Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Associate Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. This week’s African Union summit—which brought heads of state to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Monday and Tuesday—featured debate on how best to accomplish one of the main recommendations from its reform commission: curb the body’s reliance on outside donors. Julian Hattem reported for WPR in February that the African Union’s expenses are expected to total $439 million this year, of which just 26 percent will be covered by African nations, undercutting leaders’ claims that it pursues “African solutions to African [...]
When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Israel this week, he marked a major turning point in global diplomacy. Like other pivotal moments in world affairs, the first visit to Israel by an Indian prime minister was the culmination of a long process. But it underscores a series of geopolitical trends that have reshaped the Middle East, making it almost unrecognizable from barely a decade ago and presaging more far-reaching changes ahead. Modi was welcomed in Israel with an effusiveness reserved for few global leaders. At the arrival ceremony, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told him, “We’ve been waiting for [...]
Last month, a militia that had been holding Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, the son of former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, announced he had been released in accordance with an amnesty law passed by a parliament based in the eastern city of Tobruk. In response, Fatou Bensouda, the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, issued a statement calling for Gadhafi’s arrest so he could face crimes against humanity charges in The Hague. However, in a testament to the political and security factors that have dogged the court’s work in Libya for years, Gadhafi’s whereabouts are unknown, and he does not appear to [...]
