A trial that has just got under way in New York looks likely to provide some interesting insights into how South American drug traffickers are going about...
Mark Weston
Mark Weston is a writer, researcher and consultant working on public health, justice, youth employability and other global issues. He lives in Sudan, and is the author of two books on Africa – The Ringtone and the Drum and African Beauty.
Gaddafi: ‘Championing a United Africa’
This piece from yesterday's Africa Review contains much that is spurious. That coalition forces are 'taking their lead from the US,' that Libya will become 'a...
Will West’s attacks on Libya help Al Qaeda recruit West Africans?
Last week, a pro-Gaddafi protest in predominantly-Muslim Guinea was banned. This week, a similar event in Niger has been outlawed, with the head of the...
The state of Spain
A joke told to me by an unemployed Spanish friend today: Three government ministers go on a tour of Europe. One is from Britain, one from France, and the...
Wall Street continues to reward failure as Moody’s chief gets 69% pay rise
A depressing piece in yesterday's El País reports that Raymond McDaniel, CEO of the disgraced ratings agency Moody's, who presided over the company's...
Forecasting the unforecastable in West Africa
A man from the British government rang me up the other day and asked what I thought would happen in the next five years in West Africa (the advantage of being...
The two sides of immigration
The Dark Side: I have recently moved to Spain. In order to buy anything official like insurance, a flat, a car or a bank account - you have to pay for your...
Rumblings of discontent in Burkina Faso
The convulsions in North Africa have in the past three weeks found an echo south of the Sahara. The death in custody of a student in Burkina Faso has sparked...
What price democracy in the Ivory Coast?
I have never visited the Ivory Coast and do not feel well qualified, therefore, to comment on the situation developing there. But as an observer from afar of...
Illiteracy in Nigeria: the Facebook solution
Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan has hit upon an innovative idea for tackling illiteracy in Africa: publish a book of Facebook chats. His Facebook chats....
Joined Up Development
As the IMF agrees to grant Guinea-Bissau $700 million of debt relief, the European Union, the country's main donor, threatens to withhold $150 million of aid....
A Christmas morality tale from Spain
If you had ever planned an aerial invasion of Spain, last Friday would have been a good day to do it. For on that day, unannounced, Spain's air traffic...
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb: Sponsored by Europe
Last month, not long after the release by the terror group Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb of two Spanish hostages it had held in captivity for nine months,...
Desert Storm
Back in March of this year, I spent a couple of weeks in the far north of Burkina Faso. I slept under the stars on the edge of the Sahara, was offered a live...
Getting your priorities right
Eastern Turkey is currently plagued by a simmering war between the Kurdish separatist PKK and the Turkish army. Hardly a day passes without some battle or...
A man scorned: respect, vengeance and the use of rape in war
In the recent conflicts in Darfur, Uganda, Congo, and Bosnia, rape has been used systematically as a tool of war. The horrors perpetrated on civilian women...
Are West Africa’s Islamic extremists beginning to coalesce?
In a talk I gave at Demos early last year, I wondered whether Islamic extremists in different parts of West Africa, who had hitherto acted in isolation, might...
Are supermodels above the law?
Having refused to testify against Charles Taylor, the thuggish former Liberian president currently being tried at the Hague for war crimes, it now seems...
The lost children of Muslim Africa
A couple of weeks ago in the small, poor Sahelian town of Dori in northern Burkina Faso, we were sitting at a roadside stall having a breakfast of coffee and...
More drug trouble in Guinea-Bissau
Back in January, I posted the text below (I subsequently took it down for re-posting at a later date because of a bizarre and unnerving incident that happened...
More from Global Dashboard
Justice for children in detention during the pandemic
It is increasingly clear that the direct and indirect impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic are not borne equally, hitting the most marginalised and vulnerable the hardest. As an infectious disease that thrives on people being in close proximity without access to...
We can’t rely on any leader to pull us out of the inequality crisis. It’s up to us.
The acute crisis of the present moment, COVID-19, has revealed the deeper crisis of our age: inequality. And looking around at the current crop at the top of politics, it sure is hard to identify the leader who will pull us out. Dominating much of the media and policy...
Switching Ministers and Crossing Canyons
At the end of July, after months of lockdown, my first trip outside The Netherlands was to Tunisia. Just before I flew, the Tunisian prime minister tendered the resignation of his government. That meant possibly another minister of justice; the fourth in a little over...