Topic 13 Unit 10.8-9 Modern Middle East & Africa

Topic 14 Unit 10.9-10 The World Today & Globalization

Topic 13 The Middle East is an area of great diversity and economic importance but since 1945 it has been an area of conflict. The creation of the state of Israel and the refusal of neighboring Arab nations to accept it set off years of conflict. In Lebanon, civil war ravaged the country. A revolution occurred in Iran that created an Islamic republic. The aggressive actions of Iraq led to a war that involved many nations. The Arab Spring movement contributed to regional turmoil and resulted in the rise of ISIS and civil war in Syria. The post war period marked the collapse of imperialism in Africa, and the continent suffered from the legacy left by colonial rule. In Africa, independence was achieved both through peaceful efforts and bloody conflicts.

Topic 14 The past 25 years have been a time of great change. While globalization has resulted in benefits to almost all nations, there is a considerable debate about whether developed nations have benefitted at the expense of poorer countries. There have been many regional conflicts, and international terrorism, including cyberwarfare, it remains a great threat to world order. As many nations look to the future, they struggle with the tension between modernization and traditional values. Changes come at a quick pace. Advances in computer technology, space exploration, and medicine have paved the way people live. Still, many problems remain, especially in the global environment.

Islamic Fundamentalism - expression of Islam that stresses strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles

Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) - a Palestinian nationalist political and militant organization with the initial purpose of establishing Arab unity and statehood

Yassir Arafat - Palestinian statesman who was chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization

Intifada - a sustained series of protests and violent riots carried out by Palestinians, means uprising in Arabic

Camp David Accords - established a framework for a historic peace treaty concluded between Israel and Egypt in March 1979

Oslo Accords - an agreement in 1933 in which Israeli prime minister Rabin granted Palestinian self rule in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank

Palestine - part of the region known as Canaan where the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah were located

Israel - the world's first Jewish state in two millennia

Arab-Israeli Wars - broke out when five Arab nations invaded territory in the former Palestinian mandate immediately following the announcement of the independence of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948

Yitzak Rabin - soldier who became Prime Minister of Israel in 1992, and who abandoned the use of force in favor of negotiations to achieve peace with the Palestinians

Hamas - militant Palestinian nationalist and Islamist movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that is dedicated to the establishment of an independent Islamic state in Palestine

Iran - comprising the area from Anatolia in the west to the Indus river and the Syr Darya in the east

Ayatollah Khomeini - architect of the Iranian Revolution and the first leader of the Islamic republic established in 1979

Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi - governed Iran from 1953 through 1979 as a secular and authoritarian rule

Iraq - a country in Western Asia that largely corresponds with the territory of ancient Mesopotamia

Saddam Hussein - Iraqi politician and revolutionary who was the fifth president of Iraq, from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003

Iran-Iraq War - an armed conflict between Iran and Iraq that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988

Persian Gulf War - A war between the forces of the United Nations, led by the United States, and those of Iraq that followed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait

Arab Spring - a series of anti-government protests, uprisings and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s

ISIS - militant organization that seeks to establish an Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria

OPEC - a permanent, intergovernmental Organization, created at the Baghdad Conference

Nelson Mandela - a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician who served as the first president of South Africa

Apartheid - a system of racial discrimination/segregation that was unique to South Africa and was imposed by the white Europeans settled in South Africa

African National Congress (ANC) - created for the cause of ending apartheid and gaining voting rights for blacks and other non-white races

FW de Klerk - a South African politician who served as state president of South Africa from 1989 to 1994 and as deputy president

Kwame Nkrumah - a Ghanaian politician, political theorist, and revolutionary

Jomo Kenyatta - a Kenyan anti-colonial activist and politician who governed Kenya as its Prime Minister

Pan-Africanism - the attempt to create a sense of brotherhood and collaboration among all people of African descent whether they lived inside or outside of Africa

Rwandan Genocide - 800,000 people were brutally slaughtered by fellow citizens in a state-led genocide targeting the Tutsi ethnic group

Hutus & Tutsis - the Tutsi forming the wealthy, powerful part of society, and the Hutus the lower, poorer part

Darfur Genocide - the current mass slaughter and rape of Darfuri men, women, and children in Western Sudan. The killings began in 2003 and became the first genocide in the 21st century

Globalization - a term used to describe how trade and technology have made the world into a more connected and interdependent place

Overpopulation - the state whereby the human population rises to an extent exceeding the carrying capacity of the ecological setting

Urbanization - the concentration of human populations into discrete areas

Terrorism - a method of coercion that utilizes or threatens to utilize violence in order to spread fear and thereby attain political or ideological goals

Desertification - the process by which natural or human causes reduce the biological productivity of drylands

Deforestation - when humans remove or thin forests for lumber or to use the land where the trees stood for crops, grazing, extraction (mining, oil, or gas)

Human Trafficking - the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of people through force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them for profit

Refugee - someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence

Green Revolution - the increase in agricultural production that has been made possible by the use of new types of crops and new farming methods, especially in developing countries

Computer Revolution - a point in time at which computers make a significant change to human civilization

Genetic Engineering - a process that uses laboratory-based technologies to alter the DNA makeup of an organism

International Monetary Fund (IMF) - goals are to advance global monetary cooperation, gain financial stability, aid international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and decrease poverty around the world

Multinational Corporations - one that has business offices and operations in two or more countries in the world

Climate Change - a long-term change in the average weather patterns that have come to define Earth's local, regional and global climates

Global Warming - an aspect of climate change, referring to the long-term rise of the planet's temperatures

Kyoto Protocol - an international agreement to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that commits parties to set internationally binding emission reduction targets through joint implementation

Paris Conference - an international meeting convened in January 1919 at Versailles just outside Paris

Endangered Species - those plants and animals that have become so rare they are in danger of becoming extinct

Nuclear Proliferation - the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nations or terrorist organization

War in Ukraine - an ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, more and more Russian soldiers and weapons were put near Ukraine, and that became a crisis

Enduring Issue - a challenge or problem that has been debated or discussed across time