President Trump is planning on a trip to India — probably next month, depending on his impeachment trial in the Senate. That will be almost exactly 20 years after President Clinton’s pathbreaking trip to India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan in March 2000. There are some interesting lessons to be learned from looking back. Presidential travel to…

فيما تتراكم حملة "الضغط الأقصى" التي يطبّقها الرئيس الأمريكي دونالد ترامب على إيران منذ ثلاثة أعوام، جاءت جائحة فيروس كورونا المستجدّ لتزيد من حدّة تأثيرها. وتحاول إدارة الرئيس الإيراني حسن روحاني الضغط على الولايات المتحدة لتخفيف العقوبات أو رفعها على ضوء أزمة الصحة العامة هذه والأزمة الاقتصادية اللتين تؤثّران في عدد كبير من الإيرانيين. وبينما…

While President Trump’s campaign of “maximum pressure” against Iran has been building for three years now, the COVID-19 pandemic is making its impact much more acute. The administration of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has been pressing the U.S. to ease or lift sanctions in light of the public health and economic crises affecting a huge…

Camille François is a leading investigator of disinformation campaigns and author of the well-known "ABC" or "Actor-Behavior-Content" disinformation framework, which has informed how many of the biggest tech companies tackle disinformation on their platforms. Here, she speaks with Lawfare's Quinta Jurecic and Evelyn Douek for that site's series on disinformation, "Arbiters of Truth." Earlier this…

Throughout its tumultuous four decades of rule, the Islamic Republic has shown remarkable longevity, despite regular predictions of its im- pending demise. However, the fact that it has largely failed to deliver on the promises of the 1979 revolution, above all democracy and social justice, continues to haunt its present and future. Iran’s post-revolutionary history…

على مدى أربعة عقود من الحكم المضطرب اتّسمت الجمهورية الإسلامية بطول عمر لافت، على الرغم من التوقّعات المستمرّة بانهيارها الوشيك. بيد أنّ فشلها بالإجمال في تحقيق الوعود التي أطلقتها ثورة العام 1979، وأهمّها الديمقراطية والعدالة الاجتماعية، ما زال يطارد حاضرها ومستقبلها. ولم يتّسم تاريخ إيران في ما بعد الثورة بالركود السلطوي، بل بصراعٍ مستمرّ بين…

On April 13, 2020, Suzanne Maloney discussed "Why the Middle East Matters" via video conference with IHS Markit.

On Saturday night, March 28, two missiles were fired at the Saudi capital of Riyadh. They were intercepted by Saudi defenses, but two Saudis were injured in the falling debris. Another missile was fired at the city of Jazan. This is the first attack on the Saudi capital since last September’s devastating attacks by Iran on the Abqaiq…

Arab nomads in Darfur have organized interlocking conflict resolution networks to address local disputes before they escalate. Their work could help bring lasting peace to a region plagued by violence. But it requires stronger international support to fulfill its promise.

A Judicial Issues Forum discussion among leading experts on the calamity in Darfur and the international community's failure to empower a suitable war crimes tribunal. The session reviewed the gravity of the situation in Sudan, the controversy over efforts to grant jurisdiction to the International Criminal Court, and the limited potential of other options—such as turning to the Rwanda genocide tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, as an alternative.

The Brookings-Bern Project hosted a seminar with a group of six women political leaders from across Sudan to discuss their work in promoting good governance in Sudan and improving the lives of Sudanese women.

On September 26, the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement will host a discussion of the effect of the possible indictment on peace and justice, and potential impact on humanitarian and peacekeeping operations in Darfur and on the ICC itself.

On June 27, the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement hosted a discussion with representatives from the Sudanese government; Lynn Fredriksson, Africa advocacy director for Amnesty International USA; and Pamela Fierst, a member of the Sudan policy group at the State Department, to examine Sudan’s 2005 peace agreement and to explore the ways in which it has been successfully implemented and the areas in which challenges still exist.

Gonzalo Vargas-Llosa, a senior policy adviser from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, participated in a discussion on the current realities in Darfur. He was joined by experts Colin Thomas-Jensen, a policy adviser with the ENOUGH Project, and Paul Miller, Africa adviser with Catholic Relief Services. Elizabeth Ferris, senior fellow and co-director of the Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement, moderated the discussion.

Brookings expert Elizabeth Ferris and Senior Politico Editor Fred Barbash took questions about humanitarian issues in Iraq and Darfur as well as the ICC's arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omara Hassan al-Bashir in this week’s edition of the Scouting Report.

Sudan’s north-south civil war was the longest conflict in African history and claimed more than two million lives, and on January 9, 2011, a referendum will take place, allowing the southern Sudanese to vote on whether to remain part of Sudan or to gain independence. On October 13, Foreign Policy at Brookings hosted a discussion of the prospects for the Sudan referendum featuring Rep. Donald Payne (D-NJ).

In this letter to the editor, Roberta Cohen argues that the Obama administration should consult the United States' 2004 internally displaced persons (IDP) policy to help ensure that the human rights of the 27 million IDPs in the world are properly protected.

Although the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) developed from efforts to design an international system to protect internally displaced persons (IDPs), it's application may not always work to their benefit. Roberta Cohen points out that to ensure that IDPs gain from this concept, special strategies will be needed to reconcile R2P with IDP protection.

That Mexican criminal groups have been handing out assistance to local populations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping through Mexico has generated much attention. Among the Mexican criminal groups that have jumped on the COVID-19 “humanitarian aid” bandwagon are the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), the Sinaloa Cartel, Los Viagras, the Gulf Cartel, and…

Introduction Since 2009, an insurgency calling itself The People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad (Jama’tu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad in Arabic) has caused devastating insecurity, impoverishment, displacement, and other suffering in Nigeria’s poor and arid North- East Zone.1 The group is better known to the world as Boko Haram, and although…

The COVID-19 outbreak worldwide is affecting not just crime as I explained last week, but also law enforcement: How are police responding to COVID-19 and its knock-on effects on crime? What effects does the pandemic have on criminal groups and the policing they do? Where have all the coppers gone? Globally, police forces are predominantly…

Slums provide uniquely challenging conditions for containing the coronavirus and confronting the threat of COVID-19. There may be no ambulances. No hospitals. No tests. No or few police. Only some of the most densely populated places on earth. When COVID-19 reaches the world’s slums, few policy options are available; and those that exist often entail…

Possibly emerging as a result of wildlife trafficking and the consumption of wild animal meat, COVID-19 is influencing crime and illicit economies around the world. Some of the immediate effects are likely to be ephemeral; others will take longer to emerge but are likely to be lasting. How is the COVID-19 outbreak affecting criminal groups,…

This month, the Africa Growth Initiative at Brookings published a policy brief examining trends in illicit financial flows (IFFs) from Africa between 1980 and 2018, which are estimated to total approximately $1.3 trillion. A serious detriment to financial and economic development on the continent, illicit financial flows are defined as “the illegal movement of money…

The January revelations around illicit financial gains by Isabel dos Santos, Africa’s richest woman and daughter of former Angolan president Edoardo dos Santos, have once again brought the topic of illicit financial flows to the forefront of the conversation on domestic resource mobilization in Africa. Unfortunately, illicit flows are not new to the continent: While…

Abstract Since 1980, an estimated $1.3 trillion has left sub-Saharan Africa in the form of illicit financial flows (per Global Financial Integrity methodology), posing a central challenge to development financing. In this paper, we provide an up-to-date examination of illicit financial flows from Africa from 1980 to 2018, assess the drivers and destinations of illicit…

As homicides levels in Mexico are rising and U.S. pressure is mounting, the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known widely as AMLO) is turning further away from several core precepts of the security policy with which it assumed office. The idea of giving amnesty to some criminals as a way to reduce violence that…

In the futuristic 2002 film “Minority Report,” law enforcement uses a predictive technology that includes artificial intelligence (AI) for risk assessments to arrest possible murderers before they commit crimes. However, a police officer is now one of the accused future murderers and is on the run from the Department of Justice to prove that the…

Amid the many plans and projects that have been set awry by the rampage of COVID-19, spare a thought for the world’s census takers. For the small community of demographers and statisticians that staff national statistical offices, 2020—now likely forever associated with coronavirus—was meant to be something else entirely: the peak year of the decennial…

The release of the IMF’s World Economic Outlook provides an initial country-by-country assessment of what might happen to the world economy in 2020 and 2021. Using the methods described in the World Poverty Clock, we ask what will happen to the number of poor people in the world—those living in households with less than $1.90…

Here’s a striking statistic: Low-income and lower-middle income countries (LICs and LMICs) account for almost half of the global population but they make up only 2 percent of the global death toll attributed to COVID-19. We think this difference is unreal. Views about the severity of the pandemic have evolved a lot since its outbreak…

The more things change, the more they stay the same. For the nearly 860 million people living without electricity, the technologies and business options for delivering access have grown a lot. Yet a wide gap remains between the cost of providing last-mile electricity and what poorer folks are able to pay. It’s the same challenge that every…

To be capable of surveilling, preventing, and managing disease outbreaks, public health systems require trustworthy, community-embedded public health workers who are empowered to undertake their tasks as professionals. The world has not invested in this cadre of health workers, despite the lessons from Ebola. In a new paper, my co-authors and I discuss why, and…

Like in other parts of the world, the Western Balkans are suffering a heavy blow as the novel coronavirus spreads. Governments are sending people home, and only a few businesses are allowed to operate. What began as a health shock has required a conscious—and necessary—temporary activity freeze to slow the spread of infection, leading to…

E-commerce—defined broadly as the sale of goods and services online—is emerging as a key pillar in the global fight against COVID-19. Online grocery shopping and telemedicine, for instance, are helping to avoid in-person contact and reduce the risk of new infections. Video chats, movie streaming, and online education make physical distancing measures more bearable. In…

On February 20, the World Bank and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which funds development of epidemic vaccines, cohosted a global consultation on funding the development and manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines. We wrote a working paper to guide the consultation, which we coauthored with World Bank and CEPI colleagues. The consultation led to…

More than a quarter of the world’s people are in quarantine or lockdown in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19). Tens of millions are required to stay at home, with many of them laid off or on unpaid leave. Given the highly contagious nature of the virus and the absence of a vaccination or cure, the…

In a piece written for this blog four years ago—after the Ebola outbreaks but mostly focused on rising natural disasters—I argued that to deal with global public “bads” such as climate change, natural disasters, diseases, and financial crises, we needed global financing mechanisms. Today, the world faces not just another global public bad, but one…

Prior to COVID-19, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were gaining traction among local governments and city leaders as a framework to focus local policy on ambitious targets around inclusion, equity, and sustainability. Several cities published reports of their local progress on the SDGs in Voluntary Local Reviews (VLR), echoing the official format used by countries…

Surging unemployment claims show that our labor market, built for efficiency, can crumble in times of crisis at huge human and economic costs. The pandemic has exposed a weak point in the country’s economy: the precarity of low-wage workers. Many have adapted to unimaginable circumstances, risking their own well-being, implementing public health protocols, and keeping…

Executive Summary While America spent the past decade upgrading its bank-based magnetic striped cards with chips, China experienced a retail payment revolution. Leapfrogging the card-based system, two new payment systems have come to dominate person-to-person, retail, and many business transactions. China’s new system is built on digital wallets, QR codes (two-dimensional bar codes), and runs…

The COVID-19 crisis is testing America’s resilience. The rapidly accelerating economic fallout makes concrete the risks for a national economy built on the success of just a few key economic centers. When the nation turns to the work of recovery, our goal must be to expand the number and breadth of healthy communities, jump-starting a…

There are two small business crises in the United States. The first—the sudden shock to small businesses induced by COVID-19—is acute and immediate. Our recent analysis indicates that over 50% of small businesses with employees (an astounding 4 million establishments) face immediate or near-term risks due to the pandemic. The second crisis—the structural racial and…

As COVID-19 requires more and more swaths of the country to shelter at home, broadband is more essential than ever. Access to the internet means having the ability to work from home, connecting with friends and family, and ordering food and other essential goods online. For businesses, it allows the possibility of staying open without…

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Annual economic growth in Israel of 3.5% over the past decade has largely been the result of an increase in employment rates, while the growth rate in productivity has been very low. The rates of employment cannot continue to grow at this rate in the future due to the expected saturation in employment…