Q & A Archive

Last year, the Organization of American States (OAS) voted to begin reforming the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, its multilateral forum for investigating human rights conditions, with Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) countries led by Venezuela and Ecuador putting forward a number of reform proposals. In an email interview, Christina Cerna, a former human rights specialist at the commission who is currently a visiting scholar at the George Washington Univerity Law School and an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University School of Law, explained the commission’s history and prospects.* WPR: How well does the Inter-American system function at present […]

On Wednesday, Syrian rebels seized 21 Filipino members of a United Nations peacekeeping mission from a disputed demilitarized buffer zone between Israel and Syria that has been monitored by U.N. forces since 1974. The border zone in the Golan Heights had been largely unaffected by Syria’s uprising until now, and the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) has not experienced a similar incident in the decades since it was formed. The group claiming responsibility for the kidnapping said the peacekeepers would not be released until the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad withdrew from a nearby village where clashes occurred over […]

Egypt’s National Salvation Front, an opposition coalition, recently announced its intention to boycott parliamentary elections planned for this April, citing the Islamist-led government’s failure to consult the coalition about the election law. Emily Beaulieu, a political science professor at University of Kentucky and an expert on election boycotts, explained in an email interview the conditions under which election boycotts succeed and reviewed the present boycott’s prospects. WPR: What have been some of the most significant successful and failed election boycotts in recent history? Emily Beaulieu: Recent election boycotts that produced subsequent democratic reforms include the Philippines (1981), Equatorial Guinea (1993), […]

The death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez after a long battle with cancer was announced yesterday by Vice President Nicolás Maduro, who has assumed the presidency as interim leader. Chávez had served as Venezuela’s president for 14 years. The news has led to widespread speculation over the future of Venezuela and the region. An expert who spoke with Trend Lines addressed what Chávez’s long absence from Venezuela’s political scene and his death might mean for Venezuelan democracy. “What happened over the past three months, which is to say that a democratically elected president literally disappeared from his country and was […]

A bomb blast in a Shiite district of Karachi, Pakistan, killed at least 45 people Sunday in the latest example of escalating sectarian and ethnic violence in the country. Hassan Abbas, a former Pakistani government official who is now an academic and a senior adviser to the Asia Society, told Trend Lines that relations between South Asia’s Sunni and Shiite Muslim communities have historically been cordial, but that the recent uptick in sectarian attacks is linked to growing tension and violence in the region more generally. “Religious bigotry, ignorance, ethnic tensions and regional tensions are driving this trend,” Abbas said […]

In late-February, Interpol concluded its first-ever international operation against illegal logging, a three-month operation in Central and South America that resulted in the arrest of almost 200 people and the seizure of some $8 million worth of timber. Duncan Brack, an expert on illegal logging at Chatham House, explained the scope of the problem and efforts to curb it in an email interview. WPR: What is the extent of the problem of illegal logging in terms of problem regions and financial costs? Duncan Brack: Illegal logging and the international trade in illegally logged timber are major problems for many timber-producing […]

At a debate Thursday among analysts and advocates on whether the U.S. should remain in Afghanistan past 2014, when the NATO combat mission there is scheduled to end, the four panelists differed mostly on the degree of U.S. presence that would be required past that date. None advocated for a full withdrawal. Frederick W. Kagan, director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute and a prominent civilian adviser to the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan, argued that the U.S. should remain in Afghanistan because “there continue to be people in Afghanistan . . . who wake up […]