Global Dispatches -- World News That Matters

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 community is trying to do to stop it, have a listen.

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 international community's focus on providing maternal and reproductive health in humanitarian emergencies. Up to now, this is not something that the international community has done very well, for reasons she explains. And she discusses candidly the very personal reason that she decided to take on this cause. Next up, i speak with Justin Hall Tipping, a venture capitalist who is investing in nano-technology in the clean energy space. We have a discussion about the potential of nano technology to revolutionize things like access to clean water and clean energy, and what it will take to realize some very promising scientific discovery So, like I said, two somewhat different issues, but all under the rubric of this confernece and both interesting. Have a listen!

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.

The United Kingdom plays host to a major conference this week intended to raise money and political support for the Syrian humanitarian disaster. There are now over 4.6 million Syrian refugees who have fled abroad, mostly to surrounding countries and 7.6 million people displaced inside the country. In all the UN estimates that there by the end of 2016, there will be 18 million people in need of some sort of humanitarian relief, thins like food aid, shelter, medicines. And that is going to cost a great deal of money. About $9 billion to be exact. And the way that money is raised is through appeals to donors--basically like a charity whose major contributors are governments around the world. On the line today to discuss this London conference and the major global challenge of mounting an appropriate humanitarian response to this overwhelming crisis is the UK's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Peter Wilson. We discuss some specific aspects of the humanitarian response to this now 5 year old crisis, like, for example providing access to education for displaced children and opportunities for employment for refugees abroad. We also discuss the larger challenge of mounting a humanitarian response when so many of the belligerents are ignoring basic tenants of the laws of war, and we also discuss the current political peace process underway in Geneva.

Raymond Baker was a newly minted Harvard Business School graduate working in Nigeria in the 1960s when he discovered that foreign businesses were nefariously sneaking money out of the country. After years of working in Nigeria and then internationally as businessman and consultant, Baker founded the NGO Global Financial Integrity to fight what he's termed illicit financial flows out of economies in the developing world. This is a fascinating conversation about an interesting, though little appreciated aspect of the global fight against corruption. We kick off discussing the problem of illicit financial flows more broadly and one big cause of this problem more specifically, which is what he terms "mis-invoicing." You'll learn a lot about the history of the fight against global corruption from listening to this episode.

Earlier this week the World Health Organization warned that a mosquito borne viral disease known as Zika was fast spreading throughout the Americas. That includes the United States, which it will likely reach sooner rather than later. On the line to discuss Zika and its larger public health implications is one of the world's leading experts in tropical diseases, Dr. Peter Hotez. He is the Dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine Baylor College of Medicine in Houston; The's the Endowed Chair in Tropical Pediatrics Texas Children's Hospital and President of the Sabin Vaccine institute, the work of which we discuss in this conversation. This is an absolutely fascinating conversation about a topic that is clearly on many people's radars right now. We discuss how and why this disease is spreading, the lessons drawn from the ebola outbreak that can be applied to this situation, and how poverty and inequality in the USA might exacerbate the Zika outbreak?

Elizabeth Economy has for decades studied something that used to be considered somewhat obscure, but today is very much in vogue: the relationship between Chinese politics and economy to climate change and the natural world. She is now a Senior Fellow and director for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and she's written a number of books and influential papers examining China and climate change. She's had a fascinating career. She started out specializing in Soviet studies and took a turn working as an analyst in the CIA before getting her PhD and launching her career studying china and the environment. We kick off this conversation discussing China's decision to join the consensus at the Paris Climate Talks, and we have an extended conversation about some pressing, yet under the radar ecological and environmental challenges that China is struggling to deal with.