October 2011 – A diverse panel, including a representative of the Irish foreign ministry’s Middle East and North Africa department and a journalist specializing in the Middle East, who had just returned from two five-week assignments in Libya, shared their views with attendees at the ABA International Section Fall Meeting in Dublin on the challenges facing regimes in transition in the aftermath of the overthrow of despotic regimes in the Middle East and North Africa. The panel, co-organized by the ABA’s Middle East Committee, which is co-chaired by associate Yasmine Lahlou, presented the audience with an account of how the world’s powers were taken by surprise by the Arab Spring, triggered by a street vendor’s tragic revolt in Tunisia, and described the international community’s efforts to adjust to this new reality. The panel also discussed the political dynamics at play in the countries in transition, the values that will frame their future, and the difficult choices confronting the leaders of the revolutionary movements to set up national reconciliation and transitional justice.