Latest Archive

In its 2017 World Report, Human Rights Watch slammed Australia’s offshore detention of asylum-seekers on Manus Island and Nauru as draconian and abusive. The report criticized not only the treatment of asylum-seekers, but also the government’s measures—overturned by the High Court in October—to gag service-providers working at offshore camps, who can face criminal charges and other penalties if they go public with information about detention conditions. The Human Rights Watch report comes on the heels of the alleged bashing of two Iranian asylum-seekers on Manus by Papua New Guinea police on New Year’s Eve, as well as the 2016 publication […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on income inequality and poverty reduction in various countries around the world. Mexico has one of the highest rates of inequality among developed countries, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, with the richest 1 percent of the population owning almost half of the country’s wealth. In an email interview, Patricio Solís, a sociology professor at el Colegio de Mexico, discusses poverty reduction and income inequality in Mexico. WPR: What is the rate of income inequality in Mexico, what are the latest trends in terms of widening […]

A perfect storm is gathering in Mexico as the dawn of Donald Trump’s presidency north of the border coincides with domestic upheaval. While Trump’s threats on trade, immigration and border security have received the most attention, Mexico’s deeply unpopular president, Enrique Pena Nieto, also faces social unrest and a potential recession ahead of a presidential election in 2018—one in which, much as in the U.S., a populist underdog will look to capitalize on public anger. Since Jan. 1, headlines from Mexico have been dominated not by Trump, but by the so-called “gasolinazo,” a controversial yet inevitable decision by the Pena […]

Just when it seemed like the European Union’s troubles couldn’t get any worse, Donald Trump seemed to rub salt in its wounds last week. In a joint interview with German newspaper Bild and The Times of London, he lauded Brexit, disparaged German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door refugee policy, and derided the EU as a “vehicle” for German economic domination. Trump clearly would shed no tears were the union to collapse on his watch. But could he instead end up being the EU’s savior? Trump’s most recent comments follow reported assurances given by the Trump transition team to British Foreign Secretary […]

Diplomatic ties between Iran and Morocco were fully restored earlier this month when Morocco’s ambassador to Iran presented his credentials to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Morocco’s appointment of an ambassador to Iran represents a new era in bilateral relations after Rabat severed ties in 2009 over what it called Tehran’s interference in Morocco’s internal affairs. In an email interview, Ann Wainscott, an assistant professor at St. Louis University, discusses Morocco’s ties with Iran. WPR: Why did Iran and Morocco decide to restore ties, and what areas of potential cooperation are on the agenda? Ann Wainscott: Morocco and Iran officially resumed […]

On Jan. 6, soldiers in Bouake—Cote d’Ivoire’s second-largest city and the former rebel capital during the country’s civil war in the 2000s—left their barracks, firing their weapons into the air. They quickly seized control of Bouake’s main streets and announced a mutiny, the latest in a string of them in recent years in Cote d’Ivoire. Within a day, soldiers throughout the country joined the mutineers, including in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire’s largest city and commercial capital, where gunfire was reported at the army headquarters. Although the government and soldiers claim to have reached a deal to end it, the standoff proved […]

The one-year anniversary of the Iran nuclear agreement’s implementation on Monday—combined with Senate confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees last week and the death of former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on Jan. 8—has put Iran back in the spotlight. In their congressional testimony, Trump’s nominees for foreign policy and national security posts offered a range of views about the nuclear agreement and the larger problem of Iran for U.S. national interests. At the same time, Iranians are debating the implications for Iran’s foreign policy of Rafsanjiani’s final exit from the political stage. While the net effect of […]

Revolutions, by their intrinsic idealism, generate ideological extremism and destructive policies. Like the lava of an active volcano that indiscriminately burns everything in its path, revolutionary extremism devours what stands in its way. The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran was no exception. It brought to power idealistic and self-righteous revolutionaries with the mission to establish an Islamic order in Iran and beyond. Opponents of this agenda, many of whom operated outside of the new system, have been brutally suppressed. Individuals within the governing elite have attempted, with varying degrees of success, to soften this revolutionary extremism and gradually reform the […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the status of women’s rights and gender equality in various countries around the world. Last week, an Egyptian court upheld a decision to freeze the assets of three women’s rights activists. The three are charged, along with five others, of using illegally obtained foreign funds to “destabilize Egypt.” In an email interview, Marwa Shalaby, the director of the Women’s Rights in the Middle East Program at Rice University’s Baker Center, discusses women’s rights and gender equality in Egypt. WPR: What is the current status of women’s rights and […]

Resource booms and busts are a sad reality for most commodity-based developing countries, and Trinidad and Tobago is no exception. While by far the wealthiest of the Caribbean economies, thanks to its oil and gas resources, the country is currently mired in a severe recession after the collapse of world oil prices beginning in 2014. The economy contracted by 1 percent that year, followed by further declines of 2.1 percent in 2015 and 2.8 percent in 2016, according to data from the International Monetary Fund. Oil and gas, which make up about 40 percent of gross domestic product and 80 […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and senior editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss President Barack Obama’s foreign policy legacy. For the Report, Patrick M. Stewart talks to Peter Dörrie about the prospects of the liberal world order and what might replace it. Listen:Download: MP3Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant Articles on WPR: Why Obama’s Foreign Policy Gamble Fell Short The Problem With Obama’s Foreign Policy Has Been Inaction, Not Weakness Ghana’s Democracy Delivered. Can Its New President? How to Read the National Intelligence Council’s Latest Global Trends Report An Open World Is in the Balance. What Might Replace […]

Last month’s terrorist attack in Jordan, which the self-declared Islamic State quickly claimed responsibility for, was a brutal reminder of the kingdom’s fragile security situation. Gunmen attacked a police station in the southern city of Karak and then stormed a Crusader castle popular with tourists. They killed nine Jordanians in the firefight, including seven security officers, and a Canadian tourist. In the days after the attack, three Jordanian gendarmes and a police officer were killed in security raids in Karak, where authorities discovered a huge cache of weapons and explosives that apparently belonged to the gunmen. “Judging by the quantity […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on income inequality and poverty reduction in various countries around the world. With general elections due either later this year or in 2018, Sierra Leone’s opposition parties have been frequently criticizing the ruling All People’s Congress party for its handling of the country’s endemic poverty and growing crime rate. In an email interview, Tristan Reed, an independent economist, discusses poverty and income inequality in Sierra Leone. WPR: What is the rate of income inequality in Sierra Leone, what are the latest trends in terms of widening or lessening inequality, […]

Most of the policy shops and intelligence agencies in the U.S. government focus on near-term threats or issues, reflecting the time horizon of elected officials who often have little interest in events beyond the next election. But long-term thinking, as senior intelligence officer Gregory Treverton noted, “is critical to framing strategy.” For this reason there are a few government agencies designed specifically to peer deep into the future. The Pentagon, for instance, has its small Office of Net Assessment. The intelligence community has what is called the National Intelligence Council (NIC). Every four years, the NIC’s Strategic Futures Group publishes […]

Venezuela’s roiling crisis just became far more complicated for the country’s political opposition and exponentially more unsettling for the United States. On Jan. 4, President Nicolas Maduro reshuffled his Cabinet and named a new vice president, Tareck El Aissami, a man who has reportedly helped forge back-channel links for Caracas to terrorists and drug traffickers. Until now, Washington has mostly treated Venezuela’s dramatic social and economic disintegration as a matter to be watched from afar: troubling, to be sure, but without very significant repercussions beyond its own borders or neighborhood. But the appointment of El Aissami means that the next […]

Venezuelans endured a particularly difficult year in 2016. Inflation skyrocketed; scarcities lingered; crime continued to soar; and the Venezuelan currency plummeted, albeit with a bit of a December rebound as OPEC cut oil production levels and the government eliminated its 100-bolivar note, its largest and most-used bill. The year offered little respite for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, too. The opposition, which has controlled the National Assembly for the past year, continued to press for a recall referendum, while many political actors abandoned the dialogue mediated by the Vatican. Beyond the country’s borders, conservative governments replaced leftist ones in Argentina and […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the legal status and socio-economic conditions of indigenous peoples in a range of countries. Although the United States Army Corps of Engineers has temporarily stopped work on the Dakota Access Pipeline that was planned to go through the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, hundreds of protesters are still at the camp in North Dakota preparing for the next phase in the fight over the pipeline. In an email interview, Ron Whitener, the executive director of the Native American Law Center at the University of Washington, discusses Native American rights […]