̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Middle East

War in Lebanon has turned a decade of education crisis into a catastrophe - report

tdk25 — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 10:21:01 +0000

̽��ֱ��recent conflict in Lebanon has deepened a national education crisis in which children have already lost up to 60% of school time over the past 6 years, new research warns.

̽��ֱ��report, by the Centre for Lebanese Studies and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s REAL Centre, is the first to assess the state of education since Israel began its ground offensive in Lebanon in October. Using surveys and interviews with parents and teachers, it provides a snapshot of the situation a few weeks before the new ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.

̽��ֱ��study stresses that even if that ceasefire holds, a co-ordinated, forward-thinking response is essential to prevent further learning losses in an already fragile education system.

Before the recent conflict, Lebanese schools had endured over a decade of compounded crises, including an influx of Palestinian and Syrian refugees, a major financial crisis, the 2020 Beirut explosion, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2018, the authors calculate, students have missed more than 760 teaching days due to strikes, disruption and closures.

̽��ֱ��report shows that the effects of the latest violence have been uneven, depending on where families and teachers are based and their immediate circumstances. Refugee children and students with disabilities have been disproportionately affected and are among those who face the greatest risk of missing out further, even as the education system struggles to recover.

Dr Maha Shuayb, Director of the Centre for Lebanese Studies and a researcher at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education: “ ̽��ֱ��war has deepened learning losses that were already near-catastrophic. Whatever happens next, flexible, inclusive, multi-agency strategies are urgently needed to ensure education reaches those who need it most.”

“Without thorough response planning, existing inequalities will become more entrenched, leaving entire sections of the younger generation behind.”

̽��ֱ��report is the second in a series examining the impact of war on education in the Middle East. ̽��ֱ��previous report, on Gaza, warned that conflict there could set children’s education back by several years.

REAL Centre Director Professor Pauline Rose said: “In Lebanon and Gaza, it is not only clear that violence, displacement and trauma are causing devastating learning losses; we also need a much more co-ordinated response. Education should not be an afterthought in times of crisis; it is vital to future stability.”

More than 1.3 million civilians have been displaced in Lebanon since Israel escalated its military operations. ̽��ֱ��new study was undertaken at the end of October, and involved a survey with 1,151 parents and teachers, supplemented with focus groups and interviews.

̽��ֱ��authors calculate that by November, over 1 million students and 45,000 teachers had been directly affected by the conflict. About 40% of public (state-run) schools had been converted into shelters. A further 30% were in war zones, severely limiting space for schooling.

Lebanon’s Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MEHE) attempted to reopen public schools on 4 November, but the study shows that for many people, violence, displacement and inadequate infrastructure impeded the resumption. Researchers found that 303 public schools were running in-person learning and 297 functioning online, but in conflict-hit regions like Baalbek-Hermel, the South, and Nabatiyyeh, barely any were physically open.

Many of the survey participants were living in shelters or overcrowded shared accommodation, where online learning – often the only option available – was difficult. Financial pressures, exacerbated by the war, have further disrupted education. 77% of parents and 66% of teachers said the conflict had reduced their incomes amid rising living costs.

While all teachers and parents wanted education to resume, the study therefore found that they were not universally prepared. Only 19% of teachers in areas heavily affected by the fighting, for example, considered restarting education a ‘high priority’. They also tended to prefer online learning, often for safety reasons, while those in less disrupted regions felt better prepared to resume education in-person.

Both parents and teachers highlighted the resource shortages hindering learning. Many lacked reliable internet, digital devices or even electricity. For example, only 62% of teachers and 49% of parents said they had an internet connection.

̽��ֱ��report also highlights the extremely difficult experiences of Palestinian and Syrian refugee children and those with disabilities: groups that were disproportionately affected by systemic inequalities before the conflict began.

̽��ֱ��authors estimate that as many as 5,000 children with disabilities could be out of school, with some parents reluctant to send children back due to a lack of inclusive provision. Refugee families, meanwhile, are among those who most urgently need food, shelter and financial help. Despite this, Syrian parents were statistically more likely to consider education a high priority. This may reflect concerns that they have been overlooked in MEHE’s plans.

Some families and teachers suggested the government’s November restart was proving chimerical. “ ̽��ֱ��authorities claim that the school year has been launched successfully, but this isn’t reflective of reality,” one teacher said. “It feels more like a drive for revenue than a genuine commitment.”

MEHE’s attempts at a uniform strategy, the researchers stress, will not help everyone. “ ̽��ֱ��focus has largely been on resuming schooling, with little attention paid to quality of learning," they write, adding that there is a need for a far more inclusive response plan, involving tailored strategies which reflect the different experiences of communities on the ground.

̽��ֱ��report adds that this will require much closer collaboration between government agencies, NGOs, universities, and disability-focused organisations to address many of the problems raised by the analysis, such as financial instability, a lack of online learning infrastructure, and insufficient digital teaching capacity.

Even if the ceasefire holds, challenges remain. Many displaced families may not return home for weeks, while schools may still be used as shelters or require repairs. Temporary learning spaces, targeted infrastructure restoration, and trauma-informed approaches to helping children who need psychosocial learning recovery, will all be required.

Yusuf Sayed, Professor of Education, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge said: “Everyone hopes that Lebanon will return to normality, but we have grave reservations about the quality, consistency and accessibility of education in the medium term. Addressing that requires better data collection and monitoring, a flexible plan and multi-agency support. Our working assumption should be that for more than a million children, this crisis is far from over.”

Israel-Hezbollah conflict has deepened an education crisis in which children have lost up to 60% of schooling in 6 years, study shows.

Russell Watkins/Department for International Development

Syrian refugee children in a Lebanese school classroom

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Palestinian education ‘under attack’, leaving a generation close to losing hope, study warns

fpjl2 — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 07:36:49 +0000

̽��ֱ��ongoing war in Gaza will set children and young people’s education back by up to 5 years and risks creating a lost generation of permanently traumatised Palestinian youth, a new study warns.

̽��ֱ��report, by a team of academics working in partnership with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), is the first to comprehensively quantify the war’s toll on learning since it began in October 2023. It also details the devastating impact on children, young people and teachers, supported by new accounts from frontline staff and aid workers.

̽��ֱ��study was a joint undertaking involving researchers at the Faculty of Education, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the Centre for Lebanese Studies, in partnership with UNRWA. It shows that Gaza’s children have already lost 14 months of education since 2019 due to COVID-19, earlier Israeli military operations, and the current war.

On this basis and using information such as global post-COVID-19 education recovery data, the researchers model several potential futures for Gaza’s younger generation, depending on when the war ends and how quickly the education system is restored.

̽��ֱ��most optimistic prediction – assuming an immediate ceasefire and rapid international effort to rebuild the education system – is that students will lose 2 years of learning. If the fighting continues until 2026, the losses could stretch to 5 years. This does not account for the additional effects of trauma, hunger and forced displacement, all of which are deepening Gaza’s education crisis.

Without urgent, large-scale international support for education, the researchers suggest that there is a significant threat not just to students’ learning, but their overall faith in the future and in concepts such as human rights. Despite this, the study shows that education has been deprioritised in international aid efforts, in favour of other areas. “Education, simply put, is not seen as lifesaving,” the report warns.

Professor Pauline Rose, Director of the Research for Equitable Access and Learning (REAL) Centre, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “Palestinian education is under attack in Gaza. Israeli military operations have had a significant effect on learning.”

“As well as planning for how we rebuild Gaza’s shattered education system, there is an urgent need to get educational support for children now. Education is a right for all young people. We have a collective responsibility to protect it.”

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 10,600 children and 400 teachers had been killed in Israeli military operations by August 2024, and more than 15,300 students and 2,400 teachers injured. Hundreds of thousands of young people have been displaced and are living in shelters.

Satellite images analysed by the Occupied Palestinian Territory Education Cluster have verified that over 90 per cent of schools have been damaged, many beyond repair. Since August, UNRWA has provided education in the shelters, reaching about 8,000 children, but the study warns that much more is needed to mitigate lost learning, which was already considerable following COVID-19.

̽��ֱ��researchers calculate that 14 months of lost schooling so far have increased ‘learning poverty’ – the proportion of children unable to read a basic text by age 10 – by at least 20 percentage points. ̽��ֱ��accurate figure may be even higher, as the calculation does not account for the wider impacts of the war on children and teachers.

̽��ֱ��study draws together information from different sources and includes a comprehensive involvement of the Education Cluster and Cluster partners sharing their inputs, challenges and progress to enrich the report. ̽��ֱ��report provides a comprehensive overview of those broader effects. It highlights the devastating psychological consequences for Palestinian children who were already living ‘in constant fear and lack of hope’ after 17 years of blockade, according to a 2022 report by Save ̽��ֱ��Children.

Professor Maha Shuayb, Director of the Centre for Lebanese Studies, said: “Young people’s prospects in Gaza are being extinguished and our findings show that with it they are losing hope. Education is central to stabilising that spiral of decline. If it is simply erased, the consequences will be far-reaching.”

Save ̽��ֱ��Children has estimated that more than 10 children per day have lost limbs since the war began. ̽��ֱ��report warns of rising numbers of less visible disabilities, which will put further strain on an education system ill-equipped to support children with special needs.

̽��ֱ��study suggests that continuous shock and suffering are now shaping children’s outlook and world views. Interviewees reported some children questioning values such as equality, human rights and tolerance when these are taught in the shelters. “This is a full generation of trauma,” one humanitarian aid official said; “it will take a generation to overcome it.”

̽��ֱ��report highlights the immense suffering teachers and counsellors have endured physically and mentally. ̽��ֱ��killings, displacement and daily realities of life during war have taken a tremendous toll on their ability to engage meaningfully in education and will, it says, adversely affect reconstruction efforts.

Professor Yusuf Sayed, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “It is important to recognise teachers and counsellors have, like the rest of the population, suffered immensely. There is evidence of extraordinary commitment from educators striving to maintain learning, but inevitably the deprivation, killings and hardship are affecting their ability to do so.”

Despite a flash appeal from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the analysis shows that just 3.5 per cent of aid for Gaza has been invested in education. Major donors like the US and Germany have neglected education in their aid packages, and blockades continue to hinder the delivery of resources on the ground.

Without more funding and access to learning, structured play and other forms of support, the report warns, the long-term repercussions for Gaza’s next generation will only worsen.

It calls for immediate steps focusing on the resumption of education, which include providing counselling, safe learning spaces, and support for students and educators with disabilities. It also calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and an end to occupation, in line with the International Court of Justice advisory opinion and UN recently-adopted resolution, as only then can Gaza’s education system be rebuilt. This will require a focus on recruiting more teachers and counsellors to cope with the scale of learning loss and trauma suffered by children and young people.

“Education is the only asset the Palestinian people have not been dispossessed of. They have proudly invested in the education of their children in the hope for a better future. Today, more than 625,000 deeply traumatised school-aged children are living in the rubble in Gaza. Bringing them back to learning should be our collective priority. Failing to do that will not only lead to a lost generation but also sow the seeds for more extremism, hatred and violence”, said Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner General.

̽��ֱ��study also stresses that Palestinians themselves must lead the education recovery. “A ceasefire is the key for the success of any human development activity in Gaza, including education,” the authors write. “Children have seen that the international community will sit idly by as they are killed. This has left them with questions about values that schools and learning aim to instil around humanitarian principles that teachers will have to navigate.”

̽��ֱ��full report, Palestinian Education Under Attack in Gaza: Restoration, Recovery, Rights and Responsibilities in and through Education, is now available online.

Ongoing war in Gaza will set children and young people’s education back by up to 5 years, report suggests.

UNRWA

Boy sitting in the rubble of a destroyed UNRWA school in Nuseirat, Middle Areas, Gaza 2024

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Early toilets reveal dysentery in Old Testament Jerusalem

fpjl2 — Fri, 26 May 2023 06:35:45 +0000

A new analysis of ancient faeces taken from two Jerusalem latrines dating back to the biblical Kingdom of Judah has uncovered traces of a single-celled microorganism Giardia duodenalis – a common cause of debilitating diarrhoea in humans.

A research team led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge say it is the oldest example we have of this diarrhoea-causing parasite infecting humans anywhere on the planet. ̽��ֱ��study is published in the journal Parasitology.

“ ̽��ֱ��fact that these parasites were present in sediment from two Iron Age Jerusalem cesspits suggests that dysentery was endemic in the Kingdom of Judah,” said study lead author Dr Piers Mitchell from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology.

“Dysentery is a term that describes intestinal infectious diseases caused by parasites and bacteria that trigger diarrhoea, abdominal cramps, fever and dehydration. It can be fatal, particularly for young children.”

“Dysentery is spread by faeces contaminating drinking water or food, and we suspected it could have been a big problem in early cities of the ancient Near East due to over-crowding, heat and flies, and limited water available in the summer,” said Mitchell.

̽��ֱ��faecal samples came from the sediment underneath toilets found in two building complexes excavated to the south of the Old City, which date back to the 7th century BCE when Jerusalem was a capital of Judah.

During this time, Judah was a vassal state under the control of the Assyrian Empire, which at its height stretched from the Levant to the Persian Gulf, incorporating much of modern-day Iran and Iraq. Jerusalem would have been a flourishing political and religious hub estimated to have had between 8,000 and 25,000 residents.

Both toilets had carved stone seats almost identical in design: a shallow curved surface for sitting, with a large central hole for defecation and an adjacent hole at the front for male urination. “Toilets with cesspits from this time are relatively rare and were usually made only for the elite,” said Mitchell.

One was from a lavishly decorated estate at Armon ha-Natziv, surrounded by an ornamental garden. ̽��ֱ��site, excavated in 2019, probably dates from the days of King Manasseh, a client king for the Assyrians who ruled for fifty years in the mid-7th century.

̽��ֱ��site of the other toilet, known as the House of Ahiel, was a domestic building made up of seven rooms, housing an upper-class family at the time. Date of construction is hard to pin down, with some placing it around the 8th century BCE.

However, its destruction is safely dated to 586 BCE, when Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar II brutally sacked Jerusalem for a second time after its citizens refused to pay their agreed tribute, bringing to an end the Kingdom of Judah.

Ancient medical texts from Mesopotamia during the first and second millennium BCE describe diarrhoea affecting the populations of what is now the Near and Middle East. One example reads: “If a person eats bread and drinks beer and subsequently his stomach is colicky, he has cramps and has a flowing of the bowels, setu has gotten him”.

̽��ֱ��cuneiform word often used in these texts to describe diarrhoea was sà si-sá. Some texts also included recommended incantations for reciting to increase the chances of recovery.

“These early written sources do not provide causes of diarrhoea, but they encourage us to apply modern techniques to investigate which pathogens might have been involved,” said Mitchell. “We know for sure that Giardia was one of those infections responsible.”

̽��ֱ��team investigated the two-and-a-half-thousand year-old decomposed biblical period faeces by applying a bio-molecular technique called 'ELISA', in which antibodies bind onto the proteins uniquely produced by particular species of single-celled organisms.

“Unlike the eggs of other intestinal parasites, the protozoa that cause dysentery are fragile and extremely hard to detect in ancient samples through microscopes without using antibodies,” said co-author and Cambridge PhD candidate Tianyi Wang.

̽��ֱ��researchers tested for Entamoeba, Giardia and Cryptosporidium: three parasitic microorganisms that are among the most common causes of diarrhoea in humans, and behind outbreaks of dysentery. Tests for Entamoeba and Cryptosporidium were negative, but those for Giardia were repeatedly positive.

Previous research has dated traces of the Entamoeba parasite, which also causes dysentery, as far back as Neolithic Greece over 4,000 years ago. Previous work has also shown that users of ancient Judean toilets were infected by other intestinal parasites including whipworm, tapeworm and pinworm.

This research was undertaken through a collaboration between the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Tel Aviv ̽��ֱ��, and the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Study of 2,500-year-old latrines from the biblical Kingdom of Judah shows the ancient faeces within contain Giardia – a parasite that can cause dysentery.

Toilets with cesspits from this time are relatively rare and were usually made only for the elite

Piers Mitchell

Ya’akov Billig

̽��ֱ��toilet seat from the estate at Armon ha-Natziv. ̽��ֱ��site, excavated in 2019, probably dates from the days of King Manasseh, a client king for the Assyrians who ruled for fifty years in the mid-7th century.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Military spending did not 'crowd out' welfare in Middle East prior to Arab Spring

fpjl2 — Tue, 24 Jul 2018 11:00:34 +0000

Research casts doubt on the widely-held view that spiralling military expenditure across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) 'crowded out' investment in healthcare and public services, leading to civil unrest that eventually exploded in the Arab Spring revolutions.

̽��ֱ��so-called 'guns versus butter' or 'welfare versus warfare' hypothesis – that prioritised military spending resulted in neglect of health and education, thereby creating conditions that fomented public rebellion – is considered by many experts to be a root cause of the uprisings that gripped the region during 2011.

However, a team of researchers who analysed economic and security data from MENA nations in the 16 years leading up to the Arab Spring found no evidence of a trade-off between spending on the military and public services, specifically healthcare.

̽��ֱ��researchers from Cambridge and the Lebanese American ̽��ֱ�� argue that much of the evidence for the ‘guns versus butter’ causal link come from analyses of wealthy European nations, which has then been assumed to hold true for the Middle East.

They say the study’s findings, published today in the journal Defence and Peace Economics, provide a “cautionary note” against a reliance on simplistic correlations based on data from OECD nations to draw important policy conclusions about the causes of turmoil in the Middle East.

“Our research finds reports of this apparent spending trade-off prior to the Arab Spring to be somewhat spurious,” said Dr Adam Coutts, based at Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Department of Sociology.

“Academics and policy-makers should be careful in assuming that models and results from studies of other regions can be transplanted onto the Middle East and North Africa,” he said.

“Determining the cause of unrest is a rather more complex task than some experts may suggest. Historical experiences and political economy factors need to be considered.”

While only Saudi Arabia is in the top ten global nations for military spending in terms of hard cash, when calculated as a share of GDP six of the top ten military spenders are MENA nations.

Coutts and colleagues ran World Bank data through detailed statistical models to explore the trade-off between spending on military and on welfare – health, in this case – of 18 different MENA nations from 1995 up to the start of the Arab Spring in 2011.

̽��ֱ��team also looked at casualties resulting from domestic terror attacks in an attempt to estimate security needs that might have helped drive military spending in a region plagued by terrorism.

They found no statistically significant evidence that increased military spending had an impact on health investment. “Contrary to existing evidence from many European nations, we found that levels of military expenditure do not induce or affect cuts to healthcare in the Middle East and North Africa,” said co-author Dr Adel Daoud from Cambridge’s Centre for Business Research.

̽��ֱ��researchers also found no evidence for casualties from terrorism affecting either health or military spending – perhaps a result of the routine nature of such occurrences in the region.

“There may have been a policy adaptation in which regional conflicts and security threats are no longer the main influence on government security and military spending decisions,” said Daoud.

Adam Coutts added: “It has been argued that Arab populations accepted an ‘authoritarian bargain’ over the last forty years – one of societal militarisation in return for domestic security – and that this came at the expense of their welfare and social mobility.

“However, health and military spending cannot be predicted by each other in this troubled region. Policy analysts should not single out military spending as a main culprit for the lack of investment in public goods.

“Once again we find that straightforward explanations for unrest in the Middle East and North Africa are tenuous on close analysis.”

Findings dispute 'guns versus butter' narrative as a major factor behind the Arab Spring. Researchers caution against uncritically applying lessons from Western nations to interpret public policy decisions in the Middle East.

Policy analysts should not single out military spending as a main culprit for the lack of investment in public goods

Adam Coutts

Hossam el-Hamalawy

Medics transferring injured protesters in Abbassiya Square, Egypt

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Genetic study suggests present-day Lebanese descend from biblical Canaanites

fpjl2 — Thu, 27 Jul 2017 16:02:17 +0000

Scientist have sequenced the entire genomes of 4,000-year-old Canaanite individuals who inhabited the Near East region during the Bronze Age, and compared these to other ancient and present-day populations. ̽��ֱ��results, published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, suggest that present-day Lebanese are direct descendants of the ancient Canaanites.

̽��ֱ��Near East is often described as the cradle of civilisation. ̽��ֱ��Bronze Age Canaanites, later known as the Phoenicians, introduced many aspects of society that we know today - they created the first alphabet, established colonies throughout the Mediterranean and were mentioned several times in the Bible.

However, historical records of the Canaanites are limited. They were mentioned in ancient Greek and Egyptian texts, and the Bible which reports widespread destruction of Canaanite settlements and annihilation of the communities. Experts have long debated who the Canaanites were genetically, what happened to them, who their ancestors were and if they had any descendants today.

In the first study of its kind, an international team of scientists have uncovered the genetics of the Canaanite people and a firm link with people living in Lebanon today. ̽��ֱ��team discovered that more than 90 per cent of present-day Lebanese ancestry is likely to be from the Canaanites, with an additional small proportion of ancestry coming from a different Eurasian population.

̽��ֱ��team, including researchers from Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, and led by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, estimate that new Eurasian people mixed with the Canaanite population about 2,200 to 3,800 years ago at a time when there were many conquests of the region from outside.

̽��ֱ��analysis of ancient DNA also revealed that the Canaanites themselves were a mixture of local people who settled in farming villages during the Neolithic period and eastern migrants who arrived in the area around 5,000 years ago.

"Ancient DNA is becoming an indispensable tool for understanding population movements of the past. This study in particular provides previously inaccessible information about a group of people known only by surviving written accounts and interpretations of archaeological findings,” said Dr. C L Scheib, one of two Cambridge co-authors, along with Dr Toomas Kivisild.

“ ̽��ֱ��fact that we can retrieve whole genomes from conditions not considered ideal for DNA preservation also shows how far the field has advanced technically," she said.

In the study, researchers sequenced whole genomes of five Canaanite individuals who lived 4,000 years ago in a city known as Sidon in present-day Lebanon. Scientists also sequenced the genomes of 99 present-day Lebanese and analysed the genetic relationship between the ancient Canaanites and modern Lebanese.

Dr Marc Haber, first author from the Sanger Institute, said: “It was a pleasant surprise to be able to extract and analyse DNA from 4,000-year-old human remains found in a hot environment, which is not known for preserving DNA well. We overcame this challenge by taking samples from the petrous bone in the skull, which is a very tough bone with a high density of ancient DNA.”

Dr Claude Doumet-Serhal, co-author and Director of the Sidon excavation site in Lebanon, said: “For the first time we have genetic evidence for substantial continuity in the region, from the Bronze Age Canaanite population through to the present day. These results agree with the continuity seen by archaeologists.

“Collaborations between archaeologists and geneticists greatly enrich both fields of study and can answer questions about ancestry in ways that experts in neither field can answer alone.”

Adapted from a Wellcome Trust press release.

Researchers analysed DNA extracted from 4,000-year-old human remains to reveal that more than 90% of Lebanese ancestry is from ancient Canaanite populations.

̽��ֱ��fact that we can retrieve whole genomes from conditions not considered ideal for DNA preservation also shows how far the field has advanced technically

C.L Scheib

Wellcome Genome Campus Public Engagement

Cambridge co-author C.L Scheib conducting ancient bone analysis at the Wellcome Genome Campus.

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Targeting of Syrian healthcare as ‘weapon of war’ sets dangerous precedent, say researchers

fpjl2 — Wed, 15 Mar 2017 11:42:36 +0000

̽��ֱ��strategy of using people’s need for healthcare against them by violently denying access sets a dangerous precedent that the global health community must urgently address, say an international team of researchers.

̽��ֱ��authors of a new report published today (15 March) in ̽��ֱ��Lancet – marking six years since the conflict began – have “triangulated” various data sources to provide new estimates for the number of medical personnel killed so far: 814 from March 2011 to February 2017.

However, they also say this is likely to be a “gross underestimate” due to limitations of evidence-gathering and corroboration in the conflict areas.

There were 199 attacks on health facilities in 2016 alone – an increase from 91 in 2012, when the Syrian government effectively criminalised medical aid for the opposition. ̽��ֱ��government and its allies, including Russia, have been responsible for at least 94% of attacks, say the experts – threatening the foundation of medical neutrality.

Besieged areas are denied medicine, and remaining medics are delivering what care they can in brutal conditions. Despite explicit protections under International Humanitarian Law, attacks on health workers have included imprisonment, abduction, torture and execution.

̽��ֱ��authors of the latest report, including researchers from Cambridge’s departments of sociology and politics, say the conflict has exposed serious shortcomings in global governance.

They call for the systematic documentation of attacks on health workers and, critically, the perpetrators via the WHO, allowing for greater accountability. UN policies and practices should also be reviewed and strengthened, including operational capacity to deliver support to health workers across conflict lines.

̽��ֱ��research team also calls for global solidarity with health workers in the Syrian conflict, including support to increase awareness among donors and politicians.

“Syria has become one of the most dangerous places on earth to be a healthcare worker,” says Dr Adam Coutts, report co-author from Cambridge’s Department of Sociology.

“Thousands of health workers have left and relocated to neighbouring countries and further afield such as Europe. This poses significant challenges for current healthcare provision in Syria but also for future health system rebuilding in a post conflict situation.”

Between 2011 and 2015, it is estimated that 15000 doctors, or half of the pre-war numbers, left the country. In Eastern Aleppo, approximately 1 doctor remained for every 7000 residents, compared with 1 in 800 in 2010.

̽��ֱ��exodus of older, experienced doctors has left critical gaps. Younger, less experienced physicians – many of whom are students with no experience in trauma management or emergency medicine – have become indispensable. However, this increases risk for patients and warns of a serious shortage of skilled doctors in future.

In non-government controlled areas, the few health workers left face massive numbers of trauma victims, shortages of medicines, epidemics of infectious disease and chemical attacks. In areas under siege, surgical supplies and essential medicines are seldom allowed in, patients rarely evacuated, and public health measures such as water chlorination and measles vaccination are sometimes blocked.

̽��ֱ��bulk of Syria’s remaining health workers are in government-controlled areas, where they also face mortar attacks from rebel areas and travel restrictions. Some report being forced to breach ethical principles under pressure.

Sophie Roborgh, one of the report’s authors from the Department of Politics and International Studies, conducts research on violence against health workers and medical infrastructure in conflict, and how health workers deal with it – professionally and personally.

“Healthcare workers that remain have been forced to adjust their entire lives around the threats and pressures they face,” she says. “There is such a shortage of staff that some physicians and other medical staff actually live full-time in hospitals.

“One medic showed me pictures on his phone of his colleague’s young children, who spend much time with their father, helping to mop up blood in operation rooms. Another told me how he celebrated his wedding in the hospital.

“We are trying to uncover which measures of support for these health workers are actually effective, in the hope that we can eventually move beyond a one-size-fits-all approach to a more specific, evidence-based model for conflict situations.”

Coutts says that practical policy options to assist displaced Syrian healthcare workers require evidence of where they are and what skills and training capacities they have. This information is not currently available and is badly needed.

“It is vital that the international community design policies and interventions to help displaced healthcare workers find and sustain employment in neighbouring host countries,” says Coutts.

“Due to visa and right-to-work issues, Syrian doctors and allied health professionals are unable to practice in countries such as Lebanon and Jordan. This is currently an untapped and essential workforce that could be used to support the already overstretched humanitarian response and public services in host communities.”

As new estimates of death toll for health workers are published, experts say the deliberate and systematic attacks on the healthcare infrastructure in Syria – primarily by government forces – expose shortcomings in international responses to health needs in conflict.

It is vital that the international community design policies and interventions to help displaced healthcare workers find and sustain employment in neighbouring host countries

Adam Coutts

European Commission DG ECHO

Syrian refugee in a hospital in Lebanon

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Beyond the harem: ways to be a woman during the Ottoman Empire

amb206 — Fri, 12 Aug 2016 07:00:00 +0000

Ottoman women shopped. They didn’t just shop; they also ran businesses, owned property and, on occasion, stormed buildings to stage protest meetings. Not only did they flirt and dance – and infuriate their husbands with demands for the latest fashions – but they exerted genuine political and economic power. And they did all this much more visibly than is often assumed.

In Ottoman Women in Public Space, a group of scholars of the Middle East and the Islamic world turn their attention to a neglected topic: what life was actually like for women at the height of an empire that lasted for 600 years (right up until the turn of the 20th century) and, at its most powerful, stretched eastwards from present-day Hungary, southwards to the religious centre of Mecca, and westwards around the southern Mediterranean to the bustling port of Algiers.

Edited by Dr Kate Fleet and Ebru Boyar (Faculty of History and Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies at Newnham College), Ottoman Women in Public Space is a collection of essays by specialists based in five countries and from a range of academic disciplines. In drawing on sources that span from court records to poetry, the contributors challenge the notion that female life was confined to the sequestered spaces of the harem and the hamam (traditional Turkish bath).

̽��ֱ��conventional narrative places Ottoman women firmly in the domestic sphere and fails to see how visible they were outside the home, either in the mahalle (neighbourhood) or beyond. Female lives, viewed in modern western terms, were undoubtedly proscribed. But scholars are now exploring the extent to which women were publically visible, whether they were members of the elite sampling the delights of the pleasure gardens of great cities or peasants labouring in the fields.

Why have women been missing from histories of the Ottoman empire – and why have narratives about females centred on the seclusion of the harem? As Boyar and Fleet explain, women’s voices are absent in records which were almost exclusively produced by men. When female voices are heard, they are mediated through a male narrator. It’s a universal reality, they point out, that a large proportion of women – those who are older or of low status – have long been effectively ‘invisible’ in public.

How visible a woman was, where she was free to go and what she was able to do, depended largely on who she was. ̽��ֱ��mobility of noble women was more constricted than that of poor women. In the countryside, female labour was essential to agriculture. An 19th-century engraving of harvesting in Bulgaria shows two women at work. With a child on her lap and a whip in her hand, the younger woman drives a horse and threshing sledge over the crop to separate the grain from the chaff.

In cities the most visible of all women were the thousands of slaves who ranged from poor serving girls to powerful concubines. In a chapter devoted to the extremes of visibility, Fleet writes: “While women were positioned at various points along the trajectory of visibility … slave women moved through the whole gamut of visibility from physical invisibility and seclusion at one end of the spectrum to total exposure on the market place, a level of display unthinkable for any other Ottoman woman, at the other.”

Slaves crossed private/public boundaries. Vital to the smooth-running of the home behind closed doors, they were also a marker of public respectability. A hand-coloured portrait (late 16th century) of a lady walking to the baths accompanied by her slave shows both dressed to impress. ̽��ֱ��slave’s presence signalled that the lady being accompanied was legitimately out in public and under the close protection of her family.

As commodities, slaves were bought and sold, traded and transported. “ ̽��ֱ��visibility of slaves on the market varied from complete exposure in public slave markets to the more private display within a slave dealer’s house, or presentation of a slave dealer within the konak (residence) of a potential buyer,” writes Fleet. An English visitor to Istanbul at the end of the 16th century described its slave market: “They sell many Christian slaves of all sects and adge, in manner as they sell thier horses, looking them in the eyes, mouth, and all other parts.”

At the other end of the social spectrum, and with more agency at their disposal but less mobility in public spaces, wealthy women devised numerous ways to make their presence felt without jeopardising their reputations: they used perfumes; they appeared on balconies, briefly visible to passers-by; sweet sounds of their voices carried into the street. Their bodies may have been covered as they negotiated public spaces, but they walked with a sway of their hips and used tokens as a secret language to convey messages of love.

Male control of women was underpinned by notions of moral rectitude but women were out and about much more than has previously been thought. They were (at least sometimes) visible to the gaze of foreign observers, curious about a culture so seemingly exotic. In the collection of the Correr Museum in Venice is an illustrated travel manuscript showing scenes of Istanbul in the late 17th century. Among them is a delightful sketch of a group of women enjoying an outing in a boat rowed by three handsome oarsmen sporting splendid black moustaches.

Notions of honour ran deep in Ottoman society. Boyar writes: “ ̽��ֱ��desire to protect women’s honour had less to do with women than it did with concern with the well-being of society as a whole, for an immoral woman meant an immoral society.” Women could be seen in public but how they behaved, and how they were perceived, was of paramount importance. For women to be seen visiting the graves of their relatives, or shines of holy personages, was acceptable; for women visiting a cemetery to be seen drinking and eating with unrelated men was not.

Women’s lives were controlled not just by the state, argues Boyar, but also by “an imagined moral community” with the “power to label a woman as honourable or dishonourable as it thought fit, leaving the woman concerned with no recourse to this judgment”. However, social perceptions of respectability were fluid – and varied across time and space. An Anatolian visitor to Cairo was shocked to see the wives of high-ranking men riding on donkeys. His reaction was coloured by the practice elsewhere for prostitutes to be punished by being displayed on donkeys.

It was within the intimacy of the mahalle (neighbourhood) that the question of reputation was most potent. “For a woman to be labelled a prostitute had significant ramifications for it left her exposed without the protection of either family, society or the state,” writes Boyar. “She was seen as challenging the imagined moral community and as seeking to build a life outside its boundaries and control.” On one hand condemnation could mean ruin, on the other marginalisation could be empowering. Brothels were everywhere. Not only did prostitutes have access to public spaces but, as an integral part of society, they were sometimes invited to important celebrations and took part in street processions.

By the turn of the 20th century, the Ottoman empire was crumbling. Its demise had opened up new opportunities for women to enter public spheres. As Boyar writes: “Their progress and the speed of change in both the level of their participation and the acceptance of their new position owed much to the dire circumstances that the empire found itself in in that period and to certain changes, in particular the emergence of the press and the development of female education.”

Unsurprisingly, so profound a societal change was by no means unopposed. As late as 1915, a regional governor expressly forbad women discussing the government to “create demoralisation with their lying and inaccurate words and gossip”. But even this condemnation of female gossip shows how much women were present and how their voices were heard in the Ottoman public space.

With this new volume, Fleet and Boyar and their contributors lift the lid on many thousands of lives previously marginalised by academic histories.

Ottoman Women in Public Space is published by Brill.

A new volume of essays looks afresh at women’s lives during the 600 years of the Ottoman empire. ̽��ֱ��book challenges the stereotypes of female lives confined to the harem and hamam – and reveals how women were surprisingly visible in public spaces.

̽��ֱ��desire to protect women’s honour had less to do with women than it did with concern with the well-being of society as a whole, for an immoral woman meant an immoral society.

Ebru Boyar

History Library, Sofia ̽��ֱ��

Engraving of threshing near Ogosta, Bulgaria, second half of the 19th century

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Can the Revolution in Kurdish Syria succeed?

fpjl2 — Mon, 02 Feb 2015 16:29:02 +0000

Since the descent into civil war in Syria, revolutionary forces have seized control of the Kurdish region of Rojava. ̽��ֱ��mainstream media has been quick to publicise who the revolutionary forces in Rojava are fighting against: the brutality of Islamic State (IS); but what they are fighting for is often neglected. In December of 2014, we had the chance to visit the region as part of an academic delegation. ̽��ֱ��purpose of our trip was to assess the strengths, challenges and vulnerabilities of the revolutionary project under way (read the Delegation’s Joint Statement here).

Rojava is the de facto autonomous Kurdish region in northern Syria. It consists of three cantons: Afrîn in the west, Kobanê in the centre, and Cizîre in the east. It is, for the most part, isolated and surrounded by hostile forces. However – despite the brutal war with IS, the painful embargo of Turkey and the even more painful embargo of Barzani and his Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq – systems of self-governance and democratic autonomous rule have been established in Rojava, and are radically transforming social and political relations in an emancipatory direction.

As Saleh Muslim, co-president of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) representing the independent communities of Rojava, explained in an interview in November 2014: “[We are engaged in the construction of] radical democracy: to mobilize people to organize themselves and to defend themselves by means of peoples armies like the Peoples Defense Unit (YPG) and Women’s Defense Unit (YPJ). We are practicing this model of self-rule and self-organization without the state as we speak. Democratic autonomy is about the long term. It is about people understanding and exercising their rights. To get society to become politicized: that is the core of building democratic autonomy.”

At the forefront of this politicization is gender equality and women’s empowerment, with equal representation and active participation of women in all political and social circles. “We [have] established a model of co-presidency – each political entity always has both a female and a male president – and a quota of 40% gender representation in order to enforce gender equality throughout all forms of public life and political representation,” explains Saleh Muslim.

̽��ֱ��revolutionary forces in Rojava are not fighting for an independent nation state, but advocating a system they call democratic confederalism: one of citizenry-led self-governance through the formation of neighbourhood-level people’s councils, town councils, open assemblies, and cooperatives. These self-governing instruments allow for the participation of diverse political, ethnic, and religious groups, promoting consensus-led decision-making. Combined with local academies aimed at politicising and educating the population, these structures of self-governance give the populace the ability to raise and solve their own problems.

During our nine day trip to Cizîre canton, we visited rural towns as well as cities, where we met with representatives and members of schools, cooperatives, women's academies, security forces, political parties, and the self-government in charge of economic development, healthcare, and foreign affairs.

Throughout the visit, we witnessed discipline, revolutionary commitment and impressive collective mobilisation of the population in Cizîre. Despite the isolation and difficult conditions, a perseverance and even confidence seemed to dominate the collective mood among representatives and members of all the diverse groups we met. This collective optimism and willingness to sacrifice was in the pursuit of an admirable ideological program and genuine steps towards collective emancipation. We were particularly struck by the emphasis on education, politicization, and a consciousness-raising of the general population in accordance with a grass-roots democratic transformation of social and property relations.

Images by Jeff Miley. Click on images to enlarge.

An obvious and striking strength of the revolution clearly on display throughout our trip were the strides towards gender emancipation. Our meetings with government representatives, members of academies, women’s militias, and people’s councils all demonstrated that women’s empowerment is not mere programmatic window-dressing but is in fact being implemented. This, in the context of the Middle East and in sharp contrast to both the IS as well as the KRG, was most impressive.

Another feature of the programmatic agenda we found admirable was the insistence by the revolutionary government in Rojava that it is committed to a broader struggle for a democratic Syria, and in fact a democratic Middle East, capable of accommodating cultural, ethnic and religious diversity through democratic confederalism. In this vein, we witnessed proactive attempts by the revolutionary forces to include ethnic and religious minorities into the struggle underway in Rojava, including the institutionalisation of positive discrimination, quotas, and self-organisation of minority groups, such as the Syriac community – which even formed their own militias.

That said, the integration of the local Arab population into the revolutionary project remains a critical challenge, as does coordination and the formation of alliances with groups outside of the three cantons. Extra-Kurdish coordination and alliances are certainly prerequisites for ensuring the survival of the revolution in the medium and long term and are especially critical if democratic confederalism is to spread across Syria and the Middle East. Such a task is as difficult as it is urgent. It is crucial that the revolutionary authorities do everything in their power to assuage Arab fears of a Greater Kurdistan agenda, and include them in this struggle. Avoiding a Kurdish-centric version of history, literature and even the temptation to push for a Kurdish-only language educational system will help prevent the alienation of ethnic and religious minorities.

Revolutionary symbols (e.g. flags, maps, posters) are particularly important when it comes to integrating ethnic and religious minorities, as well as publicising the revolution across the world. More inclusive imagery would certainly facilitate the task of winning support and sympathy – both in the Middle East and more globally. References beyond the Kurdish movement were strikingly absent from the symbols we saw. ̽��ֱ��positive side of the Kurdish revolutionary symbols cannot be ignored and certainly plays a significant role in facilitating the mobilisation of the Kurdish population. However, at the same time it is likely to alienate non-Kurds and Kurds who might misidentify the struggle as one for a Greater Kurdistan.

Listen to Jeff Miley's talk on Rojava and the Kurdish revolutionary movement

Our biggest concern is that the revolution will be compromised – if not sacrificed – by broader geopolitical games. ̽��ֱ��current close alliance between the KRG and the United States, and the recent US-led airstrikes in Syria, fuel the suspicions of many – especially Sunni Arabs – that the Kurds are but pawns to yet another imperialist intervention in the region in pursuit of oil.

̽��ֱ��politics of divide and conquer employed by the imperialist powers have a long, bloody and effective history in the Middle East and beyond. This sad reality reinforces how crucial it is to build alliances, and to transcend the Kurdish nationalist imaginary within the ranks of the movement. Indeed, one of the principal strengths of IS has been its ability to mobilise militants both locally and globally in seemingly implacable opposition to imperialist powers.

It is especially important for the Kurdish revolution to appeal to the Turkish left, and to encourage them to denounce and fight against the crippling embargo enforced by the Turkish state on Rojava. ̽��ֱ��effects of and challenges created by the embargo were all too evident with respect to the basic health needs of the population we encountered. Unexpectedly, it was not a lack of medical expertise but rather a lack of medicine and medical equipment that most threatens population health.

̽��ֱ��effects of the embargo also reach beyond the immediate needs of the population in Rojava. ̽��ֱ��environmental toll was evident, most notably in the oil-seeped soil around the rigs. Given the circumstances, it is certainly understandable and indeed inevitable that the revolutionary authorities are nearly exclusively preoccupied with the tasks of providing for immediate energy and food needs of the population while searching for financial assistance to keep the revolutionary project afloat. Nevertheless, the revolution offers a unique opportunity to carefully establish an environmentally sustainable and democratically managed economy.

In the broader context of tyranny, violence, and political upheaval rocking many countries in the Middle East, it is highly unlikely that problems can be understood in isolation or solved on a country-by-country basis. One of the best things about the model of democratic confederalism institutionalized in Rojava is that it is potentially applicable to the entire region – a region, it should be recalled, the borders of which were largely drawn in illegitimate fashion by imperialist forces a century ago. ̽��ֱ��sins of Imperialism have yet to be forgotten in the region.

Democratic confederalism, however, is not about dissolving state borders, but transcending them. At the same time, it allows for the construction of a local, participatory democratic alternative to tyrannical states. Indeed, the model of democratic confederalism promises to help foster peace throughout the region, from the Israeli-Palestine conflict, through Turkey, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, etc. If only this democratic revolution could spread.

̽��ֱ��long siege on Kobanê, facilitated by the criminal complicity of the Turkish state, constituted not just an assault on the Kurdish people but on a revolutionary democratic project. ̽��ֱ��region is being torn asunder in a destructive process protagonized by a variety of reactionary brands of political Islam. ̽��ֱ��revolutionary project of Rojava, based on democratic participation, gender emancipation, and multi-cultural, multi-religious, multi-ethnic, and even multi-national accommodation, represents a third way, perhaps the only way, for achieving a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. For these reasons the recent liberation of Kobanê should be hailed by progressives, indeed, by all advocates of peace, freedom and democracy around the world.

Watch Sociology PhD Candidate and Kurdish activist Dilar Dirik's talk on the Kurdish Women's Movement at the New World Summit in Brussels last year.

We can but hope, argue sociologist Dr Jeff Miley and Gates Scholar Johanna Riha, who here summarise some of their observations following a recent field visit to Rojava in northern Syria, and give a brief overview of the political and social ideologies underpinning the Kurdish revolution.

Democratic confederalism is not about dissolving state borders, but transcending them. At the same time, it allows for the construction of a local, participatory democratic alternative to tyrannical states

Jeff Miley

Deliberations among a Local Women's Council in Qamişlo, Rojava

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