Resources

Advocacy aims at creating or changing policies, laws, regulations, distribution of resources or other decisions that affect people’s lives and to ensure that such decisions lead to implementation. Such advocacy is generally directed at policy makers including politicians, government officials and public servants, but also private sector leaders whose decisions impact upon people’s lives, as well as those whose opinions and actions influence policy makers, such as journalists and the media. Advocacy proved to be integral part for organizations (CSO's) working on ending violence against women in...

Advocacy aims at creating or changing policies, laws, regulations, distribution of resources or other decisions that affect people’s lives and to ensure that such decisions lead to implementation. Such advocacy is generally directed at policy makers including politicians, government officials and public servants, but also private sector leaders whose decisions impact upon people’s lives, as well as those whose opinions and actions influence policy makers, such as journalists and the media. Advocacy proved to be integral part for organizations (CSO's) working on ending violence against women in...

Research Report | June 2013
Arab States and UN Human Rights Mechanisms by Fateh Azzam
The revolts that have rocked the Arab region in 2011 have focused on demands for dignity, social and economic justice, and political freedoms. As the protests unfolded and spread from one country to another, their chants gained remarkable consistency in their rejection of unaccountable leadership and exclusionary economic and development policies that had failed for decades. The revolts were a wake-up call to all those concerned with politics and development in the region, that development can no longer be...

Working Paper | March 2013
Lebanon: The Legacy of Sectarian Consociationalism and the Transition to a Fully-Fledged Democracy by Samir Makdisi and Youssef El-Khalil
Since independence in 1943 Lebanon’s political system has been based on a power sharing arrangement among its religious communities. Referred to as a consociational democracy, it was embedded in an unwritten national pact by the leaders of the independence movement which specified the division of parliamentary seats among the Christian and Muslim communities on the basis of a six to five ratio in favor of the Christian community.3...

Background Paper | March 2013
“Nabiha 5”: A Kuwaiti Youth Movement for Political Reform by F. Gregory Gause III
Among Arab states Kuwait is a leader in terms of political freedoms and the importance of its civil society organizations. Thus it should not be surprising that one of the few successful Arab youth movements advocating political reform should have arisen in the country. The success of the “Nabiha 5” movement (Kuwaiti colloquial Arabic for “we want it to be five”) in bringing about the change in the Kuwaiti electoral system from a 25 district to a 5 district configuration certainly...

ملخص نقاش | شباط 2013 
الطاولة المستديرة الثانية لـ"معهد عصام فارس" حول "الدولة المدنية" و"الربيع العربي
استكمل "معهد عصام فارس للسياسات العامة والشؤون الدولية" ما بدأه من بحث في مفهوم "الدولة المدنية"، خصوصاً بعد تطورات طاولت أكثر من بلد عربي. ولهذا الهدف، كان المعهد قد نظّم، في أيلول )سبتمبر( الماضي، طاولة مستديرة جمعت أكاديميين وباحثين وعاملين في الشأن العام، في محاولة لوضع أسس علمية لهذا المفهوم الذي قد يبدو إشكالياً وحديثاً في التداول العربي. والحاجة لبحث هذا المفهوم تزداد بعد جدل مستمر في بعض الدول، حول مواد معينة من الدستور تتعلق بدور الدين في الحياة العامة وما إذا كانت الشريعة مصدراً...

Summary | February 2013
Summary Report of the 2nd Roundtable Discussion on the “Civil State” Discourse
Within the framework of the Arab Public Policy Roundtable, a second session on the civil state was organized on February 21st after the first roundtable was held in September. Number of academicians and researchers participated in this session, which aimed at discussing the aspired nature of states in light of current events happening in the Arab World nowadays.
Discussion around this topic gains considerably increasing momentum in light of the current debate over the role of religion in...

The Foundation & UNHABITAT analyzed the row results of  the Municipal Observatory (MO) which is a tool that aims at evaluating the performance of the Lebanese municipalities through four different aspects:

1. Administration & Management;
2. Financial Resources;
3. Governance; and
4. Municipal Development & Services

The questionnaire contains a total of 84 questions distributed across 6 sections. Those questionnaires were filled by the “Municipal Guides”, a group of municipal employees established within the context of the UN-Habitat Decentralization Project implemented in partnership with the...

تواصلت خلال عام 2012 حالات الاعتداء على العمال السوريين في أنحاء مختلفة من لبنان، من البقاع إلى الجبل ومن الشمال إلى الجنوب مرورا بالعاصمة وضواحيها. وتشي الحالات التي تم رصدها، أن الاعتداءات ضد العمال الأجانب، والسوريين بشكل خاص، ليست بحالات فردية ومعزولة بل تأتي ضمن سياق عام من التحريض العنصري ضد هذه الفئة بالتحديد. وقد رصد "المرصد اللبناني لحقوق العمال والموظفين" في هذا الإطار 29 حالة عنف موثقة ضد عمال سوريين، من خطف وعنف جسدي وسلب. هذا، وبقي المعتدين في معظم الحالات مجهولي الهوية، مما حال دون سوقهم من قبل السلطات اللبنانية إلى العدالة فضلاً عن تقصير الحكومة في اتخاذ التدابير التي من شأنها...

This report was prepared by ANND in cooperation with its member from 10 Arab countries. It is considered a result of the new direction that was followed after the revolution outbreak in the region. It is the first report of the Arab Watch for social and economic rights.

This resource, published by Oxfam in 2013, aims to present standards that were originally developed for Oxfam staff to ensure a consistent approach to promoting gender equality in humanitarian preparedness and response programming.

Working Paper | December 2012
Production of Norms and Securitization in Development Policies: From Human Security to Security Sector Reform by Penelope Larzilliere 
Several regional products have been very successful as region-based products, such as Saudi Dates, Jordanian Thyme, Syrian Barazi, Egyptian Foul Mdamas, and Lebanese Chick Pea paste (Homos Tahini). These trends of regionbased, Geographic indicator (GI) and governmental labeled products are considered to be an added value to agroindustrial sector, and are highly efficient tactics to increase small and medium-sized enterprises (SME’s...

يهدف هذا الدليل إلى تزويد القادة المحليين بمقترحات عملية وشاملة لتعزيز جهودهم في مجال الوقاية من النزاعات في السياق المحلي. يتوجه هذا الدليل إلى الأفراد الذين يضطلعون بدور هام في مجتمعاتهم المحلية علمًا أن القادة المحليين قادرين على لعب دور إيجابي في الحفاظ على العلاقات الودية ما بين المجموعات المختلفة. قد يشمل هؤلاء المحافظين والمخاتير والقادة الروحيين المحليين وأعضاء الأحزاب والكبار في السن ووجهاء العائلات والمؤرخين والصحافيين وأساتذة المدارس ورؤساء المدارس وأي شخصية تحظى باحترام الآخرين. لا يحتاج هؤلاء بالضرورة أن يكونوا من كبار المسؤولين الحكوميين أو السياسيين أو المراجع الدينية أو رواد...

This guide is intended to provide local actors with practical and comprehensive suggestions for enhancing their efforts in violence prevention in the local context. It is designed for people involved locally in their communities. Local leaders can have a positive role in maintaining cordial inter-group relationships. They can be mayors, mukhtars, local religious leaders, party members, elders, family leaders, historians, journalists, school teachers, and school headmasters—virtually anyone who is respected by others. People need not be high-ranking government officials, politicians, religious...

Summary | September 2012
The Question of the 'Civil State': An Arab Public Policy Roundtable Discussion in Light of the Arab Uprisings
On September 4, 2012, the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IFI) at the American University of Beirut (AUB) convened a roundtable discussion on the 'Civil State'. A highly topical subject due to recent Arab uprisings, IFI and the participants hoped that ideas tabled during the discussion would generate further research and working papers. It was also hoped that the discussion could provide the inspiration for a more...

2012 ملخص |  أيلول
"​طاولة مستديرة حول السياسات العامة العربية نظمها معهد عصام فارس: إشكاليات "الدولة المدنية" في ظل "الربيع العربي
دعا معهد عصام فارس للسياسات العامة و الشؤون الدولية في الجامعة الأميركية في بيروت ، إلى "طاولة  مستديرة حول السياسات العامة العربية

Summary Booklet | June 2012 Arab Uprisings Symposium Summary Critically Assessing the Changing Landscape of Power and Players IFI by Maureen Ali This symposium is part of the AUB-wide Arab Uprisings Research Initiative, which was launched and is supported by the Office of the Provost and managed by the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs. AUB has invited over twenty scholars from the Arab world and abroad to this Symposium to discuss critical themes that have emerged to date, and to help shape our future research agenda. The symposium will highlight shifting power...

Paper | June 2012
Beyond a Seat in the United Nations: Palestine’s U.N. Membership and International Law by Martin Wählisch 
Looking from the speaker’s podium, Palestine’s seat in the United Nations (U.N.) General Assembly Hall is at the very left corner in the last row for delegations. The wooden desk and ocher-blue chairs are like any other of the interior from the 1950s, including the grey plastic headphones. Only one element is missing: the green, red, and yellow voting buttons, which are replaced with a silver metal plate. Other permanent observers, such as international and non...

Author: Clairissa RadykoLebanese Emigration Research Center   SYNOPSIS: The author analyzes American migration policy toward Lebanon as it changed in tandem with the events that have unfolded in Lebanon since 1975 in order to understand what impact each factor played in shaping actual Lebanese migration to the United States. Certain events endogenous to Lebanon have served as push factors in the course of Lebanese migration to the United States, but American immigration policy has played, as well, a prominent role in determining the levels of actual migration. The result of these mutual...

Working Paper | May 2012
Women’s Citizenship Rights in Lebanon by Maya W. Mansour and Sarah G. Abou Aad
This paper tackles citizenship rights of Lebanese women married to foreigners, from an international human rights perspective at first, as consecrated over and over by multiple conventions and treaties; to move afterwards to a more practical approach in exposing the provisions of the Lebanese Constitution, the nationality law and regulations, while pointing out the consequences and challenges in addition to the movements of the civil society facing such trials. The analysis used in...