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The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which dynamic network analysis (DNA), text mining and natural language processing (NLP) are helpful research tools in identifying the key actors in a complex international crisis. The study uses these tools to identify the key actors in the Syrian crisis as a case study to validate the proposed algorithm.

To achieve its main purpose, the study uses a collection of three methodologies, namely, DNA, text mining and NLP.

The results of the analysis show four key actors in the Syrian crisis, namely, Russia, the USA, Turkey and China. The results also reveal changes in their powerful positions from 2012 to 2016, which matches the changes that occurred in the real world. The matching between the findings of the proposed algorithm and the real world events that happened in Syria validate our proposed algorithm and proves that the algorithm can be used in identifying the key actors in complex international crises.

The importance of the study lies in two main points. It proposes a new algorithm that mixes NLP, network extraction from textual unstructured data and DNA to understand and monitor changes occurring in a complex international crisis. It applies the proposed algorithm on the Syrian crisis as a case study to identify the key actors and hence validate the proposed algorithm.

There is no doubt that the political speech of the Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad is of exceptional importance in understanding the developments of the war in Syria, and clarifies the position of all parties involved in the war, whether local, regional or international. Accordingly, and based on the dismantling of political discourse, the identification of its core, as well as its variables and major themes of this discourse, this study aims to understand the levels of complexity, paths and the fate of the war in Syria that certainly does not come free of charge, the hardest of which is the human cost whether for the victims or the displaced persons.

After a careful study of all the resilient factors in the literature review to categorize the primary data based on Assad’s discourses in the media, through a “qualitative research study” of his “interviews and discourses,” it is found that the Assad’s rhetoric is highly relevant to his tenacious presidency. The research reveals the themes that dominated Assad’s interview responses and speeches and his strategy of framing the revolution as a foreign insurgency against his government. In fact, Assad delegitimizes any semblance of the uprisings as a “pro-democracy movement” or “revolution,” denying the presence of a rebellion against his government.

By the analysis the study found out that Bashar Al-Assad continued to focus on certain reasons and issues that led to the crisis and the continuation of the war, such as the Muslim Brotherhood’s involvement, considering the Syrian opposition abroad as agents of Western countries, Syria is subject to a regional and international conspiracy, terrorism is a major scourge that must be fought and that the army is essential in resolving the battles taking place there. Likewise, emphasizing the internal dialogue with all stakeholders and involved parties is the way to solve the crisis.The Syrian President’s speeches do not focus much on the accusations against his regime from the opposition or the international parties involved in the conflict.

Assad’s resiliency has made him a distinct leader in the region. This paper analyzes the factors contributing to Assad’s resiliency. The literature review consists of the existing theories on authoritarian persistence and Assad’s power base in particular. The literature review discusses the factors that helped Assad adopts his resiliency strategies to the conflict environment. The research focuses on how Assad used the media as a platform for displaying his own manipulative narrative of the conflict. It concludes that Assad’s use of the media as his propaganda tool legitimized his rule, making it highly relevant to his persistence.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how vulnerable refugee children's education can be supported in the first asylum country during a long-term, complex crisis. More specifically, the authors examine the impact of a remedial education (RE) program on academically challenged Syrian refugees' sustained learning and well-being in Jordan during a protracted emergency.

Using the 2012 United Nations human security framework, the authors analyze the quantitative results of program evaluation, supplemented by qualitative surveys and stakeholder interviews that asked about the aspirations of refugee children and their guardians, their school experience and the refugee–host community relationship.

The authors' data suggest that the program enhanced targeted Syrians' protection and empowerment. Their increased sense of safety and improved academic performance and learning motivation were likely owing to child-friendly classroom management and pedagogies that facilitated interactive and differentiated learning. Their human security was further strengthened when they learned with Jordanian children who experienced similar academic challenges and with teachers sympathetic to their plight. Meanwhile, a human security framework calls for humanitarian agencies' strategic engagement with local partners to ensure refugees' learning continuity.

Refugee education studies in first asylum countries are rare. Even rarer are studies focusing on academically low-achieving refugees with full consideration of the protracted and complex nature of a crisis. This study suggests effective measures to increase their human security while calling for humanitarian aid organizations to use long-term thinking.

This paper presents an empirical study of a Syrian refugee workforce in textile export from Jordan. The purpose of this study is to determine the challenges of integrating Syrian refugees into the local workforce and to consider the implications of these challenges for the global supply chain aiming to create stable trade.

Data were collected via three face-to-face focus group interviews with refugee workers and managers at a clothing factory site in Al-Duleil, Zarqa. Data were analysed using the Gioia methodology.

Worker attitudes, factory environment, and government support are important factors for refugees' workforce participation. The success of integrating Syrian refugees into the Jordanian workforce was largely a matter of their attitudes, commitment and motivations for taking up manufacturing work. Misconceptions about the roles refugees will undertake were identified, which results in fewer people becoming self-sufficient through employment.

This research contributes to understanding refugees' long-term integration in the host country by investigating refugee workers' and their managers' perspectives. Considering the views of multiple stakeholders enrichs the literature on refugees' integration.

Understanding refugees' perspectives facilitates their integration in the host country which leads to improvement in their wellbeing and quality of life. More broadly, Jordan's approach to integrating refugees into the economy is seen as a development opportunity rather than a crisis to be handled.

Rather than focus on the procedures of integrating refugees in the host country, this study provides the voices of refugee migrant workers themselves, thereby offering a more complete picture of those factors shaping refugees' (dis)integration in local communities.

The purpose of this paper is to prepare healthcare providers in high-income countries to deal with mental health and psychosocial issues among resettled Syrian refugees.

Collaborative work of the authors on a comprehensive review of social context, cultural frameworks and related issues in the mental health and psychosocial well-being of resettled Syrian refugees.

A practical guide that emphasizes the importance of considering the social and cultural dimensions of their predicament and highlighting principles that can help clinicians address the unique needs of Syrian refugee patients.

The content of this paper is inspired by the collaborative work of the authors on a report commissioned by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee (UNHCR).

The purpose of this paper is threefold: to introduce a theoretical frame regarding the meaning of legitimacy as an intangible asset of the public sector; to test a way of operationalizing legitimacy typologies that allows exploring and comparing how citizens from two countries evaluate the legitimacy of public policies; and to suggest implications for governments’ legitimacy-building strategies in shared international crisis, such as the refugees coming from the Syrian region.

Building on Suchman’s typology, it was defined and categorized different types of legitimacy into concrete measurable, communication related statements concerning consequential, procedural, structural and personal. For the illustrative example, four focus groups were conducted in two different European societies as a mean to have two poles of comparison.

The paper reports current understanding of legitimacy by citizens, discusses how different legitimacy types might demand different communication and public diplomacy approaches. The basis for hypothesis for further research on how governments should build legitimacy during emerging societal issues such as immigration policies is set.

It proposes a typology and its operationalization, discusses how communication might shape legitimacy and profiles the challenge governments have in building it. Within a public diplomacy context, it brings clues for new strategies to the challenge of explaining policies on international crisis combining the tension of domestic with foreign publics.

There is little research so far in search for clues for communication strategies for the legitimacy of policies on the 2015 European refugee’s crisis. This contributes to the emerging area of intangible assets in the public sector and tests a focus-group research strategy with both hermeneutical and pragmatic aims. Combine public diplomacy theory with public sector intangible assets theory to respond to the tension of internal and external public demands.

This paper aims to discuss the barriers to preventative breast cancer screening (BCS) among Muslim Syrian refugee women in a Western Canadian Prairie city.

Situated within a larger mixed-method study aimed at identifying barriers and facilitators to breast cancer (BC) preventative practices, the authors interviewed three key informants to get an in-depth understanding of the cultural, religious and social factors affecting knowledge of BC and BCS practices among Muslim Syrian refugee women.

Qualitative findings confirm quantitative results revealing that knowledge about BC and cultural and religious barriers on gender might translate into poor health outcomes for Muslim Syrian refugee women in a Western Canadian city.

This research has limitations related to the sample size and the lack of generalizability to all refugee women. Results indicate the need to develop culturally tailored intervention programs to increase breast awareness and participation in breast-self-examination, clinical breast examination and mammography. The study has implications for health-care policy. Muslim Syrian refugee women need to be educated about BC upon arrival in Canada to counteract low participation rates, promote positive health outcomes and decrease potential costs to the health-care system.

Evidence on Muslim Syrian refugee women’s knowledge and beliefs on BC is sparse. This study addressed this gap by documenting a lack of knowledge and barriers to BCS among Muslim Syrian refugee women.

The current study examined employment rates and predictors of employment among Syrian refugees currently living in Lebanon and Jordan. This paper argues that men and women refugees have different experiences seeking out employment after resettlement due to patriarchal structures and attitudes toward women that are present in the Arab Middle East. The goals of this paper were a) to examine employment rates among Syrian refugees, b) to examine predictors of employment among male and female refugees, and c) to examine refugee status as a moderator of the relationship between attitudes toward women and employment status.

Nationally representative data from the Arab Barometer on 600 refugees and 1400 native-born individuals living in Lebanon and Jordan from 2016–2017 were used.

Native-born individuals living in Lebanon and Jordan were 2.16 times more likely to be employed than refugees. Men living in Lebanon and Jordan were 7.83 times more likely to be employed than women. Finally, refugee status moderated the relationship between attitudes toward women's rights and roles and employment. Among native-born women, a positive attitude toward women's rights and roles predicted employment status, whereas this positive relationship was not found for women refugees. Among refugee men, a positive attitude toward women's rights and roles was linked to a lower likelihood of holding a job.

These findings suggest that agencies supporting refugees should communicate realistic expectations about employment during resettlement and should address the challenges that women refugees face when seeking employment.

This study is the first study to identify attitudes toward women's rights and roles as a predictor of employment among refugee populations and highlights the unique struggles that refugee women face.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and understand current challenges and future trends in leadership and management development that can help practitioners in post-wars periods, using evidence from Syrian public sector.

Qualitative method design is used for data collection: semi-structured interviews with 24 senior managers in the public sector.

The findings revealed that the current challenges includes egos, technological hurdles, financial constraints, instability and the different expectations of new and old staff; future trends include developing collective leadership, technology literacy applications for effective leadership development, focusing on self-learning and development, focusing on creativity and innovation for transferring learning and development and targeting both vertical and horizontal learning and development.

Research data have been collected with managers working in an unstable environment. Only the public sector has been involved in the study. There were a number of limitations, e.g. selection of participant sample size and exploratory methodology, which affect generalizing the findings.

The implication of the current study is practical in nature. Essentially, post-war governments can use the results of the current study to help leaders and managers develop and implement effective strategies to meet their enormous and urgent needs.

Leadership/management development has become a strategic issue in post-war countries, acting as the key element in the stage of extensive reconstruction of damaged infrastructure, and the restoration and restructuring of social services in former conflict zones, and the restoration and restructuring of economy and many other roles.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship and implications of institutional autonomy and capacity through the Central Bank of Syria in its ability to implement an effective anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CTF) framework during a period of intense armed conflict.

Due to the lack of reliable data currently available on Syria, this paper focuses on Syria’s AML/CTF legislation through passed laws and regulations; annual reports on the Central Bank of Syria and the AML and terrorism financing authority; the academic literature on money laundering, terrorist financing and institutional capacity. This paper will address the theoretical framework of Coleman and Skogstad’s characteristics that define the degree of autonomy and capacity of an institution. Though their characteristics are applied toward the Canadian state, for the purpose of this paper, they have been adopted in the absence of their use verbatim in the case of the Central Bank of Syria.

The Central Bank of Syria has experienced diminishing independence due to conflict-induced stress in Syria’s financial sector. This loss of autonomy is attributed to the prioritization of government-led emergency policies to secure and stabilize Syria's economy. Despite this loss, the Central Bank of Syria has maintained considerable and effective improvements in Syria’s AML/CTF framework, aligning it closer to that of international standards promoted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Institutional gaps, however, still exist. These gaps imply that the Central Bank of Syria still lags in a number of areas that affect its capability in implementing a more effective AML/CTF framework.

The conflict in Syria is still a very new topic that lacks a considerable amount of reliable data. As such, many research limitations were encountered despite the volume of information reviewed for this paper in both Arabic and English. Nevertheless, this paper provides a clearer understanding of how state capacity is reflected in its institutions through certain policies and approaches taken by a central monetary authority with implications and results in a country rattled by years of intense conflict.

Despite the research limitations and implications, this paper provides a clearer understanding of how state capacity is reflected in its institutions through certain policies and approaches taken by a central monetary authority with implications and results in a country rattled by years of intense conflict. This can be useful for institutional policymakers, as well as academics exploring the relationship between the state and its institutions in times of hardship.

Though there is AML/CTF literature on Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, very little is written on Syria. There is also very little written on the broader subject of state and institutional capacity through the lens of an effective AML and CTF framework during a period of intense armed conflict. By looking at an ongoing conflict, this paper explores a subject with as much detail as needed to provide an illustration of the relationship and implications of institutional autonomy and capacity in relation to the state through an effective AML/CTF framework in a country with a struggling financial system.