Does the name Mohammed Bouazizi mean anything to you?  Granted, it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.  What you will be familiar with is the seismic political shift that his action helped to create.There have been many men and women down through the generations that have taken risks to influence social injustice and prejudice, I’m sure like me many names come flooding to your mind.

The difference with Mohammed Bouazizi was that he was not an exceptional man, he was a 26 year old street vendor who in December 2010 doused himself in paint thinner outside a provincial-capital building in Tunisia to highlight harassment he dealt with in trying to make a basic daily living.  Whether his was an act of selflessness, desperation, madness or all three is up for debate but it was undoubtedly the straw that broke the camel’s back, waking a nation that would not tolerate corruption and the misuse of power anymore and ultimately setting in motion a series of events that resulted in the ‘Arab Spring’ and everything that would follow it.  Here in Northern Ireland an act of a totally different kind brought a sense of social solidarity as never seen before with the senseless murder of Ronan Kerr and a galvanisation across our community that we would not be defined by such actions.   The relationships across these islands changed forever resulting in many positive contributions of recent visits and handshakes. 

Bouazizi’s action though was the catalyst for change of a different kind. Arguably the third wave of democratisation, following Latin America in the 1980s and Eastern Europe in the 1990s, the now clichéd Arab Spring saw autocratic leaders losing power across the region. 

UK Foreign Secretary, Willie Hague, has described the Arab Spring as the most significant event of the 21st Century so far – more strategically important than 9/11 or the current  financial crisis.  So what this tragedy and all that followed serves to reinforce to us all, should we have forgotten it, is of the scale of social injustice and prejudice and the concern is that the voice against it either is not being articulated or is not being heard.

This principle applies whether we are talking about a despotic regime or a stable and transparent democracy.  You will find signs of social injustice everywhere in our own society. The level and impact may well be different but from where ever the source comes if it is not challenged it grows like a cancer.  This is what can happen when good men and women with influence, who have a view and a voice stand idly by and don’t speak out when they believe there is social injustice. 

That’s why I believe that more should be done to challenge our political and civic leaders about the decisions they are making.  People are crying out for direction and a voice that will articulate the many social and economic difficulties that they are encountering.  Archbishop Rowan Williams is one man who has refused to keep his powder dry, criticising successive governments about the Iraq War, the role of bankers  in society and more recently by questioning the UK Coalition’s democratic mandate by stating that nobody had voted for its radical reforms which were being forced through without ‘proper public argument’.

Whilst we must have separation of Church and state, I absolutely agree with Williams’ position of taking the government to task and would like to see a broad mix of voices coming from across other genres of civic society. 

The short termism of the political class and their need to have one eye permanently on the polls is certainly a factor which can lead to social injustice - taking the easy option that appeal to their targeted demographic.  They can make ill informed choices and frequently get things badly wrong.  It has been reported that since taking power in May 2010, the Conservative and Liberal Democrat power-sharing coalition has made at least 21 prominent climbdowns, including a number of policies that many believe would have specifically disadvantaged those that were in most need. 

Governments will always need to be held to account and I don’t think that the voice of the opposition is enough, which is non-existent in the case of the Northern Ireland Executive.  Although thankfully in our society we have the ultimate democratic sanctions in elections, a luxury many Arab states have not had, in my view we need more Rowan Williams to speak for those that have no voice.

As for the global injustices in the Arab states and elsewhere, wherever there is injustice there will be conflict.  When I first started to learn about the Great War, it was at the height of the Troubles.  I genuinely remember thinking to myself, with all the daily mayhem here in the North and indeed in other parts of the world, how misplaced was the aspiration that it would be the war to end all wars.  This wasn’t out of any sense or belief that man was inherently evil as purported by the 16th Century political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli, far from it I think that we must all aspire to a global utopian democracy where there is no injustice of any kind.  The reality is though that whether you are living under tyrannical rule or in an open democracy there can and will be examples of social injustice and it is only through the voices of people with a social conscience and standing that it can truly be kept in check. 

Claire Aiken is Managing Director of Public Relations and Public Affairs company Aiken PR