MENA

The renewed instability in the Middle East has exposed Africa's continued vulnerability to external energy shocks. Shipping disruptions through the Strait of Hormuz, the maritime chokepoint through which roughly one-fifth of global oil and LNG supplies transit, have once again demonstrated that African fuel security remains highly dependent on geopolitical developments beyond the continent. While many African economies have traditionally relied on refined petroleum imports from Gulf ...

The Resolution adopted by an overwhelming majority of elected European officials in Strasbourg on June 10, 2021, on "the violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the exploitation of minors by the authorities in the migration crisis in Ceuta" (2021/2747/RSP), could not fail to leave its mark.Decoding the ResolutionThe Resolution shocked Moroccans to such an extent that it was quickly set aside at the time, as if there were a wish to forget it as fast as possible. ...

Cuando estalla una crisis, esta da lugar a la activación de reflejos para su gestión y la limitación de sus efectos. Comienzan, entonces, los análisis y las suposiciones sobre las disfunciones, los incumplimientos y las fallas que la ocasionaron. En algunos casos, la teoría de la conspiración se inmiscuye y las hipótesis buscan a los autores que provocaron la crisis, sus designios y sus objetivos. Sin embargo, la teoría de la gestión de crisis nos enseña que una crisis surge según ...

When a crisis erupts, it sets crisis-management reflexes in motion and prompts efforts to contain its effects. Analysts then begin looking for the malfunctions, oversights, and failures that caused it. In some cases, conspiracy theories creep in, and speculation turns to who engineered the crisis, and to what end. Crisis-management theory teaches us, however, that a crisis unfolds under conditions that favor its emergence. Crises take shape in an environment where latent vulnerabil ...

Lorsqu’une crise éclate, elle donne lieu à l’actionnement des réflexes pour sa gestion et la limitation de ses effets. Commencent, alors, les analyses et les suppositions sur les dysfonctionnements, les manquements et les défaillances ayant entrainé ladite crise. Dans certains cas, la théorie du complot s’ingère et les hypothèses cherchent les auteurs ayant provoqué la crise, leurs desseins et leurs buts.Cependant, la théorie de gestion des crises nous apprend qu’une crise inte ...

The Mecca Agreement: A First Step Towards a New Regional Security Architecture? On 7 August, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan signed the Mecca Agreement, a trilateral defense pact aimed at strengthening collective security and defense cooperation between the three countries. At its core lies a collective defense commitment under which an attack on one member is considered an attack on all three. While many details concerning its practical implementation remain unclear, the agreeme ...

THE END OF AN ERAThe US-Israeli war on Iran, a 'little excursion' envisaged to be over within a matter of weeks, has entered its fourth month. Shock waves ripple across the globe. This war is just one in a series of recent crises which have fractured the international community, making the decades of the 2020's among the most disruptive in recent history. Each crisis compounds the deleterious effects of those which came before. The war in Iran is no exception. It abruptly stalled ec ...

With America's 250th anniversary, there will be many analyses of the country's history from domestic and international perspectives. But the meaning of the American story should also be assessed in key regional settings, from Asia to Latin America, and in transatlantic terms. In this vein, it is worth exploring the U.S. engagement in and with the Mediterranean world, one of the first places of U.S. international activism, and a setting where diverse aspects of U.S. foreign policy ha ...

The close relationship between energy and geopolitics is well established. The same holds true for several armed conflicts. In recent years, however, the conflict most closely intertwined with energy has been the 2026 Iran War, which began on February 28. A ceasefire has been in effect since April 8, and a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed by Iran and the United States on June 17. Nevertheless, as demonstrated by Iran's attacks on commercial vessels and recent U.S. strike ...

Les relations, très étroites, entre l’énergie et la géopolitique sont bien connues. Cela vaut aussi pour plusieurs conflits armés. Mais, dans la période récente, le conflit le plus lié à l’énergie est la guerre d’Iran de 2026, qui a débuté le 28 février. Un cessez-le-feu est en vigueur depuis le 8 avril et un protocole d’accord a été signé le 17 juin par l’Iran et les États-Unis. Mais, comme le montrent les attaques de l’Iran contre des navires et les frappes américaines de ces dern ...

Cet essai analyse la guerre Iran–États-Unis–Israël de 2026 comme un révélateur de la transformation profonde de l’ordre international. À travers le prisme du droit de la mer, du détroit d’Ormuz, des alliances fragmentées, des câbles sous-marins et des flux énergétiques, il montre que le pouvoir mondial se déplace progressivement du contrôle des territoires vers la maîtrise des infrastructures de circulation. Loin de disparaître, la mondialisation entre dans une phase de connectivité ...

University campuses across the MENA region consume significant amounts of energy but lack the tools to anticipate and optimize their demand. Current monitoring systems are descriptive and reactive: they record what has already happened but provide no forward-looking intelligence. Meanwhile, commercial building management systems remain financially out of reach for most institutions in developing countries, with costs exceeding $10,000 per building.A validated framework combining art ...

Este Policy Paper también ha sido publicado en inglés y francés por Le Grand Continent La economía marroquí constituye un caso ilustrativo entre las economías de renta media, en un contexto marcado por una creciente fragmentación del entorno internacional, un crecimiento mundial anémico y una desaceleración de la convergencia. Desde 2022, su trayectoria se caracteriza por una relativa solidez, con un crecimiento superior a la media de las economías de la misma categoría. Superi ...

Ce Policy Paper a également été publiée en anglais et en espagnol par Le Grand Continent Le Maroc offre un exemple éclairant parmi les pays à revenu intermédiaire, dans un contexte marqué par une fragmentation croissante de l’environnement international, une croissance mondiale atone et un ralentissement de la convergence. Depuis 2022, sa trajectoire se distingue par une certaine robustesse, avec un rythme d’expansion supérieur à celui des autres économies de même catégorie. Dé ...

This Policy Paper has also been published in French and Spanish by Le Grand Continent Morocco offers a compelling example of how a middle-income economy can navigate a more fragmented global environment, characterized by weak growth and slower convergence. Since 2022, economic activity has remained relatively strong, with growth exceeding that of many comparable economies. Non-agricultural growth has averaged 4.4% since 2022, around 1.3 percentage points above its historical av ...

The inventory is worrisomely low The US military has fired off more than 1000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, roughly ten times the number it currently buys each year. The Pentagon used more than 1200 Patriot interceptor missiles, "more than three million dollars a pop", and more than 1000 precision strike, ground based missiles, "leaving the inventories worrisomely low." US commanders were forced to ration interceptors by letting unguided or less destructive missiles hit empty or no ...

At the end of May 2026, Israeli airstrikes targeted the surroundings of Beaufort Castle (Qalaat al-Chaqif), near Nabatiyeh, before the Israeli army announced that it had captured the site. This development raises a fundamental question: why does a medieval fortified hilltop retain military value in the age of satellites, drones, and cruise missiles?This Policy Brief argues that Beaufort's significance is geographical before it is ideological or technological. Overlooking the Litani ...

Fin mai 2026, des frappes israéliennes ont visé les abords du château de Beaufort (Qalaat al-Chaqif), près de Nabatiyeh, avant que l'armée israélienne n'en annonce la prise. Ce fait soulève une question centrale : pourquoi une hauteur fortifiée au Moyen Âge conserve-t-elle une valeur militaire à l'ère des satellites, des drones et des missiles de croisière ?Le présent Policy Brief tente de démontrer que la valeur de Beaufort est géographique avant d'être idéologique ou technologique ...

This article draws in part on perspectives shared by members of the Rihla Initiative for Green Economic Growth, whose regional insights helped inform the sections on how the costs of the war are being felt across the Global South. The war on Iran and in the Gulf has made it impossible to treat the Strait of Hormuz as a regional issue. The disruption around the Strait has moved through the world economy in concrete ways, from higher fuel bills and pressure on food and fertilizer ...

This essay argues that the current debate about the future of the international monetary system is not really about Gulf currencies, oil pricing, or de-dollarization in the narrow technical sense. It is about something deeper and more important: whether institutional trust can survive when geopolitical certainty is eroding.The Gulf monarchies—Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman—increasingly exist in a world where the United States no longer looks ...

The global energy system has entered a period of acute structural stress following the strikes by the United States and Israel on Iran in late February 2026, and the subsequent disruption of flows through the Strait of Hormuz. According to the International Energy Agency, the resulting shock marks the most severe disruption to global energy markets since the 1970s oil crises, with systemic characteristics comparable to the combined effects of those crises and the 2022 Russia-Ukraine ...

Le monde du travail est engagé dans un processus de mutation sans précédent. La quatrième révolution industrielle, portée par l’intelligence artificielle (IA) et la robotisation, a été le point de commencement d’une ère nouvelle où les repères économiques et sociaux se redéfinissent à une vitesse inédite. Ces technologies suscitent un engouement légitime et offrent des perspectives prometteuses, mais requièrent une vigilance accrue face aux incertitudes qui les entourent.Bien que, à ...

Driven by its mission to reflect on and analyze the major geopolitical, economic, and societal transformations shaping the contemporary world, and with a view to contributing to knowledge-sharing and disseminating the main outcomes of its research program, the Policy Center for the New South regularly publishes collective volumes addressing issues of particular importance to Morocco, Africa, and the broader Global/New South. In this spirit, the Center has recently released two volum ...

This paper, the fourth in a research series on services-led growth in the Global South, examines Egypt’s potential for growth and economic transformation through the integration of services into Global Value Chains (GVCs). It employs a new taxonomy that classifies services into Knowledge Services (KS), Enabling Services (ES), and Local Services (LS) and applies OECD 2025 Trade in Value-Added (TiVA), Trade in Employment (TiM), and input-output databases to benchmark Egypt against Mor ...

This paper is the third in a series of country and comparative studies that together comprise a research program on services as drivers of economic growth and structural transformation in the Global South. The paper analyzes the pattern of Tunisia's services-led economic growth from 2012- 2022 using a specialized three-category framework: knowledge services (KS), enabling services (ES), and local services (LS). Using data from the OECD Trade in Value Added (TiVA), Trade in Employmen ...

This Paper was originally published on mitvim.org.il This paper argues that the reconstruction of Gaza will depend not only on the amount of funding mobilized, but on how financing is structured, governed, and anchored within a broader politi`cal context. In a setting shaped by movement restrictions and weak institutions, financial design is not neutral but shapes priorities, distributes power, and determines what can be implemented on the ground. The paper examines the key cha ...

This paper is the second in a series examining services-led development and global value chain (GVC) integration in the Global South. It applies a three-category analytical framework covering knowledge services (ICT and professional business services), enabling services (transport, logistics, and finance), and local services (retail, hospitality, health, and personal services), to OECD Trade in Value Added indicators. The paper thus  ...

Cet oped a été publié initialement dans la revue afkar/ideas 77 (IEMed).  La politique étrangère du Maroc traverse une transition structurelle, sous l’effet de la polycrise mondiale, de la diversification de ses partenariats et de l’affirmation de nouveaux choix stratégiques. La centralité accordée aux notions de « hub », de « plateforme »ou de « corridor » traduit un glissement sémantique et fonctionnel dans le narratif national, accordant une priorité majeure aux considé ...

This paper was published as a book chapter in “The Economic Potential of Islamic Countries, Part B: Sustainability, Governance, Energy and Digital Transformation,” released by Emerald Publishing. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed significant deficiencies within social protection systems worldwide, especially in Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries. This underscores the urgent need to fortify these social protection schemes to ensure resilience in the face of crises (Sa ...

This report was originally published on the website of the Middle East Institute ( mei.edu) The following study discusses the role of Lebanon’s gold reserves in the establishment of a currency board and evaluates four policy options: a true currency board, constrained central bank reform, full dollarization, and a unified managed float. Gold reserves are relevant under all four. The conclusion is consistent across them: no monetary framework, however carefully designed and howe ...

We are now in the fifth week since the U.S. airstrike that killed top leaders of the Iranian regime, initiating a war involving the United States and Israel against the country. More than a month of mutual bombardments between Iran and Israel has ensued, extending to other Persian Gulf nations, U.S. military installations—and even Cyprus. From a global perspective, the impact has stemmed primarily from disruptions to regional production of goods and the blockade of the Strait of Hor ...

While acknowledging the centrality of security tensions and potential conflict in the Gulf, this essay intentionally sets aside a detailed treatment of military and hard-power dynamics, concentrating instead on the geoeconomic logics of capital, infrastructure, energy, and connectivity, through which Gulf states now articulate power in a fragmented world order.It examines the emergence of a new tripartite or three-pillar power configuration in the Gulf, arguing that Saudi Arabi ...

Historically, manufacturing has served as the primary pathway to economic development, offering strong scale economies, learning-by-doing effects, and the capacity to generate the foreign exchange necessary to import capital goods and technology. However, advances in robotization and artificial intelligence (AI) are fundamentally undermining manufacturing’s traditional role, making it increasingly skill- and capital-intensive while limiting its ability to absorb labor. Thi ...

By mapping Iraq’s economic structure in detail, the Multiregional Social Accounting Matrix (MRSAM) sheds light on regional interdependencies and distributional dynamics, offering a critical foundation for evidence-based policy design. Key MessagesIraq is dependent on oil, but this dependence is felt unevenly. In 2013, oil accounted for nearly half of GDP, over 90% of exports, and almost all fiscal revenues, but less than 2% of jobs; benefits from oil were concentrated in Basra ...