Egyptian students chant slogans during a protest against the cancellation of high school exams, Cairo, Egypt, June 27, 2016 (AP photo by Ahmed Abd El Latif).

Population growth in the Middle East has created a variety of challenges for governments, but especially how to integrate so many young people into the economy. Failing to come up with a solution could have severe ramifications, though. A baby boom in Egypt since 2011 has added 11 million people to a population that is now approaching 100 million, according to Bloomberg. With a quarter of Egyptians between the ages of 18 and 29 unemployed, and an increasing number of young people entering a labor market that is ill-equipped to absorb them, many experts are raising concerns. Egypt isn’t alone. […]

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Editor’s note: This article is adapted from Celeste Hicks’ book “The Trial of Hissene Habre: How the People of Chad Brought a Tyrant to Justice,” which was published by Zed Books this month. In July 2015, the unthinkable happened. After having spent more than 20 years living in comfortable exile in a plush suburb of Dakar, Senegal’s capital, Chad’s former president, Hissene Habre, was brought before the Extraordinary African Chambers, or EAC, a special court set up within the Senegalese judiciary. The beginning of his trial came two years after he was arrested in Dakar and charged with war crimes, […]

Rohingya refugees watch a Malaysian delegation visiting their refugee camp near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Jan. 27, 2018 (AP photo by Manish Swarup).

When the world’s fastest-growing refugee crisis barreled into a sleepy coastal town in southern Bangladesh last August, the prime minister in Dhaka pledged that her impoverished country would go without food if that was what it took to help the Rohingya fleeing violence from the army in Myanmar. Almost nine months later, that welcome is starting to wear thin as the exodus far exceeds past influxes of Rohingya refugees and settles into a prolonged, seemingly intractable situation, taxing one of the world’s poorest and most densely populated countries. Bangladesh, no stranger to the Myanmar military’s paroxysms of ethno-nationalist violence, has […]

U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen speak at an event marking the Marshall Plan’s 70th anniversary at the George C. Marshall Center in Germany, June 28, 2017 (AP photo by Matthias Schrader).

If you need a break from the tawdry soap opera of American politics and the twists of national security policymaking these days, 2018 provides many milestones that recall actual American greatness, even instilling some hope for its renewal. Last week marked the 70th anniversary of the formal beginning of the Economy Recovery Plan, commonly known as the Marshall Plan. It was not only a financial infusion to jumpstart the struggling economies of Europe torn apart by World War II, but a demonstration of American planning and organization, as well as the role of visionary public and private sector leaders. It […]

Location manager Lee Erwin unloads corn from a trailer at the Heartland Co-op in Redfield, Iowa, April 5, 2018 (AP photo by Charlie Neibergall).

After a relatively quiet first year in the White House, President Donald Trump is delivering on his campaign promises to get tough on trade, especially with China. In 2017, the Trump administration launched a number of investigations into foreign trade practices but took little action beyond abandoning the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the Obama administration had negotiated with 11 Pacific Rim countries. Trump also threatened to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement if Canada and Mexico did not bow to his demands to renegotiate the deal. NAFTA talks are still ongoing. But then, in just the first few months […]

Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia holds up a copy of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” as he speaks during a Security Council meeting, New York, April 5, 2018 (AP photo by Mary Altaffer).

If you wanted to see some quirky improvisational comedy in New York last week, the United Nations was the place to be. On Thursday, Russia requested a public Security Council meeting to rebut charges that it was responsible for the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in the British town of Salisbury. This was the second time that the council has discussed the attempted murder of the Russian double-agent and his daughter using a sophisticated nerve agent, Novichok. Britain called the first of these meetings in March as part of a well-coordinated campaign to put Russia on the defensive, […]

French President Emmanuel Macron talks with farmers as he visits the 55th International Agriculture Fair at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center, Paris, Feb. 24, 2018 (AP photo by Thibault Camus).

On April 5, the French government announced it would provide about $1.35 billion over the next five years in state-backed credit and financing from the European Union to the country’s organic agriculture sector. The announcement was part of French President Emmanuel Macron’s efforts to reform France’s agricultural sector—including a pledge in February to invest more than $6 billion to make the industry more environmentally friendly, among other things—and follows signals from Macron that he would consider changes to the EU’s Common Agricultural policy, or CAP. For years, French farmers have been among the main beneficiaries of the CAP, which provides […]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Rwandan President Paul Kagame arrive at the Kigali Memorial Center, Kigali, Rwanda, July 6, 2016 (AP photo).

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. It was a tumultuous week for tens of thousands of African asylum-seekers in Israel, though it ultimately produced no clarity on whether some or all of them might be permitted to stay in the country and where they might go if they’re kicked out. On Monday night, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that his government and the United Nations refugee agency had reached an “unprecedented understanding” by which more than 16,000 of the African asylum-seekers, many of whom […]

Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders laughs with a supporter during a campaign stop in Heerlen, Netherlands, March 11, 2017 (AP photo by Muhammed Muheisen).

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, and associate editor, Omar H. Rahman, discuss what Hungary’s upcoming election reveals about the state of democracy in Europe, and the growing risks of a trade war between the United States and China. For the Report, Tracy Brown Hamilton talks with WPR’s senior editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, about why a national debate over racial discrimination in the Netherlands is becoming increasingly acrimonious. 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 […]

Gen. Gilbert Diendere greets people at the airport during the arrival of Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou for talks about the 2015 coup, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, Sept. 23, 2015 (AP photo).

A court in Burkina Faso was due to resume hearings this morning in a trial against the alleged perpetrators of a short-lived coup nearly three years ago that came close to derailing the West African nation’s transition away from quasi-authoritarian rule. In September 2015, members of the country’s presidential guard stormed a Cabinet meeting in the capital, Ouagadougou, taking the country’s acting president, Michel Kafando, hostage along with the acting prime minister and several other high-ranking officials. Kafando’s transitional government had been installed after a popular uprising in October 2014 forced the resignation of Blaise Compaore, who served as president […]

Supporters of newly elected President Carlos Alvarado Quesada cheer after polls closed during the runoff, San Jose, Costa Rica, April 1, 2018 (AP photo by Arnulfo Franco).

On April 1, Costa Ricans returned to the polls to elect a new president in a runoff that polling suggested would be one of the closest races in their country’s history. Numerous analysts described the election as a battle between progressive and conservative values, as evangelicals are becoming more prominent politically in Costa Rica. In the end, Carlos Alvarado Quesada, a novelist and former labor minister from the center-left Citizens’ Action Party, defied the pre-election predictions to soundly defeat Fabricio Alvarado Munoz, an evangelical singer and pastor, by more than 20 points. It wasn’t an easy road to victory for […]

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif meets with former Pakistani adviser on foreign affairs Sartaj Aziz, Islamabad, Pakistan, March 12, 2018 (AP photo by B.K. Bangash).

In mid-March, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif traveled to Islamabad for a three-day visit, heading a 30-member Iranian delegation. During talks with Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Zarif pledged to increase bilateral trade between Iran and Pakistan from around $1.16 billion today to $5 billion by 2021. They also discussed other areas of cooperation. In an email interview, Payam Mohseni, the director of the Iran Project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, discusses how Iran and Pakistan’s mutual desire for a deeper relationship must contend with regional rivalries. WPR: What is the […]

A Syrian boy rides his bike through the destruction of the once rebel-held Jalloum neighborhood in eastern Aleppo, Syria, Jan. 20, 2017 (AP photo by Hassan Ammar).

Carl von Clausewitz, the eminent 19th-century Prussian military theorist, believed war could best be understood as the interplay of three powerful forces: hatred, rationality that focuses hatred on political objectives, and chance. Chance made war unpredictable, but rationality, by making killing a means to an end rather than purely an act of hatred, kept it from becoming even more violent than it otherwise might be. This perspective reflected Clausewitz’s personal experience in the Napoleonic Wars. At that time, the military strategists of Europe’s great powers attempted to avoid killing civilians whenever possible, at least when fighting each other. Although the […]

An election poster for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is displayed on a roadside next to an official government anti-immigrant banner, Miskolc, Hungary, March 31, 2018 (Sipa photo by Michal Fludra via AP Images).

In the current global battle between liberal democracy and autocracy, few countries have seen democracy lose ground more steadily than Hungary. It is there that hopes for the unstoppable expansion of democracy in the aftermath of the Cold War have been most decisively dashed by the rise of Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his populist party, Fidesz. They have declared open war on a Western-style, democratic society, which is why the world will be watching when Hungarians go to the polls this Sunday. Ever since their surprise victory in 2010, Orban and his acolytes have engaged in an aggressive campaign […]

Vietnamese protesters hold national flags and an anti-China banner during a rally near the Chinese Embassy in Seoul, South Korea, July 24, 2016 (AP photo by Ahn Young-joon).

Late last month, Vietnam suspended ongoing work on a major oil drilling project in disputed waters between it and China in the South China Sea, reportedly under Chinese pressure. The incident revealed the ongoing challenge Vietnam faces in protecting its interests in the vital waterway as Beijing continues to aggressively assert its maritime claims. Vietnam is no stranger to this kind of Chinese behavior in the South China Sea. For Hanoi, the disputes are just part of a wider, centuries-old problem of managing ties with its giant northern neighbor, which occupied it for nearly a millennia and with which it […]

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his Vietnamese counterpart Tran Dai Quang meet at the Presidential Palace in Hanoi, Vietnam, March 23, 2018 (AP photo by Nguyen Khanh).

On March 23 in Hanoi, South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his Vietnamese counterpart, Tran Dai Quang, announced plans to rapidly increase trade between their two countries from more than $60 billion today to $100 billion by 2020. Bilateral trade has been growing quickly since South Korea and Vietnam signed a free trade deal in 2015, building on economic ties formed after diplomatic relations were established in 1992. In an email interview, Lee Jaehyon, a research fellow and director of the Center for ASEAN and Oceania Studies at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, discusses South Korea and Vietnam’s deepening […]

A girl walks by a mural of Donald Trump drawn on Israel’s separation barrier Bethlehem, West Bank, March 13, 2018 (Sipa photo by Artur Widak via AP).

On March 24, a bill requiring the U.S. government to cut financial aid to the Palestinian Authority quietly passed into law as part of the omnibus spending bill signed by President Donald Trump. The new law, known as the Taylor Force Act, is the latest in a series of punitive measures taken by Washington against the Palestinians that are casting a shadow over their bilateral relationship and threatening stability in the Middle East. Ostensibly, the law is directed at a longstanding policy of the Palestinian Authority to provide financial support to the families of Palestinians killed or imprisoned by Israel. […]

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