Two years after the violence that devastated Kenya, the country shuffles forward on a razor’s edge. Very soon, the International Criminal Court will decide whether to allow prosecutors to open investigations in to those believed to be responsible for mass expulsions and killings following a controversial election.
This occurs parallel to the uncoordinated political agenda we [...]
Rule of law is hardly adhered to in Venezuela, nor is democracy, for that matter – casualties of the revolution our favorite erratic autocrat repeatedly claims is on the rise. Judges who rule against the favor of the government’s wishes have been known to be thrown in jail themselves. Those in the executive cabinet that [...]
Health and political risk are no stranger bedfellows in Nigeria than oil reserves and skiff-boat diplomacy. From the surrealism of‘missing president’ Umaru Yar’Adua, linked to the outside world via a ghostly voiced interview with the BBC, and with attendant disputes of legitimacy and sovereignty, Nigeria has seemingly chosen to solve the crisis in its own [...]
Opposition parties in Ivory Coast staged protests today as the west African country awaited the annoucement of a new government after President Laurent Gbagbo scrapped the previous one. The protests are growing in volatility as a nation awaits a government in flux.
The head of the former rebel New Forces (FN), Guillaume Soro, whom Gbagbo reappointed as [...]
China’s leading dissident, Liu Xiaobo, yesterday lost his appeal against his conviction and 11-year sentence for inciting subversion.
Outside the court, US and European diplomats called for the immediate release of the 54-year-old Liu, a writer and one-time professor who was first detained in December 2008 after co-authoring a manifesto calling for political reform in China.
US [...]
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych yesterday called on his opponent and longtime rival, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, to concede defeat in Sunday’s presidential runoff after he secured a slim victory at the polls. With more than 98 percent of the ballots counted as of Monday evening, Yanukovych had captured 48.5 percent of the vote, with Tymoshenko [...]
International attorney and Corporate Foreign Policy founder Robert Amsterdam took to the podium on Wednesday, February 3rd at the CATO Institute in Washington DC to discuss in brief the role of the ‘reset‘ button in contemporary U.S.-Russia relations and the precedent it sets by both besmirching rule of law at home and abroad and indeed [...]
Power and the titles that accompany it are difficult to let go of, even within the ranks of established international and geopolitical communities. Mugabe has had a stranglehold on power for decades, even when it hinders progress for a Zimbabwe he claims to love. Omar Bongo rather silently ran Gabon for nearly the same amount [...]
Marifeli Pérez-Stable is vice president for democratic governance at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, DC and a professor of sociology at Miami’s Florida International University. Dr. Pérez-Stable chaired the Task Force on Memory, Truth, and Justice which published the report, ‘Cuban National Reconciliation‘, in April 2003. On both the website of the Inter-American Dialogue and indeed [...]
Free and fair elections are a pillar for tangible change in government. Many have long strived to see the fruition of democracy in all of its values reach contemporary Latin America, more recently in the Arcadia Foundation taking to task the former Honduran government of dubious dealings and questionable practices. Their anti-corruption campaigns shone a spotlight [...]
