In the research report, Arts and Human Rights: The Philosophy of Societal Emancipation Behind Supporting Artists, Dr. Fayrouz Karawya explores a less-traveled path for the work of human rights organizations; the path opened by art, imagination, memory, emotion, and creative expression.

This path does not treat art as an adornment of advocacy, nor does it ask artists to translate human rights concepts into simplified messages. Rather, it begins from a different premise: Genuine, autonomous intellectual expression, through art, can reach people in ways that formal human rights discourse often cannot. Through stories, images, performances, sounds, shared emotions, irony, beauty, discomfort, and ambiguity, art can- in many ways - influence the cultural and emotional worlds that shape a person’s conceptualization of freedom, dignity, injustice, fear, and hope.

Art, however, is not intrinsically emancipatory, as the report illustrates. Like all forms of reflection and expression, Art can be captured by systems of power, economics, and belief. Its transformative potential is subject to the conditions under which it is created, circulated, received, and debated. Most importantly, art’s potency is contingent upon how artists position themselves.

This report is therefore part of a broader reflection within the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) on the relationship between human rights and culture in the Arab region. For decades, CIHRS has explored potential paths for human rights values to move beyond legal, diplomatic, and activist circles and become socially meaningful to our specific region.

This exploration has been fundamental to the vision of CIHRS since its first years.

Authoritarianism is not the inevitable destiny of Arab societies. Said rejected cultural determinism

The relevance of Mohamed Sayed Said’s vision became evident in the struggles for democratic transformation and human dignity that intensified after his death, cresting during the waves of Arab uprisings between 2011 and 2019. It also became visible in the decline that followed. Bahey eldin Hassan, who co-founded CIHRS with Said, observed in 2024 the extended political and social stagnancy in which the Arab region remains trapped, lagging behind other regions for particular historical, political, and institutional reasons.

Mohamed Sayed Said had long insisted on a delicate but essential point: Culture is not an essence that predetermines failure in the Arab region, but neither is it secondary. It is a field for contention. It is where authoritarianism, religious zealotry, nationalism, patriarchy, rights, democracy, citizenship, pluralism, and enlightenment confront one another. Culture can be a field of obedience and fear, but it can also become a field of emancipation and renewal. That is why Said prioritized this topic in his work.

A pathway for cultural renewal must therefore be encouraged. Yet this renewal cannot simply be tasked to human rights organizations, nor can it be invented at will by intellectuals, political elites, or state institutions. Burhan Ghalioun, a Syrian intellectual, sees culture as neither a passive mirror of society nor an autonomous realm floating above it. It is formed through dialectics: between the individual and the group, consciousness and reality, past and future, geography and space, tradition and change.

Artists and intellectuals, like all other individuals and groups, are shaped by the societies in which they live, the education they receive, the dogmas they encounter, and the political, ideological, religious, or secular commitments they carry. They are not required to be neutral, but some may prevent these commitments from impeding the independence of knowledge, critique, and imagination. Mohamed Sayed Said had long argued that when the intellectual becomes merely a technician of ideas, a propagandist, a servant of authority, or a direct manager of power, they lose the critical position that makes intellectual work meaningful. The contribution of intellectuals, including artists, to renewal may therefore be amplified by their ability to examine inherited systems, question the rules that have governed past and present realities, and imagine alternatives that can improve existing conditions. In that regard, their role is not necessarily to defend or attack systems of belief, nor is it to produce ideology. Rather, it is to aid society in understanding its own symbolic and normative systems, and through this deepened understanding, they can contribute to transforming culture from a “prison of identity” to a field of renewal.

For a human rights organization like ours, working with intellectuals, artists, and cultural actors requires sensitivity. Our aim is not, and should not be, to produce the “engaged intellectual,” but to help provide spaces where intellectuals and artists can engage freely and consciously with their social, political, cultural, and economic realities.

We further recognize the imperative to engage more deeply with the social and cultural environment in which human rights values either resonate or fail to resonate. In authoritarian contexts, this environment includes state propaganda, censorship, media systems, religious discourse, nationalism, cultural industries, social norms, and everyday fears. This imperative becomes even more daunting at a time when human rights values are globally contested and waning. Nevertheless, artists and cultural actors are uniquely positioned to become protagonists capable of counteracting and challenging authoritarianism, whether through direct confrontation or indirect maneuvering. Ambiguity, symbolism, irony, beauty, memory, discomfort, tenderness, and imagination can all be deployed by the artist in some contexts.

Artists are part of the broader community of intellectual and cultural actors who shape the minds and imaginations of generations. In his book Modernity Is the Sister of Tolerance: Contemporary Arabic Poetry and Human Rights, published by CIHRS in 2001, poet and writer Helmy Salem examined the manifestations of human rights in modern Arabic poetry. Through thematic and artistic readings of Arab poets, Salem traced how Arab creators engaged with questions of freedom, repression, justice, dignity, and security. For Salem, many Arab poets understood modernity as the artist’s right, and even duty, to rely on reason rather than inherited tradition, and to produce art that expresses individuality rather than reproducing collective dogma.

It is impossible to think today that the “chapter of arts” has ended, and perhaps it never will. Regardless of technological transformations, digital media, and the rise of virtual realities, art remains uniquely distinguished among human productions because it creates a form of presence through the encounter between the artwork and its audience. The path of art is therefore intertwined with the path of humanity and civilization and confronted with the same challenges of modernity and tradition.

The tension between modernity and tradition has been a constant feature of intellectual and artistic life in the Arab region. Political conflicts in the Arab region have often been accompanied by conflicts over culture, ideology, religion, law, knowledge, social organization, and human rights. Helmy Salem described this tension as the artist’s struggle against “the guardians of taboos and the opponents of freedom of expression.”

CIHRS’s long-standing commitment to cultural renewal and debates on identity provides the background for the Tae’thir project managed by a unique consortium of four organizations.

Through training, mentorship, artistic production, mobility, and networking, Tae’thir supports participants working on themes such as patriarchy, censorship, criticism and authoritarianism. Rather than reducing art to advocacy messaging, the project seeks to protect creative autonomy, deepen critical reflection, and foster transnational solidarities.

Tae’thir reflects the tensions surrounding the role of intellectuals and artists in society. Its objective is not to ask artists to “illustrate” human rights concepts or transform them into simplified educators. Instead, it seeks to offer spaces where artists, content creators, and human rights actors can learn from one another, question dominant narratives, and collectively explore how artistic practice can challenge authoritarianism, extremism, patriarchy, exclusion, and fear.

Supporting artists should encompass more than protecting free expression or producing advocacy-oriented content, it should further aim to foster deeper cognitive and affective transformations in society, the research report contends. In its examination of the relationship between art, human rights, and societal emancipation in the MENA region, the report focuses on Egypt, Lebanon, and Tunisia. It also uses a practical case study of a conceptual art program operating at the intersection of artistic practice and human rights dissemination. Cognitive liberation, affective mobilization, art as commons or public space, and art as dialogue and community are identified as key dimensions through which artistic practice can contribute to broader social change.

The choice of Fayrouz Karawya as author of this study is itself significant. As an artist, singer, songwriter, physician, academic, and cultural researcher, Karawya occupies precisely the intersection this report seeks to examine: the meeting point between artistic practice, critical inquiry, and social imagination. Her work thus offers a vital contribution; it enables the report to transcend an external human rights reading of art and approach artists as producers of knowledge, critique, affect, and possibility.

When conducting this research, we asked the researcher not to focus primarily on the precarious situation of artists. As an organization, we fully acknowledge the security, social, economic, ideological, political, and war-related constraints to which the artistic scene in the Arab region is subjected. We also recognize that several competent human rights and cultural organizations are already working hard to document these constraints. In this research, the aim was to go beyond documenting these restrictions and to help open a much-needed discussion in our region on the role of art in culture and society. The brief overview of the numerous violations faced by the artistic community in this report is intended as a stark reminder that art - like thought, freedom, rights, and other vital aspects of life- remains under the guillotine of authoritarian regimes. Artists, as citizens of our societies, are exposed to the same risks faced by others who dare to exercise their basic human rights or to exist in the public — and sometimes even the private — sphere as an “other.” We acknowledge the heavy price paid by countless artists and their families across the region. Together with artists throughout the region, our aim is to explore new spaces for cultural renewal.

At a time when authoritarian and anti-rights narratives are becoming more sophisticated, human rights movements must become more imaginative as well. This means recognizing that law alone cannot transform societies unless people can also imagine themselves and others differently. Art is an avenue to create that possibility. It can open spaces where fear is named, silence is interrupted, inherited assumptions are questioned, and new forms of solidarity become conceivable.

This report is an invitation to take that possibility seriously.

Youssef AHMED
Head of the Human Rights Dissemination Program

Ziad ABDELTAWAB
CIHRS Director

The majority of interviewees agreed that artists should engage with broader sociocultural contexts and critically reflect on theoretical notions such as patriarchy, censorship, and human rights in order to develop their artistic approaches and enrich their capacities. However, many of them also reported that the number of sessions and discussions dedicated to these theoretical themes generated a sense of cognitive fatigue, especially as their one-week internship, according to several participants, also included a considerable amount of time devoted to related discussions. During the interviews, I sensed a clear preference for prioritizing work on their own projects, supported by mentors. Some participants emphasized that they learn more effectively through practical rather than abstract tools and expressed a desire for a rebalanced structure in which mentoring sessions would take precedence over theoretical training.

These observations reveal a tension that lies at the core of this research: the gap between the ambition to foster critical awareness through conceptual engagement and the participants’ inclination toward practice-oriented programming. From the perspective of Yúdice’s framework, the interviewees criticized the structuring of artistic practice, within art programs and institutional cadres, often through predefined thematic and pedagogical frameworks. At the same time, the participants’ resistance to extended theoretical engagement resonates with Belfiore’s critique of instrumental approaches that risk reducing complex artistic processes to measured institutional objectives. Rather than rejecting theoretical reflection altogether, these responses point to the need for alternative modes of integrating critical thinking into artistic practice modes that align more closely with experimentation, co-creation, and process-based learning.

Moreover, this tension can be interpreted through Rancière’s notion of dissensus. The participants’ preference for practice over theory reflects not simply a pedagogical choice, but a different view of how knowledge, creativity, and critical reflection could be distributed and experienced. The challenge, therefore, is not merely to reduce the amount of theoretical content, but to rethink its form and mode of delivery, so that it becomes embedded within artistic processes rather than external to them. This raises a broader question for the design of conceptual art programs; how to cultivate cognitive liberation and critical awareness without reproducing the very forms of intellectual authority and abstraction that may alienate participants.

Such preferences may also reflect the cultural ethos of the present moment, in which knowledge is increasingly mediated through visual, performative, and networked forms, rather than through sustained reading and collective deliberation, thereby calling for pedagogical models that bridge conceptual depth with practice-based engagement.

Among the six interviewees, only two were living outside their countries of origin at the time of the interviews. While some participants were able to circulate between their countries in the MENA region and European countries, where they also resided, the majority remained acutely aware of the discrepancy between the conditions governing artistic production in their home environments and those encountered abroad. Despite shared characteristics across Egypt, Tunisia, and Lebanon—namely the presence of restrictive censorship apparatuses, precarious living conditions, and limited opportunities for independent artists—specific constraints varied: Security and policing pressures in Egypt and Tunisia, compared to war, destruction, and institutional collapse in Lebanon, all emerged as major impediments to free artistic expression. Within this context, several interviewees emphasized that one of their primary motivations for applying to the Tae’thir project was precisely the nature of their artistic work and the themes they address; issues that would be difficult, if not impossible, to produce, exhibit, or distribute locally.

The Tae’thir project thus offers what can be described as a relatively safe and enabling environment, providing financial, technical, and institutional support within a transnational framework. Such environment could reflect the mobilization of culture within global circuits of governance, where artistic production is facilitated through international funding structures and institutional mediation. However, this transnational flexibility also introduces a critical tension: the emergence of a split between artistic practices grounded in local realities and those articulated within transnational conditions of production and reception. Rather than confronting the constraints of the local context, and conditions that have historically compelled artists under authoritarian regimes to develop inventive strategies of resistance, participants may find themselves operating in a space where such pressures are partially suspended. As a result, artistic works that address deeply local struggles risk being produced for, and circulated within, audiences largely situated outside those contexts.

This dynamic complicates the emancipatory potential of such programs. While Tae’thir enables processes of artistic creation and what may be understood as “individual-level cognitive liberation,” it also raises questions about the collective and situated impact of these artistic practices. Drawing on Rancière’s notion of dissensus, one may ask whether the innovative perceptions and meanings produced through these works can effectively intervene in the “distribution of the sensible” within the artists’ societies in the MENA region, if their circulation remains largely external.

At the same time, the relative freedom afforded by transnational contexts may reduce the necessity for authentic artistic tools and layered/coded/semiotic languages (such as symbolism, irony, and complex visual and auditory signs), that artists often develop under conditions of censorship. These practices, while born of constraint, constitute important modes of resistance within local artistic fields.

Avoiding a simplistic opposition between the local and the global, this tension ultimately points to a deeper question concerning the aims and design of conceptual art programs. While supporting artists through transnational networks may enhance their individual capacities and provide temporary relief from restrictive conditions, it risks producing forms of artistic engagement that are not concerned to develop their tools of “affective mobilization” and influence on local audiences. The challenge, therefore, lies in designing frameworks that sustain meaningful connections to local contexts, ensuring that artistic production can contribute to both individual emancipation and broader collective transformation.

While Tae’thir’s programming rightly provides financial support and mentorship to underpin the production and development of artistic projects, several interviewees pointed to the limited opportunities for the display and screening of their works once completed. As of 2026, projects are expected to be presented for a limited period in Marseille, after which they remain the full property of the artists. Although the networks and partnerships fostered through the program may facilitate additional opportunities for distribution, these models rely heavily on transnational circuits, as well as on the capacities, networks, and efforts of the participants.

From the participants’ perspective, there was little expectation or emphasis on the possibility of presenting their work within the MENA region. During the interviews, this dimension remained largely absent, reflecting both the restrictive conditions imposed by censorship and the broader impoverishment of cultural infrastructures in the region. However, this absence raises important questions regarding access to distribution networks for participants in art programs like Tae’thir. It suggests the need to consider more systematically the potential for engaging with local cultural networks across the MENA region, while remaining attentive to the political and security risks such engagement may entail.

While the creation of a safe space for co-creation and relational exchange is a central achievement of Tae’thir, the development of sustainable networks of circulation across Mediterranean cultural infrastructures could become a key pillar of its long-term impact. Strengthening such networks would not only expand the visibility of artistic works but also contribute to grounding them within the contexts they seek to address. In this sense, moving beyond a predominantly transnational model toward a more integrated approach, linking local and regional circuits, would align more closely with the project’s broader ambition of mobilizing artists, building solidarity networks, and promoting the circulation of people, ideas, and cultural production across the Mediterranean.

The concept note titled “Comment se constitue et se maintient une communauté d’artistes et créateur·ice·s de contenus autour des droits humains en Méditerranée [How is a community of artists and content creators around human rights in the Mediterranean formed and maintained]?” presented by Master 2 students in Paris 8 University, proposes that building a sustainable community within the Tae’thir project requires moving beyond its temporary institutional framework toward reinforcing long-term relational, structural, and symbolic connections among participants.

Such propositions resonate to a large extent with the remarks of the interviewed participants about the limited time frame that would not allow strengthening existing networks or sufficient personal and material circulation. The majority of the interviewees noted that encouraging collective collaboration through artistic creativity would be the ideal path for the development of mutual support systems among participants. The concept note, similarly, highlights the need to map and mobilize institutional, relational, and cultural resources to support both collective dynamics and individual trajectories after the project ends.

In terms of a plan of action, the concept note identifies four key dimensions of sustainability:

• Structural (maintaining stable networks and relationships).

• Functional (ensuring continued exchanges and collaborations).

• Symbolic (reinforcing a shared sense of belonging and identity).

• Adaptive (allowing the network to evolve, integrate new members, and redefine its modes of action).

The majority of my interviewees expressed that they would welcome post-project initiatives that would facilitate continued collaborations that might help them develop hybrid forms of organization that combine individual artistic development with collective engagement and cooperation.

One of the central findings of this research is the role of art as an emotional vehicle, capable of generating empathy and, potentially, action. Through the Tae’thir framework, artists are encouraged to engage with human rights issues not only at an intellectual level but also through affective and experiential dimensions. This reflects the idea that artistic practices can mobilize audiences by creating emotional connections to social and political realities.

Participants’ feedback suggests that this affective dimension is closely linked to their preference for practice-based learning and artistic experimentation. Rather than engaging with abstract theoretical discussions, many participants found that working directly on their projects allowed them to develop practice-based and meaningful connections with the themes they address. In this sense, affective mobilization becomes a key pathway through which artistic work can contribute to social awareness and engagement, moving beyond traditional forms of advocacy.

Affective mobilization could also be strengthened through the selection process itself and through greater diversity in the artistic genres included in Tae’thir. For example, performance-based arts —such as music and singing, acting, dance, and storytelling—appear to be less represented in the selected projects compared with documentary filmmaking, video art, and online content rooted in reality-based forms. It is understandable that the program’s emphasis on individual projects, together with limited budgets, may favor these more manageable formats. However, performance-based artistic practices offer powerful tools for bridging the gap between forms centered on the visualization of reality and those capable of provoking imagination, emotional identification, and fictive expression.

Encouraging projects that draw on and reinterpret inherited fictional and artistic archives—including film, theatre, folk narratives, drama, and literature—could provide participants with an important avenue for transforming their critical perceptions into creative works that cultivate “collective affect” and resonate with broader audiences in both local and transnational artistic scenes. Such approaches may deepen the capacity of artistic works to evoke empathy, stimulate emotional engagement, and foster what this research describes as affective mobilization.

Greater attention to the affective dimension of artistic production could also become an integral component of both the training sessions and the mentoring program. When lectures and discussions address emotional meaning in artistic works, affective messages, and coded sensations, they can help participants rethink their creative approaches and identify shared emotional ground with their audiences. By shifting the focus from the moralistic or rights-based messages embedded in artistic works to the affective and aesthetic tools through which similar messages can be conveyed, training and mentoring sessions may more effectively move beyond the dryness of abstract theory toward the persuasive and emotionally compelling possibilities of artistic practice.

This also suggests expanding the spectrum of topics that could form part of Tae’thir participants’ interests and, similarly, of human rights concerns. These topics may include the everyday lives of youth in MENA societies; the right to love relationships and to access and inhabit public spaces; family life in its daily dynamics and embedded cultural values; and the worlds of educational institutions, including schools and universities, with all the issues they encompass that touch upon human rights themes. Such subjects are deeply rooted in ordinary social experience and directly affect broad sectors of society.

Approaching cultural and social themes that resonate with majoritarian practices and lived realities reveals a greater role for the arts as vehicles of expression and communication. It also strengthens their function as essential generators of “collective affect,” capable of mobilizing audiences toward universal human rights values without addressing them in patronizing or moralistic tones. By grounding artistic production in everyday experiences and widely shared emotional concerns, conceptual art programs can foster more organic forms of engagement, allowing human rights principles to emerge through identification, empathy, and creative reinterpretation rather than through direct advocacy alone.

A second key finding concerns the role of artistic practices in enabling forms of cognitive subversion. Artists operating in authoritarian environments such as Egypt, Tunisia, and Lebanon often develop tools such as irony, satire, symbolism, and layered visual and auditory languages in order to bypass censorship and express critical perspectives.

These practices are not only responses to external constraints but also ways of overcoming internalized censorship. By experimenting with different forms of expression, artists create spaces in which dominant narratives can be questioned and reinterpreted. This aligns with the idea that artistic practices can contribute to cognitive liberation by expanding the ways in which individuals perceive and understand their social realities.

However, the findings also suggest that the transnational context of Tae’thir may partially alter this dynamic. While it provides a safer environment for expression, it may reduce the necessity for these coded forms of resistance, raising questions about how such practices can be sustained and translated across different contexts.

However, cognitive liberation also concerns artists’ perceptions, tastes, and interpretations of reality. It is not limited to the ability to express dissent but extends to the capacity to question inherited aesthetic preferences, dominant narratives, and habitual ways of seeing the world. According to Kim West, the ideal of autonomous art has become increasingly difficult to sustain in a world where art has been progressively “democratized” and “demythologized.” The widespread availability of digital technologies for artistic production and post-production has made user-friendly tools accessible to a growing number of creators and reduced the exclusivity once associated with technical mastery. While the technical dimension of artistic production has become more abundant and accessible, the development of an artistic perspective capable of freeing itself from hegemonic narratives and of addressing fundamental questions beyond “popularized themes” or “dominant” and “fashionable” visions may have become more challenging.

In this context, cognitive liberation requires more than technical training or thematic awareness. It involves expanding artists’ intellectual and aesthetic horizons and exposing them to historical experiences in which artists deliberately challenged established conventions and dominant systems of representation. Tae’thir’s lectures and discussions could therefore benefit from revisiting the diverse artistic movements and schools that opposed prevailing artistic norms and redefined the relationship between art and society. A broader engagement with art history and with the trajectories of artists across modern history—beyond a narrowly Western-centered perspective—could provide an inspiring and emancipatory experience for participants. Such an approach would demonstrate that artistic innovation often emerges from critical struggles against aesthetic orthodoxy, political repression, and social conformity.

This perspective could also open the door to topics that many artists in the MENA region may hesitate to address because of internalized censorship and deeply rooted beliefs. These topics include archaic religious interpretations and their impact on social organization and cultural life, artistic movements under dictatorships in Latin America and elsewhere, the historical organization of artists through unions and syndicates, and the experiences of artists who led nonconformist currents against dominant artistic trends in their own societies. Engaging with such examples can help participants recognize that challenging established norms is not an exceptional act, but a recurring feature of artistic history.

By incorporating these dimensions, conceptual art programs such as Tae’thir can strengthen the process of cognitive liberation by encouraging artists to rethink not only what they wish to say, but also the assumptions, tastes, and aesthetic hierarchies through which they perceive their reality. In this sense, cognitive liberation becomes both an intellectual and artistic process: a movement toward greater autonomy in thought, imagination, and creative practice.

The research also highlights the role of art as a form of commons and as a public space that extends beyond formal, legal, and institutional frameworks. Within Tae’thir, artistic production becomes a means of making visible the issues that may otherwise remain marginalized or silenced.

Through training sessions and lectures, mentorship, and collective exchange, the project fosters forms of engagement that go beyond individual artistic trajectories. Participants develop shared experiences and emotional bonds, which contribute to the formation of a community centered around common values and concerns.

At the same time, the findings point to limitations in the circulation and distribution of artistic works. The lack of opportunities for display within the MENA region and the reliance on transnational networks suggest that the public dimension of these works may remain unevenly distributed. This raises questions about the extent to which art can function as a shared public space if it is not accessible within the contexts it seeks to address.

Finally, the findings emphasize the role of art as a space for dialogue and for reframing social and political issues. Through their projects, artists engage with themes such as political and social freedoms, identity, war and destruction; contributing to the construction of alternative narratives that challenge dominant discourses.

Rebuilding artistic communities and expanding networks across the Mediterranean remains a fundamental cornerstone of Tae’thir and other art programs. Reclaiming public spaces, and establishing durable connections with associations, cultural organizations, and collaborative frameworks of action is a main guarantor of an enduring influence and social impact in the MENA region and within its societies.

This research set out to examine how conceptual art programs such as Tae’thir project can contribute to societal emancipation through the intersection of artistic practice and human rights advocacy. The findings demonstrate that Tae’thir operates as a hybrid structure, combining elements of institutional governance with spaces for creative experimentation and critical engagement.

From a theoretical perspective, the project reflects Yúdice’s notion of the “expediency of culture,” as artistic practices are mobilized within structured frameworks aimed at achieving social and political objectives. However, Tae’thir also creates conditions for what Jacques Rancière describes as “dissensus,” by enabling artists to produce alternative forms of perception and meaning that challenge dominant distributions of the sensible.

The findings suggest that the main challenge for conceptual art programs lies in navigating the tension between structure and autonomy. While institutional frameworks provide essential resources and support, they may also impose constraints that limit artistic programs to theoretical assumptions or shape their activities according to predefined objectives. Similarly, the transnational nature of such programs offers opportunities for expression and collaboration but may also create a disconnection between artistic production and local contexts.

In response to these challenges, this research proposes a shift in the design of conceptual art programs: from a model centered on individual projects and theoretical deliberation toward one that envisions a space for co-creation, long-lasting network-formation, and cognitive emancipation engaging diversified methods.

Ultimately, the contribution of Tae’thir lies in its ability to create a space where artistic practices can generate both affective and cognitive transformations. However, its long-term impact depends on its capacity to strengthen connections between local and transnational contexts, to support sustainable networks of collaboration, and to foster forms of artistic engagement that remain rooted in the realities they seek to transform.

Tae’thir operates against a backdrop of increasing repression, shrinking civic spaces, and heightening sociopolitical tensions across the MENA region, where traditional forms of human rights intervention face growing limitations. In this context, the project proposes an alternative approach that mobilizes artists and digital content creators as key actors in shaping public discourse and fostering new forms of engagement with human rights issues.

The project is implemented over a three-year period (September 2023 – August 2026) and is structured around two main cycles. The first cycle (2024–2025) brought together twenty participants from ten Mediterranean countries, while the second cycle (2025–2026) included twenty-four participants from eleven countries, resulting in a total of forty- four artists and digital creators. Participants, aged approximately between twenty-two and thirty-five, were selected through open calls organized around thematic frameworks: “What sustains human life?” for the first cycle and “Resisting resignation” for the second. These themes function as conceptual entry points, inviting participants to explore complex sociopolitical realities through artistic production. The diversity of participants’ backgrounds and artistic practices (varying between photography, poetry, video art, filmmaking, audio/video installation, podcasting, animation and design, digital illustration and visual art, etc.) reflects the project’s emphasis on multidisciplinarity and transnational exchange.

The program offers a rare opportunity to explore essential themes linked to human rights issues and the particularities of the MENA region from a theoretical perspective and through open deliberation. Selected expert lecturers deliver a series of online workshops (training sessions) aimed at strengthening participants’ knowledge of human rights tools and mechanisms through a combination of theoretical lectures followed by interactive feedback sessions. While the lectures explore the intersections between art, human rights, politics, and social practices, the feedback sessions provide space for critical reflection, dialogue, and participant engagement, fostering a collaborative learning environment.

The training sessions are structured around three core thematic areas—patriarchy, censorship, and criticism—through which participants examine how power structures, social hierarchies, and control mechanisms shape both artistic production and public discourse within the region. By addressing these themes, the program emphasizes the dual role of art as both a space that can reproduce dominant systems and a potential site of resistance and transformation, encouraging participants to critically engage with their contexts and mobilize artistic practices as tools for questioning norms and social taboos, amplifying marginalized voices, and contributing to more inclusive and reflective cultural processes.

The selection process in Tae’thir is based on a structured evaluation system combining qualitative and quantitative criteria. Applications are assessed through a two-stage process involving the review of written submissions and individual interviews. Candidates are evaluated according to three main criteria: the quality and relevance of the proposed artistic or content creation project (clarity, coherence, feasibility, and alignment with the project’s themes), the applicant’s profile (creativity, motivation, and the capacity to articulate complex ideas), and the quality of their previous work or portfolio. This evaluation is supported by a scoring system that allows for comparative assessment while ensuring diversity in artistic approaches and thematic concerns. The process also considers intersectionality, originality, and the potential of projects to engage critically with human rights issues.

In parallel to training sessions, the project’s mentoring system assigns participants to experienced professionals who support the development of their projects through iterative feedback and structured sessions. As highlighted in the project’s documents, the mentoring program is “structured around an evolving dynamic, designed to guide young creators through the comprehensive and coherent development of their projects.” Its main pillars integrate “professionalization” and “technical” aspects through three personalized mentoring sessions, covering the development of “un dossier artistique,” access to funding, and discussions on production and distribution processes.

The governance of the Tae’thir project is further structured through the presence of an Advisory Board composed of researchers, artists, and human rights activists with expertise in the Mediterranean context. The Advisory Board, working on a voluntary basis, plays a key role in providing strategic guidance, contributing to the selection of mentors, supporting the conceptual orientation of the project, and facilitating connections between participants and broader professional networks.

The project incorporates a second layer of evaluation through a funding mechanism designed to support the production of selected artistic projects. Participants submit developed project proposals that are assessed by a selection committee composed of eight representatives: four from the consortium organizations and four external experts from the cultural and artistic fields. Projects are evaluated based on a detailed grading system that includes thematic relevance (30 points), potential impact (30 points), originality and innovation (25 points), and feasibility (15 points). Additional considerations include the participant’s level of engagement throughout the program and the diversity of selected projects in terms of media, themes, and approaches. This process results in the selection of a limited number of projects for financial support, while others may be conditionally approved or require further development. Some Tae’thir participants, in direct interviews, viewed the funding mechanism as controversial, explaining that it generated tension among participants during the internship week in Marseille.