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A Palestinian refugee poses for a picture in front of a wall painted with a mural in the Kalandia refugee camp between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah, June 18, 2014 (AP photo by Muhammed Muheisen).
In-DepthMiddle East & North Africa
Prisoners of Oslo: Palestine After the Peace Process

BETHLEHEM, West Bank—Shivering at his desk inside a dilapidated office building housing the Bethlehem branch of the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s Interior Ministry, Ayman al-Azza feels trapped. More than 20 years ago, al-Azza, now 48, returned from the U.S. to the refugee camp he grew up in ready to build the promised Palestinian state. Drawn by the optimism surrounding the signing of the 1993 Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, more commonly known as the Oslo Accords, tens of thousands of Palestinians living abroad did the same. Two frustrating decades later, al-Azza is ready to call it quits. He’s not […]

A woman dances to Gaga Afro-Caribbean music during a protest against racial discrimination and “denationalization” of Dominicans of Haitian descent, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, March 21, 2014 (AP photo by Ezequiel Abiu Lopez).
In-DepthThe Americas
Internal Exile: The Plight of Dominicans of Haitian Descent
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In September 2013, the Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Court ruled that Juliana Deguis Pierre, who was born in the country to Haitian parents in 1984 and registered as Dominican at birth under Dominican law in effect at the time, should be retroactively deprived of Dominican nationality due to her parents’ migratory status. The decision touched off a political and humanitarian crisis that stretches beyond the island nation’s borders and deep into its political, economic and social history. By judicial fiat, thousands if not hundreds of thousands of undocumented individuals like Pierre were definitively stripped of Dominican nationality, with no immediate indication […]