Hundreds of thousands of Afghan migrants have returned home from neighboring Iran in recent months, fleeing one of the world’s worst coronavirus outbreaks. Iran has more than 94,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with a death toll of 6,000, although the real figures are likely higher. The exodus has raised concerns of an impending spike in coronavirus cases in Afghanistan. In an email interview with WPR, Annalisa Perteghella, a research fellow in the Middle East and North Africa Center at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies, discusses the high risk of coronavirus transmission in Afghanistan and the impact the pandemic [...]
Competition over scarce natural resources is often a key driver of the tensions that fuel armed conflict in different corners of the world. Yet in the heat of battle, environmental considerations are often relegated to afterthoughts, as smoke from burning buildings clouds the skies and toxic byproducts of munitions poison the soil and groundwater. As former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in 2014, “The environment has long been a silent casualty of war and armed conflict.” Conflict-related environmental damage directly and indirectly affects the wellbeing of nearby civilians by threatening their health, ecosystems, livelihoods and economies. Accordingly, humanitarian organizations [...]
After three weeks of negotiations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and leading opposition figure Benny Gantz agreed to form a national unity government last week. While the idea of a unity government between Netanyau’s right-wing Likud party and Gantz’s centrist Blue and White bloc had been discussed on both sides over the past year, what finally broke the logjam after three inconclusive elections since April 2019 was the public health crisis and economic recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Gantz, facing the difficult choice of breaking his core campaign promise to not serve alongside Netanyahu or taking Israel to a [...]
