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Essays for studying the Middle East - Coggle Diagram

- - - - The MENA is a highly diverse region with differing political and social challanges. There is a great deal of spatial inequality on social issues with women's rights varrying from country to country as well as across economic and education lines (p89 of the UN Report).
        
        Simerly the political challnages faced by different countries do vary both on a regional basis within countries and on a international level.
        
        Therefore, in this essay I will dicuss the general political and social challange trends across the MENA focusing on women's rights and equality and inter-ethnic conflict.
    - - MENA faces multiple challanges in a social and political front. Sex inequality remains a problem across the region with the burdens of life falling more on women then on men and female freedom remaining poor. Contuined political challanges focused around inter-ethnic conflicts also remain with countries like Lebanon, more then 2 decades on from the civil war, still bitterly devided along sectarian lines. Milton-Edwards, B. (2018) Contemporty Politics in the Middle East. Polity Press. --p107
    - - Interethnic conflict has generated the ethnic security dilemma that poses a great challange to the political stability of indivual countries and the region in general. -- https://leeds.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma991019693698605181&context=L&vid=44LEE_INST:VU1&lang=en&search_scope=My_Inst_CI_not_ebsco&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=AlmostEverything&query=any,contains,social%20challenges%20middle%20east&offset=0
        
        The ethnic security dilemma focuses on the idea that in MENA countries ethnic groups identify the need to either consolodate power within a political system or break away from the state to protect their people. But, when either of these approaches are followed this helps destablise the country and leaders of ther ethnic groups sens that they need to do same protect their own people.
        
        There is a great deal of agreement within the scholarly community that these interethnic struggles played desiive roles in the collapse of Lebanon and the civil wars in both Syria and Iraq. -- https://leeds.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma991019693698605181&context=L&vid=44LEE_INST:VU1&lang=en&search_scope=My_Inst_CI_not_ebsco&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=AlmostEverything&query=any,contains,social%20challenges%20middle%20east&offset=0 -- Milton-Edwards, B. (2018) Contemporty Politics in the Middle East. Polity Press. --p106
    - - The greatest social challange facing the Middle East is gender inequality.
        
        There is major male-female inequality around work in Middle Eastern countries.
        
        Across the entire region women do more unpaid care work then men. Where the inequality is lowest (Qatar) women still do 64.4% of work, but in many countries it is much higher with women doing over 80% of the work (Morroc, Iraq, Tunisia and Algeria). In general unpaid work is done 5.1 to 6.2 times more often by women then men, whilst the global average is 3.2 times. -- https://www.undp.org/arab-states/publications/arab-human-development-report-2022-expanding-opportunities-inclusive-and-resilient-recovery-post-covid-era
        
        Another major worked based problem is the poor provision of maternity leave with only 4 MENA countries offering the ILO's 14 week recomended minimum. -- https://www.undp.org/arab-states/publications/arab-human-development-report-2022-expanding-opportunities-inclusive-and-resilient-recovery-post-covid-era -- this limits women's ability to renter the workforce after having children.
        
        Another area inwhich gender inequality in present is in high rates of domestic voielnce.The WHO estimates that 31% of lifetime intimate partners face domestic abuse, with there being a seccondary layer of social inequality as refugge women are even more suspectable. -- https://www.undp.org/arab-states/publications/arab-human-development-report-2022-expanding-opportunities-inclusive-and-resilient-recovery-post-covid-era
        
        This links in with a generally patriarchal family structure across the region. It is not uncommon for fathers/husbans to have the ability to restrict movement and jobs of their daughters/wives. --https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N78ginq7N-PYqk8fxCdqNypfnbV0C6Oun_4lZsiaCko/edit
- - - - Al-Jazeera is a major Arab broadcaster that has been at the centre of long running debates over its infleunce within Middle Eastern politics.
        
        Acedemia has struggled to provide a conclusive assement of the role in changing politics Al-Jazeera has had, some have praised it for increasing political particpation through engament in political talk shows (Lahlali, 2011, p85), meanwhile BBC journalist John Simpson describe al-Jazeera has having 'altered the entire polity of the Middle East' (2003).
        
        However, others have been less praising the Carnegie Endowment for Internal Peace described it as 'wishful thinking' that al-Jazeera spread political freedom (Miles, 2006, p22) and others have raised concenrs that it is being suplanted by social media as the driver of revolution (Sultan, 2013, p252).
      - In this essay I will argue that although al-Jazeera has had an infleunce in changing the political landscape of the Middle East through raising political particpation and awarness, much of this is theoretical and that since al-Jazeera has launched there has not been substianal democratision.
    - - Its role as an agent of change
        
        Al-Jazeera's main role in changing the political landscape of the Middle East has been through its expansion of political debate and particpation.
        
        Al-Jazeera has been recorginased a relativily free news organsition (Zayani, 2005, p1), that has used its programming and community engament processes to expand the voice of Arabs on political issues (Lahlali, 2011).
        
        This enagement has been most clearly done by the TV programme The Opposite Direction which brings on a range of geusts from across politis to debate political issues. Durring these debates people are able to phone in and voice their own opinions on the issue (Lahlali, 2001, p85). This is directly enaging people in the political system.
        
        This enagement is occuring clearly in the public on live TV which has meant that political debate has moved from the coffee house (a relativly small sphere) to internal TV (a very large sphere) (Zayani, 2005, p38).
        
        Al-Jazeera also played an important role in the Arab Spring protests and revolutions being a key broadcaster as the protests took root (Sultan, 2013, 253).
        
        Al-Jazeera played an important role in the Arab Spring protests and revolutions (Harb, 2011), when early protests began in Tunisia they were broadcast across the entire region by al-Jazeera enabling this news to reach a wider range of people (Abdelmoula, 2015, p371).
        
        Protesters saw the importance of spreading news of the revolution across the country and region because al-Jazeera recived footage directly from the protestors (Abdelmoula, 2015, p371). Unless protesters saw the value to the protests of having al-Jazeera broadcast this footage it makes little sense to waste time getting this footage to the channel.
        
        It was not just through broadcasting the protests that the channel was enaged in the Arab Spring, but its programmes would frequently have geusts on to discuss the events (Sultan, 2013). Geusts on al-Jazeera are not restricted on what they can and can not say, instead are encrouged to enage in active debate (Lahlali, 2011).
        
        Many of these guests were supportive of the revolution and critical of the governemnt (Sultan, 2013, p255) expanding and ampliphing the anti-governemnt voices. Nabil Sultan goes so far as to suggest that protests in Bengharzi were caused when a geust on The Opposite Direction insulted the Libyain poeple by suggestin they has abbonded the Quran for The Green Book (2013, pp255-256).
      - Failure of democractistion
        
        Although al-Jazeera has had a role in making change in the Middle East, this change can only be considered minimal due to the widely accepted lack of democratisation in the region.
        
        Although al-Jazeera played an important role in the revolutions (Harb, 2011) to claim this makes it a change maker implies that these revolutions led to realistic change.
        
        However, only one country in the Middle East is viewed as a democracy, Israel, whilst 75% of the population live in not free countries (Grother, 2023).
        
        This lack of change is also present in countries generally associated with the Arab Spring such as Egypt which now ranks lower in democracy rankings then it did in 2006 (despite an increase following the Arab Spring) (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2023).
        
        Following the protests there actually only developed one new democracy in the region (Tunisia) which saw sustained democratic development (Spiering, 2020, pp527-528).
        
        However, even here Spiering is writting four years ago and both Freedom House and Economist Inteligence Unit (who have produced more recent works) both rank Tunisia as non-democratic/not-free (Grother, 2023) (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2023).
    - - It is acurate to say that Simpson's claim that al-Jazeera had 'altered the entire polity of the Middle East' (2003) is more like what the Hugh Miles described as 'wishful thinking' (2006).
        
        Instead al-Jazeera has helped develop some political change by better enaging the Arab public in politics, however, this change is minimal and has had no real benefits for democratistion.