<p> Morocco, an emerging nation, is working to contribute to long-term commitments regarding environmental and social sustainability on both local and global levels. Given the urgency of the ecological and social crisis, which is clearly evident at national, regional, and international levels, sustainable development is a response by all actors to reconsider global economic growth in order to take account of the environmental, cultural and social issues in the same balanced development approach. Several initiatives have been introduced in recent years in all areas related to sustainable development, starting with the national human development initiative, the Green Morocco plan, the 2020 Vision for Tourism, among many others (Bilali.2016). Morocco recently received international recognition as the hosts and organizers for the COP22 conference in November 2016. This is the second COP conference they&rsquo;ve spearheaded, the first being COP7, which took place in 2001. (Zaierg.2016). Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a concept that is intended to empower companies in their engagement with social and ecological responsibilities of the communities in which they operate and have impact. CSR is implemented within companies through different levers including: human resource management, public affairs, and supply chain management. The processes these business levers carry out are meant to support corporate development to embody more humane and responsible actions, as well as to improve the image of the company in the eyes of its employees and the world at large. CSR is one of the central social pillars defined to achieve sustainable development (World Finance.n.d.2014). As Morocco&rsquo;s economy develops, companies are faced with the obligation to follow this international approach on sustainability and to construct strategies with long-lasting advantages to support the efficiency and performance of their companies. Despite the recent launch of a wide array of sustainably focused commitments, the country is still poorly ranked according to OECD, ILO, UNDP, and WEF (Hespress.2016). It is within these reports that the gap between Morocco&rsquo;s highly publicized image and the reality is made painfully clear. What was intended to help progress the countries&rsquo; sustainable development may not be feasible in its current state, definitely, drastic changes are needed. (Wilkes.2016)</p><p>

No description available.

<p> La litt&eacute;rature et le cin&eacute;ma sur l'&eacute;migration d&eacute;crivent principalement les personnages migrants irr&eacute;guliers comme des damn&eacute;s n'ayant aucune place dans un monde globalis&eacute;. Nonobstant cela, les &laquo; harragas &raquo; s&rsquo;empressent de &laquo; br&ucirc;ler &raquo; leur identit&eacute; sur des bateaux minuscules et surcharg&eacute;s, dans des p&eacute;riples mortels, et all&eacute;goriquement compar&eacute;s &agrave; une qu&ecirc;te d'initiation. Ce faisant, ils s'efforcent d'exister en traversant silencieusement des fronti&egrave;res &eacute;motionnelles, psychologiques et physiques. Par cons&eacute;quent, &agrave; travers des romans et des films contemporains d'Afrique du Nord et de l'Ouest sur l'immigration irr&eacute;guli&egrave;re, je montre que le confinement dans un processus silencieux est en r&eacute;alit&eacute; un signe de r&eacute;sistance des migrants africains francophones sans papiers. </p><p> Ma dissertation s'articule autour de quatre parties principales, &agrave; savoir un chapitre pr&eacute;liminaire sur les perspectives th&eacute;oriques, et trois autres chapitres sur le franchissement des fronti&egrave;res comme un voyage initiatique, le silence en contexte d&rsquo;&eacute;migration irr&eacute;guli&egrave;re et le lien entre immigration et r&eacute;sistance. </p><p> Dans ma recherche, je me r&eacute;f&egrave;re aux concepts de silence et de r&eacute;sistance pour explorer divers aspects du franchissement ill&eacute;gal des fronti&egrave;res et ses cons&eacute;quences. En particulier, je me focalise sur les corps des &laquo; clandestins &raquo;, qui transmettent un message m&ecirc;me s'ils s'av&egrave;rent souvent &ecirc;tre des cadavres. Dans ce processus, je m'appuie sur le Monomythe de Joseph Campbell, notamment les &eacute;tapes du voyage du h&eacute;ros, les id&eacute;es de Mbembe sur le postcolonialisme et les th&eacute;ories sur le silence d&eacute;velopp&eacute;es par Van den Heuvel, de la Motte, Hanus &amp; Nazarova et Le Breton. J'utilise aussi la th&eacute;orie de James Scott sur les formes de r&eacute;sistance au quotidien, et je parle du concept d'initiation tel que d&eacute;fini par des th&eacute;oriciens comme Amadou Ou&eacute;draogo. </p><p> En fin de compte, le &laquo; br&ucirc;lage &raquo; des fronti&egrave;res dans les productions litt&eacute;raires pourrait &ecirc;tre analys&eacute; comme un acte silencieux de survie et de r&eacute;sistance des personnages africains postcoloniaux qui cherchent &agrave; changer leur image de perdants, m&ecirc;me s'ils font face &agrave; un monde occidental qui, graduellement, ferme ses fronti&egrave;res et se pr&eacute;sente comme une &laquo; forteresse. &raquo;</p><p>

Abstract not available.

<p> Citizens&rsquo; increased access to the internet is transforming political landscapes across the globe. The implications for civil society, culture, religion, governmental legitimacy and accountability are vast. In nations where one does not typically expect &ldquo;modern&rdquo; or egalitarian ideals to be prevalent among highly religious and conservative populations, those with motivations to unite around socially and culturally taboo causes are no longer forced to silently acquiesce and accept the status quo. The internet has proven to be an invaluable tool for those aiming to engage in social activism, as it allows citizens in highly oppressive authoritarian regimes to covertly mobilize and coordinate online protest events (such as hashtag campaigns, proclamations via social media, signing of petitions, and even DDoS attacks) without the fear of repression.</p><p> What catalyzes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) equality movements in authoritarian regimes, specifically with respect to the Middle East and North African region? This thesis argues that gay rights movements are more likely to emerge in politically repressive, more conservative states when new political opportunities&mdash;namely access to the internet for purposes of political organization&mdash;become available. This master&rsquo;s thesis identifies why LGBTQ movements emerged in Morocco and Algeria, but not in Tunisia until after it underwent democratization. These states will be analyzed in order to gauge the strength of their LGBTQ rights movements and, most importantly, to identify which variables most cogently explain their existence altogether.</p>

<p> Hepatitis E virus (HEV) has over the last three decades emerged as a cause of outbreaks in displaced populations. Effective deployment of an HEV intervention toolkit that includes HEV vaccines requires epidemiological characterization of HEV trends in vulnerable populations. The study purpose is to describe the epidemiology of HEV and identify factors for severe HEV disease in displaced populations of South Sudan. The agent-host-environment model was used. A nested retrospective cohort study was used with a sample of 14,404 cases for the descriptive case-series and 4,810 cases for the retrospective cohort. Data analyses included cumulative incidence and mortality rates, SatScan^&reg; space-time analysis, correlation and simple linear regression, odds ratio, and logistic regression. Sustained HEV transmission occurred from 2012 to 2017 with rising transmission in the rainy season but no significant correlation between precipitation and HEV cases. The median outbreak duration was 1 year 11 months. The outbreaks were attributed to HEV genotype 1 subtype 1e with the risk of HEV disease and death (as cases and deaths per 10,000) being higher in males (591 versus (vs) 23), adults (18&ndash;59 years) (367 vs 14), and elderly (60+ years) (353 vs 22). The factors associated with severe HEV disease include (a) altered mental status (adjusted Odds Ratio [a<i> OR</i>] = 640.24, 95% CI: 209.35&ndash; 1958.02), (b) death (a<i>OR</i> 28.06, 95% CI: 14.77&ndash;53.29), (c) pregnancy (a<i> OR</i> 16.90, 95% CI: 9.54&ndash;29.94), (d) illness onset in rainy season (a<i>OR</i> 0.33, 95% CI: 0.23&ndash;0.46). The implications for positive social change entail using present findings to guide clinical screening of HEV cases and to inform the effective deployment of the HEV intervention toolkit, including HEV vaccines that reduce the impact of HEV in displaced populations.</p><p>

This paper investigates the influence of readers' linguistic proficiency level and working memory functions on the reading behaviors and processes of readers of Arabic as a foreign language (henceforth RAFL). Two aspects of reading comprehension, speed and accuracy, are examined in light of readers' word decoding efficiency, recall performances, response times, scores, and readers' responses to two quantitative tests: a questionnaire and an interview. Twenty-four subjects participated in this study and were divided into two subgroups based on their proficiency level. The proficiency of these subjects was determined based on their academic level and their overall GPA in Arabic. All subjects completed a series of reading passages, in two separate sessions, followed by comprehension questions. Reading and answer time on the reading passages and questions were timed and scored. Data was also collected retrospectively using a questionnaire and an interview. The results suggest that reading comprehension and the ability to select and implement specific reading processes are impacted by the proficiency level of subjects as well as their word decoding skills. A strong correlation between comprehension outcomes and working memory functions was also found. That is, working memory capacity was found to be influential on the reading behaviors of readers especially at the sentence level with better performances reported for readers with larger and more elaborate vocabulary repertoire. Based on these results, some implications and conclusions are discussed for both Arabic reading research and foreign language classroom.

<p> How do social media contribute to groups engaged in contentious politics within a domestic environment? While many have examined the influence of social media on the Arab revolutions of 2010-2011 from an international perspective, there are fewer studies examining the impact of social media within a national environment after these events. Through interviews with a group of 40 Tunisians, many of them active in contentious politics from 2010-2013, this research identifies what sources initially informed the group members of a movement as well as the sources that ultimately pushed them to become active. While information gleaned via social media certainly played a role in the decisions of many interviewees to join the movements examined in this research - unsurprising, given the high rates of internet use within the group - social media were often cited as less trustworthy than other sources and were more likely to inform the respondents of a movement's existence than to push them to act. While these findings are not unexpected, they do require that future efforts examining the role of social media in contentious politics within a country's borders differentiate how different types of sources are viewed by potential supporters and how they might contribute to mobilization in different ways. </p>

<p> This study examines the relationship between higher education (HE) and economic development. Through the use of Algeria as a case study, this study specifically addresses how the Algerian economy needs to integrate HE to promote the country&rsquo;s competitiveness and reduce its dependency on oil. Although the country has adopted European educational paradigms, such as the LMD (Licence, Master, and Doctorate) model, this adoption does not necessarily promote change and progress if the people do not perceive HE as a wealth creator. Thus, although economic investments in HE are essential and economic diversification policies are needed in Algeria, they will remain ineffective without addressing total integration of HE into the economy. Drawing upon existing literature and original qualitative research with key participants in Algerian HE, this study concludes with recommendations on how to make HE a significant contributor to Algeria's economic progress.</p><p>

<p> This dissertation explores the structure of political attitudes on the political parties&rsquo;, as well as mass public levels in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco. I present the dimensionality, nature and structuration of political ideologies in these countries. In doing so, I describe the determinants, constituents, and components constructing parties&rsquo; and citizens&rsquo; political maps that are constantly competing for electoral, as well as actual, relevance within all societal domains. This work provides the first systematic empirical analysis of party systems in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco. It explores three basic characteristics of the party system in each case: the number of relevant parties, level of ideological polarization and the degree of parties&rsquo; institutionalization. </p><p> The dissertation begins with analyzing political parties&rsquo; policy positions obtained from a content analysis of their manifestos. The content analysis measure parties&rsquo; political preferences on thirty political issues distributed on seven policy domains: foreign relations, democracy, economy, religion, culture, welfare and social groups while party politics literature in the Arab World is increasingly attempting to identify the most relevant political conflicts in the region, the empirical investigation of parties&rsquo; policy preferences in the region is non-existent. I provide evidence that political parties&rsquo; attitudes structure, political ideology, is organized on two dimensions: an economic, as well as a cultural one. The extent to which the economy should be regulated and whether Islam should play an active role in organizing politics and society constitute the main conflicts constructing the attitudes structure of Arab political parties in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco. </p><p> Next, I analyze the attitudes structures of mass publics in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco to compare these to their political parties&rsquo; counterparts. Using the Sixth Wave of the World Values Survey, 2010&ndash;2014, the dissertation concludes that mass publics&rsquo; attitudes structures in these four Arab nations are differ from their parties&rsquo; equivalents&rsquo;. Ordinary citizens in the Arab World seem to structure their attitudes according to four dimensions: Welfare, Religion, Economy and Culture. Despite the extensive literature arguing that political elites and actors, mainly political parties, influence the structure of attitudes on the mass level, this dissertation presents evidence that contradicts such an assessment. This result indicates that elite political preferences may prove irrelevant in shaping mass publics political ideologies in certain contexts such as the Arab World. It also corroborates the assumption suggesting that political parties compete on a different ideological space than citizens. The attitudes structure on the mass level is shown to be more complex than that on the parties&rsquo; level. </p><p> Finally, I present an in-depth analysis of Algerian, Egyptian, and Jordanian and Moroccan party systems. The evidence indicates that party systems&rsquo; number of relevant actors, level of ideological polarization and the degree of institutionalization differ across countries. Morocco reflects the most stable system with few stable parties, medium level of ideological polarization and parties&rsquo; with strong organizations and deep roots in society. On the other hand, Jordan exhibits the weakest party system with a single relevant mass party, absent ideological polarization and weak parties. Algeria and Egypt withered similar political histories producing party systems with a strong state backed party and few strong opposition actors, high ideological polarization between Islamists and liberals and few highly institutionalized parties.</p><p>