Daily Brief Audio Series
Sea levels are rising, and the people of Gardi Sugdub know disaster looms.
The tiny, low-lying island off the north coast of Panama doesn’t stand a chance against the steamroller of climate change. The nearly 1,300 people crowded onto to it will have to move.
And the community wants to move. In fact, they began planning to relocate to the mainland in 2010. But no one has yet been able to leave the sinking island, because government pledges of support for the move keep falling through. The relocation date gets pushed forward, over and over.
The government’s unfulfilled promises for the new location include a partly constructed hospital – a project now abandoned – and a new school building that’s taking forever to complete. People from the community ask about the delays, but authorities fail to provide full explanations.
Of course, climate change doesn’t wait for governments, and people cannot live on promises. With the relocation from Gardi Sugdub stalled, the community is in limbo, with the sea rising relentlessly around them. Floods are already making life harder for the island’s residents, impacting health, education, and culture.
And Gardi Sugdub, home to Guna Indigenous people for over a century, is not alone. In Panama, 38 communities may need to be relocated because of overcrowding and the rising sea level. Hundreds of communities around the world find themselves in a similar position – or soon will.
It’s difficult not to see Gardi Sugdub as a metaphor for humanity’s failure in the face of climate change. People look around and see the impacts: more frequent higher temperatures and other extreme events, floods, droughts, forest fires, and more. They ask governments to do something and governments reply with delays and broken promises rather than action.
But being a metaphor or a warning for the rest of the world doesn’t help the people on Gardi Sugdub. They need authorities in Panama to follow through, so they can get off the island with dignity and rebuild their lives on safer ground.
Stop Tiptoeing around Terror in Darfur, Daily Brief July 31, 2023
Daily Brief, 31 July, 2023.
Three months into the renewed conflict in Darfur, there one glaring question: where the hell is the United Nations Security Council?
After three months of increasing attacks against civilians and horrific atrocities on the ground – including mass killings, sexual violence, and even the destruction of entire towns – we’ve yet to see anything concrete from the global body charged with peace and security.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a notoriously abusive independent military group, and its allied militias, continue to slaughter and terrorize non-Arab communities in West Darfur. Looting and arson go hand-in-hand with killing and rape. They attack critical civilian infrastructure, like hospitals, and markets.
The assaults and ongoing violence have displaced hundreds of thousands of people throughout the region since April, but the RSF is also attacking the sites where those who had been displaced in previous attacks gathered in hope of finding safety. More than 320,000 people have fled across the border to Chad.
The UN Security Council meanwhile has been tiptoeing around the issue. Sudan and Darfur have technically been on the agenda, but nothing’s come of it apart from this empty formality that helps no one.
Part of the reason has been diplomatic pushback from the three African members of the Security Council – what’s sometimes called the “A3” and is currently comprised of Gabon, Ghana, and Mozambique. They shunned proactive Security Council involvement, preferring to let regional and bilateral efforts to solve the crisis take precedence.
This kind of diplomatic effort is often called, “African solutions for African problems,” and when it works, great. No need to involve global bodies if regional efforts can get results and save lives.
But it’s been three months, and those regional efforts have not stemmed the slaughter. Ethnic attacks continue in Darfur. Atrocities keep mounting.
This is a matter of global, humanity-wide concern, and the body charged with international peace and security – the UN Security Council – needs to act.
Tomorrow, the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council falls to the United States, which will have the entire month of August to try to make things happen. The people of Darfur need to see them shift the Council’s direction.
There are some encouraging signs. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US Ambassador to the UN and a member of President Biden’s cabinet, has not been shy in talking about mass atrocity crimes unfolding in Darfur. Just days ago, she said: “In Sudan, we are beginning to see reports use the dreaded word genocide to describe the situation in Darfur.”
And in a media interview last week, she said: “What is happening in Sudan should be on the agenda of the Security Council.”
But, as we’ve seen, it’s not just about keeping the issue on the agenda. It’s about taking actual steps to address the gravity of the issue. Specifically, these are some of the concrete actions we need to see:
First, the UN Security Council should expand the current Darfur-specific arms embargo to cover the whole of Sudan and commit to publicly call out countries not respecting the existing arms embargo on Darfur.
Second, the Council should impose targeted sanctions against those individuals most responsible for atrocities in Darfur.
Third, the Council should involve the UN’s expert on conflict-related sexual violence to report to the Council and pave the way for sanctions against commanders responsible.
Fourth, they should invite atrocity survivors from Darfur to come to New York and address the Council personally.
Fifth, they should consider how to step up civilian protection, starting by asking the UN Secretary General to give the Security Council a report with options on what the UN could do to protect civilians, as soon as possible.
These five steps would be a start to the world treating the deepening crisis in Darfur with the seriousness it demands.
Special note: Starting tomorrow, we will be featuring short dispatches and notes from our researchers who have been in Chad, interviewing victims of atrocities in Darfur.
With the coup in Niger just barely two days old, we’re at a familiar stage with such situations internationally.
There’s condemnation from all the key bodies: the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States, and the United Nations. And there are still key diplomatic players – in this case, for example, France – who want to talk about “an attempted coup” to avoid sounding like it’s a done deal.
It’s a bit of a diplomatic dance that mixes outrage with hope. Everyone wants to signal that coups are unacceptable and it’s not too late for the coup leaders to change their minds. But, of course, everyone also realizes that, with each passing hour, this hope fades.
On Wednesday, Niger army officers of the self-proclaimed National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (Conseil National pour la sauveguarde de la patrie, CNSP) announced on national television the overthrow of the government of President Mohamed Bazoum.
Speaking on behalf of the coup leaders, major-colonel Amadou Abdramane proclaimed that the constitution had been dissolved, all institutions suspended, and the nation’s borders closed. He said his forces had toppled Bazoum because of the deteriorating security situation, as well as “poor economic and social governance.”
Many then took to the streets in support of Bazoum, who was elected president in 2021 in Niger’s first democratic transition since it gained independence from French colonial rule in 1960. Soldiers supporting the coup fired warning shots to disperse them.
Yesterday several hundred people gathered in front of the National Assembly to show support for the coup leaders, calling for the departure of French troops and for the intervention of Russia.
This is the fourth coup in Niger’s history since 1960, and the latest in a string of recent military takeovers in the Sahel region and West Africa. Since 2020, there have been four military coups in neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso. In 2021, military coups also occurred in Chad, Guinea, and Sudan.
Niger can ill afford further unrest and insecurity. The country already suffers from attacks by armed Islamist groups, as well as floods and droughts due to climate change. Niger is in the midst of a complex humanitarian crisis, with 4.3 million people, about 17 percent of the population, requiring humanitarian aid.
While the international community condemns the coup and pushes for its reversal, the people of Niger have to deal with the situation as it is on the ground. And, as everywhere, whoever’s in charge on the ground is who’s responsible for protecting people from harm. That means respecting human rights.
Rabia Djibo Magagi, a prominent human rights defender in Niger, told Human Rights Watch what she’s hoping for right now:
“The unrest generated by the coup should not create a void in the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms. The new military authorities should ensure that the human rights of all Nigeriens are upheld.”
About the only good thing that can be said about authoritarian regimes is they make no secret of their basic nature. Even when they try to throw on the trappings of democracy, they are almost always so bad at it, it fools no one.
The latest example comes from Cambodia, where this week we’re seeing that classic authoritarian favorite: transferring power from father to son.
After almost four decades in power, Prime Minister Hun Sen is passing the torch to his eldest son, Hun Manet. It’s as obvious as it was unsurprising – this transition has been in the works for years.
The announcement came a few days after the ruling Cambodian People’s Party took all parliamentary seats in a national show they called an “election.” That word has to be in quotation marks, because it wasn’t really a contest. There was no serious competition allowed. Hun Sen was boxing alone in the ring.
In the run up to this “election,” Hun Sen used every repressive tool at his disposal to rid Cambodia of all political opposition. The government harassed and even arrested members and supporters from the only serious possible competitor, the Candlelight Party.
We’ve seen it all before. In the 2018 “election,” Cambodia’s politicized courts simply dissolved the main opposition party ahead of time.
Uncompetitive elections and the handing of power from farther to son – the most textbook of authoritarian moves – would be almost comically cliché, laughable even, if the reality in the country weren’t so tragic.
People in Cambodia suffer under draconian laws, and authorities use arbitrary arrests, government-controlled judicial harassment, and violence to silence dissent. Politically motivated mass trials have been held for opposition members and human rights defenders. Cambodia still holds more than 50 political prisoners.
Its authoritarianism is as brutal as it is obvious.
The Most Serious Women’s Rights Crisis in the World, Daily Brief July 26, 2023
Daily Brief, July 26, 2023.
A wave of recent international media attention on the Taliban’s closure of beauty salons in Afghanistan has too often missed the point.
My colleague and women’s rights expert, Heather Barr, sets folks straight:
“This isn’t about getting your hair and nails done. This is about 60,000 women losing their jobs. This is about women losing one of the only places they could go for community and support.”
Since taking control of Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban have crushed the rights of Afghan women and girls. The list of Taliban abuses against them is long and grim.
They have banned girls and women from education above the sixth-grade level. They’ve banned women from most employment. They’ve imposed severe restrictions on women and girls to travel and even leave their homes. They’ve banned women and girls from competitive sports.
The Taliban have also completely dismantled the system that had been developed to respond to gender-based violence in Afghanistan. That’s actually a key reason why the closure of beauty salons is so devastating: It was one of the last havens for mutual support among Afghan women.
The Taliban have also been conducting a brutal crackdown against women who have protested against these abuses. This includes the torture of these women.
This all adds up to the most serious women’s rights crisis in the world.
There’s been international concern about these abuses – and many others by the Taliban – but much of this concern has been weak and uncoordinated so far. Even two years after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, many governments still seem at a loss as to what to do about the Taliban’s thuggish barbarity generally and their crimes against women specifically.
One possibly hopeful move that could change things came in March with the UN Security Council mandating an independent assessment of the international approach to the country.
It seeks to address “human rights and especially the rights of women and girls,” along with other key issues the international community is trying to deal with. Remember, Afghanistan is also one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
The independent assessment should provide recommendations for an integrated and coherent approach among key international actors, in a report to the Security Council in November.
If it does its job well, the independent assessment should both help restore global attention to the situation in Afghanistan and propose concrete steps for holding the Taliban and other abusers accountable.
To be successful, it must undo the fact that, as my colleague Heather Barr says, “Afghan women and girls and others suffering under Taliban repression feel abandoned by the world.”