In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, discuss Israel’s lethal response to the Gaza protests, the latest surprise developments in North Korean diplomacy and Venezuela’s presidential election. For the Report, Julia Steers talks with WPR’s senior editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, about Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza’s violent campaign to silence his opponents at home and abroad, against the backdrop of a constitutional referendum this week that could keep him in office through 2034. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our [...]
Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. It has been less than two years since Yahya Jammeh, the longtime dictator of Gambia, stepped down and fled into exile in Equatorial Guinea after losing the presidential election to Adama Barrow. But as the process of national reconciliation plays out on Gambian soil, human rights groups are already making moves to have Jammeh put on trial abroad. On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch and TRIAL International published a report they say links a notorious Jammeh-era paramilitary unit known as [...]
In early May, Morocco severed diplomatic relations with Iran, after having normalized relations with Tehran in January 2017. Rabat had previously severed ties in 2009 over charges that Iran had interfered in Morocco’s domestic affairs. This time, the accusation had to do with meddling in Western Sahara, a territory that Morocco claims sovereignty over, but which is home to a separatist movement, the Polisario Front. In an email interview, Ann Wainscott, assistant professor of political science at Miami University and the 2017-2018 American Academy of Religion senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, discusses the causes of the current [...]
