Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

Earlier this week the UN Security Council did something it's never done before: it held a meeting specifically focusing on violence directed against LGBT people. The council called two witnesses, both of whom are gay men caught up in the conflict in the Middle East. The first witness was an Iraqi who spoke to the Council by phone. He spoke anonymously and from an undiclosed location because he was...

"Worm Wars" is shorthand for an ongoing scientific debate about the efficacy of de-worming programs; that is, programs supported by governments and non profits to stop the transmission of parasitic worms. This debate has become exceedingly heated in recent weeks after new research called into question old research about a key claim that de-worming programs increased school attendence.   This large...

There is a new ebola vaccine. And it works spectacularly well. A recent paper in the Lancet demonstrated of the 7,600 people in Guinea who received the vaccine, not one person contracted the virus. This 100% effectiveness rate is unheard of.    Dr. Jeremy Farrar is on the line to discuss the implications of this vaccine for the fight against ebola.  He is a professor of tropical medicine and direc...

The FARC Insurgency in Colombia has been raging for fifty years. And now, after a long peace process, it may soon be coming to a formal end. But even though a peace deal may be signed, whether or not that results in a meaningful improvement for the lives of people in rural Colombia is a key determinant of whether or not peace can be sustained.  That is the argument of my guest James Bargent, a fre...

South Sudan is in a tailspin. On July 9, the country commemorated its 4th anniversary of independence but it was hardly a celebration. Since December 2013 the country has been in a freefall stemming from when a political dispute between President Salva kiir and his rival Riek Machar turned into open conflict and civil war. Millions have been forced from their homes, a famine might loom over the co...

Jessica Jackley co-founded Kiva and revolutionized micro-lending. Her new memoir Clay, Water, Brick tells the story of the founding of Kiva and her own personal journey from a religious family in Pittsburgh to becoming a successful social entrepreneur. This is a great conversation about personal development,  entrepreneurship, starting Kiva--and then figuring out how  to handle its explosive growt...

This is a special bonus episode of Global Dispatches. Mark speaks with Prof Laura Seay about the implications of President Obama's decision to visit Ethiopia, and what it says about US policy toward Africa. 

President Obama is visiting Kenya this week. This is his first trip to his father's country of birth since becoming president, and people in Kenya are certainly treating it like a homecoming.  Here with me to discuss the symbolic and political relevance of this historic trip is Wycliffe Muga, the Weekend Editor of the Star Newspaper in Kenya.    Wycliffe and I have a rather lively conversation abo...

The nuclear deal with Iran is essentially grand bargain: Iran agreed to curtail its nuclear program in exchange for a gradual easing of international and national sanctions. But as President Obama is fond of saying, the agreement is not based on trust. It's based on verification. And the entity responsbile for verifying Iran's compliance with the nuclear accord is the International Atomic Energenc...

Taking a break this week. Instead, I wanted to give you all an update on where things are going with the podcast. Let me know what you think.  

A hugely consequential UN conference kicks off in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia next week. It has has not gotten a tremendous amount of media attention, but it is pretty big deal for most of the world. At the heart of this conference is one very big question: can the idealism embedded in principles of sustainable development actually be paid for? Who will pony up the funds? And how?   The conference is of...

Anand Gopal's first book, "No Good Men Among the Living: America, The Taliban and The War through Afghan Eyes," was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize. And deservedly so. This book is easily one of the best and most important foreign policy books of the last decade and certainly the most enlightening book written about the Afghan War.  As its title suggests, Gopal offers a rarely seen perspect...

A panel of independent experts recently published an exhaustive and hotly awaited  report  on the future of UN Peacekeeping The panel was lead by Jose Ramos Horta, the Nobel Laureate and former president of East Timor--a country where peacekeeping played a key role in its turbulent early ears. The report was a pretty big deal in UN circles. Its release provides a good inflection point to discuss U...

Stephen Morrison is the Senior Vice President and Director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. He's had a long and fascinating career working on development, human rights and health issues around the world. His PhD work focused on the political economy of countries that bordered apartheid South Africa and spend much of the 1980s a...

The  UN Charter  turns 70 years old on June 26. This is the founding treaty that created the United Nations and in this episode you will learn the fascinating and legitimately  entertaining  history of that document and of the 1945 San Francisco Conference that produced it. Ban Ki Moon and a number of international dignitaries are visiting San Francisco this week to commemorate the occasion, so I...

Paula Dobriansky served as Undersecretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs for pretty much the entire George W Bush administration. Prior to that she served in the Bush 41, Reagan and Carter administrations in various foriegn policy capacities. And prior to that she was a Sovietologist studying at Harvard.   She's now back at Harvard, and reflects on her time in government. We kick off wi...

Earlier this month, the African Union held a summit in South Africa. Among the attendees was Omar al Bashir, the president of Sudan. This was somewhat surprising because Bashir is wanted on charges of war crimes and genocide by the International Criminal Court. And South Africa, as a member of the ICC, is treaty bound to arrest fugitives like Bashir.  But South African authorities did not arrest h...

It was a year ago this week that the Iraqi city of Mosul--the second largest city in country--fell to ISIS. The loss of Mosul sparked a re-examination of US policy toward Iraq and ISIS. And just this week, the White House announced that it was sending over 400 military advisers to an Iraqi base that is on the front lines of the fight. On the line with me to discuss the evolution of US strategy to...

The Chagos Archipelago is a group of islands situated in the middle of the Indian Ocean. You may have heard of the largest of these Islands, Diego Garcia, because it is home to a strategically important US military base. However, the story of how this base came to being is rather sordid. And the plight of the thousands of inhabitents who were expelled from their homeland to make room for this base...

What's the relationship between air conditioning, air temperature and income levels? In other words, at what income level and in what climate zones do people opt to purchase A/C? The answer to these questions could have a profound implication on the quality of life of people in the developing world and also seriously strain fragile energy grids and contribute significantly to global carbon emissio...

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is a journalist and fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who in April published the book Ashley's War, which tells the story of a group of female soldiers who accompanied special forces during missions in Afghanistan. I n this conversation, Mark and Gayle discuss how these units were created and take a deep dive into the history of the role of women in the US military. G...

Here's a statistic that may surprise you: most foreign aid does not go to the poorest countries on earth. In fact, only about 30% of official development assistance from donor governments goes to the 47 least developed countries in the world.  Why is that the case? What would be a more appropriate ratio of foreign aid to the poorest countries on earth? And what could these countries be doing to ra...

A dangerous game of human pingpong is underway in the Adaman Sea between Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Thousands of Rohingya, a Muslim minority primarily from Myanmar, are adrift at sea. Not only is no country taking them in, but Navies have pushed back boats that have made it into harbor. It is a wretched situation of almost unconscionable cruelty. And at the center of it all are hum...

 Jean-Marie Guéhenno is the president of the International Crisis Group and long serving head of UN Peacekeeping. He comes from an interesting background--his father was a well known French intellectual whose experience in World War I made him a pacifist. In this episode, Guéhenno discusses his experiences as the top French foreign policy planning official during the fall of the Berlin Wall; what...

Burundi is in the midst of a deepening political crisis that has many observers extremely worried about the prospects of mass violence. Dozens of people have been killed and tens of thousands of people have fled in recent weeks. At time of publication, there's been a reported coup attempt.  Journalist Jonathan Rosen is on the line from Kigali, Rwanda where he is reporting on the evolving situation...