The fight against Islamic State (IS) has been the focus of Western countries' policy towards Syria since late 2014, while the objective of finding a lasting political solution to the conflict has been relegated to the background. This policy focus has manifested as a military counterterrorism...

General Michel Aoun's election to the presidency of the Republic of Lebanon at the end of October has fuelled fears among Syrian refugees in Lebanon that their situation may deteriorate further. Some of them even predict the implementation of a forced-return policy to their homeland. In fact, in...

The objective of this publication is to create a new narrative of these conflicts which sheds light on their local dimensions by looking closely at the social, political, economic and religious transformations produced by the uprisings and the armed conflicts that followed. Only with a good...

The 2009 European Report on Development analyses the costs and characteristics of fragility (Section 1), the capacity of fragile countries to cope with negative shocks such as the 2008-09 financial crisis (Section 2), and the EU’s current engagement with fragile countries as well as the...