What has happened since the so-called Arab Spring? Eight years later, human rights are under attack across the region. Hundreds of thousands of people, many of them children, have been killed during armed conflicts that continue to rage in Syria, Libya, and Yemen. The Syrian conflict has created the largest refugee crisis of the twenty-first century, humanitarian crisis.

Tunisia is the only relative success story. It has a new constitution, some justice for past crimes, but human rights are still under attack.

In Egypt, peaceful activists, critics of the government, and many others remain in jail. Torture and other ill treatment are rife. Hundreds have been sentenced to death and tens of thousands put behind bars for protesting or for their alleged links to political opposition. However, we saw that the current president was just authorized to stay in power until 2034. In Bahrain, the authorities are silencing dissent. Libya has turned into chaos. There are many armed conflicts all across the country, and all sides have committed war crimes and serious human rights abuses.

In Syria, the region’s bloodiest armed conflict emerged in response to the brutal suppression of mass protests by the government. Atrocious crimes are being committed on a massive scale. Half the population has been displaced.

Yemen is an ongoing tragedy, with a Saudi Arabia–led coalition (principally with the United Arab Emirates), but with the US supplying arms, providing refueling and intelligence, and so forth. Here’s an interesting Tucson connection. The Emirates just bought $1.6 billion of arms from Raytheon, so the Tucson economy stays strong. The Saudi Arabia–led coalition air strikes and shelling by Houthi forces have killed more than ten thousand civilians, forty thousand wounded. Ten million are now in jeopardy of famine and disease. Some of the attacks amount to war crimes.