The Economics of Social Science in the Middle East and North Africa: Analysis of Funding for Social Science Research and Knowledge Production in the MENA Region

The study, prepared for the Research Ethics in the Middle East and North Africa (REMENA) Special Commission on Social Science Research in the MENA, aims to provide an overview of funding for social science research on the MENA region. Based on a systematic review of calls for proposals and 924 grants and projects from 23 organizations, it provides insights into the relationship between funding and social science research on the MENA region and raises questions for future research.

 

Supplementary information on the study can be found here. 

تقرير حول استطلاع رأي الشباب: النوع الاجتماعي وقابلية الانتخاب في العالم العربي

    

Arabic Version of "Report on Youth Survey: Gender and Electability in the Arab World"

Report on Youth Survey: Gender and Electability in the Arab World

A survey on gender and electability in the Middle East and North Africa. Countries: Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia. Fielding Dates: August 19, 2022 to September 25, 2022. Purpose: To explore youth's attitudes toward the electability, perceived traits, and competencies of female candidates. 

Fears, Vulnerabilities, and Precautions over COVID-19: A report on Citizen's Experiences in Malawi and Zambia

This report provides key findings on the local impact of Covid-19 in Malawi and Zambia. In March 2020, Zambia and Malawi reported their first cases of Covid-19. Both governments responded by restricting non-essential travel, banning large public gatherings, and establishing emergency committees to try to contain the pandemic at a national level. These national-level responses were important, but they did not fully reflect how individuals and the communities they reside in responded to Covid-19. The GLD project, “Developing a Locally Rooted Approach to Covid-19 Response,” sought to explore citizens’ responses at a local level. Initiated in March 2020, it aimed to explore how issues such as fear of infection, income loss, social stigma, trust in authorities, and access to information affect individuals’ daily lives during the pandemic. To do so, GLD drew on contact information from respondents gathered in earlier surveys to conduct telephone interviews.

 

The Tunisian LGPI: Selected Findings on Health

Tunisia has a very good health-care system compared to most of the Arab world. The healthcare system includes primary-care clinics and health centers, which deal with nearly 60 percent of public-sector medical outpatients, reproductive-health visits, schools, and student-health visits; a secondary-care sector with 209 district and regional hospitals; and a tertiary sector with 24 hospitals and academic institutions. It also has a large and expanding private sector, located predominantly in the coastal urban center. The public sector employs 49 percent of doctors, 73 percent of dentists, and 80 percent of pharmacists, and receives 54 percent of total health-care spending. Most Tunisians’ health-care spending is covered or subsidized by insurance plans: Public and private employees and self-employed workers (about 66 percent of the population) are covered by insurance plans overseen by the Caisse nationale de l’assurance malade (CNAM). Another 22 percent of the population is covered by the Free Medical Assistance to the Poor (FMAP)/Medical Assistance Schemes (MAS), made available via a chahedat fakr, or poverty certificate, allocated by the Ministry of Social Affairs. Together, these plans cover close to 90 percent of Tunisians. The availability of health care and insurance may help explain why, according to the World Health Organization, Tunisia has the best health indicators of all North African countries.

However, Tunisia’s health system does face challenges. These challenges lie mainly in the heavy debts the country’s public health-care system shoulders and the fact that private health care, which is of much higher quality, is unaffordable to most. Moreover, doctors and citizens report that health-care service quality varies greatly across localities, with inequities related to class and education.

This report sheds light on both the successes and the shortcomings of the health-care system in Tunisia. It identifies areas needing improvement and highlights areas where the system is doing a good job. Armed with this information, citizens and stakeholders can channel efforts to areas in need and seek to understand best practices and drivers of success from areas of excellence.