As he prepares to leave office, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon granted Anadolu Agency a sit-down interview to discuss topics ranging from Syrian refugees to Cyprus reunification talks. He began by saying Turkey should receive more help for the assistance it is providing to refugees fleeing the Syrian war....

Japanese photographer, Ryuichi Hirokawa says the discovery of the remains of Arabic villages near a Kibbutz he had enlisted in after university was the trigger that inspired him to pick up his camera and discover and document history. As a teenager, Hirokawa took pictures during trips with friends to...

French photographer Joss Dray speaks to MEMO at the Palestine Media Forum in Istanbul, Turkey about solidarity with Palestine and how things have changed since the First Intifada. How did you get involved in the Palestinian issue? I was involved in politics against colonialism and if you are against...

“… Jews, Muslims and Allah Hu Akbar!… I am not interested in Judaism and Islam as an argument for my case, my case is national determination”. An exclusive interview with Antoine Raffoul...

Lebanon currently shelters one of the largest Syrian refugee populations in the world. Political scientist Tamirace Fakhoury talks about how her home country deals with the challenges and what Europe might learn from it. MEMO: The new Lebanon report of the Bertelsmann Transformation Index, BTI 2016, finds that the...

Cycling4Gaza began as a floating idea discussed by a group of friends over coffee in a small London cafe, but has now grown into an international grassroots effort due to the dedication of its founders and volunteers. In an exclusive interview with MEMO, Cycling4Gaza founders, Tamara Ben-Halim and Zara...

On international women’s day an interview with Amber Fares, the director of Speed Sisters Amber Fares was living in Ramallah when a friend invited her to a street car race at Yasser Arafat’s old helicopter landing pad. It was here, amidst the crowds, the music and the cars revving...

Unlike many Middle East and North African states, the Tunisian military has for political purposes been neglected since the country’s independence in 1957. However, the 2011 revolution has brought a change of political strategy. Middle East Monitor spoke to researcher Sharan Grewal about the country’s armed forces pre- and...

An interview with the authors of Burning Country: “I think that’s the big story, that they’re practicing democracy and organising themselves to run things in really difficult circumstances and that’s the story that’s been largely unheard or ignored, strangely.” Until now the Syrian story has been a fabrication of...

“Art is a threat because it’s a non-violent form of resistance and even non-violent forms of resistance are a threat; sometimes actually they are a greater threat.” At Home in Gaza and London is a digital, cross-border art project that offers an intimate look into people’s personal lives. In...

In November 2014, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Fatou Bensouda held that there was a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes had been committed on board the Mavi Marmara ship, but concluded they were not of sufficient gravity to warrant a formal investigation. It...

According to Malika Zeghal, “In Tunisia today the main issue is not about Islam, or about Sharia law, but about how every Tunisian can find a job.” The Professor in Contemporary Islamic Thought and Life at Harvard University explained this while discussing Tunisia’s current challenges and its democratic success...

“If there was an Oppression Olympics, I would get gold; I am a Palestinian, Muslim with cerebral palsy from New Jersey with no health insurance, so if you don’t feel better about yourself, maybe you should.” This is how Maysoon Zayid introduces herself to her audience. Maysoon is a...

The decision to ban the Islamic Movement in Israel by the far-right government raised a series of legal questions regarding the new status of private, institutional or organisational work for matters to become clear. In order to try to find some answers to these questions, an interview was conducted...

One windy day out at the seaside Poppy spends most of the time asking her parents when it’s time to leave; a normal day for a teenage girl until she discovers military fatigues, meets a young lady in Gaza trapped beneath the rubble and eventually soldiers raid her home....

In a work by the Irish painter George William Joy, set during the Anglo-Egyptian administration in Sudan at the time of the British Empire, General Charles Gordon looks down onto an uprising led by the Mahdi army, each member of the revolt advancing upwards towards him with spears in...