European Institute of the Mediterranean - IEMED - Spain

Today in Barcelona, around thirty think tanks and public diplomacy institutions agreed to create the “Med Think 5+5”, a new network of think tanks that will have its headquarters in the city. The objective of the network, which the IEMed both promotes and hosts as its secretariat, is to foster dialogue and research on how to develop regional integration and cooperation in the Western Mediterranean.

The estimations of the power of Islamic State (Daesh) and the number of its combatants in the Middle East are the source of speculation and lack of real figures. But one of the most worrying concerns the number of combatants from Europe, estimated this year to have doubled to 4,000.

This week Barcelona has hosted an international workshop for training and exchange of good practices in 36 civil society associations, mainly from the southern and eastern Mediterranean, which fight for gender equality.

Around fifty experts from think tanks, representatives of multilateral organisations, reconstruction funds and state and private organisations explored the scope of destruction suffered by several countries in the conflict in the southern and eastern Mediterranean in an international seminar held today at the Palau de Pedralbes in Barcelona.

Syria’s neighbouring countries have received around 5 million refugees. In Europe, the arrival in 2015 of one million refugees and immigrants has been experienced as a crisis that has caused tensions between the European countries and within the European Union.

Going up the Nile to get to know different aspects of life in ancient Egypt through existing papyri. This is the aim of the exhibition “Les flors del Faraó. Un viatge pel Nil a través dels seus papirs”, which brings together over 70 pieces from two of the most important papyrus collections in the country: the Museum of Montserrat Abbey and the Palau-Ribes Collection at the Historic Archive of the Jesuits in Barcelona.

The brutality and ultraviolence of the Islamic State is one of the most widespread aspects internationally of this terrorist organisation that has managed to dominate a territory comprising Syria and Iraq and to largely determine, along with the war in Syria in which it is not even one of the main factions, the political agenda of local, regional and international actors in the Middle East.

On 20 March the controversial agreement between the EU and Turkey came into force, through which, subject to study of the asylum request, up to 72,000 Syrian refugees who arrived in Greece will return to this country. The agreement is highly criticised by the UN and humanitarian organisations, who see aspects that contravene international legislation on asylum.

Combating gender violence is the subject of the 9th edition of “A Sea of Words”, a literary contest launched again this year by the European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMed) and the Anna Lindh Foundation.

Around one hundred researchers and experts from research centres and think tanks from 30 European and southern and eastern Mediterranean countries have debated the security challenges facing the Euro-Mediterranean region and the role that the European Union should have. It has been in the framework of the conference “Towards a security architecture for the Mediterranean”, the annual meeting of the EuroMeSCo think tank network, coordinated by IEMed.

The European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMed) would like to express its profound repulsion and condemnation following the terrorist attacks in the Belgian capital on the 22nd March.

The intergovernmental summits to promote gender equality and fight violence and discrimination against women are common on the agenda of the major international events.

Five years after the Arab Spring, these events are no longer talked about positively but quite the opposite.

While the obsession with Islamic State tinges the West’s view of the Arab world with pessimism, 99% of the population of the Arab countries, especially the youth, is more concerned with training, work and future prospects.

The rise of Islamophobia, the refugee crisis, the Syrian conflict through its artists or the influence of terrorism on foreign policies of different international actors are some of the issues about which 30 experts shared recent academic research on Thursday and Friday 21 and 22 January at the Palau Pedralbes in Barcelona.

With the exhibition “Ramon Llull and the Meeting between Cultures”, which opened today in Tarragona, the IEMed begins its programme for the year 2016 dedicated to the Majorcan thinker.

A website with over 150 members from 30 countries registered, two lines of work with external funding and over 20 activities undertaken in the last three months in seven Mediterranean countries. The Euro-Mediterranean Women's Foundation has begun 2016 fully operational.