Grassroots transnationalism: regional human rights organizing during the Egyptian revolution

Across the world, human rights organizations have become increasingly transnational, and their scope can often be regional. This thesis explores Arab human rights groups working in local contexts during the Egyptian Revolution. I discuss the background of the revolution and challenges to human rights organizing in Egypt. In the first empirical part, I conduct a content analysis of newspapers regarding two regional groups headquartered in Cairo, the Arab Network for Human Rights Information and the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies. In the second empirical part, I construct human rights networks of local and regional groups and conduct social network analysis to assess their position in the networks. I argue that even though regional human rights organizations were not organizing protests, they were supporting activism and democratization with information, legal aid, and panels for discussion, and direct dealing with the government. I further find that regional groups are central actors in the Egyptian human rights network, which has grown since before the revolution, with a bigger variety of organizations and connections