geography-based population category Middle Eastern Individuals who self-identify or are described by authors as Middle Eastern, without any reference to validated genetic ancestry information. This may include individuals from countries such as Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran, as well as the Palestinian Territories of Gaza and the West Bank. This category was created to accommodate US, UK and EU use of super-national geographic descriptors in non-genetic contexts, to enable researchers to accurately annotate data, prevent loss of data, and comply with local governmental and funding standards around data collection.