Briefing Archive

International justice has taken a reputational nosedive since the late 1990s, when the creation of the International Criminal Court signaled a new age of global accountability. Some of this has involved predictable pushback from political leaders who would rather not be called to account. But other complaints resonate more widely. Some say that the ICC’s focus on Africa and its inability to address atrocities from North Korea to Syria reflect the double standards of global power, not the impartiality of law. The worldwide resurgence of populism and nationalism, capped by the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president, appears to […]

On Monday, President Donald Trump signed a congressional resolution to overturn internet privacy protections adopted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under President Barack Obama. Broadband internet service providers will now remain authorized to track and sell customers’ online data without obtaining explicit consent from consumers—a practice that Obama’s policy would have blocked had it taken effect in December 2017 as planned. Trump’s move honors longstanding Republican opposition to the Obama-era rules, approved in October, which would have applied to providers like Verizon and Comcast but not internet companies like Google and Facebook, which are regulated by the Federal Trade […]

U.S. President Donald Trump has punctured the tired but persistent myth that the United Nations Security Council can manage the Syrian civil war. Last night, he ordered cruise missile strikes against Syria without looking for authorization from the United Nations. He did not even wait for Russia and China to veto a U.N. resolution on this week’s chemical attack on the town of Khan Sheikhoun, which would have offered the U.S. an excuse for pursuing unilateral action. This is both refreshing and dangerous. Since 2011, Security Council diplomacy over Syria has frequently been a grotesque farce. The U.S. and its […]

Last February, in his address at Gambia’s 52nd Independence Day celebration, the country’s newly elected president, Adama Barrow, referred to Senegal, Gambia’s closest neighbor, as a “friend in times of need.” Just a month earlier, following unsuccessful diplomatic efforts to unseat longtime Gambian strongman Yahya Jammeh, Senegal led a military intervention into Gambia to push Jammeh out. Jammeh had ruled Gambia with an iron fist for 22 years and refused to relinquish power after losing presidential elections in December. Senegal then became a safe haven for Barrow, who was sworn in as Gambia’s president in the Gambian embassy in Dakar […]

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — A resident in Rio de Janeiro’s largest favela, Rocinha, Jose Martins is worried. Earlier this year, Rio’s city council voted to sell the state-owned water and sanitation company, CEDAE, a move that Martins believes puts access to water and sanitation at risk for almost 50,000 residents in Rocinha alone. “The state has a social obligation, so many of us here pay a symbolic price,” he says. “I don’t imagine that a business will allow people to pay as little. If this happens, people won’t be able to pay. If they can’t pay, the company will […]

KATHMANDU, Nepal — Nepalis are heading to the polls on May 14 to elect local government officials for the first time in two decades and inaugurate voting under the new constitution that passed in September 2015. But just six weeks before the voting begins, politicians are scrambling to strike a deal with the Madhesis, an ethnic group from Nepal’s southern plains that has pushed back against provisions in the new constitution. Madhesi political parties are pushing for a constitutional amendment to give them greater representation in government and redraw provincial boundaries in order to create two federal provinces that stretch […]

Bulgaria may have had three parliamentary elections in four years, but there is little sense of change in the air. After the latest vote on March 26, the next government seems set to be another unstable coalition patching together various egos, business interests and veneers of political philosophies. While EU wannabes Serbia and Macedonia continue to attract criticism and scrutiny for weighing Western and Russian interests against each other, member state Bulgaria will continue its own balancing act. Perhaps the biggest change after last month’s election is that tentatively reformist parties are now shut out of parliament, while the mainstream […]

As the worldwide movement to combat climate change gets underway in earnest following the 2015 Paris Agreement, oil-rich Saudi Arabia finds itself in an awkward position. The world’s largest producer of fossil fuels, the kingdom needs to pump ever-increasing amounts of oil to support a rapidly expanding population in a new era of relatively low global oil prices. But the hot, arid country is one of the most vulnerable to the effects of rising temperatures. There is the distinct possibility that if the emission goals of the Paris Agreement are not met, some areas of the Arabian Peninsula, including Mecca, […]