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Busy and serious people know only two types of working lunch. There are pleasant but time-consuming lunches they would prefer to skip, and then there are tedious ones they desperately wish to avoid. Today, ambassadors serving on the U.N. Security Council will endure a third category of business luncheon: One that will at best be eventful but nerve-rattling, and at worst could hasten the collapse of international diplomacy. The council is visiting Washington, where it will lunch with U.S. President Donald Trump. What could possibly go wrong? The U.S. has held the rotating presidency of the Security Council in April, […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series about education policy in various countries around the world. Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, came to power on the strength of support from indigenous language-speakers who trusted him to combat their longstanding marginalization. However, the president has not always been a stalwart backer of educational reforms intended to expand indigenous language instruction in the country’s schools. In an email interview, Aurolyn Luykx, associate professor of anthropology and teacher education at the University of Texas at El Paso, describes Morales’ evolution on the issue as well as the implementation […]

On Sunday, France will vote in the first round of a heated presidential election that has domestic and international observers biting their nails. More than ever, the outcome of the French vote will resonate beyond its borders, with implications for the fate of the European Union, the plight of migrants and refugees, and security in the Middle East and Africa. Terrorism, immigration and the economy have dominated the contentious campaign period. That’s not surprising: Just yesterday, a gunman killed a police officer in Paris; migrant camps have popped up across the country; and unemployment, especially among youth, is soaring. But […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and associate editor Karina Piser discuss the issues shaping Sunday’s presidential election in France. For the Report, Eleonora Vio talks with Peter Dörrie about the evolution of right-wing extremism in Germany and the factors making the country’s eastern region particularly welcoming to these movements. If you’d like to support our free podcast through patron pledges, Patreon is an online service that will allow you to do so. To find out about the benefits you can get through pledging as little as $1 per month, click through to WPR’s Trend Lines […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series about education policy in various countries around the world. Senegal’s system of Islamic schools, known as daaras, has been a frequent target of criticism by human rights groups, who condemn the practice of having students—known as talibé, or disciples—beg in the streets. Last year, President Macky Sall drew praise for ordering that talibé be taken off the streets and returned to their parents. However, the process of modernizing Senegal’s daara system has been slow. In an email interview, Sarah Mathewson, Africa program manager for Anti-Slavery International, describes the history […]

Throughout its history, much of American foreign policy has been built on “doctrines” associated with the president who developed them. The Monroe Doctrine indicated that the United States would oppose additional European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. The Eisenhower and Carter Doctrines stressed the importance to U.S. vital national interests of the Middle East and the free flow of its energy. The Nixon Doctrine pledged U.S. support to nations fighting communism, but said that America would not do it for them. The George W. Bush Doctrine committed U.S. military power to pre-empting and preventing transnational terrorism. Over the past two […]

On March 15, King Salman of Saudi Arabia arrived in Beijing for a three-day visit. The trip, part of a one-month tour of Asia, was widely covered in the Saudi and international press, in part due to the fact that the king was accompanied by an entourage of 1,000 people. Far more noteworthy were the $65 billion worth of agreements the king signed with Chinese President Xi Jinping in fields ranging from cooperation on China’s space exploration program to the construction of new refineries in China with Saudi Aramco, the state oil company. Saudi Arabia is clearly seeking to deepen […]

BELGRADE, Serbia—Tens of thousands of Serbians have taken to the streets in recent days to protest the victory of current Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic in the country’s presidential election on April 2. The demonstrations also reflect widespread economic and political dissatisfaction as well as divisions in the country, and present a challenge to the European Union’s approach to the Western Balkans. Brussels is increasingly seen in some quarters as promoting stability over deep reform in the combustible region, allowing strongmen to erode democracy and independent institutions. Protesters returned to central Belgrade on April 18 following a brief lull over Easter, […]

Officials at Iran’s Ministry of the Interior were expecting a relatively normal day last Wednesday, when they started registering candidates for next month’s presidential election. But former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had a surprise in store for them. Ahmadinejad, who left office in 2013, had been very publicly warned by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei not to run for another term. So when he accompanied his former vice president, Hamid Baghaei, to the ministry, no one thought much of it. But after Baghaei completed his registration for the election, Ahmadinejad put on quite a show for the media. He suddenly pulled out […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series about China’s One Belt, One Road infrastructure initiative, also known as the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. Relations between China and Myanmar have been deeply affected by Myanmar’s ongoing political evolution, though China nevertheless sees Myanmar as a key player in its One Belt, One Road initiative. In an email interview, Yun Sun, senior associate with the East Asia Program at the Stimson Center, traces how bilateral ties have changed in recent years and how One Belt, One Road could potentially serve leaders […]

The latest flare-up in Zambia’s ongoing political drama began with a high-profile case of road rage. On April 8, the motorcades of President Edgar Lungu and opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema happened to be moving along the same potholed, two-lane stretch of road in the west of the country. Footage from the encounter shows police cars swerving perilously close to Hichilema’s motorcade in an attempt to clear a path for Lungu. Hichilema’s entourage, however, continues driving forward, forcing the president to pass on the right amid blaring sirens, honking and shouting. A few days later, the gravity of the incident—at least […]

On April 1, the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta broke the news that security officials in Chechnya had rounded up at least 100 men suspected of being gay or bisexual, and that several had been killed either in custody or in so-called “honor killings” carried out by their families. Last week, United Nations experts reported that men were being subjected to verbal abuse, beatings and electric shocks. In an email interview, Kyle Knight, a researcher with the LGBT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, discusses possible reasons for the crackdown and options for an effective international response. WPR: What do […]

In picking a topic for this week’s column, I decided to write about an institution that is deeply embedded in the structure of daily life as we know it. Yet it is deeply flawed, in ways that many observers from across the political spectrum have acknowledged for quite some time: It is bloated, sclerotic, overly bureaucratic and inadequately representative of society’s less privileged. Worse still, it is detached from the everyday life of those under its watch and paralyzed by seemingly insurmountable political divisions. Similarly, there is a general consensus on the necessary reforms that would make this institution more […]

A few years ago, a trio of competing multilateral infrastructure development projects sought to advance economic interconnectedness in Central Asia, a region that, by most measures, is perhaps the least-integrated in the world. Washington proposed a “New Silk Road Initiative” to tether Central Asian states with one another and with Afghanistan. Moscow, meanwhile, launched the Eurasian Union, which was to serve, as Russian President Vladimir Putin said, as the foundation of a new “epoch” for the post-Soviet states. And China, in 2013, announced plans for its “Silk Road Economic Belt” (SREB), expanding railway and, most especially, pipeline networks in the […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series about education policy in various countries around the world. In 2008, Rwanda announced that it was switching the language of scholastic instruction from French to English. The move was implemented rapidly, and with decidedly mixed success—at least at first. In an email interview, Maria Ambrozy, a researcher with the Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS University of London, explains the reason for the change and its effects. WPR: What is the current state of Rwanda’s education system, and what are some of the biggest barriers to improving […]

In the information age, we can all access more information than we can absorb, so the choices we make about what sources to trust may make us dumber, not smarter. U.S. President Donald Trump is a prime example of a very casual approach to accessing information, more often from social media rather than subject-matter experts, whose influence on public policy is declining. As a result, leaders are more likely to make poor choices in responding to the international challenges they face. Watching Trump abruptly change his positions as he is exposed to more authoritative information about world problems is illustrative […]

Since the reunification of Germany in 1990, the government has kept yearly records of the state of national unity, issuing a report every September that takes stock of economic, social and institutional progress east of the Elbe River. In its 2016 report, the focus was more on socio-political, rather than economic, developments in the region. “We have achieved a lot in eastern Germany in the last 26 years,” said government spokesperson Iris Gleicke in Berlin last September as she presented the findings of the annual report. But, she added, “we are very concerned about the right-wing extremism, xenophobia and intolerance […]