Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

The Central African Republic is facing some serious challenges right now. Four years ago, the country was on the brink of genocide after the longtime strongman Francois Bozize was ousted in an armed rebellion. The violence quickly turned sectarian with Christian and Muslim militias attacking civilian populations and displacing hundreds of thousands of people. UN Peacekeepers along with French forces deployed to the country and prevented this crisis from spiraling totally out of control. A peace process emerged, a new government was elected and a tenuous peace took hold. The French forces withdrew last October. Now, about 12,800 UN peacekeepers remain. In recent months, though, violent conflict started to re-emerge -- particularly in more remote parts of the country. The trend-lines now are not as positive as they were a year ago.  This episode on the Central African Republic is in two parts. First, I speak with a member of Congress, David Cicilline of Rhode Island. He visited the country in August as part of a congressional delegation examining the work and role of UN Peacekeepers in the country. He describes what he saw in the country and makes a strong case that the peacekeepers in CAR need far more support than they are currently getting. Congressman Cicilline also discusses UN peacekeeping more broadly and why he believes Blue Helmets are an important pillar of US national security and global stability. After my conversation with Congressman Cicilline, I play an excerpt from my conversation from last May with the photojournalist Marcus Bleasdale, whose work from the Central African Republic was included in the may issue of National Geographic magazine. Marcus has travelled extensively in CAR and covered the violence in 2013. In the excerpt, we discuss the roots of the conflict -- why it emerged and its effect on the population at the time. This includes a conversation of Marcus' journalism and photos from CAR.   Become a premium subscriber to unlock bonus episodes, earn other rewards, and support the show!  

People in Kurdish region of Iraq have voted overwhelmingly for independence in a popular referendum that took place in late September. No country in the region wanted this referendum to happen--and neither did the United States, with whom the Kurds have been a longtime ally. Soon after the results were announced, the Iraqi government and other countries in the region like Turkey and Iran threatened retaliatory measures.   The implications of this referendum and its fallout are still unfolding, and here to help me make sense of what this referendum was all about and how it may impact the political and diplomatic dynamic of the region is Morgan Kaplan. He is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Buffett Institute for Global Studies and the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University. We discuss why this referendum was so politically significant and how it may affect the future shape of the Middle East.   Become a premium subscriber to unlock bonus episodes, earn other rewards, and support the show!  

When Keith Harper was confirmed as President Obama's Ambassador to the Human Rights Council he became the first American-Indian to achieve the rank of Ambassador. The longtime attorney for native American rights soon put his knowledge of tribal culture to use in Geneva where he represented the United States on the top UN human rights body.  Keith is a Cherokee Indian. He was born in San Francisco and from an early age was animated by a civil rights movement known as "Red Power." After law school he represented a number of Native Americans and Native American causes and this culminated in a billion dollar class action lawsuit against the federal government that he successfully litigated.  We spend this first few minutes of this conversation discussing the work of the Human Rights Council, so let me give you a little bit of a background on it. This is a 47 member body in which each member state is elected by the entire UN membership to three year terms. Now, one of its flaws that critics sometimes point to is that some of the members of the council have pretty lousy human rights records themselves--and this is undoubtedly true. But the reason they get elected to is because the membership of the council is apportioned based on a UN principle known as equitable geographic representation. This means that a certain number of seats are reserved for a certain number of countries in each region. Now, there are more African countries than there are western European countries so it would stand to reason that Africa gets more seats. Now the problem arises when regions negotiate amongst themselves to nominate an equal number of candidates as there are seats so you get uncompetitive elections that result in countries like Burundi getting a seat.    Now, that is one of they key flaws of the council. But despite it, Keith makes a compelling argument for why the United States should nonetheless stay engaged. And whether or not the US will remain a member of the council is very much in question by the Trump administration. Keith also discusses at length some tangible outcomes in the service of human rights that the council achieved while he was the US ambassador there.    Apply for the Humanity in Action fellowship! Become a premium subscriber to unlock bonus episodes, earn other rewards, and support the show!    

The Trump administration this week announced sweeping new restrictions on travelers from eight countries:  Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen Days later, the administration formally established that the United States will take in no more than 45,000 refugees fleeing conflict around the world. This is a record-low cap on the number of refugees that the United States has ever resettled since 1980. To put this in context, the previous cap authorized by President Obama was 110,000.   The travel ban and refugee cap are two separate policies, but they are related, at least politically, in the eyes of this administration.   With the exception of Venezuela, in which only government officials are targeted, the travel ban prevents nearly any national from these countries from obtaining a visa to visit, live, study or work in the United States. According to my podcast guest Mark Hetfield, there is only one historic precedent for this: the 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was an explicitely racists law barring all Chinese migration to the United States Hetfield is President of HIAS--a jewish non-profit organization that is one of nine American agencies that resettles refugees in the United States. In this episode, Mark discusses the travel ban, its implications for people both in the United States and abroad and also his organization's new legal strategy to confront this travel ban. We also discuss at length this new refugee cap, which is an unprecedented abrogation of the traditional American approach to refugee admissions.   Apply for the Humanity in Action fellowship! Become a premium subscriber to unlock bonus episodes, earn other rewards, and support the show!    

My guest today Meghan O'Sullivan is the author of the new book Windfall: How the new energy abundance upends global politics and strengthens American power. And we kick off our conversation with a discussion of the ways in which the natural gas boom in the united states is changing international diplomacy and geopolitics. It's fascinating stuff. Meghan is the Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School and has had a career in government and the think tank world. She served, for a time, as the deputy national security advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush administration and she was one of the first American civilian officials on the ground in Baghdad after the city fell to US forces in 2003. We discuss these events and more--including being mentored by the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Become a premium subscriber to unlock bonus episodes, earn other rewards, and support the show!  

Amid all the pageantry, hoopla and media circus that is UN week in New York there is always some interesting and substantive work being done on important global issues. Sometimes these issues are not on top of the agenda of world leaders (though they probably should be) and conversations around them do not get the kind of attention they deserve for one reason or another. So, I was very glad to catch up with Carolyn Miles, President and CEO of Save the Children to have a conversation about the challenges of getting refugee children in quality schools.     According to a new report from Save the Children, 700 million days of school have been missed by 3.5 million registered refugee children. More than half of all refugee children globally are out of school.   For Syrian refugee children, the situation is particularly bleak. 43 percent of school-aged Syrian refugee children will be missing school this year. This number is an increase over the same statistic last year, when 34 percent were out of school — this means that around 730,000 Syrian refugee children are receiving no education.   Earlier this week, I had a chance to meet one young Syrian girl who is trying to change this statistic. Muzoon Almellehan is a Syrian refugee who fled to a refugee camp in Jordan and quickly became a prominent advocate for both her own interrupted education and for that of her friends and fellow refugees. Earlier this year she was named a UNICEF Goodwill ambassador for this work--the youngest ever appointed UNICEF goodwill ambassador.  She said something profound that stuck with me and made me want to do this episode with Carolyne Miles.    She said: “As you have nourishment for your body, you also need nourishment for your mind.”   And this conversation you are about to hear with the CEO of Save the Children does a good job of explaining the scope of this this challenge, and how and why the international community is failing refugee children and what it can do to succeed.    We speak nearly a year to the day after leaders gathered at the United Nations and made big pledges to confront the global refugees crisis, but as Caroline explains, they are largely failing to live up to their promises when it comes to educating refugee children.

World leaders gather at the United Nations this week for the annual summit at the United Nations General Assembly. This is always one of the big highlights of the international diplomatic calendar and it will be all the more interesting this year for the fact that President Trump is making his UN debut. So what should expect from Trump at UNGA? What are some of the big issues on the diplomatic agenda in New York this week? How much oxygen will the US President suck from the room? On the line to discuss these questions and more is Richard Gowen, fellow at the European Council. We also discuss key issues — beyond Trump — that will drive the conversations this week, including the crises in North Korea and Myanmar, how Antonio Guterres his first UNGA as Secretary General and what to expect from Emmanuel Macron’s debut. This is a useful preview of some of the key issues of substance and style that will drive the global conversation in New York this week. It will be useful to both UN-nerds and general international relations enthusiasts alike. If you have 30 minutes and want get learn what this UNGA is all about, have a listen. Can Trump and the United Nations Just Get Along? -- Richard Gowan     Become a premium subscriber to unlock bonus episodes, earn other rewards, and support the show!  

Nearly 400,000 ethnic Rohingya have fled Myanmar across the border to Bangladesh. By the time you listen to this, that number will almost surely be much higher.  Since late August, security forces from the government of Myanmar (also called Burma) have attacked villages and towns in a seemingly coordinated fashion to create a massive displacement crisis. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has described what is happening a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”   On the line with me to discuss this current crisis is John Sifton, the advocacy director Human Rights Watch-Asia. We spoke just after he got off the phone with his colleagues on the Myanmar-Bangladesh border who have witnessed profound scenes of destruction. John also describes satellite imagery he's reviewed that depicts towns, villages and neighborhoods being burned to the ground.   John gives a useful background on the plight of the Rohingya population in Burma and explains why Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi,the de-facto leader of the country, has been such a disappointment and unable or unwilling to stop this onslaught against a minority community in her country. John also offers some good suggestions on how the international community might best respond to this unfolding crisis.   If you are regular listener to the show, you know that I have done several episodes on this issue--which is one of those under-the-radar global issues that I like to highlight on the podcast. Now, of course the situation is making headlines for all the wrong reasons.   Become a premium subscriber to unlock bonus episodes, earn other rewards, and support the show!  

John Shattuck is the former US Ambassador to the Czech Republic, former President of the Central European University, and served as the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy Human Rights and Labor During the Clinton administration.  He is currently a professor at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts John was deep in the policy debates over the US response to the Rwanda genocide and explains how and why the United States failed to mount a meaningful response to this crisis. John also played a key role in uncovering the genocide at Srebrenica in which some 8,000 Bosnian men and boys were murdered by Serb forces, and he explains how he came to help uncover this crime. John is a board member of Humanity in Action and we kick off this conversation discussing the situation in Poland and Hungary, where pluralist values and civic institutions have come under extreme threat by right wing governments. W discuss how civic organizations and universities can push back against this creeping illiberalism. This is a great talk with someone who has had a fascinating career standing up for civil liberties and human rights in the United States and around the world. Become a premium subscriber to unlock bonus episodes, earn other rewards, and support the show!  

With Houston still reeling from Hurricane Harvey, Irma causing massive havoc in the Caribbean, and more storms on the way, I thought it would be timely and interesting to speak with my guest today, Maria Ivanova Maria Ivanova is an academic who straddles the university and policy worlds to help think through the connections between human security, environmental stresses and global governance--that is, the mechanisms that the international community and beyond have designed to deal with environmental challenges. In this conversation she helps put the onslaught of these hurricanes into a kind of broader global context that addresses how the international community might more productively organize itself to confront the realities of climate change.   Maria is a Professor of Global Governance and Director of the Center for Governance and Sustainability at the John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at UMass Boston and a Visiting Scholar at the Climate CoLab at MIT. She is also Ambassador for the New Shape Prize of the Global Challenges Foundation. This is a $5 million prize that will be awarded next year to "the best ideas that re-envision global governance for the 21st century." Toward the end of this conversation we discuss what exactly that means.     Become a premium subscriber to unlock bonus episodes, earn other rewards, and support the show!