Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

This is a a special crossover episode featuring Global Dispatches host Mark Leon Goldberg taking questions from veteran journalist Ray Suarez, from the On Shifting Ground podcast. They discuss trends in international reporting and why humanitarian journalism is a vital part of the media ecosystem. Regular Global Dispatches listeners will get a unique understanding of how the show is put together every week.

Before COVID more and more children around the world were receiving their routine vaccinations on time and in full. But COVID severely interrupted that progress. Now, we are seeing lagging indicators of interrupted childhood vaccinations in the form of outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases like measles and diphtheria. To reverse this trend a number of global health entities have joined forces for what they call "The Big Catch-up" to boost vaccination among children following declines driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. joining me to discuss trends in routine childhood vaccinations around the world, the impact of COVID 19 on those trends and what can be done to restore progress is Dr. Ephrem Lemango, associate director of immunization at UNICEF headquarters in New York.

On May 11th a pandemic-era policy, known as Title 42, will expire. This was a Trump administration policy which used public health concerns as a pretext expel migrants from the United States before they could claim asylum under US and international law. Title 42 has continued under the Biden administration but is set to expire. American officials are bracing for a massive increase in the number of people seeking asylum at the southern US border. This is shaping up to be a humanitarian crisis and bureaucratic crisis rolled up into one. Joining me to help explain recent migration patterns in the Americas and the Biden administration's approach to migration at the southern US border is Yael Schacher, director for America's and Europe and Refugees International. We kick off discussing one key node in an increasing number of migrants journeys known as the Darien Gap. We then have a broad discussion about the patchwork of US policies intended to handle asylum claims and offer a legal pathway to entry to the USA.

Turkey holds elections on May 14th. For the first time in twenty years, President Erdogan is facing a serious challenge at the ballot box. The opposition has unified behind candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, a 74 year old career politician whose low-key demeanor is a stark contrast to President Erdogan's bombastic charisma. As my guest today Dr. Lisel Hintz explains, Turkey's struggling economy and the fallout from the earthquakes earlier this year are re-shaping the political landscape. Dr. Lisel Hintz is Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. We kick off discussing some of the domestic political dynamics driving this election and then have a discussion about the foreign policy implications of the elections. This includes Turkey's relationship to NATO, its position on Russia and Ukraine and regional dynamics in the Middle East.

In the ten year history of this podcast, it is rare to have episodes on the same topic in back to back weeks. But the unfolding crisis in Sudan is such an important topic that it demands attention. Last week, I spoke with civil society activist Hala al Karib, who was trapped in her house in Khartoum as fighting erupted. She very much offered an informed local perspective on what was happening around her. Today, we are taking a global perspective on Sudan's burgeoning civil war with Cameron Hudson. He's a senior associate in the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a long time Sudan policy hand in Washington DC. We kick off discussing why this conflict erupted when it did. We then spend a good deal of time discussing how and why this incipient civil war is very much an international affair, including a discussion of the diplomatic failures that lead to this moment.

On March 29th, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested in Russia and charged with espionage. The charges are spurious, but the intentions are clear: Evan Gershkovich is now a hostage in Russia and his release will require a delicate diplomatic balancing act. My guest today Dr. Dani Gilbert is an academic who studies what she calls "Hostage Diplomacy." She is the Edelson Fellow in US Foreign Policy and International Security at the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College. We last spoke in June 2022, following the arrest of the American basketball star Britney Griner. In our conversation today, we discuss the differences and similarities between the Griner case and the Gershovich situation. We also discuss what processes might lead to Gershkovich's release and how this latest wrongful detention of an American abroad fits into larger patterns around government sponsored hostage taking.

On Saturday, April 15th fighting broke out in Khartoum and elsewhere in Sudan. At time of recording, hundreds of people have been killed, all commercial air travel has been suspended, and international aid operations have come to a halt. In the massive city of Khartoum, millions of people are sheltering in place, with dwindling supplies of food and water-- and that includes my guest today Hala al-Karib, a Sudanese activist, research practitioner and director of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa. When I last spoke with Hala al-Karib for the podcast in late February, she more or less predicted the crisis we are seeing today which is the result of a failure of a transition to democracy in Sudan. Hala al-Karib explains that despite the predicable failure of the democratic transition in Sudan, people were still caught off guard by the actual outbreak of fighting. We then go on to discuss some of the broader conflict dynamics and what can be done to pull Sudan back from the brink of all out civil war.

Over ten years ago, most Arab countries in the Middle East cut ties with the Syrian government during the civil war and supported armed groups dedicated to the overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad regime. Meanwhile, Iran was Assad's key backer. But now, in the Spring of 2023 a big shift is underway. Saudi Arabia and Iran are taking steps towards rapprochement and Arab governments throughout the region are re-opening embassies in Damascus and re-establishing diplomatic relations with Syria. Joining me to explain what is driving this regional re-alignment is Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma and the Mackey Chair. We kick off discussing how the outbreak of the Syrian civil war impacted regional diplomacy and why now we are seeing such profound changes in the the geopolitics of the Middle East.

About six years ago, I received a request for an interview from an academic in the United Kingdom named Martin Scott who was doing journalism related research. That interview helped to inform the new book: "Humanitarian Journalists: Covering Crises from a Boundary Zone" by Martin Scott, and coauthors Mel Bunce, and Kate Wright -- all of whom are academics. The book identifies and defines what the authors call "humanitarian journalism" which combines conventional journalistic norms like objectivity with certain key humanitarian principals like the moral equivalence of all lives, regardless of geography. The book explicitly cites my work, as well as that of a small number of other journalists who do what they called humanitarian journalism. I talk with Martin Scott, Associate Professor in Media and Global Development at the University of East Anglia about the concept and practice of "humanitarian journalism."

At time of recording, there are two ongoing outbreaks of Marburg Virus Disease, one in Tanzania and the other in Equatorial Guinea. Marburg is in the same family of diseases as Ebola and is extremely deadly, with a case-to-fatality ratio of up to 88%. Humans can become infected through contact with fruit bats, and like ebola, Marburg is transmissible between humans through contact with bodily fluids. Joining me to discuss these outbreaks is Dele Ogunseitan, a professor of population, health and disease prevention at the University of California Irvine and a Visiting professor at Stanford University's Center for Innovation in Global Health. He also leads the training and empowerment objective for a USAID project called One Health Workforce Next Generation. We kick off discussing the history of Marburg before having a longer discussion about these two outbreaks and what can be done to stop Marburg from spreading further.