This year marks the 70th anniversary of the United Nations Refugee Convention, one of the signal moral advances in human history. Negotiated in the wake of World War II and initially limited to Europe, the treaty established the first binding legal protections for individuals forced to flee their countries. These rights and responsibilities, which were made universal in the Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees in 1967, remain a cornerstone of the global humanitarian regime. The convention is, however, showing its age. Many governments are failing to fulfil their legal obligations under it, and the convention does little to [...]
One week after taking office, having won election by the thinnest margin imaginable, Peruvian President Pedro Castillo finds himself “between the sword and the wall,” to use the Spanish expression, as a result of the country’s complex political realities, made worse by his early stumbles. Peruvians are watching anxiously, uncertain about what direction he will try to take the country and how far he will get in his efforts. Castillo assumed the presidency last Thursday, in a day so filled with controversy that it seemed a continuation of the turbulent events that brought him to the top job. Obviously, it [...]
Three weeks after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise, and a week after being sworn in as prime minister, Ariel Henry held his first Cabinet meeting on July 28. It did not go well. In an effort to distance himself from the unpopular Moise administration, Henry attempted to revoke a 2020 presidential decree creating a national intelligence agency, which had been widely criticized as an unaccountable secret police that could potentially spy on Moise’s political opponents. But in response to Henry’s proposal, the Cabinet’s secretary-general, Renald Luberice, submitted a letter expressing his opposition to dismantling Moise’s agenda, in which he [...]
