On Thursday, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars hosted a discussion titled “QDDR in Action: Civil Society Sustainability in U.S. Foreign Policy.” The event featured Scott Busby director for the Office of Multilateral and Global Affairs in the Bureau of Democracy, Rights and Labor; Alyse Nelson, president and CEO of Vital Voices Global Partnership; Lisa Schirch, director of 3P Human Security; Chris Seiple, president of the Institute for Global ...

In POMED's latest policy brief, Atiaf Alwazir argues that the United States should be utilizing this historic moment in Yemeni politics to shift its policy from a narrow focus on counterterrorism to a wider range of economic and political support. With a new president in power, Yemen has the opportunity to fundamentally restructure its political and military system, but multiple obstacles stand in its path. The Yemeni military remains a disjointed ...

On Wednesday, the Brookings Institute and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace hosted the event " Previewing the G-8 and NATO Summits: An Examination of the Summits’ Top Agenda Items."  The first discussion “Previewing the G-8 Summit,” featured Michael Froman, deputy assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser for International Economic Affair, Bruce Jones, a senior fellow at the Managing global order at Brookings, and Justin Vaisse, a senior fellow ...

In an Ahram Online article, Yasmine Wali discusses the impact of opinion polls on the presidential race. “These polls can manipulate undecided voters, for example, dictating their political responsiveness by portraying the same group of candidates as ‘frontrunners’ at the expense of others,” says Said Sadek, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo. The article discusses, as an example, a poll by the Cabinet’s Information and Decision Support Centre, which ...

On Tuesday, the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) held a luncheon discussion exploring the linkages between political and economic reform in the Arab world. Steve Clemons, Editor at Large of The Atlantic, moderated a panel featuring Larry Diamond, director of Stanford University Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law; Michelle Dunne, director of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East; and John D. Sullivan, ...

On Tuesday, the new America Foundation hosted a conference titled “The Civil Insurgents: The Arab Uprisings and Civil Society.” The discussion was focused on the role of civil society in the Arab Spring and in the future of the Arab states. The conference was moderated by Leila Hilal, co-director of the New America Foundation Middle East Task Force. The panelists were Abulnabi Hasan Alkery, President of the Bahrain Transparency Society, ...

The ongoing uprising in Syria entered into its 15 month, and the fight between the anti-government rebels and the President Bashar al Assad's regime, has  killed more than 12,000 people, according to the UN. Today, an additional 15 civilians and one rebel fighter were murdered as the regime cracked down on the eastern province of Deir Ezzor and in Damascus An article in the New York Times explores the 'strategy' developed by the Syrians to resist ...

According to the State Information Services (SIS), 923 foreign journalists have requested to register in order to cover the presidential election. Of the correspondents, 402 are visiting and 521 live in Cairo. The head of the SIS, Ismail Khairat, said the agency handed over the registration requests to the Supreme Presidential Electoral Council (SPEC) as a preliminary step before issuing cards to journalists allowing them to cover the elections. The ...

Writing for the New York Times, Mustafa Akyol addresses the the capacity of Islamist political parties to cope with liberalism. Akyol articulates that the debate used to focus on the if  Islam was compatible with a democratic regime, but he argues that democracy as a regime could be distinguished from liberalism. Experiences shown that Islamist parties could participate in the electoral process, as was observed last year in Tunisia and Egypt.  However according to the writer the issue is more about about if "Islam ...