Zine El Abidine Ben Ali Ben Ali also played a lead role in the UN's proclaiming 2010 as the International Year of Youth. Ben Ali's government largely bucked the trend toward greater democracy in Africa. It was deemed authoritarian and undemocratic by independent international human rights groups such as Amnesty International, Freedom House, and Protection International. They criticised Tunisian officials for not observing international standards of political rights and interfering with the work of local human rights organisations. In "The Economist"s 2010 Democracy Index, Tunisia was classified as an authoritarian regime, ranking 144th out of 167 countries studied. In 2008, in terms of freedom of
Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State but she avoided specific issues of U.S. aid and when elections should take place. President Obama was reportedly unhappy with U.S. intelligence agencies following their failure to foresee the 2010–2011 Tunisian uprising and the downfall of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali as well as the Egyptian protests. Responding to criticism that the State Department had failed to see the developments in Egypt coming, Clinton defended the U.S. in an interview on Al-Arabiya, saying "I don't think anybody could have predicted we'd be sitting here talking about the end of the Mubarak presidency at the time that this all started." Reflecting