Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

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 roots of the conflict in Western Sahara and the current diplomatic obstacles to its resolution.

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, that tells the story of the murder of a young activist and his family's quest for justice.

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 refugee policy.

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 Criminal Court and global human rights more generally is Mark Kersten. He's a post doctoral fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.