Arab Forum for Alternatives

Egypt ,Jordan ,Lebanon ,Morocco ,Tunisia

This training manual is one of the outputs of a project on social justice concept and policy after the Arab revolutions, published by AFA in collaboration with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation North Africa Office in 2014, and conducted training in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco.

This manual attempts to introduce the concept of social justice in its theoretical and practical dimensions through seven chapters:

First chapter prepared by Wael Gamal, titled “How to understand social justice? Your manual to definitions and concepts”. This chapter deals with the argument between the different definitions and approaches to social justice, then the debate between the efficiency choice or justice and how to combine them?

Second chapter prepared by Omar Samir, titled “Social justice lesson from experiences of Latin America”: This chapter addresses political orientations and their relationship to social justice, social policies as a tool towards social justice, highlights the Uruguayan Social Equality Plan as a tool for poverty reduction. It discusses direct policies to solve the problem of poverty such as social benefits conditional on improving health and education in Brazil, and how to formulate more just policies through planning Participating as in the Porto Alegre experience?. Argentina’s experience in cooperative economics and self-management of factories to maintain the right to work.

Third chapter written by Ahmed Farouk Ghoneim, titled “Social justice in the capitalist model”: it includes welfare state evolution and how does it deals with different social justice aspects, The model of the welfare state, the state of social justice in Scandinavia and its comparison with the United States of America.

It includes a training in which groups of trainees define their concept of social justice, identify priorities, develop benchmarks and specific implementation policies with a specific timetable, and take into account political and economic constraints and limitations.

The fourth chapter written by Reem Abdel Halim, titled Social justice and the rights of different generations (political – social – economic – cultural). It includes a definition of the entrances to economic, social and cultural rights of different generations, and linking the economic side of them with the management of public expenditure as a model for training in making human rights budgets.

The fifth chapter written by Mohamed ElAgati Social justice between the political and the economic, it deals with social justice policies as not only a technical issue but it depends on Biases of those politicians and economic experts who claims that their policies is neutral and technical choices. So that it affected by the nature of the political system and the political issues raised within it

The six chapter written by Salma Hussein titled “how the cake is enough for every mouth? General budget from the perspective of social justice”, it deals with policies related to budget and reallocation of financial and economic resources. It addresses budgetary policies and reallocation of financial and economic resources, including public budgeting, state fiscal policy, government spending, government revenue, taxation, how to engage everyone in resource allocation to needs, and a case study of the fairness of energy subsidy policies in Egypt.

The seventh chapter written by Heba Khalil, titled “Reading and analyzing international conventions from the perspective of social justice”. It discusses the fairness of international conventions and their governing frameworks, how to read these conventions from the perspective of social justice, how developing countries are subjected to injustice through international arbitration mechanisms for trade and investment disputes. How countries can propose alternative policies that support the justice of their economy under these conventions, whether through customs or tax restrictions. Purifying and reviewing trade and investment agreements and international arbitration cases.

The Arabic version of the manual is available at http://bit.ly/2MjGhMd