Evolving Trends in the Post-Arab Spring Era: Implications for Peace and Stability in the MENA Region

Abstract

<jats:p> The uprisings connected to the Arab Spring have thus far failed to produce social change. The dynamics of these uprisings instead generated a number of trends that are likely to continue to destabilise the Arab world and prevent peace and development. Prevailing trends in the post-Arab Spring era include the prevalence of counter revolutions, widespread violence and armed conflicts, new patterns of alliances, external interventions and thriving proxies, raising sectarian politics, ineffective governance, terrorism, and migration. While these trends have a negative impact on people’s basic demands for socio-economic and political stability and development, they will provide and shape the foundations for other revolutions in the future. To avoid future revolutions and civil wars and stimulate peace and development in the MENA region, those driving patterns of instability will need to be altered. </jats:p>

Local Ethics and Conflicts of Interest: Living Between Bottom-Up from Top-Down Peace in Provincial Egypt

“…Because the upper echelons of national and international power center, almost completely, on elite political and economic interests, grassroots movements looking to make change at the macro level are almost always corrupted, co-opted, or, most frequently, crushed. The rise and fall of the Arab Spring, where a popular bottom-up movement was first contained and then destroyed, is proof enough of this trend (see Fraihat & Yaseen, 2020; Pogodda, 2020). In her illuminating 2020 article, Sandra Pogodda elucidates how “statebuilding with its neglect of the state's redistributive function appears as a distinctly counterrevolutionary type of intervention” (p. 351)—a helpful framing that strongly corroborates my interlocutors’ skeptical views of political and economic conflict in Egypt.…”

Tourism policy and United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16: peace and stability in the Middle East and North Africa

“…Although issues of security and stability have been identified as impacting negatively on development, and tourism development, in the region as a whole (Fraihat and Yaseen, 2020; Morakabati, 2013), these issues are conspicuous by their absence in MENA tourism policy documents. Where terms connected to SDG 16 do appear, they relate mostly to the peacefulness of certain natural environments or to the peaceful emotional states that tourists can attain during their visit.…”

“…The 16th United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) focuses on the establishment of "peace, justice and strong institutions" to support the aspiration to "end poverty, protect the planet and improve the lives and prospects of everyone, everywhere" (United Nations, 2015). This research considers how tourism policy can contribute to the achievement of SDG 16 in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), where regional instability and conflicts have been identified as one of the most significant factors affecting sustainable development (Fraihat and Yaseen, 2020).…”

Safety in fragile, conflict-affected, and vulnerable settings: An evidence scanning approach for identifying patient safety interventions

“…There has been a significant change in the prevalence of violent conflict during this period, which has been particularly dramatic since 2010. For example, the onset of the Arab Spring in 2010, followed by the longstanding Syrian and Yemeni civil wars beginning in 2012 and 2014 respectively, has shifted the geographical focus of violent conflict to the Middle East [ 47 ]. In Africa, armed conflict has been in decline since 2015, however violence involving militant Islamic groups remains a source of conflict across the continent [ 48 ].…”