In The News

Toppling of Libyan Dictator Legitimizes R2P Doctrine

Bennett Ramberg November 29, 2011
The war in Libya broke new ground, lending support for the international community to take a strong stand against dictators who threaten their own people. Bennett Ramberg, formerly with the US State Department, analyzes recent wars and how intervention in Libya compares. After horrific massacres in Rwanda and Srebrenica, the Canadian government took the lead in 2001, convening diplomats in...

What Does Gaddafi's Fall Mean for Africa?

Mahmood Mamdani October 21, 2011
The brutal end of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi is a warning for despots who resist reforms. Too many African leaders follow the personality-based model of Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah rather than the state-building model of Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, argues Mahmood Mamdani, a professor at Columbia and Makerere universities in an essay for Al Jazeera. Failure to establish sustainable institutions breeds...

Coptic Christians Rage Against Egypt’s Army

October 12, 2011
Egypt’s revolution demanding human rights and just representation could be high-jacked by special interests. Tensions between Muslims and Coptic Christians, the latter making up about 10 percent of Egypt’s population of 80 million, are on the rise. The military took brutal measures on Coptic Christians protesting the burning of a church by Muslim extremists, and at least 25 people died. The...

The Women Bringing Solar Power to Sierra Leone

September 15, 2011
Developing renewables to meet the growing demand for energy is a top priority in the 21st century. So is enhancing collaboration among developing countries. By training semi-literate women from rural Sierra Leone in solar-energy techniques, Barefoot College in western India works towards achieving both these goals. Twelve women attended and then returned to villages in Sierra Leone to assemble 1,...

Band Aid

Michael Holman September 1, 2011
The absence of a government role compounds the heart-wrenching crisis in East Africa. Aid agencies, not African governments, are leading famine-relief efforts in East Africa, writes Michael Holman for the UK magazine Prospect. Drought and famine are threatening the continent’s most troubled nations, including Somalia, Eritrea and Sudan. “But this does not justify Africa’s absence from the...

South Africa Defends Refusal to Unfreeze Libyan Assets

David Smith August 29, 2011
With the Gaddafi regime on the run, the US proposed that the UN Security Council release Libya’s assets to the nation’s Transitional Council. South Africa has balked, approving humanitarian assistance while insisting on prior official UN recognition of the transitional council. “The government of South Africa condemns any form of violence and the doctrine of imposed regime change," said one...

Ethiopia “Using Aid as Weapon of Oppression”

August 29, 2011
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations describes the seven nations – Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, the Sudan and Uganda – of the Horn of Africa, as one of the most food-insecure regions in the world. A team of journalists from the BBC and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism traveled through Ethiopia, posing as tourists, and discovered communities allegedly...