Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

Kenyans will go to the polls on August 9th to elect a new president. The current president, Uhuru Kenyatta, is term limited from seeking re-election and the two main candidates are both very familiar figures in Kenyan politics.  William Ruto is currently the Deputy to President Kenyatta. But the two men had a falling out and now President Kenyatta is backing Ruto's main rival, Raila Odinga. For hi...

I caught up with Poland's Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Pryzdaz at the Aspen Security Conference in mid July.  Poland is a front line state to the crisis in Ukraine and has been directly impacted by Russia's invasion, including hosting millions of Ukrainian refugees. Poland was also and early target of Vladimir Putin's efforts to use gas exports as a kind of blackmail; and when Poland refused to...

Official and unofficial pronouncements from many sectors of the American foreign policy and political establishment routinely portray China as a major military threat to the United States --even claiming that this threat is existential.  This is part of a pattern that my guest today calls "threat inflation" which he argues leads to policy decisions that paradoxically leaves the US less secure.  Mi...

In November 2021, a rebel group known as M23 carried out a series of surprising attacks in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. By the spring and summer of 2022, M23 had captured even more territory in this region.  These attacks caught many by surprise because the M23 was believed to be largely defunct But nearly 10 years later, the group is now engaged in battles with the armed forces o...

Joe Biden is traveling to the Middle East for the first time as President, with stops in Israel, Palestine -- and most notably Saudi Arabia. As a candidate for president, Biden called the Saudi government a "pariah." Just weeks after taking office, he released an assessment from the US intelligence community revealing that US intelligence believes that Mohammad bin Salman approved of the operation...

Food prices are soaring around the world, and along with it so are rates of food insecurity and the risk of famine.  As my guest today, Sir Mark Lowcock explains, this is only partly due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which exacerbated an already worsening situation. Mark Lowcock is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Center for Global Development and author of the new book Relief Chief: A Ma...

As the Syrian civil war escalated, the Syrian government began obstructing access to humanitarian relief in rebel held parts of the country. So, in 2014 the UN Security Council took the extraordinary step of allowing the United Nations to deliver humanitarian relief to parts of Syria without the consent of the Syrian government and in violation of Syrian sovereignty. Since then, humanitarian aid h...

Brittney Griner is an American basketball superstar. On February 17th, she was arrested in an airport outside of Moscow allegedly for possession of cannabis oil. She has been held in a Russian jail ever since and her trial is scheduled to begin on July 1.  Brittney Griner's case is a text book example of what my guest today calls "Hostage Diplomacy." Dani Gilbert is an Assistant Professor of Milit...

Sweden and Finland have both formally requested to become members of the NATO alliance. To admit new members to NATO requires the approval of all existing NATO members and so far, Turkey is objecting. My guest today, Sibel Oktay, is associate professor at University of Illinois at Springfield and non-resident senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.  We kick off with a discussion ab...

On June 19th, reports began to emerge of a mass atrocity in the Ethiopian region of Oromia committed against members of the Amhara ethnic group. This latest attack fits into a broader pattern of ethnic violence in Ethiopia since the outbreak of civil war in November 2020. Laetitia Bader is the Horn of Africa Director at Human Rights Watch. She contributed to a joint Human Rights Watch-Amnesty Inte...

In early June, Iran took the dramatic step of turning off some monitoring cameras in key nuclear facilities that had been installed by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The move came in reaction to a vote by the IAEA board of governors to censor Iran over its lack of cooperation with IAEA inspectors. This latest turn in the ongoing saga of nuclear diplomacy with Iran is further indication of...

On June 5th, armed men attacked worshipers at a Catholic Church in the city of Owo, Nigeria. Scores of people were reportedly killed and many more injured. My guest today,  Idayat Hassan, is director of the Center for Democracy and Development in Nigeria. We kick off discussing this church attack as well as another high profile recent attack on a train in northern Nigeria. Idayat Hassan then descr...

At time of recording there have been over 1,000 confirmed cases of Monkey Pox across 29 countries -- mostly in Europe and North America. The actual number of cases circulating in the population is likely much higher.  We are in the midst of an outbreak of Monkey Pox, which is rarely found outside of West Africa.   My guest today, Dr. Eric Toner is a Senior Scholar at The Johns Hopkins Center for H...

Today's episode was recorded live in front of a virtual audience at a side event of the International Migration Review Forum. The episode is produced in partnership with CGIAR and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.  The event was titled "Climate-related mobility and conflict: Pathways to peace and human security" and includes some extended expert commentary on this topic....

Colombia held the first round of its presidential elections on May 29th and it is hard to overstate just how surprised most analysts were by the results. For generations, Colombia has been dominated by a small political establishment that ranges from the center right to the hard right. Unlike other countries in the Latin America, Colombia has never elected a President from the left wing; nor has C...

The United Nations Environment Program, UNEP, turns 50 years old this year. And in early June world leaders are gathering in the city where UNEP was born to commemorate this milestone in a conference known as Stockholm+50.  Maria Ivanova wrote the book on the absolutely fascinating history of the United Nations Environment Program.  She is a professor of Global Governance at the University of Mass...

Dr. Joanne Liu is a professor at the School of Population and Global Health at McGill University and a practicing physician at the University of Montreal. She is the former international president of Medicines Sans Frontiers/Doctors Without Borders and for the purposes of this conversation she served on the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response.  This panel was co-chaired former...

Today's episode of Global Dispatches is a promotion for a podcast that I think many of my listeners will find valuable. The podcast is called "Inside Geneva," in which host Imogen Foulkes puts big questions facing the world to the experts working to tackle them in Switzerland's international city. Inside Geneva is is produced by Swissinfo, a public service media company based in Bern, Switzerland....

President Biden has authorized the deployment of hundreds of American Special Operations forces to Somalia to assist the Somali government in its fight against al-Shabaab.  According to the New York Times President Biden has also authorized a Pentagon plan to step up airstrikes against al-Shabaab leadership.  This increased US military engagement in Somalia comes at a time of transition in Somalia...

The idea that China engages in so-called "Debt Trap Diplomacy" is almost apocryphal. There is a persistent media narrative that China makes big infrastructure investments oversees as part of its Belt and Road Initiative, and when countries cant replay those loans China seizes infrastructure.  My guest today, Deborah Brautigam, is the director of the China Africa Research Initiative at the Johns Ho...

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has posed a major test for the United Nations.  And while some parts of the UN system have admirably risen to the occasion, the Security Council has not.  On the line with me to assess the UN's response to Russia's invasion is Richard Gowan, the UN Director for the International Crisis Group. We kick off discussing a recent diplomatic mission by UN Secretary General to...

Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan resigned on April 10th, following a no-confidence vote in Parliament. The former cricket star turned politician had served as Prime Minister since 2018,  but in recent months he had increasingly fallen out of favor with Pakistan's powerful military establishment, which has long been a dominant force in Pakistani politics.  My guest, Michael Kugelman, is Senior...

Of all the countries that border Ukraine, Moldova is arguably the most vulnerable to Russian aggression. Since 1992, Russian troops have been present in a breakaway region of Moldova called Transnistria. This is a majority Russian-speaking region that receives considerable support from Moscow.  In late April there were a series of explosions in Transnistria, the perpetrators are unknown but the ex...

Libya is a popular point from which Africa refugees and migrants set off for Europe. However, if caught, these migrants and refugees have been subject to indefinite detention in hellish conditions in Libya. Journalist Sally Hayden first caught wind of this story when she unexpectedly received a Facebook message from an Eritrean migrant stranded in a Libyan jail. This lead her on a reporting journe...

Sri Lanka is in the midst of an economic catastrophe. The government is low on foreign exchange reserves and struggling to pay off its debts. The Sri Lankan rupee has plunged in value over the last several weeks. Inflation is soaring. Fuel is scarce, and there have been widespread blackouts in major parts of the country.  This sharp economic downturn is sparking a major political crisis for the go...