1. Conferences and debates

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Studying in Lebanon: Challenges to Syrian Refugee Children

Published at 38 12,,, 21 2021

Tenth conference in our program Aula Árabe Universitaria 2, to be given by Professor Carmen Geha (American University of Beirut). After ten years, the Syrian refugee children living in Lebanon are facing a new reality of long-lasting conflict and fear over returning home. Carmen Geha’s conference will analyze the complexities of being trapped in Lebanon, caught up in the middle of a turbulent political reality. The political system for sectarian-based power distribution in the country creates risks and challenges which can be seen in its educational policy towards Syrian youths. How do young refugees experience the educational system and what political realities make up the paths towards their return? The goal of this conference is to help conceptualize the role of education amid situations of uncertainty about the future and how a host country’s politics can influence the lives and future choices of young refugees. Casa Árabe has organized this conference with the cooperation of the bachelor’s degree program in Modern Languages at Nebrija University. Introducing the session will be Laura de la Parra Fernández, director of the bachelor’s degree program and a professor at Nebrija University, and Olivia Orozco de la Torre, Casa Árabe’s Training and Economic Coordinator. Carmen Geha Carmen is an activist and Associate Professor of Public Administration at the American University of Beirut. She specializes in mass political mobilization and the challenges to political reform across the Arab Middle East and North Africa. She is a co-founder of the Center for Inclusive Business & Leadership (CIBL) for Women at AUB, a regional reference on readying gender-inclusive employer policies across the region. She is also a co-founder of Khaddit Beirut (the shake-up), a network of 150+ experts implementing a community-driven roadmap for the recovery of Beirut following the port explosion on August 4th. She served also as Founding Director of the “Education for Leadership in Crisis,” scholarship program for Afghan women at AUB. Carmen manages and oversees large portfolio of research programs and grants in 11 Arab MENA countries focused on women’s economic participation as well as gender, peace, and security. Her work has been published in the Middle East Journal, the British Journal for Middle East Studies, Middle East Law and Governance, Journal of Refugee Studies, and Social Movement Studies among others. Carmen is an activist-scholar and is interviewed regularly on local and international media about events in Lebanon and the region. Carmen regularly advised and consults for top international organizations, UN agencies, and government institutions across the region. She has worked in Libya, Myanmar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iraq among other places. She has most recently consulted as Senior Gender Advisor for UN Women in Lebanon. Carmen has a PhD in International Relations from the University of St. Andrews, she was the 2018-2019 fellow in social sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study. She has been a visiting fellow at the WiSER Institute in Johannesburg, Weatherhead Center at Harvard, and the Watson Institute in Brown University. More info: https://en.casaarabe.es/event/studying-in-lebanon-challenges-to-syrian-refugee-children

ALL VIDEOS IN THIS CATEGORY

Women in the visual arts in the Arab world

On Thursday, March 11, we will be holding this round table discussion with artists Zoulikha Bouabdellah and Amina Benbouchta. It will be conducted by gallery owner Sabrina Amrani and Casa Árabe’s Culture Coordinator, Nuria Medina. The event is part of our institution’s activities to mark the occasion os Women’s Month. First of all, this round table will allow us to approach the work by both artists, whose careers have always held gender issues very present, although from very diverse perspectives and techniques. The initial introductions will be followed by a dialogue on issues closely related with the situation of both of these women artists, who live between Europe and the Arab world and have lengthy international careers behind them. They will analyze issues such as the status of female Arab artists in the contemporary art circuit, including the challenges and opportunities that they face, and the relationship between tradition and today’s art in the Arab world. The participants will share their experiences as visual arts professionals on an international scene in which gender issues seem to have been widely placed at the center of public policies and institutional agendas. Zoulikha Bouabdellah is a French-Algerian artist who lives in Morocco. She creates her work using the media of installations, drawings, video and photography. She deals with the effects of globalization, especially on women, and questions its representations with humor in a subversive way. She advocates the artist’s freedom by questioning the labels that are often imposed upon her as a result of a certain context and her personal history. www.zoulikhabouabdellah.com Amina Benbouchta is a Moroccan artist who lives between Casablanca, Morocco and Paris, France. Her work forms a dialogue between everyday life, her surrounding environment and human existence, above all in relation with women in the public and private spheres. This artist has developed a corpus of work rooted in the exploration of painting’s limits, transforming concepts and observations into images, sculpture and installations. Moreover, Benbouchta has started up several projects, including the journal Les Alignés and Collective 212, in order to give a voice to emerging artists. http://aminabenbouchta.com Sabrina Amrani is a French-Algerian gallery owner who resides in Madrid, where she runs two galleries. She is committed to emerging voices which veer away from mainstream discourse and experiment with different media and formats to produce art with major social, cultural and political undertones. Her concept of the gallery is that of an open, constantly changing space designed to become a cross-cultural and artistic meeting point. Both Zoulikha Bouabdellah and Amina Benbouchta are artists appearing at her gallery. https://www.sabrinaamrani.com More information: https://en.casaarabe.es/event/women-in-the-visual-arts-in-the-arab-world

Published at 45 11,,, 21 2021
Gender Politics in Tunisia and Libya (Arabic)

To mark the occasion os Women’s Month, we will be holding this round table discussion on Tuesday, March 9, with the participation of Begoña Lasagabaster, the representative of UN-Women for Tunisia and Libya; Yosra Fraoues, the president of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, and Libyan activist Wafia Saifalnasr, who has been very involved in her country’s political life in recent times. As in the rest of the world, gender equality in the Arab world is far from being achieved both for legal reasons and because of the important role played by customs and traditions which relegate women in many respects compared with men. However, the situation is not exactly the same in all Arab countries. Whilst in some countries little or very little progress has been made on the path towards achieving equality, in others quite a bit of encouraging progress has been made. In order to discuss this important issue, as part of Women’s Month, Casa Árabe is organizing a round table discussion specifically to analyze the situation in Tunisia, one of the most advanced countries in terms of gender equality, and in Libya, a country mired in a lengthy armed conflict which has had an especially strong impact on the situation of women. Participating in the round table will be Begoña Lasagabaster, the representative of UN-Women for Tunisia and Libya; Yosra Fraoues, the president of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, and Libyan activist Wafia Saifalnasr, who has been very involved in her country’s political life in recent times. Yosra Fraoues is a lawyer and human rights activist. She is the president of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women and delegate of the International Federation for Human Rights in Tunisia. She has taken part as a legal expert in the drafting of texts on the democratic transition, as well as in the drafting of the Law against violence against women approved in 2017. She is also a trainer specialized in the field of human rights in general, and of women's rights in particular. She is the author and co-author of books on the subject equality. Begoña Lassgabaster is Country Representative UN Women Libya and Tunisia. With over 20 years of professional experience, she was a member of the Spanish parliament for 12 years, followed by a stint at the European Parliament. Lasagabaster has helped establish more than 150 laws in areas of women's rights, gender equality law, elimination of violence against women, international development and cooperation, justice, and economic and social rights. Wafia A. Saifalnasr is a Libyan political activist. She was a founding member of the Libyan platform Women for peace. She holds a Master's Degree in Public Administration and a Master in Software Engineering. She was an advisor to former Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zidan. Photo: Tunisia_Cospe More info: https://en.casaarabe.es/event/gender-politics-in-tunisia-and-libya

Published at 20 09,,, 21 2021
Le hirak algérien: une étude de cas sur la mobilisation de la contestation au Maghreb

Le mardi 2 mars, nous proposerons sur notre chaîne YouTube la neuvième conférence du programme Aula Árabe Universitaria 2, par la directrice de recherche CNRS, Karima Dirèche-Slimani. Le concept de hirak regroupe diverses manifestations de la région arabe qui sont différentes les unes des autres. La genèse de ce terme remonte à 2007, au Yémen, où est né le Hirak al-Janoubi (Mouvement du Sud), qui fait référence à un groupe politique séparatiste. En 2016, le terme hirak est réapparu, mais cette fois dans le Rif marocain, où la contestation était caractérisée par son fort régionalisme et sa base sociale. De son côté, la mobilisation citoyenne qui a débuté en Algérie le 22 février 2019 développe également ses propres caractéristiques, puisque le hirak algérien se définit comme un mouvement national, pacifique et populaire aux revendications politiques fortes. Il faut garder à l'esprit que le mot vient de la racine arabe du verbe triliteral H-R-K (حرك) et signifie «mouvement». Une innovation linguistique qui montre comment la langue et le monde arabes vivent, changent et se manifestent. Dans cette conférence, l'historienne Karima Dirèche-Slimani abordera le cas du hirak algérien démantelant les représentations d'une nation dépolitisée piégée dans le traumatisme des années 90 et ainsi pouvoir mieux appréhender la dynamique des changements qu'ils ont construit, d'en bas et en silence., les multiples composantes de la société algérienne. Casa Árabe organise cette conférence en collaboration avec le Master en politique internationale: études sectorielles et régionales de l'Université Complutense de Madrid (UCM). Il s'agit de la neuvième session du programme Aula Árabe Universitaria 2 (AAU2). La session sera présentée par Rafael Bustos, professeur de relations internationales à l'Université Complutense de Madrid (UCM) et coordinateur dudit master, et le modérateur sera Karim Hauser, coordinateur des relations internationales à Casa Árabe. Karima Dirèche-Slimani est historienne, directrice de recherche au CNRS et spécialiste de l'histoire contemporaine du Maghreb. Elle est l'auteur de trois livres et de plus de quarante articles scientifiques. Il a également édité quatre livres collectifs. Spécialiste du Maghreb contemporain, ses travaux couvrent les questions socio-historiques et l'analyse critique des historiographies maghrébines dans une perspective coloniale et postcoloniale. Ses axes de travail couvrent la question des minorités religieuses au Maghreb et leurs controverses politiques et religieuses; la question de l'identité berbère dans son rapport à la politique depuis l'indépendance; la question des récits historiques nationaux et leur défi à la lumière des mouvements islamistes et berbères. Ses approches méthodologiques combinent des pratiques d'histoire orale avec des investigations anthropologiques dans une analyse sociopolitique. Le dernier livre qu'il a édité s'intitule L'Algérie au présent. Entre Résistance et changements aux Editions IRMC / Karthala, Paris, mai 2019. Plus d'info: https://www.casaarabe.es/eventos-arabes/show/el-hirak-argelino-un-estudio-de-caso-sobre-la-movilizacion-de-la-protesta-en-el-magreb

Published at 06 25,,, 21 2021
Vaccine Diplomacy in the Mediterranean: The Contest for Influence

We will be showing this debate on Thursday, March 4, on our Youtube channel. It was organized with the cooperation of the Regional Program for Political Dialogue in the Southern Mediterranean of the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation (KAS PolDiMed). The global Covid-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted countries in the Mediterranean region. As in other parts of the world, health systems have seen an increasing number of infections during the various pandemic waves. In 2020, international actors attempted to support the southern shore countries by providing medical teams and general technical assistance, an effort marked by competition and rivalry. In 2021, this situation has grown even more acute as several vaccines have gone onto global markets. The competition for increased influence in the Mediterranean is occurring mainly between China, Russia, the United States and Europe, role-players which have lobbied for their vaccine variants to enter the global market. The Chinese and Russian vaccine variants were initially met with skepticism, but recent preliminary studies have shown that they may be just as effective as the vaccines produced by the US and European companies. Furthermore, both China and Russia have very quickly managed to supply large quantities to those countries interested, gaining territory in the struggle to lead the global vaccination program. In addition to the public health implications of providing vaccines to the at-risk population, the issue of who can deliver the vaccine most effectively, quickly and economically and thus be a reliable partner and increase their sphere of influence has once again become significant at the geopolitical level. Within this context, Casa Árabe and the Regional Program for Political Dialogue in the Southern Mediterranean of the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation (KAS PolDiMed) have organized a debate that will explore the status of vaccination programs in the Mediterranean region, as well as their geopolitical implications. Participants include Rym Ayadi, president of the Euro-Mediterranean Economists’ Association; Samer al-Atrush, an independent journalist and author of therecent report published by the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation and Sami Nader, director of the Levant Institute for Strategic Affairs. Presented by Thomas Volk, director of the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation’s Regional Program for South Mediterranean Political Dialogue. The event will be moderated by Karim Hauser, Casa Árabe’s International Relations Coordinator. You can watch the debate at 6:00 p.m. live on Casa Árabe’s YouTube channel and on Casa Árabe and KAS PoldiMed’s Facebook Live channel. In English with simultaneous translation. Photo: Jernej Furman

Published at 38 25,,, 21 2021
Tunisie: le long chemin de la transition

Le lundi 22 février, nous vous proposons sur notre chaîne YouTube une nouvelle session du cycle de conférences "Le peuple veut ..." dédié à la Tunisie. La Tunisie est un exemple clair de transition démocratique réussie dans le monde arabe. Bien qu'il soit confronté à plusieurs défis politiques et socio-économiques, la vérité est que ce pays d'Afrique du Nord a réussi à sortir de l'autoritarisme. Preuve en est que les élections ont lieu régulièrement, le parlement est actif, il est composé de formations idéologiquement différentes et la population jouit des libertés fondamentales de toute démocratie. Le revers de la médaille est une situation de profonde instabilité gouvernementale: l'existence de désaccords entre le président et le Premier ministre, ainsi qu'entre l'exécutif et le chef du pouvoir législatif. Pendant ce temps, dans les rues, les manifestations populaires se poursuivent, se manifestant au niveau national contre la classe politique et la situation socio-économique défavorable. Dans le cadre de la série de conférences «Le peuple veut ...» autour du dixième anniversaire des soi-disant «Printemps arabes», Casa Árabe en collaboration avec Stractegia aborde le cas de la Tunisie avec trois spécialistes du pays: Farah Hached, juriste, fondateur du "Laboratoire Démocratique", Huda Mzioudet, journaliste indépendante et chercheuse, et Tarek Kahlaoui, politologue, professeur à la Mediterranean School of Business et chercheur à Stractegia. Présenté par Karim Hauser, coordinateur des Relations Internationales à Casa Árabe. Modérateur: Barah Mikaïl, directeur de Stractegia. Farah Hached est avocate, vice-présidente de l'Université Mahmoud el-Materi, présidente du think-tank tunisien "Labo 'Démocratique" et auteur du livre "Révolution tunisienne et défis sécuritaires". Tarek Kahlaoui a terminé son doctorat à l'Université de Pennsylvanie, est un activiste politique et analyste. De 2012 à 2014, il a dirigé le groupe de réflexion «Institut tunisien d'études stratégiques» lié à la présidence du pays, et il écrit fréquemment sur la politique tunisienne et les questions de sécurité. Huda Mzioudet est chercheuse universitaire et étudiante en Sciences Politiques et Relations Internationales à l'Université de Toronto au Canada.

Published at 48 18,,, 21 2021