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International protection for internally displaced persons, who far exceed the number of refugees, has become a major issue in recent years. This is reflected in the international community's search for solutions, by providing them with internal humanitarian assistance so that they do not have to seek help beyond the borders of their states, affirming their right to remain in their country in security and dignity and not to become refugees. However, reality has shown that the international community's attention to the protection of internally displaced persons is not so much a humanitarian consideration as it is an inevitable consequence of state reservations to welcome refugees on their territory. European states in particular have attached urgency to protecting internally displaced persons arbitrarily to justify the closure of their borders to refugees.

International protection for internally displaced persons, who far exceed the number of refugees, has become a major issue in recent years. This is reflected in the international community's search for solutions, by providing them with internal humanitarian assistance so that they do not have to seek help beyond the borders of their states, affirming their right to remain in their country in security and dignity and not to become refugees. However, reality has shown that the international community's attention to the protection of internally displaced persons is not so much a humanitarian consideration as it is an inevitable consequence of state reservations to welcome refugees on their territory. European states in particular have attached urgency to protecting internally displaced persons arbitrarily to justify the closure of their borders to refugees.

Despite the dire situation in Syria, the International Organization for Migration states that about one in ten Syrian refugees is returning home. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees predicts that hundreds of thousands of refugees may soon voluntarily return to their devastated homeland. The fear is that this will happen without any prior planning, especially since the Syrian crisis may be relatively unique in terms of its size and the difficulty of predicting its trajectories. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to identify the lessons learned from the experiences of refugee return, whether voluntary or forced, which illustrate the most important factors for ensuring the sustainable return of Syrian refugees. The study is based on an extensive literature review, consultations and interviews with experts and stakeholders, supported by the researchers' accumulated experience in the field of post-war reconstruction and refugee studies. The study does not aim to analyze the current political or military situation in Syria, or to evaluate any ongoing or planned political talks, nor does it evaluate any proposed political solution.

A convergence of interests between the Houthi militia and former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh have served to undermine the National Dialogue for the country, which had earlier formed an implementation mechanism for the GCC Initiative. Previously, the aims of that Dialogue were intended to further the cause of a federalist, democratic state which decentralized power. This would have changed the status quo, in which power was concentrated in what Yemenis call the “Holy Center”, a tribalist-sectarian concentration of political and financial power which been in place for a millennium and which survived into the reborn, unified and modern-day Yemen of 1994.

​Milestones in Democratic Transition in the Arab World 1/1-28/2/2021.

The major turning points of the Syrian revolution, beginning with the earliest public demonstrations on March 15, 2011, are here examined. The author revisits speeches made by President Bashar Al Assad in the early days of the uprising, in which he was quoted as discounting the likelihood of a revolution affecting Syria the way it did other Arab countries on the grounds that his government’s policies were in line with public sentiment. The paper then revisits the regime’s excessively violent repression of the first peaceful protests, which led to the militarization of the revolution. The author holds the international community, including the Arab League and the United Nations culpable for ensuing large scale slaughter of Syrian civilians, standing idly by even as it became apparent that Assad was mercilessly killing his own people. Meanwhile, Syria has become the site for a number of world and regional powers—including the United States, the United Kingdom, France Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, China, Iran and Russia—to advance their fundamentally incompatible policies. As a consequence of these competing foreign interventions, the author contends that the return of normalcy in Syria will be impossible for the foreseeable future.

This paper discusses the escalation of the refugee crisis following the revolutions of the Arab Spring, which triggered a mass exodus of people fleeing the countries witnessing revolution, including Syria.

​يتضمّن هذا التقرير توثيقًا لأبرز محطات التحول الديمقراطي في الوطن العربي في المدة 1 أيار/ مايو - 30 حزيران/ يونيو 2021.

This article examines a contingent Paradigmatic shifts at the 'ESS 2003 and 'EUGSS 2016'. It mainly argued that, the EUGS's including of 'Resilience' as a strategic priority of EU external and security action settled more security roles to the EU. To address these shifts, the article provide three sections. Firstly, we trace with the help of CST the 'genalogy of resilience', and show how resilience as a rationality of governance endorse an intensified logic of security. latter, we explore the EU's two paradigms, 'Normative' and 'Resilience', their meanings, connotations and applications in the EES 2003 and the EEGSS 2016, and show how the EU display a new institutional mechanisms and security/ defense initiatives in order to fulfill its new paradigm. Thirdly, we, test the limits of these shifts by examining the applications of resilience within the European agenda on Migration.

​يرصد هذا الباب أبرز الوثائق السياسية ذات الصلة بالتحول الديمقراطي في الوطن العربي. وننشر في هذا العدد توثيقًا لأهم الوثائق في المدة 1 أيار/ مايو - 30 حزيران/ يونيو 2021.