Stoking the Fires of the Arab Spring

News from the Egyptian Street and Media Translated Without Comment from Arabic into English As a Public Service
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"The violation of the rule of law as motivation of the Arab uprisings"

Delivered at the meeting of the World Justice Forum, held in Barcelona, Spain in June 2011
by Ambassador Dr. El Sayed A. Shalaby
Executive Director, Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs, Cairo, Egypt


Historical analysis of the political systems in the Arab region during the last decade will reveal a prevalence of the violations of law, human rights, abuses of power and consequent corruption. This paper will focus on manifestations of the violations of the rule of law, and their role in motivating the recent uprisings in the Arab region.

Disregard for the rule of law has been commonplace within the Arab world. The violations and corruption became structural in many Arab States, with numerous individuals consistently abusing their positions for personal gain, thereby depleting state resources.

Part of this injustice involved the consistent undermining of the authority and independence of the judicial system by the authoritarian regimes of the Arab world. One common aspect of this was the incomplete implementation of the law, with examples including violations of traffic laws, import-export laws, and building regulations, as well as prevalence of smuggling and black market operations. The judicial branch has been further weakened by the fact that court rulings are seldom enacted,. Additionally, the decaying rule of law and government authority was accentuated by several official bodies, such as through the insertion of loopholes into laws, thus providing impunity for violators. Furthermore, the governing elite have often built personal fiefdoms upon government institutions and assets, in order to increase the elites' private wealth and secure their hold on power.

Human rights violations have also been rife in Arab States, further driving the recent popular uprisings. Prevalent examples of this have included the unlawful detention and release of people from prison, the use of torture, and widespread 'disappearances'. Moreover, the security sector has often been authorized to violate human rights in the name of maintaining stability and law and order. In practice, this has usually involved crushing the government's opponents and silencing opposition parties. Indeed, laws relating to the freedom of speech in the Arab world have often restricted this freedom instead of protecting it. These human rights abuses are key issues which must be addressed by new governments in the Arab region.

The judicial system's independence has been threatened both by legal limitations on the judicial system's power and independence, and by the permeation of the more generally unlawful and corrupt conditions of the Arab States. The reduced independence of the judicial system rendered it unable to counterbalance the veritable fusion of the executive and legislative bodies in many Arab States. Additionally, in the Arab region the authority of the military justice systems has often been extended to civilian matters, thus reaching beyond their rightful jurisdiction. In addition to the violation of the rule of law, we can not also neglect major factors of the uprisings namely economic and social deprivations of a large sector of society in the form of better education, jobs and climbing of the social ladder.

It is obvious that the political corruption and the flagrant violations of the rule of law in the Arab region were among the main reasons that helped to motivate the Arab uprisings and revolutions. Those uprisings were successfull in some cases, such as Egypt and Tunisia, where the popular movement was strong enough to overthrow the regime's corruption symbols. However, other similar popular uprisings in the region are still at status quo, as is clearly seen in the Arab countries of Yemen, Libya, Syria and Bahrain. Since the blatant disrespect of the rule of law was one of the main factors behind the overthrow of the Arab regimes, it is expected that the new regimes will avoid any violations of the rule of law and build a strong democratic governing system that is based on respect of the law and human rights. This is the main challenge facing the post revolutionary Arab countries.