Theme

Conflict & Political Violence

‍Conflict and violence in the Arab Region are mostly caused by ethnic, religious, and demographic differences. Such differences tend to impact the area's political spectrum as they affect political decisions made by nations. This is especially important for Arab states as their borders tend to divide ethnicities and religious groups, which fuel political decisions and differences. Because of such situations, various civil wars sprawl out, affecting the region and its political reigns. The cultural variance is hence open to exploitation by different groups that may want to challenge regional governments. This diversity also tends to create factions within governments that harbor different ideologies, eventually leading to similar consequences. Many citizens displaced by such conflicts flee and take refuge in other nations, which creates new demographic issues, due to the differences in cultural views that span into the region. The conflict harbors an environment of political chaos, aiding major powers to seek control in the region, further extending their sphere of influence through causing international involvement in the region. These differences that give rise to humanitarian, political, and economic hardships between nations and factions impact the quality of governance and require solutions that address the root of the problem.

Weak Governance

The instability in and around the region is mainly affected by the misgovernance of different nations, causing the nations to fall into brutal civil wars. Governance includes the systems and rules that direct how a region handles issues and influences its political culture, which is prominent for the Arab States, as most of them have faced many changes of rule from colonizers to dictatorships, and from dictatorships to new means of ruling brought by the Arab Spring. These leadership changes and added interference from outside powers have led the region into decades of brutal conflict, human rights violations, and developmental or industrial hardships. Such hardships have also been brought on by the acts of non-state militias all over the region, trying to take over the governance of many nations. These armed groups have posed serious threats to the security of civilians, governments, and the environment and infrastructure around them. Additionally, the ramifications of said instabilities have driven people out of their homes and from their countries, with hopes of starting brand new lives, with minimal resources. This weakness of governmental structures in the area calls for immediate action from the international community and a plethora of new solutions in order to solve these decades-long issues.

Migration & Displacement

Arab nations are, now more than ever, notorious for the millions of displaced refugees who were left with no choice but to migrate due to political instability. Nearly 14 million people have been displaced from the Middle East since the beginning of the Arab Spring in 2011. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Syria alone has produced around 6 million migrants followed by nations such as Iraq and Yemen. Such refugees may leave the country through legal means and immigrate legally, however many of them flee without proper documentation or monitoring. The refugees who flee without monitoring tend to bring with them instability as they become burdens on welcoming states. These migrations affect migrant-harboring nations and spread the ramifications of conflict around, while migrants face troubles of their own as they enter other states with minimal resources to sustain their lives. Most of these issues stem from the decade-old uprising caused by the effects of the Arab Spring, which initially had peaceful intentions but has become a lingering issue for the international community. The main cause of these migrations, the Arab Spring, has decimated the Middle East’s demographic makeup as waves of immigrants have fled with minimal monitoring. These results of a decade-long conflict require diligent collaboration between nations and organizations as the situation gets more dire as time passes.

Radicalization and Violent Extremism

In the Arabian Peninsula, various groups tend to radicalize and become violent by vowing to protect their people, often harming others. Such violent groups have, with the Arab Spring, begun more extremist campaigns to control the land of their own to create new nations or emirates. These extremists tend to use child soldiers, attack civilians, and usually disregard international law, which pose detrimental humanitarian problems. Their effects create power vacuums eventually resulting in all-out civil wars with no end in sight. Political extremism tends to be rooted in the oppressive rule of heads of state in war-torn nations, where controversial leaders' rules are challenged by other groups; their extremist and radical points of view almost always harm their own citizens and lead to interventions from outside powers. Religious extremist groups tend to rally groups of people to create power voids. The wars in the region have displaced millions, while involving larger world powers. Finally there are sectarian differences, the centuries-long issue of sectarian differences have created divisions between various states in the region. To solve these issues, urgent aid from the international community is needed; a balance of dialogue and mediation is the hope of the international community to alleviate the effects of extremism in the region.

Economic Slowdown

The yearly economic growth of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is projected to be around 2.7% next year according to the World Economic Forum (WEF) which is not only extremely low but also does not resemble the economic growth in many Arab nations since outlying oil producers create most of the economic output. Except for those outliers, there are nations which have gone through unrest, civil wars and crises, those states are the ones that have been unprecedented economic failures. Political tension naturally leads to inflation in many nations as their buying power decreases, their economies tend to slow down. The effect of monetary policy is undeniably clear in that sense however, another source of the said crisis is due to the unemployment rate. According to the United Nations (UN), the unemployment rate among Arab states was 12%. This means almost one in eight of the working population is unemployed, then many of those unemployed citizens cannot afford necessities due to the high inflation rates which leads them to live in the streets, a major reason why north of 100 million people live in poverty in the Arab region. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has also reported a slow down of the economy of the Middle East, which is due to the overall slowdown in the world economy coupled with political tension and security issues in the Arab region as a whole. The issue calls for increased dialogue not only between nations but also international organizations, as the world’s main source of crude oil faces an economic recession.

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