Resources

في إطار النظام السياسي اللبناني الذي يقوم على المحاصصة الطائفية والعائلية السياسية والزبائنية المتمثلة في نظام الزعامة، والذي يعزز من الأبوية القائمة على القرابية، تسعى هذه الدراسة إلى فهم وتحليل مشاركة النساء في مواقع قيادية وقاعدية في أربعة كيانات في لبنان تتضمن حزب سياسي، نقابة، منظمة مجتمع مدني وحركة اجتماعية. تفحص الدراسة الهياكل والبنى المؤسسية لتلك الكيانات ومواقفها من قضايا النساء، والديناميات التي تعتمدها للتفاعل مع محيطها، وذلك من خلال تحليل وثائقها الرسمية، خطابها العام، ممارساتها، وأخيراً تجارب النساء المنتميات لها وما عايشنه من تحديات ضمن هذا الإطار. بالإضافة إلى هذه التقرير،...

Lebanon may witness a remarkable rise in the number of women serving in Parliament come May 2018 due to initiatives from women’s groups, “civil society” activists, and the substantial number of female candidates – 113 at the start of the election period. However, as this briefing paper shows, Lebanese women continue to face numerous challenges in entering government. The new electoral law passed in June 2017 does not provide women with equal opportunity to be elected, and it is yet to be seen whether it will increase female representation in Parliament. Nevertheless, the historic number of...

IFI Background Paper | November 2011
The Future Today: Youth and Adolescents of the Middle East and North Africa
 Situation Analysis on Adolescents and Youth in MENA by Suad Joseph
Calls for attention to children and youth are usually couched in future thinking: The children and youth of today will be the bulk of the population tomorrow, so we need to pay attention to them today. In much of the Middle East and North Africa, the reality is reversed. Children and youth are the bulk of today’s population. In all the MENA countries, those under 29 constitute a minimum of one half and up to two...

The July war 2006, lasted 34 days, and led to the displacement of 915,762 (almost 25% of the Lebanese population) persons, relocating into public and private schools all over the country. With the coming into force of the cease fire in August 14th 2006, there was a rapid return of the displaced to the south.

Working Paper | April 2015
Social Justice and the Arab Uprisings by Amaney A. Jamal and Michael Robbins
As the Arab Spring proceeded, massive changes swept across the region. Long-standing stability gave rise to ongoing chaos in some countries, most notably Syria and Libya, but also to a significant extent in Tunisia and Egypt. Meanwhile, Islamist parties won free and fair elections in Egypt and Tunisia and were allowed to come to power. These and other changes greatly altered the political landscape across the region. The importance of these changes cannot be overstated. Yet, amidst talk of a...

Book | January 2015
Research Handbook: the UN in the Arab World by Martin Wählisch
 

Summary Brief | May 2014
National Case Studies on Health Policy-making in the Middle East: The Case of the National Social Security Fund Voluntary Health Insurance System in Lebanon by Fadi El-Jardali, Lama Bou Karroum, Hana Addam El-Ghali
Public policy making is complex and suffers from limited uptake of research evidence, particularly in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR). In-depth case studies examining the health policymaking process would contribute to strengthening health systems, informing future policymaking and pushing for the use of technical evidence in this process through...

Research Report | May 2014
Relative Deprivation and Politics in the Arab Uprisings by Asya el-Meehy
This study seeks to assess the relative weights of economic and political grievances across the uprisings in Bahrain, Egypt, and Tunisia. Highlighting the unique shared role of middle class youth, it contends that these constituencies have suffered from relative deprivation, despite deliberate efforts by authoritarian regimes to shield them through new targeted social protection initiatives. Nonetheless, economic grievances were not always the primary driving dynamic of protests and the...

Monograph | April 2014
A Preliminary Overview of Policy Research Institutes in the Arab World A Compilation and Synthesis Report Consortium of Arab Policy Research Institutes (CAPRI) by Hana A. El-Ghali and Farah Yehia
​CAPRI started with research on policy-making and knowledge production in the Arab World, then moved into a series of workshops and seminars in Beirut, Cairo, Amman and Doha in which over 42 PRI colleagues from 17 different countries from the region examined their collective and individual experiences and explored how they could expand their impact in society. This includes...

أصوات سورية من زمن ما قبل الثورة – المجتمع المدني رغم كل الصعوبات يتضمن هذا الكتاب، مجموعة من الدراسات، وهي مقتطفات أدبية مدنيّة، بأقلام بعض ناشطي المجتمع المدني، يتحدثون فيها عن تجاربهم وآفاق عملهم المدني، ومعضلاته وإنجازاته. ولا شكّ في أنّ تجارب السوريين الماضية في بناء مجتمع مدني قائمٍ على مواطنيّة فاعلة وتشاركيّة، والإنجازات التي تحققت رغم كل العقبات، قبل ولادة الثورة، سوف تُساعد على تحديد آفاق الجهود المستقبليّة الرامية إلى إعادة الإعمار والمصالحة والتنمية.

Working Paper | September 2013
A Changing Regional Order: The Arab Uprisings, the West and the BRICS by Christina Lassen
The Arab uprisings have thrown the regional order of the Middle East into disarray and are challenging traditional actors and alliances. Notably, regional actors, both governments and the region’s people, are driving developments to a much larger extent than before. This paper will explore how the European Union (EU) 1 and the United States, in the following referred to as “the West”, reacted to the Arab uprisings and whether the West has managed to play an active role and...

2013 كتاب | آب
آفاق الدولة المدنية بعد الانتفاضات العربية من إعداد طارق متري, عطالله السليم, عماد الحوت, رضوان السيد, محمد علي مقّلد, و آخرون
 

Working Paper | May 2013
Emerging Powers and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Case of Brazil and Venezuela by Guy Burton
What are the prospects of new rising powers to play a role in the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? At present the possibility of direct talks leading to a final settlement of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians looks far from promising. Negotiations between the two sides have been at a standstill since September 2010, when the two sides briefly met under US sponsorship. Expectations had been high that the US would once again take a leading...

Working Paper | March 2013
Lebanon: The Legacy of Sectarian Consociationalism and the Transition to a Fully-Fledged Democracy by Samir Makdisi and Youssef El-Khalil
Since independence in 1943 Lebanon’s political system has been based on a power sharing arrangement among its religious communities. Referred to as a consociational democracy, it was embedded in an unwritten national pact by the leaders of the independence movement which specified the division of parliamentary seats among the Christian and Muslim communities on the basis of a six to five ratio in favor of the Christian community.3...

Background Paper | March 2013
“Nabiha 5”: A Kuwaiti Youth Movement for Political Reform by F. Gregory Gause III
Among Arab states Kuwait is a leader in terms of political freedoms and the importance of its civil society organizations. Thus it should not be surprising that one of the few successful Arab youth movements advocating political reform should have arisen in the country. The success of the “Nabiha 5” movement (Kuwaiti colloquial Arabic for “we want it to be five”) in bringing about the change in the Kuwaiti electoral system from a 25 district to a 5 district configuration certainly...

The Foundation & UNHABITAT analyzed the row results of  the Municipal Observatory (MO) which is a tool that aims at evaluating the performance of the Lebanese municipalities through four different aspects:

1. Administration & Management;
2. Financial Resources;
3. Governance; and
4. Municipal Development & Services

The questionnaire contains a total of 84 questions distributed across 6 sections. Those questionnaires were filled by the “Municipal Guides”, a group of municipal employees established within the context of the UN-Habitat Decentralization Project implemented in partnership with the...

UN-Related Publication | January 2013
Benghazi so Far: A View from Inside the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) by Georges Nasr
I joined the UN Support Mission in Libya, known by its acronym UNSMIL, in early 2012 as Head of Office in Benghazi. Established by Security Council resolution 2009, the Mission’s mandate is to support Libya’s democratic transition by facilitating political dialogue and delivering targeted technical support in the areas of electoral assistance, constitution drafting, human rights, transitional justice and public security. UNSMIL also has a mandate to...

Lecture | December 2012
International Intervention in Lebanon and Beyond by Maureen Ali
As part of its United Nations and the Arab World Program, the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs initiated a series of panels and lectures entitled, “International Intervention in Lebanon and Beyond.” The series analyzes the role played by international institutions in conflict and post-conflict zones in the region and seeks to contextualize military, civilian and humanitarian stands that are often interlinked or sometimes so blurred as to obscure the reality on the ground...

Working Paper | August 2012
 The Politics of International Justice  – US Policy and the Legitimacy of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon by John Cerone
Assessing the state of US policy toward international criminal courts is a complex, if not impossible, undertaking. Indeed, there is no coherent U.S. policy on international criminal courts generally. This is attributable on the one hand to the multifaceted nature of international criminal courts, and on the other to the fact that U.S. policy is an amalgamation of diverse views reduced in some cases to written form, which is itself subject to...