In June 2022, a new law will be implemented in the Swedish legal system, making honour- violence a certain crime. Before the new law has been implemented, investigations have been made by government officials trying to present how honour-related violence and oppression is a problem in the Swedish society. The aim for this thesis is to examine how the policy makers has presented the problematisation according to the method ‘What is the problem represented to be? (WPR). The questions that are being asked are how the policy makers problematise honour-related violence and oppression the Swedish society and how they present the Previous research has shown how social isolation and mobility plays a crucial role to those who experience honour-related violence and oppression. The thesis has therefore undertaken the theoretical framework of intersectionality to show how social and political identities can cause a person to experience a social isolation and subordination in society. The purpose is to examine how the policy makers problematise honour-violence and oppression in the law proposal and if they account for any particular vulnerabilities that can cause social isolation. Results shows that the victims of honour-related violence and oppression are being left without protection from their family, are the government including them in their policy documents to make sure that they are protected by laws and legislations? How the problem with honour-related violence and oppression is produced within policy documents and referral documents and if they account for particular vulnerability is what will be examined in this thesis and see if the government are subordinating an already subordinated group.

Morocco is oftentimes praised by academics, development workers, and women’s rights activists as a trailblazer for the empowerment of women in the Middle East and North African region. Its reforms in the realm of family legislation and progress made in human development place the country at the helm of liberalising Arab Muslim-majority societies, even more so after the Arab Spring and Morocco’s peaceful transition to a ‘new’ constitutional order. However, a closer look at women’s rights discourses, legal reforms, its texts and implementation, and the public attitudes towards the enhancement of women’s rights reveals a less empowering situation. The purported goals of the Family Code, as the extolled document showcasing Morocco’s attempt at ameliorating (married) women’s rights, of ‘doing justice to women’ while ‘preserving men’s dignity’ mask the reformed law’s reconsolidation of patriarchal family relations. Many legal grey areas within this particular law, as well as clashing principles emanating from other laws such as the Penal Code, allow judges and the ʿaduls (religious notaries) to exercise discretion and apply the law as they see fit and, to a large extent, as it conforms to their and the community’s vision of the ideal moral order. Moreover, because ‘doing justice to women’ affects men’s and family’s honour, the project of the enhancement of women’s rights has had as a result retraditionalisation of family relations and hierarchical gender structures. Nowhere is this more poignant than in the status of educated single adult girls from provincial areas. They may be poster girls for the development community, but they are pitied by their own communities because they fail to become complete women––married (non-employed) mothers. The story of Morocco’s professed progress is a story of empowering its citizens, but one which does so on paper only. It is also a story which hides the salient details of poorly written reformed laws, obstructed access to justice, continuing widespread misogyny, material poverty and social marginalisation, and cohesive socio-economic programmes, which are rarely followed through.

This dissertation presents an intervention-based study that aimed to enable teachers to improve teaching and learning in one school in Ramallah, Palestine. The non-positional approach to teacher leadership was adopted as a means to mobilise all teachers in the drive towards bottom-up, participatory school change processes that increase teacher self-efficacy and collaboration, build professional capacity and social capital, and promote sustainability. The Teachers Leading the Way programme provided a contextually tailored strategy, and set of instruments and tools that through reflective exercises and dialogic activities aimed to support teachers to innovate practice, and impact organisational structures and professional culture. This is significant in the Palestine setting for facilitating the building of locally based and sourced knowledge to inform an authentic Palestinian vision and agenda for policy-making and education reconstruction, with implications for countries of the Middle East and North Africa region. In the process, a grassroots change movement is intended to shift historical and continued reliance on foreign intervention and international assistance, and lay the foundation for democratisation and social transformation. The intervention was investigated using a critical action-based, participatory methodology that emphasised context and researcher reflexivity in one school and amongst a cohort of 12 participants. Data were collected using a range of research-designed and programme-based methods and instruments, analysed deductively and inductively, and narrated critically to maintain coherence, and convey experiential and temporal dimensions. The study outcomes indicate that teachers in Palestine are capable of leading school improvement, and impacting school structures and professional culture for system-wide change, when the proper support is provided. Non-positional teacher leadership is the vehicle and can be developed through Teachers Leading the Way. At the individual level, this is enabled through a transformation in teachers’ perspective towards a self-empowered, agential mindset that leads to action on ways to improve practice. The transition process underscores the role of effective facilitation as an enabling condition for developing non-positional teacher leadership in Palestine and similar settings.

There is near unanimous agreement in the scientific community that global mean temperatures will increase by several degrees Celsius by the end of the century. This could lead to dramatic consequences, especially for the poor in the developing world. In many countries climate change will manifest itself through reduced rainfall, greater temperature variability, a rise in sea levels, and a higher frequency of weather shocks. These effects constitute threats to people’s ability to continue to live where they are living today, and more generally to their economic security, and may lead to higher levels of migration away from areas vulnerable to climate change.While environmental change may lead to an increase in migration, in most cases it may not be feasible to identify pure environmental migrants because of the complexity of the push and pull factors involved. The aim of this dissertation is to assess the extent to which households are vulnerable today to environmental change and weather shocks in selected areas of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and in South Asia’s Sundarbans, whether households are able to cope with weather shocks and adapt to changing environmental conditions, and whether climatic conditions and weather shocks are leading to higher rates of migration. The dissertation relies in large part on the analysis of new households surveys recently implemented in areas affected by weather shocks and changing climatic conditions in seven countries: Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Morocco, Syria, and Yemen. While the MENA countries are affected mostly by droughts, and to a lower extent floods, the Sundarbans in Bangladesh and India are affected by cyclones, sea water surges, and salinity intrusions. The ways in which households are affected by extreme weather events are very different in the MENA and South Asia regions. Yet as the dissertation demonstrates, while circumstances and contexts differ between the two sets of countries, many of the findings are actually similar in both regions. The first part of the dissertation provides background for the empirical work. After a review of the literature, a set of 10 questions are asked together with hypotheses to be tested. The second part of the dissertation provides the empirical results, with three chapters focusing on (1) household perceptions about their environment and the impact of weather shocks on households; (2) the coping mechanisms and adaptation strategies deployed by households; and (3) migration decisions, in most cases by individual household members. The findings from the dissertation suggest that individuals from households more seriously and negatively affected by weather shocks and changes in their environment are slightly more likely to migrate temporarily, but not permanently. This is possibly due to the cost of migration and the fact that environmental change and weather shocks may result in large losses in income and assets for vulnerable groups, making migration less affordable for them. Thus, some population groups may well be in a situation of "relative trappedness" in comparison to other households less affected by weather shocks and changes in their environment._____________La communauté scientifique est quasi unanime sur le fait que les températures mondiales moyennes devraient augmenter de plusieurs degrés Celsius d'ici la fin du siècle. Cela pourrait avoir des conséquences dramatiques pour les populations, en particulier pour les pauvres dans les pays en voie de développement. Dans de nombreux pays le changement climatique va se manifester par une diminution des précipitations, une plus grande variabilité de la température, une élévation du niveau de la mer, et une fréquence plus élevée des chocs climatiques. Ces effets constituent des menaces pour la capacité des populations de continuer à vivre là où elles vivent aujourd'hui, ce qui pourrait par conséquent entraîner des mouvements migratoires importants.Cependant, même si les chocs climatiques pourraient mener à une augmentation de la migration, dans la plupart des cas il n’est pas possible d'identifier des migrants environnementaux dits purs en raison de la complexité des facteurs influençant la migration. Dans ce contexte, l'objectif de la thèse est triple. La thèse cherche à évaluer (1) dans quelle mesure les ménages sont vulnérables aujourd'hui aux changements environnementaux et aux chocs climatiques dans certaines régions de l'Afrique du Nord, du Moyen-Orient, et de l’Asie du Sud (Sundarbans) ;(2) si les ménages sont en mesure de faire face aux chocs climatiques, et (3) si les conditions environnementales et les chocs climatiques conduisent à des taux de migration plus élevés parmi les membres des ménages les plus affectés comparativement aux ménages moins affectés. La thèse repose en partie sur une analyse de nouvelles données d’enquêtes auprès des ménages mises en œuvre dans des zones touchées par les chocs climatiques dans sept pays :l’Algérie, le Bangladesh, l’Egypte, l’Inde, le Maroc, la Syrie et le Yémen. Alors que les pays du Moyen Orient et d’Afrique du Nord sont touchés principalement par des sécheresses, et dans une moindre mesure par des inondations, la zone géographique dite des Sundarbans au Bangladesh et en Inde est touchée principalement par des cyclones.Bien que les chocs climatiques dans les deux régions soient différents, la thèse montre que les implications pour les ménages sont similaires. Les groupes vulnérables sont fortement et négativement affectés par les chocs climatiques et ils ne sont souvent pas capables de faire face et de s’adapter efficacement à ces chocs. De plus, il semble que les ménages les plus affectés n’aient pas de taux de migration permanente parmi leurs membres plus élevés que les ménages moins affectés, même si les taux de migration temporaire sont légèrement plus élevés. En ce sens, il apparait que les groupes vulnérables pourraient être en termes comparatifs pris au piège (« relative trappedness ») dans les zones vulnérables aux chocs climatiques comme d’autres études l’ont suggéré. / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Cette thèse étudie les fluctuations macroéconomiques égyptiennes et compare leurs sources avec celles de certains pays du Moyen-Orient et Afrique du Nord (MENA). Un large éventail de méthodes économétriques sont utilisées pour examiner la synchronisation entre les cycles classiques et de croissance égyptiens et ceux de la région MENA, et de quantifier leurs sources de fluctuations ainsi que leurs réponses à ces sources de chocs. Nous ne trouvons aucune preuve de la synchronisation entre les cycles égyptiens et ceux de la région MENA et des pays développés. Les sources des fluctuations égyptiennes sont presque également réparties entre les chocs internes et étrangers, et les chocs du prix du pétrole semblent être le principal moteur de fluctuations de la production. En outre, la capacité de l'économie à contenir l'impact domestique des chocs externes négatifs à travers les chocs domestiques de l'offre et la demande est positive. / This thesis studies Egyptian macroeconomic fluctuations and compares their sources to those of some Middle East and North African (MENA) countries. A wide range of econometric methods are used to investigate the synchronization among Egyptian and MENA classical and growth cycles, and to quantify their sources of fluctuations along with their responses to these sources of shocks. We find no evidence of synchronization between Egyptian cycles and those of MENA and of developed countries. The sources of Egyptian macroeconomic fluctuations are almost equally divided among domestic and foreign shocks, and oil prices shocks appear to be the main driver behind output fluctuations. Moreover, domestic supply and demand shocks play a positive role in moderating negative foreign shocks affecting the economy.

The aim of this research is to analyse how local, Southern Middle East and North African NGOs are included or excluded in the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration and the Global Compact on Refugees and how they contribute to a changing global governance on climate change displacement. A combined theoretical framework of social constructivism interlinked with structural and social concepts of power was used in the research. The methodology is a qualitative empirical case study using mixed methods, being textual and content analysis. The results show that global governance processes and non-state actors change and transform each other. Change occurs gradually and with strong persuasion from non-state actors who do contribute to a changing discourse on climate change displacement. The research thus contributes an example of marginalised actors both constituting and being constituted by the structure of the two global compacts.

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This thesis uses cross-country panel regressions to identify the effects of fossil-fuel subsidies for both oil importers and oil exporters on GDP growth, industry growth, crowding out of government expenditures in education, health, and infrastructure, government debt, carbon dioxide emissions, inequality and poverty. Fossil-fuel subsidies are found to be associated with lower levels of growth and industry growth, less government expenditure on health and education, poorer infrastructure quality, more government debt, and higher rates of carbon dioxide emissions. No relationship is found between fossil fuel subsidies and poverty and inequality. These results confirm the arguments of those that argue that fossil-fuel subsidies should be rationalized. However, removing subsidies is politically challenging. In order to identify strategies for fossil fuel reform, the successful reform efforts of Indonesia and Turkey are examined. These cases are then used to draw lessons for governments undertaking subsidy reform. The key strategies used were to exempt some regions, groups, or fuels from reform, use funds from subsidy removal for social safety nets and other poverty alleviation programs, time the reforms strategically, and communicate clearly to the public the reason for reform and how the funds will be used. These lessons are applied to countries in the developing Middle East and North Africa, including Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco.

This thesis uses cross-country panel regressions to identify the effects of fossil-fuel subsidies for both oil importers and oil exporters on GDP growth, industry growth, crowding out of government expenditures in education, health, and infrastructure, government debt, carbon dioxide emissions, inequality and poverty. Fossil-fuel subsidies are found to be associated with lower levels of growth and industry growth, less government expenditure on health and education, poorer infrastructure quality, more government debt, and higher rates of carbon dioxide emissions. No relationship is found between fossil fuel subsidies and poverty and inequality. These results confirm the arguments of those that argue that fossil-fuel subsidies should be rationalized. However, removing subsidies is politically challenging. In order to identify strategies for fossil fuel reform, the successful reform efforts of Indonesia and Turkey are examined. These cases are then used to draw lessons for governments undertaking subsidy reform. The key strategies used were to exempt some regions, groups, or fuels from reform, use funds from subsidy removal for social safety nets and other poverty alleviation programs, time the reforms strategically, and communicate clearly to the public the reason for reform and how the funds will be used. These lessons are applied to countries in the developing Middle East and North Africa, including Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco.