Global Dispatches -- Conversations On Foreign Policy And World Affairs

My guest today Srgjan Kerim is a diplomat with the soul of an artist, who wants to become the next UN Secretary General. Karim is the former foreign minister of Macedonia, was an official in the Federal government of the former Yugoslavia and also served as president of the UN General Assembly back in 2007-8.  He's a self described citizen of the world. He was born in Macedonia, but spent much of his formative years in Germany and has lived at various times all over the world. We discuss his unique upbringing, some of his academic work in development economics, and his experience during the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia.  And, not least, he discusses how to create gorgeous photographs using a blackberry device. 

Vesna Pusic is the former foreign minister of Croatia and a candidate to become the next UN Secretary General. She's a sociologist by training. Politician and diplomat by practice and I caught up with her one day after she participated in hours of questioning by UN member states  in what was essentially a very public job interview for the position of Secretary General Pusic grew up in Zagreb in a household of intellectuals in the aftermath of World War Two, which was particularly brutal in Croatia where Nazi collaborators carried out acts of genocide and persecution. She became ensconced in academia and later turned to politics. In her twenties, she started the first feminist NGO in Yugoslavia, and she discusses that experience.   This conversation is part of our UN Secretary General candidate conversations. Stay tuned for more in depth conversations with the individuals who wish to be the next leader of the United Nations  

Something extraordinary took place at the United Nations this week. For twenty hours, over three days, each candidate in the race to become the next UN secretary general submitted themselves to hours of questioning by member states and civil society. This was a radical departure from how things were done previously. For the past 70 years, the Secretary General was picked pretty much behind closed doors by the five veto wielding members of the Security Council. It was a totally un-transparent process, sometimes you did not even know who was in the running. This time around, that is not quite how things are going down. For one, there are actually declared candidates--9 so far. And each of these candidates faced two hours of questioning by member states, forcing them to go on the record on some hot button global issues.   And it was all webcast! I watched nearly all of it.   I would be lying to you if I said that it was all riveting political theater. But for UN nerds like me and my guest Richard Gowen the nove

Danilo Turk is the former president of Slovenia and one of eight currently declared candidates to be the next United Nations Secretary General. He was president from 2007 to 2012 and also served as his country's ambassador to the UN for many years.  Turk was born in 1952, just seven years following the Nazi occupation of Slovenia. He shares how his mother's experience of being sent to a forced labor camp at the age of 14 affected his own childhood. That included an intense focus on eduction. By the time he was 14, Turk was devouring the greek classics, like Thucydides. By 18 he was in law school, discovering concepts of human rights.    We have an extended conversation about the intellectual curiosity that lead Turk to human rights law and what it was like being a human rights legal scholar in the former Yugoslavia, which was then a communist country. We discuss his role during Slovenia's 1991 secession from the former Yugoslavia and the brief war that ensued, and the tactics he used as Slovenia's first ambas

Ban Ki moon visited a refugee camp in Algeria that is home to people displaced by conflict in Western Sahara and he uttered remarks that created a diplomatic maelstrom. Ban referred to the quote "occupation" of Western Sahara, by the government of Morocco.    Morocco responded with a massive government sponsored protest in the streets of Rabat, and also ceased cooperation with a UN peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara, including evicting civilian members of that mission. It has also threatened to pull its own troops from UN peacekeeping missions worldwide.   All because of a word.   With me to put this current diplomatic crisis into the larger context of the decades old dispute over the proper status of western sahara is Fiyola Hoosen-Steele. She is not a disinterested observer of this crisis. As the UN representative of the diplomatic advisory firm Independent Diplomat, she works with political representatives of the Western Saharan indepdeence movement, known as the Frente Polisario. She explains the root

Mary Fitzgerald is an Irish journalist who for the better part of five years has covered Libya, including the fall of Gaddafi, Libya's fractured politics, and the the rise of ISIS. Mary got her start in journalism covering the conflict in Northern Ireland and she discusses how she applies what she learned studying that conflict to help her better understand Libya.   We kick off with an extended discussion about the current political situation in Libya, which is complicated, but fascinating, and Mary does an excellent job of breaking it all down.    I've made this point before, but I do think that Libya is going to be one of the most important foreign policy crises facing the United States and Europe next year, particularly as the next president takes office. And this conversation offers a great way to understand the drivers of conflict in Libya.  

Work started at the United Nations this week on the next big global enviromental treaty. The treaty would create rules of the road for management of the high seas. This would include provisions to create marine sanctuaries and other mechanisms to preserve sea life and biodiversity.  On the line to discuss this new treaty (which does not yet have a name) is Elizabeth Wilson of the Pew Charitable Trusts. She explains the problems that this new treaty aspires to solve, how it would fit into already existing treaties, like the Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the process and politics surrounding the crafting of this treaty and its eventual ratification. 

The last time I saw Anna Day we were both attending a conference in Dubai. That was just last month, in February. I hopped a plane back to the United States. She went to Bahrain, and was promptly arrested with her crew. They were filming a documentary about the legacy of the Arab Spring uprisings when they were detained by Bahrani authorities and charged with crimes that carried hefty sentences.  Anna recounts that experience in pretty vivid detail. But getting arrested in Bahrain is just the latest challenge that Anna has faced while trying to tell stories from the middle east. She was one of the first western journalists to detail the rise of ISIS in Syria, and before that she was one of the first American journalists in Tahrir square as the Egypt Arab Spring began.    If you are interested in learning more about the situation in Bahrain, I actually served as the publisher of an e- book by the journalist Elizabeth Dickinson about Bahrain, called Who Shot Ahmed, A Mystery Unravels in Bahrain's Arab Spring, t

The attacks in Brussels this week are accelerating an already heated conversation in Europe about the unrelenting movement of refugee from the Middle East to the continent.  The attacks on Tuesday came just days after the EU sealed a highly controversial agreement with Turkey in which refugees arriving to the greek islands would be expelled back to Turkey.   This agreement is highly maligned by the United Nations and refugee advocates for reasons I discuss with a UN official and a refugee advocate. This episode is in two parts. First, I speak with Melissa Flemming,  a spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency, also known as UNHCR. She offers a grounds eye view of how this new deal is affecting the work of the UN Refugee Agency on the Greek Islands and explains why UNHCR is refusing to collaborate in the implementation of this agreement.    Next, I speak with Michel Gabaudan, president of Refugees International, who discusses the details of the deal and does a good job of putting it in a larger context of global

My guest today Somini Sengupta is the United Nations correspondent for the New York Times. She's the author of the new book The End of Karma: Hope and Fury Among India's Young which tells the story of a huge demographic challenge facing India today, where 365 million people are between the ages of 10 and 24. It is the youngest country on the planet, and through storytelling and reporting, Somini puts the experiences of India's young into the broader context of the country's political, social and economic challenges.  Somini was born in Calcutta, but came to the Canada and then the USA at a young age. She joined the New York Times in the mid 1990s and she tells some powerful stories from her reporting in Africa in the early 2000s, including Liberia, Congo and Darfur.  We kick off discussing her new book, and a term she coined to describe India's youth generation, the "noonday children." 

The Islamic state is seemingly on the ascent in Libya. It controls territory, including the coastal city of Sirte, and over the past several weeks it has launched a series of spectacular attacks in Libya and Tunisia.  This episode goes pretty deep into the weeds of the origins of the Islamic State in Libya and its current strategic goals. On the line is Aaron Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Phd candidate and proprietor of Jihadology.net. Aaron explains how The Islamic State in Libya can trace its start to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq in the mid 2000s, and how through a series of contests it muscled out other jihadist groups in Libya to become a potent and destabilizing force for the entire region. 

Thomas Fuller was the longtime Southeast Asia correspondent for the New York Times. He's now based in San Francisco, but his last posting from the region caught my attention. Fuller describes a scene in which he is interviewing the leader of a protest in Thailand, when that leader is gunned down right in front of him. That experience leads him to his conclusion of the piece: a rampant culture of impunity is threatening the region's otherwise impressive gains. We discuss some of Fuller's other reporting from the region, including an incredible story last year in which he helped track down a boat full of Rohingya migrants stranded in the Andaman Sea.   This is a great episode. Fuller describes how he got started in journalism, some adventures from his early career working at the International Herald Tribune in France and how and why he feels such a deep bond with South East Asia.       

Ashish Thakkar is an African entrepreneur who started his business at the age of 15 having just escaped from the Rwanda genocide. That business, the Mara Group, is now a multi-billion dollar enterprise headquartered in Dubai and with operations in 22 African countries.  I met Ashish a few weeks ago at a conference in Dubai and learned just enough about his personal story to know that I needed to speak with him for a podcast episode. It's an intense story not only of his own escape from the Rwandan genocide, but his parents in the 1970s were forced to flee Idi Amin's Uganda.   Ashish tells much of his family history and the story of the founding of the Mara Group in his new book The Lion Awakes: Adventures in Africa's Economic Miracle. Ashish is also the founder of the Mara Foundation, the work of which we discuss, and he was recently named the chair of the UN Foundation's Global Entrepreneurs Council.

On March 1 a man named Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi  made an appearance at the international criminal court in the hague, and in so doing earned the dubious distinction of being the first person to ever appear at the ICC for the crime of destroying cultural heritage. He is accused of ordering and participating in the destruction of centuries old mausoleums in Timbuktu, Mali. Timbuktu was taken over by Islamist extremists in 2012 in the midst of a civil war in Mali, and their puritanical vision of Islam clashed with local customs which imbued these mausoleums with religious significance.  Now, one of the people who allegedly orchestrated this destruction is sitting in a jail in the Hague, possibly awaiting trial. This is not only first time that an individual is being charged with the crime against humanity of destroying cultural heritage, but it is the first time that a jihadist is facing ICC prosecution.   On the line with me to discuss the facts of this case and its broader significance to the International Crimi

Dr. Raj Shah served as the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, USAID, from 2010 to 2015. He was just 36 years old when he was appointed to this cabinet-level position, and less than a week into his tenure a massive earthquake struck Haiti. President Obama turned to raj to coordinate the US Government's response. We discuss how he came to terms with that responsibility. We also have a very interesting discussion about his childhood growing up the son of immigrants from India, and how that compelled him to a career in global health and development. That career really started at the Gates Foundation. He was one of very early employees of the Gates Foundation where he helped designed a financing mechanism that to this day is helping to fund vaccines around the world.    Raj is the co-author, with Michael Gerson, of a chapter about USAID and foreign aid in the new book "MoneyBall for Government," and we kick off discussing his contribution to that chapter. 

By now you have probably heard of the legal and public relations battle between the FBI and Apple. In short, the FBI is trying to force Apple to unlock the phone of one of the San Bernardino shooters. Apple is unwilling to comply, saying that doing so could endanger the privacy of every iPhone user, everywhere.  This dispute will play itself out in the US legal system. But the result will have profound international implications. On the line to discuss the global consequences of this dispute is David Kaye, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Freedom of Expression and a clinical professor of law at the University of California, Irvine.    David Kaye recently wrote a report in his role as UN Special Rapporteur that assesses the relationship between encryption technologies, the varying policies of governments around the world towards encryption, and the protection of human rights. Encryption, he argues, is a key protector of the freedom of expression around the world, for reasons we discuss in this episode.   

Susan Benesch is the founding director of the Dangerous Speech Project. And in this role she has helped to create a set of guidelines that helps policy makers and observers deduce the conditions under which inflammatory public rhetoric crosses the line to become a catalyst for major violence. We kick off discussion what those criteria are have a broader conversation about the role of language in inspiring violence.  Susan had a career as a journalist, covering conflict in Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s and then, after experiencing some profound physical and emotional turbulence, she switched careers and became a human rights lawyer, working among other places at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

Burundi is in a tailspin. It has been for the last year since President Pierre Nkurinziza decided to run for a constitutionally dubious third term in office. That set off protests, a violent suppression of those protests, and a short lived coup. Now, Nkurinziza is consolidating his hold on power, there is great fear that the situation may devolve into a full blown civil war, and given the history of the region, perhaps even genocide.    The world is pretty aware of this. But the international community seems unable to stop Burundi from sliding into deeper conflict. Why?   I put that question to Dr. Cara Jones, an associate professor at Mary Baldwin College. Dr. Jones offers some concise background on the history of this conflict and explains why observers are so concerned that this may spiral out of control and have profound implications not just for Burundi, but for the entire region. If you have twenty minutes and want a deeper and nuanced understanding of the crisis in Burundi, what the international commu

I'm coming to you from World Government Summit this week, which is a conference dedicated to ideas and technologies to make government work more effectively.  It's sort of a cross between TED talks and Davos. You have people like Neil deGrasse Tyson discussing government's role science research, fancy displays of drone technologies, and virtual reality stations. But you also have UN Deputy Secretary General Jan Elliason discussing the SDGs and international superstars like Mary Robinson and Mohammad Yunus keeping in real by maintaining a focus on harnessing these technologies and ideas in service of humanity at large.  It's been an interesting few days, and I two interviews from the summit for you, which reflect the dual tracks of this conference.      First up is Princess Sarah Zeid, who is a long time UN employee and humanitarian worker (whose spouse is the Jordanian diplomat and royal and current UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.) She is spearheading efforts in the UN system and beyond to sharpen the

Michelle Mays is a nurse with Doctors without Borders, better known of course as MSF. She has worked in conflict zones, post conflict zones and generally very intense situations around the world to deliver health care and other services to vulnerable people. MSF has a reputation in the humanitarian community for being the first to arrive and last to leave often times dangerous situations, and its been in the news recently for the fact that its hospitals have been bombed in Yemen, by Saudi forces and Afghanistan by Americans. Michelle started her career as a nurse in Baltimore with an itch to work globally. We discuss some of her deployments in recent years, including to Haiti after the earthquake and to a remote part of India. We kick off discussing her most recent deployment to South Sudan.