Arab Reform Initiative / مبادرة الإصلاح العربي

We are pleased to announce the release of our new book: 'Cultivating Sovereignty: Struggles for Food Justice in the Middle East and North Africa'

This book is the latest result of a research agenda ARI launched in 2023, as food systems came under growing strain and debates on food sovereignty gathered pace across the region. Since then, we have published national studies on Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia, a regional study on seed sovereignty, and case studies in Lebanon and Tunisia. We have also convened researchers, farmers’ unions and civil society groups to share what they are seeing on the ground.

Edited by Julia Choucair Vizoso and produced by ARI’s Environmental Politics Programme, the dossier brings together ten studies from Tunisia, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria. It draws on fieldwork with farmers, unions and cooperatives, and ends with concrete recommendations for governments, donors and civil society.

Our thanks to the editor and contributors:

Julia Choucair Vizoso , Imen Louati, PhD (Tunisia), Mariam Al Jaajaa, Lisa Shahin, Gaby Neubert and Aya Bseiso (Jordan), Abdalaziz Alsalehi (Palestine), Zeead Yaghi (Lebanon), Kanj HAMADE, Taif Alkhudary, Ansar Jasim and Rula Asad, and Yasser Souilmi.

📖 Read the dossier: lnkd.in/dx5JtQDx

🎙️ Join the launch webinar on 19 October: lnkd.in/de9A6nNT

#WorldFoodDay #FoodSovereignty #FoodJustice #MENA #ArabReformInitiative

We’re in Antalya for @turkiyecop31

Climate action is a governance question: who decides, who pays, and who gets a seat at the table.

ARI is at #COP31 to press that point across the MENA region.

Learn more:
tinyurl.com/bdeb67pv

"We have been programmed to compete."

In 2022, 0.42% of grants from major funding institutions went to women's rights work.

Now even that is drying up.

Maya El-Ammar asks whether feminist movements in the region can use the collapse of the old funding system to rebuild, or whether it becomes a retreat into survival.

📄 Download the research paper here:
tinyurl.com/4jv4t25d

Over a million people in #Lebanon have been displaced by Israeli bombardment and evacuation orders since September 2024, with a fresh wave in March 2026. Within three days of that escalation the state opened nearly 400 collective shelters; within a week most were full. It coordinated the response with seven other ministries, around 400 NGOs and some 20 UN agencies, while holding roughly 30% of the funds required and without an explicit mandate to do it.

Nadine Khayat argues this is not an absent state but a functioning partnership, and asks what that does over time. Trust in a state is built through daily access to public services, and the more that runs through NGOs, UN agencies and relatives abroad, the more the relationship itself changes. Her recommendations turn on one distinction: defensible as a bridge to rebuilt state capacity, corrosive as a permanent template. She wants the government to say publicly which one it is.

Read the commentary here:
tinyurl.com/yap4pkmb

How should we read Morocco’s new government?

On 16 October 2026, Head of Government Fatima Ezzahara El Mansouri announced a four-party coalition that few anticipated. Alongside the PAM, it brings back the Koutla, the historic democratic bloc of Istiqlal, the USFP, and the PPS. The bloc was central to the 1998 Alternance government and later fragmented over inter-party rivalries and ideological differences.

The result is a sharp political rupture. The RNI finds itself in opposition, and the new government holds a considerably slimmer majority.

What political calculations produced this configuration, and what does it reveal about the monarchy’s priorities?

Join us for a webinar bringing together expert analysis and debate on:

The domestic and international context behind the coalition’s composition
The emerging cartography of the opposition and the kind of opposition to expect.
The Head of Government’s room for maneuver, and what it signals about the monarchy’s policy priorities.
The new Parliament’s capacity to legislate, oversee the government, and channel growing social and political grievances.

Speakers:
Mohammed Masbah, Founder and President, Moroccan Institute for Policy Analysis (MIPA).
Saloua Zerhouni, Professor of Political Science, Mohammed V University in Rabat, Rabat Social Studies Institute.
Moderator:
Sarah Anne Rennick, Deputy Director, Arab Reform Initiative

Registration: lnkd.in/e9KH-WVK

#Morocco #MoroccanPolitics #CoalitionGovernment #NorthAfrica #MENA #PoliticalAnalysis