Over the past few years, the month of March has increasingly become the month of women, their issues, their rights, or maybe the lack of them, as well as of Egyptian Mothers Day. The month of March also marks the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere. While spring in some countries means nicer weather, longer days, shorter nights, flowers blooming and birds singing, in others it can mean sandstorms, changeable weather and the early heat of summer.

The official discourse on human rights is still far from providing the correct answers to the questions raised internationally on the human rights file in Egypt. The campaign against the government, following the court ruling sentencing nine defendants to death over assassinating the former Attorney General, focused on accusing the Egyptian authorities of extracting confessions of committing this crime under torture. Reports from human rights organizations and foreign newspapers and some shy statements by European leaders (other than front row leaders) were speaking about unfair trials. In fact, the answers provided at the Arab-European summit in Sharm el-Sheikh or through the media outlets were out of context and did not try to counter this accusation with legal and political responses. These answers seemed to reject the value of human rights in principle, so some interpreted it as if Egypt says that our values and culture allow and justify torture and execution without fair trials, which is not true.

History will probably write 2016 in bold with a double underline, because that year occasioned two events that had major repercussions throughout the world. The first was the British decision to leave the EU initiating the process known as Brexit. The second was the election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States. In the first case, there was a plebiscite giving people the choice to leave or remain in the EU and the people chose the former. In the second case, people were given the choice between a businessman who had never held public office in his life, nor was even a prominent member of the Republican Party, which chose him as its candidate, and Hillary Clinton, wife of former president Bill Clinton, former secretary of state and former senator from New York. In short, a celebrity of the US political establishment. The people chose Trump. You won t find a country more practised in the exercise of democracy than Britain or the US, or that have all the prerequisites of advanced, industrialised, educated nations that espouse open-mindedness and humanitarian values, a willingness to compromise and an aversion to polarising extremes.

Once again and in a little less than a month the US organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW) has placed itself on a collision course with the Egyptian government and judiciary over capital punishment for convicted terrorists. The US-based organisation has criticised the death sentences passed on nine members of the Muslim Brotherhood, carried out in February, as a result of their conviction for the assassination of late Egyptian attorney-general Hisham Barakat in June 2015.

The future of the Arab-Euro relationship, following the first EU-Arab League summit, will boil down to whether both sides see the Mediterranean as a bridge or a barrier between them. Bridge means enhanced trading, legislative and regulatory coordination, new thinking about migration across the Mediterranean, and security arrangements based on both averting the threats of radicalism and militancy, as well as increasing understanding of each other s value systems (and how often they are different from the other).

The first ever summit between the Arab League and the European Union (EU) can be hailed as a success for allowing an interactive dialogue between Arab and European heads of states and governments to take place behind closed doors, away from the TV cameras and instant press coverage. And the attendance of so many senior officials — heads of state, prime ministers and ministers — stands as testimony to the importance both Europe and the Arab world attach to such dialogue.

It is possible that President Donald Trump never suspected this, but among his many, yet never-acknowledged, talents is that of being a novelist. A novelist in the Latin American tradition of magic, or magical realism. Magical realism is a style of fiction writing that combines a realistic view of the modern world while also adding some magical elements. Writer and literature professor Matthew Strecher defined magical realism as “what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe.” Magical realism has been often associated with Latin American authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, and Isabel Allende. Now President Donald Trump has joined the rank of these illustrious authors. His assertion that there is a serious national crisis at the US s southern border with Mexico seems to challenge reality, making it too strange to believe.

During discussions with Egyptian young people, both men and women living inside or outside of Egypt, I have been surprised to find that the vast majority do not know that the choice of 21 February as World Student Day has its roots in the modern history of Egypt and the Egyptian student movement that served the struggle of the Egyptian people for national liberation and independence. This goes back to the post-World War II period, but one should also recall that Egyptian students played an influential and effective role in Egypt s struggle to achieve national independence throughout the earlier 20th century.

Apart from the most controversial amendments proposed to the current constitution, which some of its articles have not been implemented yet, the issue of an electoral quota has been raised in this regard. The first suggestion is to amend Article 102 to provide women with a quarter of the seats in the House of Representatives, instead of the provision in the current constitution stipulating equitable representation of women. The second suggested amendment in this regard is to amend articles 243 and 244 to stipulate appropriate representation for the following six categories: workers / farmers / youth / Christians / people with disabilities / Egyptian expats. This is instead of the stipulation in the current constitution that they should only be properly represented in the present House of Representatives. In general, many see the suggested amendment to include the seven quotas as a temptation for them to agree to the constitutional amendments, whether in parliament or during the constitutional referendum. In any case, the quota proposal raises several things:

We have previously spoken, in this column, of the fissures that are cleaving Europe and the Western camp in general. It would take too long to explain them all, especially given that they are multiplying and deepening and, moreover, spreading from the realm of international relations to the realm of domestic politics. One only has to look at the effects of Brexit inside Britain and the impact of Trump s insistence on a wall at the border of Mexico on politics in Congress and in the US where the splintering is mounting between the states and the political parties and the media.

The leaders of the Arab League and the European Union (EU) will hold their first summit on 24 and 25 February in Sharm El-Sheikh to bring their positions together on a wide range of regional and international issues, ranging from the conflicts in Syria, Libya and Yemen, the Middle East Peace Process, terrorism, and irregular immigration in the Mediterranean to investment in the Arab world, multilateralism and climate change. European leaders, however, arrive at the summit with a top priority in mind, which is curbing irregular immigration across the Mediterranean Sea.

US President Donald Trump delivered his second State of the Union address last Tuesday, 5 February, almost a week after it was originally scheduled. The postponement was due to the shutdown of the federal government, unprecedented in its duration. Never before has the federal government remained paralysed for 35 days. What a difference a year makes in American politics. SOTU 2019 was delivered in front of a House of Representatives under a Democratic majority thanks to the results of the midterm elections in November that resulted in a divided government in Washington.

The educated young man said: “We know that you support the issues of women and young people throughout your life, and we have some questions about your position.” I said: “Bring it on.” He said: “Do you agree to give women exceptional rights to set a quota in the parliament and local councils?” I said: “I agree with what the world has called positive discrimination and that women take their natural place after centuries of negative discrimination against them. In a fair race, women cannot start at a later point than men because of a culture that has spread through generations, and we think that they will compete fairly. Positive discrimination is a duty but for a certain period of time.”

The increasing public debt in Egypt has been a serious issue that is usually misrepresented and poorly explained in the Egyptian media. No one likes to bear the burden of being indebted. It is annoying and can constrain capabilities and aspirations. It gives you fewer options to manoeuvre. But that is only one side of the story. There are other hidden sides. The ability to repay interest on loans is one. Overall financial strength is another. The percentage of the debt to gross domestic product (GDP) is a third.

Last week, an Israeli news site reported that the US Embassy in Cairo boycotted the Cairo International Book Fair (CIBF) after learning that anti-Semitic works, such as Hitler s Mein Kampf, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Henry Ford s International Jew, were on display at the fair. In its article, the Jewish News Syndicate wrote that the embassy closed its booth at the fair on Wednesday last week after several written and verbal protests it allegedly sent to Egyptian government met with inaction, despite the fact that articles deemed critical of the Egyptian government have been withdrawn from the event in past rounds.

Vietnam, to our generation, was about the Vietnamese struggle against the Americans, the epic of a small Third World country fighting the world s superpower. It was a globally inspiring scene. Although America s Vietnam War began in the mid-1960s, the apex of its ferocity, of the heroic resistance of the Vietnamese people and of the atrocious massacres perpetrated by the Americans, came at a time when we, in the Arab world, were suffering the repercussions of the defeat in June 1967.

Starting this February, the American University in Cairo (AUC) will launch a number of activities intended to celebrate the centenary of its founding in 1919. These will not be confined to Cairo alone, but will extend to other cities in Egypt and will even go beyond the borders of Egypt to cities inside and outside the Arab world. They will also take place in cities where large numbers of AUC alumni reside. The AUC s legacy has been very diverse. Its core lies in the institution s long and rich history of academic undergraduate and graduate study, as well as in different areas of scientific research that have been acquiring growing importance not only in Egypt but also worldwide. In addition to its principal academic role, the AUC has also played a no less important cultural one throughout the century of its existence.

Venezuela is briskly heading towards the kind of abyss we have come to recognise as the default in many political power games. As Venezuela s crisis unfolds, the superpowers have been adopting the same practices they have deployed in other victim countries: flagrant meddling in a country s internal affairs not for the good of the country per se, but for hegemony over it and its resources.

Trends on social media are changing the world. Part of that change is much-needed and long-awaited, but another part is virtual. It might be driven by real needs, but it might also be imposed by those seeking some kind of advantage or devised for reasons unrelated to the public good. The public in Egypt over the past eight years has been subjected to and sometimes deceived by such trends. However, people have also acquired the skill of being vigilant when a trend or tweet is going viral.

On February 10, Cairo will begin its presidency of the African Union (AU) during 2019, and this will be the beginning of a phase for different work on the level of the African continent’s countries. We will notice that Africa has been witnessing a strong Chinese presence for a while, leading to an American trot behind it trying to parallel with the Chinese presence and precede it! It is not a secret that China is the first big country in the world to be able to see in this continent what other great countries could not. It did so early and with great skill. When the United States was alerted, it came late, but acted with the logic of “better late than never”.

Twenty-five years ago, participants of the International Conference on Population Development (ICPD) sat in a convention hall here in Cairo and watched a video depicting 10-year-old Nagla undergoing female genital mutilation. The graphic footage sent shockwaves that are still reverberating today, pushing forward the fight against female genital mutilation in Egypt as UNFPA marks the 25th anniversary of the ground-breaking conference. The public outcry that followed the video prompted then Egyptian Minister of Health to decree that the procedure should be performed only in certain state hospitals. Shortly after, in 2007, another decree was issued to close the loophole, banning the practice altogether in governmental and non-governmental hospitals and clinics.