Malawi is only the second African country to annul a presidential election, after Kenya in 2017. It is the first in which the opposition has won the re-run.

The initial May 2019 vote had narrowly returned incumbent Peter Mutharika to the presidency. But in February 2020 a landmark ruling by Malawi’s constitutional court annulled the result citing ‘widespread, systematic and grave’ irregularities, including the now-infamous use of corrective fluid in vote tallying, and the Malawi Electoral Commission’s (MEC) failure to address complaints before announcing results. New elections were ordered within 150 days.

In a decisive contrast with the previous year, the fresh polls on 23 June saw the coming together of Lazarus Chakwera of the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) and running mate Saulos Chilima of the United Transformation Movement (UTM) to head a coalition of nine opposition parties - having fiercely competed as the leading challengers previously.

The constitutional court ruling had also changed Malawi’s electoral system, replacing a first-past-the-post model with one demanding an outright majority, which further encouraged the regional power bases of Malawi’s opposition to cast ego aside and work in alliance with each other.

In tandem with a slick digital campaign, the new alliance travelled widely to hold rallies across what is one of the world’s youngest countries, while the elderly Mutharika remained largely confined to the capital. It would be a strategy that ultimately delivered Chakwera to the presidency, polling 58 per cent of votes to Mutharika’s 39.

Political opposition elsewhere in Africa should take note from Malawi’s coalition - dialogue, not division, can offer a genuine path to change, especially in those countries with less favourable institutional conditions. Neighbouring Zambia would certainly do well to heed this example ahead of a pivotal election of its own in 2021.

A victory built on institutional precedent

Yet the story here is not only about throwing out an incumbent: Malawians had already done so twice before, rejecting sitting presidents at the polls in 1994 and 2014. It is also not unfamiliar to see public opinion and the judiciary work in parallel to uphold the constitution: former president Bakili Muluzi was twice blocked from abolishing term limits by popular demonstration during his second term, and again prevented from running for a third time in 2009 by the constitutional court.

The new result did not arise as the foregone conclusion of a judicial miracle. Rather, throughout the re-run process Malawi has had to repeatedly draw upon the strength of its broad-based institutional foundations. The image of the constitutional court judges arriving to deliver their annulment verdict in February wearing bulletproof vests under their robes was a stark reminder that this was never the easy route to take.

In contrast to many other African states, Mutharika was unable to call upon military support as the Malawi Defence Forces (MDF) had moved to shield protesting citizens and protect the judiciary since the 2019 election. The MDF also had previous form in this respect, having defended then-vice president Joyce Banda’s constitutional right to assume the presidency after the incumbent’s death in 2012.

And this institutional resilience from the army would facilitate a smooth and mostly peaceful election process during the re-run, despite Mutharika attempts to intervene by replacing the MDF’s commander and his deputy in March 2020.

Just ten days before the fresh vote the Mutharika government switched focus back to the country’s legal system by attempting to enforce the premature retirement of Malawi’s chief justice, only to be blocked by the high court. Even as unofficial tallies trickled in, Mutharika’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) demanded the MEC annul the result: claiming their monitors were intimidated in MCP strongholds, and requesting unlawful access to scrutinise null and void votes.

Headed by a new chairperson, this time the MEC displayed enormous patience in the verification process and openly tackled complaints, now mainly from the DPP. On social media, Malawians celebrated the contrast between images of tally sheets from 2019 and the re-run.

Writing a new chapter

There are lessons here too for international partners. UK diplomacy played a subtle role in encouraging Mutharika to accept the legal process - he was invited to appear at the UK-Africa Investment Summit in January - while also helping promoting early dialogue among opposition parties.

At a time of pressure for UK engagement to offer clear strategic value, the impact of less easily quantifiable forms of influence should not be overlooked, especially as international observer missions effectively went missing in the discredited 2019 election. Preliminary statements back then from the Commonwealth, European Union, African Union and Southern African Development Community (SADC) struck a mostly congratulatory tone and were non-committal on the issues that would prove decisive in the court ruling. None went on to release their final reports.

Malawi must now start to move beyond election mode. Though COVID-19 cases remain low by global standards, a budget already heavily dependent on foreign aid and hampered by 18 months of political uncertainty will be slashed further by the pandemic’s impact. The IMF has predicted GDP growth of just 1% in 2020, down from a pre-coronavirus projection of 5%.

As it inherits a major balance of payments crisis, mounting debt and with no tourism revenue to fall back on, the new government will need to use its political capital to push for immediate reform. But it must not forget the core tenet of its campaign. The coalition that defeated Mutharika united the MCP’s rural support base with the middle-class urban following of the UTM. This spirit of unity and inclusion must be expanded and focus on long-term recovery. On this undertaking – unlike the polls – there will be no opportunity for a re-run.

Trade policy is a blunt instrument for realizing human rights. Although many trade agreements now include commitments on human rights-related issues - particularly labour rights - not everyone agrees that linking trade to compliance with human rights norms is appropriate, let alone effective.

Sceptics point out that such provisions may become an excuse for interference or ‘disguised protectionism’ and admittedly anyone would be hard-pressed to identify many concrete improvements which can be directly attributed to social and human rights clauses in trade agreements.

This lack of discernible impact has a lot to do with weak monitoring and enforcement. A more fundamental problem is the tendency of trading partners to gloss over – both in the way that commitments are framed and in subsequent monitoring efforts – significant implementation gaps between the standards states sign up to, and the reality.

Working from ‘baseline’ international standards and treating each state’s human rights treaty ratification record as an indicator of compliance does offer objective verifiability. But it also means underlying economic, structural, cultural, social, and other problems, often go unidentified and unaddressed in the trading relationship.

Regulatory failings of trading partners

Those with sufficient leverage can use dispute resolution or enforcement proceedings to signal displeasure at the regulatory failings of their trading partners, as recently shown by the European Commission (EC) in relation to labour violations by trading partners – against South Korea under the 2011 EU-South Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and Cambodia under the EU’s Generalised Scheme of Preferences (GSP) scheme.

These actions do show a more proactive and rigorous EU approach to monitoring and enforcement and have been largely welcomed – especially by trade unions – as a necessary political response to persistent failings by the states to address violations of fundamental labour rights. However, claiming any major victories on behalf of the workers who produce the goods being traded seems premature.

The ‘implementation gaps’ - between human rights commitments made in a state-to-state context and the reality of the human rights situation on the ground - mean there may be cases where enforcement action under a trading arrangement, such as the removal of trade preferences, may actually make things worse. Some local unions have expressed concern that the EU action against Cambodia may be detrimental to vulnerable migrant women factory workers, especially in the context of a worsening economic situation due to the pandemic.

Making stakeholder voices heard

There are routes through which people with first-hand knowledge of human rights-related problems arising from trading relationships – such as labour rights abuses in global supply chains – can make their voices heard. Unions have used consultative bodies set up under trade agreements to highlight labour abuses in trading partner countries - this helped to shift the Commission’s strategy towards South Korea.

But the rather vague and open-ended mandates of these consultative bodies, and their reliance on cash-strapped civil society organisations to do much of the heavy lifting, means they are not a solid basis for systematic follow-up of human rights problems.

And yet, every country is likely to have a number of agencies with interests and expertise in these issues. Beyond labour inspectorates, this could include environmental regulators, licensing bodies, ombudsmen, national healthcare bodies, special-purpose commissions, ‘responsible business’ oversight and certification bodies, local government authorities and national human rights institutions.

At present these groups are barely mentioned in trade agreements with monitoring frameworks for human rights. And if they do feature, there tends to be little in the agreement terms to guarantee their participation.

To seriously address implementation gaps, there needs to be much greater and more systematic use of these domestic regulatory bodies in human rights monitoring and enforcement activities. These bodies are potentially vital sources of information and analysis about the many different social, economic, environmental and human rights consequences of trade, and can also contribute to designing and delivering ‘flanking measures’ needed to assist with the mitigation of human rights-related risks or adverse impacts which have been detected.

Looking further ahead, monitoring practitioners may find - as those involved in the EU GSP+ scheme have already noticed - that close and visible engagement with domestic regulatory bodies helps strengthen a regulator in getting clearer political support and better resources. It can also help with greater ‘buy-in’ to human rights reform agendas, creating conditions for a positive legacy in the form of more confident, committed, and capable domestic regulatory bodies.

Paying more attention to synergies that exist between the work of domestic regulatory bodies and the principles and objectives which cause states to seek human rights commitments from their trading partners is a vital contribution to the concept of ‘building back better’ from the present crisis.

The goal should be to move from the present system – which veers between largely ineffective consultative arrangements and adversarial, often high stakes, dispute resolution – to more cooperative and collaborative systems which draw more proactively from the knowledge and expertise of domestic regulatory bodies, not only in the identification and monitoring of risks, but also in the delivery of jointly agreed strategies to address them.

This article is part of the Chatham House Global Trade Policy Forum, promoting research and policy recommendations on the future of global trade.

Flaring is a significant source of economic and environmental waste. Except when safety-related, flared gas can often be captured and monetised using low-cost proven solutions.

In doing so, governments can improve health and safety, reduce emissions (of carbon dioxide, methane, and particulates) and add value by driving up revenue, increasing reserves and production, creating jobs and improving the industry’s ‘social license to operate’.

Flare capture also helps countries to deliver on the Paris Agreement and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal #13 while, for example, providing affordable alternatives for heating and cooking.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region accounts for 40% of the world’s flaring. In the region, flaring has increased year-on-year - apart from 2018 - to almost six billion cubic feet of gas per day, generating up to 300-500 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions per year.

These emissions result not only from the combustion of gas, but also from the venting, from inefficient flares, of un-combusted methane, a more potent greenhouse gas. Yet much of this is avoidable.

There are many commercially attractive options to reduce flaring in MENA. The key is to use the right proven technology and to be agile in commercial structuring. And the prize could be a boost to MENA’s annual revenues by up to $200 per second (up to $6.4 billion per year) by delivering wasted gas to market by pipeline, as power or in liquid form.

The chart highlights the abundance of flaring across the MENA region, and in many cases, their proximity to population centres. While Iran, Iraq, and Algeria generate 75% of MENA’s flaring, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE and Qatar are notable for their relatively low ‘flaring intensity’ i.e. flaring normalized to oil production.

In today’s world of lower energy prices, it makes sense to monetise every molecule. Even more so for national oil companies, which are responsible for most of the flaring, since they are not only the custodians of their countries’ natural resources, but they also generate a dominant source of government revenue.

Most oil producers in MENA have already made commitments to the World Bank’s flaring-reduction initiatives (e.g. ‘Zero Routine Flaring by 2030’), but to date, delivery is mostly lacking. Three main issues have hindered progress.

Firstly, operators, regulators, and governments highlight that flaring is often not ‘sufficiently on the radar’. Flaring is often underreported if not ignored or denied - although satellite detection gives unavoidable transparency. In MENA alone, more than 1,700 flare clusters are visible every day from space.

Secondly, flare capture is sometimes not perceived to be economically viable due to costs, taxes, or inappropriate technology. Thirdly, there are often issues around resources, especially concerning management bandwidth, delivery capabilities or financing.

Yet these issues can be solved if the right proven technologies are combined with the right commercial structures. To accelerate flare capture projects, stakeholders in the MENA hydrocarbons sector must consider several complementary, action-oriented initiatives.

In particular, they should:

• Promote transparency and disclosure to drive greater awareness of flaring. Governments, regulators and operators must understand the real scale of their gas flaring opportunity and be capable of acting, as a recent report for the EBRD on Egypt highlighted. Compliance with clear standards for measuring, monitoring and verification is critical.
• Advance policies and incentives which encourage action. Better commercial terms will incentivise and accelerate flare investments. Stronger penalties will help, but independent and capable regulators must actually enforce these penalties. Through the use of such clear anti-flaring policies, Norway’s flaring intensity is almost 20 times lower than the MENA region.
• Improve the investment climate, beyond economics and open access to a broader range of players. Local market failures can be avoided by reducing the complexity and cost of in-country operations and by removing excessive, rigid, or redundant regulations. By enabling greater ‘third-party’ access to gas and power projects and infrastructure, new players can accelerate change by deploying new technologies and new operating models. Better third-party access will also unlock ideas, capital, skills and project-specific financing options. Algeria is making steps towards such liberalisation through its new 2019 Hydrocarbon Law.
• Reduce subsidies and improve energy efficiency and reduce demand, increase gas exports and boost national revenues. Countries with large subsidies on transport fuels and power, such as Algeria and Iraq, stand to gain the most.
• Encourage collaboration between stakeholders in industry and government by creating working groups to radiate best practices, build capacity, deploy technology and local content, such as the flare minimization programme in Saudi Arabia or Iraq’s major flare-to-power project operated by the Basrah Gas Company.

The industry needs to prepare for a greener world after COVID-19 and investors and consumers are demanding cleaner fuels. Since gas is widely viewed as a transition fuel, MENA governments and stakeholders must work to eliminate its wastage and seize the revenue, production and environmental opportunities that flare capture projects offer.

There is much new leadership in the region in government and critical institutions with new mandates for change. The time to act is now.

Belarusian president Aliaksandr Lukashenka deserves sanctions. This election campaign in Belarus, which culminated in a vote on Sunday is the most brutal and dirty in its history. But, so far, the EU, the UK and the US have only issued familiar-sounding and futile appeals to the Belarusian authorities condemning their actions. Not imposing sanctions is a de facto licence to continue with repression.

Despite all this, the West is unlikely to impose significant sanctions afterwards. There are several questionable reasons for this. First, Western policymakers fear sanctions against Lukashenko will make him more likely to genuflect to Russia. However, relations with Russia have already deteriorated as Belarus accuses Russia of trying to interfere with its domestic affairs.

Sanctions serve as a wake-up call. The Belarusian authorities then might seek - once again - to repair relations with the West and reduce repression for greater assistance in any direct confrontation with Russia.

Second, the West is reluctant to implement sanctions because it has already invested somewhat in warming relations with Belarusian authorities. Punishing Lukashenko could mean burying the - admittedly modest - achievements of a Belarus-West dialogue that started in 2014 after the conflict in Ukraine began.

Even US secretary of state Mike Pompeo met with Lukashenko in Minsk this year, after which Belarus replaced a small but symbolic amount of Russian oil for American. All the same, the West has its conscience to answer to if dialogue is won but repressions continue.

The third reason why the West may not resort to targeted economic sanctions and visa restrictions is a latent concern whether such measures have any effect on democratization processes at all. They may be appropriate punishment, but there is little evidence they ever change the nature of a regime.

According to this logic, if the West imposes sanctions, the Belarusian authorities will continue to crack down with repression because they will have nothing to lose. That said, in previous years, the Belarusian authorities have released political prisoners in response to sticks and carrots brandished by the West. If Belarusian political prisoners did not have a price tag, the authorities would most likely keep everyone in jail.

To be fair, there are reasonable arguments in favour of and against sanctions. But if the West fails to impose them - be it through lack of political will or out of genuine concern about their effectiveness - at least it should focus on helping ordinary Belarusians withstand Lukashenko’s repressions. After the vote, arrested and jailed Belarusian citizens might lack money for lawyers and arbitrarily imposed fines.

If repression spreads further, independent media and human rights organizations will need funds to keep their structures running in the heat of the crackdown. Many entrepreneurs might lose their companies for openly supporting free elections. Thus, if the West will not sanction Lukashenko, it should at least show solidarity with these Belarusians in peril.

This article was originally published in The Telegraph.

Despite being such a historic selection, in certain aspects, Kamala Harris does not actually signal change. She is a moderate in the Democratic Party, an insider more than an outsider, and a highly experienced leader with national, state level and city level credentials. She worked as a district attorney in San Francisco for several years before being elected attorney general for the state of California, and then to the US Senate in 2016. Harris also stood as a candidate against Biden in the contest to become the Democratic Party's presidential candidate.

Like Joe Biden, she is a highly experienced leader with strong credentials. But California is solidly blue, so she cannot deliver a new state for him. In many ways she is a safe choice and — at a time when Biden is far ahead of Donald Trump in the polls and America faces a lot of uncertainty — many leading political analysts say safe is exactly what the Democratic candidate needs.

But certainly as a signal to the American people, and the rest of the world, of what America is and what it stands for, the choice of Kamala Harris is truly historic. The senator from California is the first African-American woman, and the first Asian-American woman, on the presidential ticket. If Biden wins in November, Harris becomes the first female vice-president.

The historic aspects do not end there. Harris also represents a rapidly growing segment of the US population, but one that gets far less mention — multi-racial Americans. The exact size of America’s multi-racial population has been notoriously hard to measure, especially as it has only been 15 years since the US Census Bureau allowed Americans to choose more than one race when completing their census form. But America has long seen itself as a melting pot, so Harris’s place on the ballot underscores a national narrative with a deep resonance across the country, not least among America’s schoolchildren.

In recent weeks, it came to feel inevitable Biden would choose an African-American running mate. His selection comes at a time when more Americans than ever before have taken to the streets to protest the brutal killing of George Floyd and racial injustice. And the demand for racial equality has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic which has disproportionately affected African-Americans who are dying from the virus at around double the rate of their white American counterparts, while twice the number of black businesses are closing relative to their white counterparts.

The choice of Harris also speaks to another fundamental aspect of the ‘American dream’. She is the daughter of two immigrant parents, her father being from Jamaica and her mother from India. Immigration has become one of the toughest issues in US politics, and immigrants have suffered repeated rhetorical attacks from Trump. One of Harris’s first stands in the US Senate was against President Trump’s entry ban to the US on several countries with majority Muslim populations.

When it comes to questions of identity, the choices that the US electorate now face in November could not be more stark. President Trump used the opportunity of the July 4 weekend to deliver a speech at Mount Rushmore which appeared to actively seek division and to ignite America’s cultural wars.

By choosing Kamala Harris, Biden also continues to signal that he will lead from the moderate wing of the Democratic Party.

Harris may be left of Biden, but she is far to the right of other well-known progressive candidates, especially Elizabeth Warren. She has not, for example, supported more far-reaching measures to redistribute wealth, especially the proposal for a wealth tax. And she has a track record of being tough on crime during her years as a prosecutor. Although she played an active role in recent protests and signalled her commitment to police reform and anti-lynching laws, not all young or progressive protesters will be easily persuaded by her credentials.

However, for voters who hoped for a more progressive candidate, two factors play to the advantage of the Biden-Harris ticket. This election still looks set to be a referendum on President Trump and — especially now — his ability to manage the public health and economic crises at home. And Biden has continued to include the progressive side of the Democratic Party in his plans, giving Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez key roles in developing climate proposals, and establishing a series of Unity task forces to bring the party together.

There are also other more conventional factors at play. Biden has relied on the support of African-American and also female voters. While Harris may not broaden this support, it should help ensure these voters turn out — if primarily via their postal box — to vote for Biden. His choice of Kamala Harris answers the one big outstanding question facing his candidacy and signals the true beginning of the race to the White House.

Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s 26-year rule — one of the world’s longest — is itself testament to his regime’s unwillingness to change. Most of Belarus’s immediate neighbours — particularly Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland — are far more prosperous. Now, with the farce of last week’s vote and the subsequent renewed violence that Minsk is willing to use on its citizens, Belarus finds itself at the very bottom of the post-Soviet legitimacy league table. But others share a portion of blame for this saga. The West — and the EU in particular — have failed the people of Belarus.

Russia — as ever in its relationships with the Soviet Union’s other successor states — has much to answer for. Like a drug pusher, it made a loss-leading investment in getting Belarus hooked on subsidised energy with meaningless security guarantees thrown in. Lukashenka may not have been the most compliant of post-Soviet leaders — especially recently — but he is still preferred by the Kremlin over any other potential contender, especially the reforming ones currently at the fore. ‘A son-of-a-bitch, but our son-of-a-bitch’ is Russia’s take.

But if Russia is the pusher, Western countries have been the enablers. Lukashenka has played them — and played them off against Russia — by frequently rejecting the offers of one and getting closer to the other, then switching and doing the same. The inability or unwillingness to recognize — and act on — evidence of the regime’s insincerity and its propensity to inflict harm on its own citizens has encouraged Minsk’s worst excesses. At the time of writing, more than 3,000 are reported to have been arrested and many tortured.

The EU bears special responsibility for this enabling. Ever since Belarus’s independence almost 30 years ago, it has offered plenty of carrots but few meaningful sticks. President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said that ‘harassment & violent repression of peaceful protesters has no place in Europe’, but statements alone are inadequate. The Belarusian people are risking their freedoms and their lives on the streets of Minsk while the EU simply ‘calls on’ the Belarusian authorities to respect the democratic process.

Never too late

There is plenty that can be done. Sanctions are a much-touted first step and they have been proven to change the calculus, if not the character, of a regime. The EU, the UK and the US should act decisively and in unison to impose them immediately. Included in this would be the immediate halting of direct EU support to state entities.

But — as with Russia — it is lazy to limit responses to sanctions alone. Expulsion from international groups and values-based organizations should also be expedited. The EU’s Eastern Partnership (EaP) project with Belarus and five other countries is a prime example of supposedly conditional offers of financial assistance having been accepted, claimed and then defaulted on, time and again. It is time to make an example of Belarus and expel it from the EaP since it is abundantly clear it has no intention of adopting the values demanded of it.

The OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) was invited by the Belarusian authorities too late to observe last Sunday’s vote-rigging, so why, in the face of such obvious obstruction, is Belarus even a member? The OSCE often claims its strength is its inclusivity, but this has rarely stood up to scrutiny. Inclusivity may have advantages, but one should also acknowledge its propensity to dilute effectiveness. Belarus should be expelled from here too.

The same goes for the IMF, the World Bank group, and its WTO observer status. It is time to make an example of this regime.

There should be less diplomatic nicety. It is natural that foreign service officials are hard-wired to want to make things better through their undoubted skills of sensitivity and tact, and sometimes this is the right answer. But not always. It would be better in some instances, such as this one, to give a tougher message — making it clear this regime is no longer seen as legitimate and that, where possible, western countries will seek relationships with more representative figures. This is neither easy nor especially pleasant, but it is not the same as breaking off diplomatic relations entirely, which is not wise as sometimes the organs of power must be dealt with.

And in terms of immediate practical help, the EU has an obligation to open its borders to Belarusian refugees who will surely come its way as conditions deteriorate. Lithuania is already showing the way in this regard.

Belarus is not one of the more difficult countries. It has no influence, no natural resources and therefore no leverage. It could resort to even more brutal repression of its citizens, but it should be made clear that such a desperate move by the authorities would entail even greater sanction. A common argument against a tougher approach is that it will drive Belarus into the arms of Russia. But this is to fall into the same trap — blackmail in reality — that we have seen for 20 years. In fact, it would be a good litmus test for a similar policy towards other ‘abuser countries’, such as Hungary.

Russia is certainly watching closely right now, and the last thing it wants is another colour revolution. The probability is that it will get this wish for now, as the demonstrations will surely cool off and key opposition figures not already in jail have been forced to flee. But western quiescence, as it always does, encourages Russia to act with further impunity. No invasion needed this time though if it already has most of what it wants — Union State notwithstanding — and the West stands aside.

A Chinese proverb maintains that ‘the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now’. This holds true for dealing with Belarus. It is not too late to act decisively and play hardball. In doing so, the EU would help repair its reputation for hand-wringing and the people of Belarus might look at the EU with a respect they have lost.

Amid outrage and revulsion at Belarus’s fraudulent election and the subsequent savage repression of protests, Western responses must be planned with half an eye on Russia. Not just for what is often described as the risk of ‘driving Belarus into Russia’s arms’ but also for the danger of unilateral Russian action, with or without Belarusian acquiescence.

In the past six years, there have been endless discussions of what might prompt another Russian military intervention in Europe after Ukraine. In many of these scenarios, it is precisely the situation currently unfolding in Belarus that has been top of the list, with all the wide-ranging implications for security of the continent as a whole that would follow.

Just as with Ukraine, Russia is considered likely to intervene if it seemed to Moscow there was a danger of ‘losing’ Belarus to the West. If the situation in Belarus becomes more unstable and unpredictable, assertive Russian action could aim to assert control by different possible means - either propping up Lukashenka as a paper-thin proxy for Russian power, or installing a different, more compliant leadership as a pretence at legitimacy.

New facts on the ground

Leadership and support for a Western response to events in Belarus might previously have been expected from the United States which, like the UK, had been actively pushing forward relations with Belarus. But besides its preoccupation with internal affairs, US criticism of the election and ‘detentions of peaceful protesters and journalists’ looks tenuous in the light of the current administration’s behaviour over its own recent domestic issues.

Nevertheless, for NATO and for the United States as its primary guarantor, what happens in Belarus remains critically important precisely because of the possible response by Russia. Unpredictability increases the risk of Russia declaring it has received a ‘request for assistance from the legitimate government of Belarus’ and moving military forces into the country.

Once the immediate challenge of suppressing dissent had been dealt with, the presence of Russian forces in Belarus – along with the air and missile forces they could be expected to bring with them - would substantially alter the security situation for a wide area of central Europe. Popular scenarios for Russian military adventures such as a move on the Suwałki gap - the strip of Polish-Lithuanian border separating the exclave of Kaliningrad from the rest of Russia - would no longer be several geopolitical steps away.

Ukraine would be forced to rapidly re-orient its defence posture to face a new threat from the north, while Belarus’s other neighbours would need to adjust to having effectively a direct border with Russia. In particular, NATO’s enhanced forward presence (eFP) contingents in Poland and Lithuania would become the focus of intense political attention, facing calls both for their rapid expansion, and their complete removal as destabilizing factors.

Examining Russia's options

NATO and the US’s European Command must now be watching Russia just as intently as Russia is watching Belarus. For now, Russia may be reassured by what it has seen. While the protests in Belarus are far more widespread than those in Ukraine which led to its former president Viktor Yanukovych fleeing the country, Aliaksandr Lukashenka is showing no signs of similarly losing his nerve.

The viciousness of the repression combined with more or less effective suppression of communications over the internet may mean unrest will soon be subdued. Even if there were a transfer of power, the current Belarusian opposition has not declared a policy of greater integration with the West - and Russia might feel it could constrain the options available to any replacement as effectively as it has done Lukashenka’s.

Perversely, continued international apathy could even work to Belarus’s benefit by providing reassurance to Russia. If a palpable lack of interest helps the Kremlin believe the discontent in Belarus is purely organic and spontaneous, and is not other countries ‘mobilizing the protest potential of the population’ in order to bring about a ‘colour revolution’, this would be a strong argument against a need to act in order to head off Western encroachment.

But the options facing ordinary Belarusians do remain bleak. Passivity means acceptance of continuing stagnation under Lukashenka, with his rule extended indefinitely. Active opposition means a very real risk of arrest with the possibility of serious injury. Unsuccessful protest means the cause may once again soon be forgotten by the outside world. Successful protest carries the ever-present risk of Russia stepping in with an offer of ‘fraternal assistance’ and Belarus becoming effectively a province of Russia rather than an independent country with – in the long term - the opportunity to choose its own future.

The virus of violence

According to the UN (para. 7) and the International Criminal Court (ICC, para. 279), conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) is quite prevalent in hostilities-affected eastern Ukraine. Both sexes are subjected to sexualized torture, rape, forced nudity, prolonged detention in unsanitary conditions with members of the other sex and threats of sexual violence towards detainees or their relatives to force confessions. Men are castrated. Women additionally suffer from sexual slavery, enforced and survival prostitution, and other forms of sexual abuse. Women are more exposed to CRSV: in the hostilities-affected area, every third woman has experienced or witnessed CRSV as opposed to every fourth man.

COVID-19 has redirected funding priorities, affecting the availability of medical and psychological help for CRSV survivors worldwide. In Ukraine, the very reporting of such violence, stigmatized even before the pandemic, has been further undermined by the country-wide quarantine-induced restrictions on movement and the closure of checkpoints between the government-controlled and temporarily uncontrolled areas.

Addressing CRSV in Ukraine

The stigma of CRSV, the patchy domestic legislation, and the unpreparedness of the criminal justice system to deal with such cases prevent the authorities from properly helping those harmed in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine armed conflict.

CRSV is equally traumatizing yet different in nuance for men and women. Female victims often choose not to report the violence. Women avoid protracted proceedings likely to cause re-traumatization and the disclosure of their experience, which could be particularly excruciating in small communities where everybody knows everyone.

Men also struggle to provide their accounts of CRSV. Their suppressed pain and shame of genital mutilation and other CRSV result in sexual and other health disfunctions. Combined with the post-conflict mental health struggles, this has been shown to lead to increased domestic violence and even suicide.

The very investigation of CRSV in Ukraine is challenging. Certain tests and examinations need to be done straight after an assault, which in the context of detention and grey zones of hostilities is often impossible. Specialized medical and psychological support is lacking. Investigators and prosecutors are hardly trained to deal with CRSV to the point that they do not ask questions about it during the interviews. Burdened by trauma and stigma, survivors are inclined to report torture or inhuman treatment, but not the sexualized aspects thereof.

Seven years into the conflict, the state still has not criminalized the full spectrum of CRSV in its domestic law. Ukraine’s Criminal Code contains a brief list of the violations of the rules and customs of warfare in article 438. It prohibits the inhuman treatment of civilians and POWs but does not list any types of CRSV.

The article has an open-ended reference to Ukraine’s ratified international treaties, from which the responsibility for other armed conflict violations may be derived. For the more detailed norms on CRSV, Ukraine should refer at least to Geneva Convention IV protecting civilians and two additional protocols to the Geneva Conventions, to which it is a party.

However, the novelty of the war context for Ukrainian investigators, prosecutors and judges and their overcautiousness about the direct application of international conventions mean that in practice, observing the treaty or jurisprudential instruction on CRSV has been slow.

Use of the Criminal Code’s articles on sexual violence not related to an armed conflict is not viable. Such provisions fail to reflect the horrible variety and complexity of CRSV committed in hostilities. They also envisage lesser punishment than a war crime of sexual violence would entail. Cumulatively, this fails to account for the intention of a perpetrator, the gravity of the crime and the trauma of its victims.

The lack of public debate and state action on CRSV understates its magnitude. Ukraine should break its silence about CRSV in Donbas and make addressing this violence part of its actionable agenda - in law and in implementation.

Ukraine should incorporate all war crimes and crimes against humanity of CRSV in its domestic legislation; ensure a more gendered psychological and medical support for both sexes; establish rehabilitation and compensation programmes for CRSV survivors; create special victims and witness protection schemes; consider the different stigmatizing effects of CRSV on men and women in criminal proceedings and engage the professionals of the same sex as the victim; map CRSV in the bigger picture of other crimes in Donbas to better understand the motives of the perpetrators; submit more information about CRSV to the ICC and educate the public to destigmatize the CRSV survivors.

The drafters of Ukraine’s transitional justice roadmap should ensure that it highlights CRSV, adopts a gendered approach to it and endorses female participation as a crucial component of reconciliation and broader policymaking.

Embracive policymaking

Although ‘the discriminatory line almost inevitably hurts women,’ 'every gender discrimination is a two-edged sword’, Ruth Bader Ginsburg famously argued before the US Supreme Court. This could not be more relevant for Ukraine. The conflict - and lockdown-related violence has reverberated deeper within Ukrainian society, raising fundamental questions about the roles of both sexes and gender equality.

The failure to address CRSV and its different stigmas for both sexes mirrors the general lack of sustainable gender lenses in Ukraine's policymaking. It is no coincidence that a June 2020 proposal for gender parity in political parties coincided with another spike of sexist remarks by top officials. While women get access to more positions in the army, sexual harassment in the military is investigated slowly. Despite all the impressive female professionals, no woman made it to the first four-member consultative civic group in the Minsk process. Such lack of diversity sends an unfortunate message that women are not important for Ukraine’s peace process.

Ginsburg said, ‘women belong in all places where decisions are being made.’ CRSV against either sex won’t be addressed properly until both sexes contribute with their talents and their grievances to all pillars of Ukraine’s state governance and strategy. Ukraine should look to engage professional women - and there are plenty - to join its public service not just in numbers, but as the indispensable equal voices of a powerful choir.

Healthy forests have always been a vital resource for the communities living in, and around, them. Offering food, clothing, fuel and medicine, forests also stabilize the water table and guard against soil erosion. Timber from forests also serves local, national and international markets, generates jobs and is an important revenue stream for many governments around the world.

Forests have also increasingly been tasked with combatting the double threats of climate change and biodiversity loss. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has put a spotlight on the role of forests in preventing diseases which has further added to the need to preserve the world’s forest area.

However, at the same time, pressure on forest lands is increasing, particularly for agriculture and also for mining, infrastructure and urbanization. But, with myriad demands placed on forests, and impacts that transcend political boundaries, achieving a balance requires a reckoning of local and global priorities.

International forest initiatives until now have, quite rationally, prioritized a globalized conceptualization of forests – privileging their place in global supply chains and global crises. International regulations around timber, for instance, are primarily aimed at securing a long-term source of timber by reducing illegality in the system while national plans under the Paris Agreement focus on forests primarily as a global carbon sink.

Within these initiatives, local impacts are often dealt with as flanking measures. Community benefit-sharing agreements, compensation schemes and incentive programmes are aimed at mitigating impacts and modifying behaviour at the local level so that these align with international goals.

Meanwhile, and despite intense international attention, it has been found that globally natural forest cover declined in the six years since the New York Declaration of Forests set a goal to halve deforestation. Greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise and, although there have been successes, illegal timber continues to be traded internationally.

To halt these trends, it is important to reflect on the demands being placed on forests and to achieve a better balance between them. But this will require radical change. That’s why, in July, Chatham House convened an online Global Forum on Forest Governance at which these issues were explored.

One issue that was discussed is why it remains vital to listen to, and learn from, a wide range of voices. Single perspectives fail to acknowledge or respond to the full range of pressures exerted on forests therefore it is important to have a range of perspectives including those from the global north and south, economists and agronomists, social scientists and climate scientists.

But beyond the research community, all those who have a stake in forests must be included in the discussion too: women and men, young and old people, those living in urban and rural areas as well as people from the government and private sectors.

This lesson has often been repeated but rarely enacted perhaps because it is not easy to do and takes time. Nevertheless, broadening participation can help deliver the deep-rooted changes that are needed to the way forests are governed and managed.

Considerable evidence exists to show that improvements to governance can facilitate a more equitable approach to forests that better balances the needs and priorities of these different groups. Legal and institutional reforms, for example, that are sensitive to the needs of local populations have precipitated change. Successes in improving transparency have also been a key factor in holding both the private sector and governments to account.

Thus, creating radical change may not mean brand new ideas. Lessons can be learnt from the successes and failures of the past. It will be important that, as new and increasing demands are placed on already overburdened forests, these lessons are not forgotten and previous mistakes are not repeated.

What will matter over the next few years will be which ideas are acted upon and who gets to decide. As more than 100 countries announce plans to increase the ambition of their nationally determined contributions on emission reductions, and as the EU and the US move forward with plans to legislate deforestation out of commodity supply chains, a clear message that has emerged is that local actors need to be in the driving seat. This needs to go beyond listening and consultation to meaningful engagement that gives due weight to local priorities, perspectives and experience.

Having failed to swiftly translate popular support into tangible political achievements, there are signs the protests against the fraudulent presidential election in Belarus may be losing momentum in the face of the state’s resilience and still-confident security and enforcement apparatus.

Attempts to blame the unrest on the West have focused on groups Lukashenka and Russia can both call enemies. And now Aliaksandr Lukashenka is not only inventing anti-Russian policies supposedly held by the opposition, such as suppressing the Russian language and closing the border with Russia, but also a supposed military threat from NATO.

Border movements

Increased military activity inside Belarus does give Lukashenka a wider range of options. Unscheduled activation of military units includes airspace defence practice with missiles and aircraft, electronic warfare (EW) units put on round-the-clock alert, and a number of infantry brigades preparing for live firing exercises.

Lukashenka is drawing attention to the north-west corner of Belarus, singling out the city of Grodno near the border with Poland and Lithuania as a supposed target for Western efforts at destabilization. Grodno is also the destination for an airborne brigade moving from the east to the west of the country and the focus of military exercises under way on the country’s western borders.

All this feeds Lukashenka’s narrative that Belarus is in danger from NATO and the West who are supposedly both stirring up the protests and seeking to exploit disorder - and that this danger extends to possible military clashes.

The Belarusian exercises are over the border from where NATO troops - including elements of the Light Dragoons, a British reconnaissance unit - have been in place in Poland as part of NATO's enhanced forward presence (eFP) since 2017. Pointing to NATO activity in Poland and Lithuania, Lukashenka said on Wednesday ‘we have to follow their movements and plans’ and that ‘they will answer for it if something happens’.

The danger is that having invented a tense situation in Grodno, Lukashenka may now need to be proved right. There may be staged incidents or ‘provocations’ against Belarus military forces, either supposedly instigated by protesters or even by NATO forces on the border - all aimed at bolstering the narrative that NATO, the EU, and the West in general are hostile to Belarus and that more drastic measures are necessary for protection.

Russia’s options still open

Although initial fears of a Russian move into Belarus have receded, Lukashenka’s complaints about NATO also bolster the case for Moscow to intervene. The military exercises fit the narrative that Belarus is under threat from the West - which is exactly the pretext Russia would need.

If this is believed in Moscow, where foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has already described events in Belarus as part of a ‘struggle for the post-Soviet space’, this makes a Russian intervention more likely. Moving forces away from their base near the border with Russia to the other end of the country near Poland and Lithuania also means any Russian entry into Belarus could go more smoothly, with fewer wild cards of possible Belarusian opposition to consider.

There are plenty of sensible, rational, logical reasons why a Russian military intervention in Belarus would be disastrous and counter-productive. But what seems sensible and rational in Europe and North America does not always carry weight in Moscow, which may see the situation completely differently and measure options by completely different standards.

One key area of doubt is the sympathies of the Belarus armed forces. Although some elements of the Belarusian army - particularly airborne and special forces - work closely with their Russian counterparts, more general suggestions that the Belarusian military is merely an extension of Russia’s and is not capable of taking decisions for itself are an over-simplification.

The Belarus armed forces do know that hosting Russian ground troops, airbases or air defence systems would fatally undermine the country’s hopes of avoiding being caught up in any confrontation between Russia and NATO.

And although the great majority of Belarusian officers are Russian-speaking and many have been trained and educated in Russia, there may be sufficient pride in national identity and resentment at heavy-handed treatment by Russia to lead to substantial obstruction of Russian initiatives.

The Belarus General Staff has already refused permission for a Russian aircraft carrying 155 personnel from the Rosgvardiya militarized security force and three tonnes of cargo ‘for the Belarusian interior ministry’ to land in Belarus. This could indicate not only tension between Russia and Belarus, but even between ministries within Belarus itself.

Like Russia, Lukashenka has plenty of options in reserve if his situation deteriorates further. Announcing a state of emergency would allow the Belarusian army to support the security forces in dealing with protests. If the army is on the move with their equipment they are better prepared to be brought into action if needed, but testing the loyalty of the armed forces could prove dangerous if the sympathies of army units turn out to lie more with civilians than with their oppressors from the interior ministry.

The military preparations against fictitious threats and a patiently-waiting Russia is a toxic mix and Belarus’s friends abroad must tread carefully. A key task for the European Union (EU) is to help the Belarusian people without providing a pretext for further violence and Russian intervention.

The right level of engagement needs to be carefully calibrated, avoiding disasters of strategic communication such as European Commissioner Thierry Breton being translated into English as saying Belarus is not part of Europe – with the lack of EU interest that that implies. Although the EU statement promising sanctions and offering funds received a mixed reception, at least it cannot be used by Lukashenka and Vladimir Putin as evidence that their warnings of a Western military threat are genuine.

Making the case

The recent election results in Belarus have triggered revolution in yet another post-Soviet country and Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s response has been devastatingly brutal. However, the Belarusian people’s resilience and Western sanctions – adopted on 14 August – have proved effective. As some of the 6,700 jailed protesters were released, accounts of horrific treatment by law enforcement emerged: overcrowded cells, no food, torture, forced confessions, severe beatings , and threats of rape.

With reports of mounting violence, Polish MEP Radosław Sikorski warned Lukashenka to expect not just sanctions but also the possible intervention of the International Criminal Court (ICC), an idea supported by the opposition-led Belarus’ National Salvation. While there are significant impediments to the Court’s involvement, the impact of such an initiative could be ground-breaking.

Legal framework

The ICC considers criminal responsibility of top civilian or military leaders for only the most serious atrocities - war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and, in certain cases, the crime of aggression. In the context of Belarus, the Court’s jurisdiction over crimes against humanity might be relevant. According to the Rome Statute, the ICC’s founding treaty, crimes against humanity include widespread or systematic abuses directed against a civilian population. Atrocities relevant to Belarus include arbitrary imprisonment, torture, inhuman treatment, sexual violence, and enforced disappearances.

The ICC is a last resort. It can intervene only if states are unable or unwilling to properly investigate and prosecute serious crimes themselves. Although Belarus’s Criminal Code punishes crimes against humanity, as Lukashenka himself is implicated, impartial trials in the country are impossible while he is still in power. Other countries may investigate specific atrocities in Belarus under the universal jurisdiction principle. Universal jurisdiction greenlights investigations into the most serious crimes regardless of where they are perpetrated. German, Swedish and French proceedings on Syria are illustrative examples of this. Protesters may also file individual complaints of abuse to UN bodies under the protocols of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. The European Court of Human Rights is not an option for the protesters because Belarus is not a member of the Council of Europe.

As the UN mechanisms are yet to be triggered and there has not yet been any talk of universal jurisdiction proceedings, the question of recourse to the ICC remains. But as Belarus is not party to the Rome Statute, the only way to trigger the Court’s jurisdiction is a referral by the UN Security Council (UNSC). Even though it would be vetoed by Russia –  and, almost certainly, China – it could be worth pursuing.

The importance of symbolism

So far, the UNSC has referred to the ICC two situations in non-party states – Sudan and Libya. But for cases that do not end up being referred to the Court, the UNSC debates are as significant for what they manage to agree upon as they are for what they do not. Regarding Belarus, two impeded UNSC accountability initiatives are relevant: on Syria and MH17.

In 2014, Russia and China vetoed the referral of cases of violence in Syria to the ICC. In 2015, Russia was the only country to block the creation by the UNSC of a special tribunal to investigate Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, downed by a Russian missile over war-affected eastern Ukraine. In both cases, the vetoes delayed justice, but they did not prevent it. For Syria, special independent mechanisms to collect evidence for adjudication were developed. Although justice has yet to be done, except in states like Germany, the evidence is ready for any future court. For MH17, a proceeding at a domestic Dutch court became an alternative. Parallel to that, new evidence of Russia’s role in both Syria and the downing of MH17 emerged - contextualising its UNSC vetoes.

Russia’s stakes in the Belarusian elections are probably even higher: the victory of democracy in Belarus will deprive it of one of its closest and most dependent post-Soviet allies.

Even if Russia destroys any chance of Belarusian citizens using the ICC, the attempted ICC-Belarus discussion will not have been in vain. Russia’s opposition to the respective UNSC resolution would be a self-defeating validation of Lukashenka’s atrocities against his own people, unashamedly restated at one of the world’s top diplomatic negotiation tables. Similar to Syria and MH17, the UNSC would reconfirm its self-imposed impotency to defend basic human rights amid political conjuncture. This would bring more attention to the issue and catalyse action through other platforms, including the discussions across UN bodies and the consideration of Belarusians’ individual complaints of abuse, and could lead to tougher sanctions. It could also further make the case for universal jurisdiction proceedings in other countries.      

One of the features of financial markets since early summer has been a decline in the value of the dollar against many currencies, and with it, an especially interesting acceleration in the price of gold. In addition to the usual professional market analysis about the dollar’s movement, this has led to speculation that it might be the beginning of the end of the dollar’s pre-eminence.

Having spent far too much of my professional life as a supposed currency expert, I reiterate something I learnt early on: the foreign exchange business sometimes grants an analyst their 15 minutes of fame, but no expert is a match for the millions who participate in this huge global market all day long. But I spent over 30 years in the financial markets, the vast majority in the hubbub of the forex market. And along the journey, I think I learnt a few tricks of the trade.

At the core of trying to answer questions about the dollar, I learnt a long time ago that there are two entirely separate questions, one of which has two subsections, about the dollar. Firstly, there is the question about the use of the dollar. Will it continue to dominate the world’s financial system as the most widely accepted medium of exchange?

This is not at all the same issue as the dollar’s day-to-day performance against other currencies. This is the second question, which is almost definitely the most pertinent one to what has happened during the summer. How the dollar’s value moves against other currencies is driven by a structural, or a valuation component, and a cyclical component. Each can be analysed separately, and if you were daft enough to devote the years I did to the process, you can combine the two, to have a dynamically adjusted fair value, persuading yourself at least that such an approach combines all available information at any point in time.

In terms of valuation, the most common approach is so-called purchasing power parity, which holds that a currency, in equilibrium, will ultimately reflect the difference in prices between two countries. If inflation is persistently higher in the US than in the eurozone, then the equilibrium value of the dollar will decline over time. I developed my own version of equilibrium currency rates, as it seemed to me in the real world, that the real inflation adjusted value of a currency was not stable, and that it moved over time. This was a reflection of productivity differentials between two countries. I christened it GSDEER: 'the Goldman Sachs Dynamic Equilibrium Real Exchange Rate' when I joined the firm in 1995.

What I learned is that when a currency is more than two standard deviations away from its fair value, it makes a huge amount of sense to watch closely, and when the momentum changes, it is worth going with this trend reversal. The momentum can change based on a change in the forces that have driven the currency away from its fair value, although it can be often easier to detect simply by watching the change in price.

One of the things that has frustrated currency participants over the past decade, with the exception of the Swiss franc and the pound, is that other major currencies have not been that far away from their fair value against the dollar or each other. Even during the dollar’s rise in recent years, including the period up to the summer, while it had clearly become overvalued, with the possible exception of the pound, it hadn’t become more than two standard deviations above its own fair value. In this regard, I have believed that one might be on the lookout for a chance to buy the pound against the dollar, and perhaps against the yen.

The cyclical component of a currency’s movement around its conceptual equilibrium can perhaps best be captured in the nominal interest rate adjusted for inflation expectations. I persuaded myself that the actual spot exchange rate of the dollar on any one day should be close to the adjusted GSDEER, and if it was not, then it would be useful for traders.

The dollar had become more interesting pre-COVID, as it appeared to have risen notably against many currencies, including the euro. And in this regard, the dollar was highly susceptible, and has turned out to be actually vulnerable, to a change in the state of the US and euro area economies. Now that the Federal Reserve has returned to extremely expansive monetary policy, and with it, lower real interest rates, a dollar decline seemed pretty inevitable.

At current prices, on 26 August, the dollar still seems modestly expensive compared to dynamically adjusted fair value. The dollar decline could persist. In the late 1980s and mid 1990s, the dollar fell to very low levels and became very undervalued — this tended to coincide with widespread talk about the dollar’s preeminence, which turned out to be, at least for that era, wrong. And I do share the views of some people who believe, as a result of US policies, conditions are more conducive to a sustained period of dollar weakness. This requires strong ongoing evidence that Europe, China and much of the rest of Asia continue to manage COVID-19 better than the US, and that their cyclical recoveries from the pandemic continue to surprise relative to the US.

Now as for the first question, about the demise of the dollar’s dominance, let me repeat that this is largely a separate issue, but I encourage any reader to be careful about getting sucked into this belief in making an investment or hedging decision.

It is quite possible that the use of the dollar can decline, and start off a systematic decline even when its value is strong. Indeed, in the past couple of years when its value was largely rising, decisions made by US policymakers to use the dollar’s dominance as a way of penalising other countries has resulted in those countries reducing their share of dollar currency reserves. Russia is a particular example, and there is some modest evidence that China is doing likewise.

And the opposite can also be true.

Ultimately, the dollar’s dominance cannot persistently outweigh the relative decline of the US economy in the world, which has been occurring now for 20 years. At some point, it will start to be replaced by something else. Whether that is, the renminbi, the euro, Bitcoin, the return of gold — all are conceivable, and may happen. It might be starting now. But don’t confuse that with where the dollar’s price is heading against other currencies in coming days, weeks, or in 2021.

This article was originally published in The Article.

1. Acknowledge the new reality

A huge number of Belarusians across all levels of society simply no longer recognize Lukashenka as their legitimate president. The unprecedented size and persistence of protests against his regime and the sheer scale of reports of repressive actions, torture, and even murder, mean Belarus will never be the same again.

However, current paralysis in EU policy and the absence of a comprehensive US policy are both serving as a de facto licence for Lukashenka to deepen the political crisis. The sooner policymakers realize this and act with more responsibility and confidence, the quicker the increasing repression can be reversed.

2. Do not recognize Lukashenka as president

If the international community stops recognizing Lukashenka as president, it makes him more toxic to others, including Russia and China, both of which will be reluctant to waste resources on someone who is seen as the main cause of Belarusian instability. Even if Russia still decides to save Lukashenka and financially support him, ignoring Lukashenka decreases the legitimacy of any agreements he signs with the Kremlin on collaboration or integration.

Demanding a re-run of the presidential election should also remain firmly on the agenda as functionaries within Lukashenka's system should know this international pressure is not going away until a truly transparent vote takes place.

3. Be present on the ground

In order to curb repression and establish ties with actors within Belarus, a monitoring group should be organized under the auspices of the UN, the OSCE or other international organizations to establish a presence on the ground, and to stay in the country as long as it is needed, and is possible. Governments and parliaments can send their own missions, while staff from international media and NGOs should be encouraged to report on what is actually happening inside the country.

The bigger the visible presence of the international community is in Belarus, the less brutal Lukashenka’s agencies can be in persecuting protestors, which in turn would then allow more substantial negotiations to take place between the democratic movement and Lukashenka.

4. Announce a package of economic support for a democratic Belarus

The Belarusian economy was already in bad shape before the election, but the situation is going to get much worse. The only way out is support from the international community with a ‘Marshall Plan for a democratic Belarus’. States and international financial institutions should declare they will provide significant financial assistance through grants or low-interest loans, but only if there is democratic change first.

It is essential to make this economic package conditional on democratic reform, but also that it will have no geopolitical strings attached. If a democratically-elected government decides it wants to improve relations with Russia, it should still be able to count on an assistance package.

This would send a strong signal to economic reformers who remain inside Lukashenka's system, giving them a genuine choice between a functioning Belarusian economy or sticking with Lukashenka, whose leadership is seen by many as to be responsible for ruining the country’s economy.

5. Introduce targeted political and economic sanctions

The Lukashenka regime deserves tough sanctions internationally, but so far only selective visa restrictions or account freezes have been imposed, which have little to no effect on what is actually happening on the ground. Visa sanction lists need to be expanded but, more importantly, there should be increased economic pressure on the regime. Companies which are the most important to Lukashenka's business interests should be identified and targeted with sanctions, all their trading activity halted, and all their accounts abroad frozen.

Governments should also persuade their own country’s large companies to reconsider working with Belarusian producers. It is shameful that international corporations continue to advertise in media controlled by Lukashenka and appear to be ignoring the reports of human rights violations at Belarusian companies they do business with.

Moreover, there should be a deadline set to halt all repression, or broader economic sanctions will be imposed. This would send a strong message to Lukashenka and also his entourage, many of whom would then become more convinced he has to go.

6. Support NGOs to investigate allegations of torture

There are few legal mechanisms to prosecute those thought to be involved in election fraud and acts of brutality. Nevertheless, all reports of torture and falsifications should be properly documented by human rights defenders, including identifying those alleged to have taken part. Gathering evidence now prepares the ground for investigations, targeted sanctions, and leverage on law enforcement officials in the future.

But, given that such an investigation is not possible in Belarus right now, international human rights activists should be enabled to start the process outside the country with support from Belarusian NGOs.

7. Support known victims of the regime

Even with an unprecedented campaign of solidarity among Belarusians, many people need support, especially those alleged to have suffered torture. Some media outlets claim to have lost a significant amount of revenue because advertisers were forced to pull out, and journalists arrested. Human rights defenders need funds to keep organizations running in the heat of this crackdown.

Supporting all these people and organizations will cost tens of millions of euros, but it would significantly ease the huge financial burden facing those who have opposed the regime.

When Chancellor Angela Merkel offered to provide medical care for Navalny in Germany after he fell ill from suspected poisoning in Russia, she could have hardly expected her humanitarian gesture would trigger a crisis in her country’s relations with Russia.

Merkel has used uncharacteristically blunt words to condemn the apparent attempt on Navalny’s life, saying the use of novichok raises serious questions that only the Russian government could answer. She described Navalny as being the ‘victim of a crime’ which was a violation of the ‘basic values and basic rights’ that Germany and its allies were committed to. Her tone and body language certainly showed how strongly she felt about the issue.

Germany’s Social Democrat foreign minister Heiko Maas then followed up by suggesting Russia’s response might force Germany to change its position on the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline which aims to double Germany’s direct gas imports from Russia under the Baltic Sea.

This is a dramatic change of position since his party has been a staunch supporter of the controversial project. Two Christian Democrat candidates for the Chancellorship called for a stop to the pipeline together with representatives from the Greens, who could be part of a government coalition after the 2021 federal election.

Claims of hostile provocation

The Russian foreign ministry shot back with a statement condemning Berlin’s ‘unsubstantiated accusations and ultimatums’ and claiming Germany was using Navalny’s hospitalisation to discredit Russia internationally. It demanded Germany share data and test results with the Russian Prosecutor’s Office, saying any failure to comply would be ‘a crude hostile provocation against Russia’ that risked consequences for the bilateral relationship as well as ‘serious complications in the international situation’.

Such strong language from Moscow towards Germany has not been seen for over 30 years, and is all the more remarkable as Putin has personally invested heavily in the relationship with Germany in view of its economic and political importance, and its strong desire for constructive ties with Russia. Until 2014, Russian analysts viewed Germany as Russia’s ‘lobbyist’ in Europe.

Berlin is now trying to downplay the situation, claiming the Navalny poisoning is not actually a Germany-Russia matter and referring it to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. By consulting with its EU and NATO allies, Berlin is further internationalising the issue to reduce impact on the bilateral relationship.

Such a forceful reaction to the poisoning reflects Germany’s increasing frustration with the Kremlin. The murder in broad daylight in Berlin in August 2019 of a Chechen wanted by the Russian authorities has been traced to the FSB. And the publication of a report in May 2020 into the hacking of the German parliament in 2015, including Merkel’s parliamentary office, was a further reminder of how far Russia had deviated from the course of partnership that Berlin believed the two countries had established in the 1990s.

Merkel described the cyberattack as ‘monstrous’, saying it was part of a strategy of hybrid warfare that includes ‘disorientation’ and ‘manipulation of facts’. Further tension has been added since the recent Belarus election as Moscow is supporting Lukashenka’s presidency whereas the EU does not recognise him as the legitimate president.

This accumulation of events is forcing German policymakers to recognise the Russian leadership is a menace to its own citizens, its neighbours and to Germany itself. Although Berlin abandoned several of its illusions about partnership with Russia in 2014 when it led the EU response to Russia’s annexation of Ukraine and destabilization of south-eastern Ukraine, it still hoped that the Kremlin would see reason and adjust its policies.

It combined sectoral economic sanctions with continuing dialogue and a joint effort to help settle the conflict in Donbas despite the obvious fact that Russia was a party to the conflict. It still believed that Moscow had an interest in finding a compromise. Instead, experience so far suggests Russia has a greater interest in keeping the conflict ‘semi-frozen’ as a way of forcing Ukraine to compromise.

Controversially, Germany also saw the need to expand energy relations with Russia in a bid to stabilise ties and draw Russia closer to Europe. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline initiated in September 2015 by Gazprom and five European companies – two of them German – is a monument to this policy.

Even though this project lacked an overall economic rationale, the German government supported it – much to the consternation of the Baltic States, Poland and others who objected to what they saw as Berlin’s insistence on a ‘Russia-first’ policy that undercut the interests of Ukraine. This was because the pipeline’s purpose is to re-route gas flows away from Ukraine, depriving it of transit revenues and a lever of influence in its relations with Moscow.

It now appears the German government is finally waking up to the fact that its attempts to encourage better Russian behaviour have failed. Policy looks set to become tougher and a moratorium on Nord Stream 2 now appears a real possibility if Russia fails to investigate the Navalny poisoning and provide adequate answers.

However, sanctioning the new pipeline is likely to provoke counter-measures against German business interests in Russia. If Berlin is determined to pursue this tougher line, it could end up facing an uncomfortable dilemma and being forced to consider alternative ways to signal displeasure at Russia’s criminal actions.