MER Article

An Interview with William Carter, Sudan Country Director for the Norwegian Refugee Council

The war in Sudan that began in April 2023 has led to a reckoning among humanitarian aid organizations. As international organizations have struggled to alleviate the diverse, complex crises facing people across the country, locally led initiatives and mutual aid organizations have sprung up at the grassroots level. To speak

William Carter, Nisrin Elamin, Deen Sharp • 10 min read

MER Article

“We Don’t Have the Luxury to Stop”—An Interview with Syrian Civil Society Activist Oula Ramadan

Observers often summarize the past ten years in Syria in numbers: more than 500,000 killed, 100,000 disappeared, half the population of 22 million displaced, hundreds of billions of dollars of property destroyed and 90 percent of the population currently living in poverty. These shocking figures lay

Oula Ramadan, Wendy Pearlman • 14 min read

MER Article

Syrian Refugees Navigate Turkey’s Shifting Health Care Terrain

Registered Syrian refugees in Turkey are allowed to access free state health care. But the language barrier, registration difficulties and prejudice led to the emergence of informal clinics run by refugee doctors. Although the government has opened Migrant Health Centers to ease access and replace i

Nihal Kayali • 14 min read

MER Article

NGO Governance and Syrian Refugee "Subjects" in Jordan

The typical image of the Syrian refugee camp in Jordan is one of suffering. Journalistic account after account introduces spectacular stories of devastation and loss. While perhaps dramatized, these tales are not false. Syrian refugee camps have forced hundreds of thousands of strangers to live toge

Madeline Otis Campbell, Sarah Tobin • 18 min read

MER Article

Egypt's Popular Committees

During the 18-day uprising of 2011, police disappeared from the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities at the same time that the state emptied the prisons of thousands of convicts. Neighborhood watch brigades, typically led by young men, sprang up to fill the security void as reports of criminal

Asya El-Meehy • 12 min read

MER Article

Al-Haq

On a crisp November day in 1984, I first stepped into the small apartment on Ramallah's main street that housed the offices of what was then known as Law in the Service of Man (a somewhat ungainly translation of the more universal al-qanoun min ajal al-insan -- Law in the Service of the Human Being)

Joost Hiltermann • 8 min read

MER Article

Egyptian Advocacy NGOs

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been touted as a cure for almost every malady afflicting developing societies. Western governments, international organizations and regional activists expect NGOs to help fill the gap left by underfunded, ineffective state bureaucracies. NGOs are viewed as antidotes to authoritarian and corrupt rule and considered more efficient

Krista Masonis El-Gawhary • 10 min read

MER Article

NGOs' Dilemmas

In the late fall of 1996, a key committee of the Arab League met to discuss a matter of utmost importance. One of the few committees that meet regularly -- the Ministries of the Interior Committee -- it convened in Tunis to strategize about one of the most dire national

Julia Pitner • 10 min read

MER Article

The Importance of Self-Reliance

Shortly before Eritrea's declaration of independence from Ethiopia in May 1993, members of the Eritrean security forces arrived on the doorstep of the Regional Center for Human Rights and Development (RCHRD) in downtown Asmara, the capital. The center's director knew precisely why they had come -- t

Dan Connell • 16 min read

MER Article

The Transformation of Islamist NGOs in Palestine

"It's over for this generation of Islamic activists. We tried and failed, but time is on our side. We must plant the seeds for an Islamic future in the next generation through social change. We must alter the mindset and mentality of people through an Islamic value system. We do this through example

Sara Roy • 9 min read

MER Article

Problems of Dependency

On January 7, 2000, Lisa Hajjar spoke with Abdallahi An-Na'im, a lawyer from Sudan and a prominent human rights scholar and activist. He is professor of law at Emory University. Transcription was provided by Zachary Kidd and funded by the Morehouse College sociology department. Can you highlight so

Lisa Hajjar • 16 min read

MER Article

Palestinian NGOs Since Oslo

The post-Oslo debate on Palestinian NGOs in the West Bank and Gaza recently came full circle in two respects: An earlier debate that had envisioned NGOs as possible democratic alternatives to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was largely laid to rest by the NGO movement itself. At the same time,

Rema Hammami • 15 min read