Democracy & Reform

On February 12, 2004, Paula Dobriansky addressed The Washington Institute's Special Policy Forum. As the undersecretary of state for global affairs, Dr. Dobriansky is the senior State Department official responsible for a broad range of transnational issues, including democracy, human rights, labor, counternarcotics, law enforcement, refugees, humanitarian relief, and environmental

Today's meeting between President George W. Bush and visiting Tunisian president Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali may be a low-profile event with a leader of a country in which the United States has only limited strategic interests. Yet, the repercussions of their luncheon tete-a-tete for the administration's larger objective of Arab

Like legions of other proud parents, my wife and I sat beaming in the audience earlier this month, video camera in hand, as our son Benji, 6, stood with his fellow first-graders on the stage of his school auditorium and sang a medley of holiday songs. The adorably cute, multicultural

Lift up your eyes. Look to the future. There is a different world out there than the diet of Middle Eastern violence and anti-Americanism that we are fed in Europe, and that people of the Middle East are being served up as well. Nowhere is this truer than in the

Have onerous post-Sept. 11 visa requirements denied young Arabs access to American colleges and universities? That charge was made by the authors of the "Arab Human Development Report," published last month and prepared by respected Arab researchers under the auspices of the U.N. Development Program. Their condemnation of Washington's alleged

In its eighty-page report Changing Minds, Winning Peace, issued earlier today, the State Department's Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World -- chaired by Edward Djerejian -- delivered a refreshingly blunt assessment of many of the failures in Washington's efforts to deliver its message to Muslims

Hayet Laouani, Tunisian National Federation of Transport: The Arab world is diverse. There are individual Arab countries, not just a single entity, that you can strictly call the "Arab world." Is there a deficit of democracy in those countries? Yes, but not a complete absence. What is missing is an

Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland Security INTRODUCTION Well into the war on terrorism, Saudi Arabia continues to serve as the capital of international terrorist financing. Through groups like the Muslim World League (MWL), the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), the al Haramain Islamic Foundation

President George W. Bush will be holding three summits next week that will have a strong Middle East orientation. A G-8 summit will followed by a meeting with Arab leaders in Sharm al-Shaykh, Egypt, and a summit of Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Aqaba, Jordan, representing a new phase in