This Opinion was originally posted on Freedom House’s “Freedom at Issue” blog on June 21, 2012.
Originally posted October 2010
This second edition of the MEI Viewpoints series on Higher Education and the Middle East focuses on Empowering Under-served and Vulnerable Populations.
The cacophony of bullhorns, fireworks and frenzied cross-country barnstorming in trucks, busses and three-wheeled “tuk-tuks” emblazoned with candidates’ posters has come to an end, and a historic moment has arrived: tens of millions of Egyptians are heading to the polls today in the first democratic presidential election in the country’s history, an election borne out of the 2011 revolution that ousted former President Hosni Mubarak and injected Egyptians with a novel feeling of excitement for participatory democracy.
This Opnion first appeared in the Huffington Post on May 11, 2012.
Over the last decade, the dispute over the future status of the Western Sahara territory, which has set Morocco and the Algeria-backed pro-independence Polisario front in opposition, has entered a qualitatively new phase. This is due to attempts at finding a negotiated outcome instead of the long-delayed self-determination referendum. The idea of a political solution to break a twice deadlocked (1997 and 2000) UN self-determination referendum for the Western Sahara territory has steadily revived the prospect of autonomous status for the territory within Moroccan jurisdiction.
Originally posted May 2010
Originally posted May 2010
Originally posted May 2010
Originally posted February 2011
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Dr. Makram-Ebeid, along with ten other liberal and leftists members, recently resigned from Egypt's Constituent Assembly in protest over its Islamist majority, leaving only five women and five Christians remaining in the assembly. With the transition process in turmoil, a diverse coalition of Egyptian generals, liberals, bureaucrats, and judges are turning to the courts to attempt to diversify the composition of the Constituent Assembly, which is currently almost entirely dominated by Islamists – both Salafists and members of the Muslim Brotherhood.
MEI Podcast, 1 May, 2012, Egypt’s Troubled Transition, Dr. Mona Makram-Ebeid
MEI Podcast, 1 May, 2012, Egypt’s Troubled Transition, Dr. Mona Makram-Ebeid
MEI Podcast, 1 May, 2012, Egypt’s Troubled Transition, Dr. Mona Makram-Ebeid
MEI Podcast, 1 May, 2012, Egypt’s Troubled Transition, Dr. Mona Makram-Ebeid