CIDOB broadens its focus from the Middle East and North Africa to the countries of the Sahel, Iran, Turkey and the Gulf states and covers three levels of analysis –local, regional and global– focussing on dynamics of fragmentation, interdependence and marginalisation. The reconfiguration of the regional order, the changing dynamics in the configuration of alliances, the proliferation of conflict zones and the overlapping of lines of division are addressed.
Moussa Bourekba, investigador principal, CIDOB
Carme Colomina, Senior Research Fellow, CIDOB (coordinated and edited)
These Booklets, created under the MENARA Project framework, translate scholarly-sounded research into helpful insights for practitioners, including humanitarian agencies, development agencies and NGOs, the private sector and academia.
MENARA Project, led by the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB) and Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), confirms that the US retreat from the region and Russia’s willingness to fill the power vacuum in Syria, in addition to China flexing its economic muscles across the region, have created a new reality.
For over 6 years now, the Syrian population has been suffering one of the largest conflicts and humanitarian crisis of the last 75 years. This appalling situation is the result of the armed repression unleashed by the regime of Bachar Al Asad during the spring of 2011 to crush the massive peaceful mobilizations demanding democracy and civil rights, and the end of the police state and institutionalized corruption.
CIDOB’s senior research fellows Eckart Woertz, Blanca Garcés and Eduard Soler analyse the importance of the Mosul offensive, its humanitarian consequences and the risks that it may entail.
“European Youth Cooperation Schemes in the Southern Mediterranean Context: One for all, all for one?”
Within the framework of SAHWA Project, an EU-funded FP7 Project led by the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB), video-recorded Life Stories (Deliverable D4.2) were carried out in 4 out of the 5 SAHWA countries - Algeria, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia – between April and September 2015.
The fifth anniversary of the fall of Ben Ali is a bittersweet moment for most Tunisians. On the one hand, they are proud to be the only Arab country to succeed in advancing towards an inclusive democracy. On the other, insecurity is on the rise, the economy is flat, unemployment is up, the price of staple foods is rising and the image of the President Beji Caid Essebsi has been tarnished as he has imposed his son Hafedh as leader of the majority party which he helped found three years ago, Nida Tunes. CIDOB will continue to analyse, as it has been doing until now, Tunisia’s economic, political and security challenges as well as Europe’s policies towards this country and the entire region.
Eduard Soler i Lecha, research coordinator at CIDOB, is one of the contributors of the latest report of the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS). The report, entitled “Arab futures three scenarios for 2025” has been coordinated by Florence Gaub and Alexandra Laban.
Food Import Needs of the Middle East and North Africa,Ecological Risks and New Dimensions of South-South Cooperation with Africa, Latin America and South-East Asia.
Barcelona, 29-30 January 2015The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is one of the most water-stressed regions in the world and its largest net-importer of cereals. Affordable food imports are crucial for its future food security. Countries with tropical agriculture like Brazil are playing an increasing role in MENA food supplies. Apart from policy options to sustainably intensify regional agricultural production, trade will play a crucial role for MENA economies to achieve food security.
The SAHWA Project is a FP-7 interdisciplinary collaborative research project led by the Barcelona Center for International Affairs (CIDOB) and co-financed by the European Commission as part of its Research Framework Programme.
This project examines the processes of socio-technical transition to solar energy in the Mediterranean region with a specific focus on sector policy reform, investment risks, the limits and potential of regional cooperation.
Rural Development, Food Security and Political Stability in Iraq (RUDEFOPOS-IRAQ) is a project that is funded by a Marie Curie grant of the European Commission. It analyzes current challenges of food security in Iraq, opinions about such challenges among Iraqi academics and experts and the history of the multilateral UN embargo against Iraq in the 1990s based on Iraqi archival sources.
The CIDOB-OCP Policy Center partnership project deals with the Western Mediterranean Cooperation and Integration Potential. Within this framework it focuses on sustainable agriculture, food security and the water-energy-food nexus in particular.
CIDOB participates as a partner in Med-Reset, a project that aims to re-invigorating the partnership between the two shores of the Mediterranean
CIDOB participates as a partner in a project that will analyse the Future of EU-Turkey relations
The MENARA Project analyses the drivers of change for the regional order in the Middle East and North Africa and the implications of those geopolitical shifts for Europe.
VIADUCT’s promotes research, teaching and policy dialogue on EU-Turkey relations
This project will address the role of women and youth in preventing violent extremism in seven countries: Germany, Spain, France, Jordan, Morocco, the United Kingdom and Tunisia.
The RE-DEV project builds knowledge on how to facilitate a sustained transition to renewable energy in Rapidly Developing Countries.
This initiative presents alternative scenarios for Euro-Mediterranean relations and highlights the need to strengthen cooperative relations between the EU and its southern neighbours.
The project sets out to rethink, reshape, and review the EU’s democracy support policies in its Eastern & Southern Neighbourhoods. Conceiving democracy support as a social practice requiring the collective democractic learning of all stakeholders involved, the project’s consortium will pilot test a Democracy Learning Loop to create new channels and tools for interaction between the EU and its neighbours.
