The Arab League (Arabic: الجامعة العربية‎ al-Jāmiʻah al-ʻArabīyah), formally, the League of Arab States (Arabic: جامعة الدول العربية‎ Jāmiʻat ad-Duwal al-ʻArabīyah), is a regional organization of Arab countries in and around North Africa, the Horn of Africa and Arabia. It was formed in Cairo on 22 March 1945 with six members: Kingdom of Egypt, Kingdom of Iraq, Transjordan (renamed Jordan in 1949), Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria.Yemen joined as a member on 5 May 1945. Currently, the League has 22 members, although Syria's participation has been suspended since November 2011, as a consequence of government repression during the ongoing uprising and civil war.

The League's main goal is to "draw closer the relations between member States and co-ordinate collaboration between them, to safeguard their independence and sovereignty, and to consider in a general way the affairs and interests of the Arab countries".

Through institutions such as the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (ALECSO) and the Economic and Social Council of the Arab League's Council of Arab Economic Unity (CAEU), the Arab League facilitates political, economic, cultural, scientific, and social programmes designed to promote the interests of the Arab world. It has served as a forum for the member states to coordinate their policy positions, to deliberate on matters of common concern, to settle some Arab disputes and to limit conflicts such as the 1958 Lebanon crisis. The League has served as a platform for the drafting and conclusion of many landmark documents promoting economic integration. One example is the Joint Arab Economic Action Charter, which outlines the principles for economic activities in the region.

The 1978 Arab League summit was meeting held between Arab leaders on November 2 in Baghdad as the 9th Arab League Summit. The summit came in the aftermath of the Egypt's Anwar Sadat's unilateral peace treaty with Israel. The conference resolved that the agreements signed by the Egyptian Government at Camp David harmed the rights of the Palestinian people. The Egyptian government was urged not to ratify the agreements and to align itself with the Arab League. Most importantly, the League froze its relations with the Government of Egypt. On March 31, 1979, five days after the ratification of the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, Arab leaders again convened in Baghdad in the absence of Egypt and decided to expel it from the Arab League. Consequently, the secretariat of the League was moved out of its Cairo headquarters to Tunis. This decision was slowly reversed in the 1980s after president Hosni Mubarak ascended to power. Egypt, which regained strong influence in the region as rival nation Syria was suffering setbacks during the Lebanon Civil War, returned to the Arab League on May 23, 1989 and the headquarters, which never saw completed construction in Tunis, return to Cairo on March 12, 1990.

The 2008 Arab League summit was held in Damascus on March 29, 2008. The summit was marred by inter-Arab differences, mainly over the political deadlock in Lebanon, with relations between Syria and the Saudi-Egypt coalition reaching an all time low. Saudi Arabia and Egypt snubbed the summit by sending low-level representatives.Lebanon's majority government boycotted the summit

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The 2007 Arab League Summit, also called the 2007 Riyadh Summit, refers to a convention of leaders from 21 members of the Arab League who gathered in Riyadh for the 19th Arab summit in March 2007. The summit convened on the 28 March 2007 and was preceded by a set of preparatory meetings starting on 24 March 2007. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana also attended the summit. The main goal of the conference was to re-launch the Arab Peace Initiative.

Setting

The original venue of the 19th Arab summit was to be Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt; however, in mid-January 2007, Amr Moussa, Secretary-General of the Arab League, announced that the summit would convene in Riyadh. This, according to scholars, seemed an “indication that Saudi Arabia was keen to promote the cause of Arab unity.” Ambassador Mohamed Qattan, Saudi permanent representative to the Arab League, said, “The ongoing developments in the Arab region and the critical situation that the Arab peoples are passing through has prompted the Saudi monarch to call for the convocation of the summit in Riyadh rather than Sharm El-Sheikh.” Egyptian leaders did not publicly questioning the matter.