A higher education institution located in Northern Africa (Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Sudan) or in Western Asia, commonly called the Middle East (Israel, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates), gathered into a single group under the UN geoscheme's own convention of treating these two sub-regions together in regional reporting. It spans some of the oldest continuously operating universities in the world alongside twentieth century national and royal foundations, and it is kept distinct from Sub-Saharan Africa and from South and Southeast Asia, its neighboring regions on either side.