The Euro-Mediterranean Network for Human Rights (EMHRN) with the collaboration of Moroccan Association of Human Rights (AMDH) and Moroccan Organization for Human Rights (OMDH) convened a seminar in Rabat/ Morocco in February 2012 on the theme of “Reform of Judiciaries in the Wake of Arab Spring”.
With the political turmoil affecting the region since 2010, and the rising of the popular demand for political reform, new opportunities and prospects are emerging. The Arab Spring has so far resulted in the removal of the heads of the regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya and in persistent on-going popular uprising Syria, in addition to continued protest in Yemen, Bahrain and Egypt. The effects are by no means confined to the above mentioned countries but have had repercussions in the whole region and beyond.
Against this background EMHRN convened the Rabat seminar with two main objectives:
- Mapping of the reform initiatives already underway in the region, identifying commonalities and differences, challenges and opportunities and making recommendations to support these reform initiatives.
- Identifying the main actors in these processes and how civil society can support the reform processes
As preparation for the seminar in February 2012, EMHRN commissioned researchers to prepare background papers on the above mentioned issues in Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Jordan.
For the two-day seminar, EMHRN invited approximately 60 participants from the Euro-Mediterranean region. The participants were judges, lawyers, human rights activists, and researchers representing 15 countries in the region. In addition, a number of participants were from international organizations working on the issue of the judiciary in the Middle East and North Africa.
Each of the eight country papers followed a similar structure based on the terms of reference prepared prior to commissioning the papers. Firstly, each country paper commences with a brief description of the situation of independence of the judiciary prior to the Arab Spring. Secondly, the authors of the papers were to review the main reform initiatives taken in the course of 2010-2011, in the period coinciding with the democratic uprising coined as the ‘Arab Spring’. Thirdly, the country papers were to identify the main agenda and the actors of change.