Diplomacy & Politics Archive

Last month, a war crimes tribunal in Bangladesh handed down a guilty verdict against Islamist party leader Ghulam Azam, its fifth conviction of a prominent political figure for involvement in atrocities committed during the country’s 1971 war for independence. In an email interview, Zakia Afrin, an adjunct professor in international law at Golden Gate University who focuses on intra-state conflict and peacebuilding, discussed the state of Bangladesh’s war crimes trials and the lessons they yield for other contexts. WPR: How well have Bangladesh’s war crimes trials succeeded in terms of providing a fair and legitimate legal process? Zakia Afrin: As […]

It was the phone call heard around the world: The conversation between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was hailed as a major diplomatic breakthrough, a triumph for U.S. President Barack Obama, who in the last moments of his trip to Israel last March nudged the two leaders to end their festering disagreement. Reconciliation, however, is yet to come. Four months after the call, Israel and Turkey have still not managed to bridge the gaps that have separated them since relations fell apart in May 2010, when an Israeli raid on a Turkish ship […]