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39361. Responding to Insecurity in the Gulf of Guinea

Author:
Patrice Sartre
Publication Date:
07-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute
Abstract:
The Gulf of Guinea has become notorious for its violent conflicts and political instability. This insecurity has its origins in bad governance, corruption, and failures of social and economic development. Violent power struggles and competition for the control of economic assets periodically cause crises to flare up, and these tend to be persistent and widespread. The international community has worked to move countries in the region onto a stable trajectory. West Africa has also made efforts to develop a coordinated approach to the region's challenges through a common security architecture. Such subregional initiatives may ultimately prove most conducive to long-term stability.
Topic:
Security, Corruption, and Governance
Political Geography:
Africa

39362. Eritrea: Ending the Exodus?

Publication Date:
08-2014
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
The large emigration of youths is the clearest sign of extreme domestic discontent with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki's government. Social malaise is pervasive. An ever-growing number of young people have fled over the last decade, frustrated by open-ended national service – initiated in 1995 and expanded during the war with Ethiopia (1998-2000). Yet, this flight has resulted in neither reforms nor a viable movement to create an alternative to the current government. Once outside, the ties that bind émigrés to their birthplace are strong and lead them to give financial support to the very system they escaped, through the 2 per cent tax many pay the state as well as remittances sent home to family members.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Immigration, Youth Culture, and Governance
Political Geography:
Africa and Europe

39363. Ask the Experts: Higher Education

Author:
Arturo Cherbowski Lask, Francisco Suarez Hernandez, Amgad Shehata, and Salvador Alva Gómez Salvador
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
It's important to keep in mind that a region consists of different countries, each with its own needs and strengths, and bound to its particular culture and history—although tied firmly to a common, shared history and culture. In this mosaic, universities try to respond to their regional, national and local demands. Thus, the fields of knowledge and particular disciplines that each university develops answer to specific needs.
Topic:
Culture
Political Geography:
Germany

39364. Can Mexico exploit its new demographic dividend?

Author:
Nathaniel Parish Flannery
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Can Mexico exploit its new demographic dividend? With contributing research from Miryam Hazán and Carlos López Portillo Maltos of Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together (MATT). Read a sidebar on Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together (MATT's) electronic job bank. Read a sidebar on Mexican migrants' return to restaurant work. José Antonio Pérez remembers as a child seeing migrants climbing onto La Bestia ("The Beast"), the train that carries Central American migrants north to the state of Oaxaca, and wondering where they were going. An uncle told him the migrants were "traveling to El Norte," the United States. "I didn't understand," Pérez recalled. "I only understood when I was older." At the age of 14, he joined them. He left his hometown of Arriaga, Chiapas, in 2003 and found work in a greenhouse in Chestertown, Virginia.
Topic:
Migration
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Mexico

39365. Sarah Stephens and Joel Brito debate: Will warming Cuba-EU ties open up U.S.-Cuba relations?

Author:
Sarah Stephens and Joel Brito
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
The EU has recognized that its Common Position has failed to improve human rights in Cuba. It's time for the U.S. to do the same with its embargo. BY SARAH STEPHENS Will warming Cuba-EU ties open up U.S.- Cuba relations? Yes When Louis Michel, then-development commissioner for the European Union (EU), met in 2009 with Bruno Rodríguez, Cuba's foreign minister, he worried openly about the slow pace of EU diplomacy. “I think that if the European Union does not consolidate the normalization of relations with Cuba,” Michel said, “the Americans will do so before us.”1 He need not have been concerned. In the nearly five years since Michel and Rodríguez sat down together, the Cuban government has pursued reforms to pry the island's economy back from the edge of crisis—ranging from creating space for entrepreneurship to ending travel restrictions. Now is the time for the United States to follow its Atlantic partner and get off the sidelines when it comes to engaging Havana. The Obama administration's track record signals some hope: thus far, the president has used his executive authority to restore Cuban-American family travel, reinstate people-to-people trips, and reconvene the episodic talks on migration and postal delivery. But he has left undisturbed the essential architecture of U.S. policy inherited from the Eisenhower era.
Political Geography:
United States

39366. Helping tech startups in Buenos Aires — Tearing down cultural walls in Cuba — Battling Colombia's corrupt politicians — Promoting HIV awareness.

Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Business Innovator: Lisa Besserman Lisa Besserman could be at home anywhere in the world; but last year, the Queens, New York, native put down roots in Argentina to launch Startup Buenos Aires, to motivate, support and connect startups across the globe. The 29-year-old tech entrepreneur, named one of the “100 Most Influential Tech Women on Twitter” by Business Insider Australia in May, says that her goal is to put Buenos Aires “on the map of global startup ecosystems.” Her clients seem to agree. A year after its launch, her organization—which helps local startups find employees and funding, and connects local tech talent to projects and employers—has attracted some 4,000 members, including foreign firms. Besserman is a successful example of a new class of global workers that could be called “tech nomads.” In November 2012, feeling constrained by corporate culture in New York City, Besserman left her job as director of operations at AirKast Inc., a mobile app development startup, and looked at a map to determine where she'd begin her next business venture. The only requirement: the city had to have a similar time zone to the East Coast to make doing business easier.
Political Geography:
New York, Colombia, and Cuba

39367. Colombia's elections — Brazil's insular economy — the case for coordinated NAFTA-TTIP and TPP negotiations.

Author:
Jaana Remes, Patricia Ellen, Raúl Rodríguez-Barocio, and Cynthia J. Arnson
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Peace: Elections and Peace in Colombia BY CYNTHIA J. ARNSON Colombia's 2014 presidential elections marked a watershed in the country's politics. This was not because incumbent President Juan Manuel Santos won by nearly six percentage points, after having narrowly lost the first round to Óscar Iván Zuluaga, a hardliner backed by Santos's political nemesis, former president Álvaro Uribe. Rather, the campaign offered—as never before—starkly opposing visions of how to end Colombia's 50-year conflict with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—FARC): through direct peace negotiations on a tightly constructed agenda, or through military action aimed at the FARC's defeat or surrender. Understanding how the elections became a referendum on the peace process—and on uribismo itself—requires looking less at the candidates themselves than at the alliance, and then bitter parting, of Santos and Uribe. Santos and Zuluaga served together in Uribe's cabinet, Santos as defense minister and Zuluaga as finance minister. Both had similar attitudes toward Colombia's economic opening and management, which led to record levels of foreign direct investment and growth rates well above the Latin American average.
Political Geography:
Brazil and Colombia

39368. Competitive eating in the U.S. — Quemada-Diez' new film La Jaula de Oro — 10 Things to do in Patagonia — Latin America at the Sochi Winter Olympics.

Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Competitive Eating Summertime in the U.S. typically evokes the image of barbecues featuring all-American fare. But for a group of unique, dedicated elite athletes, summertime food conjures up a chance at glory. Competitive eating was introduced in Coney Island on July 4, 1916, by Nathan's Famous to determine who could ingest the most hot dogs within a set time. Since then, it has pulled in a number of other foods, including the “accoutrements,” with the sponsorship of Coca-Cola and Heinz Ketchup—not to mention the upset-stomach reliever Pepto-Bismol. The sport revived in the mid-1990s when brothers George and Richard Shea took the helm of Nathan's Famous' publicity machine and gave it an air of serious athleticism, with rules overseen by two main bodies. The better-known Major League Eating (MLE) is run by the Shea brothers and hosts over 80 competitive eating events a year around the United States. But the crowning event remains the annually televised Nathan's Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island. Then there's All Pro Eating Promotions, best known for inventing “picnic-style rules” in the U.S.—competitors must eat the food as presented, without mutilating it in any way.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
United States

39369. Anthony Spanakos looks at Venezuela befoAnthony Spanakos looks at Venezuela before Chávez — Roger-Mark De Souza examines Indigenous rights and Amazon oil conflicts — Johanna Mendelson Forman on new approaches to regional security.

Author:
Johanna Mendelson, Anthony Spanakos, and Roger-Mark De Souza
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Venezuela Before Chávez: Anatomy of an Economic Collapse by Ricardo Hausmann and Francisco R. Rodríguez BY ANTHONY SPANAKOS During the 1970s, Venezuela was the richest country in Latin America. With the region's highest growth rates and the lowest levels of inequality, it was also one of the most stable democracies in the Americas. But starting in the early 1980s, things fell apart. The nation endured three coup attempts and one presidential impeachment. Per capita growth plunged, and mass protests became the norm. What happened? Venezuela Before Chávez: Anatomy of an Economic Collapse, edited by Ricardo Hausmann and Francisco R. Rodríguez, offers some intriguing answers. Pointedly departing from much of the current research (and political discussion) on Venezuela, which focuses on the 14-year presidency (1999–2013) of late President Hugo Chávez, the editors have assembled a distinguished group of experts with the aim not only of exploring, as they put it, the “enigma” of Venezuela's pre-Chávez collapse, but to explain why some countries go through such turbulence. The unexpected outcomes in Venezuela are used by the authors to challenge hypotheses that rely on big data analysis to explain economic collapse. While the explanation behind Chávez' rise to power may draw attention, as Venezuela continues to be rocked by internal conflict following his death, it is the book's second aim that makes it stand out as an important work of scholarship.
Topic:
Economics and Government
Political Geography:
United States

39370. EDITOR'S NOTE: Brazil, the weakest link of BRICS?

Author:
Paulo Fagundes Visentini
Publication Date:
06-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
AUSTRAL: Brazilian Journal of Strategy International Relations
Institution:
Postgraduate Program in International Strategic Studies, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Abstract:
In a short period, the African continent became, from a situation of lesser relevance for the analysts, a region of higher strategic value. The complex academic understanding of this evolution is made difficult, in Brazil, for unfamiliarity towards the region and, in Europe, for the prejudiced vision. But, as a Brazilian diplomat stationed in the old continent once argued, “ignorance is more easily overcome than prejudice”. Thus, as a contribution to the debate, AUSTRAL dedicates this issue to the international relations of Africa.
Political Geography:
Europe, Brazil, and Australia