European countries are dealing with an increasing number of refugees seeking asylum. Country evidence is critical in the assessment of any asylum claim. The purpose of this study is to review some of the common issues which frequently are the focus of asylum appeal cases in relation to applicants from South Asia and the Middle East. The focus is on Pakistan, Iraq and Iran and it covers a range of issues that give rise to asylum claims, such as the general security situation, the risk from terrorism and other forms of political violence, the risk to political opponents of governments, the risks in blood feuds and from the perceived violation of family honour, religious persecution and the risks faced by ethnic minorities. It is a very useful resource to volunteers and professionals involved in supporting asylum seekers.

Analyzing regional challenges and their implications for U.S. foreign policy This book is an impressive overview of security and governance issues in South Asia and their implications for U.S. foreign policy in the region. The focus is on major enduring issues that include India-Pakistan relations, India-China relations, conventional forces, and nuclear weapons. The book's contributors also tackle a number of often underexplored issues, including democratic backsliding in India, authoritarian hardening in China, and the international ramifications of both. The impact of Pakistan's political culture on democracy, and the insurgency in Pakistan's Baluchistan province, along with examinations of the internal security challenges in Nepal, Bangladesh, and the Maldives provide lessons for other states on how to counterviolent extremism and insurgencies related to identity and marginalization. Anyone interested in South Asian security and U.S. policy toward the region will be rewarded with new insights on these topics, written by academics and analysts specializing in the issues. The chapter authors were close colleagues or advisees of long-time Brookings Institution senior fellow Stephen Philip Cohen. Cohen was the first American scholar to work on South Asian security studies. He largely defined the field, trained and mentored many of its leading analysts, and was himself its most experienced and insightful scholar-practitioner until his death in 2019. This book is dedicated to Cohen in recognition of his contributions to scholarship and policymaking on South Asia.

Legal history studies have often focused mainly on codified law, without attention to actual practice, and on the past, without relating it to the present. As the title—Research from Archival Case Records: Law, Society, and Culture in China—of this book suggests, the authors deliberately follow the research method of starting from court actions and only on that basis engage in discussions of laws and legal concepts and theory. The articles cover a range of topics and source materials, both past and present. They provide some surprising findings—about disjunctures between code and practice, adjustments between them, and how those reveal operative principles and logics different from what the legal texts alone might suggest. Contributors are: Kathryn Bernhardt, Danny Hsu, Philip C. C. Huang, Christopher Isett, Yasuhiko Karasawa, Margaret Kuo, Huaiyin Li, Jennifer M. Neighbors, Bradly W. Reed, Matthew H. Sommer, Huey Bin Teng, Lisa Tran, Elizabeth VanderVen, and Chenjun You.

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

The seventeen essays in Women and Power in the Middle East analyze the social, political, economic, and cultural forces that shape gender systems in the Middle East and North Africa. Published at different times in Middle East Report, the journal of the Middle East Research and Information Project, the essays document empirically the similarities and differences in the gendering of relations of power in twelve countries—Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, Palestine, Lebanon, Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Iran. Together they seek to build a framework for understanding broad patterns of gender in the Arab-Islamic world. Challenging questions are addressed throughout. What roles have women played in politics in this region? When and why are women politically mobilized, and which women? Does the nature and impact of their mobilization differ if it is initiated by the state, nationalist movements, revolutionary parties, or spontaneous revolt? And what happens to women when those agents of mobilization win or lose? In investigating these and other issues, the essays take a look at the impact of rapid social change in the Arab-Islamic world. They also analyze Arab disillusionment with the radical nationalisms of the 1950s and 1960s and with leftist ideologies, as well as the rise of political Islamist movements. Indeed the essays present rich new approaches to assessing what political participation has meant for women in this region and how emerging national states there have dealt with organized efforts by women to influence the institutions that govern their lives. Designed for courses in Middle East, women's, and cultural studies, Women and Power in the Middle East offers to both students and scholars an excellent introduction to the study of gender in the Arab-Islamic world.

Freedom HouseOs innovative publication WomenOs Rights in the Middle East and North Africa: Progress Amid Resistance analyzes the status of women in the region, with a special focus on the gains and setbacks for womenOs rights since the first edition was released in 2005. The study presents a comparative evaluation of conditions for women in 17 countries and one territory: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine (Palestinian Authority and Israeli-Occupied Territories), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. The publication identifies the causes and consequences of gender inequality in the Middle East, and provides concrete recommendations for national and international policymakers and implementers. Freedom House is an independent nongovernmental organization that supports democratic change, monitors freedom, and advocates for democracy and human rights. The project has been embraced as a resource not only by international players like the United Nations and the World Bank, but also by regional womenOs rights organizations, individual activists, scholars, and governments worldwide. WomenOs rights in each country are assessed in five key areas: (1) Nondiscrimination and Access to Justice; (2) Autonomy, Security, and Freedom of the Person; (3) Economic Rights and Equal Opportunity; (4) Political Rights and Civic Voice; and (5) Social and Cultural Rights. The methodology is based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the study results are presented through a set of numerical scores and analytical narrative reports.

This book focuses on transformations of political culture from times past to future-present. It defines the meaning of political culture and explores the cultural values and institutions of kinship communities and dynastic intermediaries, including chiefdoms and early states. It systematically examines the rise and gradual universalization of modern sovereign nation-states. Contemporary debates concerning nationality, nationalism, citizenship, and hyphenated identities are engaged. The authors recount the making of political culture in the American nation-state and look at the processes of internal colonialism in the American experience, examining how major ethnic, sectarian, racial, and other distinctions arose and congealed into social and cultural categories. The book concludes with a study of the Holocaust, genocide, crimes against humanity, and the political cultures of violation in post-colonial Rwanda and in racialized ethno-political conflicts in various parts of the world. Struggles over legitimacy in nation-building and state-building are at the heart of this new take on the important role of political culture.

This volume is designed to place in context the passionate controversies and emotional attachments of the two billion people who live, study, work, love, and die in the Middle East and South Asia. Understanding these regions means more than annually-updated details of the governments, politics, cultures, and economies of the twenty-four nations and assorted territories. Special chapters address significant issues of continuing international importance, including access to water, the role of oil, and the 2011 Arab spring. Both regions, after all, contain types of people misunderstood and often intensely disliked by others. Where religion intrudes on politics—the Afghan Taliban oppose educating girls, Hindu fanatics rampage in India, Iranian militiamen shoot demonstrators, Islamic extremists impose sharia, and Jewish Ultra-Orthodox send women to the back of the bus—readers bombarded with superficial news bites and slanted reporting might never sense the other accomplishments of these same societies. Islamic charities and societies bring relief to the impoverished, Israel’s scholars win Nobel prizes, and most Indians cherish long-standing religious toleration. The author of this volume attempts to let the reader draw conclusions from the evidence.

A resource ideal for students as well as general readers, this two-volume encyclopedia examines the diversity of the Asian American and Pacific Islander spiritual experience. Despite constituting a fairly small proportion of the U.S. population—roughly 5 percent—Asian Americans are a widely diverse group with equally heterogeneous religious beliefs and traditions. This encyclopedia provides a single source for authoritative information on the Asian American and Pacific Islander religious experience, addressing South Asian Americans, such as Indian Americans and Pakistani Americans; East Asian Americans, including Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, and Korean Americans; and Southeast Asian Americans, whose ethnicities include Filipino Americans, Thai Americans, and Vietnamese Americans. Pacific Islanders include Hawaiians, Samoans, Marshallese, Tongan, and Chamorro. The coverage includes not only traditional eastern belief systems and traditions such as Buddhism, Confucianism, and Hinduism as well as Micronesian and Polynesian religious traditions in the United States, but also the culture and religious rituals of Asian American Christians.