Index

ANNOUNCEMENT: Now accepting Applications for Summer Interns (Washington, DC Metro Area)

The Tharwa Foundation is seeking qualified applicants for Summer Program Interns, for a TV series addressing issues of democracy, diversity, and political reform in Syria and the broader Middle East. Tharwa is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, founded by Syrian human rights activist Ammar Abdulhamid, dedicated to providing a supportive environment for democratic principles and practices in the Broader Middle East and North Africa region through programs that encourage inter-communal dialogue.

Syria in Transition

On Friday, April 25, The Tharwa Foundation will sponsor: "Syria in Transition" - a speaking event on Capitol Hill held in partnership with the Democracy Council and organized by members of the Damascus Declaration and the Movement for Justice and Development.

April 25, 2008, 9 AM - 12:30 PM, Rayburn House Office Building, Room 2255.

We hope you will be able to join us for a discussion on the human rights situation in Syria, prospects for the emergence of an organized opposition, and implications for U.S. foreign policy. Speakers include:

Tharwa co-sponsors the Iran Freedom Concert

The Tharwa Foundation is proud to have co-sponsored the Iran Freedom Concert at Sacred Heart University on Monday, April 7th, 2008. At 8:00PM in the Edgerton Center for the Performing Arts at Sacred Heart University, students, faculty, musicians and prominent human rights activists will come together in a concert of words and music to express solidarity with dissident Iranian students, minorities, intellectuals and labourers, and highlight the flagrant violations of their most basic freedoms by the Islamic Republic in Iran.

The Tharwa Community - Wealth in People

People are the real wealth in any community. The sanctity and quality of their lives should rise above any other consideration. Tharwa is dedicated to the pursuit of a better life for the peoples in our region and the world.

About the Tharwa Community

The Tharwa Community was designed as a unique portal for activists and bloggers from the Broader Middle East and North Africa region interested in improving inter-communication between them in the hope of establishing a true community of democratic voices from across the region, a community whose members can support, share ideas and collaborate with each other with regard to ongoing efforts and programs meant to improve popular civic consciousness and the human rights conditions in their countries. In doing this, it is our hope that we can all play a role, no matter how small, in promoting the cause of democracy, modernization and development in the region.

The Tharwa Foundation Mission & Vision

THE THARWA FOUNDATION MISSION

The Tharwa Foundation was established to provide a more supportive and conducive environment for democratic principles and practices in the Broader Middle East and North Africa region. Through programs that encourage inter-communal dialogue and leadership development, Tharwa uses a range of educational, networking, and outreach strategies to enable people of different religious, economic and ethnic backgrounds to come together to discuss peaceful solutions to the region's longstanding sociopolitical and developmental challenges.

The Tharwa Manifesto

A Prologue

For all its ethnic diversity, the region, to which many refer alternatively as the Middle East, the Greater Middle East, and the Muslim World, among other inaccurate appellations, and to which we shall refer here as the Tharwa Commonwealth (an entity still in search of itself), has many common intrinsic problems that could lead most of its states to the brink of social and political disintegration and implosion at one point or another in the not-so-distant future, an event that will have serious reverberations and repercussions throughout the world.

The problems include:

• A demographic explosion that strains the resources of most states.

• Failing economies in many states, as a result of a variety of factors, including depletion of existing resources, corruption and mismanagement.

• Environmental problems resulting from climate change, drought, overgrazing, shrinking potable water resources, and, in some cases, industrial pollution, among other factors. 

• Brain drain, as many of the brightest minds opt to migrate to the West, the Far East, or, at least, to the more prosperous states in the region.

• Imploding and inadequate educational systems as a result of the demographic explosion and continuing neglect. 

• Failing state and social services leading to the augmentation of the problems of poverty and inter-communal tension, and the entrenchment and strengthening of communal identities.   

• Stunted civil societies, which are unable to compensate for governmental neglect, mismanagement, corruption and other shortcomings.

• Lack of foresight and planning on part of existing regimes.

• Lack of R&D investments.

• Rising religious radicalism, a phenomenon often associated with Islam, albeit it is not exclusive to it by any means, and which, in itself, is both a product and a cause of instability in the region and around the world, and lies at the heart of international terrorism.

• Continuing external dabbling in the region that often fails to take the interest and intellectual input of its peoples into consideration, or that assumes a messianic character that serves to further alienate and radicalize the peoples of the region.

• The impact of existing conflicts and hotspots, including those in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Caucasus, Darfur, Somalia, Lebanon, South Philippines, South Thailand, etc., combined with the lack of effective peacemaking mechanisms in the region and the often lethargic and reluctant response of the international community, that remains motivated by a narrow focus on its immediate interests.