The first year of the Arab Spring

The 2011 uprisings in the Arab world came as a surprise to most observers. While successive Arab Human Development Reports had identified lingering problems affecting the Arab regimes—including inequality, lack of economic development, low levels of participation in policy formation and the marginalization of women—few experts expected either the series of mass revolts that were carried out with such persistence and with such a global impact or the increasing use of violence to suppress them.