Transnational advocacy networks for human rights in the Mediterranean

Transnational advocacy networks (TAN) for human rights have proliferated in the Euro-Mediterranean area over the last two decades. Stable links between human rights associations from different countries have been created despite the structural factors that hamper this development. This article takes the example of the Arab Spring to consider the existence of sections of an international civil society –through a core of still-incipient tran­snational activism– that have predominantly local roots, but whose political discourse and action repertoires are similar to other phenom­ena operating simultaneously in other parts of the international system. Developments relating to the Arab Spring demonstrate the main prob­lems of some of these networks: their distance from popular movements and the negative impact of the North-South divide.

Key words: transnational networks, civil society, social movements, Arab Spring

>> The full text articles of this issue are available only in Spanish language