Paper Title
Human Rights in the Middle East, Progress and main Challenges

Abstract
For decades, "human rights in the Middle East" was a subject of scrutiny, debate, and mobilizations spearheaded from outside of the region. Most of the literature on human rights in Middle East has focused almost exclusively on women rights, the theoretical debate on the relations between Islam and human rights, and the Palestinian right for self-determination. Of course these are important concerns but they should not be the only ones. Economic, social, civil and political rights within the Middle East states are also important as the current wave of rebellions in the region demonstrates. As our main question in the paper, we are targeting the main challenges facing the human rights statue in the Middle East and we try to illustrate the achieved progress. In the paper, a context analysis is conducted, adopting an Area Studies Approach to identify the major features of a Middle Eastern context where human rights norms experience the region’s realities. Key words - Middle East. Human Rights. Islam. Women rights.