Research & Commentary Results

Since the end of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government in June 2013 and the election of the moderate Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s diplomatic activity has changed, specifically its engagement in nuclear talks. The possibility of an agreement reignited enthusiasm for and attention to Iran’s civil society, which played an important role in supporting a diplomatic solution to the nuclear dispute. While many lauded Minister of Foreign Affairs Javad Zarif as the champion of the diplomatic breakthrough, others interpreted the progress in the negotiations to be the result of effective collective efforts by pro-democracy activists.

Russia’s recent increase in military aid to the Syrian government is an extension of previous Russian policy on Syria; what is different is not the thrust of Russian policy but the scale of the aid. This ramp-up carries new risks to those hoping for a real political solution to the longstanding Syrian conflict and to those hoping to see the threat of terror groups operating in Syria contained.

This essay argues that a thick—though often underground—layer of social movements and civil society organizations (CSOs) is crucial to, and assumes prominence, during periods of democratic transition.

This article was first published on Foreign Policy’s South Asia Channel.

This past June, the United Nations removed Yarmouk refugee camp from a list of what it terms “besieged areas” in Syria. The reason for this shift, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA), is due to the availability of humanitarian aid via drop-offs at government checkpoints in nearby suburbs.

Read the full article in the September 2015 issue of The Ripon Forum.

It will be one year this September since the U.S. president declared the formation of an international coalition to ‘degrade and destroy’ ISIS.   After 6,000 air strikes, 9,000 targets struck, 10,000 fighters killed, and various battles undertaken in Iraq and Syria, the war is at a strategic stalemate.

Civil society groups can play an important role in promoting and working for democracy and in holding political elites accountable to citizens. In Malaysia and Singapore, there have long been groups operating to represent interests in society, and many activists and scholars (in the West as well as in the two countries) have hoped that these groups would help push entrenched political leaders toward greater openness and democracy. Despite allowing a certain amount of space for civil society organizations to operate, neither Malaysia nor Singapore provides a model for civil society to crack open institutions and systems created to maintain authoritarian political power.

Italian energy company Eni announced on August 30 that it had discovered a deep-water gas field 93 miles north of Egypt’s Mediterranean coast.[1] The field, named Zohr, holds an estimated 30 trillion cubic feet (cft)[2] of natural gas (NG) reserves, potentially making it the twentieth largest in the world and the largest in the Mediterranean.

Almost a century after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk abolished the caliphate in Istanbul and six decades after Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Ba‘th Party led a secular nationalist revolution in Egypt and the Arab world, the Middle East is rife with radical religious counter-revolution, and a caustic caliphate sits astride the Syrian-Iraqi interior.

Despite enduring a contentious campaign in its fight to get the ten percent of the national vote necessary to enter parliament, Turkey’s Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP)—part of the same political movement as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)—ran on a fundamentally optimistic platform. It articulated democratic hopes for the so-called “peace process,” that is, the Turkish government-led, long-stuttering negotiations to end the PKK insurgency that has killed more than 40,000 people since 1984.

This paper spotlights women’s rights organizations as key players in civil society in Tunisia and Morocco, with a comparative glance at the Philippines and South Korea, two Asian participants in democracy’s third wave. Applying the existing literature on women, gender, and democratic transitions, we draw attention to the role of women’s rights organizations in civil society and as agents of democratization; examine the organizations’ role and influence during protests and transitions; and analyze the gendered outcomes in terms of laws and policies affecting women’s rights.

Under the threat of an increasingly influential Communist Soviet Union, in the mid-twentieth century the United States became more and more involved in Middle Eastern affairs. Struggling to reconcile its goals of containment, access to oil, and Israeli security, the U.S. government implemented a historic doctrine that pledged increased economic and military aid to the region in exchange for political allegiance.

Read the full article on CNN.com.

Lebanese have long suffered through water shortages, regular electricity blackouts, a leaking sewage system and poor health and education services. But as trash has piled up on the streets in recent weeks, it looks like the people of Lebanon have had enough.

“You Stink” is the message they are sending. And the campaign might just succeed where others have failed.

MEI spoke with Reida El Oakley, Libya’s minister of health, about the state of health care in the country and how Libya could receive the funding it desperately needs.

This article was originally published by the Foundation for Middle East Peace.

On Saturday, local and international media outlets reported that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had formally announced his resignation from another organization he heads: the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Specifically the reports said Abbas had quit his role as chairman of the Executive Committee, the highest decision-making body in the PLO.