Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

On Friday, May 31, President Biden made a surprising announcement about a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. Biden laid out the terms of this three-phased cessation of hostilities and said that this deal was proposed by Israel and sent to Hamas. The optics of a U.S. president making public what he said was an Israeli proposal made many people question whether or not Israel was fully behind this deal. Meanwhile, Biden aimed much of his remarks at Hamas, urging them to accept this ostensibly Israeli deal. At the time of recording, Hamas has neither accepted nor rejected this proposal. My guest today is Joel Braunold, managing director of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace. We kick off by discussing what is included in this ceasefire agreement before having a long conversation about the reactions and responses to the Biden announcement by Hamas and Israel. We spend a good deal of time discussing some of the motivations behind Hamas' approach to a ceasefire deal and the complex domestic politics in Israel surrounding this deal. Check out our new weekly podcast about the United Nations!  https://www.globaldispatches.org/s/to-save-us-from-hell   

Claudia Sheinbaum will be the next President of Mexico. In national elections on June 2, the protégé of President López Obrador and former Mayor of Mexico City won a landslide victory, earning nearly 59% of the vote. She is a former climate scientist and will be the first woman and the first person of Jewish origin to lead the overwhelmingly Catholic country. But beyond the presidency, there were over 20,000 positions at all levels of government up for election, and it was in these state and local elections that things turned violent. Very violent. This was by far the bloodiest election in Mexico's history, with over 30 candidates assassinated during the campaigning. My guest today, Falko Ernst, is the senior analyst for Mexico at the International Crisis Group. As he explains, this election-related violence is a product of criminal gangs competing for control, influence, power, and wealth. We kick off by discussing Claudia Sheinbaum's background and her unique approach to violent crime as mayor of Mexico City. We then discuss the dynamics that led to violence in the lead-up to these elections and what can be done to disrupt criminal gangs' sway over local politics in Mexico.  

After the Islamic State was largely defeated on the battlefields of northern Syria in 2019, thousands of fighters and their families were placed in detention facilities in the region. By far the largest of these detention camps is Al Hol, which at its peak held over 70,000 people from several dozen countries. Today, over 50,000 people live in Al Hol, which is essentially an open-air prison. The vast majority of people living there are children. My guest today, Sarhang Hamaseed, is the director of Middle East Programs at the United States Institute of Peace and is intimately involved with efforts to help repatriate families currently stranded in this prison camp. When we caught up, he had recently returned from Iraq, working on programs to support the reintegration of Iraqi families in Al Hol. In our conversation, Sarhang Hamaseed explains why this festering prison camp in northern Syria is both a humanitarian and security crisis that deserves broader international attention.

Some of the most heavily indebted countries in the world are also the ones most vulnerable to climate-induced natural disasters. When a hurricane, cyclone, or massive drought hits a country, officials can be faced with the choice of either servicing their debts or paying for disaster recovery. As the pace and scale of natural disasters increase due to climate change, some policy entrepreneurs have introduced the idea of including so-called "Pause clauses" in loan agreements that would enable the country to suspend debt payments for a period of time as it recovers from a natural disaster. The best-known champion of this idea is the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley. This was her signature proposal in a suite of reforms to international financing policies for climate-vulnerable countries known as the Bridgetown Initiative. My guest today, Michael Sheldrick, tells the story of how Pause Clauses went from an idea on paper to a policy now widely implemented by the World Bank in his new book: "From Ideas to Impact: A Playbook for Influencing and Implementing Change in a Divided World." Michael Sheldrick is a co-founder of Global Citizen and devotes a chapter of his book to the successful implementation of Pause Clauses. (The book covers much more than Pause Clauses, but it is what we focus on in our conversation today because it is such a good example of policy entrepreneurship in the face of a seemingly intractable problem.) From Ideas to Impact: A Playbook for Influencing and Implementing Change in a Divided World https://gtly.to/4X3iZoma5  

Over the past several weeks, hundreds of thousands of people in the Republic of Georgia have taken to the streets to protest against a law making its way through parliament that would force many NGOs to register as foreign agents. The law is modeled on similar measures in Russia that led to the near wholesale criminalization of pro-democracy and human rights civil society groups. This move in Georgia's parliament is being pushed through by a political party led by an oligarch who made his fortune in Putin's Russia. It is also happening at the same time as Georgia is seeking to establish closer ties with the West and join the European Union. On the line to discuss what this law actually says, how it may impact Georgia's future, and human rights inside Georgia is Denis Krivosheev, Deputy Director for Europe & Central Asia at Amnesty International.

On Monday, May 20th, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, applied for arrest warrants for three senior Hamas leaders and for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The Hamas leaders include the top official in Gaza, Yahyah Sinwar, Hamas’ military commander Muhammad Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh, the Qatar-based political leader of Hamas. These three men were charged with crimes related to the October 7th attack and their treatment of hostages in captivity. On the Israeli side, Netanyahu and Gallant were charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, including using starvation as a method of warfare. For those of you who subscribe to the Global Dispatches Newsletter, you'll know that I've been expecting this shoe to drop since November, when Karim Khan first warned Hamas and Israeli officials that his office has jurisdiction in relation to this conflict. Well, this ICC action has now happened, and on the line with me to discuss what these applications for arrest warrants mean and where this ICC case may be headed next is Mark Kersten. He is an assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology at the University of the Fraser Valley who specializes in International Law. He's also a senior consultant at the Wayamo Foundation. I daresay you will not find a more informed conversation about the ICC from any other podcast out there. To support our work, please become a paying supporter at Global Dispatches at:  https://www.globaldispatches.org/ 

For humanitarian professionals, people whose job it is to deliver aid in conflict and disaster zones, Gaza is unique. Unlike other crises that suffer from lack of attention, the situation in Gaza is a top priority for governments around the world. Accordingly, there is no shortage of aid available to stem the crisis, which in some parts of Gaza has crossed the famine threshold. Rather, it is distributing the aid that has become the challenge, both in terms of getting the aid through Israeli inspections and, once in Gaza, getting the aid to where people need it most. My guest today, Jeremy Konyndyke, is the President of Refugees International and a veteran humanitarian professional who served as head of USAID's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance from 2013-2017. We kick off discussing why humanitarian groups, the United Nations, and the Biden administration are so concerned about a full-scale Israeli assault on Rafah in southern Gaza. We then discuss the propriety of a humanitarian pier the US is constructing off the coast of Gaza and why the crisis in Gaza is so different from other humanitarian crises around the world. We conclude our conversation with an important discussion of the crisis in Darfur, and specifically the complicity of the United Arab Emirates in supporting a genocidal paramilitary.

Thousands of delegates gathered in Nairobi, Kenya, last week for the UN Civil Society Conference. The gathering was dedicated to the upcoming Summit of the Future, a major UN conference in September intended to reform and revitalize the UN and the multilateral system. The Nairobi civil society conference was an important opportunity for advocates, the NGO community, and other interested parties to help shape the outcome of the Summit of the Future. On the line to discuss with me what happened at the Nairobi conference and to explain more broadly the role of civil society as we approach the Summit of the Future is Lili Nkunzimana, United Nations representative at the Baha'i International Community's New York Office. We also discuss the current state of play of the intergovernmental negotiations over the Pact for the Future, which is the outcome document for September's summit. Today’s episode is produced in partnership with the Baha’i International Community, an NGO that represents the worldwide Baha’i community at the UN and other international forums, where it says that recognizing humanity’s interconnectedness is key to a shared global future. This episode is part of a series on the Summit of the Future. The previous episode in this series was published in January and can be found on http://www.GlobalDispatches.org. NB. “The inputs for the New Agenda for Peace were in December 2022, not December 2023 as stated int he episode."  

Each year, the United Nations Development Program produces the Human Development Report. This is a compilation of country-level data around education, health, and economic security that aspires to give a more holistic understanding of a country's development beyond economic indicators alone. UNDP has been putting this Human Development Report together for decades, and while some countries would sometimes register advances or declines in the so-called Human Development Index, the global trend was always one of unrelenting progress. Until COVID. The COVID years resulted in global declines along the human development indicators for reasons explained by my guest today, Pedro Conceicao, Director of the Human Development Report Office at the United Nations Development Program. As Pedro Conceicao explains, the most recent report shows that, globally, the Human Development Index is registering progress, but that progress is not as sharp as it was prior to COVID. We discuss this trend and much more about the Human Development Report.

This is a special preview of the Inside Geneva podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.   Recently UNWRA, the UN’s refugee agency for Palestinians, has been facing scrutiny of what exactly their role is in the current Israel-Hamas conflict. Many people around the world hadn’t heard of UNRWA before this conflict - so what is it exactly, why was it founded, and does it need to continue? Journalist Imogen Foulkes takes a deep dive, talking to UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini, Israeli diplomat Nina Ben-Ami, Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council, and Louis Charbonneau of Human Rights Watch. Inside Geneva is produced by Swissinfo,  a multilingual public service media based in Switzerland.