Europe and the MENA Region: Media Reporting, Humanitarianism, Conflict Resolution, and Peacebuilding

“This book is designed to be a friendly reference guide on the subject incorporating analytical lenses and policy guidelines. It will be of good use to under and post graduate students and to those engaged in National Dialogues and policymakers at the national, regional, and international levels.”
– Prof. Hamid Ali, Dean of School of SEAPP, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar

This book provides an overview of the National Dialogue design process in fragile settings at the national, regional, and international levels in the MENA region. It provides a comparative analysis at the international level by examining the Yemeni NDC 2013 with those of Afghanistan and Ethiopia, and at the regional level, focusing on Iraq and Tunisia. It also goes beyond the traditional exploration of political and social conflicts by adding a rich theoretical layer of analysis of Humanitarian Aid and its contribution to war economies in the Arab region. Finally, it examines the news frames used in the coverage of the conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa and takes one step further to integrate a media lens by analysing the extent of the media coverage devoted to the Yemeni and Syrian wars by four prestigious European online news platforms. This incisive book presents a radical contrast between the on-ground reality of the conflicts in the region, distinguished by various social, political, economic, geographic, and humanitarian challenges, and its discordant abstract portrayal in European online media.

Moosa Elayah is Assistant Professor of International Development, Peacebuilding and Conflict Studies at Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (Qatar).