French President Emmanuel Macron greets Republic of Congo President Denis Sassou Nguesso in Paris, Nov. 12, 2021 (AP photo by Francois Mori).

Corruption is rampant and inequality is endemic in the Republic of Congo. In many countries, these conditions, combined with the staggering price hikes caused by the war in Ukraine, have led to rises in public anger that have threatened world leaders from Sri Lanka to Ecuador. Yet, despite being in control during the decades when those conditions became entrenched in Congo-Brazzaville, President Denis Sassou Nguesso and his ruling Congolese Labor Party, or PCT, actually strengthened their grip on power in the country’s recent legislative elections, thanks both to domestic repression and international complacency. Provisional results released by the government indicate that the PCT won nearly 110 seats in the 151-seat National Assembly in the mid-July vote. A second round of voting is […]

Mohammed Shia al-Sudani speaks during a statement at the special session on Iraq of the Human Rights Council, at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Sept. 1, 2014 (AP photo by Salvatore Di Nolfi).

After more than nine months of deadlock following parliamentary elections last year, Iraq appears to be on the verge of forming a government. The Coordination Framework, a parliamentary bloc that includes Iran-backed Shiite militias, has nominated Mohammed Shia al-Sudani as its candidate for prime minister. The nomination of al-Sudani by the Shiite bloc could thread the needle, as analyst Hamzeh Haddad writes, by producing an Iraqi government stable enough to make tough but necessary policy decisions, but not so polarizing as to spark a renewed round of civil conflict between rival Shiite camps.

African heads of state gather for a group photograph at the African Union leaders’ summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Feb. 5, 2022 (AP photo).

Last week, 13 African heads of state and government attended the African Union’s Mid-Year Coordination Meeting, the principal forum for the AU and Africa’s Regional Economic Communities, or RECs, to align their priorities and coordinate implementation of the continental integration agenda. This year’s meeting, the fourth since the format was launched in 2017 to replace a mid-year leaders’ summit, was focused on issues like the status of regional integration in Africa; the division of labor between the AU, its member states and RECs; a tripartite free trade agreement between the East African Community, The Common Market for Eastern and Southern […]

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On July 5, Algeria celebrated the 60th anniversary of its independence with a military parade in the capital city, Algiers, complete with tanks, helicopters and missile launchers, moving along roads lined with the national flag. The event was meant to celebrate a pivotal day in 1962, when the country officially bucked French colonial rule after fighting a brutal, eight-year war of liberation. But for many, the vision of military hardware parading across the capital that sunny, summer day served instead as a reminder of all that has gone wrong since independence. According to Mourad Ouchichi, a professor of political science […]

A high-speed rail train is pictured in Vientiane, Laos, at the opening of a Chinese-built railway connecting the Lao capital to the Chinese city of Kunming, Dec. 3, 2021 (Kyodo News photo via AP Images).

Over the past few years, the Southeast Asian state of Laos has positioned itself at the center of growing trade, economic and infrastructure integration in the Mekong subregion. Its ambitious plan envisioned its dams providing electricity for Laos’ more populous neighbors and its expanding web of roads and rails—whose development is funded extensively through debt, much of it to China—connecting the region’s rising economies. But that was before Laos’ economy crashed. Today, inflation is skyrocketing. Staple goods like cooking oil are becoming scarce. And the local currency is collapsing against the dollar. The country, whose credit rating was downgraded by Moody’s in […]

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Two weeks ago, I returned to Beirut for my first visit to Lebanon since an economic crash transformed the country into a perverse lab experiment on the limits of human tolerance for completely avoidable privation and abusive governance. The human impact of the crisis, which began in October 2019, has been thoroughly chronicled, but it’s still stunning to see it in person. Every individual and household in the country runs a daily obstacle course to secure what food, fuel and medicine is available. Meanwhile, the ultra-rich continue to live in style, packing into clubs and luxury shops in full view […]

U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid address the media following their meeting in Jerusalem, July 14, 2022 (AP photo by Evan Vucci).

U.S. President Joe Biden made his first presidential trip to the Middle East this week, stopping in Israel for a three-day visit that was refreshingly uncontroversial, before heading on to Saudi Arabia for a meeting with the kingdom’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, that has raised hackles in Washington since it was announced several weeks ago. The contrasting atmospherics of the two legs of Biden’s trip serve to underscore how much has changed in the region in recent years, but also paradoxically how much has stayed the same. Coming a year after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, […]

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In 2019, the year before the coronavirus pandemic began, a series of popular uprisings erupted in a large number of countries. That included Chile, where public discontent finally boiled over following an increase in public transportation prices. After dozens had been killed in the unrest, the Chilean government took the protesters’ grievances seriously, and then-President Sebastian Pinera agreed to a dramatic course of action: The country would rewrite its constitution. The following year, in the middle of the pandemic, nearly 80 percent of Chilean voters agreed to the plan in a national referendum. The country was jubilant. Now, nearly three years after those initial protests, the proposed new […]

A man draped with an Ecuadorean flag protests next to a burning barricade, Santa Rosa, Ecuador, June 14, 2022 (AP photo by Dolores Ochoa).

On June 30, the government of Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso reached an agreement with the country’s leading Indigenous organization, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, or Conaie, and other civil society organizations to bring an end to social protests that had ground the country to a standstill for 18 days. The protests, which began in rural areas and later converged on Quito, the capital, were triggered by rising fuel prices and escalating inflation. But they took place against the backdrop of a surge in violent crime linked with drug trafficking, exacerbated by a deteriorating justice system limiting the government’s efforts to […]

A woman wearing a face mask rides a bicycle past a large television screen displaying Chinese President Xi Jinping, Hong Kong, July 1, 2022 (AP photo by Mark Schiefelbein).

Chinese President Xi Jinping toured Wuhan last week in what amounted to a victory lap, triumphantly walking through production facilities and industrial sectors in the city that was the coronavirus pandemic’s Ground Zero when it emerged in December 2019. Xi’s visit was significant for two key, if distinct, reasons. One was to inspect “Optics Valley,” a burgeoning technology hub that symbolizes China’s ambitions to develop home-grown innovation and boost self-reliance. As with many of his visits to manufacturing facilities and incubators for critical technology sectors across China, Xi took photos with key personnel at the manufacturing sites and spoke about […]

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Arise Ghana, a Ghanaian political pressure group, organized a two-day protest last week to express the public’s growing anxiety over economic conditions in the country, including unemployment, the rising cost of living and the depreciation of the Ghanaian currency, the cedi. The group called on the government to take “pragmatic steps to alleviate the suffering of the people of Ghana.” During the protests, demonstrators marched to the headquarters of Ghana’s Ministry of Finance, where they presented a petition calling on the ministry to “take urgent steps to ensure that inflation is brought down to the barest minimum to allow the […]

Migrants climb the fences separating the Spanish enclave of Melilla from Morocco in Melilla, Spain, June 24, 2022 (AP photo by Javier Bernardo).

International condemnation is growing against Morocco and Spain as more details emerge about the violent deaths of at least 37 migrants during an attempt last week to cross Morocco’s border with the Spanish enclave of Melilla. According to media reports, more than 2,000 people attempted to enter the enclave from the Moroccan city of Nador. Moroccan authorities initially claimed that the migrants died in a stampede or as a result of falling from the high, barbed-wire fence that separates Melilla from Moroccan territory. But human rights groups threw cold water on those claims, and video footage quickly emerged and circulated on […]