Skip to main content

Home/ CULF 3331: "Middle Eastern Revolutions"/ Group items tagged primaries

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
diamond03

Prevalence of female genital cutting among Egyptian girls - 0 views

www.who.int/...en

female genital cutting egyptian

shared by diamond03 on 06 Oct 14 - No Cached
    • diamond03
      diamond03 on 06 Oct 14
       
      This is so strange and taboo. 
  • fundamental violation of women’s and girls’ rights
  • 50% or highe
  • ...41 more annotations...
  • female circumcisio
  • harmful physical, psychological and human rights consequences has led to the use of the term “female genital mutilation
  • women who have undergone FGC do not consider themselves to be mutilated and have become offended by the term “FGM”
  • no definitive evidence documenting when or why this ritual began
  • practised in ancient Egypt as a sign of distinction, while others hypothesize its origin in ancient Greece, Rome, Pre-Islamic Arabia and the Tsarist Russian Federation.
  • 97% of married women surveyed experienced FGC.3
  • 94.6% of married women had been exposed to FGC and 69.1% of those women agreed to carry out FGC on their daughters
  • 41% of female students in primary, preparatory and secondary schools had been exposed to FGC.
  • females interviewed was 38 816. The prevalence of FGC among schoolgirls was 50.3%. The prevalence of FGC was 46.2% in government urban schools, 9.2% in private urban schools and 61.7% in rural schools.
  • FGC has remained a common practice in the countries where it has traditionally been performed.4
  • Egypt are type I (commonly referred to as clitoridectomy) and type II (commonly referred to as excision).5 In Africa, the most common type of FGC is type II (excision of the clitoris and the labia minor) which accounts for up to 80% of all cases.6 I
  • In 1995, a ministerial decree forbade the practice and made it punishable by fine and imprisonment
  • The difference in the prevalence rates of FGC is mainly due to educational status in both rural and urban areas
  • There is an obvious negative correlation between the female’s parents’ education and the practice of FGC
  • Parents with low or no education are the most likely to have circumcised their daughters with prevalence rates ranging between 59.5% and 65.1%
  • higher degrees of education are the least likely to have their daughters circumcised and the prevalence rate ranged between 19.5% and 22.2%.
  • age at which FGC is performed on girls varies
  • 4 and 12 years old
  • the procedure may be carried out shortly after birth to some time before the age of marriage.6
  • some girls mentioned that they were circumcised soon after birth, during the neonatal period.
  • . In Egypt, in the past, the majority of FGC procedures were performed by traditional midwives, called dayas. However, according to the Demographic and Health Survey (1995),16 the number of
  • An immediate effect of the procedure is pain because FGC is often carried out without anaesthesia.
  • Short-term complications, such as severe bleeding which can lead to shock or death
  • include infection because of unsanitary operating conditions, and significant psychological and psychosexual consequences of FGC
  • complications (early and late) such as severe pain, bleeding, incontinence, infections, mental health problems, sexual problems, primary infertility and difficult labour with high episiotomy rate. In addition, the repetitive use of the same instruments on several girls without sterilization can cause the spread of HIV and Hepatitis B and C.
  • Fathers played minor roles as decision-makers for the procedure (9.4%
  • mothers are the main decision-makers for the procedure of FGC (65.2%)
  • circumcision is an important religious tradition (33.4%)
  • religious tradition is still the most important reason for performing FGC in Egypt,
  • In these surveys, 72% of ever-married women reported that circumcision is an important part of religious tradition and about two-thirds of the women had the impression that the husband prefers his wife to be circumcised
  • one-third of ever-married women cited cleanliness as a reason while a small number saw it as a way to prevent promiscuity before marriage.
  • milies refuse to accept women who have not undergone FGC as marriage partners
  • Around 12% of girls believed that there is no religious support for circumcision.
  • . It is an issue that demands a collaborative approach involving health professionals, religious leaders, educationalists and nongovernmental organizations.
  • partial or total cutting away of the female external genitalia
  • Female genital cutting (FGC
  • Past issues Information for contributors Editorial members How to order About the Bulletin Disclaimer Prevalence of female genital cutting among Egyptian girls
  • 100 and 130
  • cultural or other non-therapeutic reason
  • 28 African countries and the Middle East have been subjected to FGC.2
  • million girls and women
  • micklethwait on 07 Oct 14
     
    This is such a controversial topic. I saw a reference to it recently (was it possibly something that was brought up in the Bill Maher/Ben Affleck dust-up?) that pointed out that the practice is almost unheard of outside of central and northeastern Africa, with a few small pockets in Iraq and the Gulf.
allieggg

Bloody Proxy War in Libya: Qatar & Turkey vs. UAE & Egypt | Clarion Project - 0 views

www.clarionproject.org/...-qatar-and-turkey-vs-uae-egypt

proxy wars polarization libya clarion project civil war politics

shared by allieggg on 21 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Fresh clashes broke out in the Libyan capital Tripoli on Sunday, forcing the city's airport to close down. Mitiga airport has functioned as Tripoli's primary airport since Tripoli International Airport was damaged and ceased to operate in August.
  • On November 6 the Tobruk parliament was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Tripoli. However, parliamentarians in Tobruk immediately hit back, saying that because Tripoli is largely in the hands of Islamists, the Supreme Court's decision was made under duress.
  • Libyan Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni said Qatar sent 3 loaded planes with weapons to Tripoli. This is in keeping with Qatar's actions throughout the region. One diplomat from an undisclosed MENA country spoke to Telegraph saying "They [Qatar] are partly responsible for Jabhat al-Nusra having money and weapons and everything they need." Jabhat al-Nusra is the official Al-Qaeda affiliate fighting in the Syrian Civil War.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Qatar's involvement in Libya goes back to the revolution that overthrew former Prime Minister Muammar Gaddafi. In 2012, then leader of the Libyan National Transitional Council Mustafa Abdul Jibril said at a Ramadan celebration event: "Doha [Qatar] has been supporting Islamic movements as part of its vision to help establish an Arab regime that adopts Islamic Shariah law as a main source of governance." He said that Qatar had contributed $2 billion to the revolution.
  • The bloodshed is greatly exacerbated by the relentless funding of Islamist militias across the region by Turkey and Qatar. 
  • allieggg on 21 Nov 14
     
    Conflict broke out in the Libyan capital Tripoli forcing Mitiga airport, primary airport since Tripoli International was closed due to damages, to close down worsening the bloody proxy war thus escalating the crisis. Egypt and UAE have been aiding the Islamic opposition, helping to fight against the Islamic militants backed by Turkey and Qatar. Apparently Qatar's involvement in Libya goes back to the revolution that ousted Gaddafi, contributing $2 billion in support of the Islamic movements as a part of its vision to establish an Arab regime ruling through Sharia Law. As of now, no players are willing to compromise in this "state of war." 
mcooka

Lebanon - Educational System-overview - Schools, Private, Students, and Lebanese - Stat... - 0 views

education.stateuniversity.com/...UCATIONAL-SYSTEM-OVERVIEW.html

lebanon system overview schools private public

shared by mcooka on 02 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • The Lebanese educational system is divided in two sectors: private schools and universities, for which there is a charge for admission, and public (government) schools and universities that are practically free of charge.
  • Education was once almost exclusively the responsibility of religious communities or foreign groups, but because the number of students in public schools has risen to more than two-fifths of the total school enrollment, the government was pressured to open more public schools to meet the demands of the general public.
  • While public schools have not paid much attention to the preschool phase and have required students to be five-years-old to be accepted in kindergarten until the 1990s, private schools have always had a preschool phase and have accepted students as young as three-years-old
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • The total duration in school remains intact, 12 years. The primary cycle of general education has been increased by one year, and is divided into two modules of three years each, while the intermediary cycle was reduced to three years instead of four. The first year of general education's secondary cycle must be considered common for all four different series of instruction, and the second year is common to only two out of four series. Lebanese students are not allowed to enter formal technical education before age 12, which is the age limit of obligatory education. The scholastic year was changed to 36 weeks, and 4 supplementary hours per week were added at the intermediary and secondary cycles.
  • The new school curricula was launched in September 1998, and the Educational Center for Research and Development had trained 16,000 teachers in public schools and 6,000 teachers in private schools on the new uses and principles of the new program. The new system took into account economic, social, and national perspectives. The principle characteristics of this new system consist of the following:
  • The Lebanese educational system has usually relied heavily on private schooling to accommodate the evergrowing demand for learning in the country
  • As to special education concerning handicapped students, there were about 10,000 handicapped people in 1975 (prior to the Lebanese civil war). During the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, this number reached 13,000; it is more than 15,000 in 2001. About 2,500 handicapped people were being educated and made ready to enter the work market.
  • There are 1508 public and private intermediary and secondary schools for the general instruction program in Lebanon, while there are only 262 schools for the technical and professional instruction program divided between the public sector (29 schools) and the private sector (233 schools).
  • Education is compulsory until the end of the intermediate cycle, is available to all Lebanese students, and is attended by nearly 95 percent of school-age children
  • The school year starts in early October and ends in late June. The school day consists of six hours starting at 8:00 a.m. with two hour lunch break and ends at 4:00 p.m. The length of class periods ranges from 50 to 55 minutes. Both public and private schools are supposed to observe official holidays, which are decided by the government; however, Christian-administered, religious private schools take Saturday and Sunday off every week, while Moslem-run religious private schools take Friday and Sunday, and Jewish-run private schools take off all of Saturday and Sunday afternoon only.
  • In short, the new formal educational system of Lebanon, like in many other countries, divides the years of instruction as follows: 6-3-3 (six years for the primary cycle, three years for the intermediate cycle, and three years for the secondary cycle), followed by the higher education cycle. Primary school education is followed either by a six-year intermediary and secondary program, leading to the official Lebanese baccalaureate certificate, which was originally based on the equivalent French school diploma, or by a three- to six-year technical or vocational training program.
  • In addition, females appeared to have a slightly higher percentage than males with regard to attending schools and universities. After age 25 male attendance becomes almost double that of female attendance.
  • the literacy rate was 88.4 percent in 1997
  • ue to the Lebanese people's negative attitude toward manual work, especially in industry and agriculture, students of lower socioeconomic status enroll mostly in vocational and technical schools. Therefore, there is a big difference between the two major types of instruction, as well as the relative numbers of schools and students enrolled in each of these types
  • The brevet certificate is only required by public schools, vocational schools, and teacher training institutes. The baccalaureate part I exam has two main tracks: literary and scientific. The baccalaureate part II has four main tracks: literature and humanities, which includes language, literature, history, philosophy, education, arts, and religion; sociology and economy, which includes economic sciences, politics, business and management, law, and sociology; general sciences, which includes mathematics, physics, chemistry, and their applications at the level of engineering; and life sciences, which includes biology and life sciences, chemistry and their applications in the area of medicine, health, agriculture, and other related subjects.
  • Most institutions of higher education require entrance examinations besides the baccalaureate part II, which is required by law.
  • The grading system is generally based on scales of 0 to 20 or 0 to 100, with 10 or 60, respectively, as passing grades
  • he curriculum in Lebanese schools is somewhat rigid, for all students must pursue the same programs in all three cycles
  • rivate schools can choose textbooks that meet their syllabi, except in the civics area where the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport requires them to use the center's textbooks.
  • rabic and either French or English are the languages of instruction in the Lebanese schools.
  • The United Nations Reliefs and Works Agency (UNRWA) provides funds supporting a private nonsectarian school system for Palestinian Refugees in the Middle East. This type of private schooling has been very effective in offering education and social services for children of Palestinian Refugees residing in Lebanon
  • mcooka on 02 Mar 16
     
    This article gave a great general overview to the education in Lebanon. One of the major components of Lebanon's education system is when they changed it 1999 to reflect the style of French education systems. Additionally, Lebanon has a high rate of 95% attendance for its students and it also has a high rate of literacy at 89%
mcooka

News & Broadcast - Education: Improving access and quality of education in Yemen - 0 views

web.worldbank.org/...K:34424~theSitePK:4607,00.html

yemen education improving access quality girls

shared by mcooka on 02 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • For almost three decades, the International Development Association (IDA) has actively helped increase access to, and the quality of, educational services in Yemen. The main achievements are the expansion of the education system at all levels, which helped halve the illiteracy rate to 45 percent from 90 percent
  • This is particularly challenging given the country’s significant population growth and deep poverty
  • Fewer girls than boys enrol in school (particularly in rural areas), many tend to be over-age and most drop out before completing basic education.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • lack of female teachers is one of the factors resulting in low enrolment and retention of girls in schools, particularly in higher grades when parents tend to object to male teachers
  • The sector also suffers from a lack of efficiency and effectiveness in using limited financial resources and weak management capacity.
  • DA has provided assistance for development of all education system sub-sector
  • both building on the success of the Basic Education Expansion Project of 2001-2007
  • The Secondary Education Development and Girls Access Project provides a platform to address broader sector governance and management issues by bringing together the Ministries of Planning, Finance, Civil Service and Insurance and Local Officials to jointly sign a Protocol of Participation in this Project.
  • men is also part of the Education For All Fast Track Initiative (EFA-FTI). FTI focuses on increasing access of children to primary education in line with the MDG target of achieving universal primary education, and its interventions target the most remote areas in the country where no other IDA project, government intervention or donor project has gone before
  • Increase in enrolment in primary education to 87 percent in 2008-09 from 68 percent in 1998-99.Gains in girls’ enrolment were even higher with an increase to 78% in 2008-09 from 49% in 1998-99, reducing by half the gap with male enrolment
  • The Education sector in Yemen is one of oldest and largest sectors of IDA investment in Yemen.
  • otal Bank financing for the five projects amounts to US$133 million, comprising Basic Education Development Project (US$68.66 million), Secondary Education Development and Girls Access project (US$20 million), Fast Track Initiative – Phase III (US$20 million), Second Vocational Training Project (US$ 15 million), and Second Higher Education Project (US$13 million).
  • he basic education sector in Yemen is characterized by a high degree of donor harmonization. Education receives a large share of the comparatively small amount of Official Development Assistance per capita recipient (just US$13 in 2006).
  • The Yemen Country Status Report set the stage for the development of a national vision for education. The national vision is to be developed in coordination with line ministries and aims to develop the foundations for a national education system that is linked to the labor market
  • mcooka on 02 Mar 16
     
    This article is about the improvement of education in Yemen. Yemen is a very poor country with a large population growth. These programs have created platforms and finances to attract teachers, advocates for girls groups, advocates for education, and have pushed the literacy rate up towards 90%
katelynklug

The Unlikely Young Cosmopolitans of Cairo - 0 views

www.arabmediasociety.com/?article=760

Egpyt Cairo urban lower middle class cosmopolitan

shared by katelynklug on 21 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • katelynklug on 21 Nov 14
     
    Author Heba Elsayed gives a preview of the study she conducted to observe the lower middle class in Cairo. Elsayed describes Cairo as a microcosm of globalization in urban centers. She describes the unique role of Cosmopolitanism in analyzing trends of globalization. She focuses on the lower middle class who, she says, plays the biggest role in incorporating multiple viewpoints in daily life rather than practicing exclusivity like the upper middle class. In addition, she describes cosmopolitanism in terms of internal heterogeneity, describing an 'onion model' of the world, in which the local and national form the core and inner layers and the international and global form the outer layers. She also mentions that nation-states can no longer be regarded as the primary reference point for global citizenry.
alarsso

Understanding Syria: From Pre-Civil War to Post-Assad - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...281989

syria understanding history causes war revolution transition

shared by alarsso on 08 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • xtreme temperatures
  • drought from 2006 to 2011
  • 2001 to 2010, Syria had 60 “significant” dust storms.
  • ...70 more annotations...
  • lessening of rainfall
  • as of the last year before the civil war, only about 13,500 square kilometers could be irrigated
  • agriculture
  • 20 percent of national income
  • employed about 17 percent
  • Syria’s oil is of poor quality, sour, and expensive to refine
  • densely populated
  • less than 0.25 hectares (just over a third of an acre) of agricultural land per person
  • population/resource ratio is out of balance.
  • So it is important to understand how their “social contract”—their view of their relationship with one another and with the government—evolved and then shattered.
  • threw the country into the arms of
  • Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser
  • or three and a half years
  • part of the United Arab Republic
  • A fundamental problem they faced was what it meant to be a Syrian.
  • 1961 Syrians were thrown back on their own resources
  • The majority of those who became Syrians were Arabic-speaking Sunni Muslims
  • seven and eight in 10 Syrians saw themselves as Muslim Arab
  • being a Muslim Arab as the very definition of Syrian identity.
  • Nationalists took this diversity as a primary cause of weakness and adopted as their primary task integrating the population into a single political and social structure.
  • Israel
  • Looming over Syrian politics and heightening the tensions
  • A ceasefire, negotiated in 1974, has held, but today the two states are still legally at war.
  • or Hafez al-Assad, the secular, nationalist Baath Party was a natural choice: it offered, or seemed to offer, the means to overcome his origins in a minority community and to point toward a solution to the disunity of Syrian politics
  • bridge the gaps between rich and poor
  • socialism
  • Muslims and minorities
  • Islam
  • society
  • hould be modern
  • secular
  • defined by a culture of “Arabism”
  • the very antithesis of
  • Muslim Brotherhood
  • military, which seemed
  • o embody the nation.
  • help the Syrian people to live better provided only that they not challenge his rule
  • his stern and often-brutal monopoly of power
  • foreign troublemakers
  • Hafez al-Assad sided with Iran in the Iran-Iraq war
  • During the rule of the two Assads, Syria made considerable progress.
  • locked into the cities and towns
  • they f
  • had to compete
  • Palestinians
  • Iraqis
  • Syria was already a refuge
  • March 15, 2011
  • small group gathered in the southwestern town of Daraa to protest against government failure to help them
  • government saw them as subversives.
  • He ordered a crackdown
  • And the army,
  • responded violently.
  • Riots broke out
  • attempted to quell them with military
  • what had begun as a food and water issue gradually turned into a political and religious cause.
  • interpretation of Islam
  • the Syrian government is charged with using illegal chemical weapons
  • All observers agree that the foreign-controlled and foreign-constituted insurgent groups are the most coherent, organized, and effective
  • astonishing as they share no common language and come from a wide variety of cultures
  • slam has at least so far failed to provide an effective unifying force
  • all the rebels regard the conflict in Syria as fundamentally a religious issue
  • pwards of $150 billion
  • a whole generation of Syrians have been subjected to either or both the loss of their homes and their trust in fellow human beings.
  • How the victims and the perpetrators can be returned to a “normal life”
  • First, the war might continue.
  • Second, if the Syrian government continues or even prevails, there is no assurance that,
  • t will be able to suppress the insurgency.
  • Third,
  • Syria will remain effectively “balkanized”
  • alarsso on 08 Feb 15
     
    This article captures Syria's geography, history, and all events leading up to the state Syria is in today.
cguybar

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's Failures - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - 0 views

carnegieendowment.org/...n-muslim-brotherhood-s-failure

failures muslim brotherhood Egyptian

shared by cguybar on 17 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • cguybar on 17 Feb 16
     
    Great detail is provided on the major failures of the group, with specific instances as examples. The three primary faults mentioned are; misreading the political situation, shallow and opportunistic regarding ideologies, and incapable of adapting.
atownen

US Elections - 0 views

www.jpost.com/us-elections

Jerusalem U.S. Elections recent news

shared by atownen on 10 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • atownen on 10 Feb 16
     
    I really appreciated how in-the-loop the Jerusalem Post keeps its readers in Israel. They have their own section on their main website dedicated to U.S. Elections, w/recent news about our candidates and the primaries. There are actually some really good articles on here written about Bernie vs. Hillary and its interesting to read from a different stance other than America's.
atownen

UNHCR - The situation of stateless persons in the Middle East and North Africa, by Laur... - 0 views

www.unhcr.org/4ce63e079.html

stateless peoples empirical data research

shared by atownen on 27 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • atownen on 27 Mar 16
     
    This dissertation written by United Nations Commissioner for Refugees Laura Waas, provides some more academic insight into what exactly constitutes as stateless peoples in the Middle East and North African regions as well as the underlying conditions and legislation these stateless persons have developed. Waas points to the lack of nationality as the primary concern.
mcooka

Gender equality? It doesn't exist anywhere in the world - LA Times - 1 views

www.latimes.com/...lobal-womens-rights-story.html

women inequality million higher education

shared by mcooka on 08 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • t's been more than 100 years since the world began observing International Women's Day, and yet no country has achieved full gender equality.
  • But in Yemen, the country that ranks lowest according to the same data,
  • About two-thirds of countries in the developing world have achieved gender equality in primary education according to U.N. data, but the progress is less substantial at the secondary school level.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • In Africa and South Asia for example, boys remain 1.55 times more likely to complete secondary education than girls, according to World Bank data.
  • Even when girls make it into the classroom they still “continue to face particular risk in chaotic conflict settings,”
  • n Pakistan, for example, the Taliban has declared war on girls' education, and frequently attacks educational institutions
  • “They don’t translate into greater equality in the labor market,” said Sarah Gammage, director of gender, economic empowerment and livelihoods at the International Center for Research on Women. “Around the world women have disproportionately been part of the informal economy.”
  • hey are typically responsible for providing care services for family members, Gammage said. Other duties include child rearing, cooking, and other household chores. It is work for which they are not paid. Women perform three times more unpaid work than men, according to the U.N.’s 2015 Human Development Report.
  • eing able to make decisions, such as voting, owning land, and deciding whom to marry “is where we see the most significant difference between the least developed and developed countries,” said Varia.
  • In Saudi Arabia, women are not permitted to drive and cannot open bank accounts without their husbands' permissio
  • Uganda forbids women to gain permanent custody of children after a divorce,
  • Honor killings, the traditional practice that allows the slaying of a family member who is believed to have brought dishonor on a family, claims thousands of women’s lives every year in South and Central Asia.
  • pvaldez2 on 08 Mar 16
     
    This article is a response to International Women's Day, saying that gender equality doesn't exist in the world. In the middle of the article, they show a chart of the gender gap between men and women. Egypt is last in the chart.
  • mcooka on 08 Mar 16
     
    This article goes into depth about the inequality in the Middle East which extends to today. This looks at the ideas of democratization which would promote higher education. Greater rights for women. and improve infant morality rates 
aacosta8

Being Connected: Class and Cosmopolitanism in Cairo - 0 views

connectedincairo.com/...s-and-cosmopolitanism-in-cairo

Qatar Middle East Egypt

shared by aacosta8 on 31 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • aacosta8 on 31 Mar 16
     
    I spent part of last week in Qatar with a brilliant group of scholars, discussing digital media in the Middle East. The article discusses primary work in Egypt focused on the ways children grew up constructing identities in which they could be at once Egyptian and Arab and at the same time modern and global
sgriffi2

FGM - 0 views

While doing research on women's rights in Egypt I came across the term "female genital mutilation" which is something we have all heard of, but I had not thought about this concept lately, nor in t...

#egypt #women #womensrights #feminism #equality

started by sgriffi2 on 03 Mar 15 no follow-up yet
andrea_hoertz

Libya's primary oilfield remains closed after fierce battles for control | Middle East Eye - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...libya-oil-6266161

civil war Libya Oil sharara

shared by andrea_hoertz on 21 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • andrea_hoertz on 21 Nov 14
     
    Libya's oilfield was closed down. Oil makes up 95% of Libyas income.
agomez117

anthropologies - 1 views

www.anthropologiesproject.org/...art-graffiti-art-in-cairo.html

shared by agomez117 on 10 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • agomez117 on 10 Nov 14
     
    In the upscale neighborhood of Zamalek in Cairo, Egypt, a military tank faces off with a man, on a bicycle, carrying bread. This scene is a five-minute taxi ride from Tahrir Square, the primary spot within the city and the country where thousands of protesters are currently fighting against the rule of the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF).
wmulnea

Libya's civil war: That it should come to this | The Economist - 3 views

www.economist.com/...factional-chaos-it-should-come

shared by wmulnea on 11 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • It is split between a government in Beida, in the east of the country, which is aligned with the military; and another in Tripoli, in the west, which is dominated by Islamists and militias from western coastal cities
  • Benghazi is again a battlefield.
  • The black plumes of burning oil terminals stretch out over the Mediterranean.
  • ...69 more annotations...
  • Libya looked like the latest fragile blossoming of the Arab spring
  • Army commanders, mostly of Arab Bedouin origin, refused orders to shoot the protesters
  • the revolutionaries cobbled together a National Transitional Council (NTC) claiming to represent all of Libya
  • Volunteers from students to bank managers took up arms, joining popular militias and only sometimes obeying the orders of defecting army commanders trying to take control
  • In August Western bombing of government bases surrounding Tripoli cleared an avenue for the revolutionaries to take the capital.
  • Recognised abroad, popular at home and enjoying the benefits of healthy oil revenues—97% of the government’s income—the NTC was well placed to lay the foundations for a new Libya
  • he judges, academics and lawyers who filled its ranks worried about their own legitimacy and feared confrontation with the militias which, in toppling Qaddafi, had taken his arsenals for their own.
  • militia leaders were already ensconced in the capital’s prime properties
  • The NTC presided over Libya’s first democratic elections in July 2012, and the smooth subsequent handover of power to the General National Congress (GNC) revived popular support for the revolution.
  • Islamist parties won only 19 of 80 seats assigned to parties in the new legislature, and the process left the militias on the outside
  • The Homeland party, founded by Abdel Hakim Belhad
  • tried to advertise its moderation by putting an unveiled woman at the head of its party list in Benghazi
  • The incumbent prime minister, Abdurrahim al-Keib, a university professor who had spent decades in exile, fretted and dithered
  • He bowed to militia demands for their leaders to be appointed to senior ministries, and failed to revive public-works programmes
  • which might have given militiamen jobs
  • Many received handouts without being required to hand in weapons or disband, an incentive which served to swell their ranks
  • the number of revolutionaries registered with the Warriors Affairs Commission set up by the NTC was about 60,000; a year later there were over 200,000. Of some 500 registered militias, almost half came from one city, Misrata.
  • In May 2013 the militias forced parliament to pass a law barring from office anyone who had held a senior position in Qaddafi’s regime after laying siege to government ministries.
  • In the spring of 2014, Khalifa Haftar, a retired general who had earlier returned from two decades of exile in America, forcibly tried to dissolve the GNC and re-establish himself as the armed forces’ commander-in-chief in an operation he called Dignity
  • The elections which followed were a far cry from the happy experience of 2012. In some parts of the country it was too dangerous to go out and vote
  • Such retrenchment has been particularly noticeable among women. In 2011 they created a flurry of new civil associations; now many are back indoors.
  • Turnout in the June 2014 elections was 18%, down from 60% in 2012, and the Islamists fared even worse than before
  • Dismissing the results, an alliance of Islamist, Misratan and Berber militias called Libya Dawn launched a six-week assault on Tripoli. The newly elected parliament decamped to Tobruk, some 1,300km east
  • Grasping for a figleaf of legitimacy, Libya Dawn reconstituted the pre-election GNC and appointed a new government
  • So today Libya is split between two parliaments—both boycotted by their own oppositions and inquorate—two governments, and two central-bank governors.
  • The army—which has two chiefs of staff—is largely split along ethnic lines, with Arab soldiers in Arab tribes rallying around Dignity and the far fewer Misratan and Berber ones around Libya Dawn.
  • Libya Dawn controls the bulk of the territory and probably has more fighters at its disposal.
  • General Haftar’s Dignity, which has based its government in Beida, has air power and, probably, better weaponry
  • the Dignity movement proclaims itself America’s natural ally in the war on terror and the scourge of jihadist Islam
  • Libya Dawn’s commanders present themselves as standard-bearers of the revolution against Qaddafi now continuing the struggle against his former officers
  • Ministers in the east vow to liberate Tripoli from its “occupation” by Islamists, all of whom they denounce as terrorists
  • threatens to take the war to Egypt if Mr Sisi continues to arm the east. Sleeping cells could strike, he warns, drawn from the 2m tribesmen of Libyan origin in Egypt.
  • Yusuf Dawar
  • The struggle over the Gulf of Sirte area, which holds Libya’s main oil terminals and most of its oil reserves, threatens to devastate the country’s primary asset
  • And in the Sahara, where the largest oilfields are, both sides have enlisted ethnic minorities as proxies
  • ibya Dawn has drafted in the brown-skinned Tuareg, southern cousins of the Berbers; Dignity has recruited the black-skinned Toubou. As a result a fresh brawl is brewing in the Saharan oasis of Ubari, which sits at the gates of the al-Sharara oilfield, largest of them all.
  • Oil production has fallen and become much more volatile
  • oil is worth half as much as it was a year ago
  • The Central Bank is now spending at three times the rate that it is taking in oil money
  • The bank is committed to neutrality, but is based in Tripoli
  • Tripoli may have a little more access to cash, but is in bad shape in other ways
  • Fuel supplies and electricity are petering out
  • Crime is rising; carjacking street gangs post their ransom demands on Twitter
  • In Fashloum
  • residents briefly erected barricades to keep out a brigade of Islamists, the Nuwassi
  • “No to Islamists and the al-Qaeda gang” reads the roadside graffiti
  • Libya’s ungoverned spaces are growing,
  • Each month 10,000 migrants set sail for Europe
  • On January 3rd, IS claimed to have extended its reach to Libya’s Sahara too, killing a dozen soldiers at a checkpoint
  • The conflict is as likely to spread as to burn itself out.
  • the Western powers
  • have since been conspicuous by their absence. Chastened by failure in Afghanistan and Iraq, they have watched from the sidelines
  • Obama washed his hands of Libya after Islamists killed his ambassador
  • Italy, the former colonial power, is the last country to have a functioning embassy in Tripoli.
  • Even under Qaddafi the country did not feel so cut off
  • Dignity is supported not just by Mr Sisi but also by the United Arab Emirates, which has sent its own fighter jets into the fray as well as providing arms
  • The UAE’s Gulf rival, Qatar, and Turkey have backed the Islamists and Misratans in the west
  • If oil revenues were to be put into an escrow account, overseas assets frozen and the arms embargo honoured he thinks it might be possible to deprive fighters of the finance that keeps them fighting and force them to the table
  • Until 1963 Libya was governed as three federal provinces—Cyrenaica in the east, Fezzan in the south and Tripolitania in the west
  • The old divisions still matter
  • the marginalised Cyrenaicans harked back to the time when their king split his time between the courts of Tobruk and Beida and when Arabs from the Bedouin tribes of the Green Mountains ran his army
  • Tensions between those tribes and Islamist militias ran high from the start.
  • July 2011 jihadists keen to settle scores with officers who had crushed their revolt in the late 1990s killed the NTC’s commander-in-chief, Abdel Fattah Younis, who came from a powerful Arab tribe in the Green Mountains. In June 2013 the Transitional Council of Barqa (the Arab name for Cyrenaica), a body primarily comprised of Arab tribes, declared the east a separate federal region, and soon after allied tribal militias around the Gulf of Sirte took control of the oilfields.
  • In the west, indigenous Berbers, who make up about a tenth of the population, formed a council of their own and called on larger Berber communities in the Maghreb and Europe for support
  • Port cities started to claim self-government and set up their own border controls.
  • Derna—a small port in the east famed for having sent more jihadists per person to fight in Iraq than anywhere else in the world
  • opposed NATO intervention and insisted that the NTC was a pagan (wadani) not national (watani) council
  • Some in Derna have now declared their allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the caliph of the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq.
  • In December the head of America’s Africa command told reporters that IS was training some 200 fighters in the town.
aacosta8

Arab Media & Society - 0 views

www.arabmediasociety.com/?article=769

Arab Media Cyberactivism Egypt Social Media

shared by aacosta8 on 26 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • aacosta8 on 26 Jan 16
     
    Arab Media & Society is the primary reference for understanding the role of media in shaping Arab societies and the broader Muslim world. New media avenues enabled an effective form of citizen journalism.
mcooka

Saudi Arabia's education system in the spotlight again - Al Arabiya English - 0 views

english.alarabiya.net/...em-in-the-spotlight-again.html

#Middle East #Education #Saudi Arabia

shared by mcooka on 27 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Education in Saudi Arabia is in the spotlight again with the appointment of a new minister for this famously problematic ministry. In fact, education has always been a main concern for Saudi officials involved in public affairs and they were about to lose hope that the ministry, and the education sector as a whole, could be fixed. Whenever unemployment, labor and terrorism issues are brought up, education becomes the main concern of parliament and the media.
  • The report only covers 13 Arab countries where statistical information was available. Among those countries is Saudi Arabia whose statistics reveal that about half of the male students did not succeed in acquiring basic education after four years of primary school. Girls, however, were better because one third were able to acquire the basic requirements in education and thus they recorded the highest difference between boys and girls in the Arab world.
  • . This is the crisis tackled by the Brookings report, a crisis manifested through protests and anger in the streets of the Arab Spring countries.
  • mcooka on 27 Jan 16
     
    Education in Saudi Arabia. While this article is a year old, it shows the beginning of a hopeful future in Saudi education which has been lacking. 
mcooka

How the education system in Egypt works | A World At School - 0 views

www.aworldatschool.org/...pt-education-system-works-1699

education egypt school

shared by mcooka on 04 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • All levels of education are free within any government-run schools - there are great differences in educational attainment between the rich and the poor, also known as the “wealth gap”.
  • Generally speaking, there are two types of government schools: Arabic Schools and Experimental Language.
  • 75 students per class for some of them.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Ordinary schools
  • Language schools 
  • Religious schools
  • nternational schools
  • n 2010, a total of 2,646,000 students were enrolled across all tertiary levels. They attended one of 23 public universities, including Al-Azhar University, the oldest continuously running university in the world. There are 19 private universities; 18 public institutes of higher education and 81 private higher institutes.
  • verall literacy rate in Egypt is 72%
  • 80.3% for males and 63.5% for females
  • educe gender disparity in education and to achieve the 2015 Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education
  • mcooka on 04 Feb 16
     
    This goes into the education systems in Egypt. This discusses the past times of children as well while they are in school. The education system is relatively free if attending a government-run school.
mcooka

Jordan - Educational System-overview - Students, School, Schools, and Secondary - State... - 0 views

education.stateuniversity.com/...UCATIONAL-SYSTEM-OVERVIEW.html

education jordan program students school

shared by mcooka on 16 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • The present structure of the Jordanian educational system comprises formal and nonformal systems
  • A compulsory stage for children ages 6 to 15 (grades 1-10), consisting of primary school (grades 1-6) and preparatory school (grades 7-10).
  • A comprehensive secondary education (academic and vocational) and applied secondary education (training centers and apprenticeship).
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Higher education, either a two-year intermediate level course offered by community colleges or four years of university level courses, either in public or private institutions. The student's achievement on the General Secondary Education Certificate Examination is the sole criterion for admission into higher education institutes.
  • Under this system, students in grades 4 through 10 may repeat a grade twice. After that they are automatically promoted. In the preparatory stage, grade repetition is allowed only once. At the secondary level, students are allowed to repeat once in a government school provided they are younger than 17; otherwise they must transfer to a private school.
  • Community colleges and universities vary in required attendance from two years in community colleges to six or more in universities based on the type of institution and specialization
  • he majority of students are enrolled in schools directly controlled by the MOE. Some schools fall under the jurisdiction of the cultural bureau of the Ministry of Defense. The Ministry of Health oversees students studying for medical careers; it established the first nursing school in 1953-54.
  • Instruction is in Arabic, but English is introduced in public schools in the fifth grade and is widely used. A new policy was recently approved to start teaching English in the first grade beginning in the academic year 2001-02
  • The school year runs for 210 days from September to June.
  • All public schools and most private ones use the same textbooks. Under Law 16 of 1964, the School Curricula and Textbooks Division of the MOE is responsible for producing and printing the textbooks. They are distributed free of charge during the compulsory stage, but there is a nominal fee at the secondary stage.
  • Jordanian public schools are single sex schools.
  • In 1997, however, only 16 percent of students were attending two shift schools and 11 percent went to rented buildings.
  • As a whole, education in Jordan is considered an investment in the future. Skilled citizens are necessary. Before the Gulf War, most graduates could find good jobs in the oil-rich countries, and the money they sent home helped the Jordanian economy to grow. It is not uncommon for a family living at subsistence level to be able to send a child to a university (Abu-Zeinh).
  • mcooka on 16 Feb 16
     
    This article goes into great depth about Jordan Educational systems. Things such as public vs private, which still use the same books, and single sex schools. It also talks about public and two-year junior college education system. 
mcooka

Education caught in the crossfire of conflict | #ChildrenofSyria - 0 views

childrenofsyria.info/...education

education Syria system war crossfire conflict

shared by mcooka on 24 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • he attack on Al Hayat Primary School in Qaboun, eastern Damascus in November 2014 killed 11 children and injured many more.
  • But the Qaboun assault was just one of at least 68 attacks on schools across Syria between January and December 2014 alone
  • round 1 in 5 – have been damaged, destroyed, or are currently sheltering internally displaced people according to data gathered by UNICEF
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • nside Syria, two million children and adolescents are currently out of school.
  • “We simply cannot allow an entire generation of children and adolescents to be lost to ignorance, exploitation, despair and radicalisation.”
  • International humanitarian law, which declares that schools be respected as zones of peace and safe havens for children, has counted for little. The long-term consequences for children – and their place in the Syria of the future – can only be guessed at.
  • utside Syria, more than 50 per cent (600,000) of Syrian refugee children and adolescents are out of school, and this number continues to grow.
  • The campaigns include distribution of teaching and learning materials as well as school bags with stationary. Similar campaigns have been rolled out in countries hosting refugees.
  • When I go to the refugee camps and see the smiling faces of children, then I think we should not give up in the face of difficulties,
  • ublic schools receiving Syrian children are overstretched. Non-formal education spaces cannot absorb large numbers of students.
  • achers are not well equipped to work with stress, overcrowding and difference. Syrian children and adolescents are receiving multiple and dispersed forms of curricula and content that are not adapted to their capacity and needs and that come with enormous challenges in certification and accreditation.
  • mcooka on 24 Feb 16
     
    This article also talks about the problems Syrian children face regarding education. International laws about "schools remain out of conflict" has gone ignored for a long time. Public Schools are overstretched in neighboring countries due to extra children in schools. The most interesting part of this article is the video which goes into more details about the growth of education in the last four years. 
1 - 20 of 27 Next ›
Showing 20▼ items per page