As Covid-19 continues to spread in the Middle East, Arab governments increasingly blame the public for failing to comply with preventive measures. The roots of this problem lie in the uneasy relationship between autocratic regimes and the people they govern – a relationship that is likely to come...
Blog archive: All
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29th August 2020
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22nd August 2020Week ending 22 August 2020 REGIONAL OVERVIEW The Middle East and North Africa has seen an overall rise in Covid-19 infections during the past week, with an average of 14,600 new cases reported each day. This is still some way below the peak of...
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22nd August 2020More than 20 ex-Muslim organisations from around the world have joined forces to mark today (August 22) as the first annual International Apostasy Day. Persecution of apostates has a long history but it's a particular problem today in Muslim countries. Any Muslim who publicly renounces Islam...
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20th August 2020Lebanon is due to start a two-week lockdown on Friday amid a sharp rise in coronavirus infections, though there are doubts about how widely it will be observed or enforced. The Lebanese outbreak is still relatively small, with 10,347 cases confirmed since it began in...
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17th August 2020Coronavirus infections have been rising sharply in Morocco over the last few weeks, with a record 1,776 new cases reported on Sunday. This is a major setback for the North African country which, for a while, had come close to bringing the virus under control. By early...
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15th August 2020Week ending 15 August 2020 REGIONAL OVERVIEW The Middle East and North Africa has seen an overall rise in Covid-19 infections during the past week, with an average of almost 13,600 new cases reported each day. Among the 20 countries...
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11th August 2020Jordan – so far the most successful of the Arab countries in controlling the coronavirus – has reported a sudden spate of new cases which appear to have a connection with Syria. On Monday health minister Saad Jaber said 24 locally-occurring infections had been detected during the previous...
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8th August 2020Week ending 8 August 2020 REGIONAL OVERVIEW In the Middle East and North Africa the Covid-19 pandemic appears to be slowly subsiding. A month ago, new infections across the region were running at almost 16,000 a day. Since then, the seven-day daily...
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1st August 2020Week ending 1 August 2020 REGIONAL OVERVIEW More than 97,000 new cases of Covid-19 have been recorded in the Middle East and North Africa during the past week, though many others are not recorded in the official figures. Among the 20 countries...
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25th July 2020Week ending 25 July 2020 REGIONAL OVERVIEW More than 1.2 million people in the Middle East and North Africa have so far been infected with the Covid-19 coronavirus. Across the 20 countries monitored new cases currently average around 14,000 a day,...
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18th July 2020Week ending 18 July 2020 REGIONAL OVERVIEW The past week has brought a small but possibly significant decline in the overall number of new Covid-19 infections across the Middle East and North Africa. Over the past seven days new cases...
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13th July 2020When the coronavirus swept into the Yemeni city of Aden there was little to stand in its way. The war-torn country was already in the midst of a humanitarian crisis and this time last month people were falling ill and dying in untold numbers. Few received any medical treatment because the...
