Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) scholar Elias Muhanna, the blogger behind qifanabki.com, has been nominated for a special award for an outstanding contribution to new media by the Next Century Foundation.

The Next Century Foundation writes:

"The prize is awarded to individuals that contribute to different forms of new media, in particular internet news, blogging and citizen journalism... ELIAS MUHANNA's Qifa Nabki blog is about Lebanese politics, history, and culture...He offers some of the best analysis of Lebanese politics to be found anywhere - clever, eloquent, sharp and non-ideological. And he writes some wonderful satire too.""

ARD warmly congratulates Elias Muhanna on this nomination. To read his blog, please click on the link below.

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Since the Taif agreement of 1989, which helped end the civil war, half of Parliament has been reserved for Christians, the other half for Muslims, with each half distributed among 11 of Lebanon’s 18 officially recognized sects (Maronite, Greek Orthodox, Protestant, Sunni, Shiite, Druze, Alawite, etc). Each of Parliament’s (pdf) 128 seats is sect-specific: only members of that sect can run for it. (Voters, however, can cast their ballot for every seat in their district regardless of their own religious affiliation.) The president must be a Maronite, the prime minister a Sunni and the speaker of Parliament a Shiite. Hundreds of bureaucratic appointments are also subject to sectarian apportionment under the Constitution.

The imposition of religious representativeness in politics is a scourge. In the best of circumstances, it is vulnerable to the demagoguery of religious leaders; in the worst, it breeds civil violence and paralyzes the government. But others fear that a more open system would not provide the guarantees of power-sharing among religious minorities that the current model entails.

In recent months, the focus of these long-standing divergences has centered on the intricacies of Lebanon’s electoral law. The next parliamentary elections are less than a year and a half away, and a loose coalition of civil society groups, independent politicians and Lebanon’s president – the former army general Michel Suleiman — has recently proposed implementing a system of proportional representation to replace the current majoritarian, or “winner-take-all,” model.

Under the existing system, a fledgling party with a small but dedicated following stands no chance of getting its candidates elected in a district where a more established party holds sway. Under proportional representation — in which seats are allocated in keeping with the share of votes collected — a small party could win some seats with a minority of votes. In addition to ensuring multiparty representation in each district, proportional representation would empower lesser-known independent candidates. Over time the newcomers could coalesce to form a bulwark against the traditional political mainstream and advance a more liberal agenda.

Predictably, most major parties have conspired to protect the status quo; they want to maintain their primacy within it. The Future Movement, the main Sunni party, worries that the Sunni allies of its Shiite archrival, Hezbollah, might encroach on its turf. Walid Jumblatt, the country’s main Druze leader, fears that he would lose votes to other Druze figures with small-time followings in his traditional stronghold, the Chouf mountains.

In a rare show of unity, the leaders of Lebanon’s main Christian parties have come together to oppose the president’s draft law. The proposed law would combine Lebanon’s small electoral districts into fewer and larger ones, which is necessary for proportional representation to work effectively. (Imagine an election between 10 different parties in a 10-seat district: if each party wins 10 percent of the overall vote, each one gets its own seat. In a two-seat district, only the top two lists win seats.) But an electoral map with  larger districts also means  larger constituencies, which in turn means that substantial numbers of Christian candidates could be voted in on the lists of non-Christian parties (like the Future Movement and Hezbollah). And that would erode the influence of the traditional Christian political elite.

And so the Christian political establishment has offered a radical counter-proposal: a law that would institute proportional representation but also require citizens to vote only for members of their own sect (Sunnis would elect Sunnis; Greek Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, etc.)

One of the many problems with this idea is that it would generate considerable inequalities of suffrage between Christians and Muslims. As is, Christians already have greater voting power than Muslims because they still occupy half of Parliament even though they now represent less than half of Lebanon’s population. Under the new proposal, this disparity in representation would be further exacerbated.

Worse is the vision of Lebanon’s political future at the heart of the Christian plan. The president’s proposal envisages a country whose citizens vote for candidates on the basis of party affiliation and political platform, not sect. The Christians’ counter-proposal imagines Lebanon as a collection of 18 insular religious communities jealously nominating their own nobility and eyeing one another with suspicion. The first model is a bold step toward dismantling political sectarianism; the second is an enormous step backward, toward greater divisiveness.

Because of its inexpediency, a substantive revision of the electoral law in time for the 2013 elections seems unlikely — despite the fact that a solid majority of Lebanese say they would prefer proportional representation to the current system. Yet if Lebanon is ever to establish a new social contract — one based on true citizenship rather than begrudging coexistence — it will need to change its electoral arithmetic.

On January 24, Madeline Rees, former U.N. high commissioner for human rights in Bosnia and secretary general for the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, spoke at the second installment of the Sanela Diana Jenkins International Speaker Series. Rees, has been working with the CDDRL Program on Human Rights to promote research on human trafficking, posed an interesting question: can extraterritorial jurisdiction — the legal ability of a government to exercise authority beyond its borders — be a tool for improving accountability for human rights abuse during peacekeeping operations?

Rees was referring to a situation that she experienced in Bosnia where peacekeepers reportedly abused, tortured and actively trafficked women and girls. She noted, however, that there have been similar situations and accusations of sexual exploitation and abuse, including sex trafficking, in U.N. missions ranging from Cambodia to Haiti to Congo since the 1990s. Rees argued that these abuses and the involvement of peacekeepers in human trafficking in particular, result from a combination of factors, which include:

• The perception of immunity (based on UN peacekeepers status)
• Impunity that results from the lack of specific legislation and enforcement mechanisms
• Lack of formal training
• Peer pressure
• Patriarchic militarized model of peacekeeping

There has been some slow progress. Rees recalled that when she first brought up the issue of human trafficking to the U.N., laughter was a common response. Her struggle, portrayed in part in the recent film The Whistleblower, has enabled an open discussion within the U.N. In 2007, the U.N. created the Department of Field Support and made some structural changes, but these reforms have not yet addressed the heart of the problem. In part, Rees believes, this is because the U.N. has lacked the political will to hold peacekeepers accountable for their actions.

On January 31, Roni Hong, a human trafficking survivor and founder of the Tronie Foundation presented her testimony at the third installment of the Sanela Diana Jenkins International Speaker Series. Hong dramatically recounted her personal story of being trafficked into forced labor at the young age of seven in India. She spoke of the beatings and torture she suffered and ultimately her illegal, international adoption. Her story raises the controversial issue of legal and illegal international adoption.

Hong highlighted the fact that most of the framework for advocacy for victims of human trafficking centers on sex trafficking. Citing data from the Trafficking in Persons Report, Hong explained that globally there are more victims of trafficking for labor than sexual exploitation. In the United States, hundreds of thousands of children work on farms exempt from the minimum age and maximum hour requirements that apply to all other working children. This exposes them to work at younger ages, for longer hours — often ten or more hours per day — and under hazardous conditions. They are vulnerable to the risk of pesticide poisoning, heat illness, injuries, life-long disabilities, and even death.

Through the Tronie Foundation, Hong organized a network of survivors of human trafficking. She has been interviewed by Oprah and has been a key advocate for legislation that mandates training of health providers in identifying signs of human trafficking in Washington state. Hong hopes that her work and the survivors’ network will empower victims like herself to find their voice and speak out. Hong told the audience that by bringing their voices together, victims can advocate for policies that address the causes of trafficking and advance human rights.

On January 17, the Program on Human Rights welcomed Bradley Myles and Helga Konrad to the Stanford campus to open the 2012 Sanela Diana Jenkins International Speaker Series. Bradley Myles is the executive director and CEO of Polaris, a leading organization in the United States combating all forms of human trafficking. Helga Konrad is the special representative on combating trafficking in human beings at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

Drawing from a combined thirty years of experience working in the field of human trafficking, Myles and Konrad discussed the challenges of making accurate assessments of the magnitude of the problem. Myles explained that the US does not have reliable estimates on the number of victims of human trafficking. The lack of data has undermined efforts to implement public policy, raise awareness and funding. There are many reasons why assessment of human trafficking is very difficult. Myles argued, for example, that within the United States there are many different definitions of human trafficking that facilitate misconceptions of human trafficking and create a vacuum in the law.

Konrad pointed out that in Europe most countries have adopted new anti-trafficking laws or amended their criminal codes to provide for the specific crime of human trafficking. However, the need for national and regional coordination mechanisms and frameworks persists. She highlighted that although data is important, one person submitted to human trafficking is one too many. In her opinion, Europe still needs a regional referral mechanism that would interact with services and other counter-measures (shelters, hotlines, voluntary repatriation, and short-term assistance) to protect victims and not criminalize them.

In the United States, the Polaris Project has been providing services to survivors and striving for long-term solutions since 2002. Polaris operates the National Human Trafficking Resource Center hotline 1.888.3737.888 and works to train different audiences including police officers, health providers and child protection social workers. Myles mentioned that awareness and information enables people to take responsibility. He believes that it is possible to create a movement to empower communities to change laws, policies, costumes, and effectively combat human trafficking.

One year after the Arab Spring, American public diplomacy is still facing the now-established conundrum of linking words and actions. The rise of Islamist political parties as the new leaders in the Arab world is the latest challenge for U.S. public diplomacy, but it is also an opportunity.

Since the attacks of September 11, the United States has been matching its military activity in the Middle East with outreach to Muslim and Arab communities. By and large, this outreach has not been successful. As several public diplomacy experts have been arguing for a number of years now, the limited impact of this outreach is due to the negative perception of U.S. foreign policy towards the Middle East by citizens in the region. When actions and words do not match, words are perceived with a hefty dose of suspicion.

When the Egyptian revolution began on January 25, 2011, U.S. foreign policy took some time to catch up with sentiment on the Egyptian street. To make matters worse, the “Made in USA” tear gas canisters that protesters in Tahrir Square angrily displayed to the cameras of the international media were a further reminder of the United States’ cozy relationship with the Mubarak regime.

Since then, the U.S. has improved its words and actions by declaring both rhetorical and policy support for the Arab world’s revolutionaries (albeit in varying degrees), and as a result, public opinion about the U.S. in the region has improved. The 2011 Arab Public Opinion Pollshows a significant increase in favorability towards the U.S., compared with the 2010 poll, from 10% to 26%. The U.S. must continue to enhance this record.

Back in 2006, after much hype by the U.S. about the importance of free and fair elections in Palestine, the U.S. backtracked when Hamas swept the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in Gaza,withdrawing aid and boycotting the elected Gaza government. As Islamist parties sweep free and fair elections in one country after another in the region—starting with Tunisia, then Egypt—it is fairly safe to declare that in the immediate aftermath of the Arab Spring, the Arab world will be led by Islamists. So far, the U.S. has not repeated the mistake of 2006 with Hamas’ election in Gaza, accepting the results of the elections as democratic and as representing the will of the people.

But this is not enough. Of course, the United States currently has an easier task, since none of the groups that have been elected to-date in the Arab region are on the U.S.’s “terrorist” list. However, merely accepting election results will not cause a significant change in the perception of the U.S. on the Arab street.

The U.S. recognizes the current period as one of opportunity: it is the time to reinvigorate U.S. assistance with civil society, economic aid, and cultural outreach in the Arab world. But the most important “action” of all remains how foreign policy will play out. The Islamist groups that have assumed leadership positions in Tunisia and Egypt, namely Ennahda and the Muslim Brotherhood, have one very old dream: to be recognized as statesmen nationally and internationally. If U.S. foreign policy in this new era is going to be successful, it must be based on treating those leaders as such.

This is not just important on the traditional diplomatic level; it is also important for the success of U.S. public diplomacy. The Islamist leaders now assuming positions as Prime Ministers or House Speakers (and who knows, perhaps also presidents in the near future) reached power through having been elected by their constituents. The U.S. cannot reach out to those constituents while treating their leaders differently. In the past, U.S. public diplomacy towards Egypt appeared insincere because the U.S. attempted to engage the Egyptian people while taking a soft stance towards the Mubarak regime, which had been jailing, harassing, and—as in the case of Khaled Said—killing those same people.

For the first time in the Arab world’s history, there is a real opportunity for the U.S. to match its words and actions towards the region, and to have foreign policy become the basis upon which to formulate a truly engaging public diplomacy.