Peacekeeping missions which have sought to address evolving forms of conflict and instability on the African continent – led by the United Nations, African Union and European Union – have frequently been overstretched.

Across regions including the Sahel, the Horn and West Africa, the issues of violent extremism and criminality – often set against a backdrop of collapsing or severely weakened central states – have led to the mobilisation of a diverse set of new collective responses.

These include notable African-led efforts such as AMISOM in Somalia or more recently the G5 Sahel, where France have played a pivotal role in initiating new and more ad hoc approaches to coalition-building.

As existing multinational missions in Africa continue to evolve on the ground and while new collective opportunities increasingly present themselves, it is critical for policymakers to understand how far such efforts reflect meaningful long-term solutions to the challenges of conflict and insecurity.

At this roundtable event, participants will reflect on how such missions become mobilised and legitimised, the extent to which they can be defined as ‘new’, and whether they represent a truly sustainable means to tackle the issue of conflict in Africa.

This roundtable is held in partnership with Cardiff University and the University of Portsmouth and is supported by the Leverhulme Trust.

South Sudan’s prolonged peace process is approaching a critical juncture. There is uncertainty about whether the country’s political leaders will meet the 12 November 2019 deadline to form a transitional government of national unity – a process already delayed after a revitalized power-sharing deal was signed in September 2018. A political impasse has been caused by a lack of progress on outstanding issues such as deciding on the number of states and reunifying the security forces. The latter issue is seen as critical to preventing the reoccurrence of large-scale violence which would exacerbate already considerable humanitarian needs. Continued mediation by regional and international partners remains important to finding a way forward and preventing a return to widespread conflict.

At this event, a panel of speakers will examine the status of the peace deal, the issue of federalism and subdivision, measures needed to prevent the humanitarian crisis from worsening and opportunities to foster greater security and unity in the country.

THIS EVENT IS NOW FULL AND REGISTRATION HAS CLOSED.

President Cyril Ramaphosa led the African National Congress (ANC) to electoral victory in South Africa in May 2019. His promise of rooting out corruption and generating job-creating growth resonated with an electorate scarred by corruption scandals and structural economic and racial inequality.

However, divisions within the ruling party have meant that the delivery of these promises has been slow. Complex and often divisive racial dynamics continue to dominate political discourse especially around land reform and economic transformation.

The country’s main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), faces its own political crisis following the resignation of former leader Mmusi Maimane, bringing into question the role of opposition parties in the young democracy. 

At this event, South African journalists, Martin Plaut and Carien du Plessis, discuss their new book, Understanding South Africa, providing insights into the current and historical trends that define the political fault lines of modern South Africa. Is Ramaphosa shying away from the difficult political decisions necessary to encourage meaningful change in South Africa’s political environment? And how should the international community understand the trends and dynamics that dominate South African politics?

Over the last five years, the prevailing order in the Horn of Africa has been influenced by increasing engagement from the Gulf states across the Red Sea. Their growing presence has presented governments in the region with significant policy challenges, as they seek to leverage interest and competition to further their own objectives with Gulf players and their allies, while simultaneously navigating the multiple overlapping tensions and disputes that have long marked the Horn region.

Balancing regional and global dynamics will continue to be a considerable challenge for states in the Horn that already have to deal with complex internal development and political and conflict challenges. Interventions by the Gulf states have heightened tensions around internal and cross-border relationships but they have also contributed to reconciliation and have the potential to fuel long-term regional economic integration. Developing a collective action plan and coordinated strategies for engagement on common issues with the Gulf states and along the shared Red Sea arena will enable countries in the Horn of Africa to better meet the challenges and benefits from external interest.

This high-level invitation-only roundtable will bring together the special envoys and representatives for the Horn of Africa and Red Sea, along with expert participants, to analyse regional dynamics and explore options to boost collaboration and burden-sharing towards greater integration, development and more durable peace and security on both sides of the Red Sea.

Strengthened links between the states of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) are emerging marked by growth in diplomatic representation, trade and economic ties and supporting networks.

Against this backdrop, labour migration within and from the CEE and East Africa sub-regions are a key policy area with significant potential for shared learning and cooperation. For both regions, migration trends in recent years have evolved as a result of a diverse range of interactions among public, private and civil society actors and at local, national, regional and international levels. Unpacking such interactions and their political and geographical specificities is essential to effective engagement and cooperation within and between the regions on issues of labour migration and their management.

This roundtable brainstorming workshop will provide a platform for stakeholders based in East Africa to discuss the way in which different actors and agencies in the region influence and shape labour migration processes and policy responses.

This event is supported by the Robert Bosch Stiftung.

Please note, the second video on this page is from an interview with the president outside the event.

HE Alassane Ouattara, president of Côte d'Ivoire, discusses governance and domestic priorities ahead of and beyond elections, as well as efforts to sustain stability and support an inclusive electoral process.

Presidential elections in Côte d'Ivoire, the world’s top cocoa producer and the largest economy in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), will be held ‪on 31st October 2020 against a backdrop of marked political dynamism in the country and wider region.

Possible constitutional amendments and a newly announced major reform of the currency regime are among significant issues drawing focus.

A credible and inclusive electoral process is critical for the improvement of socio-development outcomes and for the maintenance of a positive investment environment.

But instability remains a serious risk and the stakes are high for Côte d'Ivoire and the wider region.

Freedom House’s annual report,  Freedom in the World, assesses the condition of political rights and civil liberties around the world. Its next report, to be published on 4 March, will examine trends and changes since its previous assessment which found that political rights and civil liberties have declined globally over 13 consecutive years. This event will launch the Africa findings of its forthcoming report, highlighting positive and negative changes, and why different regions are diverging.

Jon Temin, Director of Africa Programs at Freedom House, will examine trends in political freedoms in Africa in the global context, discussing the causes and potential consequences of the shifts being seen, and what needs to be done to protect positive shifts and prevent further decline elsewhere.

Please note that this event is at capacity and registration is now closed. 

Nigeria is better placed than many to respond to the arrival of the coronavirus disease. In 2014, it successfully contained a deadly Ebola virus outbreak and the country’s current score on the Epidemic Preparedness Index (38.9 per cent) is higher than the African and global averages.

But the outbreak is compounding Nigeria’s numerous pre-existing crises. It was already grappling with a Lassa fever outbreak that has claimed more than one hundred lives in 2020, the aftermath of recession, and conflict and insecurity within its borders.

Effective leadership to build confidence will be vital. However, President Muhammadu Buhari has made few appearances, delivering his first speech on Nigeria’s response more than one month after the country’s first recorded case. And the indefinite suspension of meetings of the Federal Executive Council has raised questions on the efficacy of the response.

Extended lockdown imposed

The recent loss of President Buhari’s steadfast chief of staff Abba Kyari as a result of contracting COVID-19 is a further significant setback for the presidency. But the administration has established a presidential task force to develop a national strategy and an extended lockdown has been imposed on the most affected states – Lagos, Ogun and the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja. The country has also closed national borders and is expanding testing capacity to 1,500 per day.

However, when Nigeria’s first case was recorded on February 27 it was state governments that initially took action – shutting schools, closing state borders and imposing lockdowns. Going forwards, the 36 state governments will have a key role to play although their governance capacity and commitment varies widely.

The federal government has released $2.7 million to support the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), and promised an additional $18 million – but this falls well short of the estimated $330 million needed to tackle the coronavirus disease in Nigeria. The government is looking to its private sector to help make up the difference. The country’s finances are under severe pressure with Nigerian crude oil – the main source of government revenue and foreign exchange reserves – selling for as low as $12 or $13 a barrel (with production costs of around $22 per barrel), and a debt servicing to revenue ratio of more than 50 per cent even before the oil price crash.

Facing its second recession in four years, with -3.4 per cent GDP growth forecast by the IMF, the country has little economic resilience. Nigeria will not be able to sustain restrictions on its 81.15 million-strong workforce, 83.2 per cent of which operate in the informal sector. One area at particular risk is food security, as the pandemic is disrupting farming, supply chains and trade. By building on past benefit programmes, the federal government is providing cash and distributing food to vulnerable households, but this important effort is being hampered by poor communication, inefficiencies and a lack of transparency – longstanding challenges in many aspects of public service delivery in Nigeria.

In the absence of a reliable social safety net, Nigerians trust and rely on their families, communities and the informal economy to see them through difficult times. It is these informal mechanisms that lend Nigeria its oft-referenced resilience, which has enabled society to function and continue while a largely disconnected political class has focused on self-enrichment.

It is through these traditional channels that the government will need to deliver information, support, testing and treatment. But without high levels of trust, the administration may find it difficult to do so. Many Nigerians initially considered the pandemic a hoax, some describing it as a ‘rich man’s disease’, while others see it as another conspiracy by politicians to loot the treasury.

Lockdown measures have also heightened tensions across the country. Some citizens are rebelling and in one instance burned down a police station in response to the closure of mosques in Katsina state. Marking a further breakdown in the relationship between the population and its leaders, the Nigerian National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) recently reported security services enforcing the lockdown have extrajudicially killed 18 people, while, so far, COVID-19 has killed 25 people in Nigeria.

Mitigating the spread and worst consequences of the virus will depend on the state rebuilding trust with its citizens through effective communication and action. It is particularly important that the community mechanisms of support are protected as they come under growing pressure as communities become increasingly affected by the virus.

The stark choice facing most Nigerians – between risking starvation and risking contagion – means a sustained lockdown is not a tenable option. People will choose to go to work. This will especially be the case as people grow weary of measures imposed upon them by a state that the vast majority of the population believe does not serve or care for them.

Having largely ignored the needs of Nigeria’s citizens for decades, the political class face an uphill battle in building trust with the population. Earning this trust is not only crucial for the struggle against COVID-19 but also for Nigeria’s longer-term progress and system of political governance.

In the COVID-19 crisis so far, Cyril Ramaphosa has been widely praised for displaying the decisive leadership so many hoped for when they cast their ballot for him in May 2019. Buttressed by others such as health minister Dr Zweli Mkhize, and on a simple objective to prevent transmission, South Africa has been a lesson to the world. Act fast. Act hard.

Former president Thabo Mbeki’s disastrous response to the HIV crisis cast a long shadow over his legacy, and Ramaphosa has taken note. South Africa has had one of the tightest lockdowns in the world. No exercise. No cigarettes. No alcohol.

The lockdown was imposed when the country had only around 1,000 recorded cases and just two deaths. As a result, transmission from returning travellers has not yet led to an exponential infection rate within the community. The government’s swift reaction has bought much needed time with the peak now seemingly delayed to September or October.

Continental and national leadership

Ramaphosa has also emerged as a key focal point for Africa-wide responses. As current chair of the African Union (AU) he leads the continental engagement with the World Health Organization (WHO), and the various international finance institutions, while South African officials are working with the AU and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) on a push for African debt restructuring.

He has also been active in trouble shooting to unlock external assistance to the continent, including from China and Russia. Appointing special envoys is typical of his boardroom-honed leadership style.

International and regional partnerships are vital for resilience and the arrival of 217 Cuban doctors to South Africa is strongly reminiscent of the liberationist solidarity of the Cold War era. And regional economies remain dependent on South Africa to protect their own vulnerable citizens. Following the 2008 financial crisis, it was South Africa’s regional trading relationships that remained robust, while trade with its main global partners in China and the US dropped.

Despite the plaudits, Ramaphosa remains vulnerable to challenge at home, notably around his failure to stimulate South Africa’s moribund economy. On the eve of lockdown, Moody’s joined its peers Standard and Poor’s and Fitch in giving South Africa a below investment grade credit rating. The move was a long time coming. Long mooted economic reforms were slow to materialise, and South Africa had fallen into recession.

Ramaphosa depends on a small core of close advisors and allies, initially united in apparent opposition to the kleptocratic rule of President Jacob Zuma and the deep patronage networks he created within both the party and the state. But this allegiance is being tested by economic reality. Support within the party was already drifting prior to the crisis.

Disagreements are not just technocratic – there are big ideological questions in play around the role of the state in the economy, the level of intervention, and its affordability, with key government figures sceptical of rapid market reforms. Energy minister and former union stalwart Gwede Mantashe is wary of job losses, and minister of public enterprises Pravin Gordhan protective of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Before coronavirus hit, Ramaphosa seemed content to allow these policy disputes to play themselves out with little decisive intervention.

Slow progress on reform, against worsening economic performance, left Ramaphosa and his allies exposed. In January the president missed the UK’s African Investment Summit in order to assert control over a party meeting at which it was expected his detractors would seek to remove Gordhan.

COVID-19 has sharpened thinking

As the independently assertive - and eminently quotable - pro-market reformist finance minister Tito Mboweni stated, ‘you can’t eat ideology’. Accelerated reform and restructuring is required if the government turns to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for assistance.

For the first time, Gordhan has been forced to deny a bailout to beleaguered state airline South African Airways (SAA), and the government’s lockdown bailout of R300 billion has been applauded by business. Much like the fiscal stimulus and recovery plan of 2018, it relies on smart spending, targeting sectors with high multiplier effects. It also includes significant reserve bank loans.

But it has been criticised for not doing enough to help the most vulnerable. There is considerable fear of what could happen when the virus takes hold in South Africa’s townships and informal settlements where social distancing is almost impossible, basic toilet facilities are shared, and HIV and TB rates high.

There are mounting concerns of the humanitarian cost of a prolonged lockdown, and the government has been faster than others in implementing a tiered lockdown system, trying to get people back to work and keep the economy afloat.

South Africa has been criticized by the UN for the use of lethal force by security forces in enforcing lockdown and, in a society plagued by corruption, there are fears legislation to stop the spread of false information could be used to restrict legitimate reporting on the virus response or other issues.

COVID-19 shines a spotlight on societies’ fault-lines worldwide. South Africa is often touted as having one of the highest levels of inequality in the world but, in a globalized economy, these divisions are international as much as they are local.

Resilience comes from within, but also depends on regional and global trading and financial systems. South Africans and international partners have long recognised Ramaphosa’s leadership qualities as an impressive voice for the global south.

But he must also be an advocate for South Africa’s poor. This crisis could accelerate implementation of his landmark pro-poor National Health Insurance and Universal Health Care programmes. Or the hit of COVID-19 on top of South Africa’s existing economic woes could see them derailed entirely. Ramaphosa must push through economic reforms at the same time as managing COVID-19 and rebuilding trust in his government.

In the past 12 months, a series of highly-anticipated elections throughout Latin America have demonstrated that deep political shifts are underway.  This has occurred at a time when economic growth across the region is slowing and a number of countries face growing social crises.  How will these political shifts and social challenges affect growth and foreign direct investment (FDI)?

Christopher Sabatini will outline how the shifting political dynamics across the region have, and will, continue to influence trade and investment in the coming months and years across the continent and what regional developments mean for the international community in light of Brexit, global trade tensions and the rise of China and other emerging powers. How can businesses and governments provide a platform to overcome mutual obstacles faced by Latin American investors? What impact have Chinese development projects had in Latin America? And are medium and small economies in Latin America vulnerable to a global trade war?

This event is only open to Major Corporate Member and Partner organizations of Chatham House. If you would like to register your interest, please RSVP to Linda Bedford. We will contact you to confirm your attendance.

To enable as open a debate as possible, this event will be held under the Chatham House Rule.

As the chair of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, I recently hosted an offsite event with some of the organization’s strongest supporters, research staff, and other leaders. I left with a clearer view of three of the biggest issues of our time: slowing productivity growth, anti-establishment politics, and the rise of China.

This article argues that practices of global finance provide a rich opportunity to consider gender's embodiment in everyday, but highly regulatory, financial life. Tracing a pathway through the rise of the ‘diversity agenda’ in global finance in the wake of the global financial crisis, the article asks how ‘diversity’ has shaped the global financial services industry, and whether it has challenged the reproduction of gendered power in global finance. Recent, innovative feminist political economy work has laid out a clear challenge to researchers of the global political economy to explore how everyday practices have become significant sites of gendered, regulatory power, and this article takes up this challenge, analysing how the rise of ‘diversity’ in financial services reveals the crucial intersections of gendered power and everyday economic practices. Using a conceptual framework drawn explicitly from Marysia Zalewski's work, this article advances critical inquiry into how gender has become an often unacknowledged way of writing the world of global finance, in ongoing, and problematic, ways. It proposes that the practices and futures of the diversity agenda in global finance provide a window into the persistent failure of global finance to reconfigure its foundational masculinism, and asks that financial actors begin to take seriously the foundational, gendered myths on which global finance has been built.

The upcoming UK general election is arguably a 'Brexit election', and as such, whoever wins the election will have little time to get their strategy for Brexit up and running to meet the new Brexit deadline of 31 January 2020. But what are the political parties’ policies for the UK's future trade? This event will present and discuss what the five main parties’ manifestos imply for future UK trade. Each manifesto will be presented and analysed by a fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory (UKTPO) and will be followed by a Q&A session. 

Using the UK as a case study, this book provides the first systematic exploration of how accountability is understood inside the secret world. It is based on new interviews with current and former UK intelligence practitioners, as well as extensive research into the performance and scrutiny of the UK intelligence machinery.

The result is the first detailed analysis of how intelligence professionals view their role, what they feel keeps them honest, and how far external overseers impact on their work.

The UK gathers material that helps inform global decisions on such issues as nuclear proliferation, terrorism, transnational crime, and breaches of international humanitarian law. On the flip side, the UK was a major contributor to the intelligence failures leading to the Iraq war in 2003, and its agencies were complicit in the widely discredited U.S. practices of torture and 'rendition' of terrorism suspects. UK agencies have come under greater scrutiny since those actions, but it is clear that problems remain.

Secrets and Spies is the result of a British Academy funded project (SG151249) on intelligence accountability.

Open society is increasingly defended by secret means. For this reason, oversight has never been more important. This book offers a new exploration of the widening world of accountability for UK intelligence, encompassing informal as well as informal mechanisms. It substantiates its claims well, drawing on an impressive range of interviews with senior figures. This excellent book offers both new information and fresh interpretations. It will have a major impact.

Richard Aldrich, Professor of International Security, University of Warwick, UK

Gaskarth’s novel approach, interpreting interviews with senior figures from the intelligence world, brings fresh insight on a significant yet contested topic. He offers an impressively holistic account of intelligence accountability—both formal and informal—and, most interestingly of all, of how those involved understand it. This is essential reading for those wanting to know what accountability means and how it is enacted.

Rory Cormac, Professor of International Relations, University of Nottingham

About the author

Jamie Gaskarth is senior lecturer at the University of Birmingham, where he teaches strategy and decision-making. His research looks at the ethical dilemmas of leadership and accountability in intelligence, foreign policy, and defence. He is author/editor or co-editor of six books and served on the Academic Advisory panel for the 2015 UK National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review.

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The coronavirus outbreak comes at a difficult time for China’s ruling party. A tumultuous 2019 saw the country fighting an economic slowdown coupled with an increasingly hostile international environment. As authorities take assertive steps to contain the virus, the emergency has - at least temporarily - disrupted global trade and supply chains, depressed asset prices and forced multinational businesses to make consequential decisions with limited information. 

Against this backdrop, panellists reflect on the country’s nascent economic transition from 2020 onward. What has been China’s progress towards a sustainable innovation-led economy so far? To what extent is the ruling party addressing growing concerns over job losses, wealth inequality and a lack of social mobility? And how are foreign investors responding to these developments in China?

In the last 100 years, global economic crises from the Great Depression of the 1930s to the 2008 financial crash have contributed to significant political changes in Europe, often leading to a rise in popularity for extremist parties and politics. As Europe contends with a perceived crisis of democracy - now compounded by the varied responses to the coronavirus outbreak - how should we understand the relationship between externally-driven economic crises, political upheaval and democracy?

The panellists will consider the parallels between the political responses to some of the greatest economic crises Europe has experienced in the last century. Given that economic crises often transcend borders, why does political disruption vary between democracies? What can history tell us about the potential political impact of the unfolding COVID-19-related economic crisis? And will the unprecedented financial interventions by governments across Europe fundamentally change the expectations citizens have of the role government should play in their lives?

This event is based on a recent article in The World Today by Hans Kundnani and Pepijn Bergsen who are both researchers in Chatham House's Europe Programme. 'Crawling from the Wreckage' is the first in a series of articles that look at key themes in European political discourse from the last century. You can read the article here. 

This event is open to Chatham House Members. Not a member? Find out more.

As Lebanon strains to contain COVID-19, it is not clear which governmental public health policies apply to refugees. The government announced free testing for coronavirus in the public Rafiq Hariri University Hospital in Beirut but has not mentioned if refugees are eligible.

Lebanon’s coronavirus containment strategy is based on self-reporting and, given incidents of forced deportation and harassment of Syrian refugees from both the authorities and local communities, it is certainly less likely refugees would present themselves to the health authorities for fear of deportation.

Despite agreeing a Lebanon Crisis Response Plan with the UN for refugees, different ministries were left to implement it without coordination, just as Lebanese politicians from all sides started trying to rally popular support for ridding Lebanon from refugees - in particular from Syria, who Lebanese leaders say are causing a strain on the country’s already weak infrastructure.

This finger pointing is coupled with the leaders’ own complete disregard for the rampant corruption and lack of accountability within Lebanon’s political class, which contribute to the weakening of the country’s infrastructure.

For refugees who do find themselves back in Syria, there are different challenges according to which area they are in. In the north-east, the WHO and international NGOs (INGOs) negotiate with both Kurdish authorities as well as the government - each presenting its own hurdles.

Kurdish authorities in northeast Syria have closed the Semalka border with Iraqi Kurdistan, posing a serious dilemma for INGOs offering services in north-east Syria but concerned about their staff safety whose movement is now curtailed.

The government of Syria has stipulated all emergency response must go through its ministries. But this limits what the WHO can do in the country and gives Syrian authorities the ability to block ‘cross-line aid’ which goes from government-controlled to non-government areas.

Despite reports that doctors raised the alarm about suspected cases well before patient zero was confirmed, the government appears to be either covering up the actual extent of the spread of COVID-19 or failing to respond. Some limited testing kits have arrived but testing has barely started.

The WHO’s Syria plan is divided into three regions (north-west, north-east, and areas under government control). But concerns remain as to how workable such a decentralized plan is because of the government’s practices. In January, the UN Security Council did not renew the cross-border response resolution for the Yaroubiye border crossing between Syria and Iraq that the WHO was using to send medical supplies into north-east Syria.

Syrian authorities do not permit recently authorized ‘cross-line’ responders to engage with non-government authorities in areas outside regime control. This essentially voids the authorization to work cross-line as it is practically impossible to implement programs. The WHO has sought approval from the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to move medical supplies by land to north-east Syria.

While promising facilitation, the Ministry’s reply comes with conditions of seeking detailed approval for every shipment. When Eastern Ghouta was under siege, similar conditions led to certain supplies being removed from UN/ICRC convoys to Eastern Ghouta, and there is no guarantee this will not happen again.

Due to lack of capacity in north-east Syria, coronavirus tests conducted by the WHO there must be processed through the Central Public Health Laboratory in Damascus. Samples are transported twice a week from Qamishli to Damascus but no results were ever received from Damascus for those tests.

While the WHO is able to coordinate access to north-west Syria with the Turkish authorities, the prospective coronavirus testing capacity in the Idlib region is low – despite claims that thousands of kits are arriving, a lack of resource on the ground means potentially only 20 tests per day could be done in an area inhabited by an estimated three million people.

Following the recently announced ceasefire in the area, many internally displaced people are returning from the Turkish border to their homes in the north-west, but such mass movement increases the risk of coronavirus spreading. People also continue to move between Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Lebanon, posing a challenge to the WHO’s COVID-19 response in the Levant, as the WHO has distinct response plans for each country in the region and it is difficult to coordinate across these plans.

Challenges face refugees even if they head towards Europe due to the potential for conflation between migration control and coronavirus outbreak control. Aurelie Ponthieu, Coordinator for Forced Migration at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) says there is a risk some countries could use COVID-19 to impose draconian measures towards asylum seekers.

The crisis has also put a halt to search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean because European countries are not allowing boats carrying migrants to disembark under the pretext of limiting the spread of coronavirus. And for migrants who already made it - such as in Greece - they are now being put in collective quarantines in asylum centers, often with poor medical facilities.

Ponthieu also reports that migrants being quarantined on overcrowded navy ships docked in Greek ports, making social distancing impossible. And she is concerned the Greek authorities are imposing a curfew on asylum seekers but not on the local population.

UNHCR is stressing that people’s right of asylum must not be overruled by concerns about the spread of coronavirus, while local and international NGOs across the Levant are trying to coordinate their advocacy on lifting restrictions on freedom of movement for humanitarian workers and on other policies and practices by authorities in the region which are adversely affecting refugee and other vulnerable communities.

The international community must not lose sight of the impact of the crisis on refugees and migrants. It is not enough simply to supply humanitarian and medical assistance without paying attention to the policies and practices of the different authorities who have direct control over the fate of vulnerable communities.

The author would like to thank Aurelie Ponthieu and the two INGO field workers who all agreed to be interviewed to inform this analysis piece.

Iraq is a country already in turmoil, suffering fallout from the major military escalation between the US and Iran, mass protests calling for an end to the post-2003 political system, and a violent government crackdown killing more than 600 and wounding almost 30,000 - all presided over by a fragmented political elite unable to agree upon a new prime minister following Adil abd al-Mehdi’s resignation back in November.

COVID-19 introduces yet another threat to the fragile political order, as the virus exposes Iraq’s ineffective public health system dismantled through decades of conflict, corruption and poor governance.

Iraqi doctors are making every effort to prepare for the worst-case scenario, but they do so with huge structural challenges. The Ministry of Health lacks enough ICU beds, human resources, ventilators, and personal protective equipment (PPE). Bogged down in bureaucracy, the ministry is struggling to process procurements of equipment and medications, and some doctors have made purchases themselves.

But individual efforts can only go so far as many Iraqi doctors are concerned the official numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases do not reflect the complexity of the situation on the ground.

The ministry relies predominately upon patients self-presenting at designated public hospitals and has only just begun community-based testing in areas of suspected clusters. Reliance on self-presentation requires a level of trust between citizens and state institutions, which is at a historic low. This gap in trust – 17 years in the making – puts Iraq’s COVID-19 response particularly at risk.

Iraq’s myriad vulnerabilities

Certain social and political factors leave Iraq uniquely exposed to the coronavirus. The country’s vulnerability is tied directly to its social, religious and economic interconnections with Iran, an epicenter of the pandemic.

Exchanges between Iran and Iraq are concentrated in two regions, with strong cross-border links between Iraqi and Iranian Kurds in the north-east, and Iraqi and Iranian Shia pilgrims in the south. Cross-border circulation of religious pilgrims is particularly concerning, as they can result in mass ritual gatherings.

The high number of confirmed cases in the southern and northern peripheries of the country puts a spotlight on Iraq's failure in managing healthcare. The post-2003 government has failed to either rebuild a robust centralized healthcare system, or to pave the way for a federalized model.

Caught in an ambiguous middle between a centralized and federalized model, coordination across provinces and hospitals during the coronavirus crisis has neither reflected strong management from Baghdad nor robust ownership at the governorate level.

This problem is part of a wider challenge of managing centre-periphery relations and federalism, which since 2003 has not worked effectively. Baghdad has provided all 18 provinces with instructions on testing and treatment, but only a handful have enough resources to put them into practice. Advanced testing capacity is limited to the five provinces with WHO-approved centers, with the remaining 13 sending swabs to Baghdad.

But the greatest challenge to Iraq’s COVID-19 response is the dramatic deterioration of state-society relations. Studies reveal a profound societal distrust of Iraq’s public healthcare institutions, due to corruption and militarization of medical institutions. Numerous videos have recently circulated of families refusing to turn over sick members - particularly women - to medical teams visiting households with confirmed or suspected cases.

As medical anthropologist Omar Dewachi notes, the ‘moral economy of quarantine’ in Iraq is heavily shaped by a history of war and its impact on the relationship between people and the state. Although local and international media often interpret this reluctance to undergo quarantine as a matter of social or tribal norms, distrusting the state leads many families to refuse quarantine because they believe it resembles a form of arrest.

The management of coronavirus relies upon an overt convergence between medical institutions and security forces as the federal police collaborate with the Ministry of Health to impose curfews and enforce quarantine. This means that, troublingly, the same security establishment which violently cracked down on protesters and civil society activists is now the teeth behind Iraq’s COVID-19 response.

Without trust between society and the political class, civil society organizations and protest movements have directed their organizational structure towards awareness-raising across Iraq. Key religious authorities such as Grand Ayatollah Sistani have called for compliance to the curfew and mobilized charitable institutions.

However, such efforts will not be enough to make up for the lack of governance at the level of the state. In the short-term, Iraq’s medical professionals and institutions are in dire need of technical and financial support. In the long-term, COVID-19 is a lesson that Iraq’s once robust public healthcare system needs serious investment and reform.

COVID-19 may prove to be another catalyst challenging the ‘muddle through’ logic of the Iraqi political elite. International actors have largely been complicit in this logic, directing aid and technical support towards security forces and political allies in the interest of short-term stability, and neglecting institutions which Iraqis rely on for health, education, and well-being.

The response to the crisis requires cooperation and buy-in of a population neglected by 17 years of failed governance. This is a seminal event that may push the country to the brink, exposing and stirring underlying tensions in state-society relations.

This analysis was produced as part of the Iraq Initiative.

Historically, Iraq lay claim to one of the most abundant water supplies in the Middle East. But the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers has reduced by up to 40% since the 1970s, due in part to the actions of neighbouring countries, in particular Turkey, upstream.

Rising temperatures and reduced rainfall due to climate change are also negatively impacting Iraq’s water reserves. Evaporation from dams and reservoirs is estimated to lose the country up to 8 billion cubic metres of water every year.

A threat to peace and stability

Shortages have dried up previously fertile land, increasing poverty in agricultural areas. Shortages have also served to fuel conflict: communities faced with successive droughts and government inertia proved to be easy targets for ISIS recruiters, who lured farmers into joining them by offering money and food to feed their families. Economic hardship for those whose livelihoods relied upon river water has also driven rural to urban migration, putting significant strain on already over-populated towns and cities, exacerbating housing, job and electricity shortages, and widening the gap between haves and have-nots.

But scarcity isn’t the most crucial element of Iraq’s water crisis – contamination is. Decades of local government mismanagement, corrupt practices and a lack of regulation of dumping (it is estimated up to 70% of Iraq’s industrial waste is dumped directly into water) has left approximately three in every five citizens without a reliable source of potable water.

In 2018, 118,000 residents of Basra province were hospitalised with symptoms brought on by drinking contaminated water, which not only put a spotlight on the inadequacies of a crumbling healthcare system but sparked mass protests and a subsequent violent crackdown.

The water crisis is also undermining the stability of the country’s federal governance model, by occasionally sparking disputes between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government, as well as between governorates in the south.

The crisis is both a symptom and a cause of poor governance. Iraq is stuck in a cycle whereby government inaction causes shortages and contamination, which result in economic losses, reduced food supply, increased prices and widespread poor health. This in turn leads to increasing levels of poverty, higher demand on services and civil unrest, increasing the pressure on a weak, dysfunctional system of government.

What can be done?

The first priority should be modernising existing water-management infrastructure - a relic of a time when the problem was an excess rather than a shortage of water (the last time Iraq’s flood defences were required was 1968). Bureaucratic hurdles, widespread corruption and an endless cycle of other crises taking precedent prevent good initiatives from being implemented or scaled up.

Diversifying energy sources to improve provision is crucial. Baghdad has a sewage treatment plant that originally ran on its own electricity source, but this capacity was destroyed in 1991 and was never replaced. The city continues to suffer from dangerous levels of water pollution because the electricity supply from the grid is insufficient to power the plant. Solar energy has great potential in sun-drenched Iraq to bridge the gaping hole in energy provision, but successive governments have chosen to focus on fossil fuels rather than promoting investment to grow the renewables sector.

Heightened tension with upstream Turkey could turn water into another cause of regional conflict. But, if approached differently, collaboration between Iraq and its neighbour could foster regional harmony.

Turkey’s elevated geography and cooler climate mean its water reserves suffer 75% less evaporation than Iraq’s. Given that Turkey’s top energy priority is the diversification of its supply of imported hydrocarbons, a win-win deal could see Turkey exchange access to its water-management infrastructure for delivery of reduced cost energy supplies from Iraq.

German-French cooperation on coal and steel in the 1950s and the evolution of economic integration that followed might provide a model for how bilateral cooperation over one issue could result in cooperation with other regional players (in this case Iran and Syria) on a range of other issues. This kind of model would need to consider the future of energy, whereby oil and gas would be replaced by solar-power exports.

These solutions have been open to policymakers for years and yet they have taken little tangible action. While there are leaders and bureaucrats with the will to act, effective action is invariably blocked by a complex and opaque political system replete with vested interests in maintaining power and wealth via a weak state and limited services from central government.

Breaking the cycle

To break this cycle, Iraq needs a group of professional and able actors outside of government to work with willing elements of the state bureaucracy as a taskforce to pressure for action and accountability. Publishing the recommendations from a hitherto withheld report produced in the aftermath of Basra’s 2018 heath crisis would be a great start.

In time, this taskforce could champion the prioritisation of water on the national agenda, the implementation of infrastructure upgrades, and hold more productive conversations with neighbour states.

With such a high degree of state fragmentation and dysfunction in Iraq, looking to the central government to provide leadership will not yield results. Engagement with a coalition of non-state actors can begin to address the water crisis and also open a dialogue around new models of governance for other critical issues. This might even be a starting point for rewriting the tattered social contract in Iraq.

This piece is based on insights and discussion at a roundtable event, Conflict and the Water Crisis in Iraq, held at Chatham House on March 9 as part of the Iraq Initiative.

Nigeria is better placed than many to respond to the arrival of the coronavirus disease. In 2014, it successfully contained a deadly Ebola virus outbreak and the country’s current score on the Epidemic Preparedness Index (38.9 per cent) is higher than the African and global averages.

But the outbreak is compounding Nigeria’s numerous pre-existing crises. It was already grappling with a Lassa fever outbreak that has claimed more than one hundred lives in 2020, the aftermath of recession, and conflict and insecurity within its borders.

Effective leadership to build confidence will be vital. However, President Muhammadu Buhari has made few appearances, delivering his first speech on Nigeria’s response more than one month after the country’s first recorded case. And the indefinite suspension of meetings of the Federal Executive Council has raised questions on the efficacy of the response.

Extended lockdown imposed

The recent loss of President Buhari’s steadfast chief of staff Abba Kyari as a result of contracting COVID-19 is a further significant setback for the presidency. But the administration has established a presidential task force to develop a national strategy and an extended lockdown has been imposed on the most affected states – Lagos, Ogun and the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja. The country has also closed national borders and is expanding testing capacity to 1,500 per day.

However, when Nigeria’s first case was recorded on February 27 it was state governments that initially took action – shutting schools, closing state borders and imposing lockdowns. Going forwards, the 36 state governments will have a key role to play although their governance capacity and commitment varies widely.

The federal government has released $2.7 million to support the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), and promised an additional $18 million – but this falls well short of the estimated $330 million needed to tackle the coronavirus disease in Nigeria. The government is looking to its private sector to help make up the difference. The country’s finances are under severe pressure with Nigerian crude oil – the main source of government revenue and foreign exchange reserves – selling for as low as $12 or $13 a barrel (with production costs of around $22 per barrel), and a debt servicing to revenue ratio of more than 50 per cent even before the oil price crash.

Facing its second recession in four years, with -3.4 per cent GDP growth forecast by the IMF, the country has little economic resilience. Nigeria will not be able to sustain restrictions on its 81.15 million-strong workforce, 83.2 per cent of which operate in the informal sector. One area at particular risk is food security, as the pandemic is disrupting farming, supply chains and trade. By building on past benefit programmes, the federal government is providing cash and distributing food to vulnerable households, but this important effort is being hampered by poor communication, inefficiencies and a lack of transparency – longstanding challenges in many aspects of public service delivery in Nigeria.

In the absence of a reliable social safety net, Nigerians trust and rely on their families, communities and the informal economy to see them through difficult times. It is these informal mechanisms that lend Nigeria its oft-referenced resilience, which has enabled society to function and continue while a largely disconnected political class has focused on self-enrichment.

It is through these traditional channels that the government will need to deliver information, support, testing and treatment. But without high levels of trust, the administration may find it difficult to do so. Many Nigerians initially considered the pandemic a hoax, some describing it as a ‘rich man’s disease’, while others see it as another conspiracy by politicians to loot the treasury.

Lockdown measures have also heightened tensions across the country. Some citizens are rebelling and in one instance burned down a police station in response to the closure of mosques in Katsina state. Marking a further breakdown in the relationship between the population and its leaders, the Nigerian National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) recently reported security services enforcing the lockdown have extrajudicially killed 18 people, while, so far, COVID-19 has killed 25 people in Nigeria.

Mitigating the spread and worst consequences of the virus will depend on the state rebuilding trust with its citizens through effective communication and action. It is particularly important that the community mechanisms of support are protected as they come under growing pressure as communities become increasingly affected by the virus.

The stark choice facing most Nigerians – between risking starvation and risking contagion – means a sustained lockdown is not a tenable option. People will choose to go to work. This will especially be the case as people grow weary of measures imposed upon them by a state that the vast majority of the population believe does not serve or care for them.

Having largely ignored the needs of Nigeria’s citizens for decades, the political class face an uphill battle in building trust with the population. Earning this trust is not only crucial for the struggle against COVID-19 but also for Nigeria’s longer-term progress and system of political governance.

In the COVID-19 crisis so far, Cyril Ramaphosa has been widely praised for displaying the decisive leadership so many hoped for when they cast their ballot for him in May 2019. Buttressed by others such as health minister Dr Zweli Mkhize, and on a simple objective to prevent transmission, South Africa has been a lesson to the world. Act fast. Act hard.

Former president Thabo Mbeki’s disastrous response to the HIV crisis cast a long shadow over his legacy, and Ramaphosa has taken note. South Africa has had one of the tightest lockdowns in the world. No exercise. No cigarettes. No alcohol.

The lockdown was imposed when the country had only around 1,000 recorded cases and just two deaths. As a result, transmission from returning travellers has not yet led to an exponential infection rate within the community. The government’s swift reaction has bought much needed time with the peak now seemingly delayed to September or October.

Continental and national leadership

Ramaphosa has also emerged as a key focal point for Africa-wide responses. As current chair of the African Union (AU) he leads the continental engagement with the World Health Organization (WHO), and the various international finance institutions, while South African officials are working with the AU and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) on a push for African debt restructuring.

He has also been active in trouble shooting to unlock external assistance to the continent, including from China and Russia. Appointing special envoys is typical of his boardroom-honed leadership style.

International and regional partnerships are vital for resilience and the arrival of 217 Cuban doctors to South Africa is strongly reminiscent of the liberationist solidarity of the Cold War era. And regional economies remain dependent on South Africa to protect their own vulnerable citizens. Following the 2008 financial crisis, it was South Africa’s regional trading relationships that remained robust, while trade with its main global partners in China and the US dropped.

Despite the plaudits, Ramaphosa remains vulnerable to challenge at home, notably around his failure to stimulate South Africa’s moribund economy. On the eve of lockdown, Moody’s joined its peers Standard and Poor’s and Fitch in giving South Africa a below investment grade credit rating. The move was a long time coming. Long mooted economic reforms were slow to materialise, and South Africa had fallen into recession.

Ramaphosa depends on a small core of close advisors and allies, initially united in apparent opposition to the kleptocratic rule of President Jacob Zuma and the deep patronage networks he created within both the party and the state. But this allegiance is being tested by economic reality. Support within the party was already drifting prior to the crisis.

Disagreements are not just technocratic – there are big ideological questions in play around the role of the state in the economy, the level of intervention, and its affordability, with key government figures sceptical of rapid market reforms. Energy minister and former union stalwart Gwede Mantashe is wary of job losses, and minister of public enterprises Pravin Gordhan protective of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Before coronavirus hit, Ramaphosa seemed content to allow these policy disputes to play themselves out with little decisive intervention.

Slow progress on reform, against worsening economic performance, left Ramaphosa and his allies exposed. In January the president missed the UK’s African Investment Summit in order to assert control over a party meeting at which it was expected his detractors would seek to remove Gordhan.

COVID-19 has sharpened thinking

As the independently assertive - and eminently quotable - pro-market reformist finance minister Tito Mboweni stated, ‘you can’t eat ideology’. Accelerated reform and restructuring is required if the government turns to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for assistance.

For the first time, Gordhan has been forced to deny a bailout to beleaguered state airline South African Airways (SAA), and the government’s lockdown bailout of R300 billion has been applauded by business. Much like the fiscal stimulus and recovery plan of 2018, it relies on smart spending, targeting sectors with high multiplier effects. It also includes significant reserve bank loans.

But it has been criticised for not doing enough to help the most vulnerable. There is considerable fear of what could happen when the virus takes hold in South Africa’s townships and informal settlements where social distancing is almost impossible, basic toilet facilities are shared, and HIV and TB rates high.

There are mounting concerns of the humanitarian cost of a prolonged lockdown, and the government has been faster than others in implementing a tiered lockdown system, trying to get people back to work and keep the economy afloat.

South Africa has been criticized by the UN for the use of lethal force by security forces in enforcing lockdown and, in a society plagued by corruption, there are fears legislation to stop the spread of false information could be used to restrict legitimate reporting on the virus response or other issues.

COVID-19 shines a spotlight on societies’ fault-lines worldwide. South Africa is often touted as having one of the highest levels of inequality in the world but, in a globalized economy, these divisions are international as much as they are local.

Resilience comes from within, but also depends on regional and global trading and financial systems. South Africans and international partners have long recognised Ramaphosa’s leadership qualities as an impressive voice for the global south.

But he must also be an advocate for South Africa’s poor. This crisis could accelerate implementation of his landmark pro-poor National Health Insurance and Universal Health Care programmes. Or the hit of COVID-19 on top of South Africa’s existing economic woes could see them derailed entirely. Ramaphosa must push through economic reforms at the same time as managing COVID-19 and rebuilding trust in his government.

In 2017 Trump expressed pity for the ‘beautiful babies’ killed in a gas attack on Khan Shaykhun in Syria before launching airstrikes against President Assad's regime. Images of suffering children in world politics are often used as a synecdoche for a broader conflict or disaster. Injured, suffering, or dead; the ways in which images of children circulate in global public discourse must be critically examined to uncover the assumptions that operate in these environments. This article explores reactions to images of children by representatives and leaders of states to trace the interconnected affective and political dimensions of these images. In contrast to attending to the expected empathetic responses prompted by images of children, this article particularly focuses on when such images prompt bellicose foreign policy decision-making. In doing this, the article forwards a way of thinking about images as contentious affective objects in international relations. The ways in which images of children's bodies and suffering are strategically deployed by politicians deserves closer scrutiny to uncover the visual politics of childhood inherent in these moments of international politics and policy-making.

Images are central to social media communication. Billions of images are shared across different social media platforms every day: photos, cartoons, GIFs and short video clips are exchanged by users, facilitating or framing discourse on participatory sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Many of these images depict events of extreme violence, which circulate uninhibited by the conventional constraints associated with traditional news media censorship. A question arises here as to how such images mobilize public and policy-making responses to atrocities. This article examines the political dynamics of violent social media images. I argue that the particular qualities of social media can play an important role in how the digital visibility of horrific violence influences policy-making as a response to such atrocities. There is an important connection between the properties of social media platforms that allow user images to reach a global audience in real time and the emotional responses that this level of circulation generates. In turn, the pressure created by events made globally visible through the circulation of violent images and the audience responses to those images puts governments in a position where they are forced to act, which has significant implications for policy-making.

World politics generates a long list of anxiety-inspiring scenarios that threaten to unravel everyday life with sudden and violent destruction. From total war and the concentration camps, through nuclear firestorms, global pandemics and climate disaster, the diabolical violence of the recent past and conceivable future is the stuff of nightmares. Yet International Relations scholars and practitioners are often criticized for being disconnected from the human realities of international calamity. The challenge for both is to engage world politics in a way that foregrounds the human consequences of extreme violence and depravation. In this article, we explore these difficult experiences through popular culture representations of the apocalypse, a subject of intense interest for researchers in a discipline where global destruction is a distinct possibility. However, we take a different route by engaging the apocalypse through the horror genre, the one place where human suffering is explicitly accentuated. We argue that the horror genre is at once an access point for ethical engagement with the human consequences of extreme violence and a complex terrain where dark imaginings can be politically loaded, culturally specific and ethically ambiguous.

This article sets out to bring sound and music to the field of visual studies in International Relations. It argues that IR largely has approached the visual field as if it was without sound; neglecting how audial landscapes frame and direct our interpretation of moving imagery. Sound and music contribute to making imagery intelligible to us, we ‘hear the pictures’ often without noticing. The audial can for instance articulate a visual absence, or blast visual signs, bring out certain emotional stages or subjects’ inner life. Audial frames steer us in distinct directions, they can mute the cries of the wounded in war, or amplify the sounds of joy of soldiers shooting in the air. To bring the audial and the visual analytically and empirically together, the article therefore proposes four key analytical themes: 1) the audial–visual frame, 2) point of view/point of audition, 3) modes of audio-visual synchronization and 4) aesthetics moods. These are applied to a study of ‘war music videos’ in Iraq and Syria made and circulated by Shi'a militias currently fighting there. Such war music videos, it is suggested, are not just artefacts of popular culture, but have become integral parts of how warfare is practiced today, and one that is shared by soldiers in the US and Europe. War music videos are performing war, just as they shape how war is known by spectators and participants alike.

When powerful liberal democratic states are found to be complicit in extreme violations of human rights, how do they respond and why do they respond as they do? Drawing on the example of the United Kingdom's complicity in torture since 9/11, this article demonstrates how reluctant the UK has been to permit a full reckoning with its torturous past. We demonstrate that successive UK governments engaged in various forms of denial, obfuscation and attempts to obstruct investigation and avoid accountability. The net effect of their responses has been to deny the victims redress, through adequate judicial processes, and to deny the public adequate state accountability. These responses are not simply aimed at shielding from prosecution the perpetrators and those who have oversight of them, nor preventing political embarrassment. The various forms of denial and obstruction are also designed to ensure that collusion can continue uninterrupted. A core concern of intelligence officials and ministers has been to prevent any process that would lead to a comprehensive prohibition on involvement in operations where torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment are a real possibility. The door remains wide open, and deliberately so, for British involvement in torture.