Supporters of the ruling party gather for the start of the election campaign, Bugendana, Burundi (AP photo by Berthier Mugiraneza).

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso—Burundi’s ruling party celebrated Monday after its candidate, Evariste Ndayishimiye, was declared the winner of last week’s presidential election. But the leading opposition party says it will contest the results, prompting fears of a return to the violence that plagued the country after President Pierre Nkurunziza’s disputed reelection in 2015, which sparked widespread protests that were met with a government crackdown. Since then, at least 1,200 people have been killed in intermittent clashes with security forces, while 400,000 have been forced to flee the country. Burundi’s election commission announced that Ndayishimiye won handily, with nearly 69 percent of […]

Two U.N. soldiers stand guard in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nov. 30, 2012 (AP photo by Jerome Delay).

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Violence is escalating once again in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ituri province, a region long beset by militant groups and intercommunal conflict. The United Nations reported that an ethnic militia operating in the northeastern province might have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity beginning late last year. Meanwhile, another rebel group slaughtered dozens of civilians in a series of raids this week. Between disease outbreaks and inter-ethnic clashes, the mineral-rich province has been a flashpoint for decades. But starting in […]

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, left, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel inspect an honor guard during a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Sept. 6, 2019 (pool photo by Roman Pilipey via AP Images).

The European Union has struggled mightily in recent months to assert itself as a strategically autonomous and relevant actor in response to an increasingly aggressive China. In April, the EU drafted a report critical of Chinese disinformation efforts related to the spread of the novel coronavirus in Europe, but it bowed to pressure from China and removed most of the criticism leveled at Beijing that had been included in the initial draft, which leaked to the press. The subsequent public criticism led the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, Josep Borrell, to receive a tongue-lashing at a hearing of the […]

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An article published earlier this month in the largest English-language newspaper in Bangladesh, the Daily Star, inadvertently revealed a lot about different perspectives on religion’s role in society, including during the coronavirus pandemic. The writer argued that religious actors play a “vital stabilizing role” during such global crises and can “offer a beacon of hope” amid “the ravages of this pandemic.” But in the comments, a reader took a starkly different stance with what he called “a rude question”—a few of them, in fact. First, can faith and science go together? Second, how can faith actors help when they fight […]

Pedro dos Santos, the leader of a community named Park of Indigenous Nations, in Manaus, Brazil, May 10, 2020 (AP photo by Felipe Dana).

Far from being a “great equalizer,” the coronavirus pandemic “is reinforcing the brutal inequality that separates the world’s privileged and marginalized communities,” WPR columnist Stewart Patrick wrote recently. Consider the indigenous people of South America, whose populations were decimated long ago by the arrival of European colonizers who introduced new and deadly pathogens to the continent. In an email interview with WPR, Rosaleen Howard, chair of Hispanic Studies at Newcastle University, explains how centuries of exploitation and neglect have left these indigenous communities especially vulnerable to COVID-19. World Politics Review: What kinds of unique challenges are indigenous communities in South […]

A United Nations camp for internally displaced people in Wau, South Sudan, May 14, 2017 (AP photo).

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. COVID-19 has reached a camp for internally displaced people outside South Sudan’s capital, Juba, raising alarm that the virus could spread quickly among the thousands living there in crowded conditions. The positive diagnosis of two COVID-19 patients this week is a worst-case scenario for health experts in South Sudan, who warn that sick patients could quickly overwhelm the camp, which has few supplies or health facilities. The country’s already limited health infrastructure was gutted during its recent civil war; there aren’t even […]

Workers disinfect the streets to prevent the spread of coronavirus in Qamishli, Syria, March 24, 2020 (AP photo by Baderkhan Ahmad).

In this week’s editors’ discussion on Trend Lines, WPR’s Judah Grunstein, Freddy Deknatel and Prachi Vidwans talk about the problems around the world—from Syria’s civil war to human rights abuses in China—that are being overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic and risk deteriorating further. They still must be addressed somehow whenever this crisis is over. Listen: Download: MP3Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | Spotify Relevant Articles on WPR:Is All Hope Lost for a Global Cease-Fire Resolution at the U.N.?As COVID-19 Hits Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi and the Military Seek an Electoral EdgeThe ‘Swedish Model’ Is a Failure, Not a PanaceaThe […]

Military representatives wear masks during a session of parliament, Naypyidaw, Myanmar, March 11, 2020 (AP photo by Aung Shine Oo).

Myanmar’s official public messaging about the coronavirus pandemic began with a video. To airy elevator music and a placid voiceover, Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s de facto leader, stood in a nondescript bathroom and demonstrated the proper way to wash hands. It all seemed very calming and benevolent, with Suu Kyi acting out the maternal role she is accorded by her supporters. Before the video was posted online on March 21, the government also established a coronavirus task force. But all the while, it sought to downplay the likelihood that COVID-19 would wreak havoc in Myanmar to the same […]

Afghan security personnel wear protective face masks to help curb the spread of the coronavirus, Kabul, Afghanistan, April 8, 2020 (AP photo by Rahmat Gul).

The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the entire world—but in vastly different ways. In particular, efforts to “flatten the curve” could create huge but unquantified costs for the most vulnerable. As a result of measures to contain the coronavirus’s spread, the specter of “biblical” hunger now hangs over much of the globe. At the same time, social distancing strategies remain an unattainable mirage for the hundreds of millions of people living in crowded quarters in the developing world. For fragile and conflict-affected countries, the pandemic represents a grim, dual challenge that risks threatening a precious good: peace. Many of these countries […]

A woman is told to go home by a police officer on a motorbike to stop the spread of the coronavirus, on Primrose Hill, London, April 5, 2020 (AP photo by Matt Dunham).

For as long as there have been governments, pandemics have been occasions for the exercise of greater muscle by the state. In the case of COVID-19, that muscle has predominantly been the police. From the initial outbreak and first mass quarantine in the central Chinese city of Wuhan to the lockdowns around the globe today, national leaders and local officials alike have called on their police to play a new set of roles and enforce a new set of rules. What’s gone well and what’s gone badly? What’s been learned? And what’s next? Before examining any actual policing, it is […]

A woman wearing a mask and gloves waits outside a soup kitchen run by nuns in Caracas, Venezuela, April 30, 2020 (AP photo by Ariana Cubillos).

The ultimate cost of the coronavirus pandemic won’t be tallied for a while. But one casualty seems obvious now: sustainable development. The pandemic has exposed the world’s failure to meet basic human needs, not least in health. Worse, it threatens to erase recent social, economic and environmental progress, particularly among the world’s most vulnerable populations. Pundits frequently describe the coronavirus as a “great equalizer,” reinforcing the message that “we’re all in this together.” In truth, the pandemic is reinforcing the brutal inequality that separates the world’s privileged and marginalized communities. Five years ago, U.N. member states endorsed the Sustainable Development […]