The head of Sudan’s military, Gen. Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan, speaks during a press conference, Khartoum, Sudan, Oct. 26, 2021 (AP photo by Marwan Ali).

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, Africa Watch, which includes a look at the week’s top stories and best reads from and about the African continent. Subscribe to receive it by email every Friday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your email inbox. Across Sudan, people have taken to the streets to protest a military coup that threatens to derail their aspirations for a democratic future. On Oct. 25, just weeks after a previous failed coup attempt, Sudan’s military leadership detained Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, several key civilian government officials […]

Women and teachers demonstrate to demand their rights and equal education for women in Kabul.

Last week, a group of Afghan women appealed to the United Nations, imploring it not to recognize the Taliban’s proposed ambassador to the global body as the representative of their country. “The UN needs to give that seat to somebody who respects the rights of everyone in Afghanistan,” Fawzia Koofi, a former Afghan politician and peace negotiator, told reporters. The group’s call was echoed by Ghulam Isaczai, the embattled ambassador appointed by the government the Taliban ousted, in remarks he made to the U.N. Security Council. “Women and girls in Afghanistan are pinning their hopes and dreams on this very […]

Iceland’s prime minister, Katrin Jakobsdottir.

Iceland almost made history at the end of September, when it looked like the country had elected Europe’s first majority-female parliament, with women holding 33 of 63 seats. After a recount, however, the share of seats held by women declined to 30. Still, in a world where the average share of female lawmakers is 25.5 percent, even this degree of parity is an achievement. It might seem especially satisfactory because it was done without any mandatory quotas requiring a certain level of women’s representation in parliament. But three of Iceland’s five largest parties had adopted voluntary gender quotas, which appears to have […]

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, lead a rally in Managua, Nicaragua, Sept. 5, 2018 (AP file photo by Alfredo Zuniga).

On Nov. 7, a presidential election will be stolen. One week from this Sunday, the profoundly unpopular Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, will declare themselves the winners after one of the most grotesque reelection campaigns in recent memory. We know they will win, among other reasons, because they have imprisoned all the other candidates who sought to challenge them at the polls. Ortega and Murillo might have won without resorting to such a blunt instrument of tyranny, because they had already used their somewhat less blunt anti-democratic instruments to dismantle the checks and balances […]

Supporters of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik party rally against Asia Bibi in Karachi, Pakistan, Oct. 12, 2018 (AP photo by Fareed Khan).

Last summer, Tahir Ahmad Naseem was at a bail hearing in a high-security courtroom in Pakistan when he was shot dead. His killer, a 15-year-old student named Faisal Khan who had sneaked a pistol into the courtroom, was arrested immediately. But rather than facing public opprobrium, Khan was hailed as a hero. Thousands took to the streets to defend him, chanting slogans in his support and rallying for his release from prison. Police officers clicked jubilant selfies with him as they ferried the teenager in and out of court.  Naseem, his victim, had been targeted both by the lawsuit and […]

Shawan Jabarin, director of the al-Haq human rights group, at the organization’s offices in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Oct. 23, 2021 (AP photo by Majdi Mohammed).

Editor’s note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, Middle East Memo, which takes a look at what’s happening, what’s being said and what’s on the horizon in the Middle East. Subscribe to receive it by email every Tuesday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it. Last week, Israel placed “terrorism” designations on six Palestinian human rights groups, escalating an ongoing legal and political campaign against Palestinian civil society. The move drew condemnations from the international human rights community, while initially attracting a muted response from the United States. Israeli officials reportedly plan to travel to […]

Polisario Front soldiers sit on a cliff in the Boujdour refugee camp, Algeria, Oct. 15, 2021 (AP photo by Bernat Armangue).

After two years of diplomatic deadlock, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appointed a new envoy for Western Sahara, a territory disputed between Morocco and the pro-independence Polisario Front, which represents the ethnic Sahrawi population of the territory. The recent designation of seasoned Italian-Swedish diplomat Staffan de Mistura marks a much-delayed and critical step forward in a standoff that, if left untreated, risks spreading instability elsewhere in the region.  The temperature has been rising of late in this often-overlooked conflict. In November 2020, fighting flared up between Morocco and the Polisario Front. A month later, President Donald Trump threw fuel on the […]

Chinese military vehicles carrying DF-17 ballistic missiles roll during a parade to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the founding of Communist China in Beijing, Oct. 1, 2019 (AP photo by Mark Schiefelbein).

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only Weekly Wrap-Up newsletter, which gives a rundown of the week’s top stories on WPR. Subscribe to receive it by email every Saturday. If you’re already a subscriber,  adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your email inbox. Last month, the surprise announcement by the U.S., U.K. and Australia of their trilateral AUKUS security partnership sent shockwaves across the Indo-Pacific and put China on notice that Washington was adding some bite to its “pivot to Asia.” This week, the shoe was on the other foot, as news broke that China reportedly […]

A woman protests at Lekki Toll plaza on the one-year anniversary of the #EndSARS demonstrations against police brutality, Lagos, Nigeria, Oct. 20, 2021 (AP photo by Sunday Alamba).

Editor’s Note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, Africa Watch, which includes a look at the week’s top stories and best reads from and about the African continent. Subscribe to receive it by email every Friday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it directly to your email inbox. In Oct. 2020, Nigerians took to the streets in cities across the country during widespread protests against police brutality, popularly known as #EndSARS. The demonstrations, regarded by many as the most significant popular uprising since the country’s pro-democracy struggles of the 1990s, initially began as a campaign […]

A grave digger wears a protective suit during a burial for a person who died of COVID-19, at a cemetery in Omsk, Russia, Oct. 7, 2021 (AP photo).

In the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, Russian officials seemed to delight in pointing to the country’s relatively low COVID-19 death toll and highlighting what they portrayed as a disastrous response by the West. Russia developed the first coronavirus vaccine, and it reopened its economy before many others. Now, however, as global deaths due to COVID-19 reach their lowest levels in a year, the trend is going in the opposite direction in Russia. In fact, the pandemic response has all but gone off the rails, with a record number of deaths, hospitals straining to keep up and, astonishingly, less than one […]

Thai activist Nachacha Kongudom raises a three-fingered salute outside a cinema where “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1” is showing, in Bangkok, Thailand, Nov. 20, 2014 (AP photo by Sakchai Lalit).

About a year ago, the South Korean pop band BTS got caught up in a low-grade, somewhat baffling international scandal. During a speech accepting an award for improving relations between South Korea and the U.S., the band’s leader Kim Namjoon, better known as RM, referenced the “history of pain shared by the two nations,” which fought together during the Korean War. It should have been a fairly benign statement, but it sparked a furor in China, where state media outlets fiercely condemned the band for failing to acknowledge Chinese casualties in the war and thereby betraying a “totally one-sided attitude […]

Followers of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr celebrate after the announcement of the results of parliamentary elections, Baghdad, Iraq, Oct. 11, 2021 (AP photo by Khalid Mohammed).

Editor’s note: This is the web version of our subscriber-only weekly newsletter, Middle East Memo, which takes a look at what’s happening, what’s being said and what’s on the horizon in the Middle East. Subscribe to receive it by email every Monday. If you’re already a subscriber, adjust your newsletter settings to receive it. Iraq has begun the long, tortuous and now-familiar process of post-election negotiations among the country’s powerful, mostly armed blocs, and the interregnum between the Oct. 10 parliamentary election and the swearing-in of a new government could potentially stretch into next summer.  The election results have made possible many important shifts […]

Followers of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr celebrate after the announcement of the results of parliamentary elections, Baghdad, Iraq, Oct. 11, 2021 (AP photo by Khalid Mohammed).

On Sunday, for the fifth time since the U.S. invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iraqis voted in elections. Initial results suggest that the big winner was nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose political formation once again emerged with the most seats in parliament. Parties aligned with pro-Iranian militias were the big losers, seeing their vote totals plummet. But with turnout at a record low 41 percent of registered voters, the election is being seen as an expression of Iraqis’ disillusionment with the state of the country’s electoral politics. The elections were the culmination of a political process triggered by […]

An anti-coup protester peeps from behind makeshift barricades in Yangon, Myanmar, March 11, 2021 (AP photo).

Up until the spring, the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar was mainly expressing its opposition to the military junta that seized power in February through peaceful protests. But over the summer, in reaction to the junta’s violent and often lethal response, hundreds of small, armed, civilian resistance groups popped up and begun to carry out ambushes on military convoys around the country. As Betcy Jose and Peace Medie have shown, this is typical of how civilians begin to protect themselves with force when faced with violence from their own government, and in the absence of adequate outside help. And when peaceful protesters begin to […]

A video surveillance camera is installed above a subway platform in the Court Street station, Brooklyn, Oct. 7, 2020 (AP photo by Mark Lennihan).

Near the outset of my time as a correspondent for The New York Times in China in the early 2000s, during one of my regular conversations with my research assistants, I had an idea for a story that I thought was promising. Beijing was just then cracking down on both video game parlors and internet access, with authorities saying that age limits needed to be imposed and real-name identification required in order to do many things online. At the time, the state used pornography as the rationale for the moves, arguing that online smut would poison the minds of the […]

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern holds up a card showing a new alert system for COVID-19, in Wellington, New Zealand, March 21, 2020 (AP photo by Nick Perry).

COVID-19 has walloped the world’s women. As the virus spread, women—who are overrepresented in hard-hit industries like food service, hospitality, education and, crucially, health care—found themselves vulnerable, unemployed and without a social safety net, and often neglected by government crisis responses. Closures of businesses and schools, necessitated by social distancing, have pushed millions of women from the global workforce: Worldwide, women lost 64 million jobs—$800 billion in earnings—in 2020. At the same time, women’s retreat to the home widened gendered inequities in household labor, as women shouldered ever-greater child care responsibilities and more domestic chores. More time at home also […]

Mahamat Idriss Deby, head of the Transitional Military Council of Chad, salutes the coffin of his father, the late Chadian President Idriss Deby, during a state funeral in N’Djamena, Chad, April 23, 2021 (pool photo by Christophe Petit Tesson via AP).

The death of Chadian President Idriss Deby in April ended his three-decade rule and plunged the Central African country into uncertainty. Officially, Deby succumbed to wounds sustained on the frontlines of battle with a rebel group called the Front for Change and Concord in Chad, known by its French acronym FACT. Chad’s constitution stipulates that in the event of the president’s death, the speaker of the National Assembly serves as interim head of state and organizes new presidential elections within 90 days.  Instead, a military junta made up of those close to Deby announced that his son, Gen. Mahamat Idriss Deby, had […]

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