Blogs

This article was first published by American University in Cairo’s Cairo Review of Global Affairs. It was published as part of UCF’s partnership with AUC, thanks to the generous support of Jonathan and Nancy Wolf.   On September 21, 2021, members of the Sudanese military attempted to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok […]

A relentless hail of gunfire outside the Guinean presidential palace announced the beginning of the violent military coup on Sunday, September 5, 2021. The capture of President Alpha Condé, now detained by his formerly trusted soldier, Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, was met with shocked reactions and demands for his release from within Africa and around the […]

The imprisonment of former South African President Jacob Zuma has started the greatest surge of violence in the country since the introduction of democracy in 1994. Riots have rocked the streets of Johannesburg as Zuma’s supporters protest his arrest for contempt of court, and the fragile economy, already threatened by staggering COVID-19 infections and unemployment, […]

The assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise on July 7, 2021 has ignited a spark fire of political unrest in the Caribbean country over the past month. His funeral occurred on July 23 and was preceded by protests against the murder. Citizens lit fires and demanded justice for their fallen leader, as the vacuum left […]

The global pandemic caused by COVID-19, climate change, and racism all have some unfortunate similarities. They are all global crises and they all have a death toll. They each cause the most harm to the least well-off in society, and they all lay bare our structures of social inequality. And they all are made worse […]

Turkey’s cities are back to their daily hurley-burley after most of the restrictions to stop the spread of COVID-19 were lifted. The return to the old normal, with crowds on the streets, packed public transport and traffic jams, happened so fast that the time when the cities appeared apocalyptically quiet and still during the curfews […]

Hong Kong has begun to tighten restrictions as coronavirus cases hit record highs (Reuters). Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam reported that more than 100 cases were reported on Sunday, the most since the pandemic began in late January (Reuters). The government has increased testing especially for individuals in high-risk areas (NYT). Social gatherings are now […]

The Turkish parliament approved a controversial law on Wednesday which gives authorities greater power in regulating social media (AP). The adoption of such a law raised the concern of growing censorship on dissenting voices on social media platforms (Reuters). The law requires foreign social media sites to appoint Turkish representatives to address authorities’ concerns over […]

Monday, July 27th, Papua New Guinean President, James Marape, ordered the lockdown of the capital city of Port Moresby (Asian Age). The lockdown came after the small nation’s first COVID-19 death and a rapid spike in confirmed cases (Asian Age). Within a day, Marape announced the discovery of twenty-three new positive cases (Asian Age). Before […]

A new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) details sexual violence against gay and bisexual men, transgender women, and non-binary people in Syria (HRW). The Syrian state and non-state actors have targeted people based on their perceived or known sexual orientation or gender identity, people they saw as “soft” (HRW). HRW conducted 40 interviews in […]