Resources Archive

A country’s gold reserves are meant to provide stability and financial ballast, not cash for everyday purchases. Only in the most extreme cases do they become a source of currency for vital supplies. That is exactly what is happening in Venezuela, where the political crisis has triggered the kind of international intrigue usually scripted in Hollywood. The embattled government of President Nicolas Maduro is trying to cash in its reserves while the opposition and its foreign backers maneuver to keep the country’s gold and any hard currency from its sale out of Maduro’s hands. This intrigue involving bank vaults and […]

After seven years of war, the Central African Republic has taken a shaky step toward peace. The United Nations announced in early February that the Central African government and 14 armed groups had agreed to a draft peace accord after 10 days of negotiations in Khartoum. The deal is a promising first step, but the drivers of conflict in CAR need to be addressed for a lasting peace to take hold, as competition for natural resources, ongoing ethnic disputes and, to some extent, religious cleavages, have all complicated past peace efforts. The agreement, provisionally signed on Feb. 6, calls for […]

As unrest grows in Venezuela, oil production mismanagement is turning the disaster from bad to worse. Find out more when you subscribe to World Politics Review (WPR). When oil prices started their collapse in 2014, plummeting from well above $100 a barrel to just over $29 by early 2016, the market drama sent shockwaves across the global economy, producing winners and losers. Oil importers benefited from sharply lower import costs, while producers’ economies, particularly those that rely on oil for the majority of their exports, went into crisis mode. That was the case in Venezuela, where oil production remained the […]

Leaders from Iraq and Jordan held a summit meeting earlier this month, where they signed a slew of agreements liberalizing trade and commercial ties. The meeting, which follows a visit to Iraq by Jordan’s King Abdullah II, is part of a recent intensification in Baghdad’s diplomatic outreach as it seeks to rebuild after its brutal, years-long war with the Islamic State. In an interview with WPR, Randa Slim, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, discusses Iraq’s post-ISIS foreign policy priorities. World Politics Review: What is Iraq’s interest in cultivating increasingly close economic and diplomatic ties with Jordan? Randa […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss the implications of the upcoming second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and the potential consequences of a content-free diplomatic process. For the Report, Mariana Palau talks with WPR’s senior editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, about Colombia’s post-conflict land restitution program, which is not only struggling in its mission to help landowners reclaim property that was stolen during the country’s civil war, but is also in some cases driving a new cycle of displacement. If you like what you […]

Weeks into Nicolas Maduro’s disputed second term as Venezuela’s president, his prospects for political survival appear more uncertain than ever. Many countries, including the United States and many South American and European countries, have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido, president of the National Assembly, as the legitimate interim president, as he declared himself last month. It is risky to predict the end date of a regime whose leadership has already weathered nearly six years of economic crisis, but if it is approaching, there should be plans for reviving the economy of an oil-rich but desperate nation. Guaido is already devising […]

The death toll continues to rise in southern Brazil after the collapse of a tailings dam at a mine last month triggered a massive mudslide. In what is being called the country’s worst environmental disaster, 134 people have been confirmed dead and another 199 are still missing in the nearby town of Brumadinho, in Minas Gerais state. Five people have been arrested as part of an investigation into the collapse, and a Brazilian court ordered the mine’s operator, Vale S.A., to stop using eight other tailings dams, which are constructed out of the waste materials left over from mining operations. […]

The scale of the humanitarian disaster in Venezuela is almost inconceivable. Despite the world’s largest proven oil reserves, the economy barely functions. People struggle just to survive. Store shelves are nearly empty of food, medicine and other necessities. The few goods available are out of reach for most people because of hyperinflation that the International Monetary Fund estimates reached a shocking 1 million percent in 2018. An estimated 3 million Venezuelans have already fled to neighboring countries, and more will likely join them. Last fall, the Pharmaceutical Federation of Venezuela estimated that only around 20 percent of needed medicines were […]

APARTADO, Colombia—The sun was sitting low in the sky when Luis Izquierdo noticed the group of armed men walking onto his family’s farm in this town in Uraba, a region of northwestern Colombia that abuts the Caribbean Sea. In the fading daylight, he couldn’t see them clearly at first; he and his parents and siblings thought they might be soldiers looking for something to eat or drink. Their guts started to clench, however, when the men came closer with their rifles shouldered. They realized it was more likely that the men belonged to a paramilitary group that had recently started […]

After years of impoverishment, Guyana is suddenly on the verge of prosperity. Since 2015, a consortium led by Exxon Mobil has developed at least 10 deepwater oil wells off Guyana’s shores, with a combined productive capacity of around 750,000 barrels per day. Exploration is ongoing, with most experts anticipating the country’s oil reserves exceed the current estimate of 5 billion barrels. One way to grasp the magnitude of these discoveries is that in 10 years, Guyana, with a population of slightly less than 800,000, could pump nearly a barrel of oil per person each day—more production on a per capita […]