As is the case with the military in Honduras and Guatemala, both profiled in previous Just the Facts posts, it looks like troops will be on the streets in Venezuela for the next few months, if not longer. Venezuelan...
A study by Somos Defensores, a non-governmental protection program for human rights defenders, reveals shocking growth in murders of Colombian human rights defenders. The chart below illustrates that in 2012, the number of murders was nearly 14 times what it was in 2006. And 2013 is on a pace to be even worse.
The number of murders, although still high, remained relatively consistent around 30 per year between 2008 and 2011. But in 2012, the...
A recent Brookings Institute policy paper, “No ‘Plan B’: U.S. Strategic Access in the Middle East and the Question of Bahrain,” makes an important case for the need for U.S. contingency planning in the Persian Gulf country of Bahrain in the event that the U.S. were to lose access to its naval base in the country. The paper’s author, Commander Richard McDaniel, writes, “In view of the ongoing political unrest, the possibility of losing strategic basing rights in Bahrain is...
After initial results declared Ibrahim Boubacar Keita the front-runner of Mali’s presidential election last Sunday July 28, 2013 with 39.2 percent of the vote, the government announced today the election will go to a second round on August 11. As former Prime Minister, Mr. Keita is not a new face to Malian politics. However, Mali’s electoral system requires a candidate to win at least 50% of the vote or face a run-off vote.
According to Radio France International...
Adam looks at the foreign aid bill that's moving through Congress, the state of the gang truce in El Salvador, and Venezuela's latest effort to fight crime by sending soldiers into the streets.
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Mali appears to be on the path toward some level of normalcy after over a year of national crisis sparked by a northern secessionist movement and subsequent military coup. (Read CRS’s report “Crisis in Mali” (PDF), by Alexis Arieff, for background information). Now, with support of the international community, important progress is being made; yet, there are also signs that indicate that these political steps may be insufficient to address the scope of Mali’s woes.
Political Progress
In late June, after...