(c) Greenpeace
Greenpeace activists mobilizing people
peacefully against a polluting waste
incinerator in the southern suburbs of Beirut,
Lebanon, in 1997. In was later shut down.

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The end of Arab Dictators

A look at the political situation in the Arab region in usually an unpleasant exercise. Before 2011, Arab experts at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) wrote reports describing the main obstacles to development in this region: gender inequality and the need to empower women, constraints on freedom that impede good governance, the desperate state of education systems and the lack of knowledge.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others regularly publish damning reports about the human rights situation in Arab states.

The overall picture, before the "Arab Spring" was bleak and hopeless until the Tunisian people on January 14, 2011 overthrew dictator Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali ("Zaba, Degage!") and put their country on the path of freedom. A month later it was the turn of Egyptian dictator Hosny Mubarak ("Ir7al!"). Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia; Mubarak faced trial and was humiliated. In March 2011 the Syrian people rose up against the dictatorship of the Assad regime. In August 2011, Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi was toppled after more than six months of fighting, the dictator was caught and killed weeks later. Who could have predicted this in 2010? All sparked by the self-immolation of one desperate Tunisian man, Mohamed Bouazizi, whose vegetable cart was confiscated by police.

The walls of fear collapsed in the Arab region, 21 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Finally. But the revolutions turned sour. The Syrian people are facing a de facto occupation by Iran, Hezbollah Lebanon and Russia. In Bahrain, Gulf Arab troops intervened and crushed peaceful protests in Spring 2011. Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya today are in a mess, other Arab states are anything but stable. In Lebanon, people have been demanding an end of the corrupt sectarian system - in vain.

Secular and progressive Arab non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and individual activists have been at the forefront of the fight for freedom. Despite hardships and violent oppression they have been fighting with peaceful means to ensure that the Universal Human Rights Declaration is respected in their countries. The price is high: Many are killed, end in jail, disapear or forced into exile. The fight goes on. Thawra mustamira.

Attached are speeches, articles and position papers I wrote about the role of civil society in the Arab region. There are also interviews and articles written about how Greenpeace in Lebanon, which I founded in 1994, strengthened civil society there and how non-violent activists can push for changes. You will also read articles I wrote as a journalist in the 1980s and 1990s.