Q & A Archive

In mid-November, a vote of no confidence ousted the government of Moldovan Prime Minister Maia Sandu, who was subsequently replaced by Ion Chicu with the support of the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova, or PSRM. Until her ouster, Sandu’s ACUM bloc had governed in coalition with the Socialists, but their alliance had been a fragile one and its demise surprised few observers. In an email interview, Cristina Gherasimov—a research fellow at the Robert Bosch Center for Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia at the German Council on Foreign Relations, and an academy associate in the […]

In late October, the Trump administration announced the suspension of more than $1 billion in trade preferences for Thailand’s fishing industry due to rampant violations of human rights, particularly among migrant laborers who work in the sector. Thailand is one of the world’s largest seafood exporters, but its fishing industry has long been dogged by reports of slave labor, trafficking and other human rights abuses. While Thailand has made some progress in addressing these issues, it still has not implemented necessary reforms, says Steve Trent, founder and executive director of the Environmental Justice Foundation, a British watchdog organization. In an […]

Since 2001, member states of the World Trade Organization have held on-and-off negotiations on an agreement to end harmful subsidies to fisheries that are contributing to the depletion of fish stocks around the world. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that in 2015, only two-thirds of the world’s fish stocks were being harvested at sustainable levels, down from 90 percent in 1974. Although the WTO is close to an agreement, it won’t meet a year-end deadline proposed by the U.N. In an email interview with WPR, Daniel Skerritt, a postdoctoral research fellow with the Fisheries Economics Research Unit […]

South Africa’s largest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, or DA, is in turmoil following its poor showing in parliamentary and provincial elections earlier this year. Several senior black figures in the DA, including Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba and Mmusi Maimane, the DA’s first black leader, left the party last month. Their resignations came on the heels of the return of the party’s controversial former leader, Helen Zille, to a top leadership post. Zille, who is white, has a history of making remarks seen as racially insensitive, so her return was widely interpreted as a sign that the party would recalibrate […]

In this week’s editors’ discussion on Trend Lines, WPR’s Judah Grunstein and Frederick Deknatel talk about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to the White House, and Donald Trump’s “worst of both worlds” approach to Turkey. They also discuss the fall of Bolivian President Evo Morales and why the events there are too complicated to easily categorize as either a coup or a revolution. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get our uncompromising analysis delivered straight to your inbox. The newsletter offers […]

Scores of people died in Ethiopia in late October after anti-government demonstrations descended into communal violence in and around the capital, Addis Ababa, and other parts of the Oromia region. The protests against Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed began when a high-profile activist and media mogul, Jawar Mohammed, accused the government of plotting an attack on him at his home. Responding to the violence—which killed 86 people, according to the government’s latest count—is only one of the domestic challenges facing Abiy, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last month for his efforts to reconcile with neighboring Eritrea. To discuss the […]

In this week’s editors’ discussion on Trend Lines, WPR’s Judah Grunstein and Frederick Deknatel talk about Iraq’s ongoing protests and what makes them different than those seen in previous years. They also discuss French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to China and why the EU has such a hard time maintaining a united front in dealing with Beijing. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get our uncompromising analysis delivered straight to your inbox. The newsletter offers a free preview article every day of […]

Switzerland’s Green party outdid already high expectations in the country’s late-October elections, picking up a record number of seats to become the fourth-largest party in the National Council, the lower house of the Swiss parliament. The right-wing, anti-immigrant Swiss People’s Party finished first, but well below its 2015 results, followed by the center-left Social Democrats and the center-right Liberals, both of which also suffered losses compared to 2015. Combined with gains by the Green Liberals, a more centrist environmental party, the elections represented a Green “tsunami,” according Pascal Sciarini, as quoted in The New York Times. In an email interview, […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series about education policy in various countries around the world. In a raid last month in Katsina, the capital of Katsina state in northern Nigeria, police freed 67 men and boys from what news reports called an “Islamic school.” The captives, who ranged in age from 7 to 40 years old, had been held in degrading conditions that included being shackled at the feet and suffering regular beatings and abuse. Hundreds more had escaped from the center in the weeks preceding the raid. In September, a police raid in neighboring Kaduna […]

A retired law professor with no prior experience in government won by a landslide in Tunisia’s presidential runoff in mid-October. Kais Saied’s victory, with more than 70 percent of the vote, was widely seen as a sign that the electorate is fed up with the country’s political establishment. In parliamentary elections held between the first and second round of the presidential race, no party won more than 19 percent of the vote. Ennahda, the moderate Islamist party, won a plurality of 52 seats but is likely to face difficulty assembling a coalition government in the 217-seat parliament. In an email […]