Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

Lauren Wolfe is an award winning journalist who covers sexual violence in conflict. She's the director of the Women Under Siege project, which is a journalistic endeavor founded by Gloria Steinem as part of the Women's Media Center to investigate how rape and gender based violence are used as tools of conflict. About a week before we spoke Lauren wrote an article in the Guardian about a Congolese militia that terrorized a small town in the eastern part of the country by systematically raping babies and toddlers. A day after the publication of this article, the militia leader was arrested. We kick off discussing that story. Lauren has spent the better part of her career in journalism reporting on trauma and she is currently a columnist for Foreign Policy. Among other stories, she covered 9-11 and its aftermath for the New York Times and Lauren opens up in a pretty profound way about she feels so compelled to cover violence and trauma. This is a pretty heavy episode, though not without moments of humor. But it was a real honor to speak with her.

On July 9, South Sudan commemorates its 5th independence day. And I say "commemorates" and not "celebrates" because there is not a whole lot to celebrate. The country has been mired in conflict since late 2013, when a political dispute between president Salva Kiir and his deputy Riek Machar devolved into an armed battle and then full blown civil war. The consequences of this war for the people of South Sudan have been immense. Millions have been displaced, and though a peace deal was signed last year violence continues to flare up and the humanitarian situation is as dire as ever. On the line to discuss recent developments in South Sudan, the role of the United Nations Peacekeepers in the country, and the humanitarian situation is Noah Gottschalk, who is the senior humanitarian policy advisor at Oxfam. He does a good job of offering some broader context to understand how South Sudan has so unraveled in the last five years. If you have 20 minutes and want to understand the deep challenges that face the people of South Sudan on the country's 5th birthday -- and the leaders under whom they have been so ill-served -- have a listen.

Both the European Union and the United Kingdom are important players in international development. In fact the EU is the single largest foreign aid provider; and the United Kingdom's own aid programs, run by the Department for International Development, or DfID, are considered some of the more innovative programs in this space. Also, the UK is one of just a few countries to actually have met a commitment to spend 0.7% of its gross national income on global development. So, it would seem the fallout from Brexit could potentially be pretty profound for international development. To go over these big issues, I caught up with Mikaela Gavas of Overseas Development Institute, which is a highly respected UK-based think tank that focuses on global development issues. Mikaela, in particular, works on Pan-European global development policies so she is able to offer some deeply nuanced insights into these questions. (Also, toward the end of the interview, Mikaela expresses some consternation that as a British expert on EU policy, she may soon loose some credibility with her continental peers.) If you are a global development nerd, Mikaela will give you a lot to chew on. If you are a more casual observer of internationals affairs, this conversation offers a good distillation of one way in which Brexit may have some profound global implications.

Stewart Patrick is an international relations scholar with a background in studying human evolution. As you might imagine, that combination makes for some fascinating conversation. Stewart is a Senior Fellow and Director of the International Institutions and Global Governance Program at the Council on Foreign Relations. He's a Rhodes scholar who has studied the intersection of the evolution of culture and international relations and we have some great digressions about how culture contributes to the creation of international norms and international law. In the early 2000s, he received a fellowship to serve on the policy planning staff of Colin Powell's State Department, and he discusses two big lessons he drew from that experience: the power of ideology to shape policy and how bureaucratic politics can influence big decisions. We kick off discussing his newest project, which is The Global Governance Report Card grades international performance in addressing a specter of current global challenges.

You've probably heard about the dispute in the South China Sea. And if you have heard about it, you are probably vaguely aware, as I was, that it involves disputed territorial claims between China and its neighbors, and that in defense of American allies in the region, the US navy is positioning military assets in the area. On this episode we go a bit deeper into this dispute, its origins, and broader global implications -- of which there are many. On the line to discuss it all is Gregory Poling, a fellow with the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. And we kick off discussing a case that the Philippines has brought against China at an international court of arbitration, the result of which is expected very soon.

I caught up with my guest today, Arms Control Association president Daryl Kimball from his hotel in Vienna. Daryl, along with hundreds of diplomats around the world were gathered for the 20th anniversary of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. This is a treaty that bans the testing of nuclear weapons and establishes a global monitoring system to ensure that no one can secretly test a nuclear bomb. The treaty was signed by the USA and most countries on the planet back in 1996, but it has not been ratified by some key countries, including the United States, and accordingly has not formally entered into force. Despite that, Daryl Kimball explains how the CTBT has become a very effective treaty over the past two decades, in particular through deployment of a system of monitoring stations around the world that can detect anomalous seismic activity and radioactive discharge into the atmosphere. We also discusses the implications of the continues non-ratification of the treaty by the USA.

If you follow the Middle East at all, you've probably read the works of my guest today, Marc Lynch. Marc publishes widely and in a wide variety of mediums. He's got a high volume Twitter feed under the handle @AbuAardvark and writes regularly for the Monkey Cage blog at the Washington Post. He is a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, and the founder and director of the Project on Middle East Political Science among other affiliations. He is someone whose work I have learned from and followed for several years We spend about the first 20 minutes or so talking about his new book, The New Arab Wars: Anarchy and Uprising in the Middle East, which explores the Arab Spring and its fallout through the prism of international relations and regional politics. Marc discusses how he became interested in the middle east through an internship early in college, and the evolving nature of one of his key research subjects over his career, the relationship between media and politics in the Middle East. And of course, stick around until the end for his musings on how international relations theory can explain rivalries in hip hop.

The Gambia is a tiny country in western Africa. It's a narrow sliver on the ocean, surrounded by Senegal. It has a population of under 2 million, and according to my guest today, Jeffrey Smith, it is the worst dictatorship you have never heard of. Smith is a human rights researcher, now a consultant to human rights activists in Africa through his firm Vanguard Africa. In this conversation he describes the politics of repression in Gambia and how the deteriorating situation there is having profound regional, and even global consequences. Indeed, I was surprised to learn that The Gambia as small as it is, is actually a major source of refugees crossing the Mediterranean to Europe. We also discuss a foiled coup plot that was planned in the United States by Gambian-Americans. The Gambia is obviously not much in international headlines so I was glad to be able to shine a spotlight on this really under covered story. Even if you have barely heard of the Gambia or if you follow African politics closely, I think you will appreciate this conversation.

In her new book The Fires of Spring my guest today Shelly Culbertson travels to six countries in the Middle East and North Africa to describe for readers how each of these countries are managing the political, economic and social challenges of the post Arab Spring era. Through interviews and drawing on her own expertise as a longtime analyst, Culbertson explains why some countries in the region managed to muddle through the Arab Spring, some collapsed under pressure, and how at least on may have emerged stronger. Culbertson has had a career in government and is now with the Rand Corporation, where she specializes in education and development in the Middle East. We discuss her interesting career path and some of the fascinating stories from her book and travels throughout the middle east. If you are interested in comparative politics and the Middle East, you'll love this conversation. I certainly learned a lot from her and the book is a great resource.

Over the past week, a number of scientists and bio-ethicists expressed deep concern that holding the Olympics this summer in Rio de Janeiro could enable the Zika virus to spread far and wide. I caught up with one of the world's leading experts on Zika, Dr. Peter Hotez and put the question to him. Dr. Hotez has a lot of credentials. Among other affiliations, he is dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of medicine, where he is also a professor of pediatrics and molecular & virology and microbiology, and president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute. He describes why these fears are overblown and unfounded. Instead, he argues that we should really be focusing our attention on the spread of Zika to the Caribbean and Southern United states. In this conversation, Dr. Hotez explains to us laypeople why Rio is actually no longer a hotbed for Zika. (It's science, but it's easily understandable). He also explains why dithering in congress over providing funding for mosquito control could have potentially catastrophic consequences for people living in the Gulf of Mexico.