Who we are
Headquartered in Paris, the Noria MENA Program gathers researchers with decades of diverse experience and region-spanning expertise. With a proven record of operating in the most challenging of environments, Program team members leverage field research to foster public debate, inform policy decisions, and drive meaningful change on long-term trends across the Mediterranean. Action-oriented and internationalist in outlook, we strive to serve as a window allowing Europe to more clearly see the MENA region, and vice versa. Fighting against the shrinking of public space, our Program works to advance the causes of social justice, inclusion and democracy.
Our history
The Noria MENA Program was born from a series of meetings between researchers and practitioners in early 2019. These meetings centered around Europe’s (mis)understandings of post-2011 dynamics in the MENA region. As is well documented, member states and the EU itself perceived and engaged the region during the period in question via two lenses: national security and border control. In obsessing over religious extremism and migratory flows across the Mediterranean, however, the consequence of Europe’s policy approach for the MENA region wound up bolstering regional forces of authoritarianism and stifling hopes for democracy.
During the many discussions which followed our team’s coming together, conversation often turned to the intimate connections which otherwise bind Europe to the MENA region. As became clear, neither the rise of populism, the spread of un and underemployment, nor the intensification of surveillance and repressiveness across Europe and the MENA region could be understood with a national focus alone: All of these developments, and many others, needed be addressed as the yield of transnational processes which put Europe and the MENA region in constant interaction. Mindful of this, we decided to launch the MENA Program with the aim of growing Europe’s knowledge of the MENA region, and the MENA region’s knowledge of Europe.
Our Team
