On 2 March 2012, activists and experts from across the world convened by the Women's Learning Partnership For Rights, Development and Peace (WLP), met in New York City to discuss the causes, consequences and other aspects of the revolutions sweeping the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) during 2011. As longstanding dictatorships collapsed, what had appeared as the promise of democratization, an "Arab Spring," seemed to be turning into the perils of chaos, civil war and resurgent authoritarianism, whether secularist-nationalist or Islamist in character.
