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Judge Makram Awad gave five-year sentences in absentia to at least 15 U.S. citizens who left Egypt last year. He sentenced an American who stayed behind to two years in prison, and gave the same sentence to a German woman.

The Egyptian investigation focused on charges that the groups were operating without necessary approvals and had received funds from abroad illegally. Eleven Egyptians who faced lesser charges were handed one-year suspended sentences.

Egypt was run at the time by a military council that assumed power from deposed President Hosni Mubarak. Although the case is a legacy of that era, analysts say it further darkens prospects for an open society after the Islamist-led administration drew up a new NGO law seen as a threat to democracy.

There are several reasons the National Dialogue succeeded, including strong popular and international pressure to avoid the Egyptian scenario. A key factor was that the Quartet had real support in Tunisian society. The UGTT, despite years of dictatorship, had managed to build a national network of over 400,000 members and today has the ability to call for massive general strikes that can paralyse the economy. While the UGTT represents labour, the UTICA represents capital, the influential and moneyed business elite. The human rights league and the lawyers’ syndicate are veterans of the opposition to the Ben Ali regime and played an important role in the 2011 revolution. Together, these four organisations had both moral clout and political brawn; they could mobilise public opinion and steer the national debate. The UGTT and UTICA, precisely because they are often at loggerheads on labour issues, made for a particularly compelling duo in jointly pushing an agenda of compromise.

the Quartet’s leadership in effect provided a vehicle for negotiation, neutralising the opposition’s hardliners who might have backed more radical options, such as an outright coup

In a region where civil-society groups often face repression and are marginalised, the Tunisian example shows the value of having actors from outside formal politics play a role in moments of crisis. No one elected the National Dialogue Quartet, but they nonetheless represented something real: the desire of many Tunisians to resolve their differences in a peaceful and constructive way

For decades, democracy promotion efforts have tended to focus on strengthening civil society and stimulating civic engagement as methods of encouraging the emergence of a democratic political culture. This is nowhere more present than in the Arab world. Between 1991 and 2001, some $150 million -- more than half of all U.S. funding for democracy-promotion in the Middle East -- went toward this goal. Yet the QWVS revealed that, in fact, civic participation in Qatar is actually associated not only with reduced support for democracy itself, but also with a disproportionate lack of the values and behaviors thought to be essential to it, including confidence in government institutions and social tolerance. In Qatar, the QWVS showed that civic participation cannot lead individuals toward a greater appreciation for democracy, for it is precisely those who least value democracy that tend to be most actively engaged.

Qataris who channel their social, economic, and political ambitions through participation in civic associations are disproportionately likely to be less tolerant of others, less oriented toward democracy and less confident in formal governmental institutions. These findings are the result of a careful multivariate analysis, which offers a strong foundation for inferring, albeit not proving, causality

In places where democracy does not exist to begin with, private associations can just as easily operate in support of the prevailing regime as in support of the behaviors and attitudes thought to beget democratic citizens. Indeed, the survivability of such organizations is linked precisely to the extent they do so. In the rent-based Arab Gulf, where the state's principal role is the top-down distribution of revenue generated from the sale of natural resources, private civic associations are a natural locus of the clientelist networks that link all citizens directly or indirectly to the state. Furthermore, with every eight out of 10 residents of Qatar being foreign expatriates or migrant laborers, Qatar's citizen population of no more than 300,000 tends to be inward-looking and to seek opportunities to be connected to one another and to the regime.

While Tunisians are often told that theirs is the only revolution that remains from the "Arab Spring," they know full well that its goals have not been achieved.

Béji Caïd Essebsi has always rejected a democratic process within the party he founded in 2012--the party that carried him to the highest office. At the end of the party's congress held in Sousse on 9 and 10 January, the party appointed Caïd Essebsi's son to succeed him as party leader

Béji Caïd Essebsi has always rejected a democratic process within the party he founded in 2012--the party that carried him to the highest office. At the end of the party's congress held in Sousse on 9 and 10 January, the party appointed Caïd Essebsi's son to succeed him as party leader,

Tunisia's General Labour Union (UGTT: Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail), created more than 100 years ago, combines a rich history of anti-colonial and anti-authoritarian struggles. With nearly 700,000 members, it stands as the most powerful organisation and a political heavyweight of leftist and secularist leaning members. It was significant in leading the civic alliance's mediator role in negotiating a democratic plan and timetable for its fulfilment.

the long-established Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH: La Ligue Tunisienne pour la Défense des Droits de l'Homme) is the oldest in the Arab world

the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts (UTICA: Union Tunisienne de l'Industrie, du Commerce et de l'Artisanat) eventually responded to the UGTT’s invitation to endorse and join the national dialogue

Research conducted in March by 50 teachers from the Imam Hatip schools revealed that students are moving away from Islam

Another cause of upset on the part of many religious Muslims is the content of the Diyanet-prepared Friday sermons, which frequently advocates violent jihad

great disappointment in the Erdogan government's version of Islam, especially when accompanied by corrupt politics and a deteriorating justice system

Tunisia has secured greater press freedom than many of the Arab Spring countries, but local journalists told CPJ that with elections slated for this year, challenges including funding, transparency, and government pressure remain

Despite a ban on foreign funding, many of the independent journalists who spoke with CPJ said they believe Gulf money is secretly pouring in to campaigns, although they often lack the means to expose it. Businessmen and politicians are also using privately owned media companies and the government is harnessing public broadcasters to further their political agendas.

Journalists speak privately of money from the United Arab Emirates flowing to establishment politicians and funds from Qatar to Islamists but there is little published evidence of this.

Freedoms are imperilled in Tunisia after the violent suppression of protests against President Kais Saied last week, rights groups warned

"It is clear that freedoms are threatened and face an imminent peril," Yassine Jelassi, head of the Tunisian National Journalists' Union (SNJT), told a press conference organised by 21 human rights groups."A police and security mentality is running the state... Tunisia has become a country which suppresses freedoms."

Tunis, the capital, has not witnessed such unrest for a decade.

A group of Egyptian civil society organisations have been prevented from attending the Cop27 climate summit by a covert registration process that filtered out groups critical of the Egyptian government.

“You don’t let a government tell the UN who is and who isn’t an NGO, certainly not the Egyptian government,” said Ahmad Abdallah, of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF), one of five leading organisations unable to register to attend the conference due to the screening.

“the UN is colluding with the Egyptian government to whitewash this regime”

Since Kais Saied's assumption of the Tunisian presidency in 2019, the number of African migrants who have arrived in Tunisia without being stopped or registered has dramatically increased. “Officially, 10,000 irregular migrants have crossed the borders from Libya to Tunisia during the first half of 2022”, M.E., a former UNHCR employee in Medenine revealed. In reality, the numbers are much bigger.

it is believed foreign migrants in Tunisia far exceed a million. 

Since the start of his tenure, Saied has put the army and the police at the behest of his political project. After his referendum on a new constitution, Saied sacked and replaced nine high-ranking police officers. Furthermore, Saied's Interior Minister Taoufik Charfeddine has been appointing his own friends to key positions in the police and the National Guard.