Learning through transnational advocacy networks: EuroMed Rights’ Majalat project

The literature examining transnational advocacy networks and their role in human rights promotion tends to focus on boomerang patterns, examining whether and how international contacts amplify local activists’ voices, help them to influence international stakeholders and thus, by extension, their own local governments. Less attention has been devoted to understanding how cooperation and interaction within transnational networks allows activists to learn from each other – both how to navigate oppressive domestic conditions as well as how to engage with and influence external stakeholders. To better understand such learning processes in the Euro-Mediterranean region, this paper zooms in on EuroMed Rights’ Majalat project, a structural dialogue between the EU and civil society in the Southern Mediterranean that ran from 2018 to 2021. In line with the objectives of this special issue, the article unpacks whether, and if so how, collaboration in the Majalat project led to knowledge transfer and the diffusion of practices among participating activists from different Arab countries. It examines whether and what they learned from each other on how to deal with their domestic political situation as well as on how to influence EU officials and policy makers. In doing so, the paper seeks to better understand to what extent and how learnings in transnational advocacy networks allow civil society activists to achieve policy changes.