There are over 1.8 billion youth in the world today. While there is no clear universal definition of “youth”, the 1.8 million includes individuals up to the age of 33. The percentage of youth in the global population is the largest in history, posing both challenges and opportunities for...

Children and young people suffer the most from the impact of war and in post conflict rebuilding.  According to a recent Save the Children report, children and young people are more at risk in conflict situations now, than they have been at any time in the last 20 years....

The Islamic State has lost almost all of its territory across Iraq and Syria. However, since 2014, it has underhandedly entered the Khorasan region, which covers territory in parts of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Officially established on 10 January 2015, the affiliate group is known as Islamic State-Khorasan Province...

Introduction Long considered a moderate Muslim country, Syria has become one of the world’s most radicalized conflict zones. Despite its peaceful and political origins, the civil-war has allowed Daesh and likeminded violent radical groups to turn the country into a recruiting ground and operating base. The significant local and...

The Agenda for Humanity has aimed to overcome the humanitarian – development divide for the sake of more responsibility and sustainability. A range of international institutions, such as FAO, UNHCR, UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF, to name a few, has been combining efforts to develop a common approach to achievement of...

To explain the troubles facing Iraq, whether violence, political stalemate, mass demonstrations, or other, a favorite explanatory variable is the various ethnic and religious cleavages found among the Iraqi population.  Recent crises belie that standard analytical paradigm.  An alternate analysis is that absent other overwhelming factors, Iraqi dysfunction and...

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a large-scale international cooperation project which was announced by the Chinese government in 2013. This grand project aims to improve international cooperation across regions and continents, linking together more than 60 countries and (re)creating both maritime (the “belt”) and terrestrial (“the road”)...

Although it is on the battlefields of Syria and Iraq that the destructive capacity of political violence driven by religious dogma is most apparent, the impact of soteriological narratives have become apparent across the world. The contours of power continue to be recast across the Arab world, which has...

According to Eurostat, an unprecedented number of asylum seekers arrived in Europe in 2015, the majority of whom were primarily fleeing the civil war in Syria. As of early 2018, Germany has been host to the largest number of people, having granted protection to 593,410 asylum seekers in 2015...

The small country of Djibouti in the Horn of Africa made the headlines in May 2018 due to claims that soldiers on the new Chinese base were pointing lasers at U.S. aircraft landing at the American base. Djibouti is the only “official,” permanent American base in Africa, and the...

Liwa al-Baqir (The Baqir Brigade, named for the fifth Shi’a Imam) is a militia group that is as part of the Syrian “Local Defence Forces”  and strongly linked to Iran, Hezbollah and Harakat Al-Nujaba. The origins of the group appear to date to around 2012 in the eastern and...

War and chaos have been present in Afghanistan for almost all of the past four decades.  The current conflict there in 2001, when the United States and NATO allies invaded in response to al-Qaeda attacks on the United States on September 11 of that year.  Recently the United States...