COVID-19 has offered regimes in the region the opportunity to end popular protest. The squares of Algiers, Baghdad, and Beirut – all packed with protesters over the past few months – are now empty due to the pandemic, and political gatherings have also been suspended. In Algeria, Iraq and Lebanon, COVID-19 has achieved what snipers, pro-regime propaganda, and even the economic crisis, could not.

Moreover, political regimes have taken advantage of the crisis to expand their control over the political sphere by arresting their opponents, such as in Algeria where the authorities have cracked down on a number of active voices of the Hirak movement. Similarly, in Lebanon, security forces have used the pandemic as an excuse to crush sit-ins held in Martyr’s Square in Beirut and Nour Square in Tripoli.

However, despite the challenges that the pandemic has brought, it also offers opportunities for protest movements in the region. While the crisis has put an end to popular mobilization in the streets, it has  created new forms of activism in the shape of solidarity initiatives to help those affected by its consequences.

In Iraq, for example, protest groups have directed their work towards awareness-raising and sharing essential food to help mitigate the problem of food shortages and rising prices across the country. In Algeria, Hirak activists have run online campaigns to raise awareness about the virus and have encouraged people to stay at home. Others have been cleaning and disinfecting public spaces. These initiatives increase the legitimacy of the protest movement, and if coupled with political messages, could offer these movements an important chance to expand their base of popular support.

Exposes economic vulnerability

Economic grievances, corruption and poor provision of public services have been among the main concerns of this recent wave of protests. This pandemic only further exposes the levels of economic vulnerability in the region. COVID-19 is laying bare the socio-economic inequalities in MENA countries; this is particularly evident in the numbers of people engaged in the informal economy with no access to social security, including health insurance and pensions.

Informal employment, approximately calculated by the share of the labour force not contributing to social security, is estimated to amount to 65.5% of total employment in Lebanon, 64.4% in Iraq, and 63.3% in Algeria. The crisis has underscored the vulnerability of this large percentage of the labour force who have been unable to afford the economic repercussions of following state orders to stay at home.

The situation has also called attention to the vital need for efficient public services and healthcare systems. According to the fifth wave of the Arab Barometer, 74.4% of people in Lebanon are dissatisfied with their country’s healthcare services, as are 67.8% of people in Algeria and 66.5% in Iraq.

Meanwhile, 66.2% of people in Lebanon believe it is necessary to pay a bribe in order to receive better healthcare, as do 56.2% of people in Iraq and 55.9% in Algeria. The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the need for more government investment in public healthcare systems to render them more efficient and less corrupt, strengthening the protesters’ case for the need for radical socio-economic reforms.

On the geopolitical level, the crisis puts into question the stability-focused approach of Western powers towards the region. For years, Western powers have directed their aid towards security forces in the interests of combating terrorism but COVID-19 has proved itself to be a much more lethal challenge to both the region and the West.

Facing this new challenge requires international actors to reconsider their approach to include supporting health and education initiatives, as well as freedom of expression and transparency. As argued by Western policymakers themselves, it was China’s lack of transparency and slow response that enabled the proliferation of the virus, when it could have been contained in Wuhan back in December 2019.

This crisis therefore offers regional protest movements the opportunity to capitalize on this moment and push back against the policies of Western powers that have invested in regional stability only to the extent of combating Islamic jihad. 

But crises do not change the world, people do. The COVID-19 pandemic will not in itself result in political change in the MENA region. Rather, it brings opportunities and risks that, when exploited, will allow political actors to advance their own agendas. While the crisis has put an end to popular mobilization and allowed regimes to tighten their grip over the political sphere, behind these challenges lie real opportunities for protest movements.

The current situation represents a possibility for them to expand their popular base through solidarity initiatives and has exposed more widely the importance of addressing socio-economic inequalities. Finally, it offers the chance to challenge the stability-focused approach of Western powers towards the region which until now has predominantly focused on combating terrorism.

He brings substantial expertise on food systems and environmental change to the role and will focus on establishing new initiatives at the intersection of research and policymaking.

Tim was appointed as a distinguished visiting fellow of Chatham House in the Energy, Environment and Resources Department in 2016. He has since contributed to the institute in a number of ways, not least through leading the GCRF-AFRICAP project which aims to enhance policy making in Sub-Saharan Africa, through building climate-smart food systems.

Tim’s research focuses on food security and building food systems that are resilient and sustainable, working within the broader areas of ecology, natural resources and climate change impacts. He has published over 150 academic papers, most tackling the core themes of agriculture’s environmental impact and more generally how systems respond to environmental change. He is a lead author of the upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on climate change and land. He is also coordinating lead author on international risks for the UK’s Climate Change Risk Assessment, which draws on his broader interests in sustainable finance, trade and energy. He has advised other governments as well as global companies on related issues.

Tim joins Chatham House in his new capacity from the University of Leeds where he is dean of strategic research initiatives. Prior to this, from 2011 to 2016, Tim was the champion of the UK’s Global Food Security programme, a large multi-agency partnership of the UK’s public bodies involved in addressing challenges around food. He has also been research dean in the Faculty of Biological Sciences, and head of department, at Leeds.

Dr Robin Niblett, director of Chatham House, said: 'Tim’s wealth of experience will be especially valuable as we build up our interdisciplinary Chatham House research theme of promoting sustainable growth. We look forward to welcoming Tim to his new role in early July.'

Tim Benton said: 'I am honoured to be joining Chatham House as Research Director for Energy, Environment and Resources. Chatham House has a global reputation in these areas, on which we can build. Informed analysis, combined with effective action to transition towards sustainable economies, is needed now, more than ever.'

About the Energy, Environment and Resources Department

The Energy, Environment and Resources department at Chatham House seeks to advance the international debate on energy, environment and development policy and to influence and enable decision-makers – governments, NGOs and business – to take well-informed decisions that contribute to achieving sustainable development. Independent of any actor or ideology, we do this by carrying out innovative research on major policy challenges, bringing together diverse perspectives and constituencies and injecting new ideas into the international arena.

Tim Benton takes over the role from Rob Bailey who has joined Marsh & McLennan Insights as Director, Climate Resilience.

The NATO Summit, held in September 2014 in Newport, Wales, was a waypoint in the larger strategic vision for NATO over the coming decade. As the alliance continues to confront challenges on its eastern and southern frontiers, it must find ways to adapt its strategy for more effective responses, while also staying ahead of emerging threats and risks. 

The event will bring together senior representatives from a number of the NATO member states, NATO partners and external experts from industry, the media and the think-tank and academic communities, to examine what NATO member states have done thus far to move the deliverables forward, and how to most effectively work together in continuing to do so. 

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

This is the second of two workshops held in collaboration with SWP-Berlin; the first took place at Chatham House in October 2014.

The transatlantic partnership has provided the backbone to the liberal international order ever since the end of the Second World War. The tumultuous political events of 2016 denote a brutal rupture from the dominant global position of the transatlantic partnership and threaten to undermine the partnership itself. Only by understanding that the current problems facing the transatlantic relationship have deep structural roots will it be possible to find ways to prevent further erosion, sustain the benefits of the existing partnership and build opportunities for transatlantic cooperation in the future. 

Ahead of the publication of his new paper, Robin Niblett, will join us to share his thoughts on the challenges, opportunities and potential strategies towards securing the future of the transatlantic relationship. 

Attendance at this event is by invitation only. 

England and Australia are considered standard-bearers of universal access to health services, with the former’s National Health Service (NHS) recognized as a global brand and the latter’s Medicare seen as a leader in the Asia-Pacific region. However, through the exclusion of migrant and refugee groups, each is failing to deliver true universality in their health services. These exclusions breach both their own national policies and of international commitments they have made.

While the marginalization of mobile populations is not a new phenomenon, in recent years there has been a global increase in anti-migrant rhetoric, and such health care exclusions reflect a global trend in which undocumented migrants, refugees and asylum seekers are denied rights.

They are also increasingly excluded in the interpretation of phrases such as ‘leave no one behind’ and ‘universal health coverage’, commonly used by UN bodies and member states, despite explicit language in UN declarations that commits countries to include mobile groups.

Giving all people – including undocumented migrants and asylum seekers – access to health care is essential not just for the health of the migrant groups but also the public health of the populations that host them. In a world with almost one billion people on the move, failing to take account of such mobility leaves services ill-equipped and will result in missed early and preventative treatment, an increased burden on services and a susceptibility to the spread of infectious disease.

England

While in the three other nations of the UK, the health services are accountable to the devolved government, the central UK government is responsible for the NHS in England, where there are considerably greater restrictions in access.

Undocumented migrants and refused asylum seekers are entitled to access all health care services if doctors deem it clinically urgent or immediately necessary to provide it. However, the Home Office’s ‘hostile environment’ policies towards undocumented migrants, implemented aggressively and without training for clinical staff, are leading to the inappropriate denial of urgent and clearly necessary care.

One example is the case of Elfreda Spencer, whose treatment for myeloma was delayed for one year, allowing the disease to progress, resulting in her death.

In England, these policies, which closely link health care and immigration enforcement, are also deterring people from seeking health care they are entitled to. For example, medical bills received by migrants contain threats to inform immigration enforcement of their details if balances are not cleared in a certain timeframe. Of particular concern, the NGO Maternity Action has demonstrated that such a link to immigration officials results in the deterrence of pregnant women from seeking care during their pregnancy.

Almost all leading medical organizations in the United Kingdom have raised concerns about these policies, highlighting the negative impact on public health and the lack of financial justification for their implementation. Many have highlighted that undocument migrants use just and estimated 0.3% of the NHS budget and have pointed to international evidence that suggests that restrictive health care policies may cost the system more.

Australia

In Australia, all people who seek refuge by boat are held, and have their cases processed offshore in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Nauru, at a cost of almost A$5 billion between 2013 and 2017. Through this international agreement, in place since 2013, Australia has committed to arrange and pay for the care for the refugees, including health services ‘to a standard of care broadly comparable to that available to the general Australian community under the public health system’.

However, the standard of care made available to the refugees is far from comparable to that available to the general population in Australia. Findings against the current care provision contractor on PNG, Pacific International Hospital, which took over in the last year, are particularly damning.

For instance, an Australian coroner investigating the 2014 death from a treatable leg infection of an asylum seeker held in PNG concluded that the contractor lacked ‘necessary clinical skills’, and provided ‘inadequate’ care. The coroner’s report, issued in 2018, found the company had also, in other cases, denied care, withheld pain relief, distributed expired medication and had generally poor standards of care, with broken or missing equipment and medication, and services often closed when they were supposed to be open.

This has also been reiterated by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, which has appealed to the Australian government to end its policies of offshore processing immediately, due to health implications for asylum seekers. This echoes concerns of the medical community around the government’s ongoing attempts to repeal the ‘Medivac’ legislation, which enables emergency medical evacuation from PNG and Nauru.

Bad policy

Both governments have signed up to UN Sustainable Development Goals commitment to ‘safe and orderly migration’, an essential component of which is access to health care. The vision for this was laid out in a global action plan on promoting the health of refugees and migrants, agreed by member states at the 2019 World Health Assembly.

However, rather than allow national policies to be informed by such international plans and the evidence put forward by leading health professionals and medical organizations, the unsubstantiated framing of migrants as a security risk and economic burden has curtailed migrant and refugee access to health care.

The inclusion of migrants and refugees within universal access to health services is not merely a matter of human rights. Despite being framed as a financial burden, ensuring access for all people may reduce costs on health services through prevention of costly later-stage medical complications, increased transmission of infections and inefficient administrative costs of determining eligibility.

Thailand provides an example of a middle-income country that recognized this, successfully including all migrants and refugees in its health reforms in 2002. Alongside entitling all residents to join the universal coverage scheme, the country also ensured that services were ‘migrant friendly’, including through the provision of translators. A key justification for the approach was the economic benefit of ensuring a healthy migrant population, including the undocumented population.

The denial of quality health services to refugees and undocumented migrants is a poor policy choice. Governments may find it tempting to gain political capital through excluding these groups, but providing adequate access to health services is part of both governments’ commitments made at the national and international levels. Not only are inclusive health services feasible to implement and good for the health of migrants and refugees, in the long term, they are safer for public health and may save money.

Having chaired the independent (and global) Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Review for David Cameron, I know a similar approach should have been taken quickly about COVID-19.

Similar not in precise nature but - in so far as incorporating infectious disease modelling, and using economic analysis to try to contain and solve it - it should be applied in parallel.

The AMR Review is well-known for highlighting the potential loss of life as well as the economic costs of an escalating growth of resistance to antimicrobials, and the inaction to prevent it.

In particular we showed that, by 2050, there could be around 10 million people each year dying from AMR, and an accumulated $100trn economic cost to the world from 2015 to 2050.

Horrendous outcomes

What is less focused on, as we showed in our final report, is that to prevent these horrendous outcomes, a 'mere' $42bn would need to be invested globally. This would give an investment return of something like 2,000%.

I shudder to think what policymakers could do if we don’t make these investments and we reach a situation - possibly accelerated itself by escalating the inappropriate use of antibiotics in this COVID-19 crisis - where we run out of useful antibiotics. It will be a much longer time period to find new vaccines to beat COVID-19.

In addition to this crisis, requiring G20 policymakers to back up their generous words about combatting AMR would mean they need to spend around $10bn instigating the generally agreed Market Incentive Awards to promote serious efforts by pharmaceutical companies.

In fact, given that the financial crisis we are also now in means companies are greatly dependent on our governments for their future survival, perhaps the pharma Industry will finally understand the real world concept of 'Pay or Play', where companies that don’t try to find new antibiotics are taxed to provide the pool of money for others that are bold enough to try. And realise there is a world coming of different risk-rewards for all, including them.

When applied to the COVID-19 challenge, it is useful to look at the required investment in accelerating as much as possible the efforts to find useful vaccines to beat it, but also to immediately introduce the therapeutics and diagnostics in countries that are so poorly prepared.

Those Asian countries affected early include a number that seem to have coped so far in keeping the crisis to a minimum because they had the appropriate therapeutics and diagnostics, despite not having vaccines. A sum of approximately $10 bn from the G20 would be sufficient to cover all these vital areas.

Now consider the economics of social distancing. As soon as it became apparent that our policymakers were heeding the Chinese method of trying to suppress COVID-19, it was immediately obvious that our economies would - at least for a short period - sustain the collapse of GDP that China self-imposed in February. From industrial production and other regular monthly data, the Chinese economy has declined by around 20%.

It is quite likely many other economies - probably each of the G7 countries - will experience something not too dissimilar in March. And, to stop our complex democracies from further immediate pressure including social disharmony, governments in many countries have needed to undertake dramatic unconventional steps.

Here in the UK, our new chancellor effectively had three budgets within less than a fortnight. And outside of the £330bn loan policy he has announced, at least £50bn worth of economic stimulus has been announced.

Many other G20 countries have undertaken their own versions of what I call 'People’s QE', many of them bigger packages - the US appears to be contemplating a stimulus as much as $2 trillion.

But, for the sake of illustration, if the UK package were the price for three months social distancing and this was repeated across the G20, then the total cost for all G20 countries - adjusted for relative size - would be in the vicinity of $1trillion.

If this isn’t accompanied by steps involving the best therapeutics and diagnostics, and we have to keep everyone isolated for one year, it would become at least $4trillion.

This may be 'back of the envelope' calculations which ignores the almost inevitable challenges for social cohesion in so many nations. But the G20 must spend something around $10bn immediately to put in absolute best standards all over the world, and another $10 bn to kickstart the market for new antibiotics.

This is a version of an article that first appeared in Project Syndicate.

Panellists discuss the significance of investing in mental health and the return on the individual, the economy and society. 

Although the economic and societal benefits of investing in health are increasingly recognized, less than two per cent of national health budgets globally are spent on mental health, despite the enormous impact it has on citizens and countries around the world. 

With the global health emergency of COVID-19 accelerating conversations around mental wellness and productivity, governments around the world are under increasing pressure to respond to the immediate challenges of ensuring both physical and mental health. 

Given that mental illness typically rises in times of economic recession and health crises, how are individuals, businesses and societies thinking about this issue? How can governments ensure mental health is integrated in global health coverage? And what role does technology play in mental health provision?

This event was run in partnership with United for Global Mental Health, within the framework of the Speak Your Mind (SYM) nationally led and globally united campaign that calls on leaders to provide quality mental health for all. 

UnitedGMH aims to unite global efforts on mental health and provides advocacy, campaigning and financing support to global institutions, businesses, communities and individual change-makers seeking greater action on global mental health. 

In recent decades, political party systems across Europe have fragmented and electoral volatility has increased. The number of parties represented in parliaments across the continent has grown and the formerly dominant mainstream parties have seen their support base collapse, forcing parties into often uncomfortable and unstable coalitions.

From the United Kingdom to Germany, politicians and commentators talk of such scenarios in often apocalyptic terms and associate it with political instability and policy paralysis.

They shouldn’t. Instead they should focus their energy on making these increasingly competitive political markets work.

The Netherlands is frequently held up as a prime example of this process, which is therefore sometimes referred to as ‘Dutchification’. Its highly proportional political system has created the opportunity for new parties and specific interest groups to win parliamentary representation, ranging from an animal rights party and a party catering specifically to the interests of the elderly.

This has been accompanied by increased electoral volatility. In the 1970s, less than 15% of seats in the Dutch parliament would change party at any election, but in the last election in 2017, this was just over a quarter. The system also created space for the relatively early rise of populist far-right parties, though it was not the cause of their rise.

Nevertheless, despite the regularly difficult coalition politics, it remains one of the most well-governed countries in the world.

A short history of fragmentation

Looking at the effective number of parties represented in parliaments, the number of parties, corrected for their size, provides a good measure of the extent of fragmentation. In the Netherlands this steadily increased from around four in the 1980s to over eight following the election in 2017. Even the populist far-right vote has fragmented, with two parties partly competing for the same electorate. In other countries it has been a more recent phenomenon. Spain remained a de facto two-party system until the financial crisis. Dissatisfaction with both mainstream parties has seen challenger parties on both the left and the right attract significant support, making it harder to form stable coalitions. Political fragmentation decreased slightly in Italy in recent years, but that was from a high base as it shot up in the early 1990s when the post-war political settlement crumbled.

German politics, long a hallmark of stability, is struggling with the decrease in support for the parties that dominated its political scene in the post-war period. The Christian Democrats and Social Democrats only barely managed to win a majority together in the election in 2017, at 53.4% of the vote compared with the 81.3% achieved 30 years earlier. The latest polls suggest they would only get to 40% together if an election were held today.

A similar trend is visible within the European Parliament. Whereas the two largest groups in the European Parliament, the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, together won 66% of the vote in the election in 1999, they did not even manage to win a majority together in 2019, taking just 39.5% of the vote.

No crisis of democracy

If electoral volatility and political fragmentation does indeed constitute some sort of crisis of democracy, we should expect to see voters become unhappy about how their national democracy functions. Largely, the opposite seems to be the case.

In the Netherlands, satisfaction with its democracy went up at the same time as Dutchification did its work. Similar trends are visible in other highly fragmented European political systems, often those with very proportional systems. Despite regular minority governments, satisfaction with democracy is above 90% in Denmark and at 80% in Sweden, according to the latest Eurobarometer data.

In comparison, it stood at 52% in the United Kingdom and 53% in France, where the electoral system has, at least on the surface, prevented the kind of fragmentation supposedly plaguing proportional systems.

Satisfaction with democracy seems to be affected by a number of factors. This includes the state of the economy, particularly in countries that were hit the hardest by the global financial and euro zone crises. Nevertheless, the data suggests that, even if we can’t say that Dutchification by definition leads to more satisfaction with democracy, it is clearly not associated with falling faith in the system.

A competitive political market

Dutchification should be seen as accompanying a more competitive political marketplace. A more emancipated, demanding and politically engaged electorate than in the post-war decades is willing to shop around instead of merely vote according to socioeconomic class or other dividing lines, such as religious ones. The fragmented parliaments that emerge as a result provide better representation of different groups within European societies.

This makes life harder for Europe’s political parties and politicians, as they juggle large coalitions, or changing coalitions under minority governments, but provides voters with more choice and democratic renewal. If handled correctly this would also allow more responsiveness to shifts in public opinion.

Such democratic creative destruction in competitive political markets is to be celebrated in a well-functioning democracy. Just as companies prefer to operate in an oligopoly, political parties prefer the stability of limited political competition. But wishing for this kind of stability comes perilously close to preferring stability over proper representation.

Worrying about Dutchification risks confusing a crisis of the traditional mainstream parties with a crisis of democracy. For some countries, particularly those like the Netherlands and Denmark which have longer histories of consensus-based politics and coalition building, this is an easier adjustment. But this should not be an excuse to not attempt to make politics work better as they were forced to go through, arguably still ongoing, adjustment processes too.

Instead of investing in futile attempts to get back to how things were in the old days, or hoping this will somehow magically happen, political leaders and parties across Europe need to reassess how they deal with the new reality of Dutchification.

This article adopts a constructive approach to examining the problem of the Indo-Pacific construct. Through reflection on the east Asian experience, it proposes an analytical framework of developmental peace as a constellation of international practices, which means that the more economic development is prioritized by states in regional processes, the more likely it is that a sustainable peace will be achieved. States participating in regional integration comprise a community of practice. On the basis of a shared understanding that development is of overriding importance and underpins security and state legitimacy, the community takes economic development as the anchoring practice; this practice embodies and enacts constitutive rules and fundamental norms for a broader set of practices in regional processes, such as peaceful coexistence and non-interference. The more economic development is prioritized on domestic and regional agendas, the more likely it is that conflicts in the security realm will be relaxed or even resolved to protect security interests. The author draws some useful implications from the developmental peace in east Asia for the Indo-Pacific construct, among which the most important include building shared understandings on the prioritization of economic development, taking advantage of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and using the code of conduct process as a vehicle and best practice to facilitate rule-making for the maritime order. Finally, the author briefly discusses the contributions of the study and limitations of the model.

In April 2018, the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), held in London, saw the creation and the adoption of the Commonwealth Cyber Declaration. The declaration outlines the framework for a concerted effort to advance cybersecurity practices to promote a safe and prosperous cyberspace for Commonwealth citizens, businesses and societies. 

The conference will aim to provide an overview on the progress made on cybersecurity in the Commonwealth since the declaration was announced in 2018. In addition, it will examine future challenges and potential solutions going forward.

This conference is part of the International Security Programme's project on Implementing the Commonwealth Cybersecurity Agenda and will convene a range of senior Commonwealth representatives as well as a selection of civil society and industry stakeholders. This project aims to develop a pan-Commonwealth platform to take the Commonwealth Cyber Declaration forward by means of a holistic, inclusive and representative approach.

Please see below meeting summaries from previous events on Cybersecurity in the Commonwealth:  

• A cyberspace that supports economic and social rights online (London)
• Build the foundations of an effective national cybersecurity response (Barbados)
• Promote stability in cyberspace through international cooperation (Addis Ababa)

Attendance at this event is by invitation only. 

This year marks the 20^th anniversary of the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security – the first to recognize the important role of women in peacebuilding. How did the resolution come into being and how significant was its adoption in 2000?  

Well it has quite an amazing history that goes back to other UN resolutions, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic and Social Rights, which were passed in the 1960s and came into force in the 1970s. These were some of the biggest covenants on human and civil rights at the time but it was only later that people realised, that those who passed them, did not assume that they applied to women.

There was an attempt, subsequently, to pass the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women – commonly called the CEDAW Convention – which was widely adopted in 1979, when 187 out of 194 UN members signed, although the United States was not one of them, and in fact, the US has still not ratified the treaty. But the understanding that women’s rights were not necessarily assumed in human and civil rights action was beginning to gain recognition.

Then, in 1995, Hillary Clinton spoke in Beijing and really put it forward that women’s rights were human rights and also civil rights and we all have to address them as such. So, ‘95 really brought together all the different social groups – women’s groups, human’s rights groups, civil rights groups, and more, who pushed for the women, peace and security agenda to be passed in 2000 at the United Nations. 

The resolution on women, peace and security was a significant moment because it recognized gender equality issues were national security issues – not just social justice issues – and was soon followed by a number of other resolutions which make up the women, peace and security agenda today. 

Conflict has a disproportionate effect on women and girls, with global security threats, such as climate change,  reported to impact women more than men. In light of this, growing numbers of women are now serving on the frontlines of conflicts, in comparison to 1957-1989, when  only 20 women served as UN peacekeepers. In your view, what have been the successes of the women, peace and security agenda so far?

I think some of the successes specific to peacekeeping have been, as you mentioned, that women are increasingly part of peacekeeping forces being deployed to conflict and post-conflict situations.

Importantly, the nature of war is changing – we are no longer primarily engaged in interstate work in some places – it’s mostly intrastate work where there are often ethnic or religious overtones.

In this landscape, women are often caught up in the battle lines. They often become the heads of their households when the men are gone or injured or killed. There have also been instances of rape being used as a weapon of war and other forms of sexual violence being committed in conflict and post-conflict situations even by peacekeepers.

So, having more women as peacekeepers is important because, number one, when women see women peacekeepers, they are much less likely to fear them, and therefore, feel less threatened speaking to them. Number two, women are a less threatening presence so civil society begins to build again. Number three, women peacekeepers give women in the local area a role model of strength showing them that they can play an active role in their own security. Finally, I would say that women peacekeepers are all impressively trained to guard those under their protection.

What other successes have there been more broadly outside of peacekeeping? Well, I think one that is often cited is that there’s a 20 per cent increase in the probability of a peace agreement lasting at least two years and a 35 per cent increase in the probability of that peace agreement lasting 15 years if women are at the negotiating table. The reason being that women bring things to the table – for example focussing on the root causes of conflict – that men neglect either because they’re not aware of them or it’s not considered an issue of importance to them. 

We have a pretty abysmal history of peace agreements holding so including more women in peace negotiations, given these increases in the probability of agreements holding, seems to me the only logical thing to do.

You mentioned the inclusion of women in peace processes increases the likelihood of agreements succeeding, however, women continue to be underrepresented, comprising under 10 per cent of peace negotiators and under 4 per cent of signatories to peace agreements. Do you think there are any shortcomings with focusing on increasing the presence of women over the positions they hold and how their positions are used to further gender equality?  

I think there are a couple of aspects to this. Importantly, women have been extremely effective in leadership positions, for example, in Liberia. But it is true having women at the table does not necessarily further gender equality in the long-term and I think this was the case in Northern Ireland where the women who were at the table did not include provisions for women. But, I think, we’ve learned since then.

The most important case to cite right now, in my view, is that of women in Afghanistan. They came out of their homes, they went to school, they identified themselves as proponents of gender equality, yet now, with the US-Taliban deal, there were almost no women at the table and not a single provision in the peace agreement that deals with women. So what’s going to happen to all of these women?

Since 2000, the number of agreements referring to women has grown to 28 per cent – more than double the number between 1990-2000. However, some critics have pointed to the gap between theory and practice since many peace agreements still omit a gender perspective on peacekeeping operations. What, in your opinion, have been the failings of realising the women, peace and security agenda so far?

You know, it’s not just critics who point this out, it’s advocates as well, that there is a big gap between rhetoric and implementation. I think the reason for this, in most cases, is political will. It’s the idea that gender equality is an optional luxury – we’ll get to it when we can – and that we have more important issues to work out. Well the agency of 50 per cent of the population should not be seen as an optional luxury.

In all cases, however, it’s a question of power. There are only so many seats at the table where power is doled out and nobody wants to give up theirs to let somebody else sit down. So, I think, there is active resistance to implementing gender equality in the peace and security arena because it would mean sharing power. 

There are also some other reasons. The first is something we call the ‘blind fish’ – people who are simply unaware of gender equality issues – the second, which is interestingly by adamant supporters of the women in peace and security agenda, and that’s they are not given the budget and the authority to carry out the agenda as it should be.

The concept of a feminist foreign policy, which places gender equality and women’s rights at the centre of its foreign policy goals, has been gaining momentum globally. Sweden became the first country in the world to adopt a feminist foreign policy in 2015, and since then, 82 countries have adopted national action plans to raise the role of women in peace processes. How effective have these measures been to furthering women in peace and security? 

That, I think, is one of the issues that women in peace and security advocates, such as myself, are currently looking at because the word ‘feminist’, for better or for worse, is a trigger in many countries.

In many countries, it’s a negative trigger, which is kind of ironic because, if you ask people, ‘Do you believe in gender equality?’, a lot of people will say, ‘Yes absolutely.’  But if you ask people, ‘Are you a feminist?’, a lot of people will say, ‘No not me.’ 

So, the question is, do we aim for a broad goal like a feminist foreign policy which would look at defining peace as, not just the absence of war, but a lot more then than that, such as creating the conditions needed for gender equality and aiming for peace and stability among other broader goals.

Or do we aim to work on a more incremental basis by trying to get more women into peacekeeping, trying to get more women into leadership positions, trying to move gender equality up the agenda as the more effective path forward?

I think the answer to the question is that it depends. If you’re Sweden, Canada or Mexico, a feminist foreign policy might be acceptable. But, if you’re the United States, it’s nowhere near acceptable. Even getting the US Defence Department to take the incremental steps of the women, peace and security agenda has been challenging.

Why do you think that is the case in the United States?

I think a lot of it has to do with power as I mentioned earlier. It has to do with an assumption that women aren’t assertive and don’t see security under the same lens as men, which is true, but which is why they are needed in this space.

I think it also, again, goes back to the point that some see it as an optional luxury rather than an absolute necessity and everybody is too busy – or simply unwilling – to change the status quo.

You mentioned the cases of Liberia and Northern Ireland, but another example that struck me was Rwanda, where women make up 62 per cent of the national legislature, far more proportionally than any other country, following provisions included in its constitution in the aftermath of the genocide of 1994.

Though equal representation between men and women is still far off for most of the world, what does the case of Rwanda and other post-conflict countries demonstrate about how to go about including more women in peacebuilding?

Well, I think the number one way to get more women into political leadership roles, where the women, peace and security agenda could then be implemented, is quotas. 

Many countries use quotas to increase more women in political participation, which Rwanda certainly does, although there are different types. There are quotas that say each political party must have X number of women as candidates and then there are quotas that say the overall number of women in the parliament must reach a certain level. 

So there are different varieties of quotas but they are all used as, kind of, affirmative action methods to at least temporarily bring the numbers up to where women’s voices are inclusive not token. 

Research has shown that until you have at least 33 per cent of a minority in an overall group – so if it’s all men then 33 per cent of this group as women – then you won’t see any change because having one or two will likely be drowned out. But, at about 33 per cent, they’re able to have political power which then means their views and their agendas are seriously considered. So, in Rwanda, that has certainly been the case and that’s been one of the big lessons learned. 

As I mentioned earlier, in Northern Ireland, the lesson learned was that it’s not enough to just have women in on peace agreements. There need to be implementation assurances written into the peace agreement that says it must be taken forward. So, in this vein, women have been learning over the years how to make a difference in male-dominated spaces. 

50 years ago, humans landed on the moon, becoming one of the most significant moments in human history. The stories of women, from Margaret Hamilton, to Katherine Johnson, to JoAnn Morgan, who all helped men take their first steps on the moon at the height of the space race, have since come into the spotlight. How will the inclusion of women need to be considered more in space security as it becomes increasingly important in international relations?

Right now, space security is at a very critical point. We have moved from a situation where there was both co-operation and competition during the space race to a situation of great power competition in space where the United States, China and Russia are, for the first time, overtly weaponizing space. When I say overtly, much of space technology is dual-use, meaning it could be used as a weapon or it could be used as something for non-military purposes.

In the past, the United States and other countries have been very careful, kind of, not to cross the Rubicon into the overt weaponization of space but that’s now ending which I think puts us in a very precarious situation. 

What seems to be missing from considerations of space security at the moment is the most threatening issue – space debris – which can only be dealt with on a multinational basis meaning it inherently requires co-operation. 

So, what I think more women in space security positions would bring, would be that inclusion and the insistence on inclusion as a pillar of space diplomacy.

If there was just a fraction of the money, and manpower, spent on space diplomacy as there is on planning for space warfare, I think we’d all be a lot better off.

How far do current discussions about women in peace and security factor in space security?

Not at all.

Do you see the role of women in space security progressing in the future in spite of this and also despite what some have described as a broader backlash against women around the world whether in the political or in the security space?

I think there have been events over the past five or so years that have made women around the world, if anything, more acutely insistent on their participation than ever before.

We saw the marches in 2017, in the United States and worldwide, in response to what women felt was a rise in authoritarian and misogynistic governments and we have seen the rollbacks in gender equality rights in areas like reproduction too but I don’t think they’re going to take it lying down. The backlash, if anything, is going to spur women to be more, not less, active in all spaces. 

Some have argued for the need of a men, peace and security agenda, to compliment the work on women, with proponents arguing that men are needed to realise gender equality worldwide. How far are men needed as allies to realise the women, peace and security agenda? 

Well, I think, though the women, peace and security agenda has women in the title, it argues for gendered perspectives, that policies affect men and women differently. So, I think it is very important that it not be seen as dealing only with women’s issues – it deals with gendered perspectives. 

In that regard, it is very much needed to have a broadening of all of those involved. I mentioned earlier it was all women’s groups that got the women, peace and security agenda passed and now we need to include men. In fact, I would point out, NATO is a great example of an organization that has recognized the importance of looking at how policies affect men and women, girls and boys. 

So bringing more men in to support gendered perspectives is absolutely essential and looking at gendered perspectives in things like leadership roles is critical as well as gendered perspectives in everything from space policy to nuclear policy to human security issues too.

In your view, what are the greatest challenges to the uptake of gendered perspectives across the board and what, if anything, needs to change in order to realise the goals set out by the UNSC 20 years ago?

On a macro level, we need accountability. We have lots of policies, laws, national action plans and strategies of all kinds but we need accountability.

In the United States, in particular, I very much hope that accountability comes from Congress. In 2017, Congress passed the Women, Peace and Security Act on a bipartisan basis but I think it’s now up to Congress to hold organizations responsible for its implementation. 

On an organizational level, we need to get, as you said, more men involved. But, interestingly, not all women agree, so we need to have more talks among women too, be they liberal, conservative, working, non-working, mothers, not mothers etc. We may have different views but where we’re trying to go is the same and we need to work together better. 

I think among the advocates of women, peace and security, there are still issues that are up for debate like do we go for big feminist foreign policies or do we go for incremental change? In addition, are there lynchpin issues such as reproductive rights, women’s healthcare, gender equality or budget? 

You know, in the United States, I wrote in an article that although the US Defence Department gave $4 million for women, peace and security in 2018, which they were patting themselves on the back for, the Military Times pointed out that they are spending $84 million a year on Viagra.

But this is not just in the United States. 140 countries stood up at the UN to advocate for women, peace and security in 2000 but only 25 per cent of those have national action plans and any budget connected to those plans. Everyone everywhere needs to put their money where their mouths are if we are to realise the goals set out by the UNSC 20 years ago.

Soon after assuming power in 1994, President Aliaksandr Lukashenka turned his back on democratic norms and overpowered the Belarusian political elite. However, the influence of the governing elite in Belarus is growing again. It seems likely that the current governing class could rule the country after Lukashenka leaves. It is thus important to study Belarusian elites not only to understand the current regime, but also to better forecast and navigate the political system that will one day replace it. 

This study group aims to disentangle how the Belarusian political system works, outline the types of individuals that make up the Belarusian ruling elite, assess the interaction of the elite and institutions with the West, and suggest changes that Western political actors might make to their approach to the Belarusian ruling class.

This meeting will see the launch of the Chatham House-CAGE briefing paper ‘Human Development as Positive Freedom: A World View since 1870’. The author of the paper will argue that while substantial gains in world human development have been achieved since 1870, the main period of improvement actually occurred between World War I and 1970. He will further argue that, despite initial successes in lifting human development, the socialist experiments of the 20th century failed to sustain momentum and then (with the exception of Cuba) stagnated and fell behind prior to the socialist model's ultimate demise. Finally, he will contend that since 1970, while most OECD countries have experienced a second (later life) health transition, all developing regions have fallen behind in this dimension.

The briefing paper is the 12th publication in the Chatham House-CAGE series, published in partnership with the Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE) at the University of Warwick.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

Summary points:

• Substantial gains in world human development have been achieved since 1870, but research shows that the main improvement actually occurred between the First World War and 1970.
   
• Across-the-board advances took place in life expectancy and education between 1920 and 1950, a phase during which there was a major backlash against economic globalization. This is evidence of a development puzzle: economic growth and human development do not always go hand in hand.
   
• Between 1913 and 1970 the absolute gap between most countries in the OECD and the rest of the world widened, with different regions experiencing mixed success in catching up. Since the 1970s the performance of developing regions has varied greatly.
   
• Despite initial successes in lifting human development, the socialist experiments of the 20th century failed to sustain momentum and then (with the exception of Cuba) stagnated and fell behind prior to the socialist model’s ultimate demise.
   
• Education has been the driving force behind the limited catching-up of developing regions in terms of long-term human development. In terms of life expectancy,these regions achieved significant gains only during the first (early-life) health transition. Since 1970, while most OECD countries have experienced a second (later-life) health transition, all developing regions have fallen behind.

Project: Shifting Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy 

Launch event

Human Development as Positive Freedom: A World View Since 1870
26 February 2014

 

 

The mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War continue to be a divisive and highly politicized issue. The mixed reactions to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's message of condolence on 23 April highlighted the obstacles standing in the way of normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia. This event will explore whether the upcoming centenary of the genocide represents an opportunity for improvement. The speakers will offer initial remarks for approximately 10 minutes each, followed by an hour for questions and discussion.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

Viacheslav Chirikba will offer his perspective on the situation in Abkhazia following the recent presidential elections, and the developments in Abkhazia's relations with other regional players. 

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

This event will discuss the rise of the culture of world development. It will examine the post-war reconstruction and development projects of the 1940s through to the 1960s, including those devised at Chatham House. The speaker will argue that these projects hold valuable lessons that still apply to the current economic environment. The speaker will also discuss the key role played by Eugene R Black (1898-1992), the third president of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank), who was one of the main architects of post-war reconstruction and development projects and a promoter of a ‘culture of development’.

The international community’s response to the Syria crisis has been unsatisfactory on many fronts, and humanitarian aid and development is no exception. While there has been renewed emphasis by development organizations on the importance of engaging local actors − notably highlighted in the new Sustainable Development Goals − the reality is this has been woefully lacking in practice. And Syria is simply one example of many where the failure of UN agencies and other humanitarian actors to partner with local actors has hampered the response to humanitarian crises.

Double standards

The problem is that international agencies usually have high and unfair expectations from Syrian individuals and organizations, requiring them to speak the ‘language’ of development, meet international standards, and demonstrate a wide range of expertise. However, these demands are not reciprocated by international organizations and experts being expected to have the same depth of knowledge of the local context in which they are operating. In addition, while Syrian actors are expected to be neutral, impartial and politically unaffiliated, foreign aid appears to be driven − explicitly and unashamedly − by the political objectives of the donor countries.

There is a double standard at work. In many cases, international ‘experts’ on Syria have little local knowledge, but there are no channels to measure or question their level of expertise. At the same time, including local Syrians in decision-making is seen as a threat to predetermined objectives, rather than as an asset.

Syrians could add an indispensable source of knowledge and context to international agencies, as well as add local credibility. But too often they are brought on board to be part of the humanitarian and development picture or to get their simple feedback for evaluation and needs assessment reports to satisfy donors’ requirements, rather than employed as an integral component of designing and implementing projects. Though some of this is down to a pretext of lack of capacity, it raises the question of whether there is an international political willingness and genuine organizational courage to involve Syrians at programming, decision and policy making-levels.

The importance of local

The Syrian example is not isolated. While there is now a debate to encourage engaging local actors, this does not happen in practice. The Local to Global Protection Initiative study reported that local and national humanitarian actors received only 0.2% of the overall direct global humanitarian response in 2013.

Moreover, the international humanitarian and development systems are designed, together with foreign aid policy, to be self-contained and to exclude local actors. This allows donor governments to use the systems as political tools for leveraging control. It is equally difficult for both outsiders as well as insiders to understand how the system really functions. The UN-led coordination structure is one example of the heavy international architecture that remains unable to reform itself, learn from its previous mistakes, or to engage with local actors.

And that engagement matters. The Independent Research Forum emphasized in its brief in February 2014 how engaging local researchers and implementing bottom-up participatory learning can make countries better prepared to achieve the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals. Those goals, as well as the upcoming World Humanitarian Summit, highlight the importance of including local actors in the humanitarian and development responses.

Moving forward

Fortunately, such initiatives are creating a momentum within the development community to make radical changes through bottom-up approaches that put sustainability into practice. But if the Sustainable Development Goals want to affect real change, there will have to be a significant drive to move from rhetoric and ‘intentions’ to reality and actions. Currently it seems that the international community prefers to simply maintain the current status quo. It only takes a brief reflection on how many Syrians are included in every project or programme and how many Syrians are in positions to contribute at the policy and decision-making levels to realise the scale of the impetus required to change this system. To make that change might provide an opportunity for Syrians to restore some of the ownership to the outcomes and decisions of their conflict.

To comment on this article, please contact Chatham House Feedback

This roundtable will explore the role of and the challenges faced by both the international community and local civil society in countering sectarian narratives in the Middle East and North Africa region. Speakers will draw on their experiences working with communities in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt to discuss potential contributions that can be made at the local, national, and international level in tackling the root causes of religious division and facilitating positive community relations.

This inaugural Asfari Forum is sponsored by the Asfari Foundation.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

Following 21 years since the adoption of the Beijing declaration by 189 states, China has the opportunity to lead the way in prioritizing gender-inclusive growth policies on the G20 agenda, as it is hosting the G20 this year.

This roundtable will examine specific challenges in China, a country with a high heterogeneity in the labour force and among its population. The event will bring together representatives of government, business and civil society to continue the dialogue that Chatham House started one year ago in Beijing. Taking stock of the progress achieved so far, the participants will analyse what type of recommendations can have a positive impact in both rural and high- density populated areas.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

The Chatham House Rule 

To enable as open a debate as possible, this event will be held under the Chatham House Rule. 

The void in governance created by the ongoing Syrian conflict has been capitalized upon by warlords, militias and extremist groups to expand and consolidate their power – but has also helped to generate activism, with new leaders born as a reaction to authoritarian governance and conflict limitations.

As public social services have been taken over as war tools, local coordination committees, local councils, humanitarian support groups, citizen journalist networks, women’s groups, and more, have mushroomed across all of Syria. But this new civil society continues to be threatened by many challenges.

It remains hindered by structural weakness and limited capacity - largely as a result of the legacy of Ba’athist policies, which did not allow civil society to exist in the so-called Damascus Spring, but only under the umbrella of the Government, First Lady Asma al-Assad and business NGOs (GoNGOs, FLNGOs and BoNGOs). Beyond this, civil society was limited to purely charitable and religious causes, known as “moujtamaa ahli”.

In addition, Syrian civil society is often a victim of counter-terrorism legislation, with laws and regulations across many countries and institutions prohibiting Syrians from registering an organization and opening bank accounts.  This makes it difficult to secure financial support in an environment where funding has already been dwindling due to a “Syria fatigue” among potential donors, and where any money available is mainly directed at large, often international, NGOs.

Trust, hope and legitimacy

To reach funds, many organizations have to submit to this “NGOization” process. But even this rarely allows for civil society to foster its own interests through core funding. Civil society in Syria is treated more as a “project” with strict indicators, deals and deadlines, when working under conflict necessitates building relationships of trust with a community over time and often has to cover the direct needs on the ground to gain local legitimacy and increase effectiveness. Trust, hope and legitimacy are not aspects you can report against or cover in a sophisticated proposal.

But despite such obstacles, activists and civil society groups continue to volunteer for various causes, ensuring many have not had to seek refuge elsewhere. And their work has included challenging authoritarian and extremist governance.

In Aleppo in 2014, it was civil society with the support of a military faction of Jaish Al Mujahideen that helped expel ISIS. Local councils have since been providing services ranging from humanitarian aid and garbage collection to re-establishing order and resolving local conflicts, thus challenging the legitimacy of jihadist institutions.

NGOs such as the Civil Defense Forces (known as the White Helmets) continually risk their lives to save others by rescuing people from bombed out buildings. On September 19, when a UN sanctioned aid convoy was attacked in Aleppo – reportedly by Russian aircraft – it was the White Helmets that responded, before then coming under attack themselves.

Human rights activists, meanwhile, persist in documenting human rights abuses in the hope that the perpetrators will eventually be held accountable.

However, a Syrian civil society tragedy is unfolding as their work is struggling to survive. To give but one example, Kesh Malek, one of the biggest groups running home-based schooling for children in Aleppo, has already had to close some of its schools.

Lacking international protection, the fate of these children in relation to arms and radicalization is all the more alarming.  Several local councils have also been much weakened, especially vis-à-vis warlords, authoritarian and/or extremists actors.

At its best, the current bombing campaign serves to kill any potential alternatives to an authoritarian regime, and only boosts human suffering, radicalization and displacement.

If this situation is to be reversed, international actors need to ensure security at the local Syrian level, showing that Syrian security is as important as that of Europe.

This means financial security through a deeper and more sustainable capacity building and funding to civil society, and it means protecting civilians and civil society groups though the creation of a safe haven.

To comment on this article, please contact Chatham House Feedback

Since 2010-11, Cuba has engaged in legal and constitutional reform intended to provide a greater role for private enterprise and foreign investment in the country's state-run economy. New rules have been introduced to provide greater scope and guarantees for foreign investment and adjustments have been made to allow private ownership of land – and in a handful of cases 100 per cent share in ownership of investments.

At the same time, Cuba remains subject to US sanctions and an embargo regime that has left foreign investors weary when deciding whether or not to invest in the country. To what extent have these changes provided the security and confidence for foreign investors to seize on Cuba’s efforts to engage internationally around a range of industries including infrastructure, hospitality, hydrocarbons and small and medium enterprise.

Rodrigo Malmierca, Cuba's minister for trade and investment since 2009, will discuss the most recent changes in Cuba, their implications for development and investors and the viability of the official Economic Development Zone situated at Mariel.

The US and Americas Programme would like to thank BTG Pactual, Cairn Energy plc, Diageo, Fresnillo Management Services, HSBC Holdings plc and Wintershall Dea for their generous support of the Latin America Initiative.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only. 

The vote to impeach Donald Trump holds almost no surprises - on both the abuse of power and obstruction of congress articles, the votes were split entirely on party lines with nearly all the majority-led House Democrats but not a single Republican voting to impeach Trump.

However, this ‘pre-ordained’ outcome of the House impeachment inquiry does serve to highlight that the US is in the midst of a hyper-partisan political moment. Policy gridlock has led to two government shutdowns during Donald Trump’s presidency, with one further budgetary fight narrowly avoided.

With a few notable exceptions (such as USMCA), policy areas that lend themselves to bipartisanship - including infrastructure and drug pricing - have seen very little progress under divided congressional chambers. Party identification can now be overlaid with the cable news channel one watches or the newspaper one reads.

Impeachment now moves to the Senate for a trial, requiring a two-thirds majority of the Republican-led senate (or 67 senators) for a conviction. Given the congressional partisanship we are seeing, the baseline scenario continues to be that the senate will not vote to convict Trump and remove him from office - despite much being made of how many senators are likely to vote for a Senate conviction.

Why public opinion could be crucial

There is another story to keep a close eye on. The number to track is 47.2 – the current polling average of public support for Trump’s impeachment. Polling averages from the end of September 2019 (before the hearings began, but after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal inquiry) had 49.4% supporting impeachment versus 47.2% this week.

Here’s why this number matters. If those pushing for impeachment and removal are unable to drive popular support across a critical threshold level, then those against impeachment and removal are not going to abandon the president and vote for a senate conviction. With Trump consistently polling in the low 40s on job approval, but in the high 80s/low 90s within the Republican party, this means Republican congress members concerned about re-election are extremely hesitant to distance themselves from him without a clear mandate from the domestic public. 

A tale of the two most recent presidents to face impeachment underscores this point. Gallup polling claimed 58% of adults supported impeaching and removing President Richard Nixon from office in August 1974, whereas only 35% of the public supported impeaching President Bill Clinton in December 1998, the month he was impeached.

Given the respective outcomes of those two impeachments, it suggests public support for impeachment and removal needs to increase well beyond the current 47.2%, to avoid the foregone conclusion of acquittal in the Senate (even if there are signs of the tide moving in the opposite direction with those against impeachment overtaking support for the first time in December).   

What does this mean for Democrats?

In the short term, if the Democrats want to make inroads into the hearts and minds of those across the partisan gulf, it will be critical to secure senate testimony from those in Trump’s inner circle at the time of the Ukrainian affair.

After Trump ordered individuals with first-hand knowledge of the administration’s efforts vis-à-vis Ukraine not to testify, House investigators were unable to call many witnesses with direct evidence (which in fact left the House testimony exposed to Republican claims of hearsay). With Trump impeached, more of the public is likely to tune in to the senate proceedings, and direct evidence by inner circle administration officials required to testify presents an opportunity to move public opinion.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi recognizes how crucial the procedures and participants for the senate trial will be, and has said she could delay sending the articles of impeachment to the senate as leverage for a 'fair trial'.

Democrats also have to consider how an impeachment inquiry that - at least from this vantage point - does not end in a conviction of the president plays out for the 2020 election campaign, especially if this also likely means that public opinion - and certainly Republican-party views - of Trump have not shifted.

Trade and investment between the UK and Latin America is woefully underdeveloped. Latin America’s agricultural powerhouses Brazil and Argentina only accounted for a total of 1.6% of the UK’s agricultural market across eight sectors in 2018, all of those areas in which Argentina and Brazil have substantial comparative advantages. 

Conversely, UK exports to the large Latin American economies remain far below their potential.  To cite a few examples, in 2018 in the electrical equipment sector, the UK only exported $95.7 million of those products to Brazil, making the ninth largest economy in the world only the 42nd export market for those goods from the UK; Mexico only imported $91.4 million of UK-made electrical goods, placing it directly behind Brazil as UK’s market for those goods.

As we look to the future, any improvement to the relationship will depend on two factors: 1) how the UK leaves the EU and 2) whether Latin American agricultural producers can improve their environmental practices and can meet the production standards established by the EU and likely maintained by a potential post-Brexit Britain.

In the first meeting of the working group,  Chatham House convened a range of policymakers, practitioners and academics to explore this topic in depth, identify the key issues driving this trend, and begin to consider how improvements might best be made. Subsequent meetings will focus on specific sectors in commerce and investment.

We would like to thank BTG Pactual, Cairn Energy plc, Diageo, Equinor, Fresnillo Management Services, HSBC Holdings plc and Wintershall Dea for their generous support of the Latin America Initiative.

This event is part of the Inaugural Virtual Roundtable Series on the US, Americas and the State of the World and will take place virtually only. Participants should not come to Chatham House for these events.

Differing approaches across the hemisphere have had different impacts on presidential popularity and, at least in one case, on democratic institutions and human rights. Yet, even within that diversity, South America’s Southern Cone countries (Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay) have shown a sign of solidarity: protecting and facilitating trade flows, sponsoring cross-border research and ensuring citizens’ return to their home countries.    

The response from populist leaders

On the extreme have been the responses of presidents of Brazil, Nicaragua and Mexico, all of whom have ignored the science of the virus and of experts and refused to implement isolation policies.  President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil fired his health minister, Luis Henrique Mandetta on 16 April for contradicting him and earlier had claimed that the pandemic was a hoax or little more than a ‘measly cold.' 

Meanwhile, Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega has resisted closing businesses and schools.  After a mysterious 34-day absence, Ortega appeared on television on 15 April reinforcing his refusal to close businesses saying that Nicaraguans must work or they will die and claiming that the virus was ‘imported.’ 

Mexico’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) has also resisted the call for strict stay-at-home policies, though with his Deputy Health Minister, Hugo López-Gatell, has closed schools – recently extending the closure to the 1st of June and urging non-essential businesses to close – but focusing primarily on social distancing. 

In contrast to his deputy health minister and Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard – who had declared the situation a health emergency on 30th March, later than many neighbouring countries – AMLO has largely attempted to avoid discussion of the pandemic, claiming that in his case he has lucky charms that prevent him from contracting the virus. 

And both Bolsonaro and AMLO have participated in large public rallies, doing all the things that politicians love, shaking hands and hugging babies, and in the case of the former even wiping his nose before embracing an elderly woman.

The Nicaraguan, Brazilian and Mexican presidents make an odd grouping since one (Bosonaro) is considered of the extreme populist right and the others (Ortega and AMLO) of the populist left. What unites them is good old-fashioned populism, a belief in a leader who represents the amorphous popular will and should be unfettered by checks and balances on his power, including something like… science.  

An eclectic group

At the other extreme have been the quick responses by governments in Peru, Argentina, Chile, El Salvador and Colombia which put quarantine measures in place in mid-March. In these cases, governments have even banned outdoor activities and in the case of Peru and Colombia (in the large cities) have imposed alternating days for when women and men can leave the house so as to better control outside movement.  

This too, though, is an eclectic group. It includes a Peronist president Alberto Fernández in Argentina, conservative presidents Sebastian Piñera in Chile and Ivan Duque in Colombia, interim president and relative political neophyte Martin Vizcarra in Peru and outsider president Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. 

El Salvador’s strict quarantine measures have led to rising concerns that Bukele is using the crisis to consolidate personal power, using the national police and the armed forces to enforce the quarantine and ignoring three rulings by the Supreme Court urging the president to end the abuses. In Argentina, Peronist Fernández has shown a surprising commitment to containment even as it hurts his party’s working-class base, not something typically expected of the populist Peronist Party.   

In all of these cases, the quick, strong responses by the presidents shored up their popularity. Peru’s Vizcarra saw his popularity shoot up 35 points in a week to 82 per cent according to surveys taken in March. In late March 2020, Fernández in Argentina saw his approval ratings swell to 79.2 per cent with 94.7 percent of citizens approving of the government’s strict shelter-at-home policies.   Even presidents Piñera and Duque who had struggled with low approval ratings throughout 2019 and saw those numbers sink even lower after the social protests that ended the year have seen their numbers rise.  

According to an 20th April poll, Piñera’s popular approval rating swelled from 13 percent in March 18th at the start of the crisis to 25 per cent by 20th April; while hardly a sweeping popular mandate, even that level was unthinkable only a few months ago when administration was battered by social protests. 

In Colombia, after a series of political missteps and the popular protests, Duque’s popular approval rating had slumped to 26 per cent; by April 2nd, 62 percent of Colombians supported the once-beleaguered president.   (No recent surveys were available for Bukele in El Salvador.)

In contrast, Bolsonaro’s in Brazil has only nudged up.  Before the crisis hit, the president’s popularity had been in steady decline from a high of 49 per cent in January 2019 to 30 per cent by early December 2019. But by the first week in April, in the midst of a crisis in which other presidents saw their approval ratings increase by double digits, after his public disagreements with the health minister, Bolsonaro’s had sunk to 33 per cent while the soon-to-be-fired Mandetta’s stood at 76 per cent.  

AMLO in Mexico has fared no better. The populist leftist scored a high 86 per cent approval rating in February 1, 2019. By March 28, 2020 with concerns over his weak and flippant COVID-19 response and a severe contraction in economic growth, AMLO’s approval rating had sunk 26 points to 60 per cent and his disapproval stood at 37 per cent.    

In the midst of disharmony, coordination

Despite these differences, many countries in the region have shown the solidarity they often speak of but rarely follow in policy or practice. Peru, Chile and other countries have collaborated in repatriating citizens back to their home countries in the midst of the crisis.  

Even the countries of the Southern Cone common market, MERCOSUR, have pulled together on a number of fronts.  The trade bloc had effectively been ruled a dead-man-walking after its failed efforts to integrate Venezuela into the bloc, lowering its standards to let in the petroleum dependent semi-authoritarian government of then President Hugo Chávez. 

Even on the basics of internal cooperation, the block was struggling, unable to coordinate monetary policies and non-tariff trade barriers between the original founding member states, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

The 35-year-old customs union seemed to get a breath a new life with the announcement that it had concluded 20-year-long negotiations with the EU for a free trade deal. Ratification of that deal, however, ran aground on the political differences between the recently elected governments of Bolsonaro in Brazil and the Peronist Fernández in Argentina. 

Bolsonaro refused to attend the Fernández December 2019 inauguration, in protest of the newly elected president’s leftist leanings.  And this was well before their sharply divergent reactions to the COVID-19 virus. 

How surprising then that Mercosur has served as an effective coordination mechanism for these different and once opposed governments. The trade body is collaborating among member states to ensure the repatriation of citizens and has agreed to coordinate to ensure that trade flows, especially of medical supplies, are not interrupted by shutdown measures. 

Mercosur has even gone one step further than several other bodies have failed to take.  In early April the bloc’s governing body, based in Montevideo, Uruguay created a $16 million (12 million pound) fund to augment country research and assist in the purchase of supplies needed to combat the virus.  

Now if Brazil, Argentina and the others could only coordinate their domestic coronavirus responses and economic policy. In late March Fernández announced he was pulling Argentina out of a possible Mercosur-EU trade deal.

COVID-19 has offered regimes in the region the opportunity to end popular protest. The squares of Algiers, Baghdad, and Beirut – all packed with protesters over the past few months – are now empty due to the pandemic, and political gatherings have also been suspended. In Algeria, Iraq and Lebanon, COVID-19 has achieved what snipers, pro-regime propaganda, and even the economic crisis, could not.

Moreover, political regimes have taken advantage of the crisis to expand their control over the political sphere by arresting their opponents, such as in Algeria where the authorities have cracked down on a number of active voices of the Hirak movement. Similarly, in Lebanon, security forces have used the pandemic as an excuse to crush sit-ins held in Martyr’s Square in Beirut and Nour Square in Tripoli.

However, despite the challenges that the pandemic has brought, it also offers opportunities for protest movements in the region. While the crisis has put an end to popular mobilization in the streets, it has  created new forms of activism in the shape of solidarity initiatives to help those affected by its consequences.

In Iraq, for example, protest groups have directed their work towards awareness-raising and sharing essential food to help mitigate the problem of food shortages and rising prices across the country. In Algeria, Hirak activists have run online campaigns to raise awareness about the virus and have encouraged people to stay at home. Others have been cleaning and disinfecting public spaces. These initiatives increase the legitimacy of the protest movement, and if coupled with political messages, could offer these movements an important chance to expand their base of popular support.

Exposes economic vulnerability

Economic grievances, corruption and poor provision of public services have been among the main concerns of this recent wave of protests. This pandemic only further exposes the levels of economic vulnerability in the region. COVID-19 is laying bare the socio-economic inequalities in MENA countries; this is particularly evident in the numbers of people engaged in the informal economy with no access to social security, including health insurance and pensions.

Informal employment, approximately calculated by the share of the labour force not contributing to social security, is estimated to amount to 65.5% of total employment in Lebanon, 64.4% in Iraq, and 63.3% in Algeria. The crisis has underscored the vulnerability of this large percentage of the labour force who have been unable to afford the economic repercussions of following state orders to stay at home.

The situation has also called attention to the vital need for efficient public services and healthcare systems. According to the fifth wave of the Arab Barometer, 74.4% of people in Lebanon are dissatisfied with their country’s healthcare services, as are 67.8% of people in Algeria and 66.5% in Iraq.

Meanwhile, 66.2% of people in Lebanon believe it is necessary to pay a bribe in order to receive better healthcare, as do 56.2% of people in Iraq and 55.9% in Algeria. The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the need for more government investment in public healthcare systems to render them more efficient and less corrupt, strengthening the protesters’ case for the need for radical socio-economic reforms.

On the geopolitical level, the crisis puts into question the stability-focused approach of Western powers towards the region. For years, Western powers have directed their aid towards security forces in the interests of combating terrorism but COVID-19 has proved itself to be a much more lethal challenge to both the region and the West.

Facing this new challenge requires international actors to reconsider their approach to include supporting health and education initiatives, as well as freedom of expression and transparency. As argued by Western policymakers themselves, it was China’s lack of transparency and slow response that enabled the proliferation of the virus, when it could have been contained in Wuhan back in December 2019.

This crisis therefore offers regional protest movements the opportunity to capitalize on this moment and push back against the policies of Western powers that have invested in regional stability only to the extent of combating Islamic jihad. 

But crises do not change the world, people do. The COVID-19 pandemic will not in itself result in political change in the MENA region. Rather, it brings opportunities and risks that, when exploited, will allow political actors to advance their own agendas. While the crisis has put an end to popular mobilization and allowed regimes to tighten their grip over the political sphere, behind these challenges lie real opportunities for protest movements.

The current situation represents a possibility for them to expand their popular base through solidarity initiatives and has exposed more widely the importance of addressing socio-economic inequalities. Finally, it offers the chance to challenge the stability-focused approach of Western powers towards the region which until now has predominantly focused on combating terrorism.

Differing approaches across the hemisphere have had different impacts on presidential popularity and, at least in one case, on democratic institutions and human rights. Yet, even within that diversity, South America’s Southern Cone countries (Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay) have shown a sign of solidarity: protecting and facilitating trade flows, sponsoring cross-border research and ensuring citizens’ return to their home countries.    

The response from populist leaders

On the extreme have been the responses of presidents of Brazil, Nicaragua and Mexico, all of whom have ignored the science of the virus and of experts and refused to implement isolation policies.  President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil fired his health minister, Luis Henrique Mandetta on 16 April for contradicting him and earlier had claimed that the pandemic was a hoax or little more than a ‘measly cold.' 

Meanwhile, Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega has resisted closing businesses and schools.  After a mysterious 34-day absence, Ortega appeared on television on 15 April reinforcing his refusal to close businesses saying that Nicaraguans must work or they will die and claiming that the virus was ‘imported.’ 

Mexico’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) has also resisted the call for strict stay-at-home policies, though with his Deputy Health Minister, Hugo López-Gatell, has closed schools – recently extending the closure to the 1st of June and urging non-essential businesses to close – but focusing primarily on social distancing. 

In contrast to his deputy health minister and Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard – who had declared the situation a health emergency on 30th March, later than many neighbouring countries – AMLO has largely attempted to avoid discussion of the pandemic, claiming that in his case he has lucky charms that prevent him from contracting the virus. 

And both Bolsonaro and AMLO have participated in large public rallies, doing all the things that politicians love, shaking hands and hugging babies, and in the case of the former even wiping his nose before embracing an elderly woman.

The Nicaraguan, Brazilian and Mexican presidents make an odd grouping since one (Bosonaro) is considered of the extreme populist right and the others (Ortega and AMLO) of the populist left. What unites them is good old-fashioned populism, a belief in a leader who represents the amorphous popular will and should be unfettered by checks and balances on his power, including something like… science.  

An eclectic group

At the other extreme have been the quick responses by governments in Peru, Argentina, Chile, El Salvador and Colombia which put quarantine measures in place in mid-March. In these cases, governments have even banned outdoor activities and in the case of Peru and Colombia (in the large cities) have imposed alternating days for when women and men can leave the house so as to better control outside movement.  

This too, though, is an eclectic group. It includes a Peronist president Alberto Fernández in Argentina, conservative presidents Sebastian Piñera in Chile and Ivan Duque in Colombia, interim president and relative political neophyte Martin Vizcarra in Peru and outsider president Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. 

El Salvador’s strict quarantine measures have led to rising concerns that Bukele is using the crisis to consolidate personal power, using the national police and the armed forces to enforce the quarantine and ignoring three rulings by the Supreme Court urging the president to end the abuses. In Argentina, Peronist Fernández has shown a surprising commitment to containment even as it hurts his party’s working-class base, not something typically expected of the populist Peronist Party.   

In all of these cases, the quick, strong responses by the presidents shored up their popularity. Peru’s Vizcarra saw his popularity shoot up 35 points in a week to 82 per cent according to surveys taken in March. In late March 2020, Fernández in Argentina saw his approval ratings swell to 79.2 per cent with 94.7 percent of citizens approving of the government’s strict shelter-at-home policies.   Even presidents Piñera and Duque who had struggled with low approval ratings throughout 2019 and saw those numbers sink even lower after the social protests that ended the year have seen their numbers rise.  

According to an 20th April poll, Piñera’s popular approval rating swelled from 13 percent in March 18th at the start of the crisis to 25 per cent by 20th April; while hardly a sweeping popular mandate, even that level was unthinkable only a few months ago when administration was battered by social protests. 

In Colombia, after a series of political missteps and the popular protests, Duque’s popular approval rating had slumped to 26 per cent; by April 2nd, 62 percent of Colombians supported the once-beleaguered president.   (No recent surveys were available for Bukele in El Salvador.)

In contrast, Bolsonaro’s in Brazil has only nudged up.  Before the crisis hit, the president’s popularity had been in steady decline from a high of 49 per cent in January 2019 to 30 per cent by early December 2019. But by the first week in April, in the midst of a crisis in which other presidents saw their approval ratings increase by double digits, after his public disagreements with the health minister, Bolsonaro’s had sunk to 33 per cent while the soon-to-be-fired Mandetta’s stood at 76 per cent.  

AMLO in Mexico has fared no better. The populist leftist scored a high 86 per cent approval rating in February 1, 2019. By March 28, 2020 with concerns over his weak and flippant COVID-19 response and a severe contraction in economic growth, AMLO’s approval rating had sunk 26 points to 60 per cent and his disapproval stood at 37 per cent.    

In the midst of disharmony, coordination

Despite these differences, many countries in the region have shown the solidarity they often speak of but rarely follow in policy or practice. Peru, Chile and other countries have collaborated in repatriating citizens back to their home countries in the midst of the crisis.  

Even the countries of the Southern Cone common market, MERCOSUR, have pulled together on a number of fronts.  The trade bloc had effectively been ruled a dead-man-walking after its failed efforts to integrate Venezuela into the bloc, lowering its standards to let in the petroleum dependent semi-authoritarian government of then President Hugo Chávez. 

Even on the basics of internal cooperation, the block was struggling, unable to coordinate monetary policies and non-tariff trade barriers between the original founding member states, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

The 35-year-old customs union seemed to get a breath a new life with the announcement that it had concluded 20-year-long negotiations with the EU for a free trade deal. Ratification of that deal, however, ran aground on the political differences between the recently elected governments of Bolsonaro in Brazil and the Peronist Fernández in Argentina. 

Bolsonaro refused to attend the Fernández December 2019 inauguration, in protest of the newly elected president’s leftist leanings.  And this was well before their sharply divergent reactions to the COVID-19 virus. 

How surprising then that Mercosur has served as an effective coordination mechanism for these different and once opposed governments. The trade body is collaborating among member states to ensure the repatriation of citizens and has agreed to coordinate to ensure that trade flows, especially of medical supplies, are not interrupted by shutdown measures. 

Mercosur has even gone one step further than several other bodies have failed to take.  In early April the bloc’s governing body, based in Montevideo, Uruguay created a $16 million (12 million pound) fund to augment country research and assist in the purchase of supplies needed to combat the virus.  

Now if Brazil, Argentina and the others could only coordinate their domestic coronavirus responses and economic policy. In late March Fernández announced he was pulling Argentina out of a possible Mercosur-EU trade deal.

Political leaders, policy-makers and academics routinely refer to development as an objective process of social change through the use of technical, value-free terms. Images of poverty and inequality are regularly presented as evidence of a world that exists ‘out there’ where development unfolds. This way of seeing reflects the value of scientific forms of knowledge but also sits in tension with the normative foundations of development that take European modernization and industrialization as the benchmark for comparison. The role images play in this process is often overlooked. This article argues that a dominant mode of visuality based on a Cartesian separation between subject and object, underpinning the ascendance of European hegemony and colonialism, aligns with the core premises of orthodox development discourse. An example of how visual representations of development matter is presented through images of Africa–China relations in western media sources. Using widely circulated images depicting China's impact on African development in western news media sources as an example of why visual politics matters for policy-making, the article examines how images play a role in legitimizing development planning by rendering associated forms of epistemological and structural violence ‘invisible to the viewer’.