As the lead for ARI's Tech & Society program, I have noticed a drastic increase in interest around questions of tech over the past three years, especially since the first reports on Israel's use of AI systems to enable genocide in Gaza. The dossier you are about to read is the fruit of a full year of effort, support, and intense discussion on this very topic, during which we thought on how to bring MENA voices to the centre of the conversation as active constructors of knowledge as opposed to relegating them to the status of passive victims of violence.

This project was born in 2024 when the Arab Reform Initiative (ARI) became a host organisation for the Mozilla Fellowship, entering into collaboration with Nada Kabbary Mousa to expand our critical thinking about the intersection of Technology & Society in the MENA region. The Fellowship works symbiotically, and while we are proud at ARI to be a part of key initiatives Nada has launched to combat algorithmic warfare, we are equally grateful to have had the opportunity to develop this dossier with Nada's wide knowledge and keen conceptual edits.

Working on this dossier with Nada has only further cemented the urgency of our work. Merely reporting is no longer enough to influence change, especially with vested interests working to further increase the use of technology in warfare. We must amplify counternarratives and centre new, locally grounded knowledge in order to ensure that the methods used to address these crises are equally focused on local needs and understanding.

Throughout the writing process, we presented our findings at MozFest 2025, Bread&Net 2025, and individual papers were discussed in spaces such as Tech For Palestine  and Geneva's Digital Week. The feedback was always the same: these views are not only desperately lacking, they also provide much-needed nuance and insight to contexts that are often spoken for but not listened to.

These contexts do not remain static, however, and the  following dossier has become even more relevant and its content more pressing as time goes by, with increased use of technology to repress, surveil, and kill in our region. As attention in international fora seems to slowly be shifting away from the harmful uses of technology, and critical discussions are cancelled under state pressure, the need to address the intersection of technology and power only grows.

The authors in this dossier have experienced this changing context firsthand. From different backgrounds, varied professions, and diverse topics of expertise, Sherif Mohyeldeen, Dima Samaro, Reem Joudi, Kassem Mnejja, Sarra Hannachi, and Ahmad Ghosn provide us with a clear overview of how technology has come to be used used to harm populations and their fundamental dignities in three regional flashpoints: Lebanon, Gaza, and Sudan. In the final paper, Nada Kabbary Mousa brings these perspectives together and issues a call to action under the connecting claim that violence and harm are structural as opposed to isolated, unintentional, or random.

As you read through the papers, please bear in mind that this is not an exhaustive dossier; there are many topics that we were unable to tackle for a variety of reasons ranging from financial constraints to author hesitancy. This being said, the papers are representative. Most of all, they represent the fact that the most valuable voices to hear when discussing MENA issues are indeed MENA voices. The insights in these papers are not only informed by rigorous academic research but also by lived experience, brought to bear in order to sharpen the conceptual lenses being used to analyse violence in MENA and change our understanding of it, shifting onus from asking victims to protect themselves to both individual actors and larger systems of power that enable them to reduce harm.

This dossier would not have been possible without the countless hours of research, interviews, and discussions with our interviewees, editors, translators, in-house staff, authors, and colleagues who have provided their kind feedback. It is impossible to name you all, but you are all in the lines and message of this dossier – thank you.

Andrew Findell-Aghnatios

Senior Program Coordinator & Lead (Tech & Society)

Arab Reform Initiative