The Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) and zenith magazine kindly invite you to join our online discussion The only constant is change –Arab Spring between memories and continuation that will take place onMonday, 2nd of November 2020, 11 – 12.30 pm (NYC, Washington, DC) / 4 – 5.30 pm (Algier, Berlin, Brussels, Cairo, Rabat, Tunis).
Ten years have passed since a series of popular uprisings reshaped the Arab World. The epochal significance of the “Arab Spring” can’t be disputed. But its results remain ambiguous. Only one fragile democracy has developed in the MENA-region since 2011. Considerably more countries have sunk into war or experience a renewal of repressive and authoritarian rule. Since 2019, a new wave of protests has begun to shake the MENA-region, including in Lebanon, Sudan, and Iraq. Partly driven by different conditions and triggers than the 2011 uprisings, these new protests, nevertheless, epitomize a wish for change that has never abated in the region.
Shedding light on the different perspectives of people who participated in or witnessed the Arab Spring, zenith magazine has recently published a special edition “Das Arabische Jahrzehnt” [The Arab Decade] in cooperation with FES. In this thematic issue, protagonists and observers of the protests from 2011 to 2019 remember and reflect on the transformations that have been initiated by the calls for bread, freedom and social justice. What happened to the main demands of the Arab Spring? How are the uprisings and protests perceived ten years later? Which parallels can be drawn between the demonstrations then and now? And, with regard to the future, how can policies and societies be shaped alternatively?
In this online debate, we elaborate these and further questions jointly with a panel of distinguished speakers, who all themselves, contributed to the FES/zenith special issue:
- Lara Baladi,Artist and Archivist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology / Board Member of the Arab Image Foundation
- Ruba Ali Al-Hassani, Legal Sociologist at Osgoode Hall Law School / Non-Resident Fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy
- Kholood Khair, Managing Partner at Insight Strategy Partners (ISP) in Khartoum
- Henrik Meyer, Director of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Tunis
Moderated by Robert Chatterjee (zenith) with an introduction by Elisabeth Braune (FES).
Please register here for the online discussion via Zoom until 30 October 2020 or follow our livestream on Facebook. You can also watch the event later on Youtube.
The event will take place in English. We will provide a German and Arabic translation.
The German Dossier »10 Jahre Arabischer Frühling« is open access and can be found here.
Some articles in Arabic and/or English as well as further analysis and reports will be published regularly on our MENA Blog.
