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During normal times, if the world’s petroleum producers announced an agreement to slash output, oil prices would immediately spike. During normal times, lower crude prices would boost economic growth. During normal times, low oil prices might be reason to celebrate. But if there is one fact we can agree on, it is that these are not normal times. The global economic crisis triggered by efforts to stop the coronavirus pandemic has not only upended some of the patterns we had grown accustomed to—it has also revealed that many long-standing preconceptions have become outdated. That is evident in the dramatic shifts […]

The dusty border town of Taftan in western Pakistan is a frequent stopover for religious pilgrims. Many members of the country’s Shiite minority pass through it en route to visit holy sites in neighboring Iran. But after Iran emerged as one of the countries hit hardest by the coronavirus, the Pakistani government set up a quarantine camp in Taftan to prevent further movement, inadvertently turning the town into an epicenter for the spread of COVID-19. Testing in the camp is sporadic at best, while health facilities are abysmal. Many pilgrims reportedly paid bribes to escape back into Pakistan, and as […]

With China having lifted the lockdown in place in Wuhan since the end of January, and many European countries and parts of the United States beginning to envisage how they, too, will gradually ease social distancing measures, the second phase of the response to the coronavirus pandemic is coming into focus. Central to already active debates in Western democracies, at least, is the balance to be struck between addressing the urgency of the public health crisis and managing the growing impact of social distancing on national economies and individual livelihoods. At first glance, the choice seems to be an obvious […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Governments across Africa lodged protests against Beijing this week after disturbing reports emerged from China, where Africans have been subjected to a xenophobic, racist campaign of harassment and mistreatment that is ostensibly aimed at containing the spread of the coronavirus. Some African residents in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou said they have been evicted from their apartments and barred from hotels and restaurants. Others reported being forced to self-quarantine and submit to coronavirus tests regardless of symptoms or […]

One of the many challenges facing governments and businesses during a disaster is ensuring the steady supply of food and other essential items. People’s natural impulses to stock up in preparation for shortages often kick in at the same time that complex supply chains are coming under immense strain. Add to this the direct impacts of COVID-19 on workers in the food industry and the export restrictions on agricultural products that some governments have put into place to ensure that their own populations stay well-fed, and you’ve potentially got the makings of a looming food security crisis. Robyn Metcalfe, a […]

The United Kingdom has long been infamous as a money-laundering haven, with hundreds of billions of dollars in dirty money passing through its financial system just in recent years. In 2017, the British government decided to deal with all this dirty money by enacting the Unexplained Wealth Orders, a series of regulations allowing authorities to identify and seize assets related to potential corruption and money-laundering cases. But in their three years of existence, the government has pursued a grand total of just one case under the orders, against the wife of a prominent former banker from Azerbaijan, who had fallen […]

A major scandal erupted in Costa Rica recently over privacy concerns stemming from a data analysis unit that President Carlos Alvarado created after he took office in 2018. The scandal has forced the resignation of several high-level Costa Rican government officials, but no evidence has emerged yet of any illegal intent on the part Alvarado’s administration. In an email interview with WPR, Suráyabi Ramírez, a graduate student at the London School of Economics and a former staffer in Costa Rica’s legislature, explains why the scandal has caused such an outcry and why it may still have far-reaching political implications. World […]

Editor’s Note: You can find all of our coverage of the coronavirus pandemic here. If you would like to help support our work, please consider taking advantage of our subscription offer here. In a video uploaded to Twitter on March 16, Carol Yin talked through a white face mask as she explained to the camera what it was like to travel in a country that has turned cell phones into weapons to fight COVID-19. Yin, a Shanghai-based podcaster, described her trip to the nearby city of Wuxi, outside Shanghai, shedding light on how integral a phone’s location data has become […]

At a time when global cooperation is desperately needed, it seems to be scarcer than ever. G-20 leaders have effectively given up on trying to coordinate a global response to the coronavirus pandemic. Countries are beggaring their neighbors with export restrictions on medicines and food, and scrambling to snatch up medical supplies where they remain available. Among the various closures and cancellations to try to contain the spread of COVID-19, the World Trade Organization announced in March that it was cancelling the biennial ministerial meeting scheduled for June in Kazakhstan. The cancellation of a WTO ministerial meeting has barely registered […]

For decades, Sierra Leone has languished at the bottom of international corruption rankings. Despite detailed anti-corruption legislation that has been on the books since 2000, millions of aid dollars in technical assistance and repeated promises by politicians, corruption has persisted, even flourished. More recently, however, this has started to change under President Julius Maada Bio. Transparency International ranked Sierra Leone 119th out of 180 countries in its Corruption Perceptions Index last year, up 10 places from 2018. The Millennium Challenge Corporation, an independent U.S. foreign assistance agency, also recorded a jump for Sierra Leone in its annual anti-corruption scorecard, from […]

Jean Palou of the Chilean daily El Mercurio interviewed WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, by email last week for an article on the prospects for multilateralism and global governance institutions during and after the coronavirus pandemic. Grunstein outlined the challenges to the international system that predated the pandemic; why global governance still matters, even if it has been hampered; and the major questions going forward as the next phase of this global crisis unfolds. The following is the full transcript. El Mercurio: United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called the coronavirus pandemic the most challenging crisis since the organization’s founding after […]

For those still curious about the meaning of gaslighting, look no further than President Donald Trump’s verbal assault on the World Health Organization last week. In a flagrant attempt to divert attention from his own poor performance during the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump excoriated the WHO for alleged delays and dysfunction in its global response. Beyond its immediate details, the episode offered a textbook example of how conservative U.S. politicians curry favor with their sovereignty-minded constituencies by treating multilateral organizations as pinatas and scapegoats during crises. To recap, the president unloaded on the WHO on April 7, first on Twitter and […]

RAMALLAH, West Bank—The coronavirus came quietly to Gaza on March 21. Two residents who had returned from Pakistan via the Rafah border crossing with Egypt were diagnosed with COVID-19, sending waves of shock and fear across the Palestinian territories. The outbreak started out small in the West Bank, as well. Seven Palestinians who had interacted with a group of tourists visiting Bethlehem on March 5 were confirmed to have the novel coronavirus. Authorities quickly scrambled to implement a containment strategy for Jesus’ biblical birthplace, and imposed a lockdown on the entirety of the West Bank on March 22. Movement between […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent More than half of Africa’s 54 countries are restricting people’s movements in hopes of slowing the spread of the coronavirus, with regulations ranging from evening curfews to the total lockdowns that have been imposed in South Africa, Rwanda and, as of this week, the Seychelles. As those constraints expand, so are concerns about the violation of rights, including the violent tactics being used to enforce some of the new rules. In Kenya, where the government introduced sweeping restrictions on movement in late […]

In this current age of American dystopia, it can sometimes be hard to believe there is any part of Washington that still functions, let alone finds consensus on U.S. national security priorities. So the State Department’s designation this week of the ultranationalist, white supremacist Russian Imperial Movement as a terrorist organization came as a pleasant surprise. As counterterrorism experts have been warning for years about the threat posed by the proliferation of white supremacist groups, the move to classify the St. Petersburg-based outfit as a transnational threat is a welcome, if overdue, step in the right direction. The U.S. terrorism […]

MADRID—On the first Friday in March, Spain was deep into the rigorous hand-washing phase of its response to the coronavirus pandemic, but still about a week away from a lockdown. That night, I met a friend at a quiet tapas bar close to home. Afterward, we went to another bar in the Arguelles neighborhood, a popular late-night haunt for students at several nearby universities. It was the typical Friday pandemonium of people yelling orders, drinks and plates being passed around, and used napkins covering the floor. As I washed down my Spanish omelet with a glass of Verdejo, I looked […]

In the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, the odds were never in Taiwan’s favor. An island just 80 miles off the coast of China, it has extensive business and cultural ties with the mainland, where hundreds of thousands of its citizens live or work. The first cases of COVID-19 were reported in the central Chinese city of Wuhan just before the Lunar New Year holiday, a busy travel season for millions of people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. When researchers from Johns Hopkins University modeled the projected contagion of the virus in January, they assessed that Taiwan had […]