, also weighed in
on the debate about Lebanon’s border and entry policies. Beirut-
based FrontiersRuwad Association, for example, consistently
defended Syrian refugees and their right to seek asylum on the basis
of human rights norms. It faulted the government for rejecting
Syrian refugees and asylum seekers at the border and for denying
them entry or re-entry to Lebanon. Not surprisingly, FrontiersRuwad
opposed the Lebanese government’s position and articulated
objections in the NGO’s Mar 2015 Universal Periodic Review
stakeholder submission to the U.N. Human Rights Council.27 In this
submission, FrontiersRuwad decried fundamental human rights
violations of Syrian refugees and asylum seekers, “most notably their
right to seek asylum, and to liberty and security,” occurring in
Lebanon at the level of legislation, regulations, policies and
practices.28 FrontiersRuwad denounced the restrictive admission
criteria for Syrian nationals, calling on the Lebanese government to
474
grant displaced Syrians legal residency status on the basis of their
valid UNHCR registration.
FrontiersRuwad cited the customary international legal norm of
non-refoulement obliging Lebanon not to force individuals ba into
Syria if their lives or freedom would be at risk. At a minimum,
FrontiersRuwad insisted that non-refoulement would require
Lebanon to allow Syrians to enter the country in order to seek refuge
from persecution. Meanwhile, this permission to enter would at least
allow the government or UNHCR to investigate whether individuals
fleeing Syria needed protection. However, Lebanon has largely
ignored this obligation since January 2015.
All of this has raised a host of human rights questions related to
the right of entry. Opinions diverge about whether Syrian refugees
have the legal right to enter and to remain in neighboring countries
in their flight from violence and persecution. Should displaced
Syrians have the unqualified right to seek and enjoy asylum, or do
sovereign states have absolute authority to restrict entry into their
own territory? is debate became increasingly vivid as Syrian
refugees pressed beyond neighboring countries and into Europe.
Although it is beyond the scope of this apter, the European
dimension to the Syrian refugee crisis also speaks to the ability of
refugees to take maers into their own hands and exercise their own
agency in an effort to claim their human rights by seeking asylum
outside of the region.
475
Aer entry: respect for refugee rights
Policy debates also have revolved around treatment of displaced
Syrians once they enter neighboring countries. On many levels,
these debates have concerned access to the means for basic survival
and protection and the realization of subsistence rights su as
shelter, food, water, clothing, and sanitation. How and to what
extent should provisions be made available to refugees in order to
meet their basic needs? Debates also concern access to public
services, including education and healthcare, as well as access to the
courts and to social services su as ild protection systems. It is a
contested maer as to how refugees should avail themselves of these
rights in practice and what public services should be available to
them, at what cost, and by whom. In addition, host governments,
U.N. agencies and NGOs have varying approaes to the provision of
humanitarian aid and services, whether in the form of in-kind
benefits, vouers, cash assistance, or self-reliance. ese approaes
inevitably have significant impacts on the realization of refugees’
human rights and their ability to live in dignity and on their own
terms under displaced circumstances.
Camps or self-settlement?
Governments and U.N. agencies have put forward various proposals
and criticisms about where refugees should live and how collective
humanitarian responses should be organized.29 What bearing do
refugee camps have on the broader realization of refugees’ rights
including freedom of movement and right to work? What does it
mean for Syrian refugees to realize the right to an adequate standard
476
of living and to exercise their housing rights within or outside of
refugee camps? Some government officials and U.N. or NGO
representatives have supported the position that Syrian refugees are
beer off living in official camps, su as Nimis and Karkamis in
Turkey. Others have contended that they have the right to move
freely outside of refugee camps and self-sele in rural, village, or
urban seings, as the vast majority of Syrian refugees already have
across the region. Outside of camps, refugees have typically paid
rent, in cash or on credit, while others have sought shelter in
unfinished buildings, on unclaimed land, or in informal tented
selements, sometimes exanging their labor for temporary plots of
space. Palestinian refugees from Syria have tended to gravitate
toward pre-existing Palestinian camps or gatherings, oen forced to
live in the shadows because of their la of legal status in
neighboring host countries.
Regardless of their exact location, self-seled Syrian refugees have
encountered sub-standard and overcrowded dwellings with very
lile security of tenure and unsanitary surrounding conditions. is
is especially true in Lebanon’s roughly 1,500 informal tented
selements, where the government—as a maer of policy—has not
developed adequate municipal infrastructure to extend sufficient
pipes, sewage, sanitation facilities, and drainage systems to areas
densely populated by refugees. Refugees living outside of camps
have faced the prospect of moving from place to place on a continual
basis because of rising rent prices and forced evictions. Yet, oen
they still prefer to self-sele in urban or rural areas because life in
refugee camps is not necessarily sustainable or bearable, especially
when remote camp locations can diminish prospects of finding work
and generating income. Given the allenges of self-selement,
should host governments and aid agencies continue to operate and
construct refugee camps? Encampment has represented a significant
allenge to the protection of basic human rights of Syrian refugees
in neighboring countries, especially freedom of movement. Yet
477
official camps have also provided an organized and dignified way for
many refugees to realize their rights, particularly the rights to
housing and to an adequate standard of living. Open questions
persist about encampment policies and how host governments, U.N.
agencies and NGOs should prioritize certain human rights above
others.
National camp policies for Syrian refugees have differed in Jordan,
Lebanon, and Turkey. In all three countries, refugees have
predominantly self-seled, but official refugee camps still have been
home to significant numbers of refugees in Turkey and Jordan. In
Lebanon, the government has opposed the building of official camps
from the outset of the crisis and has also espoused a policy of non-
integration of Syrian refugees in the country. A brief examination of
the three neighboring countries’ camp policies serves to
contextualize the human rights questions at issue.
Jordan’s camp policies
According to a December 2015 UNHCR-World Bank study, “Jordan
opted early on to let refugees sele in urban areas and only later
decided to establish camps when the number of refugee arrivals
grew sharply.”30 e government held off on establishing camps until
2013, aer pressure had mounted from northern tribal leaders who
insisted on camps in response to the growing influx. Jordan’s two
primary official camps, Zaatari and Azraq, have been managed and
administered by UNHCR, with operational support from partner
NGOs and U.N. agencies, as well as Jordanian police forces.31 Until
2015, Syrians were able to ‘bail out’ of the camps provided they
obtained sponsorship from a Jordanian national. As a result, the
camps largely served as an initial entry point, and indeed, the
Jordanian government’s 2015 urban verification process indicated
that Syrians generally preferred to live outside of camp seings.
478
However, government policy in 2015 became more restrictive, with
‘escape’ from camps through the sponsorship system becoming a
formidable allenge. is raised questions about whether Jordan
was essentially warehousing a significant number of Syrians in
refugee camps and restricting their freedom of movement in the
name of containing security threats while effectively denying these
refugees their human rights.
Turkey’s shiing policy: costly camps to self-settlement
Across Syria’s northeastern border, Turkey has constructed, funded,
and operated 25 government-run camps housing approximately
280,000 people, comprising roughly 10-15 percent of the country’s
total Syrian refugee population, as of early 2016.32 e camps were
built in the three provinces contiguous to Syria, where most of
Turkey’s 2 million Syrian refugees entered into the country.
Construction of the camps was largely complete by the end of 2012;
but, aer initial enthusiasm for the establishment of camps, with
operational costs mounting, the Turkish government shied course.
By rough estimates, initial costs amounted to nearly $10 million for
the government to construct ea camp, followed by over $2 million
a month to keep ea camp running.33 With the Turkish government
having spent an estimated $6-8 billion on the refugee crisis by late
2015, the cost factor had a direct impact on policy decisions.34 As
Turkish political scientist, Cigdem Benam, explained,
Turkish camp policy was built on a number of inaccurate assumptions. e government
clearly assumed that Assad would be gone within a short period of time (3–6 months)
aer the uprising in Syria started … and the government wanted to ensure that its
Syrian “guests” lived comfortably in Turkish camps and had good memories of Turkey
during their time in the southern part of the county. ey even furnished camp
dwellings with luxurious flat screen TVs. e camps, of course, were expensive to build
and maintain. And once the government realized that it was not going to be just a
short-term crisis they stopped building camps.35
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Gradually the Turkish government shied policy, guided by its
system of Temporary Protection, through whi Syrian refugees
were allowed to self-sele and live interspersed in communities
throughout the country.36
Lebanon’s ‘no camps’ policy
By contrast, the Lebanese government established a policy against
camps from the outset of the refugee crisis. Since then, the prospect
of building official refugee camps has been highly contested among
cabinet ministers and U.N. agencies. In 2013–14, Minister of Social
Affairs, Rashid Derbas, actively lobbied for the construction of
refugee camps. He put forward a proposal for two camps—one in the
north and one in the east—to be built in the no-man’s-land between
Syria and Lebanon. is proposal won support from the Ministry of
the Interior, but it was met with opposition from others who
steadfastly supported Lebanon’s official “no camp” policy.37
roughout this policy debate, Minister of Social Affairs, Derbas,
has argued that Lebanon should deal with the question of refugee
camps from a humanitarian perspective, not a political one. Official
refugee camps, according to Derbas, would ease tension between
Lebanese and Syrians and provide refugees with decent and humane
conditions—especially if prefabricated houses were used instead of
tents. Besides, argued the Minister of Social Affairs to his fellow
Lebanese cabinet ministers, eventually the camps would serve as
border stations for refugees returning to their hometowns in Syria.
Derbas also added a security-based component to his argument,
contending “the (unofficial) presence of 1,400+ camps without any
kind of security surveillance is a danger in and of itself.”38 Derbas
contended that the Lebanese government had neglected to address
the issue due to expectations that only a few thousand Syrian
refugees would be displaced into Lebanon for a few months. is
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was, as it turned out, a vast underestimate: by the year 2016, the
number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon comprised one quarter of the
country’s population.
481
In camps or self-settled, rights remain
essential
Realizing rights for refugee communities goes well beyond the
sear for adequate living conditions and accommodations. It also
entails the quest for freedom of movement, access to education,
healthcare, and livelihoods, and protection from exploitation.
UNHCR’s 2014 Policy on Alternatives to Camps built further on the
Refugee Agency’s 2009 Policy on Urban Refugees.39 In both policy
statements, UNHCR has embraced a “rights-based approa” to
refugee assistance, explicitly moving away from camps as the
assumed foundation of refugee policy.40 Under the 2014 Policy on
Alternatives to Camps, notes legal solar, Miael Kagan, “Refugees
are now to be reconceived as people with autonomy. e focus is to
be on their rights, their legal status, their ability to support
themselves and to raise their families in dignity.”41 Indeed, as the
2014 policy explicitly states,
From the perspective of refugees, alternatives to camps means being able to exercise
rights and freedoms, make meaningful oices regarding their lives and have the
possibility to live with greater dignity, independence and normality as members of
communities.42
e question of how neighboring countries, aid agencies, host
communities, and Syrian refugees can seek to realize these human
rights guides the remainder of this apter.
Freedom of movement
Under Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and
Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
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Rights, anyone lawfully present in a country has the right to
freedom of movement. Only in exceptional circumstances—not
generally present in the case of Syrian refugees—can governments
enact restrictions on movement, whi must be provided by law and
must be necessary to protect national security, public order, public
health, morals, or the rights and freedoms of others.43 As the U.N.
Human Rights Commiee has noted, in order to be consistent with
international human rights law, su restrictive measures on
freedom of movement must be proportionate to the narrow objective
or purpose of the restrictions without casting an overly wide net
over a geographic area, duration, or number of people.44 In addition,
discrimination on the basis of nationality is usually inconsistent with
human rights protections on the right to freedom of movement.
While there have been restrictions on mobility in and out of
camps in Jordan and Turkey, Syrian refugees have generally enjoyed
freedom of mobility within urban and rural areas of neighboring
countries. In Lebanon, however, dozens of municipalities have
imposed curfews for Syrian refugees.45 Ostensibly these curfews are
meant to ensure public order and community safety, but effectively
they serve to discriminate against Syrians in Lebanon on the basis of
their nationality. In additions to the nighime curfews, Syrians in
Lebanon have faced additional restrictions on their freedom of
movement. Many Syrians, especially those with expired residency
permits, have lived in constant apprehension of being stopped by the
police at epoints or in other public places. is has compounded
an already precarious situation by hampering their ability to seek
work or humanitarian assistance, oen meaning that Syrian refugees
cannot pay their rent or afford other basic necessities. In many
regards, freedom of movement is critical to other concerns about
refugees’ human rights and overall policies around integration (or
non-integration) of Syrian refugees. is entails recognizing
refugees’ legal right to work—or not—whi has been under active
483
scrutiny and consideration at various levels in neighboring
countries.
Right to work
Distinct legal and administrative barriers, including work permit
requirements, residency requirements, and border entry
requirements, have deterred Syrian refugees from exercising the
right to work, in both the informal and formal sectors, in
neighboring host countries. Specific parameters have varied in
Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. But these barriers have had significant
bearing upon Syrian refugees’ access to livelihoods and their ability
to provide for themselves and their families.
Because the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol do not
apply to Syrian refugees in Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon, the right to
work is not ensured to them under international refugee law. e
corresponding la of formal asylum or refugee frameworks in
Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey has compounded the allenges
already facing refugees in exercising this right, especially since none
of the three neighboring governments under discussion have
officially recognized Syrians as refugees under domestic law.
In Jordan, work permit requirements have been difficult for most
Syrian refugees to meet, and they require considerable
documentation.46 Eligibility for work permits also has hinged on the
point of entry into Jordan, excluding most Syrian refugees from
eligibility depending on whi border crossing they traversed.
Meanwhile, employing Syrian refugees without work permits in
Jordan has led to fines for employers, with strict consequences for
the workers, who have faced the prospect of being sent ba to a
refugee camp, deported from the country and then barred from re-
entry. Additionally, the Labor Ministry has maintained a list of
‘closed’ professions for whi Syrian refugees are not eligible. e
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Ministry also has maintained quotas based on economic sectors for
migrants, including Syrians, so that work opportunities are
guaranteed to local communities. Fewer than 6,000 Syrians received
formal authorization to work in Jordan in 2014, but in the meantime
official measures have been under discussion to facilitate Syrian
refugees’ lawful access to the labor force, whether in camps,
qualified industrial zones, or host communities. Assuming that
Syrian refugees will eventually be allowed to work in certain zones
and sectors, it remains to be seen if the Jordanian government will
also allow these displaced Syrians to maintain their status as
UNHCR-registered refugees.
Turkey’s legal parameters for work permits have differed slightly
from Jordan. e Turkish government’s 2013 Law on Foreigners and
International Protection recognized Syrians’ need for protection—but
not their full refugee status. In 2015, members of the Turkish
Parliament draed bylaws and implementing legislation specifically
around the right to work. ese legal measures pinpointed certain
sectors and geographic zones for whi Syrian refugees would be
allowed to apply for work permits. is implementing legislation
was slated to pass through the Turkish Parliament by the end of
2015, but turbulent political dynamics led Turkey’s Minister of Labor
to announce instead that the government would not “give refugees
the right to work.”47 In 2016, however, the Turkish Council of
Ministers, did adopt regulations authorizing work permits for Syrian
refugees, representing a major development in the region.48
In Lebanon, displaced Syrians have been discouraged from
working in the formal and informal sectors even more so than in
Turkey and Jordan. According to Ministry of Labor data, only about
1,500 work permits were issued to Syrians in 2014.49 Since early 2015
the Lebanese government obliged UNHCR-registered refugees to
sign a notarized pledge not to work. Refugees were prohibited from
renewing their annual residence permits, authorizing their legal stay
in Lebanon, without signing this ‘no work’ pledge, among other
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requirements, in addition to paying a $200 yearly residency fee.50
According to a 2014 Ministry of Labor decree, Syrians were eligible
to work only in construction, agriculture, and cleaning sectors. Even
those Syrians who managed to find employment in these areas also
needed to have an official Lebanese sponsor to serve as their legal
guarantor in the country. is situation was compounded in 2015 by
Lebanon’s updated border requirements, as explained above, whi
have since prohibited ‘displaced’ Syrians from traveling ba and
forth across the border and have made it difficult for them to enter
Lebanon as migrant workers without ample documentation and
advance proof of sponsorship.
Su policies are understandable when one considers that the host
country governments are also concerned about the human rights of
their own citizens. Lebanese citizens, facing competition from
informal Syrian workers, have largely perceived Lebanon’s ‘no
work’ pledge as a positive policy decision.51 Key questions around
the right to work, meanwhile, have hinged on the fairness and
practicality of opening formal labor markets to Syrian refugees and
on proving the net positive effects of opening labor markets in host
countries. In this context, Western governments have pushed for
right-to-work policies for refugees, seeking to contain the refugee
crisis within the region. In practice, the situation has raised many
questions about whether Syrians have the legal right to work in
neighboring host countries, what law applies in this regard, and
whether Syrians should be restricted to work in specific zones and
sectors. e prospect of Syrian refugees gaining access to formal
labor markets in neighboring countries has raised hope for some and
apprehension for others. Neighboring host communities already
employ significant numbers of migrant workers from Egypt and
Southeast Asia, whose fate is unclear in this equation. It is also
unclear whether displaced Syrians will have to forego their status as
UNHCR-registered refugees in Jordan and Lebanon—or their status
486
under temporary protection in Turkey—if they obtain official
permission to work.
Regardless of these variables, the right to work is a contested and
contentious one, and one that has been under active debate and
consideration at the local level. It represents a potential source of
self-reliance for refugees and relative independence from insufficient
humanitarian aid and the limitations of the U.N. surrogate state. But
realizing the right to work for displaced Syrians across the board in
practice inevitably requires a significant amount of legal, political,
bureaucratic, and diplomatic maneuvering. Trade-offs are necessary
to benefit host communities, and negotiations will have to be guided
by a deep understanding of the competing interests and rights at
stake.
Economic, social, and cultural rights: food, health, and
education
Under relevant international standards and applicable treaties, states
have a duty to respect, protect, and fulfill basic human rights and to
allow for an adequate standard of living for everyone within a state
party’s jurisdiction. ese rights pertain to nationals and non-
nationals alike, including refugees, migrants, and other vulnerable or
marginalized groups. e rights to food, water, shelter and health are
set forth in the Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
(ESC Covenant) and in the Convention on the Rights of the Child
(CRC). Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey have ea signed these treaties
without significant reservations. e binding nature of these rights,
however, is not fixed and is subject to progressive implementation.
In addition Article 2(3) of the ESC Covenant, specifies that
“developing countries, with due regard to human rights and their
national economy, may determine to what extent they would
487
guarantee the economic rights recognized in the present covenant to
non-nationals.”
e U.N. Commiee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
(ESC Commiee) has nevertheless identified a minimum core
content of fundamental rights as virtual obligations: minimum
essential levels of foodstuffs, primary healthcare, basic shelter and
housing, and the most basic forms of education.52 Regarding
refugees and situations of humanitarian emergency, the ESC
Commiee has clarified that all states’ parties have a joint and
individual responsibility to “cooperate in providing disaster relief
and humanitarian assistance in times of emergency, including
assistance to refugees.”53
The right to food
e ESC Covenant recognizes the right to food in Article 11
including “freedom from hunger and malnutrition.”54 Yet violations
of the right to food occur among refugees when a state fails to
ensure freedom from hunger or actively blos access to food. For
Syrian refugees, the dollar amounts, eligibility, and frequency of
distribution of World Food Programme (WFP) vouers—the
primary source of ‘income’ for many refugee families—have shied
over time. Vulnerability assessments have indicated that WFP food
assistance has been scaled ba, leaving many Syrian refugees on the
cusp of abject poverty and extreme food insecurity.55 Among Syrian
refugees in Jordan, food constituted an average of 51 percent of
household expenditures according to Jordan’s 2015 Comprehensive
Food Security Monitoring Exercise.56 Syrian refugees in all three
primary host countries have reported self-monitored food rationing
su as reducing food intake per meal, or eating one meal per day,
due to cost.57
488
The right to health
e ESC Covenant guarantees in Article 12 the “right of everyone to
the enjoyment of the highest aainable standard of physical and
mental health.”58 However, realization of the right to health and to
healthcare has been elusive for the vast majority of Syrian refugees.
Responsibility for the realization of refugees’ ESC rights may lie
with different actors simultaneously, including host states, U.N.
agencies and refugees themselves.
Syrian refugees’ healthcare needs have been steady and acute. In
contrast to the heavily subsidized healthcare system in Syria before
the war, most refugees in host countries found themselves at a loss
for how to sustain critical medical treatment and healthcare for
themselves and their families over any length of time.59 Medical care
has been a universal allenge for Syrian refugees regardless of the
condition: antenatal care, traumatic war injuries, communicable
diseases, ronic conditions, and cancer.
As with other refugee rights, host government policies on
healthcare differ. Lebanon’s mostly private healthcare system offers
public facilities. e Lebanon Crisis Response Plan 2015–16
identified healthcare as one of the most critical gaps in service
delivery among refugee communities: “Health centers are
overwhelmed by the increase in population … and persons displaced
from Syria increasingly need subsidization and support to access
basic healthcare.”60 In Jordan, more than half of the registered Syrian
refugee population has experienced high or severe vulnerability in
terms of access to healthcare.61 Jordan’s Ministry of Health,
according to the Jordan Response Plan (2016–18), predicted that the
direct financial cost of providing healthcare to Syrian refugees would
be roughly $67 million annually for the coming years. In Turkey,
Syrians under temporary protection have had the benefit of free
medical services, whi according to government officials has
489
amounted to 9 million medical consultations, 280,000 surgical
procedures, and 66,000 births since 2011.62
Yet Syrian refugees have encountered countless obstacles in
exercising the right to health in relation to the benmarks of
accessibility, availability, affordability, and quality. estions
abound as to whether Syrian refugees in neighboring countries
should have access to free or subsidized emergency medical
treatment, primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare. Public health
ministries and U.N. agencies have conducted vaccination campaigns
and have worked to contain outbreaks of contagious diseases,
particularly among ildren, su as measles, polio, and olera.
ey have aempted to counter outbreaks of Leishmaniasis, scabies,
and watery diarrhea as well as help to manage the symptoms of
ronic conditions su as cancer, leukemia, and hypertension.
In all three countries, realization of Syrian refugees’ right to
health depends on access to medical treatment, health clinics,
medication, and hospitals. Access can be a function of proximity,
local capacity, transportation, and quality. Public health clinics have
been expanded and NGO medical services have been ramped up, but
cost can still be a prohibitive factor for refugees. Access to
emergency care and primary care—among myriad other healthcare
services—all come at a price.
The right to education63
Human rights principles seek to ensure access to education for
refugee and non-refugee ildren alike. Although the 1951 Refugee
Convention provisions on education do not directly apply to Syrian
refugees in neighboring countries, the right to education is spelled
out explicitly in two core U.N. human rights treaties that do directly
apply: the ESC Covenant (Article 13) and the CRC (Articles 28 and
29). Both of these human rights treaties set forth the right to primary
490
education for all ildren within a state’s jurisdiction, without
discrimination, and regardless of legal status.64 e CRC in Article
22 goes a step further than the ESC Covenant with respect to
refugees, also calling on states to ensure special protection and
humanitarian assistance for refugee ildren or those seeking
refugee status—although granting states significant discretion in the
process.65
Despite policies making public education legally accessible for
Syrian refugees in all three countries regardless of their status,
practical barriers have remained.66 ese have included differences
in curriculum and language of instruction, discrimination and
bullying, transportation costs, la of adequate classroom space and
teaers, and la of familiarity with the registration process.
Dilemmas have also arisen with regard to certification and remedial
policies that restrict eligibility for any ild who has already missed
two or more years of formal education. Meanwhile, Ministries of
Education have facilitated refugees’ tenical eligibility for public
sools by waiving fees, taking measures to open the enrollment
process, and compelling local municipalities to comply. In addition,
governments have worked with U.N. agencies and NGOs to
introduce non-formal education options, offer double shis in
existing sools, construct new sools, hire new teaers, and
laun multiple ba-to-sool campaigns.
Yet aer years of crisis in the region, sool enrollment rates
among Syrian refugee ildren continue to fall severely short in
Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. is raises questions about what the
right to education means for Syrian refugees in practice. By UNHCR
estimates, over half of all sool-aged Syrian ildren in neighboring
countries were not enrolled in formal education programs in 2015.67
In Turkey, where language is an obstacle, less than 30 percent of
sool-aged refugee ildren (ages 5–17) in host communities had
enrolled in sool as of August 2015.68 By comparison, sool
enrollment rates in Turkey’s refugee camps reaed almost 90
491
percent by mid-2015. In Lebanon, sool enrollment rates for sool-
aged Syrian refugees have remained below 50 percent since 2011;
enrollment rates in Jordan have been relatively higher, reaing
closer to 80 percent by mid-2015 according to 3RP Country
Education Sector Dashboards. But virtually all sool-aged Syrian
refugees in Jordan—as well as in Turkey and Lebanon—have been at
high risk for non-aendance since the start of the conflict in Syria.
Significant dropout rates in all three countries have meant increasing
ineligibility for public education among Syrian refugee ildren;
they are generally disqualified from enrolment aer having missed
more than two consecutive years of sool. Remedial education
programs alone have not accelerated progress for the vast numbers
of refugee ildren who have fallen behind.
Wider barriers to education also exist in the form of financial
pressures, access to livelihoods, and ild labor. Human rights
principles seek to ensure access to education and also to protect
ildren from economic exploitation and to prevent them from
engaging in work that is harmful to their health, safety, or morals.
Legal standards to this effect have been agreed to by Syria’s
neighbors and are set out in the CRC, ILO Minimum Age
Convention, and the ILO Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention.
For Syrian refugee families, enrolling ildren in sool can mean
compromising income opportunities that would otherwise help meet
the family’s basic survival needs. Child labor rates in Jordan,
Lebanon, and Turkey have indicated that many refugee families
have been forced to prioritize work over education; in Jordan the
ILO has documented ild labor rates at 37 percent among Syrian
refugee ildren between the ages of nine and sixteen.69 Countless
numbers of Syrian ildren in Lebanon and Turkey have also worked
to support themselves and their families out of economic need while
foregoing their education in the process.
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The right to a nationality
Since the start of the crisis, more than 142,000 Syrian ildren have
been born to refugee families in exile. Beyond questions of access to
social services and livelihoods, this fact has raised human rights
concerns about how these ildren will claim another fundamental
right: the right to a nationality. According to Article 7 of the CRC,
every “ild shall be registered immediately aer birth and shall
have from birth the right to a name and to acquire a nationality.” e
process of official birth registration can be a daunting prospect for
refugees. But without birth registration and official documentation
of their nationality, Syrian refugees face a lifetime of allenges in
exercising their human rights, accessing public services, maintaining
their legal status, and moving freely from place to place.
UNHCR estimates that since the refugee crisis began, more than
70 percent of Syrian refugee births in Lebanon have not been
registered, and that this reflects the broader situation of newborn
refugees throughout the region.70 e pervasive la of birth
registration among ildren runs in parallel with an even broader
la of valid identity documents among Syrian refugee adults.71 In
their unexpectedly abrupt departures from Syria, many refugees le
behind national identity cards, marriage certificates, family books,
and passports. e allenge of renewing expired identity documents
also presents difficulties for most Syrian refugees.
When refugees cannot present required identity documents to
civil registry authorities, birth registration becomes virtually
impossible in most situations. is predicament may be exacerbated
by a la of familiarity with the registration process and
requirements, especially if a ild’s father is not present. Because
Syrian nationality is transferred only from the father, mothers on
their own oen struggle to register the births of their newborns.
Challenges in obtaining official birth certificates can translate
directly into statelessness.72 Without documentation to prove
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nationality, stateless Syrian ildren will inevitably face difficulties
in accessing healthcare and education, among other rights. ey will
face obstacles not only in exercising their freedom of movement, but
also in the right to return to Syria when the war ends. Syrian refugee
ildren who are listed in their parents’ family booklets will need
their own identity documentation when they turn fieen, but they
will not be able to go ba to Syria to obtain it and face difficulties
doing so in host countries.
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Conclusion
e longer-term outlook for Syrian refugees, in the context of their
inability to claim the full range of rights just discussed, is a lens on
the larger crisis. As the situation continues to intensify and becomes
increasingly complex, refugees are sometimes taking maers into
their own hands. In a fraction of cases, this means seeking asylum
outside of the region and beyond the boundaries of Lebanon, Turkey,
and Jordan. In other cases, this means staying in the region while
seeking human rights out of the ashes of human dignity.
It is now clear to the host governments, U.N. agencies, aid
organizations, and the international community that the Syrian
refugee crisis will persist, with no clear resolution and no immediate
answers on the horizon. Governments, U.N. agencies, NGOs, and
refugees that have continued to flee from Syria are forced to respond
to the crisis in whatever way they are able or willing. Despite the
desperation borne out of the situation, policies do not necessarily
reflect humanitarian or human rights considerations. estions,
including heartbreaking decisions about whether to flee or to remain
in a devastated country, and myriad other concerns and dilemmas
will arise, again and again, in response to the shiing, and at times
contradictory, policy positions in ea country.
e key debates concerning human rights will continue to focus
on access to territory, public services, and safe livelihoods. Given the
la of clearly applicable international standards, states, U.N.
agencies, and aid organizations will continue to look to one another
for guidance on how to proceed. Unfortunately, the complexity of
the Syrian refugee crisis will not diminish in the foreseeable future.
Answers will not suddenly emerge clearly, and outcomes will not
become more predictable. Yet, amidst the human tragedy, positive
495
work continues to be done—oen based on human rights standards
within legal frameworks.
estions will arise from the rubble of politics, policies, and
human life, as to whether hope remains for a beer future. In the
context of the Syrian refugee crisis, human rights norms and
standards are inadequate and insufficient. But they can and do offer
more than just the illusion of hope to refugees and their families. In
incremental ways, these standards and norms can provide a form of
rough scaffolding for individuals to utilize as bridges, or even as
tightropes. is can lead to the practical realization of human
dignity and to a minimum of decent treatment for Syrian refugees
who face innumerable dilemmas and allenges in neighboring
countries.
496
Notes
1 Interview in person with Maha Kaaa, ILO Syrian Refugee Response Coordinator for
Jordan, Beirut Lebanon, November 25, 2015.
2 For comparative data and statistics on recent humanitarian emergencies and protracted
refugee crises, see United Nations Refugee Agency information portal, available at:
hp://data.unhcr.org [accessed November 11, 2015].
3 United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs data, available at:
www.unoa.org/syria [accessed November 11, 2015].
4 e 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol do not apply to displaced Syrians in
neighboring host states of Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. is is because Lebanon and
Jordan have not ratified the treaty. And although Turkey has ratified the treaty, it filed a
significant reservation stating that it would not be held to convention standards with
respect to non-Europeans.
5 For breakdown of Syrian refugee population by host country, see U.N. Refugee Agency
information available at: hp://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php [accessed
November 11, 2015].
6 e international legal definition of a refugee is “a person who owing to a well-founded
fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a
particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and
is unable or, owing to su fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that
country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former
habitual residence as a result of su events, is unable or, owing to su fear, is
unwilling to return to it,” Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, 189 UNTS
2545, done July 28, 1951, entered into force Apr. 22, 1954, supplemented by the Protocol
relating to the Status of Refugees, 606 UNTS 8791, done Jan. 31, 1967, entered into force
Oct. 24, 1967.
497
7 U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Handbook and Guidelines on
Procedures and Criteria for Determining Refugee Status under the 1951 Convention and
the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, December 2011,
HCR/1P/4/ENG/REV. 3, p. 33 “War Refugees” Section, available at:
www.refworld.org/docid/4f33c8d92.html [accessed October 29, 2015].
8 e mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees covers “all persons
outside their country of origin for reasons of feared persecution, conflict, generalized
violence, or other circumstances that have seriously disturbed public order and who, as
a result, require international protection.” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR), Note on the Mandate of the High Commissioner for Refugees and his Office,
October 2013, p. 3, available at: www.refworld.org/docid/5268c9474.html [accessed
November 14, 2015].
9 K. Hamill and S. Bartels, “Running Out of Time: Survival of Syrian Refugee Children in
Lebanon,” FXB/Harvard Report (2014), available at: hp://fxb.harvard.edu/fxb-report-
survival-syrian-refugee-ildren-lebanon/ [accessed October 31, 2015].
10 A. Farmer, “A Commentary on the Commiee on the Rights of the Child’s Definition of
Non-Refoulement for Children: Broad Protection for Fundamental Rights” (2011). Res
Gestae. Paper 8 hp://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/res_gestae/8 [accessed September 4, 2016].
11 See 1998 MOU between UNHCR and Government of Jordan.
12 M.B. Dembour, “What Are Human Rights? Four Sools of ought,” Human Rights
Quarterly (2010), available at: hp://muse.jhu.edu/login?
type=summary&url=/journals/human_rights_quarterly/v032/32.1.dembour.html
[accessed September 4, 2016].
13 See Preamble to Constitution of Lebanon.
14 N. Katamine, World Bank Conference Remarks, “Fragility in Middle Income Countries:
New Ideas for Unique Challenges,” Lima, Peru, October 2, 2015, available at:
www.worldbank.org/en/events/2015/09/28/fragility-in-middle-income-countries-new-
ideas-for-unique-allenges.print [accessed October 11, 2015].
15 Interviews in person with UNRWA representatives and Palestinian refugees from Syria
in Jordan (June 2014); See N. Erakat, “Palestinian Refugees and the Syrian Uprising:
498
Filling the Protection Gap During Secondary Forced Displacement,” International
Journal of Refugee Law (Oxford University Press, 2014), available at:
hp://ijrl.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/4/581.full?etoc [accessed November 12, 2015].
16 Norwegian Refugee Council, “No Escape: Civilians in Syria Struggle to Find Safety
Across Borders,” NRC Report, November 2014, available at:
www.rescue.org/sites/default/files/resource-
file/No%20Escape%20Syria%20report%20IRC%20final%20Nov2014.pdf; U.N. News Center,
“UN Agency Urges Jordan to Allow 12,000 Desperate Syrian Refugees Stranded at
Border,” December 8, 2015, available at: www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?
NewsID=52760#.VmeDuUzLQ [accessed December 8, 2015].
17 In early 2013, Jordan’s Prime Minister, Abdullah Ensour, announced the government’s
official non-admission policy for Palestinian refugees from Syria. It was widely
understood to reflect (1) the Jordanian Government’s reluctance to increase Jordan’s
pre-existing Palestinian population of roughly 2 million and (2) the Jordan
Government’s fear of becoming the long-term “alternative home” country for
Palestinians. Nevertheless, Jordan’s strict no-entry policy generally excludes Palestine
refugees from Syria who have a Jordanian national number. Other exceptions to the
policy occur sometimes for those who (a) are eligible to receive a Jordanian national
number (for example, those who possess a royal acquial form issued aer their
ancestors’ expulsion from Jordan due to the events of September 1970) and (b) have
applied for political asylum through the Jordanian embassy in Syria.
18 e Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 14), available at:
www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ [accessed December 10, 2015].
19 H. Hannum (ed.), Guide to International Human Rights Practice, (Hotei Publishing, 2004)
p. 214.
20 Under customary international law, however, they are arguably bound by the principle
of non-refoulement, or the prohibition of forcible return. is provides at least some
legal baseline for not rejecting refugees or turning them away at the border with Syria.
21 K. Kirisci, “Syrian Refugees in Turkey: e Limits of an Open Door Policy,” Brookings
Institution Blog, June 27, 2013, available at: www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-
front/posts/2013/06/27-syrian-refugees-in-turkey-kirisci [accessed October 10, 2015]; R.
499
Sweis, “Jordan’s Open Door Is Now Only Craed, Leaving Syrians Stranded,” New York
Times, November 20, 2014, available at:
www.nytimes.com/2014/11/20/world/middleeast/jordans-open-door-is-now-only-
craed-leaving-syrians-stranded.html [accessed November 21, 2014]; Human Rights
Wat, “Turkey: Syrians Pushed Ba at the Border,” November 23, 2015, available at:
www.hrw.org/news/2015/11/23/turkey-syrians-pushed-ba-border [accessed December
10, 2015].
22 Lebanese General Directorate for General Security, Specifications on Lebanon’s Border
Entry Categories and Requirements, available at: www.general-
security.gov.lb/getaament/e1e76fe0-181e-4fe7-a19c-9b175759ad49/Rules.pdf.aspx?
set=f247bae1-d485-42fa-8a33-079df973a536 [accessed November 10, 2015].
23 See Protection Sector Dashboard June 2015, InterAgency Coordination, Lebanon,
available at: data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/download.php?id=9236 [accessed December
10, 2015].
24 e 2003 MOU between the Lebanese government and UNHCR, however, does not cover
prima facie refugee determinations.
25 See Protection Sector Dashboard June 2015, InterAgency Coordination, Lebanon,
available at: data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/download.php?id=9236 [accessed December
10, 2016].
26 J. Owens, “UNHCR: Lebanon’s New Rules for Syrian Refugees Raise Concern,” VOA
News, January 20, 2015, available at: www.voanews.com/content/unhcr-says-lebanon-
new-syrianrefugee-rules-raise-concern/2606223.html [accessed Mar 20, 2016].
27 FrontiersRuwad, “Violation of the Right to Seek Asylum and Non-Refoulement,” Joint
Submission in View of Lebanon’s Second Periodic Review by the U.N. Human Rights
Council, Mar 23, 2015, available at:
hps://frontiersruwad.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/2015-upr_lebanon_right-to-seek-
asylum_joint-submission_mar-2015.pdf [accessed November 10, 2015].
28 ibid.
29 Norwegian Refugee Council Report, “A Precarious Existence: e Shelter Situation of
Syrian Refugees in Neighboring Countries,” June 2014, available at:
500
www.nrc.no/ar/_img/9179446.pdf [accessed November 10, 2015].
30 P. Verme, et al.,World Bank and UNHCR, The Welfare of Syrian Refugees: Evidence from
Jordan and Lebanon, December 16, 2015, available at:
www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2015/12/16/welfare-syrian-refugees-evidence-
from-jordan-lebanon [accessed December 17, 2015].
31 D. Sullivan and S. Tobin, “Security and Resilience Among Syrian Refugees in Jordan,”
Middle East Research and Information Project, October 14, 2014, available at:
www.merip.org/mero/mero101414 [accessed November 10, 2015].
32 “UN Refugee Chief Visits Camp in Turkey,” Andalou Agency, January 15, 2016, available
at: hp://aa.com.tr/en/turkey/un-refugee-ief-visits-refugee-camp-in-turkey/505716
[accessed January 16, 2016].
33 “Turkey Opens Up to International Aid in Camps,” IRIN News, November 16, 2012,
available at: www.irinnews.org/analysis/2012/11/16/turkey-opens-international-aid-
camps [accessed December 2, 2015]; Mac McClelland, “How to Build a Perfect Refugee
Camp,” The New York Times, February 13, 2014, available at:
www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/magazine/how-to-build-a-perfect-refugee-camp.html?
_r=0 [accessed December 2, 2015].
34 O. Budak, “Global Migrant Crisis Requires Global Effort,” Boston Globe, November 14,
2014, available at: hps://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/11/14/global-migrant-
crisis-requires-global-effort/S4DVxSUm4NNJ9vWLhKVrpJ/story.html [accessed
December 2, 2015].
35 Interviews with C. Benam by phone and email, December 2015.
36 Ahmet Icduygu, “Syrian Refugees in Turkey: e Long Road Ahead,” Migration Policy
Institute, April, 2015, available at: www.migrationpolicy.org/resear/syrianrefugees-
turkey-long-road-ahead [accessed December 2, 2015].
37 “Lebanese Minister Lobbies for Refugee Camps,” The Daily Star, September 27, 2014,
available at: www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2014/Sep-27/272213-lebanese-
minister-lobbies-for-syrian-refugee-camps.ashx#axzz3EWzMs0 [accessed November
11, 2015].
501
38 E. Shoufi, “Lebanon: Political Consensus Over Establishment of Formal Syrian Refugee
Camps Remains Elusive,” Al-Akhbar, September 11, 2014, available at: hp://english.al-
akhbar.com/node/21514 [accessed November 11, 2015].
39 U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR Policy on Alternatives to Camps, July 22,
2014, UNHCR/HCP/2014/9, available at: www.refworld.org/docid/5423ded84.html
[accessed December 9, 2015].
40 An official refugee camp is defined by UNHCR’s Policy on Alternatives to Camps as
“any purpose-built, planned and managed location or spontaneous selement where
refugees are accommodated and receive assistance and services from government and
humanitarian agencies. e defining aracteristic of a camp, as highlighted in
paragraph 3.2 of the policy, is some degree of limitation on the rights and freedoms of
refugees, su as their ability to move freely, oose where to live, work or open a
business, cultivate land or access protection and services.”
41 M. Kagan, “Why Do We Still Have Refugee Camps?” Urban Refugees Debate, October 8,
2013, available at: hp://urban-refugees.org/debate/why-do-we-still-have-refugee-
camps/ [accessed December 1, 2015].
42 U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR Policy on Alternatives to Camps, July 22,
2014, UNHCR/HCP/2014/9, available at: www.refworld.org/docid/5423ded84.html
[accessed December 9, 2015].
43 Id. at ICCPR Art. 12.3.
44 U.N. Human Rights Commiee (HRC), CCPR General Comment No. 27: Article 12
(Freedom of Movement) 2 November 1999, CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.9, available at:
www.refworld.org/docid/45139c394.html [accessed December 10, 2015].
45 Human Rights Wat, Lebanon: At Least 45 Local Curfews Imposed on Syrian Refugees,
October 3, 2014, available at: www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/03/lebanon-least-45-local-
curfews-imposed-syrianrefugees [accessed January 1, 2016].
46 As identified by Jordan’s Ministry of Labor, these requirements include a valid passport,
Ministry of Interior security card, work contract, registration of employer’s business,
proof of worker’s social security subscription, and annual work permit fees.
502
47 Today’s Zaman, “Minister: Turkey Will Not Give Syrian Refugees Right to Work,”
August 8, 2015, available at: www.todayszaman.com/anasayfa_minister-turkey-will-
not-give-syrian-refugees-right-to-work_395996.html [accessed November 1, 2015].
48 E. Gurses and M. Ozkan, “Turkey Plans to Introduce Work Permits for Syrian Refugees,
Minister Says,” Reuters, Jan. 11, 2016, available at: www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-
migrants-turkey-idUSKCN0UP0QP20160111 [accessed January 11, 2016].
49 Lebanese Ministry of Labor’s 2014 Annual Report, available at:
www.labor.gov.lb/_layouts/MOL_Application/Cur/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D9%82%
D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%B1%20%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D9%86%D9%88%D9%8A%20%20
2014.pdf [accessed November 11, 2016].
50 UNHCR, Syrian Refugees in Lebanon, Snapshot Jan-Mar 2015, available at:
hp://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Syrian_Refugees_Lebanon_Snapsh
ot_Jan_Mar2015_v3_20150417.pdf [accessed November 11, 2015].
51 Interviews conducted in person by author, November 2015, Beirut, Lebanon.
52 e Nature of States Parties’ Obligations (1990), U.N. Doc. HRI/GEN/1/Rev.7, May 12,
2004at 15, para. 10, available at:
hp://tbinternet.ohr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/TBSear.aspx?
Lang=en&TreatyID=9&DocTypeID=11 [accessed November 11, 2015].
53 U.N. Commiee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), General Comment
No. 12: The Right to Adequate Food (Art. 11 of the Covenant), 12 May 1999, available at:
www.refworld.org/docid/4538838c11.html [accessed December 10, 2015].
54 U.N. General Assembly, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights, 16 December 1966, United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 993, p. 3, available at:
www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b36c0.html [accessed December 10, 2015].
55 “Syrian Refugees No Longer Receive Food Vouers,” Jordan Times, Mar 19, 2015,
available at: www.jordantimes.com/news/local/34000-syrian-refugees-no-longer-
receive-food-vouers-april [accessed November 14, 2015].
56 See 3RP, Regional Refugee & Resilience Response Plan 2016–17 In Response to the Syria
Crisis, Regional Strategic Overview, p. 31–2, available at: www.3rpsyriacrisis.org/wp-
503
content/uploads/2015/12/3RP-Regional-Overview-2016-2017.pdf [accessed September 4,
2016].
57 See 3RP, Regional Refugee & Resilience Response Plan (2016–17) in Response to the
Syria Crisis, Regional Strategic Overview, p. 31–2, available at:
www.3rpsyriacrisis.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/3RP-Regional-Overview-2016-
2017.pdf [accessed December 20, 2015].
58 U.N. General Assembly, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights, December 16, 1966, United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 993, p. 3, available at:
www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b36c0.html [accessed December 10, 2015].
59 WHO Response to the Syrian Crisis: Regional Situation Report, World Health
Organization, January 2015, available at:
www.who.int/hac/crises/syr/sitreps/syria_regional_health_sitrep_january2015.pdf
[accessed December 20, 2015].
60 See Government of Lebanon and United Nations, Lebanon Crisis Response Plan 2015–16,
available at:
hps://docs.unoa.org/sites/dms/Syria/LCRP_document_EN_26Mar2015.pdf [accessed
November 20, 2015].
61 UNHCR Jordan, Jordan Refugee Response, Vulnerability Assessment Framework Survey,
May 2015, p. 38, available at:
hp://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/vaf.pdf [accessed November 19,
2015].
62 O. Budak, “Global Migrant Crisis Requires Global Effort,” Boston Globe, November 14,
2014, available at: hps://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/11/14/global-migrant-
crisis-requires-global-effort/S4DVxSUm4NNJ9vWLhKVrpJ/story.html [accessed
December 2, 2015].
63 Save the Children, “Futures Under reat: e Impact of the Education Crisis on Syria’s
Children,” (2014), available at: www.savetheildren.org/atf/cf/%7B9def2ebe-10ae-432c-
9bd0-df91d2eba74a%7D/FUTURES_UNDER_THREAT.PDF [accessed September 4,
2016].
504
64 See General Comment No 13: e right to education (1999) U.N. Commiee on
Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, “Educational institutions and programmes have
to be accessible to everyone, without discrimination, within the jurisdiction of the state
party.”
65 CRC Article 22 “States Parties shall take appropriate measures to ensure that a ild who
is seeking refugee status or who is considered a refugee in accordance with applicable
international or domestic law and procedures shall, whether unaccompanied or
accompanied by his or her parents or by any other person, receive appropriate
protection and humanitarian assistance in the enjoyment of applicable rights set forth in
the present Convention and in other international human rights or humanitarian
instruments to whi the said States are Parties.”
66 Save the Children, “Futures Under reat: e Impact of the Education Crisis on Syria’s
Children,” 2014, available at: www.savetheildren.org/atf/cf/%7B9def2ebe-10ae-432c-
9bd0-df91d2eba74a%7D/FUTURES_UNDER_THREAT.PDF [accessed November 18,
2015].
67 3RP Regional Overview 2016-17, p. 34, available at:
hp://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/download.php?id=9937 [accessed January 1, 2016].
68 S. Gee, “When I Picture My Future, I See Nothing: Barriers to Education for Syrian
Refugee Children in Turkey,” Human Rights Watch, November 2015, available at:
www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/turkey1115_reportcover_web.pdf [accessed
December 10, 2015].
69 Interview in person with Maha Kaaa, ILO Syrian Refugee Response Coordinator for
Jordan, Beirut Lebanon, November 25, 2015.
70 A. Sen, “Born In Exile, Syrian Children Face reat of Statelessness,” UNHCR News,
November 4, 2014, available at: www.unhcr.org/5458916.html [accessed December 19,
2015].
71 Norwegian Refugee Council, “Registering Rights: Syrian Refugees and the
Documentation of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in Jordan,” 2015, available at:
www.nrc.no/ar/img.aspx?file_id=9208964&ext=.pdf [accessed February 2, 2016].
505
72 Z. Albarazi and L. Waas, “Statelessness and Displacement,” Norwegian Refugee Council
Scoping Paper, 2015, available at: www.nrc.no/ar/_img/9197390.pdf [accessed
December 20, 2015].
506
Selected Bibliography
Abisaab, J. et al. Syrian Refugees in Jordan: Urgent Issues and
Recommendations. Boston: Harvard FXB Center for Health and
Human Rights, 2014. Available at:
hps://cdn2.sph.harvard.edu/wp-
content/uploads/sites/5/2014/12/Jordan_2014-final.pdf.
Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance. Syria
Evaluation Portal for Coordinated Accountability and Lessons
Learning, available at: www.syrialearning.org/ [accessed January
29, 2016].
Akram, S. et al. Protecting Syrian Refugees: Laws, Policies, and
Global Responsibility Sharing. Boston University Law Sool
Report (July, 2014). Available at:
www.bu.edu/law/files/2015/07/FINALFullReport.pdf [accessed
February 24, 2016].
Balsari, S. et al. “Syrian Refugee Crisis: When Aid Is Not Enough” in
The Lancet (2015). Available at:
hp://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-
6736(15)60168-4/abstract [accessed April 1, 2015].
Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies—ORSAM. The Situation
of Syrian Refugees in the Neighboring Countries: Findings,
Conclusions, and Recommendations, (April, 2014). Available at:
www.syrialearning.org/resource/12433 [accessed February 23,
2016].
Erakat, N. “Overlapping Refugee Legal Regimes: Closing the
Protection Gap During Secondary Forced Displacement” in
Oxford International Journal of Refugee Law (December, 2014).
Available at:
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[accessed February 24, 2016].
Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., Loeser, G., Long, K. and Sigona, N. eds.
Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Forced Migration Review. The Syria Crisis, Displacement and
Protection, no. 47 (September, 2014). Available at:
www.fmreview.org/en/syria/syria.pdf [accessed February 24,
2016].
Goodwin-Gill, G. and McAdam, J. The Refugee in International Law.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Hamill, K. and Bartels, S. Running Out of Time: Survival of Syrian
Refugee Children in Lebanon (Harvard FXB Center for Health
and Human Rights, 2014). Available at:
hps://cdn2.sph.harvard.edu/wp-
content/uploads/sites/5/2014/01/FXB-Center-SyrianRefugees-in-
Lebanon_Released-01-13-13.pdf [accessed October 31, 2014].
Hathaway, J. ed. Human Rights and Refugee Law. Cheltenham:
Edward Elgar, 2014.
Icduygu, A. Syrian Refugees in Turkey: The Long Road Ahead.
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www.migrationpolicy.org/resear/syrianrefugees-turkey-long-
road-ahead [accessed February 22, 2016].
Kirisci, K. and Ferris, E. Not Likely to Go Home: Syrian Refugees and
the Challenges to Turkey and the International Community.
Washington D.C.: Brookings, 2015. Available at:
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anrefugee-international-allenges-ferris-kirisci/Turkey-Policy-
Paper-web.pdf?la=en [accessed February 25, 2016].
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Shibli, R. Reconfiguring Relief Mechanisms: The Syrian Refugee
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2016].
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hp://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php; 3RP Regional
Refugee Response and Resilience Plans. Available at:
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[accessed July 17, 2015].
509
Part II
Issues
510
Section V
Gender and human rights in the
Middle East and North Africa
511
15
Colliding Rights and Wrongs
Intimate labor, health, human rights, and
the state in the Gulf
Pardis Mahdavi
512
Introduction
Migrant–state encounters transform both migrants and the states
within whi they move and live. Whether in the home or host
country, migrant interactions with local and state officials affect and
are affected by migrants’ intimate lives. Juxtaposing migrants
against a reified and monolithic state eclipses the micro
opportunities made possible by state actors. is apter looks at
what happens when migrants encounter the state in its various,
personified forms. ese personified manifestations of the state
include the individuals whom migrants experience as the state or
authorities acting on behalf of or in the interests of the state, su as
embassy officials, employers, hospital staff, or law enforcement. In
these encounters, migrants have opportunities to negotiate their
agency specifically within the realm of SRRH and mobilize through
their frustrating immobility. In addition, these interactions affect
those who present them with allenges and possibilities. e
following stories of various dyads and triads, whi represent
microcosms between migrants and the state, highlight the role of
migrants’ intimate lives in producing micro mobilities and
movements. Migrants and state officials come across profound
opportunities in the small openings throughout their journeys—
whether provided, created or imposed—and find possibilities of
drawing on intimate lives to ange the immobilities of others. ese
encounters provide an opportunity to look more closely at migrants’
agency as well as the intricate workings of state power.
513
Stories from the field
Nataly, born and raised in Madagascar, always knew she wanted to
be a mother, but she never imagined that becoming a mother would
land her in jail. ough she still does not fully understand the
reasons for her imprisonment, Nataly was sent to jail in Kuwait the
moment her employers discovered her pregnancy. She was arged
on two separate counts: zina (or adultery and sex outside of
marriage) and violation of her employment contract. Nataly’s
decision to migrate to work abroad had not been an easy one, and
now her only desire is to return home to Madagascar with her baby
boy.
Working with an informal recruitment agency, Nataly had gone to
Kuwait and was placed in the home of a local Kuwaiti family. Over
time, Nataly became very close with the eldest son of her employers
named Afzal. He would sometimes take her to the movies on her
days off, and the two started sneaking into one another’s rooms in
the late hours of the evening aer the rest of the family had gone to
sleep. Nataly remembers Afzal as being kind, courteous and gentle.
“And he smelled good. It was too easy to fall in love with him,” she
added.
But when Nataly became pregnant, Afzal and the rest of the
family anged their aitudes towards her almost overnight. At first,
Nataly tried to hide her pregnancy, even from Afzal. Given her
slender frame, however, the obvious protrusion of her belly was not
easy to hide. Afzal was the first to notice. “He put his hand on my
belly and asked, ‘is this what I think?’ When I nodded, he was so
angry with me! He started yelling at me, asking me how I could have
let this happen. en that night he stopped speaking to me, forever,”
Nataly said through tears. Her employers hadn’t noticed the ange
514
in Nataly’s figure, but they noticed the ange in their son’s
behavior. Afzal, who oen wanted to take all his meals at home and
took Nataly out most weekends, was suddenly absent most of the
time. is led Nataly’s employers to question her regarding his
whereabouts. Nataly could not properly answer her employers’
questions and eventually ended up confessing her pregnancy. is
was unacceptable to her employers who turned her over to the
police, reporting her for the crimes of zina and brea of contract.
e police took Nataly to a detention center where she met over a
dozen other pregnant women. e police explained to Nataly that
she would be held in the center until her due date drew closer. She
had regular medical examinations, and when it was time for her
delivery, she was taken to a local hospital and gave birth to a baby
boy whom she named Afzal aer his father. She tried to contact her
previous employers and the baby’s father, but they never returned
her calls. A week aer she had given birth, Nataly was sent to a
different detention center. is time her suitemates were other
Malagasy and Ethiopian women who had babies. e babies were
allowed to live with them in the center, but minimal supplies were
provided. During this time Nataly was vaguely aware that she would
have to go to court and possibly face deportation. What she did not
know, however, was that if she were deported, the baby would
possibly remain in Kuwait as a stateless person if paternity were tied
to a Kuwaiti citizen.
Nataly and others in the detention center feared deportation
because it would restrict them from returning to the region and
possibly from finding work abroad ever again. One day a
representative from the Malagasy government came to visit the
women in the center. He was accompanied by a local activist and
asked to meet with all of the Malagasy women who were being held.
When they had convened, he told the women that several women
who had been deported from the detention center had approaed
the Ministry of Labor to report the situation of those being held in
515
detention against their will. Because of the collaborative efforts of
survivors and several faith-based initiatives, the government of
Madagascar had become invested in helping the women go home
without the shame of deportation. He offered all of the women
amnesty in exange for testimony about their recruiters and their
working situations abroad.
Several of the women took the official up on his offer. But Nataly
refused. “I said I didn’t want to go home if I can’t take Afzal (the
baby) with me. I’m not leaving without my son, I told them that. I
said I would rather rot in this jail, twelve women and how many
babies to one room. All of it, I would take that, but I would not go
home, no way,” Nataly explained. But Nataly felt conflicted. On the
one hand she worried for her family ba home, especially given
that she had not been paid for these many months of her labor, and
her mother and siblings could barely survive. On the other hand, she
felt that she could not leave without her son. Nataly’s story,
however, toued the government official who used her case to begin
lobbying for new laws regarding ildren of Malagasy women. Most
of the women who did not have ildren were repatriated, and a few
Malagasy women who did have babies le their ildren behind and
went home. Today, Nataly remains in jail with her son, awaiting
trial.
Fabian is a close friend of Nataly’s who also migrated from
Madagascar to Kuwait in sear of employment abroad. While their
trajectories started out in a similar fashion, and they even shared the
same jail cell for a time period in Kuwait, the outcomes of their
experiences were quite different. “Me, I don’t detest the government,
or really, the governments (les gouvernmentes), because the
governments oen help me. But the people, or really, my employer,
it’s she who detests me,” said Fabian, a slender Malagasy woman not
more than five feet tall. Fabian wore a scarf on her head because, in
her own words, “the working abroad made me si, and made me
lose my hair and all and all.” Fabian was born and raised in a rural
516
area located in the southern part of Madagascar. Aer her two
brothers were killed during violent altercations resulting from the
illegal stealing and selling of zebu, Fabian’s father decided to move
to Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar referred to as Tana by
locals, in sear of safety for his only remaining ild. When they
arrived in Tana in 2012, her aging father, who turned seventy-five
the same year, was unable to find work.
In order to support her family, Fabian sought out employment
abroad and worked through an unlicensed recruiting agency. e
agency turned Fabian over to their partnering agency in Kuwait.
When she arrived, the staff at the partnering agency told her that she
was on a tourist visa, as opposed to a working visa, and that she
should keep a low profile due to the fact that her migration had been
illegal. “at is the first time I’m hearing that I’m there illegally.
Later I come to learn that Malagae [Malagasy] women are not
supposed to go to the Middle East, for this reason I’m just given a
tourist visa, but then I didn’t know exactly,” she explained1. Fabian
was placed in the home of a Kuwaiti family who insisted that she
wear a veil that covered her from head to toe, only revealing her
hands and face. She was given a very small room where she was
made to sleep on the floor but was only permied three to four
hours of sleep ea night. She spent her waking hours cleaning the
five-story house whi had several rooms on ea floor. Fabian did
not have a lot of experience with domestic work, so it took her some
time to learn how to work efficiently.
Shortly aer Fabian’s arrival, her female employer began giving
her shots twice a week. To this day, Fabian does not know what
exactly was contained in the shots, but she explained that aer the
shots her muscles hurt, her hands trembled, and she could not sleep.
“e madam is telling me I must do the shots for no babies, and for
more energy so I work beer, but my body cannot support the
shots,” Fabian said, referring to the fact that she began to have
epilepsy aer receiving these unidentified injections. Later, Fabian’s
517
doctor told me that he suspected that the shots were some
combination of contraceptives and B-12 energy shots, but he could
not be sure. Five other migrant women who worked as domestic
workers in the Gulf also reported receiving these injections.
One evening, the male head of household returned from work to
find his wife beating Fabian so severely that Fabian began
hemorrhaging. Fabian’s male employer began to beat his wife and
loed her in their bedroom. Aerwards, he came to Fabian and
offered her money. “He came and said to me, ‘Fabian, you must
leave here, if not, my wife will kill you. She is a very jealous woman,
and she will hurt you. You must go.’ But I was too weak. He saw
then that I’m very si. So I try to rest some days, but I keep the
money he gave me and I keep the idea,” Fabian explained. One night
a few weeks later, Fabian exited the house under the pretense of
taking out the trash. “at night, I took out the trash and never came
ba,” she said with a slight laugh, revealing a warm smile that I had
never seen before.
She was not sure of where to go but knew she wanted to avoid the
police because she had migrated illegally. When an Ethiopian taxi
driver offered her a ride, asking her if she wanted to go to the police
or the hospital, she asked him to take her to the South African
embassy. “I don’t know why I’m saying South African embassy, just
I have a feeling that there they can help me,” Fabian recalled, smiling
once again at the decision she had made some months ago. She
arrived at the South African embassy just aer midnight, and the
embassy was closed. e taxi driver, however, recognized the
security guard at the entrance and convinced him to allow Fabian to
spend the night in the security booth. She was grateful for the help,
and glad to have a place to rest as her health worsened.
e next day she went inside the South African embassy and was
able to speak with the labor aaé despite not being a South
African citizen. “He was so kind and helped me. He took me to the
shelter and said that he would look aer me, whi he did,” Fabian
518
explained. She was taken to a local shelter run by the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs in Kuwait. e shelter housed over 130 women of
different nationalities, most of whom had run away from their
employers, and a caseworker would visit and work with the women.
“ere, the shelter, it was ok, but like a prison. Not mu to do, eat
and sleep, and you can’t leave. And you are just siing there,
waiting and waiting,” added Fabian. e labor aaé from the
South African embassy came to visit her aer a few weeks and
observed Fabian’s worsening health. He told her that he was
working on finding her passport and resolving her paperwork so that
she could return to Madagascar. “He asked me if I am happy at the
shelter, but he can see that I’m geing more and more si. So he
calls Mama Lisa from the ur and she comes to take me to
another, beer place, in the ur, where I have doctors,” Fabian
said, pulling out a photograph of her siing in front of a decorated
Christmas tree inside a Kuwaiti apartment with four other African
women.
Fabian met several other women in similar situations at Mama
Lisa’s informal shelter, many who had been waiting months, even
years to return home. Aer six weeks, however, the South African
labor aaé came once again to visit her. He told her that he had
worked with the Ministry of Foreign affairs in Kuwait and had been
able to create an outpass for her and procure a tiet ba home2.
e Kuwaiti government paid for her tiet and also issued her a
e for ba pay that she had not received for many months.
“ey were so kind to me, the South Africans and the Kuwaitis, so
kind, they helped me to come home. ey were worried for me, you
know, because I’m si, so they really wanted to get me home,” she
recalled, happily.
When she arrived in Madagascar, however, she did not receive a
warm reception from the customs and immigration personnel at the
airport. Several policemen took her to a holding room and
questioned her for many hours. She was told that she had violated a
519
Malagasy law that prevents Malagasy citizens from migrating to
work in the Middle East. A police officer told Fabian that she could
face arrest and heavy fines for having violated the law. “But even
this police, he could see I am si, that I need help. So, thankfully, he
called my Pastor instead of arresting me. en my Pastor came and
took me to the ur, I am so luy,” she said. Fabian spent a week
living in the informal shelter at the ur in Antananarivo before
going home to her father who was now very ill. Fabian’s Pastor
arranged for her to have regular medical eups, but she could not
afford the medical care that her doctor prescribed.
Today, Fabian struggles to support her own and her father’s
medical bills. She is working with another survivor to open a
clothing shop in Tana and has successfully secured a loan from the
ur. Most importantly, Fabian’s case and the cases of six other
Malagasy women who migrated to Kuwait and faced abuse have
actually inspired the creation of a new human traffiing law draed
in August of 2014. Her return and her ability to narrate her story,
complete with the allenges posed by the agencies and her
employers as well as the help she received from embassy officials
and the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Kuwait, has forced the
Malagasy government to re-think their law. Rather than banning
women from migrating to the Middle East, the government now
seeks to regulate migration and to ensure the presence of Malagasy
officials in ea country where citizens may travel to work. Fabian is
currently working with her pastor and her fellow survivors to
influence the new law being draed by the Ministry of Justice that
will take into consideration their lived experiences and concerns.
e stories above reveal the complex interconnections between
sexual and reproductive rights, health, migrant labor, and the role of
the ‘state.’ e selective giving and withholding of sexual and
reproductive health services constitute an obvious violation of
human rights for intimate laborers in the Gulf. Both Nataly and
Fabian experienced violations of their human rights as a result of
520
various health interventions (or la thereof). But both women were
also able to navigate through these allenges—albeit with differing
results—through their encounters with different personifications of
the state. In this apter, I argue that the intersections of health and
human rights in the intimate lives of migrant laborers reveal
multiple layers of complexity in migrant encounters with the ‘state.’
Examining the contours of these migrant–state encounters allows for
an exploration of migrant subjectivity as well as transformations
within the ‘state.’ Looking at the impacts of migrants on the state
(not just vice versa) foregrounds the possibilities for anging the
human rights discourse around the intimate lives of laborers.
Conversations about intimate labor and human rights in the Gulf
tend to focus on the problematically reified issue of human
traffiing3. Currently, the dominant framing of human traffiing
focuses almost exclusively on the sex industry to the detriment of
sex workers and other types of migrant laborers alike. An increased
international focus on human traffiing, traced through Hollywood
films, journalistic exposés, corporate investment, and policies, has
hijaed the human rights discourse pertaining to migrant labor in
the Gulf. Instead of understanding the context of lived experiences,
the many layers of allenges that migrants in all industries face,
and the multiple roles of the ‘state,’ the current framework of human
traffiing constructs stark oppositional binaries: migrants vs. the
state, employers vs. employees, sex workers vs. other (intimate)
laborers. When this human rights discourse becomes equated to the
broader human rights discourse, it obscures more than it reveals. e
binaries listed above, and indeed the oppositional nature of the
discourse, crudely simplify multidimensional encounters and
decisions. Instead, lived experiences of both migrants and various
arms of the state tend to be more fluid. us, a similarly fluid human
rights discourse that anowledges the many layers of nuance is
needed in order to help migrants overcome the obstacles that they
do face. In particular, the arena of health and human rights can
521
illuminate the flexible role of the state and the possibilities for
ange that can come about from a modified human rights
framework less focused on moral panic and more grounded in lived
experience.
As one of my interlocutors asked me, “but who or what is the
state?” Rather than a monolithic, reified or static construction, the
state here can refer to the many different facets—human,
bureaucratic, and political—of operating power. When talking about
migrant encounters with the state, I’m referring to both home and
host countries, as I follow migrants through the cycles of
interactions they have with state actors, citizens, migrant networks,
and home communities. Rather than one monolithic entity that
affects all individuals the same, different individuals, citizens and
non-citizens, experience the state in a myriad of ways. Legal, formal,
or academic notions of the state differ from that whi migrants
experience at home and abroad. Various operators of the same state
can also work at odds with one another. While some operators of the
state may facilitate access to sexual and reproductive rights and
health (SRRH), others restrict and allenge migrants’ ability to
access SRRH and in some cases pose direct harm to their wellbeing.
Fabian experienced both tendencies. On one hand, her employer,
operating as her sponsor, made Fabian adhere to an unhealthy work
sedule, made decisions about Fabian’s body, and inflicted physical
harm. On the other hand, the Kuwaiti sponsored shelter and
caseworker gave Fabian space to recover and connected her with
resources that could provide more appropriate healthcare.
Both of the women whose stories began this apter faced
significant rights violations regarding sexual and reproductive
health. Nataly was imprisoned as a direct result of not being able to
access sexual health services. Fabian’s rights were violated as her
female employer forcefully injected her with contraceptives and
other unidentified substances. But academia and popular discourse
rarely examine the SRRH of migrant women in the Gulf. Intimate
522
labor tends to be the predominant lens of analysis through a
traffiing framework; however, the intimate lives of intimate
laborers reveal both obstacles to and possibilities for empowering
intimate laborers and advancing conversations about the human
rights of migrants in the Gulf.
Migrant women’s sexualities have been eclipsed both discursively
and politically, whi both corresponds and contrasts with the
hyper-regulation of women’s bodies and reproductive capacities.
Migrant women in the Gulf are contractually bound to celibacy.
Engaging in sexual activity (or even being suspected of engaging in
sexual activity), even if it does not result in visible pregnancy, is
grounds for termination, deportation, and oen incarceration.
Migrant women who become pregnant while in the Gulf are
immediately imprisoned and also arged with the crime of zina4.
Women face criminal arges for breaking their contracts and are
subject to heavy fines, and women who migrated illegally are
further subject to worse penalties when arrested for suspected sexual
activity. To compound their already precarious legal situations,
migrant women are also arged with the crime of zina, or sex
outside of marriage. Ziba Mir-Hosseini, in a powerful article entitled
“Criminalizing Sexuality: Zina Laws as Violence Against Women in
Muslim Contexts” (2010), outlines the ways in whi zina has been
used to regulate and criminalize female sexuality leading both to
physical and structural violence. In the case of migrant women in
the Gulf, the deployment of zina laws reinforces the regulation of
migrant women’s sexuality also codified through labor laws su as
the kefala system. Other solars have emphasized the structural
violence inherent in the kefala system5. But many women, even
those who migrate informally or abscond in order to circumvent the
kefala system, still experience the violence of discursive and political
regulation of their bodies. rough a combination of kefala and zina
laws, women are subject to what De Genova and Peutz term a
523
“deportation regime” wherein women’s deportability (deportation or
the possibility of forced removal) is tethered to their sexualities6.
Women are painted as hypersexual and in need of regulation both
discursively and legally. In sending countries, anxieties about
migrant women’s sexualities manifest in the form of rumors or the
emasculation of men who stay behind7. In receiving countries, laws
that criminalize migrant women’s sexualities respond to and
perpetuate discourses about the need to control migrant women
because of their sexualities. Frequently employers cite these
discourses as reasons for not allowing their female employees out of
the house unaccompanied. Female employers also perpetuate this
fear by categorizing migrant women as threats and seek to control
them through the regulation of their movements, activities, and
bodies. In response to these anxieties, laws and policies aim to strip
women of their sexualities by forcing celibacy and punishing
deviance8. Part of the punishment for many women entails forced
separation from their babies, as they are deemed immoral and
“unfit” to parent given their status as “criminals.” Many women are
forcibly deported without their babies.
Foucault’s notion of biopower helps describe the contours of the
lives of women, su as Nataly and Fabian, whose bodies are
managed by a whole host of actors within their home and host
states. In particular, biopower emphasizes a regulation of the
reproductive capacities of women, focusing on who can reproduce
and under what conditions. Biopower continues operating through
the bodies of female intimate laborers as the state (including, again,
how migrants experience the state through individuals like their
employers) regulates their movements, locales, and statuses, purely
because of their genealogy. Women workers experience regulation
from employers and state surveillance of their bodies as a source of
constraint. Mothers and ildren experience constraint as various
factions of the state exert biopolitical management semes to
control the existence of these “foreign” bodies within their borders.
524
In struggling to aain their SRRH, migrants work with and against
various arms of the state to allenge current legal frameworks and
look for new solutions. ese migrant–state encounters have the
possibility to provide a road map for a way forward in helping
migrant intimate laborers aieve their rights.
525
Regulate, discipline, punish
Migrant workers are oen subject to two, incongruent levels of
policing and disciplining. e first level involves state laws,
including labor laws (and la thereof) and the sponsorship or kefala
system. e second level of discipline comes from the kafeels or
sponsors themselves, who oen do not abide by state laws. Kafeels
take the form of large corporations or private employers in the
home, and while there are rules outlining humanitarian treatment of
workers, including laws against retaining passports and not
providing days off, many sponsors take it upon themselves to
discipline their employees. Many employees do not agitate for their
wages or report abuse out of fear of the harm that will come to their
families, deportation, or detention, and so these employers continue
to violate migrant workers’ rights, resulting in traffiing-like
experiences.
UAE and Kuwaiti laws regarding abortion and pregnancy outside
of marriage further complicate the situation for many workers. Even
though female domestic workers in particular do not have rights or
access to women’s health or family planning services, their
pregnancies can be cause for immediate termination of their
contracts and subsequent deportation. Islamic law as interpreted in
the GCC strictly prohibits abortion unless it is to save the life of the
mother or if the baby will be born with serious genetic defects and
likely will not survive.
Pregnancy outside of marriage is not permied. Although migrant
women who become pregnant while in the host country are
encouraged to return to their home countries to deliver their
ildren, if they can not finance their own return travel they may be
held in detention. Several of my interlocutors did not have their
526
passports or working papers, whi made returning home difficult.
Some women do not wish to return to their home countries for
reasons including fear of family stigma, fear of returning without
money to pay ba their family or their own debts, or a general
preference to remain abroad. In these cases, the women become
immediately undocumented, and their ildren are placed in a
precarious position. Women who are domestic workers are
imprisoned both for zina and brea of contract.
Tropes about race, class and gender as articulated in the UAE and
Kuwait are important in marginalizing or privileging migrant
workers and their narratives. Racial hieraries play a role in the
construction of local discourses about migrant women’s sexualities
and reproductive capabilities. State policies about reproduction and
family reunification for non-citizens reflect anxieties about migrant
women (especially women from certain socioeconomic bagrounds)
as mothers, fueled by concerns about demographics and racial
purity. As is clear from the language in the laws, unmarried migrant
workers are encouraged (and this encouragement is enforced) to
return to their home countries to have their ildren in order to
remain in accordance with Sharia law. Women who are pregnant
and wish to get married in-country are encouraged to do so but
many times are not able to retain their employment and/or cannot
live with their new spouses because living arrangements are oen
tied to employers. For married couples who are not citizens, the
criteria for filing for a residency permit for a baby are numerous and
accompanied by high costs and bureaucratic red tape. A close look at
the requirements reveals the allenges in aaining su a permit in
the case of tenuous relationships with employers/sponsors and the
allenges in procuring a passport for the baby. If these requirements
are not met, and the parents fail to file the necessary paperwork for
their newborn ild within 120 days of the birth, the ild will not be
permied to leave the country and the parents or legal guardian
527
must pay a fee of 100 AED (equivalent to $25 USD) for ea day over
the 120-day period.
In actuality, most women cannot finance their journeys home nor
are they always aware of laws pertaining to zina. Many are arrested
and imprisoned before they have a ance to file for paternity or
complete the necessary paperwork for their families. Navigating the
bureaucratic red tape of citizenship can be a triy process for many
women. Experiences vary at sending-country embassies. While some
women report receiving assistance at their embassies and procuring
white papers for their ildren to travel home with them, others
report no help and, in some cases, further incarceration. I personally
witnessed this when spending time at various embassies in Kuwait
and the UAE. While the embassy of the Philippines was invested in
providing assistance to migrant women and allowing them to
remain at their shelter with their ildren, the Indian embassy was
not able to provide mu assistance. To be fair, citizenship transfer
laws in the Philippines allow for ildren of Filipinas to become
citizens right away, thus facilitating the procurement of papers for
the women who were able to avoid or break out of incarceration.
e Indian labor aaé’s hands were tied because of home country
pressures not to extend citizenship benefits to the ildren of Indian
women who are deemed ‘immoral.’
Various arms of the state constantly survey women’s bodies,
sexualities, and reproductive capacities. In both home and host
countries, this surveillance takes the form of laws that contractually
bind female domestic workers to celibacy while they are abroad
(oen during their most fertile years) as well as laws permiing
employers to monitor their (female) employees’ health and sexual
activity. Discourses in home and host countries paint women as
hypersexual by influencing policies that curtail the movements of
migrant women inside and outside the home. Examples of these
discourses include those articulated by weary employers in the Gulf
who narrate their domestic workers as constant sexual threats inside
528
their homes. Many female employers assume promiscuity on the
part of their domestic workers, casting them as sexual predators, and
accusing them of seducing the various men in the household. Other
employers use narratives of domestic worker promiscuity and
hypersexuality to legitimate their decisions not to allow their
employees out of the house unaccompanied or denying them a
cellular phone. at women who are imported to perform intimate,
reproductive labor are excluded from reproducing themselves is also
a testament to Marxian analysis of alienation of the self.9 Migrant
women who are legally prohibited from reproducing while working
experience a type of immobilization of their intimate and family
lives whi sometimes corresponds with the physical immobility
that can result from violating these laws. Contractually sterilizing
intimate laborers in the Gulf, involving continuous healthcare
screenings and es, also opens the door to the possibility of
forced contraception, as was the case of Fabian.
Some migrants face allenges to their SRRH while abroad, but
receive assistance and support when they return home. Several of
my interviewees commented on the irony of a state that was not
invested in their rights before their migratory journeys, but they
were pleasantly surprised to see their home states seeking to meet
their needs. is is likely because different arms of the state act in
these different capacities; one arm of the state needs to send its
citizens abroad for remiances, while another arm of the state is
invested in protecting the rights of its citizens. When the question of
SRRH is brought to the fore, the home state in particular steps in to
help alleviate rights violations experienced by the migrant women
that it previously sent abroad with lile protection.
529
Conclusion: migrants, intimacy, SRRH, and
the state
Multiple layers of allenges and opportunities can be observed
when looking at interactions between migrants and the state with a
focus on SRRH. Legally, migrants are contractually sterilized, leading
to a simultaneous hypersexualization of female laborers and erasure
of their sexualities. How host countries operationalize these laws
and what can be observed in home country responses reveals mu
about the grey areas and room for possible movement and
strengthening of rights in this important area of migrant women’s
lives. e variability of employers and the willingness of hospital
staff, embassies, or informal NGOs to assist migrant women are
important aspects of subjectivity formation for migrant women. At
the same time, the transformations that take place at the state level—
in both sending and receiving countries—should not be overlooked.
e arena of SRRH may be an important intervention point wherein
sending countries can push for rights and reform for their citizens in
the Gulf. It is also an opportunity to highlight the intimate lives of
intimate laborers that are so oen eclipsed in narrow portraits of
their lives.
Migrants—both men and women—are transformed by their
experiences working in the Gulf. eir intimate lives and selves
ange, and they face both allenges and opportunities for
emotional, social, and economic mobility. But it is also important to
note the ways that migrants transform the states between whi
they move, particularly within the realm of SRRH. Sending country
officials may wish to lobby their governments to enact ange and
protect the SRRH of their citizens. Receiving country employers or
hospital staff may be open to safe guarding the SRRH of migrant
530
women, even if they are not invested in protecting other aspects of
their rights. e arena of SRRH presents an opportunity for dialogue
that incorporates, and even foregrounds, migrant women’s voices
and lived experiences, not just between sending and receiving
countries at the state level, but globally as well. ese micro
movements and spaces that can be observed in migrant–state
microcosms and encounters become the foundations for larger
conversations not only about SRRH but also about human rights at
large and should not be overlooked.
As my ethnographic resear has shown, the relationship between
sexual and reproductive rights, health, migrant labor, and the role of
the ‘state’ is both complex, and also anging in possibly positive
ways. It is true that many migrants experience violations of their
rights, particularly in the arena of SRRH, but it is also true that
many are also able to navigate through these allenges through
their encounters with different personifications of the state. e
intersections of health and human rights in the intimate lives of
migrant laborers reveal multiple layers of complexity in migrant
encounters with the ‘state’ and it is in these micro movements that
migrant subjectivity, and transformations of the state can be beer
understood. Most importantly, understanding the impacts of
migrants on the state (not just vice versa) foregrounds the
possibilities for anging the human rights discourse around the
intimate lives of laborers, a conversation that is mu needed and
can be a powerful agent for ange for migrants and states alike.
531
Notes
1 See the Freedom of Movement section of the U.S. Department of State’s 1993 Human
Rights Practices report on Madagascar. U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy,
Human Rights, and Labor, Madagascar Human Rights Practices, 1993 (January 31, 1994).
Accessed May 15, 2014.
hp://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/democracy/1993_hrp_report/93hrp_report_africa/Madagas
car.html.
2 An “outpass” is essentially documentation that allows migrants to exit the host country
without their passports. ese are usually created by migrant’s own embassies, but in
this case, because there is no Malagasy embassy in Kuwait, the South African embassy
was able to step in and assist Fabian.
3 For more in-depth discussion of the production of moral panic, an idea drawn from the
work of Stanley Cohen, around human traffiing especially in the Gulf, please see
Mahdavi (2011 or 2013).
4 Zina is the act of unlawful sex outside of marriage, including both premarital and
extramarital sexual relations. is law is established within Sharia law, whi is a
religious and moral code followed and combined with secular law in the GCC and other
countries. Sharia law mandates two means of proving zina: either the person who
commied zina confess or four eyewitnesses testify. However, when an unmarried
woman becomes pregnant, her pregnancy can be used to prove that she has commied
zina. Laws on zina drastically affect migrant women because they are women and
generally la citizenship within the GCC. Many migrant women are married, but their
husbands reside in another country. e use of pregnancy to prove zina ignores issues
of rape within the workplace and denies women sexual autonomy. Because of these
issues, pregnancy is considered circumstantial proof and is hotly debated. Zina may not
be directly cited within secular law, but the combination of Shaira law and civil law
within judicial systems makes zina present. In the UAE, the Federal Penal Code includes
provisions of Sharia law. Article 345, on rape, states that anyone who uses coercion to
532
have sexual intercourse with a female or homosexual relations with a male will be
sentenced to the death penalty. is article does not make direct mention of zina but is
cited in relation to laws concerning sex outside of marriage. is would seem to protect
survivors of rape from being arged with zina, and if they are migrants, from being
deported. is law combined with the use of pregnancy to prove zina ignores the
nuance and situational power dynamics that occur especially within an
employer/employee relationship. e article also states that coercion will be considered
existent if the victim is below the age of fourteen.
5 See Gardner (2008) and Longva (1999).
6 Niolas De Genova and Natalie Peutz, eds., The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty,
Space, and the Freedom of Movement (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).
7 See Osella and Osella (2012).
8 See Ong (2006).
9 See Marx and Engels (1848).
533
Selected Bibliography
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Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
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diasporic elite in contemporary Bahrain” in City & Society vol.
20, no. 1, 54–78. doi: 10.1111/j.1548-744X.2008.00005.x.
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Persian Gulf, edited by Zahra Babar and Mehran Kamrava, 105–
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