Across SWANA, governments are racing to both build national AI strategies and to invest in the technologies behind them. Most analysis frame this as a way to foster innovation, aligned with local economic and security priorities. However, no one had taken a close look at how these strategies actually intersect with human rights, until now.
Earlier this year, we set out to change that. This report is the result of what we found.
We see governments across the region increasingly speak the language of ethical, responsible AI. Some have gone further: issuing AI governance frameworks, setting up dedicated oversight bodies, even drafting AI laws. But the safeguards needed to make any of that meaningful, in practice, remain weak, voluntary, or simply absent, and the gap holds regardless of how far along a country is in adopting AI.
We focused on eight countries that have issued national AI strategies and ethical frameworks: Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and the UAE. Two of them gave us pause: Morocco hasn’t published relevant policies, and Tunisia’s strategy proved impossible to locate –despite having been announced and referenced by both government and media.
What we found across the rest: ethical language that too often floats free of enforceable rights, independent oversight, or any real path to remedy.
Join us this October 8, 2026 13:00 UTC to discuss the findings and what they mean for different actors. We’ll be joined by Afef Abrougui (Fair Tech), lead researcher on this project, alongside Dr. Nour Naim, Academic & AI Ethics Consultant, and Yosr Jouini, independent researcher, both of whom we interviewed as part of this research.
Read the report here.
Register to the webinar here.