Research & Commentary Results

To what extent does the boat migration phenomenon demonstrate the limits of migration governance? The purpose of this essay is to address this question by focusing on Bangladesh as a source country. There are compelling reasons for looking into the boat migration phenomenon through the lens of migration governance. Despite the growing contribution of foreign remittances to the national economy, establishing a fairer migration regime has emerged as a challenging task for Bangladesh. An analysis of the boat migration phenomenon provides an opportunity to investigate the nature of the problem and its underlying causes.

Read the full article on The National Interest.

President Barack Obama’s Thursday visit to Riyadh to participate in the Gulf Cooperation Council summit comes one year after his meeting with GCC leaders in Camp David, and is an attempt to shore up an important relationship at a time when the two sides have been drifting apart over key regional issues.

Regional Cooperation Series

This Policy Paper is part of The Middle East Institute’s Regional Cooperation Series. Throughout 2016, MEI will be releasing several policy papers by renowned scholars and experts exploring possibilities to foster regional cooperation across an array of sectors. The purpose is to highlight the myriad benefits and opportunities associated with regional cooperation, and the high costs of the continued business-as-usual model of competition and intense rivalry.

Summary

Australia has long prided itself on being one of the world’s premier destinations for refugees. In more recent years, however, the comparative size of Australia’s humanitarian program has declined in relation both to the country’s overall migrant intake and to Australia’s population.

This paper is part of a MEI scholar series titled “The Middle East and the 2016 Presidential Elections.”

Introduction

In this week’s Monday Briefing, MEI experts Paul Salem, Jean-François Seznec, and Robert Ford provide analysis on recent events including President Obama’s final GCC summit, the Doha oil summit, and protests over Iraq’s cabinet turmoil.

Obama’s Thursday G.C.C. Summit
Paul Salem, Vice President for Policy and Research

Turkey’s ideologically inspired foreign policy is shifting to concentrate more directly on bolstering domestic nationalist support and highlight its regional religious identity. Ankara seeks to divert attention from its policy setbacks in Syria, as well as its internal and economic problems, while continuing to blunt U.S. efforts to crush ISIS.

When the Mongols invaded Baghdad in 1258, they laid siege to the city’s libraries, including the famed House of Wisdom—the largest in the world at the time.

A center for Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars, the destruction of the library remains one of the most famous examples of cultural loss during wartime.

Nine centuries later, Iraqi-American artist Wafaa Bilal has taken the fate of the House of Wisdom as a starting point for a cultural project aimed at rebuilding the library of the Baghdad College of Fine Arts, destroyed in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion.

This essay depicts the Syrian refugee crisis as a symptom of the disorder which currently exists in the international system, describes the distinctive characteristics of the Syrian exodus, discusses the security implications of the crisis, and proposes four forms of international cooperation to safeguard the welfare of Syria’s refugees and to prevent the emergency from generating further upheaval in the Middle East.

The United States has been pushing Turkey for a campaign to eject ISIS from a 60-mile stretch of border that it still controls between the Syrian towns of Jarabulus and Azaz. However, the joint U.S.-Turkey operation has faced several roadblocks. From the outset, the United States and Turkey have had different goals. Washington wants Ankara to close the border, which is the sole remaining crossing point for ISIS militants.

WASHINGTON, DC (April 13, 2016) – Today the Antiquities Coalition, Asia Society, and Middle East Institute released #CultureUnderThreat: Recommendations for the U.S. Government,  a series of steps for confronting growing threats to our cultural heritage and global security. Cultural racketeering – the global trade in looted antiquities – is a multibillion-dollar industry that funds organized crime and terrorists like Daesh (also known as ISIS).

This essay suggests lines of inquiry for a research agenda on why migration has arisen both as a consequence and a driver of conflict in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. The essay sheds light on conflict-induced migration flows and their determinants in the post-2011 landscape; highlights how displacement has become both as a consequence and as a driver of new types of conflict and vulnerability; shows how migration flows and patterns have become closely intertwined with the construction of security and power; and raises the question of whether or not the post-2011 migrant crises have provided opportunities for political reform.

This article was first published on RealClearWord

Sen. Ted Cruz, when asked at last month’s CNN town hall meeting to defend his controversial proposal to target Muslim neighborhoods in the United States, made a valuable distinction between Islam and Islamism.

Since the mid-2000s, Egypt has developed into a main transit country for irregular migrants, either to Libya or to Israel. Now, as the traditional paths have largely been closed, many migrants and refugees are blocked in Cairo and along Egypt’s Mediterranean coast. Boarding a boat towards Europe is for many the only option to escape negligence, detention and abuse.

Tunisia is facing multiple pressures that, if not handled well by its current leaders, could undermine its stability as it continues to grapple with the post-Arab Spring era. The March 7 attack on Ben Gardane in Tunisia was a vivid reminder that the threat of ISIS and other extremist groups with safe haven in Libya is alive and well.