Routledge Handbook on Human Rights and the Middle East and North Africa
Recent events su? as Irans Green Revolution and the Arab
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 regions on-
the-ground politics, transnational intellectual debates, and global
political intersections.
?e Routledge Handbook on Human 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;
explores the various frameworks in whi? to consider human
rightsconceptual, 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
A multidisciplinary approa? from s?olars with a wide range of
expertise allows the book to capture the complex dynamics by whi?
human rights have had, or could have, an impact on Middle Eastern
and North African politics. ?is book will therefore be a key
resource for students and s?olars of Middle Eastern and North
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
rights, most o?en in the context of the Middle East.
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
711 ?ird Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017
Anthony Tirado Chase
?e right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the
authors for their individual ?apters, has been asserted in 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
form or by any electronic, me?anical, or other means, now known or herea?er invented,
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 (hardba?) |
ISBN 9781315750972 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Human rightsMiddle East. |
Human rightsAfrica, North.
Classification: LCC JC599.M53 R68 2017 | DDC 323.0956dc23
LC record available at h?ps://lccn.loc.gov/2016021351
https://lccn.loc.gov/2016021351
6
ISBN: 978-1-13880767-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-31575097-2 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo
by Sunrise Se?ing Ltd, Brixham, UK
7
?anks
Many thanks to my resear? assistants Keith Jones and Beebe
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
an epic adventure. ?is bookand all that led to its creationis
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
Friday of Anger protests. ?ese protests were part of what led to
Hosni Mubaraks fall from power on February 11, 2011. Harara lost
his other eye during anti-military protests near the Ministry of
Interior on November 19, 2011. ?at days clashes are known as the
Ba?le of the Eyes of Freedom, as Harara was just one of many
protestors to lose eyes to sniper fire.
Overlaid in red on Hararas portrait is the o?-repeated Egyptian
army slogan ?e army has, of course, protected the revolution.
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,
and structural ?ange
Anthony Tirado Chase
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
6 ?e ISIS crisis and the broken politics of
the Arab World: a framework for
understanding Radical Islamism
Nader Hashemi
7 ?e impact of the AKP on human rights
in Turkey: one step forward, two steps
ba?
Turan Kayaoglu
8 ?e politics of human rights in Iran
since the Green Movement
Shadi Mokhtari and Neda Nazmi
9 Narrating law: Israel and the Occupied
Territories
Kathleen Cavanaugh
10 ?e United States and Israeli violations
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
Islamic Cooperation a?empts to reshape
values in the U.N. human rights system
Ann Mayer
13 Human rights, youth, and te?nology:
agents of ?ange?
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
Middle East and North Africa
15 Colliding rights and wrongs: intimate
labor, health, human rights, and the state
in the Gulf
Pardis Mahdavi
16 Turning ba? the clo?: population
policy and human rights in Iran
Homa Hoodfar
17 Womens rights in the Middle East:
constitutions and consequences
Anicée Van Engeland
18 ?e Arab uprisings and the future of
human rights
Micheline Ishay
12
SECTION VI Religion and human rights in the
Middle East and North Africa
19 Shari`ah and human rights
Khaled Abou El Fadl
20 Islam, the principle of subjectivity, and
individual human rights
Barbara Ann Rieffer-Flanagan
21 ?e OIC, human rights, and religion:
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 Tunisias experience
Rim El Gantri
26 ?e impact of impunity 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
30 ?e quest for constructive criticism:
critical approa?es to human rights
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 201115: how can a democratic
revolution fail to improve human rights
conditions?
Amr Hamzawy
14
34 Reflections on human rights before and
a?er the Arab Spring
Bahey eldin Hassan
35 Human rights, law and politics: a
reflection on human rights work in the
Middle East and North Africa
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
rights, most o?en in the context of the Middle East. His most 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
California, Los Angeles S?ool of Law. He is the author 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
Age (Rowman & Li?lefield, 2014).
Lisa S. Alfredson is an Assistant Professor at the University of
Pi?sburgh Graduate S?ool of Public and International Affairs. 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 womens 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
International Studies at the S?ool of Global and International
Studies at Indiana University.
Alison Brysk is Melli?amp Chair of Global Governance at the
University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author and editor
of ten volumes on international human rights.
Kathleen Cavanaugh is socio-legal s?olar and currently a 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 Resear?
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
A?er the Creation of the Truth and Dignity Commission.
David P. Forsythe is University Professor and Charles J. Ma?
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 a?ention to
human rights and humanitarian affairs.
18
Osire Glacier tea?es in the Department of Politics and
International Studies at Bishops 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 Israels 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
Visiting S?olar and Fellow at Harvards FXB Center for Health and
Human Rights. Hamill is also affiliated with the Flet?er S?ool of
Law and Diplomacy at Tu?s University as an Adjunct Assistant
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 Peoples 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
University of Denvers Josef Korbel S?ool of International Studies.
Bahey eldin Hassan is the Director of the Cairo Institute for Human
Rights Studies. He has authored and edited many books, ?apters,
and articles on human rights in the Arab region.
Homa Hoodfar is Professor of Anthropology at Concordia
University. Her primary resear? and expertise lies in the
19
intersection of political economy, gender and development and
womens movements and electoral politics in the Middle East.
Mi?eline Ishay is Professor of International Studies and Human
Rights at the Korbel S?ool of International Studies at the 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
S?ool of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of
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 Universitys Center for Middle Eastern Studies. He
is currently helping to lead a resear? team with the American
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
director of its Pacific Basin Institute. Her resear? interests include
gendered labor, human traffi?ing, migration, sexuality, human
rights, youth culture, transnational feminism and public health in
the context of ?anging global and political structures.
Ann Elizabeth Mayer is an Emeritus Associate Professor of Legal
Studies and Business Ethics at the Wharton S?ool of the University
20
of Pennsylvania. Her resear? areas include Islamic law in the
contemporary Middle East and North Africa and international
human rights law, and the fi?h edition of her book Islam and
Human Rights was published in 2012.
Shadi Mokhtari is an Assistant Professor at the S?ool of
International Service at American University. Her resear? focuses
on the local and international politics of human rights in the Middle
East.
Mahmood Monshipouri tea?es Middle Eastern Politics at San
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 Rights as a senior resear?er.
Barbara Rieffer-Flanagan is a Professor of Political Science at
Central Washington University. Her resear? and tea?ing focus on
the intersection of religion, politics and human rights.
21
Martin Shaw is a sociologist of global politics, war and genocide. He
is Resear? Professor at the Institut Barcelona d`Estudis
Internacionals, Professorial Fellow in International Relations and
Human Rights at the University of Roehampton, London, and
Emeritus Professor of the University of Sussex.
Chandra Lekha Sriram is a s?olar of human rights and peace
processes, and has conducted resear? globally, including in
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
Gö?ingen. He also taught and resear?ed at eighteen further
universities including Harvard, Princeton, Yale and the latest,
Cornell University, where he acted as A. D. White Professor between
2006 and 2010.
Anicée Van Engeland is a Resear? Fellow at the Oxford Centre for
Socio-Legal Studies and a Lecturer in law and religious studies at
Cardiff University.
Lynn Wel?man is Professor of Law in the Middle East and 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
at the University of Arkansas at Li?le Ro?. His resear? interests
include transitional justice, human rights, post-conflict
reconstruction, and democratization.
22
Stephen Zunes is a Professor of Politics and coordinator of Middle
Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco. His resear? 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
?ange
Anthony Tirado Chase
26
Introduction
In conceptualizing this Handbook, I have sought to highlight original
s?olarship from authors with a record of innovative approa?es to
human rights in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). ?e goal
in doing so is simple: to capture in ways that cannot be done in
traditional s?olarly approa?es the complex dynamics by whi?
human rights have had or could have an impact on MENA politics.
?is is not an abstract goal. ?e stakes in this Handbooks
intellectual conversations are high at a time in whi? recent 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
resurgent. ?ese authoritarianisms vary among secular, ethnic,
and/or Islamist justifications, but share a common foundation in
some form of nationalist sectarianism. ?e regions resurgent
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.
?is pessimism is quite reasonable given the MENAs post-
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-
pluralistic forces out of a misbego?en sense of self-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
society in the MENA. ?e saliency of these alternatives emerged
quite visiblyin artistic ?allenge, economic rebellion, political
rebellion, and social resistanceduring 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
?oices between competing patriar?al authoritarianisms. Saudi
monar?ical Wahhabism or Iranian Shi`a theocratism? Egyptian
secular military rule or anti-pluralist Islamisms? Syrian-style
stability or fiefdoms ruled by warlords? ?ese and other su?
binaries are not just false ?oices, they are dangerously 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 regions peoples, societies, and states, as
well as the broader regional and global order.
Most specific to this Handbooks purposes, those frames have
limited thought about even the possibility of alternatives to the
status quo. Su? possibilities have, nonetheless, persisted in many
domains. ?is introductions overview of the Handbooks three parts,
nine sections, and thirty-five ?apters shows how human rights, in
particular, have become interwoven with discourses that reject false
?oices between exclusivist nationalisms. ?ese human rights-
inflected discourses have sought, instead, to somehow make space in
the MENAs political, economic, cultural, and social structures for
pluralisms of different sorts. I will conclude this introductory ?apter
by a?empting to show the importance of pluralism in the social
domain, with particular reference to sexual orientation and gender
identity-related (SOGI) rights. I argue that connecting 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
it might appear at first glance. It is, in essence, an a?empt to make
sense of how rights have been part of varieties of resistances against
28
dominant power structureslocal, domestic, regional, and
internationaland, beyond that, what the variables are that will
determine if they may do so more successfully in the future.
29
Pushing human rights s?olarship into
indivisibility, intersections,
multidisciplinarity, and beyond
A?empting to accomplish this goal has meant calling on s?olars
who in diverse wayssometimes in disagreement with ea? other
and, indeed, in disagreement with my own viewsare at the cu?ing
edge in thought about what human rights are, how they can be
relevant to the MENA, and ways in whi? specific contexts in the
MENA condition whether human rights will or will not have an
impact. ?e contributors were ?osen to represent a range of
disciplines as well as regional and thematic expertise. Part I of the
Handbook includes sections that, a?er Section Is introduction,
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 rightsfrom 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
global politics through whi? dynamics around human rights play
out, and how powerful states increasingly contest human rights at
all of these levels. Part IIs sections focus the reader on issue areas
that have been subject to particularly intense debate. Section V
explores gender as a key ba?leground in ba?les over human 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
and the overar?ing question of whether or not normative demands
30
for ?ange can be sustained through representative processes and
institutions.
Part III contains two concluding sections that end the Handbook
in a particularly distinctive manner. Section VIIIs 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. ?e
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
should inform s?olarship on human rights and the MENA. One
emphasis in recent human rights s?olarship, as evidenced in these
?apters, is a move beyond traditional linear histories of human
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 foundationphilosophical
or historicalis increasingly seen as less important to human rights
resonance (or la? of resonance) than the degree to whi? human
rights have been malleable enough to be seized and repurposed as
useful tools to grassroots struggles in many different contexts around
the globe.
?is is directly relevant to the MENA and, as su?, informs the
conceptualization of Section IXsConclusions from a grassroots
viewpoint: reflections on dynamics around struggles for human
rights in the Middle East and North Africa. ?ese ?apters come
from s?olar-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
engage with the reflections of those working on the ground. ?is is
all too o?en missing in theoretical work on human rights in general
and, most egregiously, on human rights in the MENA. Lynn
Wel?man pertinently concludes this section and this Handbook
31
with the observation that academics need to be open to being
surprised that is to having their
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