Human rights and the Arab spring : some preliminary reflections

Abstract

The human rights situation on the southern Mediterranean littoral was for the past forty years characterized by paralysis and the received wisdom has been that there could be no change. This aura of stasis was defined by a number of factors including:(i) a perception that human rights were a Western concept, a perception fortified by the presentation of the human rights agenda as ‘foreign interference’ by certain secular and religious authorities; (ii) a suggestion that, in some ways, a number of human rights principles were incompatible with the dominant religion in the region; (iii) seemingly unassailable authoritarian leaders whose power was rooted in control of the military, the power of patronage as well as tacit or explicit support from the USA, the EU or, in the case of certain countries in the Levantine rim of the Mediterranean, Iran; and (iv) a general climate of instability due to the perpetuation of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict and related tensions.