Author: Imad Naddaf – لقد أمضيتُ زمنا طويلا من حياتي درستُ فيه تاريخ سورية جيداً وخضتُ نقاشات واسعة حول ماضيها وحاضرها ومستقبلها الوطني، وعانيت من آرائي السياسية التي كنت أحملها وقضيت في سجني تدمر وصيدنايا قرابة عشر سنوات إبان الحكم الديكتاتوري السابق ..
Author: Imad Naddaf – I have spent a long period of my life studying Syria’s history in depth and engaging in extensive debates about its national past, present and future, and I have paid a heavy price for the political views I hold, spending nearly ten years in Tadmur and Saydnaya prisons under the former dictatorial rule. On that basis, I consider it a duty to set out my own view, while passing over the well-known historical facts related to the colonial targeting of the region and earlier partition plans, most notably the Sykes-Picot Agreement.
Author: Natalia Valero – Recent and past conflicts in Africa reflect the diverse and complex political, economic, cultural, and ethnic background of the continent. In countries such as South Africa, Ethiopia, and Nigeria, a federal system with multilevel governance has been presented as a model able to accommodate diversity. In a multilevel system, cooperation, partnership, and power distribution operate to varying degrees in order to deal with divisions along territorial, social, political, and cultural lines. In this way, federal governance systems may act as a peacebuilding tool.
Author: Anthony Bou-chrouche – For almost 50 years, Lebanon has been plagued with problems of civil unrest due to a lack of social cohesion that stems from religious differences among the groups that comprise its population. The country is home to 18 different religious communities, each of which possess constitutionally enshrined levels of representation in Parliament. In the legislature, generally seats are divided equally between Christian and Muslim communities (with some exceptions like that of the representation of the Druze community).
Author: Victoria Rose King – Since the end of the Cold War, the frequency with which federalism has been adopted as a peacebuilding tool in deeply divided states has increased. This is due to its perceived “ability to satisfy the aspirations and demands of both minority and majority groups: giving minority groups (limited) control over their own economic, political and social affairs, while also sustaining the territorial integrity of the extant state” (Anderson & Keil, 2017).
Author: Asma Zribi – The outbreak of COVID-19 impacted how governments operate and deliver services, including security. The pandemic shone a spotlight on governance shortcomings in supporting the most vulnerable and underrepresented populations, who have been disproportionately impacted in health and economic terms. State security providers, in their turn, have been required to cooperate with public health authorities, adapt to rapidly changing emergency regulations, and provide services that are not generally within their mandates.