For decades, human rights defenders across the Arab region have relied on foreign resources rather than local funding to support human rights initiatives.
The Arab region has experienced a number of historical developments in the last year, a dynamic of change unseen since the 1950s. Analyzing the whereabouts of this dynamic might be pretentious for a grantmaking organization like AHRF; nevertheless, reflecting on how this reshuffling of the cards would affect philanthropy in the region is a much needed exercise at this stage.
Only three decades ago, the role of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in filling the gaps resulting from the public sector’s shortcomings was intensively debated in a context of extreme caution (by governmental stakeholders).