Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

  The United Nations General Assembly, better known as UNGA, kicks in New York this week.  Hundreds of heads of state, business and civil society leaders and dignitaries of all stripes will descend on the UN for a week of events, meetings, and of course speeches. UNGA is the single most important and action-packed week on the diplomatic calendar -- a behemoth of diplomatic events. On the line with me to preview the big stories that will drive the agenda at UNGA this year is Margaret Besheer, the UN correspondent for Voice of America, and Richard Gowan, the UN director of the International Crisis Group.  We discuss a key youth summit on climate, the UN Climate Action Summit, how tensions between the United States and Iran may shape events at UNGA, and many other key moments, events, and ideas to watch during UNGA.   If you have 25 minutes and want to learn the storylines that will drive the agenda at UNGA this year, have a listen.   https://patreon.com/GlobalDispatches  

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres discusses climate change in this special episode of the Global Dispatches podcast.  On Tuesday, September 17th Antonio Guterres sat down with Mark Hertsgaard of The Nation and Mark Phillips of CBS News for an interview conducted on behalf of Covering Climate Now. This is a global collaboration of over 250 news outlets, including the Global Dispatches Podcast and UN Dispatch, to strengthen coverage of the climate story. The interview with Antonio Guterres was conducted on behalf of all participating members of this coalition and I am glad to be able to present the podcast version of it to you.   If you are listening to this episode contemporaneously, I'd encourage you to check out the episode I posted earlier this week that gets into a little more detail about the UN Climate Action Summit; and later this week, I will have an episode that previews all the big stories that will drive the agenda around the UN Week in New York.  After the interview concludes, I'll offer some short commentary about my big takeaways. I've covered the UN for nearly 15 years and I think Antonio Guterres' remarks in this interview for reasons I explain.      If you are new to the podcast: welcome. Global Dispatches is a global affairs podcast that typically features my interviews with diplomats, NGOS leaders, policy experts journalists and academics all around topics of world concern. I encourage you to subscribe the show and check out our robust archive. 

The UN General Assembly convenes at United Nations headquarters in New York next week. As in every year, UNGA is an annual opportunity for heads of state to come to the United Nations to meet each other and address the world.   What distinguishes the UN General Assembly this year is a series of key events and meetings focused on climate change.   Of these events and meetings the most high profile is what is known as the UN Climate Action Summit. This will take place on Monday the 23rd of September, and will include top government officials, business leaders, and civil society members bringing to the table concrete action plans to accelerate progress on addressing climate change.    Today's episode of the Global Dispatches podcast is dedicated to explaining just what that Climate Action Summit entails and what to expect from this major climate meeting at the United Nations.     On the line with me to discuss the significance of this summit and what it hopes to achieve is  Cassie Flynn, she is the strategic advisor on climate change in the executive office of the UN Development Program, UNDP. She is the someone who has very much been involved in aspects of planning the summit and in this conversation offers a curtain raiser for the summit itself, and discusses some of the broader expectations for this event.    The Climate Action Summit at the UN is the capstone to several climate related events happening at the UN, including a Youth Climate Summit that will feature young leaders from around the world. In this conversation we discuss how these events relate to each other and directly to the Paris Climate Accord.   If you have twenty minutes and want to better understand the UN Climate Action Summit, have a listen.   This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 250 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.

In late August it appeared that the United States was very close to an agreement with the Taliban that would see US troops withdraw from the Afghanistan. Leading the negotiations on the US-side was Zalmay Khalilzad, a widely respected former US Ambassador to the UN who is an immigrant to the US from Afghanistan.  He also served as US Ambassador to Afghanistan shortly after the fall of the Taliban.  Significantly, these negotiations did not include the Afghan government, rather they were direct negotiations between the US and the Taliban.  By early September it appeared that the two sides had reached a deal. Then, on September 7th Donald Trump appeared to upend the deal in a tweet suggesting that a planned meeting between the US and Taliban at Camp David had been cancelled, apparently ending these talks. But then, days later, he fired National Security Advisor John Bolton who had largely opposed negotiating with the Taliban in the first place.  So where does this leave the peace process and negotiations for a US withdrawal from Afghanistan? And what happens next? On the line to discuss these questions and more is Daniel Serwer. He is a professor of conflict management and American foreign policy at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Study and a scholar at the Middle East Institute  Daniel Serwer has had a long career in and out of government participating in peace talks and peace building efforts around the world, including Afghanistan. We kick off discussing just what Zalmay Khalilzad was negotiating with the Taliban before having a longer conversation about how those talks broke down and what comes next. If you have 20 minutes and want to get up to speed on US diplomacy towards Afghanistan, then have a listen.   https://www.patreon.com/GlobalDispatches     https://www.patreon.com/GlobalDispatches   

Tanzania has long been recognized as stable country, generally more advanced in its democracy than many other countries in East Africa. To be sure, democracy in Tanzania was certainly imperfect and flawed. But there did exist a degree of press freedom, a robust civil society, and multiple political parties. Over the last few years, elements of Tanzanian democracy have been curtailed. The country is now in the midst of what scholars would call a democratic backslide. This occurs when the state uses its power to weaken institutions that sustain democracy, like civil society and a free press.  A key inflection point in this process was the 2015 election of President John Magufuli. Magufuli is very much a populist -- his nickname is "The Bulldozer." He came to power on a pledge to stamp out corruption but has also shown himself to be increasingly intolerant of dissent.  Since taking office he has enacted laws to severely restrict press freedoms; many journalists have been arrested, and political opponents silenced.  But according to my guest today, Constantine Manda, the process of democratic backsliding really began under the previous administration. Still, for reasons he explains in this episode, the erosions of have accelerated in recent months.  Constantine Manda is a Tanzanian national and a PHD candidate in the department of political science at Yale University. Support the show!  https://www.patreon.com/GlobalDispatches 

Japan and South Korea are in the throws of a dispute - and its getting worse. What was a trade war escalated to the security realm last month when the South Korean government announced that it was pulling out of a key intelligence sharing agreement with Tokyo. This agreement enabled the real-time sharing of key intelligence as it related to common threats, including from North Korea.  Needless to say, amid a growing threat from North Korea, which is regularly testing missiles that could reach both countries, this dispute between South Korea and Japan poses a big risk for international security.  So why are two key US allies that share a common adversary at such loggerheads? And what does a frayed relationship between Seoul and Tokyo mean for regional security and international relations more broadly? On the line with me to answer these questions and more is Andrew Yeo, associate professor of politics at the Catholic University of America. We kick off talking through the World War Two era origins of this conflict before having a longer conversation about the global implications of a dispute between Japan and South Korea.  If you have twenty minutes and want to learn why historical grievances have become hyper-relevant in East Asia -- and why relations are poised to get worse between these two countries, have a listen.    People often ask me what podcasts I most enjoy listening to and top of the list for me is "First Person" from Foreign Policy magazine. The host, Sarah Wildman, is someone I have gotten to know over the years and whose work I have long admired. Each week she draws out from one guest a personal story or narrative that has some broader global significance.It's a great show and if you are fan of Global Dispatches, you'll certain enjoy First Person.   First Person Homepage Apple Podcasts Spotify

Greg Stanton has spent a career researching and fighting genocide. He speaks candidly about the psychological toll of this line of work and managing the PTSD which he confronts to this day.  Stanton is a descendent of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and as you'll learn from this conversation, the human rights gene runs strong in this family. His father was a liberal preacher and civil rights activist, and Greg tells me the most dangerous place he's ever worked, to this day, was registering black voters in Mississippi in the 1960s.    Greg is the founder of the NGO Genocide watch. His career as a genocide scholar and activist began in the 1980s as an humanitarian worker in Cambodia, and he recounts collecting evidence of war crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge. Greg served for many years in the State Department as well, including in Rwanda to help establish the war crimes tribunal following the 1994 genocide. We kick off discussing an ongoing genocide against the Yazidi people in Iraq and Syria.   The subject matter of this episode is pretty heavy and i just want to thank Greg for being so open and honest about the emotional challenges he's faced throughout his career.   This is a rebroadcast. The episode originally aired in August 2016. 

Fires raging in the Amazon have captured the world's attention and put focus on the policies of the Brazilian government.  The true extent of the fires is not yet known--but most sources suggest that the scale of the fires and deforestation underway is much greater than that of previous years. The reason for that is the permissive policies of the Jair Bolsonaro government. Bolsonaro is a rightwing firebrand who was elected to office in 2018 following major scandals implicating more left wing parties. As my guest today Rebecca Abers explains, once in office Bolsonaro quickly enacted policies that reversed years of progress against forestation of the Amazon. Rebecca Abers is professor of political science at the University of Brasilia in Brazil. And in this conversation, she describes the bureaucratic maneuvers engineered by Bolsonaro to undermine protections against de-forestation. We also discuss how and why international pressure, including an upcoming major UN Summit on Climate Change is impacting domestic politics in Brazil and forcing Bolsonaro to more productively combat de-forestation.     https://www.patreon.com/GlobalDispatches

About 75% of the world's population live in societies that practice of form of dowry payment. This is also known as brideprice and it is essentially wealth that a potential husband must pay to the family of his would-be wife. But in this way, brideprice acts as a kind of regressive flat tax that younger, and generally poorer men must pay to wealthier, older men. Hilary Matfess, a PHD candidate at Yale University, undertook a wide study of the impact of fluctuations in brideprice on broader issues related to conflict. She found that there is a positive correlation between changes in brideprice and the outbreak of violent conflict. In other words, when the cost of getting married increases, so too does the probability of armed conflict. Hilary Matfess published her findings a paper published in the 2017 issues of the academic journal International Security. In it, she and her co-author Valerie Hudson identify how the cost of getting married can lead to the outbreak of violent conflict and war. Anyone who has ever taken an international relations or security class knows that there are volumes of research on what causes the outbreak of violent conflict. Through case studies, which Matfess discusses in this conversation, the paper demonstrates how fluctuations in brideprices can lead to the outbreak of violent conflict. It is fascinating research with very real-world policy implications.   This is a re-broadcast of an August 2017 episode.     Become a premium subscriber to unlock bonus episodes, earn other rewards, and support the show!

The fish you eat may have been caught by slaves. Most Thai fishing boats operating in the South China Sea are dependent on migrant labor. But many of those vessels are essentially floating slave ships in which migrant workers are forced into a kind of debt bondage from which they cannot escape.  Journalist Ian Urbina covered this issue for years as a reporter for the New York Times. He reported from land and sea to offer a first hand account of both the conditions on these ships and the broader economic, political and environmental forces that propel slavery on fishing boats in the South China Sea.   Ian Urbina is on the podcast today to discuss his reporting on this issue, which is included in his new book the Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier. We kick off discussing the plight of these debt-bonded laborers before having a broader conversation about the issue of slavery at sea.  Support the show! https://www.patreon.com/GlobalDispatches