Democracy for the the Arab World Now (DAWN)

Democ­ra­cy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) is a think tank and watch­dog set up in 2020 by asso­ciates of the late Sau­di dis­si­dent and Wash­ing­ton Post colum­nist Jamal Khashog­gi to mon­i­tor human rights vio­la­tions by US allies in the Mid­dle East and North Africa. The New York Times has report­ed that Khashog­gi had come up with the idea to form DAWN in the months lead­ing up to his 2018 killing in the Sau­di con­sulate in Istan­bul by Sau­di oper­a­tives. In Feb­ru­ary 2021, a Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) inves­ti­ga­tion found that the DAWN board at that time includ­ed mul­ti­ple indi­vid­u­als tied to the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB) in the US. Two of those board mem­bers remain as part of the DAWN board, most notably Nihad Awad, the long-time exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR). Both Awad and CAIR are his­tor­i­cal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Hamas. DAWN is led by for­mer Human Rights Watch Mid­dle East direc­tor Sarah Leah Whit­son, who has often defend­ed the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood against accu­sa­tions of ter­ror­ism and extremism.