First Independent Mena Newspaper
The United States has for years voiced support to the settlement of the Western Sahara in the context of the United Nations and when in 2007 Morocco proposed a plan providing to grant a large autonomy to the disputed territory, Washington has expressed in unequivocal terms backing to the Plan and subsequently to the Moroccan […]
The January 14 ouster of Ben Ali’s regime in Tunisia set off a wave of popular uprisings in the Middle East, the most significant change in more than thirty years. The last time the Middle East saw such monumental shifts was in 1979, when the ouster of the Shah in Iran, the Soviet invasion of […]
By international standards, extreme poverty or destitution is relatively low in the countries of North Africa. According to the World Bank, the number of those living below 2 USD a day was 13.9 percent in 2008, which would make the region of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) the fourth poorest region in the world […]
In the mid of the 2008 financial meltdown, countries from the periphery injected their hard-won money into the rescue of Western financial institutions and near-defaulting governments. Those events have definitely cleared the way for the arrival of new powers on the international scene, showed in the rush at calling up an enlarged G-20 in early […]
Globalization is generally viewed as the inevitable solution to many of the world’s inequality issues, especially where access to education and educational resources are concerned. Technology as a facilitator of educational equity through increased access to education and educational resources is also viewed as an inevitable leveler of the proverbial global playing field. Technology is […]
Western Sahara was front and center in CNN’s latest edition of Amanpour, marking a rare instance in which the oft-overlooked and stalemated conflict has been treated as more than a peripheral issue in the Western media. Amanpour hosted and plugged a new documentary film on the Western Sahara that claims to shed light on the […]
When the French troops launched a military operation in Mali on 11 January, the official places in Paris declared that it was aiming at stopping the advance of Islamists from their bases in the north of the country to its southern part. In this context, analysts have pondered possible reasons that lead to the invasion, […]
Women in MENA countries have made big strides over the past four decades in the fields of education and health coverage, but they still face serious hurdles in the labor market, says a World Bank report. The progress made by countries of the region to bridge gender gaps has not been matched by increases in […]
The role of civil society in bringing about change in the Arab world has been widely acknowledged. Today, civil society organisations (CSOs) face the challenge of helping consolidate the process of reform at a time when progress towards democratisation is uncertain. Emerging think tank and policy research initiatives are at the centre of these efforts, […]
The sovereign debt crisis is often being called the mother of all problems, especially those with no-win solutions (or double-win of any sort for that matter). The consequences of the European sovereign debt crisis, touched off by Europe’s weakest economies in 2011, have been piecemeal yet deep and noticeable far beyond the EU’s borders. As […]