BACKGROUND: Millions of people have fled from their countries, due to war or conflict, in order to find a safer environment for themselves and their children. One common destination is Europe, which people can reach only through the sea from the Turkish coast to the Greek coast after walking hundreds of kilometers through the mountains. This long journey has a significant impact on refugee children’s health and that is primarily observed in the Greek islands were they can seek for emergency health care. The aim of this study is to investigate the reasons that the refugee children seek for emergency help in the hospital of Lesbos, Greece.   METHODS: Primary data collection from the medical records of the Pediatric department of the hospital of Lesbos. Statistical analysis of the data with R commander 3.2.1.The results will be presented in diagrams and tables, showing the most common symptoms/clinical findings, diagnoses, origin, gender, hospitalization or not of the refugee children and the relation of the symptoms and diagnoses in accordance with the seasonality, age, gender and origin calculated with Chi² and Chi² Fischer test.   RESULTS: Respiratory tract infections and gastro-intestinal tract infections are the first two most common diagnoses by far. Almost half of the refugee children that were submitted in the Hospital of Lesbos needed hospitalization and further treatment. More than half of the refugee children that sought after emergency help in the hospital of Lesbos were Syrians and boys. Mental health was also a big issue.   CONCLUSION: The journey that the refugee children are undertaking in order to reach the Greek islands and the prolonged living in refugee camps and detention centers is affecting their mental and physical health, with respiratory tract infections and gastro-intestinal tract infections being the major diagnoses.

This thesis develops a potential strategy for carrying out humanitarian intervention in Syria using the legal justification and policy framework of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine.

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Currently, over 65 million people around the world have been forced from their homes; among them are nearly 21 million refugees. Thus, the discussion of refugees and refugee camps on a global scale is ever more salient given the recent heightened attention to the global crises. This thesis uses an interdisciplinary Science, Technology, and Society (STS) approach to analyze the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) policies, refugee camps, and their implication in the greater society.

The current conflict in Syria and Iraq has attracted a large number of foreign fighters (FFs) from Western countries. The main question of this thesis is why these countries do not have a similar pattern for their proportions of FFs. This thesis explores this question in nine Western countries with varying proportions of FFs: Finland, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, England, Canada, Australia, and America. Through a case study of Islamic State’s online FF recruitment campaign, it will be shown that common religious identity is the main part of the group’s recruitment message. However, comparing the identified countries on factors related to Muslims’ identity and integration uncovers that common Muslim identity itself is not capable of answering the question; instead, it is Muslims’ integration into their surrounding societies that correlates with proportions of FFs from identified countries. / Graduate / 0615 / 0616 / 0750 / mhashemi@uvic.ca

The artistic tradition of the Middle East is under attack. While sensationalized media and fear-mongering politicians seem to dominate the discussion on ISIS, researchers are racing against time to work on conservation and education efforts to try and preserve what is left of the artistic heritage of Iraq and Syria. This paper seeks to present a factual and understandable view on cultural destruction in the Middle East at the hands of ISIS. This paper is divided into several parts discussing; the history of ISIS, why ISIS attacks art and architecture, the scope of their destruction and the long and short term effects this destruction has on local and global communities, as well as current and proposed conservation efforts. From this discussion it is clear that ISIS' propaganda does not always align with the group’s actions and that there needs to be a global awareness of the ongoing situation if current and future conservation efforts are going to be truly successful. This paper is part of a growing academic field studying ISIS and a larger community-based movement for accessible and accurate information. It is the hopes of the author that this paper accurately addresses the severity of this destruction within communities and encourages more discussion about conservation efforts in the Middle East, the importance of the artistic tradition of the Middle East, and the importance of global solidarity against this destruction.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the link between internal and external conflict of states in the field of International Relations. More specifically, it is a critique of the Diversionary War theory, which argues that political leaders can instigate foreign conflict to divert the attention from domestic issues in order to secure their political positions. This paper will test an alternative approach to the Diversionary War theory called the Diversionary Peace theory, which inverts the logic of the original theory. It argues that leaders facing domestic strife have incentives to cooperate with other states in order to deal with the internal problems in a more cost effective way. Using process tracing methodology, the Diversionary Peace theory is applied to Turkey from 1984-1999, to understand how the Kurdish issue as a source of domestic conflict in Turkey affected the Turkish-Syrian relations. The Diversionary Peace Theory would assume that as the Kurdish conflict escalates at the domestic level, Turkey would be inclined to give concessions to Syria to deescalate conflict at the international level. This paper proves otherwise: as the domestic conflict escalates, relations actually deteriorate and cooperation becomes less likely. Therefore, it is both a critique of the Diversionary War theory and the Diversionary Peace theory. The main interpretation of the findings is that the theory is not applicable to those cases where the boundaries between domestic and international realms are too porous as in the case of the Kurdish politics. When the domestic conflict and international dispute is interlinked, as in this case, I argue that cooperation might not be possible. Future reseachers in the area are advised to pay attention to whether the domestic factor and the international factor are interlinked, how the level of domestic conflict affects foreign relations and the impact of domestic audience costs.

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(i): The first part of this thesis questions the concept of ‘minority’, and the way it has been used to analyze French imperial policy in Syria (‘divide and rule’). Chapter 1 traces the concept’s emergence, showing that it is not self-evidently valid but rather depends on a set of wider social and political circumstances related to the existence of modern nation-states: the minorities of modern Syria cannot be mapped directly back onto the Ottoman millets or religious communities. Chapter 2 examines the term’s application in Syria between the wars: French imperial policy emphasised divisions in Syrian society, but the term ‘minority’ was only systematically attached to these divisions from the 1930s. The concept’s spread in Syria reflects its growing importance in international public discourse worldwide, as the nation-state became the standard state form after World War One. The second part of the thesis uses case studies of particular themes to show how the emergence of minorities illuminates processes of state-formation that have shaped the modern world. Chapters 3 and 4, on the question of ‘separatism’ and the definition of modern Syria’s northern border, examine the spread of effective state authority across a ‘national’ territory. This process bound culturally-divergent populations more tightly into the fabric of a centrally-controlled state, thereby constituting them as ‘minorities’. Chapter 5 examines the debate about a Franco-Syrian treaty leading to Syrian independence, showing that this made the recently-established body of international law on ‘minorities’ in newly-independent states applicable to Syria: the term only became widespread in Syria at this time. Chapter 6 looks at French efforts to reform personal status law in the later 1930s, when the restructuring, on religious lines, of the institutional relationship between the Syrian state and its population created a new uniformity within communities at the national level (one condition for their developing the sense of being ‘minorities’). It also sparked opposition from groups now claiming to represent the ‘majority’. Other Syrians, though, understood their society in different terms.

This diploma thesis deals with the issue ancient caravan trade in the region of Roman Syria. The available evidence on ancient over-land trade is analyzed here, as well as its routes, main trade commodities, and historical events connected with the trade in the Near Eastern Roman provinces. The intention was to process all the accessible sources concerning the local epigraphy in its urban context, complemented by examinations of the archaeology of the city and narrative sources. The goods arriving to the province of Syria are divided typologically and also according to their utilization and provenience. The prices of main trade commodities are summarized in the chart. The main trade routes crossing the region of the Roman province of Syria are divided geographically into southern and northern routes, and to the routes leading westwards from Palmyra or Antioch to the Mediterranean ports. I also explored the caravan trade of south Arabia mediated by the Nabateans, and its development according to Roman provincial policy. According to the analyzed sources, the decline of the Nabatean trade is examined. The decline was primarily caused by the Roman effort to weaken the influence of the Nabatean kingdom. The key issue of the thesis reveals the Palmyra's caravan trade development in its hinterland and...