Arab League
The Arab League, officially called the League of Arab States, is
a notoriously fractious regional organization of 22 Arab states
based in Cairo. It was founded on March 22, 1945, with the aim
of strengthening the relationships between member states through
political, cultural and economic cooperation.
At the time of the organization’s founding, a key concern was
the promotion of independence and sovereignty for nascent Arab
countries, an especially important subject as the colonial
powers considered the fate of the territories they held at the
end of World War II. Another important issue for the early
league was its opposition to a Jewish state in the British
mandate territory of Palestine, which was addressed in a special
annex to its founding charter.
The first six members of the organization were Egypt, Iraq,
Transjordan — renamed Jordan after 1946 — Lebanon, Saudi Arabia
and Syria. Yemen joined a few months later. The league has since
grown to 22 members, located in various parts of Africa, the
Gulf and the Middle East.
The League and Syria
For decades, the league bordered on irrelevance, reflecting the
ossified politics of most of its members. It endorsed an
Israeli-Palestinian peace plan in 2002, too late to have an
impact. As the Arab Spring unrest swept through the region in
2011, the league stayed on the sidelines.
But in early November 2011, the Syrian government accepted a
plan brokered by the league to halt violence and convene talks
with the opposition. Days later, Syria launched a bloody assault
to retake Homs, the country’s third-largest city.
Two leading international human rights organizations called on
the Arab League to back the referral of Syria to the
International Criminal Court for committing crimes against
humanity in its ferocious campaign to crush the uprising. |