The Organization of Arab League

 The Organization of Arab League

The Arab League formally, the League of Arab States (Arabic), is a regional organization of Arab countries in and around North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Southwest Asia. It was formed in Cairo on 22 March 1945 with six members; such as- Kingdom of Egypt, Kingdom of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria Yemen joined as a member on 5 May 1945. Currently, the League has 22 members, although Syria's participation has been suspended since November 2011, as a consequence of government repression during the ongoing uprising and civil war.

The League's main goal is to "draw closer the relations between member States and co-ordinate collaboration between them, to safeguard their independence and sovereignty, and to consider in a general way the affairs and interests of the Arab countries".

Through institutions such as the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO) and the Economic and Social Council of the Arab League's Council of Arab Economic Unity (CAEU), the Arab League facilitates political, economic, cultural, scientific and social programs designed to promote the interests of the Arab world. It has served as a forum for the member states to coordinate their policy positions, to deliberate on matters of common concern, to settle some Arab disputes and to limit conflicts such as the 1958 Lebanon crisis. The League has served as a platform for the drafting and conclusion of many landmark documents promoting economic integration. One example is the Joint Arab Economic Action Charter, which outlines the principles for economic activities in the region.

Each member state has only one vote in the League Council, while decisions are binding only for those states that have voted for them. The aims of the league in 1945 were to strengthen and coordinate the political, cultural, economic, and social programs of its members, and to mediate disputes among them or between them and third parties. Furthermore, the signing of an agreement on Joint Defense and Economic Cooperation on 13 April 1950 committed the signatories to coordination of military defense measures. In the early 1970s, the Economic Council of the League of Arab States put forward a proposal to create the Joint Arab Chambers of Commerce across the European states. This led, under the decree of the League of Arab States no. K1175/D52/G, to the decision by the Arab governments to set up the Arab British Chamber of Commerce which was mandated to: "promote, encourage and facilitate bilateral trade" between the Arab world and its major trading partner, the United Kingdom.

Member of the Arab League

Starting with only six members in 1945, the Arab League today occupies an area spanning around 14 million km² and counts 22 members, and 4 observer states. The 22 members today include 3 of the largest African countries (Sudan, Algeria and Libya), and the largest country in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia).

There was a continual increase in membership during the second half of the 20th century, with an additional 15 Arab states being admitted. At present, there are a total of 21 member states due to Syria's suspension following the 2011 uprising.
Arab League State is as follows:

1 Bahrain	2 Comoros	3 Djibouti	4 Egypt	5 Iraq
6 Jordan	7 Kuwait	8 Lebanon	9 Libya	10 Mauritania
11 Morocco	12 Oman	13 Palestine	14 Qatar	15 Saudi Arabia
16 Somalia	17 Sudan	18 Syria	19 Tunisia	20 United Arab Emirates
21 Yemen	22 Algeria

And Four Observe State:

Eritrea Brazil Venezuela India

Main functions of the Council of the League of Arab States:

1.      Deciding on applications for membership and accepting withdrawals;

2.      Deciding on the introduction of amendments to the founding charter/pact;

3.      Mediating the settlement of disputes in all differences that threaten to lead to war between two member states, or a member state and a third state;

4.      Drawing up statutes for the subsidiary and affiliate bodies of the League;

5.      Appointing the Secretary-General.

Institutional Structure of the Arab Parliament

The AP holds biannual two-month sessions, beginning in March and in September. The parliament includes the following structures:

1.      The presidency, which represents the AP in the field of external relations.

2.      The bureau (composed of the Speaker, the Speaker's deputies and the heads of the standing committees), which is charged with administrative matters.

3.      Four standing committees, with a total of 22 members (no more than one member per country:

a.       Committee on Foreign, Political and National Security Affairs

b.      Committee on Economic Affairs and Finance,

c.       Committee on Legislative, Legal Affairs and Human Rights,

d.      Committee on Social and Cultural Affairs, Women and Youth.

4.      The General Secretariat, which provides technical expertise. For the time being, the General Secretariat is staffed by a limited number of seconded employees from League members' national parliaments.

Failure of the Arab league

This is the Arab League a supposedly great unitary project founded in 1945, however, did not write in its preamble the foundation of its success but left it to destiny. The failure of the Arab League started ever since it was founded, and still failing as these lines are being written, and will probably remain to fail.

A.    The twenty two Arab states all together failed to face some crucial issues such as the Palestinians cause, Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon and Iraq. Those issues made the Arab League a not very trusted institution that lacks effectiveness. Even though that one of the Arab League’s chief purposes –as embodied in the pact, was the domestic and foreign coordination, however, its power was not to be great (Seabury 636).

B.     According to article VIII, the members of the league were “forbidden” to take any action tending to alter the regime of any other member state. It is ironic how this article contradicts with everything the Arab world is going through nowadays, as regimes are being overthrown with the help of other member states of the league. This is one simple example of how the League of Arab States is a redundant institution.

C.     The failure of the Arab league comes from the unproductive role of the member states, because there is no member state or a group of member states are willing to stand up and grip the task of pressuring the rest of the member states for the sake of common good and bear the responsibility of the dereliction of this unitary project.

D.    The  be an Arab today means to be subject to four main phases: such  as

a)      The phase when George Bush decided to fight the Islamic and the Arab world as a reaction to an act was done by people who do not represent the Arab world whatsoever.

b)      The second phase is the phase of what is so called the ‘Arab Spring

c)      The third phase is the democratization phase;

d)     The fourth and the final phase is the renaissance phase of Arabs

Arab league is not to be seen effective in any of them and its presence does not actually make a significant difference so the Arab League has been failed.

 On a regional cooperation level, there is no doubt or in other words, it is not arguable that the Middle East’s main institutional framework, which is the Arab League, is a total bleak experience (Pinfari 6)The failure of the Arab League can be addressed in two points. First, when the Arab league was established, it was not based on the Arab leaders will to unify and to look
Consequently, the league’s failure should not be considered just as a failure of the Arab states, it also a failure of a wide-spread belief that such a local arrangement can actually form and shape the basis for regional stability and peace. Whether with the existence of the league or not, the Arab states would have more cooperative integration with their neighbor states through effective enhanced legitimacy. If the Arab states decentralized themselves off the spot and gave distinctive ethnic, sectarian and regional sub-communities a sense of security and justice, the states would be unified and therefore ready for a regional integration. The league needs to go through a drastic process of institutional reforms, for instance, it should address the functional overlap between its major bodies such as the Council, the Political Committee and also the Summit meetings. Another important thing, the league should and needs to reinforce the powers of the Secretariat and give them one path to follow, one constitution to implement, because in many occasions when the position of Secretary General was held by charismatic, charming and respected figures; it has proven to be active and effective body in mediating regional crises.

By way of conclusion, we want to try to summarize a very rich set of studies. To this end we focus on four issues. First, we look at the variations in institutional design (our first dependent variable) among the regional institutions as a function of variation in the matrix of independent variables identified in the introduction. Second, we look at the variation in the nature of cooperation across regional institutions (our second dependent variable), as a function of institutional design (our first dependent variable now performing as an independent variable). Here we also highlight similarities and differences in the efficacy across regional institutions. Third, we highlight some tentative findings about the relationship between institutional design and the nature of cooperation. And finally, we set out some arguments and suggestions about extending the research agenda on comparative regional institutional design.
Although we presented the contributors with a list of variables on institutional design and indicators of the nature of cooperation, we did not insist that each chapter writer must address each of these variables and indicators. We allowed them the freedom to decide which of these were most relevant to their case study. In short, we recommended, but did not impose, a matrix of variables and indicators. The result, greater autonomy for the contributors, also created the condition for a rich set of empirical studies. But we are able to find important common ground and make generalizations about similarities and differences in meaningful ways.