Conversations about Foreign Policy and World Affairs
On June 18th, Antonio Guterres was re-appointed United Nations Secretary General for a second and final five year term.
Richard Gowan, the UN Director of the International Crisis Group, looks back at the highlights and lowlights of Guterres’ first term and discusses some of the key challenges and opportunities that will present themselves over the next five years.
Climate variability can cause the mass movement of people — but does the mass movement of people fleeing climate shocks undermine political and human security?
A diverse panel of experts who explores the relationship between security challenges and climate induced migration — both across and within borders.
Maureen Achieng, Chief of Mission to Ethiopia and Representative to the African Union and UN Economic Commission for Africa at the International Organization for Migration (IOM)
Bina Desai, Head of Programs at the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre
Alan de Brauw, Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute IFPRI.
Co-host, Alan Nicol, Director – Strategic Program on Water, Growth and Inclusion and IWMI
This episode was recorded live in front of a virtual audience and produced in partnership with CGIAR, the world’s largest agricultural innovation network, as part of a series of episodes examining the relationship between climate and security.
In May 2009, the long running civil war in Sri Lanka ended with the defeat of ethnic Tamil insurgents by the Sinhalese dominated Sri Lankan armed forces. The manner of this defeat was a mass atrocity event. Tens of thousands of ethnic tamils were trapped in a thin stretch of land as the military bombarded the area.
Since then there has been no accountability for the atrocity crimes committed, nor has there been any meaningful post-conflict peace and reconciliation efforts. In fact, many of those most directly involved in this atrocity are now the most senior political leaders of the country, including the president of the Sri Lanka, Gotobaya Rajapaksa.
Research has demonstrated that countries are more vulnerable to atrocity crimes if there is a recent history of atrocity and now real peace or reconciliation efforts. As my guest today J.S. Tissainaygam (Tissa) explains, this is certainly the case in Sri Lanka. Tissa is a journalist who recently reported a story examining how the government of Sri Lanka is responding to the COVID-19 crisis in ways that have deliberately exacerbated ethnic and religious tensions in Sri Lanka in a bid to assert Sinhalese dominance over ethnic minorities.
This episode is produced in partnership with the Stanley Center for Peace and Security whose project “Red Flags or Resilience?” examines COVID-19’s impact on atrocity risks. The project uses journalism to explore the connections between the coronavirus pandemic and the factors for risk and resilience to mass violence and atrocities around the world. You can view Tissa’s article in Sri Lanka and other works of journalism as they are published by visiting resilience.stanleycenter.org.
By all accounts, the situation in the Tigray region of Ethiopia is extremely grim — and poised to deteriorate further. The United Nations now says that famine has struct parts of the region while the civil war in Ethiopia continues without and end in sight. Meanwhile, fraught national elections are scheduled for June 21.
Ethiopian journalist Zecharias Zelalem explains how we got to this point and where the conflict may be headed next.
Ban Ki-moon served as the eighth Secretary General of the United Nations from 2007 to 2016. He is out with a new memoir titled Resolved: Uniting Nations in a Divided World.
We cover quite a bit of ground in this interview, including his perspective on what the covid crisis revealed about the strengths and weaknesses of the United Nations, what can be done to bolster multilateralism today, his frustrations with the Security Council and what advice he might offer to his successor Antonio Guterres. We also spend a good deal of time talking climate change diplomacy, which was Ban’s signature issue as Secretary General.
Transcript.
Resolved: Uniting Nations in a Divided World, by Ban Ki-moon
For The Love Of Hong Kong: A Memoir From My City Under Siege, by Hana Meihan Davis
Hana Meihan Davis comes from a long line of democracy activists in Hong Kong. Today, they are all either in exile, facing arrest, or somewhere in between.
Hana Meihan Davis is the author of the new book For The Love of Hong Kong: A Memoir From My City Under Siege, which tells the story of Hana’s family and friends who have been on the frontline of an epic struggle to defend democracy, freedom of speech and human rights in the face of increasing repression by Chinese government authorities.
This is the first book under the new Global Dispatches publishing imprint.
In this episode, Hana Meihan Davis discusses the history of Hong Kong and the city’s rapid democratic decline.
