BY MARK N. KATZ Largely quiescent for decades, the Arab world has experienced a surprising—and surprisingly powerful—wave of revolutionary activity beginning in January 2011 and continuing ever since then. So far, the “Arab Spring,” as it is popularly known, has resulted in the downfall of Tunisia’s Zene el-Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. Although [...]
BY BASSAM HADDAD I would like to start by positing two remarks about the recent events in the region. I use the word events deliberately to underscore the multitude of problematic and misleading ways in which the protests have been characterized, interpreted, connected, and written off by observers. Are these revolutions, or as Asef Bayat [...]
BY JOHN G. DALE The United Nations (UN) established the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002 to indict, try, and sentence individuals who commit any of four crimes, including war crimes or crimes against humanity. Although neither the United States nor Myanmar are currently signatories to the Rome Statute that created the authority and jurisdiction [...]
BY JAIME DAREMBLUM The Organization of American States (OAS), an international institution with headquarters in Washington D.C. consisting of 35 independent states of the Americas, was once the premier democratic forum in the Western Hemisphere. Now it is headed for irrelevance. In recent years, the OAS has been infected with the virus of radicalization, thanks [...]
BY SUSAN BENESCH Once unimaginable, prosecutions for state-sponsored atrocities are multiplying rapidly. They continue to deliver new milestones, both by expanding transnationally and by reaching previously untouchable defendants. Some trials astonish even their own proponents, as this symposium illustrated: Peru’s conviction of its former head of state Alberto Fujimori in April left Ronald Gamarra Herrera [...]
BY LEHN BENJAMIN In January 2006 a group of nonprofit directors in Cape Town wrapped up a two year commitment to a peer learning cooperative. This initiative was intended to strengthen the capacity of black women leaders and improve the sustainability and effectiveness of the nonprofits they directed. These women all had significant organizational experience [...]
BY JOHN N. PADEN Religious affiliation is one of many identities that may be mobilized for political purposes. Succession to leadership in democratic systems is always a political process, and symbol management is an integral part of this process. In pluralistic societies, the ability to balance the ticket, or to convince a multi-ethnic constituency that [...]
BY JULIE MOSTOV In the midst of domestic arguments for fortifying the United States’ borders, I argue for soft borders and thin social bonds. I have been thinking about borders with respect to Southeastern Europe, but my arguments are meaningful in a larger context. While boundaries are regularly and easily traversed by capital, electronic information, [...]
BY DANIELE ARCHIBUGI The two main wars that opened the third millennium, those in Afghanistan and Iraq, have been justified by the United States (US) and its allies with a mixture of arguments. The first, and perhaps foremost, has been self-defense: to eradicate the terrorist roots in Afghanistan and destroy the alleged weapons of mass [...]
BY JO-MARIE BURT One of the most contentious issues facing transitional democracies is the problem of gross human rights violations committed during the previous regime. How should fragile democracies address the question of accountability, given the known deficiencies of their judicial systems; the ongoing power of the torturers themselves and/or those who benefited from their [...]