tribune. At the beginning of 2020, the Arab world remains traversed by a series of protest movements, with a common denominator being a citizen demand close to that which had already precipitated the 2011 “Arab Spring”. From Algiers to Cairo, From Beirut to Baghdad, and in many other places, this call for citizenship targets a set of systems and institutions that have failed, on the whole, to ensure a decent and acceptable life for their governed. Elsewhere, as in Tunis, this call is certainly muted at present, but it is still very much present. Smothered in countries in a situation of civil war such as Libya, Syria or even Yemen, this citizen movement will necessarily reappear with force on the scene.
"Arab citizen demands have been a structural constant for a decade, linked to very concrete political and social demands"
Arab citizen demands are not a thing of the past; moreover, they cannot be seen as a momentary moment. Rooted in the protests that have arisen here and there in recent months, they have been a structural constant for a decade, linked to very concrete political and social demands. When it started in December 2018 in Sudan, the last protest wave to date, caused firstly by the tripling of the price of bread, resulted in popular rallies which would ultimately defeat the regime of Omar Al-Bashir. In the Algerian context, the citizens revolted within the framework of the Hirak movement as of February 2019 against yet another candidacy of the president in office Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who will end up resigning, without taking with him the "deep state" firmly established in the country and governed by the army.
The Egyptian case, for its part, makes one think of a sort of aborted repetition of the January 2011 revolution. Again gathered in Tahrir Square in the fall of 2019 to demand full recognition of their citizenship and the rights which As a result, the demonstrators demand the departure of the president officially in power since 2014, Abdel Fattah Al-Sissi, but fail to overthrow him as they did with Hosni Mubarak. At the origin of this citizen irruption, the diffusion on the Web of videos accusing the head of state of corruption. Since then, the repression has been fierce, without however reaching the level of that of Iraq, where the protest, which begins at the same time, is repressed with hundreds of dead and wounded, including very young demonstrators. Unfit and corrupt political elites, absence of economic reforms, continuous dilapidation, dictate of sectarian and community strategies massively rejected by the population: the sharp anger of the Iraqi citizen, anxious to be heard and recognized as such, is not new and will reappear necessarily too.
