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Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the impact of corruption and various countries’ efforts to combat it. Corruption wracks Latin America, but some governments across the region have taken measures to improve transparency and accountability. In an email interview, Geoff Thale, program director at the Washington Office on Latin America, discusses El Salvador’s approach to combating corruption and organized crime and the challenges that remain. WPR: How big of a problem is corruption in El Salvador, and in what areas is its impact felt most strongly? Geoff Thale: Like Honduras and Guatemala, El Salvador […]

With the U.S. presidential election only about a year away, no candidate for either party has laid out a comprehensive national security strategy or even a broad philosophy of America’s role in the world and the purpose of U.S. power. To the extent that national security has been raised at all, the presidential hopefuls are clamoring to appear the toughest, whether against the self-declared Islamic State, Iran or Russia, and to offer unqualified support for Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The candidates have talked of reviving America’s influence in the Middle East and restraining Russia, but they haven’t […]

Against the backdrop of Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II, Croatia is gearing up for general elections on Sunday, Nov. 8, following one of the shortest campaign periods in its history. They are Croatia’s first parliamentary elections since it joined the European Union in 2013. The ruling coalition, which calls itself Croatia Grows and is run by Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic’s Social Democratic Party (SDP), will face the Patriotic Coalition, anchored by the center-right Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and the former head of Croatia’s internal security agency and Interior Ministry, Tomislav Karamarko. Croatia is just turning the page […]

In Morocco’s largest protest since 2011, more than 20,000 demonstrators, primarily youth, rallied in Tangier on Saturday, decrying the exorbitant cost of water and electricity. Although mass gatherings are scarce in Morocco, where the king holds a tight grip on power, the past three weeks have been punctuated by demonstrations over utilities prices, with protests spreading to other major cities in recent days. Protesters lashed out against Amendis, a subsidiary of the French utility company Veolia Environnement, which has serviced the relatively impoverished northern cities of Tangier and Tetouan since 2002. “Amendis, go home, Tangier is not yours,” demonstrators chanted, […]

After an uptick in violence in June threatened peace talks between Colombia and the country’s largestguerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, progress since July, when the FARC reinstated its cease-fire, led both sides to declare recently that a final deal was close at hand. But even if an agreement is reached, challenges to establishing a sustainable peace will persist, both for Colombia and its international partners. All of the articles linked below are free for non-subscribers until Nov. 19. The Road to a Deal: Since negotiations began in October 2012, the peace talks have divided Colombians, […]

With a month left until Venezuela’s pivotal parliamentary elections, the country has been jolted by accusations that the government’s case against a top opposition leader was a sham. Meanwhile, President Nicolas Maduro is vowing that he will not surrender power under any circumstances. The stage is now set for the country’s already turbulent political environment to become even more dangerously unstable. Despite the highly charged political rhetoric, it is not politics but basic subsistence needs that dominate the concerns of most Venezuelans. Shortages of all manner of basic goods, triple-digit inflation and off-the-charts crime rates have made life a daily […]

Rather than resolve its ongoing political crisis, Nepal’s new constitution has produced a polarized internal landscape and complicated relations with its most important neighbor, India. The product of a peace process that brought insurgent Maoist rebels into mainstream politics, the new constitution was promulgated on Sept. 20, institutionalizing a federal, democratic and secular republic. But it failed in its core task of bringing the country’s various ethnicities—there are over 100—and social groups together. Many social groups, especially the Madhesis and Tharus of southern Nepal, are deeply unhappy with its provisions on inclusion, political representation, federalism and citizenship, and have been […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the impact of falling oil and commodities prices on resource-exporting countries. Zambia’s economy, which relies heavily on copper and its derivate products, is coming under strain as commodity prices drop and foreign investments wane. Worse, China’s economic slowdown has also weakened Zambia’s growth, as the two countries are close trading partners. In an email interview, Irmgard Erasmus, a fixed-income economist at NKC African Economics, discussed the risks for its economy. WPR: How important are commodities for the Zambian economy, and what effect have falling commodity prices had on […]

After months of anti-corruption protests, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez recently announced an agreement with the Organization of American States (OAS) to create an anti-graft body, the Mission to Support the Fight Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras, known as the MACCIH. A similar, U.N.-led initiative next door in Guatemala, the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), strengthened the rule of law, helped to root out corruption and brought down Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina. Yet despite those relative successes, observers should temper their expectations that the MACCIH will have any meaningful impact on corruption and impunity in Honduras. […]

Several weeks ago, Hillary Clinton spent 11 hours testifying before a congressional committee about the deaths of four Americans, including the then-U.S. ambassador, Chris Stevens, in Benghazi, Libya, in September 2012. For anyone watching this spectacle, little new was gleaned, except for the fact that Clinton is a remarkably disciplined politician—and that whatever threat the GOP’s Benghazi obsession might have posed to her presidential prospects in 2016 is effectively over. What would have been of far greater interest, to both policy analysts and voters, is a look back on the U.S. decision to intervene in Libya, which Clinton strongly supported. […]

On Monday, following through on a threat issued last week, Iraq’s parliament voted unanimously to block Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi from passing anti-corruption measures and other pledged reforms without its approval. The move is just the latest sign of Abadi’s tug-of-war with Iraqi lawmakers. In August, in response to growing protests over graft and dysfunctional utility services, Abadi announced a series of reforms to deal with corruption and mismanagement. Most prominent among them were plans to eliminate several senior political offices that had become patronage vehicles, including Iraq’s three vice presidents and two deputy prime ministers, and to cut back […]

The war in Afghanistan has been both a boon and curse for neighboring Central Asia. The conflict placed this sparsely populated region, long disconnected from the globalization taking place around its borders, on the front lines of the international community’s 15-year effort to stabilize Afghanistan. Central Asia became a staging point for coalition military forces, a transit corridor, a donor as well as a recipient of aid and at times a pawn in a larger strategic competition playing out between the United States and Russia. The region also found itself on the receiving end of Afghanistan’s noxious exports: extremism, drugs […]

A new date of Dec. 13 has been set for national elections in the Central African Republic, after the vote was postponed again last month due to renewed violence. A constitutional referendum, which was also scheduled for October, will now be held on Dec. 6. However, there are many who fear the electoral process is being rushed. Legislative and presidential elections were originally scheduled to take place in February 2015, but were repeatedly delayed due to security concerns and the failure to register all voters. Another outbreak of deadly violence in the capital, Bangui, in late September—in which at least […]

Last week, I was in New Delhi to attend the Asian Forum on Global Governance, at the same time that 40 African leaders were gathering in the city to meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the India-Africa Forum Summit. The scheduling was a coincidence, but the official summit added some real-world insight to the nongovernmental deliberations at the Asian Forum. Relations among the countries of the Global South have become an important feature of the debate about how to reform the institutions of global governance. However, in contrast to the predictable Cold War-era positions of the Non-Aligned Movement […]

Three months after Burundi held its third elections since the end of its long civil war, violence has only deepened in the country. July’s fraught presidential vote took place in an environment tainted by government crackdowns and fear, and there has been an alarming upsurge in arrests, detentions and killings, with bodies found almost daily in the streets of Bujumbura, the capital. On Monday, President Pierre Nkurunziza warned that Burundians must give up any illegal firearms by Saturday, or risk being “dealt with as enemies of the nation.” Burundi had already descended into crisis in April, following the announcement of […]

Last month, the board of governors of the World Bank gathered for their annual meeting in Lima, Peru. To much fanfare, they released new data demonstrating that for the first time, the percentage of the global population living in extreme poverty—that is, on less than $1.25 a day—has dropped below 10 percent. The international community has much to celebrate with this achievement, but the work is not done. In fact, the remaining zones of abject poverty around the world are the toughest cases yet. They are often located in zones of habitual conflict where, repeatedly, the World Bank, the United […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the European refugee crisis and European Union member states’ approaches to addressing it. French President Francois Hollande held talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday on the refugee crisis, with a French official reporting that the two leaders agreed on policy objectives. However, France’s response to the refugee crisis has been far more subdued than Germany’s. In an email interview, Didier Fassin, professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, discussed […]