Rule of Law Developments in the Middle East and North Africa

The second issue of Rule of Law Developments in the Middle East and North Africa includes four feature pieces that engage with topics of accountability, anti-corruption, elections, and personal status issues.

As the United States unveils a civil lawsuit involving torture committed in Syria against an American citizen, Meroua Zouai asks critical questions on the prospects for accountability and revisits the legal and judicial environment inside Syria. The conversation is particularly poignant as Arab League member states welcome Syria back into their fold and as the question of normalisation is front and centre.

In Lebanon, Central Bank governor Riad Salameh’s term comes to an end as judicial proceedings against him intensify and red notices are issued. Valeska Heldt engages with this news and presents an accounting of what the ramifications may be for Salameh’s potential dismissal and the likelihood of such action in the first place.

Can presidential and parliamentary elections be the silver bullet that bring some semblance of stability to Libya? In a piece by Vito Todeschini, the author revisits the political process, reflects on lessons learned from prior attempts, and presents an outlook of what we may expect in the upcoming months.

In a final feature piece, Mai El-Sadany and Bassel Jamali react to headlines from Morocco that the country’s family code, also known as the Moudawana, may be amended; the co-authors lay out some of the key provisions in the text on critical issues including marriage, divorce, inheritance, and child custody, and highlight issues with implementation.

The newsletter concludes with a Developments You May Have Missed section that takes readers through some of the top rule of law stories from the quarter, from the targeting of politicians in Tunisia as part of a broader crackdown on political opposition to the drafting of a first-ever Refugee Law in Egypt amid the arrival of Sudanese citizens displaced by the conflict.