Event Roundup

Safadi Foundation USA and Project on Middle East Democracy held an event entitled "The Role of New Media in Promoting Reform in the Middle East: The Case of Lebanon" last Friday. You can read about the event on POMED's blog here.

POMED-Safadi Foundation USA Event

You're Invited: New Media and Reform in the Middle East: The Case of Lebanon

Safadi Foundation USA and the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) present:

New Media and Reform in the Middle East: The Case of Lebanon

The year 2009 witnessed an explosion of Internet-based activism in the political cultures of the Middle East. From the so-called Iranian "Twitter Revolution," which helped Green Movement activists mobilize and organize their protests on the streets of Tehran, to the recent imprisonment of prominent bloggers in Egypt and other countries, the Internet has finally become a force to be reckoned with in Arab politics.

The use of information and communication technology (ICT) in the Middle East has been a transformative tool in strengthening civil society and expanding the outreach of independent voices. In her remarks concerning Internet freedom last month, Secretary Clinton noted the power of the Internet and new technologies in helping to bridge divides between people of different faiths and help expand dialogue.

What types of U.S. assistance are needed to empower young reformers committed to non-sectarian politics? What is the role of ICT in promoting inter-faith dialogue and peace building? Can ICT help organize young voters in advance of the upcoming municipal elections? What is the direction of new media training in Lebanon?

Please join us for a discussion with:

Jared Cohen, Policy Planning Staff, U.S. Department of State

Elias Muhanna, Blogger, QifaNabki.com

Moderated by: Mona Yacoubian, Director, Lebanon Working Group, United States Institute of Peace (USIP)

Friday, March 5, 2010
11:00 AM
Rayburn House Office Building
Room 2255

Please RSVP here or by email to: rsvp@pomed.org

Safadi Foundation USA is a non-partisan registered 501 (c) (3) public charitable tax-exempt organization dedicated to promoting a national and strategic framework for Lebanon's development.

CONTACT: Lara Alameh of Safadi Foundation USA, +202-349-0890, lalameh@safadifoundationusa.org

Citizen Lebanon

With support from the National Democratic Institute (NDI), the seven partner organizations of Citizen Lebanon have engaged more than 7,000 citizens across the country in the last 18 months. Through intensive training of 67 community facilitators, NDI and its partners have supported community activists in 400 municipalities to hold discussion and debate groups. Many of these groups have evolved into "action groups" that receive training and guidance on advocacy techniques with the ultimate goal of enabling participants to work with other citizens, civic organizations, and government officials to address common problems for the benefit of their communities.

A very worthwhile program. Check it out in a municipality near you!

Event announcement:

Social Media Cafe is pleased to invite you to attend the Young Leaders Social Media Café in its Vol. 01- Beirut, atMarch 6, Zico House (Hamra) at 4.00.

Students, techies, geeks, social media enthusiasts, activists, journalists, entrepreneurs, investors, civic and business leaders, policy-makers and change-makers will be attending the event hosting more than 22 speakers from 22 Arab Countries and Sweden from the Key Social Media Projects, internationally, Regionally and locally.

The agenda is on the YLSMC blog here.

iLebanon

It was like some exclusive place in Soho back when Soho was cool, but there was an ocean between it and New York, a tumultuous ocean full of the wrath of winter. Concrete ceilings, water spots, black walls that probably receive a regular dose of paint, and art, much art, a red-faced Warhol and Superman Obama and marvel comics on canvas, an explosion of popart was right there on the walls of a warehouse bar in Beirut on a winter's Friday night.

The future of Lebanon socialized inside those walls, a mix of programmers, bloggers, photographers, musicians, social entrepreneurs, Twitterers, and civil society activists, all of them recognizing that in natural resourceless Lebanon, human resources are the way to progress, building a knowledge society through technology and ideas.

They called it Geekfest.

They had come out from behind computer screens to prove they are real, that they aren't just avatars but living human beings whose ideas are as real as they are. Lebanon could be a leader in tech, but its telecommunications infrastructure prevents it from being so. Instead, tech investment goes to Amman, and young Lebanese are left in the dark. Will the new government make good on his promise to bring Lebanon into the twenty-first century, or will corruption and ineptitude keep these "geeks" mired in the past, their ideas fading with each advance made by the world around them?

There are so many great initiatives in Lebanon, so many skilled developers and talented individuals, and most of them attended Geekfest at Art Lounge on Friday night. I wish them luck in their endeavors and hope we develop long lasting partnerships for the betterment of Lebanon's civil society.

SMEX post on Geekfest.

Fake Plastic Souks post.

fadynammour photos

Public Service Announcement

Developing Lebanon supports programs that further the cause of equality for women. I'd like to pass on this message.

MTV tv station is preparing with Hiyam Abou Chedid a program titled "w ana kamen ..lebnene"...(And I also...Am Lebanese).

If you are a Lebanese mother and facing nationality problems regarding your children and want to appear on tv and defend the cause, please send me a message.

The message must include name, problem description and phone number.

This message is addressed to women living inside Lebanon, in order to make the interviews.

The MTV program admins will chose among the candidates to the program.

Contact Antoine Yammine here.

Friday night in Cybeirut

Big tech event tonight in Cybeirut, Lebanon - Geekfest Beirut, starting at 8:30pm at Art Lounge.

Join the techies of Lebanon in what has been billed as "a social networking event UNORGANIZED for geeks, aspiring geeks and people who think that they might have a little geek in them!"

The mission? "To bring geeks together to exchange ideas, skills, stories and generally have some geeky fun."

In addition to the website, Geekfest Beirut is on Facebook and Twitter.

Lots of things going on, from presentations on all things tech to photography exhibits and some good old fashioned socializing and networking.

The agenda:

The Quality of Disintermediation
A millennium of disintermediation, how technology is challenging the world to change
Alexander McNabb

Creative Commons
Naeema Zarif, Maya Zankoul

CEDRO Sustainability projects in Lebanon
Elie Abou Jaoudeh, CEDRO, UNDP

Our Relationship with Information

How information has evolved and its effect on personal self-expression and business communication.
Ayman Itani, Telephone.com, LAU

The Potential of Mobile Applications

Elie Haddad, Ayna Corporation

What the F’UX?
User experience presentation. Using an everyday object to reflect the online UX and a simple guide to build a good ux.
George El Khabbaz, Cleartag

For more information, visit the Geekfest Beirut website.

Roy G. Biv on the Med

Today as I was type, type, typing away on a document aiming to help civil society in Lebanon, this rainbow appeared above the Mediterranean in full glory. It was a majestic thing, a miracle of science and nature, and I thought about all of the things a rainbow has come to symbolize to human beings. To Noah, a figure in each of the three Abrahamic faiths, the rainbow was God's promise to never again destroy the Earth. To Irish-Americans, if you go to the end of a rainbow, you'll find a little leprechaun and a big pot of gold to make all of your dreams come true, and if you're Polish, it's angels who leave the gold.

Speaking of angels, one civil society organization that operates in Lebanon takes as its name this light refracting phenomenon. Arc en ciel is celebrating its 25th anniversary of helping disadvantaged people. They help market agricultural products, improve the environment, and develop ecotourism in Lebanon, among other very worthwhile activities. They operate in many places across Lebanon. I encourage you to check them out.

Everything's gonna change our world across the Twitterverse

Last night, I had the good fortune of attending an open house for Social Media Exchange here in Beirut. There, I met real life people with whom I've previously had only online contact, whether it was through Twitter or email.

It's funny how you can instantly connect with people who live an ocean away.

I think Lebanon really has something here. Through technology, young people are coming together and shaping their own view of what the future of Lebanon should be (too bad they can't do it with a decent internet connection...) In Beirut, Twitter has brought together tech types in a way that could never have happened ten years ago. Through "Tweetups," young Lebanese get together to talk about tech, complain about Lebanon's slow internet, and just socialize and enjoy each other's company. True, Tweetups happen in other parts of the world, but not with the same frequency and intensity as they happen here. Friendships are forged, new projects develop, and activities have expanded beyond the Twitterverse. This weekend in Faraya, there is a snow Tweetup at a ski resort.

Imagine if individuals can get together like this what organizations can do with such a simple tool as Twitter. Instead of working individually, organizations can learn about each other's activities and work together to tackle a common problem, whether it be computer illiteracy, poverty, or the corruption in the telecoms sector that is to blame for the poor internet infrastructure in Lebanon.

If you are a civil society organization, sign up for an account at Twitter.com! Make sure you use your organization's name, and if you have one, use your logo as your avatar. Find a third party application like Echofon or Tweetdeck to facilitate the use of Twitter, and start tweeting about your projects!

You can follow us on Twitter at @SafadiUSA.

Strengthening the Role of Women in the Public Sphere

Moderating Extremism: Lebanese Leaders’ Perspectives

The Institute for Inclusive Security hosted a delegation of women from Lebanon in Washington, DC as part of their 2010 Colloquium. The women represent a cross-section of Lebanese society (see below for a list of the women).

The delegation met with a variety of think tanks and US policy makers, including Safadi Foundation USA. The delegation emphasized the need to increase female participation in the public sphere. While Lebanon appears to be a very free society on a superficial level, there are many barriers women must work through to obtain equality with their male counterparts. These barriers include patriarchy, confessionalism and cultural limitations imposed by religious clerics. In fact, Lebanon has one of the lowest percentages of women in policy or decision-level making positions. Currently, there are four women out of 128 parliamentarians and 2 female Cabinet-level Ministers out of a total of 30. The women that are present in public life in Lebanon have strong familial ties to male sectarian leaders with strong financial backing. What this shows is that women with strong financial resources and elite family connections are successful in making it to public office. However, there are many other women who are not able to share the same success based on merit alone due to institutional discrimination.

What these women are fighting for is to ensure that women’s rights are being accorded to them based on their national citizenship and not their sect and/or family status. With the assistance of Hunt Alternatives Fund, these women are working to strengthen their advocacy skills through coalition building, training and exchange programs, and technical advice. The delegation announced a set of recommendations specific to advancing the role of women in democracy and peacebuilding in Lebanese society. The recommendations can be viewed in their entirety at: http://www.huntalternatives.org/download/1918_new_solutions_for_moderating_extremism_lebanon.pdf

Safadi Foundation USA commends these women and will continue to seek ways to mobilize support for strengthening Lebanese civil society.

Participants:

Wafa Abed, President, Institute of Progressive Women Union;
May Akl, Foreign Press Secretary for MP Michel Aoun;
Dima Dabbous-Sensenig, Director, Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World, Lebanese American University;
Elissar Douaihy, Training and Mobilization Coordinator, Women Empowerment: Peaceful Action for Security and Stability (WEPASS);
Claudia Abi Nader, Professor, Military Academy; and
Lamia Osseiran, Vice president, Lebanese Council of Women.

An interesting social media initiative by...the Lebanese government?

That's right! The Lebanese government has rocketed into the Twitterverse with a new initiative @AskLEBGov. Have a question for the government? Ask away!

AskLEBGov says " Ask the Lebanese Government and help others ask. Leading e-Diplomacy Initiative to accounting & querying the Lebanese government through social media."

Prime Minister Hariri, too, has a team on Twitter, @PMHariri.

A response on social media

The following is a comment on our post on the use of technology by civil society organizations in Lebanon by the folks at Social Media Exchange. It is a good response and is useful knowledge for those outside of Lebanon who don't understand the infrastructure issues here.

I appreciate the mention of our work in Lebanon. It’s true, we’re trying hard to help civil society take advantage of what technology has to offer, and at the same time caution against thinking of technology as a solution in itself. As a new organization that has relied almost exclusively so far on project grants, we also understand the challenges that NGOs face with regard to resources, continuity of programming, and sustainability. But it’s not all their/our fault.

Let’s not forget that the Lebanese government hasn’t done much to improve the accessibility of the internet, either in terms of cost or infrastructure. When it takes overnight to upload a video, is it any wonder that NGOs don’t see the value of beginning to explore the possibilities of the web? Our internet connection—the fastest available at 2.3 Mbps—costs us $200/month, and that’s just for 8GB of upload or download. Every additional GB is $10.

That said, it’s true that may NGOs have yet to realize the importance, not just of the web, in general, but of strategic communications plans in particular. This is partly owed to the fact that extra-internet media here are very politicized. So it will take a while for civil society, journalists, and others to develop a new media literacy and internalize the possibilities so that they can use these new tools strategically to suit their needs and, we hope, in defense of the public interest.

We’ve also struggled to keep our website updated, and initially used a content management system (CMS) that was too complex for our needs. As a result, our website and blog often needed to be updated. My one best piece of advice that I’m giving these days: Don’t hire a web developer to build a website from scratch for you. Ask them to guide you through the selection of an open-source (free and customizable) CMS like Wordpress, Drupal, or Joomla. If they won’t do it, find a new developer (we can help with that). If you want a social network, check out Ning or Crabgrass. There’s really no need to pay for the creation of this infrastructure. Save your money for the person you’ll need to maintain the site and keep the content fresh. And remember, that person has to like technology. Get them some training, which is one of the things we do at SMEX.

In the past year, we’ve seen an amazing leap of awareness of the web and what it can do for civil society projects in Lebanon. That will only improve and expand as time goes on—as long as we don’t slide backwards in other ways, over which we may or may not have control.

You can find SMEX online here.

Internet Freedom

Secretary Clinton's internet freedom speech she gave this morning in DC.

Civil society issues in Lebanon

Last week, the Daily Star reported that in 2009, despite unprecedented stability in Lebanon, civil society failed to achieve any significant reforms.

Here are some issues that Lebanese civil society needs to deal with to be more effective:

1. Lebanese civil society organizations largely fail to understand how to use technology to spread awareness about their activities. There are many organizations doing great work; however, no one knows about it. This results in a duplication of efforts, wasted resources, and unnecessary competition for precious funding.

If you click on many of the links in our sidebar, you will encounter many websites that have not been updated in awhile. This happens for several reasons:

a) The organizational website was set up under one particular grant, and when that grant ended, so too, did updates to the website.

b) The organization pays a company to maintain the website and the company charges for every update.

c) The organization doesn't understand how important it is to update a website.

All of these issues are easily rectified, especially in a country as tech savvy as Lebanon.

For the first point, many grants - including all US government grants - require sustainability of projects before they are awarded. Simply put, an organization is not fulfilling the commitment it made when signing its contract if it stops updating its website. When writing proposal budgets, organizations should always include website maintenance as a line item.

On the second point, companies who charge for every update should be fired and replaced by a company who values service and commitment to its clients. The company should offer the software that allows organizations to update their own websites. Organizations should understand that paying for this software is worth the cost.

The final point is the most difficult to overcome, yet it is still rather simple to rectify. Civil society organizations simply don't know the value of or don't know how to use technology to promote their causes. Groups like Social Media Exchange are working hard to help civil society understand the importance of technology. Organizations should take advantage of training programs on how to use technology to promote their activities and accomplishments.

An organization's website is the primary means of electronic communication. Social media like Facebook and Twitter are good tools to promote your organization, but they should not be the primary means of spreading information. Your website should do that. Your website should include frequent updates on your organization's activities and accomplishments. Websites are especially important to overseas funders who want to know if your organization has enough experience and knowledge to be awarded a grant.

Up next, the second reason why reforms were lacking in 2009: organizational egos...

Safadi Foundation USA wishes everyone a great 2010

Here's to 2010 yielding new hopes for peace and prosperity for the whole world. Here's to optimism for the future and a relegation of pessimism and victimhood mentalities to the past. Here's to all of us cooperating to make the world a better place. Here's to leaders having the courage to stand up and do what's right for everyone, not just for themselves or their sects or their parties. Here's to an end of desperation, an end to ignorance, an end to the warped minds of fanatics convincing youth to blow themselves up in the name of some ideology. Here's to soldiers across the globe returning home to their families and friends and staying there. Here's to literacy, abundance of food, good health, and shelter for all.

With each new year comes the chance that maybe, just maybe, this is the year we'll get it right.

The Beacon of Legislation

The Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) here in Washington "is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to examining how genuine democracies can develop in the Middle East and how the U.S. can best support that process. Through dialogue, research, and advocacy, [they] work to strengthen the constituency for U.S. policies that peacefully support democratic reform in the Middle East." You can read their blog here.

Each week, POMED produces a brief but really well-done newsletter of the week's happenings regarding democracy in the Middle East. Called "The Weekly Wire," the newsletter comes to those of us who have signed up for their mailing list. The Wire informs us of legislative actions taken by Congress as well as briefs about each country in the region. This week included some information about two interesting Congressional activities:

On Tuesday (12/8), H.R.2278, calling for the "President to transmit to Congress a report on anti-American incitement to violence in the Middle East," was passed under suspension of the rules in a vote of 395-3 and was referred to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. The bill, originally introduced by Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) in May, focuses on Middle Eastern media outlets, including al-Manar, al-Aqsa, al-Zawra, that broadcast calls of violence against Americans and the United States and calls for a report in six months that lists anti-American media outlets and satellite companies that provide these channels. The bill also proposes that the U.S. should: designate satellite providers that knowingly contract with such entities as "Specially Designated Global Terrorists," evaluate levels of foreign assistance with reference to state-sponsorship of anti-American incitement to violence, and "urge all governments and private investors who own shares in satellite companies or otherwise influence decisions about satellite transmissions to oppose transmissions of [such] telecasts."

On Thursday (12/10), the House passed H.R.3228, the Consolidated Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2010, in a 221-202 vote. On Saturday (12/12), the Senate voted 60-35 on a cloture motion to end debate and bring the bill up for a vote. The bill was then passed by the Senate in a special session yesterday and sent to the President. Full details of the Conference Report for the bill are available on the website of the House Rules Committee, including the full text of Division F of the bill, the portion of the bill making appropriations for State and Foreign Operations, as well as the Joint Explanatory Statement that accompanies it. The bill includes a controversial provision that permits $50 million of the $250 million in Economic Support Funds (ESF) allocated for Egypt to be put into "an endowment to further the shared interests of the United States and Egypt." Such an endowment has been advocated for several years by the Egyptian government, and is widely viewed as an attempt to reduce the potential leverage by Congress afforded by U.S. economic aid to Egypt. Other levels of funding in the bill include $65 million for the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), which is a 30% increase over funding in recent years, but $5 million less than included in the House version of the State and Foreign Operations bill passed in July. For reference and comparison, see POMED's report on the budget and appropriations process from July, and keep an eye out for a brief report on the final version of the bill.

I'm one of those dorks who watches C-Span to see Congress in action, and while not as entertaining as a UK parliamentary session, they've been getting pretty good, what with all the props like babies and leis and all sorts of nonsensical nuttery. It's like a reality television show for the Informed, and it has the advantage of being real!

You'll probably notice that the first piece of legislation has implications for Lebanon with Al-Manar possibly being affected and all. Thoughts?

On another note, we are diligently working to ensure that Lebanese NGOs are able to take advantage of the MEPI funding. If your NGO has a good program idea related to the development and capacity building of civil society, pitch them to us. You can email me.

I encourage you to sign up for POMED's Weekly Wire.

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Happy International Human Rights Day!

Some time ago, a King in England signed a piece of paper establishing certain rights of men. King John signed the Magna Carta in part because he was afraid he'd be overthrown by revolting barons who were angry at the monarch's abuse of power. By no means did the document care about the rights of ordinary people - it was meant to protect the wealthy barons' properties. Yet the rights of the rich it protected gradually evolved into universal rights in the nearly 800 years that have passed since it was drafted.

Three hundred years after John put his signature on the Magna Carta, the Twelve Articles of the Black Forest were drafted in Germany by peasants who demanded certain rights as Christians. The articles are considered by many to be the first record of human rights in the world. That is not to say that human rights issues were not being debated and implemented in other parts of the world. Akbar the Great, the Mughal Emperor, established religious rights for all during his reign in the same century. The British Bill of Rights was drafted in the late seventeenth century. The United States of America was founded on the principle of universal human rights:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." - United States Declaration of Independence, 1776

The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 is a precursor document to modern human rights.

We have come a long way since we lived in caves, ate raw meat, and died by the age of thirty, haven't we? Yet, everywhere we look we see human rights violations, from Aun Sun Sui Kyi's house arrest in Burma to the Iranian regime's crackdown on student protests in Iran to the United States' detention without trial of prisoners in Gitmo to the apartheid in Israel to terrorists blowing up lives in the name of religion to Uganda proposing the death penalty for homosexuals to migrant worker abuse in Lebanon to the Swiss banning of minarets...Sometimes it makes our heads spin, makes us feel like there is no hope, that we should give up, that humanity is so corrupted by its own selfish impulses there will never be any solution to our global problems. Media bombards us every day with new stories about injustice, new terrors to be wary of, new deaths that have come at the hands of psychos. It's easy to dwell on the atrocities that take place on this planet. It's easy to succumb to the forces of disillusionment and despair. It's easy to let ourselves drown in the seas of human suffering, to let our hearts burn in the fires of hatred and ignorance, to let our minds be swallowed by the psychology of victimhood.

Hope is hard.

Hope is what keeps the world spinning. All of the progress we've made throughout human history hasn't been made by those who wallow in the pits of despair but by those cognizant of the future, by those who can imagine a planet where people are equal, where people have enough food to eat and clean water to drink and clean air to breathe, where people aren't killing each other in the name of their own version of a Creator. Human rights martyrs like Martin Luther King, Jr. did not dwell on suffering but envisioned a world like this.

"...when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

The dream of Dr. King has made progress in the 36 year since he spoke to a million people in front of the memorial to President Lincoln, another martyr who died for the cause of human rights. Yet, we still have so far to go. Sometimes it may seem like we're going backwards or that those who profess a faith in the rights of humanity are hypocrites because they violate human rights. Such is the criticism of President Obama, who accepted a Nobel Peace Prize today.

Those who pursue human rights are not perfect. We tend to view our martyrs as perfect and forget their flaws. We put people like Gandhi on pedestals and forget he had an army of critics. Lincoln himself was something of a racist, but he always believed slavery was wrong and that all men should never be deprived of life, liberty, and property. His work for the cause of Emancipation and the bloody civil war that entailed exposed him to African-Americans and his views on race began to change. It was a speech in which he supported the right for blacks to vote that so incensed John Wilkes Booth, he murdered him two days later.

You have to remember, humanity is still evolving. People's attitudes evolve. There will never be an End to History so long as homo sapiens sapiens roams the planet. We have not reached a point in our history where we are capable of ending our problems as quickly as it takes us to tweet them. Just the fact that we as a species generally recognize something called "Human Rights" is wondrous, something to be marveled at and revered. Sure, many times the path that we think leads to progress turns out to be covered with thorns or full of poisonous snakes and hungry beasts. Sometimes we have to turn around and start over. Sometimes we get so lost that it seems like we will never reach our destination, Dr. Kings dream. But we're gonna get there some day. Just look at how far we've already come.

While human rights heroes like King, Lincoln, and Gandhi have become immortal, we can't forget all of the others who work for human rights without recognition. Today we should remember them, remember all of the civil society organizations across the world that fight for human rights, those who give speeches, who hold conferences, who write the reports demanded by a grantmaking organization, who tweet and blog about human rights, who create awareness about issues. They might not do the glorious work, but they are just as important to progress.

Sport and the Art of Peacebuilding

This weekend, Beirut experienced a marathon in which Prime Minister Hariri, President Sleiman, and Minister of Interior Baroud participated, among 30,000 others. It was nice to see all creeds participating in such a massive event. From everything I've read, the Beirut Marathon Association did a wonderful job of organizing the race and should be commended for this accomplishment. The Association has been organizing the annual marathon since 2002, holding its first race in 2003, and in six short years it is already attracting international marathon stars.

I envy those with the energy to run a marathon. I'm not much of a sports fan (though I do strictly adhere to the tenets of the Church of Baseball), but I do enjoy the World Cup and the Olympics, and I can appreciate watching Alex Ovechkin score another goal for the Washington Capitals. I can't say I don't turn my attention to a television screen during the last few minutes of a basketball or American football game if the score is close and there is excitement in the air. Ok, so maybe I am a bit of a fan.

What really interests me is the way sport can serve as a bridge builder between competing factions, whether they be nations or neighborhoods. I suppose that is what I find the most fascinating about the global soccer order (Egypt-Algeria and El Salvador-Honduras aside.) You can have countries that hate each other in politics go out and play a game. A GAME. Far better than bullets and bombs!

Civil society organizations across the world have been using sport as a peacebuilder. The NBA has a program Basketball without Borders. In Lebanon, groups like Safadi Foundation, MercyCorps, IREX, and the Rockwool Foundation have developed sports programs aimed to build peace among kids with different politico-religious backgrounds.



Football and basketball are common sports used in such programs, but one group is using an entirely new sport as a means to peace - ultimate frisbee. While in countries like Lebanon, a sport could have sectarian or class implications, ultimate frisbee is pretty unknown outside of American university campuses. Ultimate Peace's mission is "to build bridges of friendship, understanding and fun for youth from different social and cultural backgrounds around the world." The organization has recently ventured into the Middle East and will be implementing an ultimate frisbee peacebuilding program in Tel Aviv in 2010. Could Lebanon be in their future? We'll have to check this out!

Lebanese civil society gets active in migrant domestic workers issues

A recent series of tragic suicides has prompted rare and vital coverage of the plight of domestic workers in Lebanon. The Zico House in Hamra, regular host to the only legally recognized gay rights organization in the Middle East, held a panel discussion on domestic workers and also facilitated a vigil to commemorate the victims of suicide, domestic and sexual abuse. The event was sponsored by Taste Culture.

Among the panelists were several domestic workers from a variety of nations including the Philippines, Sudan, and Ethiopia. These women described the duplicitous agencies that worked in their home countries to recruit women to travel overseas and become domestic workers. Despite the diversity of backgrounds, all the women described a similar process wherein the pay and ease of their labor abroad were greatly exaggerated. Once domestic workers arrive in Lebanon, they are usually deprived of their passports, and as a result have no recourse when their employers withhold pay or time off. Compounding this problem is the fact that many of the home nations of the domestic workers do not have full-fledged embassies in Lebanon that could provide passport services or facilitate legal representation. Withholding passports is illegal in Lebanon, but it is widely known that this law is not enforced, and the police in Lebanon are notorious for siding with Lebanese families over their foreign employees.

Besides the laws that aren’t even enforced, domestic workers have incredibly little legal protection. Migrant workers are not guaranteed the rights to minimum wage and regular leave that are provided to all Lebanese citizens under article six of the Lebanese Labor Law. Depressingly, little pay for endless work is perhaps the best-case scenario for a migrant worker in Lebanon, as physical and sexual abuse are also prevalent.

A community organizer, who also spoke as a part of the panel, explained that he had turned his home into a safe house for domestic workers who were attempting to escape abuse and had nowhere to go. There was also a panelist representing Human Rights Watch, who mentioned that the labor secretary of Lebanon has not responded to over 50 letters sent by Human Rights Watch.

It is vital that this rare moment of exposure to practices akin to modern-day slavery not be an aberration. Here are two more important pieces on migrant workers in the Middle East.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-a-morally-bankrupt-dictatorship-built-by-slave-labour-1828754.html

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/11/24/lebanon.suicides/

Written by Evan Barrett

Do you like films?

Go to the Common Ground Film Festival December 10-12 at the Sunflower Theater. More info.

Don't miss it!

More information is at Taste Kulcha. Also, while you're there, sign the petition "Promises not Politics: Ministry of Labour Must Protect Migrant Workers in Lebanon." And don't forget to follow @simby on Twitter!

Solidarity with migrant workers

In March of this year, the Feminist Collective held a sit-in in solidarity with migrant workers in Lebanon. Here's the video.

What is "independence?"

When the state of Belgium was formed in 1839, the Europeans who signed the Treaty of London did not realize what a monster it was that they had created. No, Belgium is not a monster (though rising calls for the dissolution of the Belgian state could become one.) The concept of the modern nation state is the monster, and borders are its claws.

Let's go back a bit in history to the Peace of Westphalia (1648) that ended (temporarily) non-stop fighting in Europe between the Holy Roman Empire, the Hapsburgs, the Kingdom of Spain, France, Sweden...am I forgetting someone? The treaty sort of drew up Europe and assigned territorial borders and is generally considered to be the birth of the nation-state concept in political science/international relations. Aside from assigned borders, the treaty also agreed that states were to be free from external interference. A state's domestic affairs belonged to the state and to no one else. (Unless it was in Africa where the Europeans were free to do whatever they liked, ahem...)

The Westphalian System did seem to be a good system. Prior to that, borders were forever changing as rival empires fought for more land and more riches and for revenge on family members with whom they did not get along. The Holy Roman Empire continued to pretend that the fall of Rome hadn't occurred, the Hapsburgs' thirst for land was never quenched, and a variety of Kingdoms and Dukedoms and I'm-better-than-youdoms were forever skirmishing over the same parcels of earth.

Belgium was created under the Treaty of London (after the Belgian Revolution) because the UK, France, and Germany couldn't respect Westphalian boundries. Belgium was to be a buffer state between them. The treaty took neither ethnicity nor history into account, gave land to Belgium that belonged to other states, and pretty much set in motion the events that led to World War I (which led to World War II which led to Europe getting sick of war so that they entered into economic union to never fight each other again. It's worked so far...)

At the same time, colonialism was still in full swing. In what we now call the Middle East, perpetual war was fought between the Sassinids and the Byzantines from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Rise of the Islamic Empire at the time of the Prophet. Then came the Abassids, the Fatimids, the Umayyads, and the Moors. Throw in some Mamluks and others, and the Middle East was no different than Europe at the time of The Billion Years War. The Ottomans later took over for the other Muslim empires like the Safavids and the Mughals, and since they were defeated in World War I, the territory was divided up among the victors. It's been that way since the dawn of human history, only this time, lines mattered. Before that, there was never any state called Lebanon, never any country called Palestine, never any government called Syria, and certainly no lines that drew borders. No, today's lines that have caused so many conflicts in the region are largely a product of the European Westphalian idea. I guess it should be called West-fail-ian.

I read something from a Lebanese Twitterer about how there is no independence in Lebanon "while parts of it are occupied." I argue that there is no independence while Lebanon is gripped by fear and suspicion of the people within its internationally recognized borders. I also see a fierce independence among so many young Lebanese and so many civil society activists for whom lines on a map are not as important as feeding your people, running your economy, striving for progress, and ending perpetual conflict.

Lebanon may not be able to change the world outside its artificial borders, but it certainly has the power to change from within. When Prime Minister Hariri said, "Lebanon will not remain a playground for regional conflicts," he was standing up for Lebanon's independence. It's up to the Lebanese people to help him make that a reality. Let it be known, Lebanon, that you have a lot of people cheering for you!

Friday Fodder

Civil Society in Global Governance - a preview

Pulling Torn Pictures of W out of Arab Trashcans

The Westerners who melded the Mayan religion with the writings of St. John the Divine and then turned it into what is apparently a horrific movie may have been right, because I’m quite certain what I heard at the National Endowment for Democracy at the conference on “Middle East Democrats and Their Vision for the Future” means the end of the world is coming.

An Arab said he wished George W. Bush would come back.

This wasn’t just any Arab, this was perhaps the most famous civil society activist in the entire Middle East North African chain of dictatorships pretending to be democracies, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, founder of the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies, former political prisoner in Egypt, Wallerstein Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Drew University, and generally all around hero for humanity.

Dr. Ibrahim was part of a panel discussing “What assistance can the international community provide?” I’m really taking his idea out of context. His point – and there were others who agreed – was that the Obama administration is very weak in its democracy promotion efforts and that the level of pressure on regimes to change is not there. It is not the first time he has criticized President Obama - his August editorial in the Wall Street Journal outlined his disillusionment.

The panel – which consisted of Tamara Cofman Wittes, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs; Daniel Brumberg, United States Institute of Peace; Scott Carpenter, Keston Family Fellow, Washington Institute for Near East Policy; Vidar Helgesen, Secretary-General of International IDEA; Dr. Aseel al-Awadhi, one of the four women members of the Kuwaiti Parliament; Musa Maaytah, Minister of Political Development in Jordan; and Nouzha Skalli, Minister of Social Development, Family, and Solidarity in Morocco – discussed the lack of pressure on Arab governments to reform, unlike during the Bush years, when even Pharaoh Mubarak relented a bit and held presidential elections (even if the elections themselves were a farce).

Cofman Wittes is a well-respected, academically-minded individual who up until her appointment was Senior Fellow and Director, Middle East Democracy and Development Project, Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. Her CV is here. Her appointment means that she oversees the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI). Daniel Brumberg has written a lot about liberalization and Arab reform. Vidar Helgesen talked about European approaches to foreign assistance and spoke of the need to stop being so condescending to those groups receiving aid.

The tone of the conversation changed when Scott Carpenter began to speak. Carpenter formerly held Mrs. Cofman Wittes’ post under the Bush administration. He told us that an Egyptian civil society activist said to him they were pulling their torn pictures of Bush out of the garbage and taping them back together. Dr. Ibrahim agreed.

The problem, they say, is that the Obama administration focuses on talking to regimes rather than people, that the level of pressure on regimes to reform just isn’t there, and it is affecting what civil society reformers can accomplish.

Is the criticism warranted? Well let’s see. You have a prominent civil society activist saying there was more done during the Bush years than there has been under Obama. You have an appointment to the head of USAID that takes ten months. You have NGOs on the ground waiting to see what direction the administration is going to go.

Yet.

Even during the twilight of the Bush years, the international community wondered if decades of foreign assistance to the Middle East North Africa region was all for naught. Nothing was changing, and regimes seemed to be getting stronger. In fact, the space created – a sort of Bizarro World kind of freedom – allowed just enough room for “Islamists” to have a voice that was loud enough for regimes to crack down on their people, claiming they were fighting terrorism. There was no political reform, no economic reform, just lip service spilling from the mouths of dictators (no matter how benign they were).

This was enough for the international community to begin asking itself how to change its approach to foreign aid. (In 2003, for example, Daniel Brumberg wrote Liberalization Versus Democracy: Understanding Arab Reform," Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Working Paper #37). Throwing money at groups intent on loosening the dictatorial reigns of the Arab World has resulted in…the dethroning of Pharaoh Mubarak? No. The election of someone other than Ben Ali in Tunisia? No. The House of Saud becoming the House of Someone Else? No. Bashar Assad giving a concession speech after hotly contested elections? No.

I was four years old when Pharaoh Mubarak came to power. Lebanon was trying to commit suicide then, and Yemen was split into a microcosm of the commie vs. democracy world order. Habib Bourguiba had been Presidictator of Tunisia for twenty years and lasted another ten before Ben Ali became Presidictator in a coup. An Assad was the Presidictator of Syria. Jordan was ruled by the current king’s dad. Morocco was ruled by the current king’s dad. Saudi was ruled by the current king’s brother or half brother or something like that.

No, change has not come to the Middle East despite all of my tax dollars being funneled there. No we can’t!

Finally, though, someone woke up and started to ask why nothing is different except there are more people willing to blow themselves up. The international community began to reconsider its strategy to “make the world a better place” and decided that bandaids are not appropriate when your arm has been cut off. More democracy people began to say, “Forget the dinosaurs, let’s help the kids!” and youth and community development programs started to receive attention. Foreign assistance programs began to focus on the future rather than choking on the present.

I think like so many other aspects of his presidency, Obama is a victim of history when it comes to strategies towards foreign assistance. Seems that everyone is asking why hasn’t this worked, why have we failed, what can we do differently. He’s jumped into a time of uncertainty and transformation even in the approach to foreign aid. There is a reason it took ten months to appoint someone as head of USAID, and it isn’t because Obama was chopping brush on a ranch in Texas.

And who can honestly say his public diplomacy approach to international relations is a bad idea? Do those civil society activists longing for a return to foreign assistance under the Bush years want the bombs that come with it? That’s part of the package – scare dictators with bombs just enough to allow for some space, isn't it?

Look, President Obama’s deliberate approach to everything is frustrating, especially in the Twitterverse we live in, when two seconds is too long a wait for so many people. It has been ten months, hardly enough time to solve all of the world’s problems. With the appointment of Rajiv Shah as head of USAID and Cofman Wittes to Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, it looks like the approach to foreign assistance is coming around, that a new strategy focusing on the long-term is being shaped, rather than bandaid fixes to election and economic laws that have been applied for so long now.

Right now, I guess it’s just wait and see.