The Arab Spring 5 years later
19 October 2015 | In the Media
The Arab uprisings of 2011 “were not the first in the Arab world or the first to be called Spring,” said Lurdes Vidal, head of the Arab and Mediterranean World department at the IEMed, in a debate in El Punt Avui Television. This indicated that the revolts of 2011 had been brewing for some time due to the degradation of the socio-economic situation and the rights of citizens throughout the region. She recalled that Tunisia, to the surprise of its government and the international community, was the flame that the rest of the countries of the Arab world needed to rise.
While Tunisia represents the positive exit from that revolutionary wave, Syria has been the other side of the coin. Without organized civil society not link to the government, the country is still in its fifth year of civil war and is also suffering from Islamic State violence.
Vidal concluded by recalling the good relations between European governments and companies and the authoritarian regimes of the Arab world, and the need to establish links between peoples and societies on both shores of the Mediterranean so that the demands of the revolts are met.
The IEMed analyst took part in the debate on Robinson’s Island on El Punt AVUI Televisió on Wednesday 14 October, together with historian Antoni Segura and journalists Jordi Llaonart and Oriol Barba.