Financials and Human Resource Planning MGT465 Version 2

Financials and Human Resource Planning
MGT/465 Version 2
1
University of Phoenix Material
Financials and Human Resources Planning
Section One: Start-up Financials
Start-up Expenses- Complete the SCORE.org template and
attach as an object here:
Startup Expenses
In The Mix
Sources of Capital
$20,000
Owners' Investment (name and
percent ownership)
Tim Johnson 5% 5%
Peter Wilson 5% 5%
Jimmy Williams 10% 10%
Other investor
-
Total Investment

$
0
Bank Loans
USAA
$
2,500
Navy Federal
5,000
Bank Of America
4,000
Chase
5,000
Total Bank Loans
$
16,500
Other Loans
One Main Financial
$
3,000
Accion
5,000
Total Other Loans

$
8,000
Copyright © 2016 by University of Phoenix. All rights reserved.
MGT/465 Version 2
2
Startup Expenses
Buildings/Real Estate
Purchase
$
150,000
Construction
50,000
Remodeling 250,00
Other
-
Total Buildings/Real Estate
$
200,000
Leasehold Improvements

DryWall
$
5,000
Carpentry
1,500
Restroom Accessories
2,500
Lighting Fixtures
500
Total Leasehold Improvements
$
9,500
Capital Equipment List
Furniture
$
30,000
Equipment
10,000
Fixtures
5,000
Machinery

10,000
Other
-
Total Capital Equipment
$
55,000
Location and Admin Expenses
Rent & Related Costs
$
1,250
Utility deposits
200
MGT/465 Version 2
3
Legal and accounting fees
5,000
Prepaid insurance
7,500

Pre-opening salaries
20,000
Other
-
Total Location and Admin Expenses
$
33,950
Opening Inventory
Choclate
$
300
Flour
100
Sugar
50
Utensils
100
Decorations
250
Total Inventory

$
800
Advertising and Promotional
Expenses
Advertising
$
10,000
Signage
3,500
Printing
1,000
Travel/entertainment
5,000
Other/additional categories
-
Total Advertising/Promotional
Expenses
$
19,500
Other Expenses
Other expense 1
$

-
Other expense 2
-
Total Other Expenses
$
-
MGT/465 Version 2
4
Reserve for Contingencies
$
-
Working Capital
$
-
Summary Statement
Sources of Capital
Owners' and other investments
$
0
Bank loans

16,500
Other loans
8,000
Total Source of Funds
$
24,500
Startup Expenses
Buildings/real estate
$
200,000
Leasehold improvements
9,500
Capital equipment
55,000
Location/administration expenses
33,950
Opening inventory
800
Advertising/promotional expenses
19,500

Other expenses
-
Contingency fund
-
Working capital
-
Total Startup Expenses
$
318,750
Security and Collateral for Loan Proposal
Collateral for Loans Value Description
Real estate $
200,000
MGT/465 Version 2
5
Other collateral -
Other collateral -

Other collateral -
Owners
Your name here
Kenneth Williams
Van Boubeka
Loan Guarantors (other than owners)
Accion
One Main Financial
Banks
Pricing Strategy- Document the team’s pricing strategy. Include
competitive data and factors used
to develop a strategy and model. Attach supporting
documentation as needed.
Premium Pricing
costing a product at a high price due to its high
quality.
that are usually packaged
really well. Or other high quality and artisan baked products.
oking for good
quality, who aren’t worried about
budget.
“If you’re losing unprofitable customers, it’s sad, but you’re in
business to stay in business,”
says Dennis Stanton, owner of Swedish Bakery, Chicago, IL.
“Our head counts have declined
significantly over the past 10 years, but our sales per customer

have continuously
increased.”Nobody likes to lose customers, but unprofitable
customers are simply not good for
business. With premium priced products, you’ll often generate
higher profits with fewer
customers, according to How to accurately price bakery
products | Bakemag.com | September
03, 2015 08:39
MGT/465 Version 2
6
Financial Statements- Summarize the purpose of Financial
Statements and why it is important for
small business owners to understand the key components of:
– “The purpose of a balance sheet is to give
interested parties an idea of the
company's financial position, in addition to displaying what the
company owns and owes.
It is a snapshot at a single point in time of the company's
accounts—covering its assets,
liabilities and shareholders' equity according to Investopedia”,
Reading the Balance Sheet
(investopedia.com)
- The income statement is an important
part of a company’s performance
reports that must be submitted to the Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC).

Essentially, it gives an account of how the net revenue realized
by the company gets
transformed into net earnings (profit or loss) according to
Investopedia. Income Statement
Definition (investopedia.com)
– “A cash flow statement is a valuable
measure of strength,
profitability, and the long-term future outlook for a company.
The CFS can help determine
whether a company has enough liquidity or cash to pay its
expenses. A company can use a
cash flow statement to predict future cash flow, which helps
with matters of budgeting”,
according to Investopedia Understanding the Cash Flow
Statement (investopedia.com)
-even Analysis –“ break-even analysis which, very
simply, is the amount of revenues
you need to generate to cover your direct and indirect
expenses”, according to Montrel
Financial. The Importance of Breakeven Analysis for Business
Owners
(montrealfinancial.ca)
MGT/465 Version 2
7
Part Two: Human Resource Planning for a Start-up Business

1. Describe below how your team will determine human
resource requirements during the
first 12 months of operation. Provide a Human Resource
Forecast that includes:
- full time, part time – 4 Full
Time Employees
and 5 Part Time
- seasonal, after school – None AT
the moment
–
Skilled labor requirements- certifications, licenses, etc. – Each
member has there Certified
Journey Baker (CJB), Certified Journey Decorator (CJD),
Certified Baker (CB), and
ServSafe Certifications
MGT/465 Version 2
8
– None At the Moment
Family member employment – N/A
Not At
All
Satisfied

Slightly
Satisfied
Neutral Very
Satisfied
Extremely
Satisfied
# of Hourly
Employees (Full
Time/Part Time)
x
Use of Students
(N/A)
No need
Management
Structure
x
Volunteers x
Family Employment
(None)
x
Conduct Training x
Key:
1 – Not at All Satisfied

2 – Slightly Satisfied
3– Neutral
4– Very Satisfied
5- Extremely Satisfied
2. Include any charts your team wants to include to illustrate the
Human Resource Planning
Process.
MGT/465 Version 2
9
MGT/465 Version 2
10
MGT/465 Version 2
11

Part Three: Reflection and Observations
Answer the following questions:
1) What role did each team member provide to obtain the
business plan information?
Each member did their share of the work.
2) What roadblocks did the team face when obtaining required
information?
There were no road blocks, just the matter of choosing the
information provided.
3) What lessons were learned during the week’s learning team
assignment which can be applied during
the specific phase of business start-up?
The behind the scenes start up HR work. Getting the little
things in order.
4) What is the team’s overall observations of this week’s
assignment relative to the type of
information needed to develop a comprehensive business plan?
To be successful as small business owners, you would want
somebody running HR department.
Developing a business plan will likely increase chances to not
have your business fail.
5) How does this week’s Learning Team assignment support the
Learning Objectives?
HR is a very important assest for a business. HR keeps a
business organize, helps grow the business,

handles issues. HR also handle responsibilities like training,
hiring, payroll, benefits, and onboarding
MGT/465 Version 2
12
References
Sims, B. (2015). Bake. How accurately price bakery products.
Retrieved From How to accurately price
bakery products | Bakemag.com | September 03, 2015 08:39.
Estevez, E. (2020). Investopedia. Reading The Balance Sheet.
Retreieved From Reading the Balance
Sheet (investopedia.com)
Chen, J. (2020). Investopedia. Income Statement. Retrieved
From Income Statement Definition
(investopedia.com).
Murphy, C. (2021). Understanding the cashflow statement,
Retrieved From Understanding the Cash Flow
Statement (investopedia.com)
Montreal Financial. The importance of breakeven analysis for
business owners, Retrieved From The
Importance of Breakeven Analysis for Business Owners
(montrealfinancial.ca).

Section One: Start-up FinancialsPart Two: Human Resource
Planning for a Start-up BusinessSkilled labor requirements-
certifications, licenses, etc. – Each member has there Certified
Journey Baker (CJB), Certified Journey Decorator (CJD),
Certified Baker (CB), and ServSafe Certifications5- Extremely
SatisfiedPart Three: Reflection and Observations
1
Routledge Handbook on Human
Rights and the Middle East and
North Africa
Uprisings’ have exploded notions that human rights are
irrelevant to
Middle Eastern and North African politics. Increasingly seen as
a
global concern, human rights are at the fulcrum of the region’s
on-
the-ground politics, transnational intellectual debates, and
global
political intersections.
man Rights and the Middle East

and
North Africa:
emphasises the need to consider human rights in all their
dimensions, rather than solely focusing on the political
dimension, in order to understand the structural reasons
behind the persistence of human rights violations;
rights—conceptual, political and transnational/international;
discusses issue areas subject to particularly intense debate—
gender, religion, sexuality, transitions and accountability;
contains contributions from perspectives that span from
global theory to grassroots reflections, emphasising the need
for academic work on human rights to seriously engage with
the thoughts and practices of those working on the ground.
2
expertise allows the book to capture the complex dynamics by

human rights have had, or could have, an impact on Middle
Eastern
key
African politics and society, as well as anyone with a concern
for
Human Rights across the globe.
Anthony Tirado Chase is a Professor in International Relations
at
Occidental College, USA. Professor Chase is a theoretician of
human
3
Routledge Handbook on Human
Rights and the Middle East and
North Africa
Edited by Anthony Tirado Chase
4

First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
5
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business © 2017
Anthony Tirado Chase
as the author of the
editorial material, and of the
accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without
intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue
record for this book is
available from the British Library Library of Congress
Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Chase, Anthony Tirado, editor.
Title: Routledge handbook on human rights and the Middle East
and North Africa / edited
by Anthony Tirado Chase.
Other titles: Handbook on human rights and the Middle East and
North Africa
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY:
Routledge, 2017. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016021351 | ISBN 9781138807679
ISBN 9781315750972 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Human rights–Middle East. |

Human rights–Africa, North.
Classification: LCC JC599.M53 R68 2017 | DDC 323.0956–
dc23
https://lccn.loc.gov/2016021351
6
ISBN: 978-1-13880767-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-31575097-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
7
Sanders for their invaluable help in editing this volume.
8
Dedication
Dedicated to the sweet memory of Ruth Flora Tirado Chase. My

mother passed on the sense that nothing is worth doing unless it
is
—and all that led to its creation—is
saturated with that spirit. Death is not an end; the spirit lives on
through the acts it continues to inspire.
Front cover artist: Ganzeer
Cover art: “Of course, Harara, 2014”
Art description: A portrait of Ahmed Harara. Harara is an
Egyptian
activist who lost one eye to a bullet during the January 28, 2011
to
Hosni Mubarak’s fall from power on February 11, 2011. Harara
lost
his other eye during anti-military protests near the Ministry of
known as
the
many
protestors to lose eyes to sniper fire.
-repeated Egyptian

Designed in Cairo, Egypt, 2013.
9
Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
CONTENTS
Editor biography
List of contributors
PART I Frameworks
SECTION I Introduction and overview
1 Human rights and the Middle East and
North Africa: indivisibility, social rights,

SECTION II A conceptual framework: political,
economic, and cultural rights in the Middle East
and North Africa
2 Political legitimacy, contingency, and
rights in the Middle East and North Africa
Hussein Banai
3 Economic rights in the Middle East and
North Africa
Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat
kindle:embed:0006?mime=image/jpg
10
4 Cultural rights in the Middle East and
North Africa: art, revolution, and
repression
Mark LeVine
SECTION III A political framework: intersecting
human rights and governance crises in the
Middle East and North Africa

5 Genocide in the contemporary Middle
East: a historical and comparative regional
perspective
Martin Shaw
ics of
the Arab World: a framework for
understanding Radical Islamism
Nader Hashemi
in Turkey: one step forward, two steps
Turan Kayaoglu
since the Green Movement
Shadi Mokhtari and Neda Nazmi
9 Narrating law: Israel and the Occupied
Territories
Kathleen Cavanaugh

of international humanitarian law
Stephen Zunes
SECTION IV A transnational and international
framework: human rights beyond borders
11
11 Rival transnational advocacy networks
and Middle East politics at the U.N.
Human Rights Council
Laura K. Landolt
12 Redefining rights: Organization of
values in the U.N. human rights system
Ann Mayer
Mahmood Monshipouri

14 Rights, refugees, and the case of Syria:
what do human rights offer?
Kathleen Hamill
PART II Issues
SECTION V Gender and human rights in the
15 Colliding rights and wrongs: intimate
labor, health, human rights, and the state
in the Gulf
Pardis Mahdavi
policy and human rights in Iran
Homa Hoodfar
17 Women’s rights in the Middle East:
constitutions and consequences
Anicée Van Engeland
human rights

Micheline Ishay
12
SECTION VI Religion and human rights in the
19 Shari`ah and human rights
Khaled Abou El Fadl
20 Islam, the principle of subjectivity, and
individual human rights
Barbara Ann Rieffer-Flanagan
rejection, reconciliation, or
reconceptualization?
Marie Juul Petersen
22 Rhetoric versus reality: American
foreign policy and religious freedom in
the Middle East
Barbara Ann Rieffer-Flanagan

SECTION VII Transitions and accountability in
the Middle East and North Africa
23 Core transitional justice debates in the
Middle East and beyond
Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm
24 Courts as a tool in transitions: lessons
from the special tribunal for Lebanon
Chandra Lekha Sriram
25 Lessons on transitioning from
authoritarianism: pitfalls and promise
from Tunisia’s experience
Rim El Gantri
nity on violating
cultural rights in Morocco
Osire Glacier
13
PART III Conclusions: global theory and grassroots

reflections
SECTION VIII Conclusions from a global
viewpoint: theoretical justifications and
contestations around human rights
27 International human rights at 70: has
the Enlightenment project run aground?
David P. Forsythe
28 On the local relevance of human rights
Koen de Feyter
29 Israel/Palestine, human rights and
domination
Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon
onstructive criticism:
Alison Brysk
31 Making human rights ‘universals’ from
the ground up?
Lisa S. Alfredson

SECTION IX Conclusions from a grassroots
viewpoint: reflections on dynamics around
struggles for human rights in the Middle East
and North Africa
32 Reflections on three decades of human
rights work in the Arab region
Fateh Azzam
33 Egypt 2011–15: how can a democratic
revolution fail to improve human rights
conditions?
Amr Hamzawy
14
34 Reflections on human rights before and
Bahey eldin Hassan
35 Human rights, law and politics: a
reflection on human rights work in the

Lynn Welchman
Index
15
Editor Biography
Anthony Tirado Chase is a Professor in International Relations
at
Occidental College, USA. Professor Chase is a theoretician of
human
recent
article is “Human Rights Contestations: Sexual Orientation and
Gender Identity” in International Journal of Human Rights
(April,
2016). His previous books are Human Rights, Revolution, and
Reform
in the Muslim World (2012) and Human Rights in the Arab
World:
Independent Voices (co-edited with Amr Hamzawy, 2006).

16
Contributors
Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi
Distinguished Professor in Islamic Law at the University of
fourteen
books on various topics in Islam and Islamic law, including his
most
recent work Reasoning with God: Reclaiming Shari`ah in the
Modern
Lisa S. Alfredson is an Assistant Professor at the University of
She
is the author of the book, Creating Human Rights (University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2008), as well as numerous policy reports
for
international human rights organizations.
Zehra F. Kabasakal Arat is Professor of Political Science at the
University of Connecticut. Exploring both theoretical and
empirical

questions of human rights, with an emphasis on women’s rights
and
their interpretation/application in Islamic and Turkish contexts,
she
published numerous books and articles on human rights and
their
relation to democracy, development and globalization.
Fateh Azzam is the Director of the Asfari Institute for Civil
Society
and Citizenship, and Senior Policy Fellow at the Issam Fares
Institute
for Public Policy and International Relations, both at the
American
University in Beirut. He previously served as the Middle East
Regional Representative of the U.N. High Commissioner for
Human
Rights, Director of Forced Migration and Refugee Studies at the
17
American University in Cairo, Human Rights Program Officer
at the
Ford Foundation in Lagos and Cairo, and Director of the

Palestinian
organization Al-Haq. He led the process of establishing the
Arab
Human Rights Fund.
Hussein Banai is an Assistant Professor in the Department of
of Global and International
Studies at Indiana University.
University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author and
editor
of ten volumes on international human rights.
Kathleen Cavanaugh is socio-
Lecturer
in the Faculty of Law, Irish Centre for Human Rights, National
University of Ireland, Galway.
Koen De Feyter is Professor of International Law at the
Group on Law and Development of the University of Antwerp,
Belgium.
Rim El Gantri is a transitional justice expert who is currently
head

of office at the International Center for Transitional Justice,
Nepal.
She led the ICTJ Tunisia program for about five years. Notable
among her published writings is “Tunisia in Transition: One
Year
Distinguished Professor of Political Science Emeritus, at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He taught various aspects of
International Relations for forty-two years, with special
human rights and humanitarian affairs.
18
International Studies at Bishop’s University. She is the author
of
Universal Rights, Systemic Violations and Cultural Relativism
in
Morocco (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2013); and Political
Women

in Morocco, Then and Now (Trenton: Africa World Press,
2013).
Neve Gordon is a Professor of Politics at Ben-Gurion University
in
Israel and is the author of Israel’s Occupation (California:
University
of California Press, 2008) and co-author of The Human Right to
Dominate (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
Kathleen Hamill is an independent human rights lawyer and
and
of
Professor.
Amr Hamzawy is a Professor at both American University in
Cairo,
and Cairo University. Dr. Hamzawy is a former member of both
the
Egyptian People’s Assembly and the Egyptian National Council
for
Human Rights, as well as author of, A Margin for Democracy in

Egypt – The Story of An Unsuccessful Transition (in Arabic),
among
other books.
Nader Hashemi is an Associate Professor of Middle East and
Islamic
Politics and the Director of the Center for Middle East Studies
at the
Studies.
Bahey eldin Hassan is the Director of the Cairo Institute for
Human
Rights Studies. He has authored and edited many books,
and articles on human rights in the Arab region.
Homa Hoodfar is Professor of Anthropology at Concordia
Universi
19
intersection of political economy, gender and development and
women’s movements and electoral politics in the Middle East.

Rights at
University
of Denver. She is the author and editor of numerous books,
including
Internationalism and Its Betrayal, The Nationalism Reader, The
History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Era of
Globalization, and The Human Rights Reader.
Turan Kayaoglu is a Professor of International Relations at the
Washington, Tacoma. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Muslim
World
Journal of Human Rights.
Laura K. Landolt is Associate Professor of Political Science at
Oakland University. She examines relationships between state
power
and human rights advocacy.
Mark LeVine is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at
University of California, Irvine, and a Distinguished Visiting
Professor at Lund University’s Center for Middle Eastern
Studies. He

University of Beirut to study the evolution of human rights
discourses in the Arab world.
Pardis Mahdavi, PhD, is Associate Professor at Pomona College
and
include
rights, youth culture, transnational feminism and public health
in
Ann Elizabeth Mayer is an Emeritus Associate Professor of
Legal
University
20
slamic law in the
contemporary Middle East and North Africa and international
Human Rights was published in 2012.

International Servi
focuses
on the local and international politics of human rights in the
Middle
East.
Francisco State University and University of California,
Berkeley. He
is editor, most recently, of Information Politics, Protests, and
Human
Rights in the Digital Age (New York: Cambridge University
Press,
2016) and Inside the Islamic Republic: Social Change in Post-
Khomeini Iran, (London: Hurst & Company, forthcoming).
Neda Nazmi is an expert in Iranian politics and civil society
development. She holds Masters degrees from American
University
and Allameh Tabataba`i University, and a BA in Political
Science
from Tehran University.

Nicola Perugini is Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown
University
and co-author of The Human Right to Dominate (New York:
Oxford
University Press, 2015).
Marie Juul Petersen is a sociologist of religion with a PhD from
Copenhagen University. She works at the Danish Institute for
Human R
Barbara Rieffer-Flanagan is a Professor of Political Science at
on
the intersection of religion, politics and human rights.
21
Martin Shaw is a sociologist of global politics, war and
genocide. He
Internacionals, Professorial Fellow in International Relations
and
Human Rights at the University of Roehampton, London, and
Emeritus Professor of the University of Sussex.

Lebanon. She is Professor of International Law and
International
Relations and Director of the Centre on Human Rights in
Conflict at
the University of East London.
Bassam Tibi, born in Damascus, was Professor of International
Relations until his retirement in 2009 from the University of
universities including Harvard, Princeton, Yale and the latest,
Cornell University, where he acted as A. D. White Professor
between
2006 and 2010.
for
Socio-Legal Studies and a Lecturer in law and religious studies
at
Cardiff University.
North

Africa at SOAS, University of London. Prior to becoming an
academic she worked with non-governmental organizations
(NGOs)
in the Arab human rights movement, mostly in Palestine but
also
elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa, an engagement
she
has sought to maintain since joining SOAS.
Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm is Assistant Professor of Political
Science
interests
include transitional justice, human rights, post-conflict
reconstruction, and democratization.
22
Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics and coordinator of
Middle
focus
includes human rights, U.S. foreign policy, strategic nonviolent

action, and Middle Eastern/North African politics.
23
Part I
Frameworks
24
Section I
Introduction and overview
25
1
Human Rights and the Middle East
and North Africa
Indivisibility, social rights, and structural

26
Introduction
In conceptualizing this Handbook, I have sought to highlight
original
to
human rights in the Middle East
goal
in doing so is simple: to capture in ways that cannot be done in
human rights have had or could have an impact on MENA
politics.
e stakes in this Handbook’s
popular
uprisings inflected by human rights principles have been
violently
repressed everywhere from Iran, across the Arab world, and in
Turkey. In their place, long dominant authoritarianisms are
and/or Islamist justifications, but share a common foundation in

authoritarianisms show a resilience and ability to morph into
progressively more brutal systems of power that leave many
with
the sense that there is no alternative.
-
colonial inheritance of despotic power structures, current
realities of
failed governance that have exacerbated divisions along many
fault
lines, and extra-regional forces that consistently reinforce anti-
-interest.”
Nonetheless, it is also worth remembering that human rights
have
long been part of informing subterranean articulations of
alternatives to dominant forms of culture, economics, politics,
and
quite visibly— onomic rebellion, political
rebellion, and social resistance—during the popular uprisings
that

27
swept the region from 2009 to 2013. But, now that the hope
represented by those uprisings seems a distant memory, there
has
been a return by many in academic and policy-making circles to
status quo thinking that assumes the MENA is solely defined by
secular military rule or anti-pluralist Islamisms? Syrian-style
misleading
ones. Lazily taking them as a frame effaces other possibilities,
serving the purposes of elites invested in their perpetuation with
devastating results for the region’s peoples, societies, and
states, as
well as the broader regional and global order.
Most specific to this Handbook’s purposes, those frames have
limited thought about even the possibility of alternatives to the

many
parts,
nine sections, and thirty-
in
particular, have become interwoven with discourses that reject
false
-
inflected discourses have sought, instead, to somehow make
space in
the MENA’s political, economic, cultural, and social structures
for
pluralisms of different sorts. I will conclude this introductory
domain, with particular reference to sexual orientation and
gender
identity-related (SOGI) rights. I argue that connecti ng social
resistances to human rights is not just important in isolation; it
is
connected to sustaining interconnected resistances in the
cultural,

economic, and political rights’ spheres.
In that light, the goal in this Handbook of coming to terms with
human rights’ potential impacts is ambitious, but more realistic
than
make
sense of how rights have been part of varieties of resistances
against
28
dominant power structures—local, domestic, regional, and
international—and, beyond that, what the variables are that will
determine if they may do so more successfully in the future.
29
indivisibility, intersections,
multidisciplinarity, and beyond

who in diverse ways—
other
and, indeed, in disagreement with my own views—are at the
edge in thought about what human rights are, how they can be
the
MENA condition whether human rights will or will not have an
disciplines as well as regional and thematic expertise. Part I of
the
further situate the reader within frameworks for thinking about
human rights in the MENA. Section II gives a conceptual
framework
inclusive of different categories of human rights—from social
rights
to political, economic, and cultural rights. Section III gives a
political
framework inclusive of key countries, sub-regions, and the U.S.
as an
omnipresent external hegemon. Section IV gives a transnational

and
international framework that makes clear the intersecting levels
in
play
out, and how powerful states increasingly contest human rights
at
all of these levels. Part II’s sections focus the reader on issue
areas
that have been subject to particularly intense debate. Section V
rights’
relevance in the MENA. Section VI gives different points of
view on
the intersections of religion and human rights in the
predominantly
Muslim MENA. Section VII takes on transitions and
accountability
demands
30

institutions.
Part III contains two concluding sections that end the Handbook
in a particularly distinctive manner. Section VIII’s Conclusions
from
a global viewpoint: theoretical justifications and contestations
around human rights calls on human rights theoreticians with a
global perspective to shed light on human rights in the MENA.
MENA is not an insular region disconnected from global
currents,
including those in academic circles. To the contrary, academic
conversations about human rights’ history, relation to the state,
and
their contradictory dynamics in many parts of the world can and
these
rights that see them as having progressively grown out of
Enlightenment thought and post-WWII history. A top down

diffusion of human rights from a singular foundation—
philosophical
or historical—is increasingly seen as less important to human
rights’
resonance
rights have been malleable enough to be seized and repurposed
as
useful tools to grassroots struggles in many different contexts
around
the globe.
orms the
conceptualization of Section IX’sConclusions from a grassroots
viewpoint: reflections on dynamics around struggles for human
-practitioners who reflect on their decades of work
on
human rights in the region. It is a key premise of this Handbook
that
academic work on human rights in the MENA should more
seriously
is

on human rights in
general
and, most egregiously, on human rights in the MENA. Lynn
31
with the observation that academics need to be open to being
‘surprised’ —that is to having their theoretical assumptions
overturned by taking seriously the normative commitments and
intellectual analyses of those on the ground. It is my hope that
the
Handbook consistently highlights precisely these sorts of
unexpected
surprises that flow out of tangible engagements with human
rights
in the MENA.
conclusion, intersectionality), and multidisciplinarity.
Indivisibility,

too
segmented
categories. Virtually any rights issue, to the contrary, can and
should
be contextualized in multiple dimensions rather than as simply
structural
reasons behind the persistence of human rights’ violations, it is
essential to recognize that these violations take place in the
context
of systems of power that function simultaneously in the
cultural,
violations, in parallel, has been most powerful when it has
functioned across these spheres. Intellectual accountings of
human
rights must take into account, therefore, all of these dimensions
if
they are to make sense of controversies and contestations that
revolve around human rights. As will be seen, this is a recurring

theme throughout the Handbook.
informed by a focus on intersections—that is, how it is that
human
rights intersect with a range of issues and, more broadly, how
rights’
mestic crises in governance
and
perspectives. Rights’ violations are not discrete and
disconnected
32
but, rather, are intimately related to many of the globe’s
geopolitical
crises that—from wars without borders to global refugee
flows—have
their roots in systematic human rights’ violations. Given the
crucial to

shine a light on how rights’ violations are at their heart.
As these themes of indivisibility and intersections came to
define
the Handbook, it also became clear that in order to illuminate
them
it would be necessary to call on the resources of many academic
disciplines rather than the narrow focus of just one or two
fields.
in a
-
disciplinary
perspectives on human rights and the MENA, helping to bring
out
rights’ evolutions in different dimensions and their impacts on
diverse issues.
will
conclude this introduction by reference to SOGI-related rights.
If we
take seriously both indivisibility and not just intersections but

intersectionality in the light of multi-
‘social’ rights are clearly not marginal, but rather vital to
envisio
economic,
political, as well as social life.
33
contributions to human rights and the Middle
East and North Africa
Section II
A conceptual framework: political, economic, and cultural
rights in the Middle East and North Africa
I have already noted both this Handbook’s defining
organizational
frameworks and recurring themes of indivisibility, intersections,
and
tual threads
were

Handbook’s nine sections. Section II, for example, is informed
by the
notion of indivisibility that I have already started to outline in
this
o my closing discussion of
social
rights). Most academic discussions of human rights in the
MENA
Handbook departs from that by emphasizing human rights in all
lity of rights’ categories has
long
been a key contention in human rights theory. As this literature
makes clear, rights are best conceptualized as mutually
constitutive
of
interconnected, as are the reasons behind the gains in
implementation. What is key is identifying the structures of
power

can
both reveal the incentives behind their maintenance and why
34
among a wide range of violations, rather than focus on issues in
isolation.
conceptually frame the Handbook by making clear how all
categories of rights are essential to thinking about human rights
and
the MENA. Huss Banai’s “Political legitimacy, contingency,
and
rights in the Middle East and North Africa” notes that the
vocabulary of the Arab uprisings— “cries for freedom, equality,
accountability, respect for rights and dignity, and justice” —is
shared
with many other uprisings around the globe. What have to be
recognized, however, are the fundamentally distinct contexts in

popular legitimacy, but nonetheless have enough political
legitimacy
with key sectors (and external allies) to withstand popular calls
for
democracy and rights. Zehra Arat’s “Economic rights in the
Middle
East and North Africa” shows how issues of economic justice
are as
important to peoples in the MENA as political justice. Arat
stresses
the interdependency of rights and the necessity of more
equitable
economic development in MENA countries if there are to be
this
point: economic elites use closed political structures as a shield
to
erishment of
their
societies. Transparency and accountability to counter that is an

Mark LeVine’s “Cultural rights in the Middle East: art,
revolution,
and repression” brings into the discussion MENA governments’
this is
essential to sustaining systems of economic and political
exclusion. It
and
political. LeVine argues that uprisings across the MENA put
this into
stunning relief: art was, in short, an essential constitutive
element in
35
uprisings across the region, showing its revolutionary potential.
counterrevolutions that have followed have taken as their
essential
starting point, therefore, cultural repression and suppression of
free
isolation,

but also must be seen as fundamentally about sustaining broader
power structures based in economic hiera
and
socially dominant groups.
with
-related
rights are key to conceptualizing identity in a more pluralistic
man
other
undermine authoritarian power structures. Collectively, Section
I
social,
these categories are, in themselves, insufficient. It is only by
taking
into account how they are mutually constituted—that is,
indivisible—
that we can begin to make sense of huma
in

the MENA and their potential to undergird movements for
structural
Section III
A political framework: intersecting human rights and
governance crises in the Middle East and North Africa
nt a depth and breadth in
academic
contributions on the intersections of human rights with broader
MENA politics that has not been conceivable until quite
recently.
intellectual
developments. Foremost among these developments is, simply,
an
36
increasing recognition that these intersections are of vital
importance to regional and global politics. Even casual
observers
have noted that Iran’s Green Movement (2009), the Arab
uprisings

(2010–11), and Turkey’s Gezi Park protests (2013) exploded
notions—
surprisingly common until quite recently—that human rights are
irrelevant to the MENA’s politics. To the contrary, this era of
uprisings across the region has shown that human rights (and
their
violation) are at the fulcrum of ongoing governance and security
crises in the MENA.
Intellectual debates and academic explorations of how human
rights intersect with ongoing crises in the MENA are, thus, the
collectively give an overview of political dynamics regionally
and in
clear
how both general and specific human rights issues are essential
to
understanding the reaso
intersections are not just about domestic human rights’
violations,

pursuing policies that have consistently reinforced a spiral of
despotic, unaccountable governance in the region.
in
contemporary middle-east: a historical and comparative regional
perspective.” Shaw argues that well-known genocides—
those
of Armenians in 1915, Kurds in 1988, and recent Islamic State
atrocities—
violence
in the Middle East. Shaw contends that the genocidal agenda of
the
Islamic State is exceptional only in its explicit sectarianism.
From the
Islamic State to the Syrian and Iraqi civil wars, the divide
between
Sunni Gulf states and Shi`a Iran, and Israel’s expansion into the
West Bank, he sees similar sectarianisms defining the MENA’s
politics as part of a wider processes of homogenizing
populations

and removing unwanted Others.
37
How these homogenizing processes are at war with pre-existing
pluralisms is developed in specific contemporary contexts in
Section
emi has perhaps the broadest
take on
world:
A framework for understanding radical Islamism.” Hashemi
argues
that ISIS reflects fragmented social conditions that have
emerged out
of a long crisis of bad governance in the Arab world. In short,
as he
puts it, “human rights and democracy, or rather, their general
absence in the Arab world, can best explain the rise and
expansion
of ISIS.” Human rights’ violations and political
authoritarianism have
led to a destructive cycle of state failure, civil wars, and the
rise of

extremist ideologies. Hashemi points out that during the Arab
uprisings violent Islamist groups were rendered impotent as the
possibility briefly emerged of peaceful polit
an
increase in extremist violence—that is, when democratic
openings
are closed radicalism thrives. Until this political-social context
in the
spiral of worsening state failure and
sectarian conflict will continue.
disappointing
turn of history. Turkey’s AKP in its first years in pow er seemed
to
represent an advance both for human rights and for the idea that
a
moderate Islamist party and human rights principles are
perfectly
power

and openings toward Kurds and a general social openness that
ranged from more freedom for the religiously pious to the
experience
shows, however, that selective gains for human rights without
ights by
seen
Erdogan increasingly assert one-man power. Despite democratic
mobilizations and the Gezi Park protests, the result has been
38
reversals for forces of democratic pluralism, with minorities of
all
sorts—ethnic, ideological, and sexual—increasingly targeted by
a
government that uses sectarianism to solidify its power.
rights
in Iran Since the Green Movement” narrates a similarly

depressing
tale. Iran’s 2009 Green Movement represented a high point for
popular aspirations for more open politics in Iran informed by
human rights, one that could only be repressed by brutal
methods
and xenophobic nationalist justifications. Since that repression,
regime
have since been largely sidelined to those forced into exile, with
result
in Turkey and Iran has been the resurgence of authoritarian
governance, with both states acting internally and externally in
identifies.
Repressing domestic pluralism has gone hand in hand with
projections of singular nationalism into foreign policy, as seen
in
both
inside and outside of Turkey, and Iranian support for Shi`a
allies

outside its borders.
Kathleen Cavanaugh’s “Narrating law: Israel and the Occupied
Territories” takes a more theoretical turn, one that reflects
Israel/Palestine as a long-time example of the homogenizing
processes that Shaw discusses. Cavanaugh discusses how
t
narratives regarding that process. One legal ‘truth’ regarding
Israel/Palestine is that this is an issue of the Palestinian human
right
to self-determination as well as redress of a broad range of
other
narrative,
however, confronts a competing legal truth: that the actual legal
frame is one of Israel’s sovereign right to maintain its national
-
conflict,’ in Cavanaugh’s term, is not exclusive to
Israel/Palestine,
39

sphere
around the globe.
Cavanaugh’s argument flows directly into Stephen Zunes’
hu
shielded Israel from legal sanctions for violations of human
rights
and humanitarian law, specifically in regard to treatment of
civilians
than
just a
critique of the U.S.–Israeli relationship or how the United
States,
beyond Israel, prioritizes its military–security relationships in
the
region over human security concerns. He argues more broadly
that
impunity under a U.S. shield from international law harms the
possibility of reversing processes of ethnic conflict that are
reinforced by human rights’ violations justified by national

security.
between
Israelis and Palestinians.
sectarianism: never absent from MENA politics, it is
increasingly a
tool used by states and non-
s—and the
resources of actors who instrumentally deploy them—has
clearly
overwhelmed countervailing democratic pluralist politics with
have been in steady decline since WWII. What has been on the
rise
are so-called ‘new wars,’ in Mary Kaldor’s phrase: local
conflicts
causes or ideologies and more about using particular identities
and
group solidarities as the basis for staking claims to local turf.1

Genocidal conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda to
vicious
new
wars. For a long time the MENA appeared to be exempt from
this
style of warfare as its states were capable of maintaining—at a
bloody cost—the traditional Weberian model of the state
40
monopolizing legitimate authority and violence within a defined
—
from
Syria’s refugee crisis to Saudi intervention in Yemen, the
disintegration of state authority across the region, and the rise
of the
Islamic State—
sectarian
conflicts have, at their heart, dysfunctions in governance across
the
re -border

Section IV
A transnational and international framework: human rights
beyond borders
s
make
deeply
interconnected with other parts of the world in terms of
intellectual
and
social currents, and intersections with both Great Powers and
international organizations. Section IV shows some of the
specific
transnational and international factors that impact human rights
in
the MENA, with reference to transnational advocacy networks
(TANs), international organizations from the OIC to the United
they demonstrate how integrated putatively domestic human
rights

illustrate the multiple lev
being
this
poses.
Laura Landolt’s “Rival transnational advocacy networks and
Middle East politics at the U.N. Human Rights Council,” for
example,
41
looks at rival human rights TANs from the MENA—including
those
that are allied to or even appendages of states—and how their
contestations are played out at the U.N. Human Rights Council
(HRC). Many MENA states are rhetorically adopting the
language of
human rights in ways that are superficially appealing but
actually
quite problematic. While this rhetorical adoption may be
supportive
of human rights in the abstract (cultural relativist arguments

become
immaterial when even MENA states are loudly proclaiming
human
remake
human rights into a tool to serve their own interests, rather than
society
movements continue to contest this, of course, but have
increasingly
domestic and international spaces.
values
in the U.N. Human Rights System” makes this point even more
strongly. Mayer discusses the Organization of Islamic
Cooperation
issues
that
marily political—to
justify

internal repression of minorities and dissidents—rather than
based in
either human rights or Islamic values. And, more generally,
Mayer
makes clear that the real stakes in terms of any acquiescence to
the
OIC in this regard
to
‘redefine’ human rights in the interests of its leading states.
Mahmood Monshipouri takes on a different element of the
transnational and international context that helps shape human
rights’ realities in the MENA. In “Human rights, youth, and
connections
evidenced itself during the Arab uprisings with the prominent
role
of youth, showing a potential avenue to harness the voices of
the

42
disaffected in ways that brought to the fore demands for
alternatives
dr
this
also evidences itself with the rising appeal of radical Islamisms
as ISIS, particularly in the wake of the counterrevolutions that
crushed the youthful voices that informed populist uprisings
across
the region. Transnational networks have empowered alternatives
to
the status quo but, when pluralist alternatives are repressed, it is
not
surprising that xenophobic and nihilistic alternatives emerge.
-edged sword are evidenced in
Kathleen Hamill’s “Rights, refugees, and the case of Syria:
What do
embodiment of
this Handbook’s concerns: in short, that authoritarianism, mass

human rights’ violations, sectarian rule, and Great Power
meddling
on
state,
regional, and international level. Hamill details the futility as
well as
the fragile hope of human rights in this context. Futility in that
the
refugee legal regime’s poor definition has been exposed by its
inability to cope with everything from basic protections for
refugees
to broader issues of integration, freedom of movement, and
access to
services. A fragile hope in that, amid the bleak hopelessness,
human
rights norms—while inadequate—have nonetheless been the
only
tangible framework for offering a minimum of humane
treatment
for Syrian refugees.

world,
the global effects of mass human rights’ violations make clear
that,
leaving moral imperatives to the side, there is a self-interested
that self-interest impel sufficient practical action so that there is
real
the
43
conceptual inadequacy of the refugee regime. Human rights are
still
mainly focused on a domestic context—that is, the relation
between
a state and those under its jurisdiction. Can the rights regime
meet
s to make sense in an
make a

of
functioning sovereign states seems q
no
doubt about the conceptual relevance of this transnational and
international context; its implementation, however, remains
deeply
Section V
Gender and human rights in the Middle East and North
Africa
Part II includes sections on three particularly contentious issues
regarding human rights and the MENA: gender, religion, and
transitions out of authoritarianism. In terms of
multidisciplinarity,
these three sections particularly exemplify how this Handbook
draws
from a variety of disciplines in a way that is unprecedented in
work
-

anthropology,
history, international relations, law, philosophy, political
science,
religious studies, and sociology. It was only a short time ago
that it
-disciplinary
both
on human rights and on human rights’ intersections with the
Middle
East and North Africa, however, has provided the opportunity to
move beyond the intellectual insularity of a discipline-based
focus.
44
on issues, making clear how they can be illuminated by debates
in a
range of academic disciplines. Section V on gender and human

Mahdavi and Homa Hoodfar, by socio-
Engeland, and
complementary despite—or perhaps because of—the authors’
differing methodologies and disciplines. Gender is a contested
true
in the MENA, where
undifferentiated symbol of cultural authenticity rather than
active
by anthropologists give fine-grained portraits that show how,
beyond stereotypes, women engage in struggles for agency.
Section
how
and, through that, societies as a whole.
Mahdavi’s “Colliding rights and wrongs: Intimate labor, health,
human rights, and the State in the Gulf” brings out the lived
realities

of sexual and reproductive health in the context of intimate
ethnographic portraits that show both migrant agency and state
human rights in Iran” also has an anthropological perspective
that
focuses on close readings of ongoing contestations over
reproductive
rights in Iran, connecting more specifically to the ideological
reasons
behind the
Engeland’s
“Women’s rights in the Middle East: Constitutions and
consequences,” by contrast, takes a broader comparative law
systematically disempower
uprisings and the future of human rights” has an even broader
despite
the repression of the Arab uprisings, human rights have always
45

progressed out o
connected
to fundamental freedoms, most accurately gauged by progress in
women’s rights.
—whether about micro-realities of migrants
and
citizens resisting state power over their sexual and reproductive
women—
placing
make clear both how it is that women are acting to claim agency
and
why rights are so essential to making those claims.
Section VI
Religion and Human Rights in the Middle East and North
Africa
intense
articularly the case

when it
comes to Islam in MENA contexts, where the power of
Islamisms
has made religion a point of acute controversy. Section VI’s
on religion and human rights bring, again, a multi-disciplinary
lens
to this controversy, wi
in
Islamic Studies, international relations, anthropology, and
political
science.
the
dominant issue confronting human rights in the MENA, then
debates about religion need to avoid reifying the notion that
Islam
monopolizes the Muslim public sphere. When this sort of
reification
occurs—
compatible?”
debates—it implicitly reinforces a sectarian assumption that
Islam is

the primary variable defining life in the MENA. It must be
46
emphasized, instead, that this tired trope of Islam’s quasi -
monopoly
on the public sphere neglects the MENA’s pluralistic normative
shows 52 percent of
Arab
youth feel “religion plays too big a role in the Middle East.”2
an environment that continues to be increasingly informed by,
among other factors, heterogeneities, hybrid identities,
intersectionalities, diasporas, local, regional and international
networks, satellite television, cyber spaces, and transnational
currents and normative networks. It is by taking into account
these
contradictory currents, rather than denying their complexity,
that
space is opened for recognizing how human rights may facilitate
pluralism as a complement rather than a contradiction to Islam.
Khaled Abou El Fadl’s “Shari`ah and human rights” masterfully

dispenses with theological objections to human rights from an
Islamic perspective and, indeed, suggests possibilities for an
Islamic
doctrine for realizing a vision of human rights. Abou El Fadl
notes
how the human rights movement has gained support in the
Muslim
world, coming to be used as a medium for expressing dissent
and
making demands on local governments. In particular, he notes
that
“the revolutions of the so-called Arab Spring demonstrated the
widespread utilization of the language of rights (huquq)” but
that,
nonetheless, there remains tension between traditional Islamic
law
and
freedom of religion. Abou El Fadl argues that, to move beyond
that
tension, Muslims must recognize on Islamic grounds that
pursuing a
just society includes recognition of the rights due to human

beings.
rights in “Islam, the principle of subjectivity, and individual
human
rights,” arguing this must be done on cross-cultural foundations
as
an Islamic foundation only reifies a notion of Muslim
exceptionalism. Tibi advances a ‘principle of subjectivity’ —that
is, a
human-centered view of the world rather than a religion-
centered
view—as essential to human rights’ expansion in the Muslim
world
47
ntly points to the problem with a
simplistic
acquiescence to the normative monopoly of Islam. Tibi points
out
course,

incontestable constructs of Islam projected out by dominant
state
the
power.
place of human rights in Islamic law may be both practically
and
theoretically problematic.3 Practically problematic because it
risks
reinforcing the centrality of those actors most invested in using
Islam instrumentally to further their interests. And theoreti cally
foundation for human rights is what is even needed if human
rights
are to justify (and, more importantly, expand on) their current
-existing foundation in religion
may be
a misdirection that makes us miss the everyday cultural,
economic,
political, and social reasons that human rights language already

increasingly constitutes many claims for justice around the
globe
and in the MENA. It is most likely, in short, that it is those
daily
realities that make human rights relevant or irrelevant, not
theology.
arguments
rights, and religion: Rejection, reconciliation, or
reconceptualization?” returns us to the OIC, now in terms of the
implications of its adopting human rights language. Petersen
argues
that the OIC’s establishment in 2011 of its Independent
Permanent
Human Rights Commission
from its
Declaration
declared an Islamic alternative to the rights enshrined in
international human rights documents whereas, rhetorically at
least,
the IPHRC represented an evolution toward recognizing

international legal obligations regarding human rights. In
practice,
48
however, the OIC has become increasingly insistent on pushing
for
‘traditional values’ to be integrated into human rights.
In a narrow sense, this testifies to Saudi Arabia’s use of the
OIC as
an instrument to advance its policy preferences—just as Tibi’s
speaks
to a broader point: human rights should not be understood as
fixed
concepts, rather they are subject to constant contestations,
-make human rights
into
a tool to advance exclusivist ideas of religious truth in the
service of

Carol Vance and Alice Miller: human rights are a not a static
entity
but rather, as they say, are both a tool of struggle and a site of
struggle.4 As a site of struggle, human rights are subject to
contesting forces continuing to struggle to define and redefine
what
rights language illustrate this, as do other ongoing struggles
among
states and non-state actors around how human rights are
articulated
and in whose interest.
Barbara Rieffer-Flanagan’s “Rhetoric versus reality: American
foreign policy and religious freedom in the Middle East”
connects
these arguments to U.S. foreign policy and broader geopolitical
c
U.S.
economic or national security interests have led to support for
regimes that violate rights to religious freedom and dissent,
most
prominently, once again, Saudi Arabia. Rieffer-Flanagan argues

that
violations in the region, violations that are an essential part of
the
context that has led to state failure and violent extremism.
Insofar as
this has led to domestic, regional, and global instability, it has
been
counterproductive to U.S. interests.
counterproductive policies speaks, in part, to the
misconceptions
49
tion refer.
-makers that elite-defined
Islam is all-determining in the MENA, rather than an infinitely
by the
powerful in narrow ways. Contesting these instrumental
deployments by pointing to the MENA’s (religious and non-

religious) diversity is essential to allowing religion to be an
expression of the region’s living pluralism rather than a tool in
repressive efforts to create a mythically united community.
Indeed, a
human right to religious freedom and free expression is needed
if
religious discourse is to be constituted by pluralistic voices that
will
keep it dynamic, rather than static and closed. And human rights
can also be a necessary safeguard ensuring that religion does
not
exclude from the public sphere non-religious voices that are an
essential part of the MENA’s diverse mosaic.
Section VII
Transitions and accountability in the Middle East and North
Africa
Post-mortems on the failures of pluralist uprisings across the
MENA
streets

another thread that runs through this Handbook is that the
power of
state institutions (and non-state Islamist institutions) to wait out
the
power was not at all surprising. Nor has subsequent instability
been
terribly surprising, given that one of political science’s few
maxims
is that periods of democratic transitions are particularly
vulnerable
to conflict and violence.5 Indeed, the problem runs deeper than
the
50
return of authoritarian governing structures across the MENA.
bequest of decades of despoti
basis
for political community, making the failures of democratic
hopes
true

transformation will require a process both to institutionalize
accountability and, more broadly, to re-create political
communities
in traumatically divided state-societies.
how
a state-society can be rebuilt on stable foundations that allow it
to
move past the str
previous
order. Processes that have emerged as a means to this end
include
lustration (i.e. purges of those associated with the old regime in
order to make possible the emergence of an untainted new
regime),
tribunals (i.e. trials for those responsible for human rights’
violations
past
wrongs), and truth and reconciliation commissions (i.e. an
replace retribution with truth-telling as a path

wounds).
Section VII concerns these processes in a MENA context, with
rights’ violations suffered across
downplayed. Beyond a generic recognition that torture and
the
structural violence that exists at the cultural, economic,
political, and
es clear the difficult path to true
revolutions that reconstitute public spheres in more open,
pluralistic
ways. Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm’s “Core transitional justice
debates in
the Middle East and beyond” gives an overview of debates in
this
field, from philosophical notions of what is justice to more
specific
Examples
from the MENA cited by Wiebelhaus-Brahm show that, rather

than
favored
51
either retribution or manipulating transitional justice processes
for
transitions.
illustrating different dimensions of these failures—or at best
very
limited successes—of transitional justice efforts in the MENA.
Chandra Sriram’s “Courts as a tool in transitions: Lessons from
the
Special Tribunal for Lebanon” takes on the hybrid tribunal
established by Lebanon and the United Nations Security Council
to
address the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime
Minister
however, does not address abuses during Lebanon’s earlier civil

wars
or abuses under subsequent Syria
spillover from Syria’s more recent civil war. Sriram finds that it
is
unlikely to promote accountability or even truth telling, though
there is some hope that it may facilitate some helpful
discussions
about the past.
Rim el-Gantri’s “Lessons on transitioning from
authoritarianism:
Pitfalls and promise from Tunisia’s experience” notes that
Tunisia is
-Arab Spring state,
partly
due to it having initiated transitional justice processes. El-
Gantri
Tunisian state’s reluctance to implement these processes. Civil
-start this process keeps alive the
past, but fears
are
very real that the supposed Tunisian success story is a passing

mirage. Without a true transformation of its political system,
Tunisia
less
bad version of the pathologies that ail the Arab political system.
Morocco is an even more difficult case. Its Equity and
Reconciliation
Commission was the first transitional process in the region, but
rights
in Morocco
but
also how continuing impunity is part of what has kept Morocco
in
52
stasis. Glacier returns us to Mark LeVine’s focus on cultural
rights
and how their repression is intimately linked to violati ons in
other
dimensions. She argues that impunity for cultural rights’
violations,

including deliberately depriving Moroccans of education, is part
of a
political strategy that impedes cultural, economic, political, and
social development.
Experiences around the globe have demonstrated that simply
having elections or referenda is not a long-term solution to
deeply
seated cultural, economic, political, and social divisions.
Experiences
around the globe have also shown, however, that processes of
transitional justice—when seriously engaged—have helped
many
state-societies in their transition out of authoritarianism. No all -
encompassing model emerges from these experiences, but there
is
one unifying principle: the need to recognize and grapple with
authoritarian pasts if more democratic, pluralistic futures are to
emerge. To speak specifically of the Arab uprisings, their
spontaneity gave them their irrepressible power. Ironically,
however,
gathering

together
heel
thought put into envisioning how to deal with responsibility for
past
wrongs or the shape of future governing structures.
simple transitional justice process that is uniformly appropriate.
across
the Middle East, especially in the Arab world, there has been a
general failure to come to terms with responsibility for past
authoritarianisms. If transitions to democracy are inherently
divided
either despotism or internecine
conflicts.
opportunity—fragile but real—was missed when domestic,
regional,

53
and global powers conspired to return the Arab world to its
‘stable’
status quo.
Section VIII
Conclusions from a global viewpoint: theoretical
justifications and contestations around human rights
Part III’s two sections conclude the Handbook with theoretical
reflections grounded in global and grassroots perspectives.
Section
difficulty
of human rights’ implementation in practice is paralleled by the
contentiousness of theoretical arguments about how to
understand
human rights and their global spread. A flourishing human
rights
literature allows for contributions from a number of different,
sometimes conflicting, perspectives to illuminate difficult

debates
about what human rights are and what explains their resonance
or
particularities, including in the MENA.
human ri
true
distinctive
contexts that must be taken into account if we are to make sense
of
,
indeed,
Banai
because it would risk reinforcing insularity in intellectual
debate
rather than the exploration of connections across disciplinary

and
54
geographic divides. Underlying this Handbook is a critique of
insularity and a theoretical assumption that moving beyond
disciplinary and regional expertise c
behind broadening the Handbook’s academic palate with
is globally-
regarding the intersection of human rights and locales around
the
world, including in the MENA.
David Forsythe’s “International human rights at 70: Has the
Enlightenment project run aground?” gives, as its title indicates,
a
broad reflection on how human rights have evolved historically,

criminal justice, transitional justice, and the Responsibility to
Protect
advances, the rights regime has a long path before it can make
more
than incremental progress in the face of nationalisms and
illiberalisms, especially in the MENA. If Forsythe speaks of the
gradual diffusion of human rights across the globe in what he
calls
contingent circumstances, Koen De Feyter’s “On the local
relevance
of human rights” takes that focus on contingency and asks, more
specifically, in what contexts it is that peoples on the ground
come to
Asia
shows that groups around the world, especially in the global
South,
appeal to human rights when their human dignity is under
threat.
Contrary to usual top-down notions of the global diffusion of
rights,
De Feyter makes the argument that the use of human rights at

the
local level is the starting point for the normative development
of
global human rights. In a phrase he borrows from Upendra Baxi,
people are the ‘primary au
literature
that human rights flow from on high out of Enlightenment era
55
problematic and, in a M
ways
realities.
Nicola Perugini and Neve Gordon’s “Israel/Palestine, human
rights and domination” takes a critical theory perspective on
human
rights, insightfully arguing that the rights regime can reinforce
state
power in a problematic manner. A new generation of
contemporary

historians—
most
prominently—have put into question the common story that the
human rights regime flowed out of WWII. Perugini and Gordon,
however, accept the more traditional story, assuming the birth
of the
that,
when this new regime emerged, it did so in order to bestow on
the
had
the effect, ironically, of reinforcing the state’s power. In
Israel/Palestine they see an unfortunate result of this, arguing
that
functioned to
normalize colonial relations between the Israeli state and
dispossessed Palestinians.
rights project. Human rights’ synergistic relationship with the
state

creates a sort of mutual dependency; counter-intuitively, this
risks
empowering the very states that human rights are meant to limit.
David Forsythe’s broad historical overview makes clear,
however,
that human rights are too narrowly pigeonholed if they are seen
only through that one problematizing prism. Indeed, while far
from
a panacea, Forsythe gives a cogent overview of how human
rights
have developed in ways that, at least at times, have effectively
limited state power to violate the rights of individuals and
social
groups. One should also be skeptical, per De Feyter’s
contribution, of
making too exclusive an identification of human rights with
state
peoples
—from the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa to
indigenous

56
peoples in South America—use their agency to engage with
human
rights as a tool in their struggles against states. Human rights
can be
instrumentally appropriated by states, as Perugini and Gordon
point
out, but that does not exhaust their potential.
rely on monolithic, ahistorical notions of human rights that are,
in
her words, “undisciplined by empirical reality.” Using the
example of
activism around women’s rights, Brysk shows how to
understand
human rights as a “contested, constructed, and evolving basis
for
mobilization and empowerment with the capacity for counter-
moves

discussion of human rights beyond predetermined theoretical
templates and more toward being informed by empirical
realities
that explain human rights “expansion and vernacularization.”
Human rights are, as noted before, both a potential tool of
struggle
actors—state and non-state alike—contest how human rights
develop
and are re-imagined. To see human rights as a singular monolith
is
to miss their problems, their possibilities, and their
transformations.
of
work to re-orient understandings of human rights toward a
localized
-
from the

ground up?” emphasizes, in particular, the need to recognize,
rather
than deny, the agency of peoples in claiming human rights,
converting them to their own purposes and, in that process,
human rights creation by globally diverse actors, Alfredson
argues
that human rights’ adaptations in response to new claims shows
that
57
rather than becoming stagnant in its own notion of
‘universality.’
Indeed, the emergence of new sets of human rights in recent
years—
regarding sexual orientation and gender identity, for example—
demonstrates how human rights are, at their best, in a dynamic
process of becoming rather than static.
tributions in Section VIII indicate how human rights

relevance in diverse parts of the world flows from the degree to
a
have
only become important to the region from a top-down global
of
the literature on human rights and the MENA.
Section IX
Conclusions from a grassroots viewpoint: reflections on
dynamics around struggles for human rights in the Middle
East and North Africa
authors who have been inspirations to many who have worked
on
their
reflections is a testament to the interplay of long experience,
talk of

however,
eoretical
and
practical issues revolving around human rights and grassroots
struggles in the MENA inform reflections that astutely
recognize the
58
surprises that make human rights and
difficult topic.
Fateh Azzam’s “Reflections on three decades of human rights
work in the Arab Region” gives a magisterial overview of all
this
Handbook encompasses. Azzam meditates on both the growth of
the
human rights movement since the late 1970s in the MENA and
its
consistent frustration by structures of power that are both local
and

political in human rights discourse leads Azzam to decry “a
cycle of
tilting at windmills by human rights proponents: now it’s the
culture, now it’s the law, now it’s the politics.” Azzam argues,
instead, for considering culture, law, and politics in an
integrated
arguments about indivisibility that, as I have noted, inform from
the
meaningfully impacts local and global structures of power.
Azzam
and
Sanctions (BDS) movement, saying its strategies are “human
rights-
based and well known: to bring pressure on states, commercial
companies, universities and other institutions, to desist fr om
activities that support the continuing Israeli occupation and
violations of international law and Palestinian human rights.

Initiated by Palestinians, it has grown exponentially in the past
10
years and has garnered significant global support, scored many
successes and is beginning to have tangible effect.”
Amr Hamzawy foregrounds the experience of Egypt in his
“Egypt
2011–15: How can a democratic revolution fail to improve
human
rights conditions?” As with Azzam, Hamzawy is both an
engaged
intellectual and a grizzled practitioner whose reflections flow
out of
by
recalling an intellectual environment in the Arab world at the
start
of the twenty-first century that was informed by a sense of
urgency
59
to confront long-standing authoritarianism and the “pseudo-
rational

discourses” of apologists for ruling regimes and Islamism as its
only
alternative. Hamzawy evokes the prevailing optimism that Arab
societies were bound to transition to democracy and the rule of
law.
In making these arguments at the time, intellectual elites and
human
Arab
populations looking for alternatives to a stagnant and repressive
status quo. Hamzawy argues this was key to empowering a
younger
generation of Arab activists to discover the street as a peaceful
arena
Arab
d
make the counterrevolutionary tide that swamped these
uprisings all
Hamzawy has been Egypt’s most consistent critic of Mubarak,
of
Muslim Brotherhood rule, of the 2013 coup that overthrew

Muhammad Morsi, and of al-Sisi’s rule since then. He describes
of these phases as sharing an idea of a savior from above that
justifies mass violations of human rights, sacrificing both the
blood
and the hopes of Egyptians.
Bahey eldin Hassan’s “Reflections on human rights before and
current events and, yet, a continued engagement with how to
create
Studies,
Hassan argues that military elites in Arab countries are the
variable
that explains the counterrevolutionary turn that repressed
popular
focuses
on Egypt. He uses Egypt’s recent history as a case study
demonstrating a regional trend of military power as the
determining
factor in reversing calls for democratization and pluralism by

Arab
rights activists who have moved from being popularly lionized
as
revolutionary leaders to being hunted as the foremost enemies
of the
state. Nonetheless, the underlying claim raised by these
activists—
60
regional,
and global instability—has only grown more acute. Hassan
concludes
that addressing these systemic violations, however unlikely,
remains
the only hope to ending the impetuses that make the Arab world
a
source of conflict, terrorism, and refugee flows.
reflection
on
human rights work in the Middle East and North Africa” is a

indicates
reflective
commitments of grassroots human rights activists who “act on
human rights in the daily grind as well as in the bigger picture.”
rights
organizations in the MENA—
Hassan
—are well aware of the problematics surrounding human rights
law
horror of a Tunisian activist at yet another academic tome
invoking
the “endtimes” of human rights—
to
get started!” the activist exclaims.
sought out by those in struggle as one of the few resources
available.” It may be that simple. In events that range from
ongoing

struggles by Palestinians and Kurds for the right to self-
determination to contemporary demands for cultural expression,
economic opportunity, political voice, and social pluralism,
human
rights have been invoked when they are perceived as a useful
tool—
legal and normative—of the marginalized to contest hegemonic
by
Western academics from their position of privilege.
mind
rights organizations in
the Middle East and North Africa on their partners in the
international movement, as
well as the intensification of regional initiatives. Now, here is
an extremely interesting
61

area of exploration for those who wish perhaps to uncover a
different kind of human
rights story.
Indeed, whether in writing of human rights “endtimes” or their
“rise
and fall” among Palestinians, what seems to be missing from
too
n human rights and the MENA is a
substantive
engagement with local contexts and a willingness to take
seriously
grassroot actors’ reflections and commitments. What is missing
is an
presupposed.6 Could there be serious reasons that human rights
continue to undergird struggles in the region to find an
alternative to
governance that serves the power of cultural, economic,
political,
and social elites, despite the dismissiveness of some observers?
that underlies the premise of this Handbook as a whole: the

that
moment theoretical templates that suggest human rights can be
constructed only in certain limited ways.”
62
Conclusion
–13—from Iran’s Green
Revolution
to the Arab uprisings and Turkey’s Gezi Park protests—were
both a
uprisings took this high point the furthest, forcing long-
rulers to step down in response to demands from massive street
mobilizations for greater cultural, economic, political, and
social
expectations in the region regarding democracy, human rights,
and a

recognition of the Other’s place in a political community. As
Challand convincingly argues,
on sociological novelty, that
of expressing the new
massive adherence of the people, ash-sha`b, to the notion of
citizenship and the
collective will to underwrite a new, more inclusive type of
to a call for the precedence of citizenship over the nation as
opposed to previous
Even if the Arab uprisings’ hopes have been frustrated, their
underlying normative currents represent a continuing potential
to
“hidden Liberalism”—that is, a desire for liberal ends even if an
ngs also represented a low point, however.
animating calls for more representative, accountable politics. In

the
identity
politics and strongman stability returned as a powerful
mobilizing
force, justifying a return of authoritarian politics in new modes.
In
some sense this reversal was inevitable given the powerful
63
institutional and ideological forces arrayed against populis t
uprisings
in countries like Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen. It is
also
true, however, that calls during the Arab uprisings for cultural
vitality, economic justice, political democracy, and social
pluralism
were too superficial to be translated from rhetoric into plans of
action. Even Tunisia’s limited success in continuing its
democratic
transition is tenuous, as many old guard figures have returned to
power and slowed transitional justice processes (as el -Gantri

as well as broader processes of
institutional
foundations to withstand deeply embedded structures of power.
Neither, however, did they ever have a fully articulated vision
of
move
beyond the nationalisms and other forms of identity-based
politics
that have been and continue to be mobilized against democratic
politics.
gs were an example of both human rights’
unanticipated impacts and their continued shortcomings. In
regard
invoked against specific rights’ violations and authoritarianism
in
general; its normative and political relevance to the Arab
uprisings is

another example of how human rights can be a useful tool in
rights
have not consistently done enough to inform a structural
critique of
inability
of the Arab uprisings to be translated into representative,
accountable institutions is one example of human rights not
their potential.
do not have the possibility
structural
critiques are fundamental to human rights and need to be made
more deeply and more explicitly. In order to point toward this
64
possibility, I will conclude this introduction with a few thoughts
on
why SOGI-related rights, even if a particularly controversial
part of

social rights, are central to this argument. If we are to take
seriously
the themes of human rights’ indivisibility and intersections that
run
through this Handbook, it is essential to see how the struggle
for
SOGI-related rights is intimately linked to broader struggles for
cultural, economic, and political empowerment. Social
resistances in
the domain of sexuality and gender are not just important in
isolation. Rather, they provide an example that goes to the heart
of
how human rights can constructively inform articulations of
political futures that are more inclusive and pluralistic.
So, how is it that SOGI-related rights can point us toward
taking
into account rights’ indivisibility and their intersections in ways
essential to rights’ long-term relevance? In regard to
indivisibility,
economic,
and political rights and their importance. Social rights are

equally
important and, per rights’ indivisibility, interwoven with the
possibility of implementing all categories of rights. In specific
regard
olarship allows us to see the politically radical
effects of
boundary-breaking phenomena, from feminism to alternative
gender
whether perceived as mildly or wildly outrageous, can be part of
subverting a mutually reinforcing status quo in the cultural,
by
how the Arab uprisings were heralded by under-the-
in
—from sexual and gender
expressions to
cultural rebellions evidenced in rap music, heavy metal, and
various
cultural

energy constitutes a continued defiance against the status quo.
Keeping this in mind explains why it is not surprising that
counterrevolutions in the Arab world (as well as in Iran and
increasingly in Turkey) have taken as a necessary task brutally
65
out
of morality. It is out of an implicit sense of rights’
indivisibility: that
—cultural, economic, political
and
social—and therefore must be crushed.
In regard to intersections, it is essential to push beyond what
was
—how human rights intersect with a
range of issues and crises—and toward a more truly
intersectional
that

the era of uprisings in the MENA flowed out of “overt support
for
toward the
be it
essentialist
identity constructs; it imposes, among other things, singular
notions
of appropriate ethnicity, sexuality, and gender roles. If this is,
indeed,
narrow conceptions
of
identity. SOGI-related rights have particular potential toward
this
end insofar as they emphasize that sexual and gender identities
must
be recognized as multiple, overlapping, and coexisting, rather
than
singular. Movements for SOGI-related rights are powerful in
words,

“focused on the uncertainties of identity.”12 Dennis Altman
argues
that, in so doing, they “interrogate identity as a fixed point and
a
central referenc
calling
impetus
behind human rights’ violations and sectarian violence one sees
around the world, including in the MENA.
Indivisibility and intersectionality, thus, are not merely abstract
uprisings showed the potential of human rights-inflected
popular
movements but also exhibited their limits. In the wake of
sobering
66
experiences in Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Libya, and Tunisia, it is
clear

how difficult it is to translate the Arab uprisings’ impulses into
pluralistic political communities. While SOGI-related rights
may
seem improbable to contemplate in currently dire circumstances,
it is
also worth contemplating if it may only be in the context of
multi-
—even those that are supposedly
less
controversial—can be sustainably implemented. In short, there
is an
interdependency among rights that must be recognized if real
revolutionary. Surface improvements on structures that are
authoritarian to their core are insufficient. In theses contexts,
human
rights must indeed aim to be revolutionary rather than merely
reformist.
remind us to keep in mind three realities as we think about how
is

that, even in a reactionary period, rebellious contestation will
continue. A key lesson of the Green Revolution, Arab uprisings,
and
Gezi Park protests is how the disorganized, incoherent, yet
inevitable
pluralism of people
stable
current status quo in the MENA is particularly precarious given
its
governance feeds into widening cycles of violence and
instability.
Second, these rebellious contestations need to focus on the
structural
causes of human rights’ violations if they are to sustain the
—governmental and
non-
governmental—
these

forms of authority, then they need to be “multilingual”14 —that
is,
re to be
the
rights
not due to one universal heritage, but rather due to human
rights’
67
utility as a tool that evolves according to context, speaking to
varied
resistances against human rights violators.15
Lastly, in that light there needs to be less focus on if human
rights
are inherently relevant or irrelevant, but rather on how human
rights can continue to evolve in order to tangibly become
relevant to
the claims and demands made
are
not a static entity, but rather have been continuously re-

imagined
and repurposed,16 so too do rights need to continue to be open
to
-imaginings.
are
in and of themselves a goal, and in and of themselves an
ideological
are
more about processes than ends—processes that can restrain
state
dominance, empower peoples and social groups, and advance
individual and group agency. What is accomplished with that
empowerment and agency is not determined by human rights; it
is
determined by those who claim, use, and transform human
rights.
In the short-and even medium-term there is every reason to be
pessimistic about human rights in the MENA. In the long-term,
however, making space for forms of political community that
are
fluid and open enough to represent cultural, economic, political,
and

social pluralism is the only alternative to authoritarianisms that
are
inherently unable to come to terms with diversity within the
Middle
East and North Africa. Despite the structural, institutional, and
ideological obstacles to creating alternative forms of political
community, human rights remain relevant to that struggle in the
many domains addressed in this Handbook and beyond.
68
Notes
1 Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a
Global Era (Palo Alto:
Stanford University Press, 2012).
2 Asda`a Burson-Marsteller, Arab Youth Survey, available at:
www.arabyouthsurvey.com/en/home. Accessed on May 2, 2016.
3 Anthony Tirado Chase, “Liberal Islam and ‘Islam and human
rights’: A sceptic’s view,”
Religion and Human Rights vol. 1, no. 2 (2006), 1–19.
4 Alice M. Miller and Carol S. Vance, “Sexuality, human rights,

and health,” Health and
Human Rights vol. 7, no. 2 (2004), 5–15.
5 Linz and Steppan, Problems of Democratic Transition and
Consolidation: Southern
Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1998).
6 Stephen Hopgood, The Endtimes of Human Rights (Ithaca,
New York: Cornell University
Press, 2013).
Lori Allen, The Rise and Fall of Human Rights. Cynicism and
Politics in Occupied
Palestine (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013).
7 Benoît Challand, “Citizenship against the grain: locating the
spirit of the Arab uprisings
in times of counterrevolution,” Constellations vol. 20, no. 2
(2013), 170.
8 Huss Banai, Hidden Liberalism in Modern Iran (forthcoming).
9 Desiree Lewis, “South African feminism, Lady Gaga, and the
Utopia’” in Los Angeles Review of Books (Sept. 2015).
Available at:

-african-feminism-lady-
gaga-and-the-flight-
toward-queer-utopia. Accessed on May 2, 2016.
10 Asef Bayat, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change
the Middle East (Palo Alto,
CA: Stanford University Press, 2010).
11 Challand, p. 175.
http://www.arabyouthsurvey.com/en/home
https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/south-african-feminism-lady-
gaga-and-the-flight-toward-queer-utopia
69
Muslim identities,”
Sociology vol. 44 no. 5 (2010), 951.
13 Dennis Altman, “Global gaze/global gays,” GLQ: A Journal
of Lesbian and Gay Studies
vol. 3, no. 4 (1997), 430.
Resistance in an Authoritarian
State (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2014).
15 Anthony Tirado Chase, “Human rights contestations: sexual
orientation and gender

identity,” International Journal of Human Rights vol. 21 (2016),
1–21.
16 Samuel Moyn, “On the Genealogy of Morals” in The Nation
[online]. Available at:
www.thenation.com/article/genealogy-morals#. Accessed on
May 2, 2016.
https://www.thenation.com/article/genealogy-morals
70
Selected Bibliography
Difference.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Afshari, Reza. “On historiography of human rights discourse” in
Human Rights Quarterly vol. 29 (2007), 1–67.
Bayat, Asef. Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the
Middle
East. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010.
Beitz, Charles. The Idea of Human Rights. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2009.
Benhabib, Seyla. Dignity in Adversity: Human Rights in

Troubled
Times. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011.
Burke, Roland. Decolonization and the Evolution of
International
Human Rights. Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania Studies in
Human
Rights, 2010.
Chase, Anthony Tirado. “Human rights contestations: sexual
orientation and gender identity” in International Journal of
Human Rights vol. 21 (2016), 1–21.
Resistance in
an Authoritarian State. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University
Press, 2014.
Relevance of Human Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2011.
York:
Oxford University Press, 2009.

Grabham, Cooper, Krishnadas and Herman, eds.
Intersectionality
and Beyond: Law, Power and the Politics of Location. London:
Routledge, 2009.
71
Jensen, Steven. The Making of International Human Rights,
1945–
1993. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Merry, Salley Engle and Goodale, Mark, eds. The Practice of
Human
Rights: Tracking Law Between the Global and the Local.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Moyn, Samuel. The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.
in
Global Politics. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2010.
g gay

Muslim identities,” Sociology vol. 44 (2010), 944–61.
Rajagopal, Balakrishnan. International Law from Below:
Development, Social Movements, and Third World Resistance.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
nd Ropp, Stephen eds. The
Persistent Power of Human Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2013.
72
Section II
A conceptual framework: political,
economic, and cultural rights in the
73
2
Political Legitimacy, Contingency,
and Rights in the Middle East and

North Africa
Hussein Banai
74
Introduction
Very few governments in the contemporary Middle East enjoy
region,
in the main, are exercised by fiat rather than sanctioned by their
citizenry. According to Freedom House surveys of civil and
political
liberties around the world, of the twenty-one countries in the
Middle
East and North Africa (MENA) region, only Israel and Tunisia
are
free (encompassing only five percent of the region’s 410 million
populace—but even counting Israel and Tunisia as free is
contentious
-
specific
Freedom

Index,2 Amnesty International Annual Reports on myriad
abuses of
human rights, the United Nations Human Development Index3,
and
of
these reports over the course of the last two decades, combined
with
myriad failed efforts at reform and liberalization in the region,
help
to explain why the so-called ‘third wave’ of democratization
sweeping across central and eastern Europe, Latin America, and
parts of central Asia and the Caucuses has largely eluded the
MENA
region.
At the time of the successive popular uprisings in Iran, Tunisia,
Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, Jordan, Iraq, and Yemen (to name
the
that a
new trajectory had at long last come to replace the puzzle of
‘persistent’ and ‘robust’ authoritarianism in the Middle East.4

But
the Green Movement in Iran and the so-called ‘Arab Spring,’
while
helping to expose multiple and intersecting crises of legitimacy
across the region, also underlined the difficulties inherent in
confronting powerful interests and established practices that
have
75
long shaped social relations under longstanding regimes of
significant concessions from the status quo revealed important
insights about the differences between popular and political
legitimacy, and the implications for human rights and
democratic
reforms. For my purposes, I define (and later justify) political
legitimacy as a mere modus vivendi between ruling parties,
their
support networks, and the general population. Popular
legitimacy, by
contrast, is legitimacy gained through the free and fair

participation
of citizens in the public sphere, and especially
governance. Very few recent works on the determinants of
legitimacy do not either confuse or conflate popular and
political
constructive thinking about the prospects for democratic reform
and
fulfillment of human rights in the region.
legitimacy and rights in light of the conjoined domestic and
foreign-
induced convulsions that have set the Middle East upon a most
uncertain trajectory. It may reasonably be asked just what is to
be
-mutating conditions. I
offer
two related reasons. First, the socio-economic and political
factors
that for so long conditioned the terms of political legitimacy
have

current moment notwithstanding, the uprisings across the region
have in fact broken some significant taboos and slain more than
a
few sacred idols. It is, therefore, important to pause and take
collapse of the previous order. Second, this new political
revealed the underlying pluralism of values, grievances,
interests,
and strategies that serve as reference points for struggles over
and
debates about basic rights and freedoms. Put simply, there is a
great
deal of variation in the terms of political discourse, as well as
the
substance of political claims on offer, from Tunis to Tehran.
76
Max Weber’s definition of the state as a political entity whose
“administrative staff successfully upholds a claim on the

monopoly of
the legitimate use of violence in the enforcement of its order
within
a given territory”6 is an instructive starting point for thinking
about
the determinants of political legitimacy. In Weber’s influential
formulation, legitimacy stems from the unmatched capacity of
the
state to exercise its coercive powers. In other words, to the
extent
powers,
Weber’s definition is instructive here because it links the
normative
concept of legitimacy directly to the material capacity of the
state to
bring about desired outcomes. Legitimacy, therefore, is gained
once
the agents of state—that is, ‘the administrative staff’ carrying
out
executive functions—can demonstrate their ability to thwart
rity, maintain order within their

territory,
and to secure the elementary security needs of subject
populations.
To be sure, this capacity does not by itself render the state’s
exercise
of power just or unjust; rather, it signifies a key (for Weber,
perhaps
It is important to be mindful of this fine distinction from the
political
legitimacy of the state is confused or conflated with what makes
the
ruling r
especially
important in the case of Middle Eastern countries where, as the
catalogue of measurements of popular legitimacy cited in the
introduction make clear, explanations for the persistence of
authoritarian regimes can easily neglect overlapping areas of
political legitimacy between the state and the regimes in power.

77
Popular legitimacy corresponds more closely to a representative
system of government, whereby ruling elites are not only
responsive
to the claims of their citizens but also reflect the preferences of
majorities while protecting the rights of minorities. Although
democratic institutions and procedures are the most optimal
means
hways to popular
—more prevalent among Persian Gulf countries and
in
Morocco—also exist.
In any event, muddled understandings of political legitimacy as
regards Middle Eastern states and societies are primarily due to
the
contingent nature of its determinants, and not because the
concept
itself is inherently enigmatic. More importantly, the prevalence
of
authoritarianism in the region does not necessarily entail that

considerations of political legitimacy are any less variable or in
flux
than under other systems of rule. As Lisa Anderson has recently
suggested,
Rather than assume the stability and legitimacy of the state,
political scientists of the
Middle East must treat it as a variable: the state is stronger,
more widely accepted, and
conversely, it is more hotly
contested, routinely ignored, or otherwise weaker in some
places than others.7
ate capacities, in turn, affects
the
the
ruling elites come to rely.8 Correspondingly, political
repression must
be viewed more as a means of ensuring the material and
ideological
interests of authoritarian coalitions than a mere blunt instrument
of
determined to

a significant degree by their leaders’ ability to construct and
successfully maintain, as one influential study has argued, a
‘winning coalition’ among the ‘selectorate,’ a cohort of
individuals,
authoritarian state.9 Indeed, the variable fate of uprisings and
78
popular movements across the region since 2009 further confirm
this
reality.
Iran
the
Green Movement,10 however harsh and draconian in the short-
term,
did not result in a state-of-emergency-like power grab by ultra-
conservative factions seemingly enjoying the support of the
Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Instead, the regime
recalibrated by

re-drawing its ‘red lines’ around new, more acceptable public
criticisms of officials and policies. With the terms of political
discourse once again redefined, the opposition responded by
electing
President Hassan Rouhani in 2013, a moderate pragmatist with
conservatives
wary of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s costly hostile posture and
actions.
Rouhani’s election was made possible due in large part to the
diffused, but inextricably linked, networks of commercial,
religious,
and political interests that make up the support base of the
regime.
Highly invested in the stability of the Islamic Republic, these
point
—
agenda—
legitimacy of the regime was secured once again.

Financials and Human Resource Planning MGT465 Version 2

Financials and Human Resource Planning MGT465 Version 2

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