Each year, the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs selects a group of 16 extraordinary leaders from across the world to spend four months in residence at Yale as mentors, lecturers, and students. On Friday November 3, YIRA held its annual World Fellows Discussion Event, where students and faculty were invited to a Q&A session with these leading intellectuals.

Note: Questions 1-3 were submitted ahead of time by students. This transcript was edited for clarity.

Introductions:

[Guy Disney]: Hi all, thank you very much for coming out on a Friday evening. Guy Disney, from the UK. I was in the British army for seven years, did a trip to the North Pole, and then led an expedition to the South Pole. I’ve been working in Central and Southern Africa for the last five to seven years.

[Bam Aquino]: Hello everyone, I’m Bam Aquino, I’m a Filipino politician, so if anyone is interested in legislation or politics, feel free to ask. Thank you.

[Ala Qasem]: Hi everybody, my name is Ala Qasem, and I’m from Yemen. I work on different things: I established civic society organizations that engage youth in public policy, I established a boutique consulting firm that works on peacebuilding, and I work in areas of economic development, now as a part of the economic team advising the Presidential Leadership Council of Yemen. My career is wide and generalist, if somebody is interested in what it’s like to switch careers.

[Shamil Ibragimov]: Hi everyone, my name is Shamil. I am from Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet Union country in Central Asia. For the last few years, I was the head of Open Society Foundations in my country, and I am the founder of a data-driven, civic engagement startup. I work on the intersection of civic engagement and on social innovations, technology, and education. Thank you.

[Raphaela Schweiger]: Hi everyone, my name is Raphaela. I’m from Germany and I work at a big European foundation, Robert Bosch Stiftung. I work on issues of migration, climate change, global governance, and technology.

[Naasu Genevieve Fofanah]: Hello, I’m Naasu Fofanah and I’m from Sierra Leone. I work in different areas: I’m an entrepreneur, I specialize in gender and women’s empowerment, and you can ask me anything about that, including public service.

[Ann Iyonu]: Hi everyone, my name is Ann. I’m from Nigeria and I work on democracy, conflict resolution and governance.

[Abdouramane Diallo] Hi everyone, my name is Abdou. I’m from Cote d’Ivoire and am currently working in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia at the Islamic Development Bank. This is a multilateral development bank that oversees 57 countries, 27 of which are in Africa. I am also the co-founder of two startups: Agrobiotech in Mali, which specializes in cloning plants, and Paygas in South Africa, which specializes in the distribution of clean cooking fuel to low-income families.

[Smita Rakesh] Hello, I am Smita Rakesh and I am from India. I work on climate change, and particularly with early-stage start-ups — investing in them but also supporting them in non-financial ways. I’m happy to speak about social enterprises, innovation, or climate change in India. Thanks.

[Binbin Wang] Hello everyone, I’m Binbin from China, and I work on climate policy and governance. I and my team are going to COP28 [United Nations Climate Change Conference] and we will host a particular pavilion there, so if you guys have any interest on COP, global governance, our planet, come talk to me.

First question: What advice would you give to young leaders (like ourselves) and changemakers who are passionate about making a difference in their communities on a global scale?

[Smita Rakesh]: All of us know a little bit about leadership; it’s about discovering what you think your style of leadership is depending on where you work, who you’re leading, and what problem you’re solving. So, without being preachy about “what should ideal leadership look like” or “what should I really focus on,” I would say that true leadership is one that one leads from the front but also, in a way, from behind, in order to make sure that you’re not just a leader as somebody who is heading something, but also engaging more from the farther quarters as well. So, leadership in climate change, for example, means making sure that it is inclusive and we’re not just talking about one country, one sector, or one community’s problems, but thinking of the globe as a whole. So, in today’s time, which is particularly divisive, just ensuring that we are factoring in multiple interests is a big part of leadership in any sector, particularly in climate. So, leadership must be empathetic, inclusive, and equitable.

[Bam Aquino]: If you’re thinking about development work, politics, or any type of work, go for it. Don’t wait. Most of you will say “I’m going to do that when I’m established,” “I’m going to do that when I have a stable job,” or “I’m going to do that when I graduate.” If you want to do something, do it. You can be an intern, at this age, and you can set up something — we know a lot of people who have set up things, even while they are in college. Look for good people and for your tribe who can be around you and support you, and look for a mentor. You can do it right now. I think most of you are eighteen, right? [Mixed answers from audience]. Nope, seventeen? [Laughter and mixed conversation in audience] Oh, older!

[From audience]: Twenty-one!

[Bam Aquino]: I see, so you’re old! So, you know… All I’m saying is, don’t let your age, status, or where you are be a hindrance. You’re all at Yale, so that’s a leg up already. Don’t let those things hinder you from doing what you think you would like to do, or how you would like to contribute. My school in the Philippines is like the Yale of the Philippines, and oftentimes there is pressure for us to go into business or the corporate world; the most difficult thing is just accepting what it is you really want to do. I think a lot of the World Fellows, at some point in our lives, said we were going to take the risk and do this thing even though we didn’t know what the outcome would be. So that’s my suggestion: go for it and see where it goes. And if it doesn’t work out, you’re twenty-two and you can figure something else out. But don’t let where you are now stop you from doing that.

[Naasu Genevieve Fofanah]: I just want to let you know that having difficulties and challenges is part of life, and I’m here because I’ve overcome very difficult challenges. The strategy for that is you take responsibility for your role in whatever is happening; you cannot be 100% sure over other people’s roles. So, there should be self-reflection and you should be humble in understanding that you cannot always be right. Accept constructive criticism and feedback — there is nothing like bad feedback. However bad it is, just learn from it. My motto is that challenges are growth poles and that’s how you maintain your resilience. Remain humble, be intentional, and if you want to learn more about how to overcome that, my book is out there. Leave it to Naasu: How to Take Charge and Go for What You Want has a chapter for each and every one of you. Read it.

Question 2: In each of your opinions, how can education and empowerment be leveraged to create positive change, especially within your respective fields?

[Ann Iyonu]: I work as the Executive Director of the Goodluck Jonathan Foundation, which was founded by the former president of Nigeria, President Goodluck Jonathan. When you are working with a president, usually he is supposed to be smarter than everybody around him — that’s the perceived notion. But when you are working with the president, ideally you should be smarter than the president. You must always be ten steps, and if possible, twenty steps, ahead. That’s my own perspective. Education is knowing a lot about different topics — democracy, conflicts, context-specifics in the different countries we work in. I work in West Africa, so I have to know a little bit about politics, economics, socio-political life in all of the fifteen countries in the region. So educating myself beyond the education we see within the four walls of the classroom is very key. Learning from people, especially through assimilation (where you embed yourself in every community in which you find yourself), is another form of education. I allow myself to get assimilated; I learn the culture and the food, because we break barriers by being friendly with people. It’s not just the formal education that you need; it is the informal education — you can learn from peers, from people, colleagues. You can learn even by reading and keeping yourself abreast with current events. You must keep studying and studying. Just keep developing yourself; that has helped me. You guys are brilliant; I am sure you can help yourselves. Make sense?

[Ala Qasem] In my case, I’ve been educated in the West. I studied in Canada for my undergrad, I did my masters at Harvard University, and there was always this thought that maybe being educated in elite institutions would give you an advantage when you go back to your country, which in my case was Yemen. You’re going to get that advantage and you’re going to go back equipped with knowledge, and you will be able to push things in a direction that is necessarily better. One thing I’ve learned once I came back, and I came back to Yemen around the time of the Arab Spring, is that there is a level of knowledge that, as Ann mentioned, is not found in the books. It is the kind of tacit knowledge that needs only to be built through experiential learning. And that kind of knowledge only comes from being in the field and having yourself open to what the circumstances are going to teach you. It is only then that you will be able to understand systems that are not taught in books and relations that are not necessarily gained from just reading, but instead through experiencing. Those are very, very critical if you are to drive change in very difficult contexts. And they take time. Traditionally, this kind of tacit knowledge only comes from time, from putting yourself out there, and from being open to the fact that you’re not going to get it the first, second, or third time, but eventually you will be able to build it. That is the key thing — if you can link and connect that with the actual knowledge you are getting in schools here, then you will be able to create changes within complex systems that do not necessarily have pre-defined solutions. The solution only comes from being involved, and being able to adapt very quickly to changes and how the system pushes back. I think that’s one of the things that is very critical, and I have learned the hard way when I went back to Yemen and became part of the government. I hope that you get the chance to experience that, and to open yourself up to that level of training and education.

[Shamil Ibragimov]: I am the co-founder of a private school, the oldest private school in Kyrgyzstan, and I am mostly thinking and reflecting on the topic of high school education rather than higher education. Nowadays, in the time of high-speeds and tectonic changes that are driven by new technologies, we have to admit that the current system of education is outdated. It’s very static, it’s very slow. What you can do with this, this is my personal opinion, but I believe the most important thing you can get from education is to preserve curiosity, to make your passion to study, to develop it, to be curious. There is one phenomenon in school: when kids go to school in the first grade, on the fourth week they lose interest in studying. Because in the first four weeks [Shamil raises his hand above his head], they are so excited, they are so curious to learn something new, at the fourth week it’s like [Shamil drops his hand down low and makes a falling noise]. Their interest drops! Because the system that still exists kills their curiosity. They see that it is boring, that there is nothing to learn. My recommendation for you, for your age, wherever you are – twenty, thirty, forty years – preserve and nurture this curiosity. Because the moment you graduate from this university, the technical knowledge you are getting here will be outdated. Maybe in a year from now it will be outdated, AI drives a lot. You have to be curious, you have to find new questions, you know, that you will be curious to find the answer to. Thank you.

[Abdouramane Diallo]: I think my fellows here have said it all in the area of education and empowerment. I think what I’d like to share with you is that when we come from the kind of school we are in here, that we tend to want to be forward, we know a lot of things, I’ve seen and heard the best talk. I’ve felt the same as that, I did a graduate program at Columbia University. And then I went to work in the Middle East. So, I also was educated in the West, I come from the Ivory Coast, a French-speaking environment, a former French colony, so I studied in French schools, I studied in a French business school. I went to Columbia University. And then I went to the Middle East, to the Islamic Development Bank. And I went there with a conceptual framework of what I had learned in the West, so how to do peacebuilding in conflict-affected areas but I realized there it didn’t work like that. I was confronted with a lot of opposition of my views, and I felt that I knew things better than the people there. But it wasn’t the case; they knew much better. One of the best experiences I have had in my life is to learn from the people that I found there, in this institution where I was working. So, I founded an enterprise department in the bank worth three hundred thousand dollars, and then we brought it to forty-eight million dollars after four years, thanks to the people who were working there. Principally, because they had much better contextual knowledge of the place, they knew the players much better, and they were, especially, open-minded. That’s what I want to tell you. I went there with some ideas that I had from here, and whereas they had so many better ideas. What I am glad to share is to be curious, but to also let yourself be empowered by others. Don’t believe that you come from Yale or Harvard or from Columbia and then you are leading the world – those people, they know so much better. Just let yourself be influenced by others as well. Be humble and do that. I’ve co-founded companies, also, without having any knowledge of energy and agriculture or biotechnology, just because I’ve also worked with people from those fields who knew these things so much better. I humbled myself to the point where I could learn from them. That’s just a recommendation, learning actually happens both in the classroom and in the field, as my colleague said here, so just be humble and accept learning from others.

Question 3: In your individual experiences, what are some of the most pressing global challenges you have encountered in your fields of work and how do you navigate those?

[Raphaela Schweiger]: As I’ve said, I work on migration, and if you look at the world these days, you look at the high numbers of people displaced. You look at how many thousands of people don’t have access to education because they cannot continue with their life as they were planning and it was supposed to be. So, I think for me, when you talk about global challenges we can go through everyone here talking about migration, climate, agriculture, peace and conflict, the role of women in politics. For me it is a bigger question of how we envisage the world that we live in and how we create new collaborations and how we actually think and work together because we so many divisions and some of them are ending up in really big conflicts. Some of them are really visible, some of them are very present in the media, and others are not. I have been listening to so many colleagues, fellows, here. Over time, what it does to individual people’s lives and how much the geopolitics of it is influencing in that sense. If we are thinking about the [recording inaudible], thinking about how conflicts emerge and how to solve conflicts, thinking about different possibilities for the world, are we talking ourselves into conflicts between the US and China, are we talking ourselves into certain new challenges that we don’t need to have. How do we find different ways of thinking about it? And then you can go into all these areas that are increasingly interconnected and see how organizations and people are connecting. I work on how the climate crisis will affect migration in the future and already does. All the displacement we see all over the world is not only doing a lot of harm to people but is hindering economic development because people are being put into situations where they can really create. All the conflicts are hindering economic development. So what does that mean going forward, and I think places like here and people like you when you’re studying here, you can actually think about different possibilities for how to think about the world and how we can resolve some of those things in a very tiny way, having conversations about what are our commonalities as people in that sense. That was very broad, but I feel I wouldn’t only want to talk about migration.

[Binbin Wang]: So, as I mentioned, I work on climate. You may think the crisis I mention will be on climate, the climate crisis. Fourteen years ago if you had asked me the same question my answer would be “Yes! Climate! The climate crisis!” At that moment, I was in Copenhagen and it was also my first time participating in this kind of UN treaty policy, at this high-level, influential conference. I was shocked, and I said wow! So many people care about this issue, but it’s not enough. If other people don’t take action then we cannot address climate change together. Nowadays, through this program something here changed [Binbin points to her head], and the fellows here changed my mindset. Why? Because when we talk about climate change, now there’s a new goal, a new word and that’s carbon neutrality, right? And if we want to reach the carbon neutrality, net-zero future we should use more renewable energy, right? But renewable energy means that it’s another chance for humans to experience an industrial revolution. We can look back in the history of humans. Every time – the first industrial revolution, we found coal. The second one, we found oil. These are all fossil fuels; we need to use renewable energy. You can learn from the history, you can identify this is really a new chance for all of us. To only talk about climate is not enough. Renewable energy will change all our systems. Our lives, our working style, everything. Together with AI. Then when we talk about the future, the net-zero future, what should we think of? Beyond climate. This is now why I, together with my team, work on the synergy between climate and the other sixteen SDGs [UN Sustainable Development Goals], which we will reach the seventeenth SDG together when we reach a net-zero future. And then we can see what is happening around the world nowadays. As Raphaela mentioned, conflicts, right? And Janah [Binbin is referring to Janah Ncube, another one of the 2023 World Fellows who was not able to attend the event], Janah is not here, she showed us a map of the world this year. Only North America, part of South America, China, and South Africa are still in peace. All the other parts of the world are in crisis, conflicts. Civil wars or other kinds of wars. If we have more wars, then how can we reach the net-zero future? How we can we reach the SDGs? This is why we should care about this kind of issue together. We need to find the synergetic solutions, and we should open our hearts, open our minds to not only stand in our own silo, our own aspect of the future. It’s not enough. What I say is why should open our mind to the world, keep our curiosity, and think of what I can contribute. Otherwise, if we only stand in our own silo, and we refuse to learn new things then we cannot shake hands with other people. We should set up our connections between academics and practicers. This morning, one of my students called me and said “I got a new offer in the UN but I refused.” I said “Why?” He said “Oh, I have participated. You have given me a lot of opportunities, to support me through different kinds of UN conferences, and I feel tired. They are similar, you know. I don’t want to go to these kinds of fancy conferences anymore, I want to go into academia, to a university.” And I said “What do you need?” “I need to publish journal papers, more papers. I need to reach Nature, Science.” “I see. Any conflicts between these two, your experience in different UN conferences, and your research interests? Have you asked the people in this conference for their feedback, their own concerns about your research interest? Because they are in the real world! Have you tested your research interests with them? And if you can make good use of this opportunity, then you can identify the real problems, and then you can change your platform to that of a university and conduct research on that real problem. Then, you can contribute more to solving those real problems. There are also deep connections between these two.” So this is my suggestion: to keep open and to try and set connections to your world and open your world to the outside

[Questions 4 and 5 came from the audience]:

Question 4:

[Tomas]: Thank you all so much for your time and for being here, it has been great. This question is especially for those of you who work in development institutions, and economic development in developing countries (I, myself, am from Colombia). What I want to ask you is: how do you navigate the institutional challenges of the public and the private together? Of going into a national, institutional framework and trying to bring things from international governance, for example? Oh, and my name is Tomas and I am a sophomore in Branford.

[Abdouramane Diallo]: Look, how to navigate the challenge of international, public institutions and the private sector. To be honest with you, it’s very difficult, okay? I started my career as a banker, in Europe, so I’ve been always kind of private sector driven, and I decided to go back to school and join an international, multilateral development institution. But, you know, over time I got bored by the work in that development institution; it’s still very important what the institution does, but that’s the reason why I felt the need to go back a little bit to the private sector and try my way at entrepreneurship. That way, I could always be connected to some sort of world where I can see some concrete things. So, how I reconcile this is by actually acting, by trying to do my best to, you know, see private sector work, speak with companies, build companies, and understand those challenges. I had the chance to be in an institution where I understand the biggest issues and I’m connected with governments, with ministries, with influencers at that level, which is important. With resources, also, that they provide to do this work, but it’s also very good to be close to reality. Hence, being close to the private sector. I don’t really have a recommendation, you know, for that, but if you intend to do a career in a multilateral development institution, there is also always windows available at all institutions. They are always, I mean you’re from Colombia, you have the Inter-American Development Bank and you have the World Bank, and here you will always have some private sector sections that are there. Then, the biggest challenge is to overcome the administrative part of it, the red tape part of it. If you are someone who is really active, likes a fast-paced environment, then you know you have to make a choice where you would like to go: if you would like to go to the public part of it, or if you would like to strictly remain in the private part of it, that will depend on you. But what worked for me is to actually keep one foot in the private sector, while actually looking at the bigger issues and benefitting from the network of the public institution.

[Bam Aquino, addressing the audience member who asked the question]: Do you intend to work in Colombia or do you intend to work in the multilaterals?

[Tomas]: I’m still figuring it out, but I am leaning more toward the multilaterals.

[Bam Aquino]: So, from the perspective of a local practitioner, the big multilaterals come and there is a tendency to do everything they say. And that’s just not the case. You always have to remember, they come with good intentions probably, but sometimes things don’t translate the same – that’s happened in the Philippines many times. For example, policies that the World Bank pushed that on paper seemed really good but in practice didn’t really work. If you’re from the multilateral, just have the humility to understand how things really happen in the local setting because there’s a tendency for people from these multilaterals to come in with all the solutions. They say “oh, it worked in Colombia, it must work in the Philippines” and sometimes it just doesn’t. So always have that in mind.

[Ana Iyonu]: Let me just add to what Bam said. I think it’s all about context, knowing the context of where you want to work properly. Like he said, if they come with the idea that whatever worked in let’s say Venezuela should work in Colombia, I think it’s about understanding the context. Taking what you can, and applying it within in your own context. Because most times, they have the peripheral knowledge about the environment, but you have been somebody who probably comes from there, who understands the context and the issues better. It’s not about taking everything hook, line, and sinker, but applying it to your context.

[Naasu Genevieve Fofanah]: I will answer your question but because others have to ask, we can talk. I worked in government, I worked in the UN, I am now in the private sector.

[Ala Qasem]: I’ll add one more, one last thing. I think this is very, very important what you are trying to ask, and I have as well worked in the government, within economic development. One of the realizations that we have come to is the fact that, particularly in fragile and conflict-affected countries, or least developed countries, is that development will not happen by the government alone. You need the private sector, you need civil society organizations, you need all the actors. Now the challenge that we have faced when we are trying to mobilize the private sector is that in order for them to come in a context where there is a high cost for accessing finance, it becomes really hard. That formula of risk and reward, it is not calibrated in a way that makes incentives for the private sector to want to invest. So, what we are trying to do at this point in time is we are trying to work with development finance institutions and others to bring in some of the development financing to lower the risk for the private sector so that they can accept to work in countries like that. If I am, for example, the World Bank or others can I put in some money towards first-loss or [recording inaudible] so the private sector is going to come and it’s going say “this is going to make it now much more attractive for me.” This is where we need to start thinking of some creative solutions where you can bring the multilaterals or development finance institutions or others and bring the private sector and bring the government and get them to talk about what is it that is preventing that kind of synergy and that kind of collaboration and come up with solutions that are very pragmatic, that can be implemented. And that requires some dialogue, that requires some openness to thinking about some new innovative types of solutions. That is just one of the big issues that we are facing.

Question 5:

[Katia]: Hi, thank you so much for being here. My name is Katia, I am from Ukraine and I understand that if you want to go back and help your country it’s more about the skills rather than the concrete facts that you learn. And I love America, I love studying here, but I feel like my purpose here is to go back to my country and help there. But, for many of us, I feel that our home countries are quite different from where we study and go to university. So I was wondering: how can we be the most helpful and how can we overcome the fact the issues we deal with here and at home can be so different?

[Guy Disney]: Horrendous, to hear what’s going on at home for you. There will be light at the end of the tunnel. For myself, I mean from my point of view, while I was in the British army at [recording inaudible] I got my right leg blown off below the knee in Afghanistan, I lost a soldier, it was quite challenging. And then to lead expeditions with other injured soldiers – I’m not saying that to talk myself up but more seeing what human beings can do post-conflict. And you know I’ve been seeing the Superhumans Project you’ve got in Lviv which I think is exceptional. For me, it’s all about how do you empower society to be a better version of itself and it starts at the individual level and builds up. But you know, seeing the coverage that’s coming out, I’ve no doubt you guys have that in you, but it will take changemakers to do that. And it’s finding the grassroots projects that really can affect that, not losing sight of what you are as a society. There will come a point when it is over. And all of us, we still focus on the good society piece, and it’s fundamentally important. Making money — great. Being good politicians — great. But having people who are invested in what they believe and, I don’t want to sound too fluffy, but a slightly better world. Do go home. And make it better.

[Raphaela Schweiger]: Maybe I can just add, for my organization and philanthropy we work a lot with civil society actors in Ukraine who have left Ukraine for now, all across the world. And my sense specifically referring to Ukraine is that amazing people who can do great stuff are all over the place right now for all of the very dramatic reasons. I really believe all the people that I work with have the sense of “we want to rebuild” and are thinking about this and I think this will be an exercise where it doesn’t matter where you spent the time during the war, but more kind of what skills, what intents you are bringing to it. I think it’s horrendous what’s going on. There are coalitions that are being built right now for rebuilding, there will be major finances, there will be impact funds, there are already a lot of funds for civil society and social investments and start-up investments. When it comes to Ukraine I think there will be, on a positive note, a lot of opportunities that you can think about here right now, but probably you are in that world enough that you have and start something. What I’ve seen specifically from Ukraine is a lot of the digital connectivity of people just getting things done without being in the same place, which is very, very impressive, which is what I have seen coming out of this, even in this situation right now. So keep up that spirit, and go with it.

[Naasu Genevieve Fofanah]: So I returned home after living in the UK, I returned to Sierra Lione just after the civil war and I went back because I was feeling like you and needed, you know, I was hungry to go back home. So took the degrees, left everything here, a good job, and I returned home. I went back because nobody is going to build Ukraine for you. You are Ukraine [gestures at Katia]. You are the person who is going to build Ukraine. Because you understand Ukraine better. So you have to go with that zeal, understanding that you have more influence now. Networks. Education. That you can take to Ukraine and make Ukraine a better society. So what you have, which is really good, is the passion and the intentionality, which is all good, but you are going to make a difference. And when you get there – when I went back, I wasn’t expecting to do the things that I am doing now. I will tell you had I not gone back, I most definitely would not be at Yale University talking to you today. I am here because I returned to Sierra Lione. I learned, and I have supported, I have worked in Sierra Lione on post-war reconstruction. That’s the value I bring to places like this. So, go. You will find a niche. You will not find the big job you think Yale is going to give you, but you can create. And once you do that, it’s so valuable, you will expand; you are going to find all the rough diamonds. You will claim them, and come back here, and people will be in this room, trying to listen to you.

[Clapping from audience]

[Shamil Ibragimov]: We have an office in Ukraine, and the director is a good friend of mine. I noticed one thing, I was several times in Ukraine, what I really admire about the local initiatives in Ukraine. My point is that, after graduation from Yale, you will be inspired like I was to go big, to do something big, you know? To be employed by the World Bank, whatever. But the real things happen on the very local level. So my point is the best you can probably do for your country is to be “glocal”: think globally, and act locally. And that you will find, because you have a huge, great legacy in Ukraine of very local initiatives. I love them and I admire them. I love them so much that I implemented them back home, also. It is a competition between being humble and at the same time thinking big. And then you will end up with something really cool. Here at Yale, you will find so many opportunities. Then you can apply those opportunities. [Shamil expresses his support for Ukraine to Katia in Russian].

[Clapping from audience]

[End of transcript]

At 2:03am on the 26th of September, 2022, the Geological Survey of Denmark recorded a 2.3 magnitude tremor originating from the depths of the Baltic Sea; but the seismic activity was characteristic of an underwater explosion, not a tectonic movement. Exactly seven hours later, a second tremor was recorded [1]. These events were confirmed by seismographs as far as Germany [2], where officials for the Nord Stream pipeline declared a simultaneous loss of pressure in both Nord Stream 1 and 2.

Denmark, Sweden, and Germany all started individual investigations, initially refusing Russian demands of inclusion (as well as each other’s, citing concerns over state secrets). Fingers were immediately raised, but those pointed at Russia were promptly lowered. Nord Stream 2, a natural gas pipeline complex carrying Russian natural gas into the heart of Europe, was filled with liquefied natural gas and set to be open two days after the explosion. Russian gas, making up nearly half of all gas imports in Europe, is one of the country’s strongest levers in making the EU more dependent on Moscow. At first, this seems to suggest the Kremlin as the prime suspect, especially since cutting supplies to the EU has been one of the Kremlin’s strategies of choice. However, sabotaging the pipeline would provide no benefits over simply turning the valves off and carries many more risks [3]. As Russia quietly inquired about repair costs, The Washington Post admitted that after months of investigation, there was no clear evidence that the country was behind the attack [4].

The clearest beneficiary of this attack is the United States. Even Secretary of State Anthony Blinken pronounced that it is “a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove dependence on Russian energy.” [5] The disabling of the Nord Stream pipelines fits neatly within the American foreign policy agenda, and its European allies stand to lose. U.S. media almost completely ignored the incident until Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh published a report challenging Western media, which had stopped insisting on Russian responsibility but failed to put forth any alternatives. Hersh detailed an American and Norwegian sabotage that had allegedly taken place during NATO maritime exercises [6]. Though the report is based on the comments of a single anonymous source, Hersh has published similar reports throughout a long and daring career in journalism, notably exposing the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, and torture at Abu Ghraib prison. 

The Rand Corporation, a think tank established in 1948 and funded in great part by the Department of Defense, acts as the policy research arm of the United States Armed Forces. In a report called “Extending Russia,” the nonprofit finds that the most efficient way to counter Russia’s influence is in the economic domain. In the second measure of its economic program, the report details Russia’s tight connection with Europe through natural gas and recommends “stopping Nord Stream 2.” [7] The US has attempted to stop the construction of the pipeline through sanctions for years, but they have been inefficient overall [8].

The Russian economy is disproportionately reliant on fossil fuel exports, which fund 45% of the federal budget [9]. Nord Stream transports 30% of all natural gas coming from Russia, second only to pipelines crossing Ukraine [10]. Sabotaging Nord Stream represents a considerable blow to Russian capacity to generate revenue in a time of great need. The Ukraine War has become one war of attrition, so depriving Russia of much-needed revenues now could be crucial to NATO’s war goals. 

However, the immediate economic losses are not the most significant impact for Russia’s economic position in the European stage. An important part of American foreign policy to overcome Russia has been, as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice explained during a 2014 interview with Welt N24, a German news outlet, “[…] to change the structure of energy dependence” to a “North American platform.”  The same day of the Nord Stream explosions, a new pipeline taking Norwegian oil to the European mainland was triumphantly unveiled. “You don’t want to have pipelines running through Russia and Ukraine,” she added. The Baltic Pipe, as the project is called, had a similar endpoint to Nord Stream, and transferred the dominance of the Nordic natural gas market away from Russia to Norway, Denmark, and Poland, the owners of the project. 

Most importantly, American natural gas exports have shot up massively since the beginning of the Ukraine War. In the face of shut pipelines, Europe has had to rely more heavily on American imports, even though the price is considerably higher [11]. The back-and-forth of natural gas as an object of leverage in the European continent in recent years, especially since the initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014, has now turned to benefit the United States. This year, 74% of its natural gas exports were directed to Europe, up from 34% last year. It has also enjoyed an 8.6% year over year increase in overall gas exports. European powers, constrained by their roles in NATO but deeply frustrated by being casualties in energy disputes, have spoken out. Germany firmly opposed U.S. sanctions on the Nord Stream project and carried out the contract for the project with Russia until recently [12]. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas denounced the United States for meddling in European Energy policy [13], and French President Emmanuel Macron lamented that American producers were charging high prices, saying, “I don’t think that’s friendly” [14].

The United States’ energy skirmishes against Russia collide with the larger geopolitical ambitions of other EU countries. At stake in these events is Europe’s cooperation and interdependence with Russia. The United States needs a European political community resolutely against all Russian influence. Through diminishing it, the United States gains ground in Europe against China, its main contender. But European powers like France are losing interest in the United States grand strategic vision, and instead have their own plans. Seeing how Beijing’s and Washington’s collision course will continue to drag Europe into costly trade wars (or worse), France has pushed for strategic autonomy of the region that will maintain its American allies but will separate Europe from further confrontation with China. This plan involves drawing the European Union into an alternative pole of power that is also militarily competent. Interdependence with Russia, even from afar, would allow the EU to decouple from American goals. Though ambitious, it may also delink the Russia-China bloc, further disengaging the EU from China. 

Even though it fits American foreign policy (both in theory and in practice), at a particular as well as at a global level, the White House cannot admit that it perpetrated the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage. Such a significant attack on energy infrastructure is an act of war against Russia. Both the United States and Norway have vehemently pushed back at accusations of the attack, and key investigators like Sweden have shut their findings behind doors of state secrecy. 

Recent theories that a pro-Ukranian group was behind the attack were as highly publicized as they were quickly discredited. The reason why there was so much press coverage could have to do with a waning interest of Washington to maintain Ukraine’s reputation combined with an eagerness to close the Nord Stream case. Disabling the pipeline and shifting the structure of energy dependence in Europe might prove more efficient in the United States’ goals of economic attrition against Russia—at any rate, this is just speculation. Whether by accident or design, the United States has overtaken Russia on the energy front by standing on the back of its European allies. It treads a fine line between keeping its enemies at bay and keeping its friends close. 

“To be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.”

–Henry Kissinger.

References

[1] GEUS har registreret rystelser i Østersøen. (2022, September 27). GEUS. Retrieved April 1, 2023, from https://www.geus.dk/om-geus/nyheder/nyhedsarkiv/2022/sep/seismologi

[2] Scandinavian seismic stations register explosions near pipelines, raising fears of sabotage. (2022, September 27). PBS. Retrieved April 1, 2023, from https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/scandinavian-seismic-stations-register-explosions-near-pipelines-raising-fears-of-sabotage

[3] Streichholz, Josef. (2023, February 13). Conscious uncoupling: Europeans’ Russian gas challenge in 2023 – European Council on Foreign Relations. European Council on Foreign Relations. Retrieved April 1, 2023, from https://ecfr.eu/article/conscious-uncoupling-europeans-russian-gas-challenge-in-2023/

[4] Harris, Shane, Hudson, John, & Birnbaum, Michael. (2022, December 21). No conclusive evidence Russia is behind Nord Stream attack. The Washington Post. Retrieved April 1, 2023, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/21/russia-nord-stream-explosions/

[5] Secretary Antony J. Blinken And Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly At a Joint Press Availability – United States Department of State. (2022, September 30). State Department. Retrieved April 1, 2023, from https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-and-canadian-foreign-minister-melanie-joly-at-a-joint-press-availability/

[6] Hersh, Seymour. (2023, February 8). How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline. Substack. Retrieved April 1, 2023, from https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream

[7] Dobbins, James, & Cohen, R. S. (2019, April 24). Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground | RAND. RAND Corporation. Retrieved April 1, 2023, from https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html

[8] Mason, Jason (2022, February 23). U.S. slaps sanctions on company building Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Reuters. Retrieved April 1, 2023, from https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-plans-sanctions-company-building-russias-nord-stream-2-pipeline-cnn-2022-02-23/

[9] Energy Fact Sheet: Why does Russian oil and gas matter? – Analysis. (2022, March 21). IEA. Retrieved April 1, 2023, from https://www.iea.org/articles/energy-fact-sheet-why-does-russian-oil-and-gas-matter

[10] Extending Russia, April 24, 2019.

[11] Hernandez, America. (2022, November 15). Why cheap US gas costs a fortune in Europe. POLITICO. Retrieved April 1, 2023, from https://www.politico.eu/article/cheap-us-gas-cost-fortune-europe-russia-ukraine-energy/

[12]Ray, Siladitya. (2022, February 22). Germany Stops Approval Of $11 Billion Nord Stream 2 Pipeline With Russia. Forbes. Retrieved April 1, 2023, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/02/22/germany-stops-approval-of-11-billion-nord-stream-2-pipeline-with-russia/?sh=2946f8533726

[13] US Senate approves German pipeline sanctions – DW – 12/17/2019. (2019, December 17). DW. Retrieved April 1, 2023, from https://www.dw.com/en/us-senate-approves-nord-stream-2-russia-germany-pipeline-sanctions/a-51711980

[14] cheap US gas, November 15.

Historical Background

Think of someone you disagree with the most — maybe you have even scuffled once or twice — and now you two must sit in a room together and agree on something. Even if you do succeed, how easily could this agreement be broken? That is the story of Israel and Lebanon.

However, the two countries have had cordial relations in the past. In 1949, Lebanon was the first Arab League country to sign an armistice agreement with Israel after the War of Independence. Lebanon did not take part in the Six-Day War in 1967 or the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Furthermore, the Lebanon-Israel border was peaceful until the early 1970s. The initial relations between the two were friendly, with Israeli students studying at the American University in Beirut and Zionists and Maronites working together to build their power against the Arab-Muslim world.

During World War II, Lebanese Zionism weakened due to French and British occupation of the country, which boosted the pro-Arab camp led by Bechara El Khoury. This camp believed peace was preferable to conflict between Arabism and Islam. In 1943, Lebanon gained independence, and El Khoury was elected president, leading to a negative popular attitude towards Israel in the years to follow. After Israel’s declaration of independence, Arab countries declared war and prepared forces to fight, but Lebanon, under El Khoury, only declared itself a belligerent instead of invading. Lebanon helped Arab armies and the Salvation Army in the south, as per the partition plan, which would share most of Lebanon’s southern border with an Arab country.

The armistice agreement between Lebanon and Israel didn’t specify the international border and relied on the border established during the British and French mandates in Syria and Lebanon. Israel conquered 14 villages and occupied Rosh HaNikra in Lebanon, but the Jewish population in Lebanon still grew after the establishment of Israel, unlike in other Arab countries.

In 1970, after the events of Black September, Palestinian terror groups established themselves in southern Lebanon, taking advantage of the weak Lebanese government, and carried out attacks on northern Israel.^[1] They also participated in the 1975 Lebanese civil war. To secure access to Beirut’s banks and port, Syria invaded Lebanon to stop the fighting and first targeted Palestinians, but later turned against Christians.^[2] In 1978, after a Palestinian attack on Israel, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) forces occupied southern Lebanon in Operation Litani. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was deployed to mediate between the terror groups and Israel, and IDF withdrew. The terror groups then obtained Katyusha rockets and 130 millimeter cannons, which they used to attack Israeli civilians.^[3]

1982 Lebanon War (Also known as “The 1^st Lebanon War” and/or “The Invasion”)

In the four years since the occupation of southern Lebanon, the terrorist organizations attacked Israeli citizens. These attacks ultimately led to the first Lebanon war in 1982, resulting in the expulsion of the PLO from southern Lebanon to Tunis, destruction of its infrastructure, and seizure of weapons by the IDF. The war also gave rise to the Iranian and Syrian backed Shiite organization, Hezbollah, in Lebanon, with the goal of violent resistance against the Israeli occupation.^[4]

On May 17, 1983, Israel and Lebanon signed the May 17 Agreement, which aimed to end hostilities and regulate relations between the countries while respecting each other’s territorial borders. The agreement called for Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory and a Lebanese commitment to prevent terror acts on its soil.^[5] However, the agreement was violated in February 1984 due to the breakdown of the Lebanese army, Syria’s refusal to withdraw forces, and Arab opposition to recognizing Israel. As a result, the Lebanese government cancelled the agreement on March 5, 1984.^[6]

Post-War Period and the 2006 Lebanon War (Also known as ”The 2nd Lebanon War” /“The July War”)

In the 1990s, Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon led to growing dissatisfaction, leading to a complete withdrawal of IDF forces on May 24, 2000. This ended 22 years of occupation.^[7] The SLA collapsed, and 6,000 members and their families fled.^[8] With the withdrawal of Israeli forces, calls for a review of the presence of Syrian forces, estimated at 25,000, increased.^[9]

After the withdrawal, terror attacks against Israeli citizens resumed with the Second Intifada, a violent Palestinian uprising that escalated the conflict to a level not seen in decades, causing thousands of casualties on both sides.^[10] On October 7, 2000, Hezbollah kidnapped three soldiers and Elhanan Tannenbaum was lured to Dubai and kidnapped.^[11] In 2004, Ariel Sharon released 400 prisoners in exchange for Tannenbaum and the bodies of the soldiers which inspired further attempts to kidnap IDF soldiers as bargaining chips.^[12] On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah attacked IDF vehicles, kidnapped two soldiers (Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev), thus sparking the Second Lebanon War.^[13] Since then, there have been no major conflicts due to Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian Civil War, siding with Bashar-El-Assad.

Maritime Border Dispute Background

The Israel-Lebanon maritime border negotiations began on Oct 14, 2020, and led to the first agreement negotiated between the two countries since 1983.[14] The agreement defined the demarcation of the exclusive economic zone and territorial waters, preserving the eastern five kilometers (the “buoyed line”) status until the land border is settled. The prior dispute between Lebanon and Israel centered around the maritime border location, both claiming exclusive economic rights to a 330 square kilometer triangular buffer zone and claiming natural gas reserves.[15]

The 1982 Law of the Sea defines territorial waters as 22 kilometers from the coastline.[16] The maritime area north of Rosh HaNikra, Israel’s northernmost coastal town, is Lebanese territory, while the same area south of it is Israeli territory. An exclusive economic zone (EEZ) allows a state to use natural resources such as gas, oil, and energy production up to 200 nautical miles from the coastline.[17] The dispute between Israel and Lebanon concerned the size of the angle along which the border line would extend from the edge of their temporary land border into the sea, mainly impacting the area of economic waters.

In 2007, Lebanon and Cyprus signed a maritime agreement that had six provisions, but it wasn’t submitted to the UN or made official. The southernmost point in the agreement was stated to be subject to change. In 2010, Israel signed a similar agreement with Cyprus that marked the maritime border between Israel and Lebanon starting at the aforementioned point. However, Lebanon disagreed and submitted a proposal to the UN, which included an 860 square kilometer strip more than what Israel proposed.[18] This difference in opinion arose as Lebanon believed the border should be determined according to the Law of the Sea, not Israel’s agreement with Cyprus. Both Israel and Lebanon submitted their versions to the UN in 2011 but could not reach a compromise from 2011 to 2021.

The dispute over the maritime boundary between Lebanon and Israel has been reignited due to the discovery of natural gas reserves in Israel, as well as Lebanon’s energy crisis. The negotiations were conducted indirectly and took place at the UNIFIL headquarters in Naqoura, following three years of preparation and amidst various crises in Lebanon, including the explosion in Beirut’s port, the economic crisis, and ongoing protests.

Determining Maritime Borders

The determination of a maritime boundary involves considering several factors, and there are three recognized methods for doing so. The first method involves projecting a perpendicular line (90 degrees) from the coastline.[19] In 2000, Israel adopted this method unilaterally and established a 5 kilometer-long line of yellow buoys protected by the Navy.

The second method, adopted by the UN to represent the Lebanese position, involves continuing the land border line into the sea. However, this created a triangle of disagreement because the westernmost section of the land line turned west at 270 degrees.[20]

The third method, known as the “median method,” was proposed by the United States during its mediation efforts between Israel and Lebanon. This method is based on drawing a median line between the two countries, where each point has an equivalent value from the nearest points on the lines of origin. This method is preferred according to international law but can result in slight differences in measurement.[21] The dispute between Israel and Lebanon over the location of this line resulted in a much smaller triangle of disagreement compared to the first method, as both parties agreed to adopt the median method years before reaching an agreement in 2022.

The Negotiation

In the maritime border negotiations between Lebanon and Israel, General Joseph Aoun, the commander of the Lebanese army, initially demanded an additional 1,430 square kilometers of the economic waters of Israel.[22] This demand was based on the continuation of the border marked between Great Britain and France in the Paulet-Newcombe Agreement of 1923.[23] This claim of ownership would include the Karish gas field, which is owned by Energean. Israel refused to negotiate over areas south of the disputed area.

After three rounds of negotiations in November 2020, the talks were halted. After a period of inactivity, the Lebanese government announced in April 2021 that they were annexing all of the disputed territories, despite Israel’s opposition.[24] Two weeks later, negotiations resumed, but they were stopped again in May 2021 due to a conflict between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip.

After several months, the negotiations resumed in January 2022 with the appointment of a new American mediator, Amos Hochstein. Hochstein believed that there was a window of opportunity until the elections in Lebanon in May 2022, and he worked towards finding a solution. However, the emergence of the Karish rig, a natural gas platform located off the coast of Israel, and Hezbollah’s launch of drones towards the rig which were intercepted by the IDF, reignited the tension.[25] Nonetheless, Israel maintained its stance that gas production from Karish would commence regardless of the negotiations.

The American mediator’s proposal in September 2022, which attempted to resolve the dispute over the maritime border between Israel and Lebanon, sparked renewed hope for a resolution. After several rounds of discussions, both parties agreed to several key points in principle. During the UN General Assembly meeting, American mediators held separate discussions with both sides and presented an outline for marking the maritime border. The outline was eventually presented in a final version, which determined the “buoyed line” as the beginning of the border and its continuation based on line 23 proposed in 2010 at the UN. This agreement was deemed permanent and marked the end of the conflict over the disputed maritime area. The agreement also regulated the development of cross-border gas reservoirs in the area and ensured that any future disputes would be resolved with US assistance. An international corporation was designated to be responsible for paying Israel for its share of the reservoir, with strict requirements to ensure that the corporation would not be subject to international sanctions, harm US aid, or be an Israeli or Lebanese corporation.

On October 27, 2022, the then President of Lebanon Michel Aoun, and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, signed an agreement on the disputed maritime border between their countries. The agreement, presented by American mediator Amos Hochstein, was signed at a ceremony at the UN base in Naqoura and officially submitted to the United Nations.[26]

Winter is coming!

The demand for natural gas worldwide has risen, particularly in Europe. The Russian invasion of Ukraine caused a global supply shortage, as Russia is a major natural gas exporter and accounts for almost 45% of the natural gas imported to Europe.[27] The shortage of natural gas in Europe has become severe, with only 74% of working gas in storage, compared to 94% the previous year.[28] Europeans need to heat their homes during cold winters, but as they phase out coal, there is a higher demand for natural gas, which combined with a shortage has caused a surge in prices. If Israel and Lebanon start extracting and producing energy from Lebanese the Qana and Karish gas fields, they have the potential to resolve the energy shortage in Europe and make significant financial gains.

For Israel, the agreement and safe development of the Karish field could reinforce its position as a clean energy leader, as it already has an estimated 1,000 BCM of natural gas.[29]

In Lebanon, the financial aspect of the agreement is crucial. The country is in the fourth year of an economic crisis with no end in sight. GDP has dropped to $20.5 billion in 2021 from $55 billion in 2018; the Lebanese pound has lost 95% of its value, causing prices to soar and destroying purchasing power; 80% of the population is now considered poor; and banks have frozen depositors out of dollar accounts. The government estimates financial losses at $70 billion, expected to increase if the crisis goes unaddressed. Many Lebanese people, including doctors, have emigrated in what has become the largest exodus since the civil war. Hospitals are operating at 50% capacity and 40% of doctors and 30% of nurses have emigrated or are working part-time abroad. Shortages in power and fuel, along with soaring prices, have made daily life difficult.^[30] The Sidon-Qana gas field, which belongs to Lebanon, could contain up to 100 BCM, making this agreement to develop clean energy and export natural gas potentially transformative for the economy. ^[31]

Political Instability

Both Israel and Lebanon face political instability which may hinder the implementation of the natural gas exploration agreement. Israel has had recent political turmoil with five elections, three different prime ministers, and an indictment against a former prime minister. Despite being politically powerful, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has failed to form a government, leading to a coalition of smaller parties opposing him. The then elected Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, served a two-year term rotating with another six-month term served by Yair Lapid. Since then, the situation in Israel, with the newly proposed judicial reform, has deteriorated and reached an extreme point as demonstrations are held on a biweekly basis and disrupt the peaceful day-to-day of Israeli citizens.[32]

The situation in Israel regarding the Maritime Border Agreement signed by former Prime Minister Lapid has become uncertain with the election of Netanyahu as Prime Minister. Upon the signing of the agreement, Netanyahu expressed his concern by calling it a “historic surrender.” And claimed it will be “neutralized.” This raises concerns about the future of the agreement and its implementation under Netanyahu’s leadership.[33]

In Lebanon, the political climate is more uncertain and could pose a risk to the implementation of the Maritime Border Agreement signed by Israel and Lebanon. The former President, Michel Aoun, resigned and the country has yet to elect a new President after multiple rounds of elections.[34] Members of the parliament have expressed concerns and criticism about the agreement, and the identity of the elected officials could also pose a threat to its implementation. The political instability in Lebanon adds to the uncertainty about the future of the agreement and its successful implementation.

Lebanese journalist Mohamad Barakat claims that this is a normalization agreement for Hezbollah:

“If any of us dare express criticism that is deemed out of place by someone, we would be immediately blamed for cooperation with the enemy, but that does not stop them [Hezbollah] from making a deal with the Israelis. This is the height of audacity; one side is making an agreement with Israel while accusing other people of cooperation.”[35]

Paula Yacoubian, former journalist and TV host and a current member of the Lebanese parliament, is a main critic of the deal. Yacoubian claims that it is her country’s defeat, and that the agreement must be submitted to parliament for approval, as follows:

“The Israelis received the treasury, and we were left with a lottery ticket… Today, instead of Lebanon examining how to receive compensation from the Karish gas field, we are those who must provide compensation from the Qana field…. This is due to this weak deal. We do not know for certain what there is in Qana, compared to Karish in which there is definitely gas. What we will receive according to the agreement, is unknown and unsure… This agreement is a deal made by someone who has been defeated, the reality of fixing the maritime border is a bitter one.”[36]

Samy Gemayel, a Christian parliament member in Lebanon and a known critic of Hezbollah, expressed agreement with the need to establish a clear border between Lebanon and Israel through the Maritime Border Agreement. However, he mentioned that the timing of the agreement was convenient for Hezbollah and expressed his intention to help the government not fulfill its obligations derived from the agreement.[37]

Conclusion

The Maritime Border Agreement between Israel and Lebanon, signed on October 27, 2022, is a significant diplomatic and economic achievement, but its implementation is facing numerous obstacles. Political instability and uncertainty in both countries, as well as opposition from some parliament members, could pose threats to its success. It may live up to its potential, surpassing previous agreements in its success. However, given the historically financial irrationality that which characterizes the tense and emotional relationship between the two nations, and the unstable political leadership on both sides, you can count me among the sceptics.

[1] Black September (also known as the Jordanian Civil War) is a nickname for the struggle that took place between the Jordanian army and Palestinian organizations (which were organized in the Palestinian Liberation Organization, or PLO), from September 1970 to July 1971.; Fisk, Robert. 2002. Pity the Nation : The Abduction of Lebanon. New York Thunder Mouth Press. p. 74.

[2] Carter, Terry, Lara Dunston, and Andrew Humphreys. 2004. Syria & Lebanon. Footscray, Victoria ; Oakland, Ca: Lonely Planet Publications. p. 31.

[3] Cooley, John K. 1984. “The War over Water.” Foreign Policy, no. 54:3.

[4] Robinson, Kali. 2022. “What Is Hezbollah?” Council on Foreign Relations. May 25, 2022. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-hezbollah

[5] Kelly, James. 1983. “A House Divided.” Time. August 8, 1983. https://web.archive.org/web/20070930093214/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,955173-1,00.html

[6] Database, E. C. F. n.d. “Israel-Lebanon Treaty (1983).” https://ecf.org.il/issues/issue/183

[7]Eisenberg, Laura Zittrain. 2000. “Do Good Fences Make Good Neighbors?: Israel and Lebanon after the Withdrawal.” Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 4, No. 3. September 2000, p. 17. https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/meria/meria00_eil01.html

[8] Id. P. 24.

[9] Id. P. 26.

[10] Pressman, Jeremy “The Second Intifada: Background and Causes of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”. Journal of Conflict Studies 23, no. 2 (2003) : 114–141. https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/jcs/2003-v23-n2-jcs23_2/jcs23_2art07/

[11] The International Coalition of Missing Israeli Soldiers. http://www.mia.org.il/tannenbaum.html

[12] “Mid-East Prisoners Welcomed Home,” News.bbc.co.uk. January 29, 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3442719.stm

[13] “Israel/Lebanon: Hizbullah’s Attacks on Northern Israel.” 2006. Amnesty International. September 13, 2006. https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/mde020252006en.pdf

[14] Stocker, James P. 2020. “Putting out to Sea: What the History of Lebanese-Israeli Negotiations Can Tell Us about Current Negotiations over a Maritime Boundary.” War on the Rocks. November 13, 2020. https://warontherocks.com/2020/11/putting-out-to-sea-what-the-history-of-lebanese-israeli-negotiations-can-tell-us-about-current-negotiations-over-a-maritime-boundary/

[15] Henderson, Simon. 2021. “Lines in the Sea: The Israel-Lebanon Maritime Border Dispute.” The Washington Institute. May 3, 2021. https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/lines-sea-israel-lebanon-maritime-border-dispute

[16]  Churchill, R. R.. “Law of the Sea.” Encyclopedia Britannica, February 11, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Law-of-the-Sea

[17] Metych, M.. “exclusive economic zone.” Encyclopedia Britannica, February 25, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/topic/exclusive-economic-zone

[18] “Cyprus-Lebanon, Cyprus-Israel Offshore Delimitation.” 2012. MEES. September 28, 2012. https://www.mees.com/2012/9/28/op-ed-documents/cyprus-lebanon-cyprus-israel-offshore-delimitation/f994d750-6d1a-11e7-9675-d5a0b0510107

[19] United Nations. Division For Ocean Affairs And The Law Of The Sea. 2000. Handbook on the Delimitation of Maritime Boundaries. P.56. New York: United Nations. https://www.un.org/depts/los/doalos_publications/publicationstexts/Handbook%20on%20the%20delimitation%20of%20maritime%20boundaries_Eng.pdf

[20] Id, p. 57.

[21] Id, p. 47.

[22] Haboush, Joseph. 2022. “Lebanon, Israel ‘Narrowing Gaps’ towards Deal on Maritime Border: US Diplomat.” Al Arabiya English. February 9, 2022. https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2022/02/10/Lebanon-Israel-narrowing-gaps-towards-deal-on-maritime-border-US-diplomat

[23] League of Nations Treaty Series, Vol. 22, N°565, pp. 363-373. https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/LON/Volume%2022/v22.pdf

[24] Zaken, Danny. 2021. “Israel and Lebanon to Resume Maritime Border Talks – Report.” Globes, April 29, 2021, sec. News. https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-israel-lebanon-to-resume-maritime-border-talks-report-1001369332#!

[25] Orna Mizrahi, Yoram Schwietzer, David Siman-Tov, “Launching Drones at the Karish Gas Field: Hezbollah’s Message to Israel and to the Lebanese”, The Institute for National Security Studies, July 3, 2022. https://www.inss.org.il/social_media/launching-drones-at-the-karish-gas-field-hezbollahs-message-to-israel-and-to-the-lebanese/

[26] Staff, ToI, and AFP. 2022. “‘A New Era’: At Border Ceremony without Handshakes, Israel-Lebanon Deal Takes Effect.” Times of Israel, October 27, 2022. https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-border-ceremony-without-handshakes-israel-lebanon-agreement-goes-into-effect/#:~:text=Israel%20and%20Lebanon’s%20landmark%20maritime,by%20the%20Hezbollah%20terror%20group.

[27] Yuksel, Firdevs, “All Eyes Turn to Russia’s Share of EU’s Gas Imports.” Anadolu Agency, July 29, 2022. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/economy/all-eyes-turn-to-russias-share-of-eus-gas-imports/2647905

[28] “Why Is There an Energy Crisis in Europe?” Euronews. February 3, 2022. https://www.euronews.com/2022/02/03/europe-s-energy-crisis-why-are-natural-gas-prices-soaring-and-how-will-it-affect-europeans#:~:text=A%20record%2Dhigh%20increase%20in,841)%20a%20year%20from%20April.

[29] Karish, Energean Official Website. https://www.energean.com/operations/israel/karish/?__cf_chl_tk=qsppgPwOROw3BhGs3EYs_QxtM9718UrhpJs9Z6N_pao-1680894974-0-gaNycGzNClA

[30] “Factbox: Just How Bad Is Lebanon’s Economic Crisis?” Reuters, September 14, 2022, sec. Middle East. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/just-how-bad-is-lebanons-economic-crisis-2022-09-14/#:~:text=*%20Gross%20domestic%20product%20plunged%20to,in%20the%20import%2Ddependent%20country.

[31] According to the agreement, Israel is entitled to 17% of profits from the Sidon-Qana gas field; Danny Zaken, “”Sidon-Qana gas field could contain 100BCM”, Globes, October 28, 2022. https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-sidon-qana-gas-field-could-contain-100-bcm-1001428180#:~:text=If%20the%20Sidon%2DQana%20field,(at%20least%20470%20BCM).

[32] “Israel’s political instability is putting the nation in danger – editorial”, The Jerusalem Post, September 13, 2022 – https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-716983; Natasha Turak, ‘”Huge Uncertainty’ for investors and economy as Israel’s government pushes for controversial reforms”, CNBC, March 1, 2023. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/01/israel-judicial-reforms-protests-against-netanyahu-risks-to-economy.html

[33] “Netanyahu wants to neutralize maritime border agreement with Lebanon”, The Cradle, October 31, 2022. https://thecradle.co/article-view/17614

[34] Mustafa Fahs, “Lebanon, Filling the Vacuum to Suit the Clique”, Asharq Al-Awsat March 10, 2023 – https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/4204226/mustafa-fahs/lebanon-filling-vacuum-suit-clique; Patricia Karam, “A New Model for Presidential Elections in Lebanon”, Arab Center Washington DC, March 9^th, 2023. https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/a-new-model-for-presidential-elections-in-lebanon/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Lebanese%20Constitution,simple%20majority%20in%20subsequent%20rounds.

[35] Daniel Salami, “Critics in Lebanon Say Hezbollah recognizes Israel by acknowledging maritime deal”, Ynet News October  13, 2022. https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/rkmj11qsqj

[36] Ibid.

[37] Ibid.

Are elections in Nicaragua a double-edged tool used to suppress democracy? Nicaraguan democracy has historically been affected by several civil wars and coups d’état. Among the most controversial periods are the right-wing dictatorial regime of the Somoza family (1976-1979), the Sandinista Revolution (1979-1990), and the subsequent governments of current Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. Ortega is now in his fifth term, which began in early 2022. His administration is accused of weakening and obscuring the main components of democracy through the oppression of opposition political parties, the lack of plurality in elections, the decline of freedom of expression, and several acts of corruption. This article seeks to analyze how the Ortega government has lost credibility in electoral processes. Next, it will examine how Nicaragua’s fragile democracy has transformed into semi-competitive authoritarianism, and, in turn, understand how the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), is becoming a single party. Finally, this piece will discuss the most recent presidential and legislative elections of 2021.

Competitive authoritarian regimes are hybrid regimes in which formal democratic institutions are considered the main means of gaining power, but the abuse of rules skews the playing field to such an extent that the opposition’s ability to compete is seriously compromised. It is assumed that these types of governments are competitive because the opposition can use elections in their favor. In most cases, however, this competition follows an uneven trajectory, as the autocratic leaders who govern tend to politicize state institutions such as electoral tribunals, tax institutions, and the judiciary in their favor. In Nicaragua, the Ortega government has repressed the main democratic institutions of the country, trying to silence any citizen who opposes the administration’s governance. In her interview with BBC News Mundo, Vilma Núñez, a principal human rights activist in Nicaragua, notes that “apart from the fact that the Judiciary does not have independence, Daniel Ortega has become an instrument of repression.” This reinforces the theory of academics Steven Levistsky and James Loxton when they explain that for competitive authoritarianism to be generated, the main conditions are fragile political parties and weak governmental institutions. Even so, Nicaragua is only a semi-competitive state moving towards a one-party system.

According to political scientists Freddy Quezada and Silvio Terán, an authoritarian regime such as Ortega’s conditions the competitiveness of Nicaragua’s party system. Because of this, several Nicaraguan organizations and many citizens showed apathy in the last municipal elections in 2022, and the ruling party dominated the electoral field uncontested, taking over all 153 of the mayoralties of the country. According to data from the Supreme Electoral Council of Nicaragua, the FSLN has swept the opposition since July, and there was an abstention rate of 82.7 percent of the electorate in the 2022 elections. The Ortega regime’s coercion and the fraudulent management of state institutions has involved the imprisonment of opposition politicians, presidential pre-candidates, and people who take to the streets to protest. Núñez comments that Nicaraguans “are not even sure if they are imprisoned, because their whereabouts are unknown.” Among other concerns, this casts a shadow over the professed idea of electoral competition.

The presidential and legislative elections held in Nicaragua in 2021 are the clearest example of the enormous setbacks to democracy. Urnas Abiertas is an independent multidisciplinary observatory located in the city of Managua and focuses its work on the monitoring of electoral processes and scientific research. According to its report on the 2021 elections, the FSLN used public resources for its political campaign in the elections of November 7, 2021, where President Daniel Ortega won his third consecutive re-election. It is estimated that more than 20 public institutions and 92 municipal governments were at the disposal of the ruling party helping in its campaign, and state workers collaborated with Ortega’s proselytizing lending state vehicles, technological equipment, offering benefits to voters, and more. In addition, three opposition parties — Democratic Restoration Party (PRD), Conservative Party (PC) and Citizens Party for Freedom (CxL) — were invalidated and seven candidates for the presidency were arrested without justification. A vice-presidential candidacy was also annulled. Illegal and fraudulent methods had been used to eliminate all electoral competition. It is worth emphasizing that the Supreme Electoral Council is managed by FSLN militants, which calls into question its transparency in the electoral process. To this is added the imminent repression of the media and the freedom of expression of Nicaraguan citizens that prevent the correct exercise of the vote. 

The Ortega government has lost credibility in its electoral processes because of its lack of transparency at the polls, widespread repression, and near non-existence of party competition. Nicaragua may be on the verge of becoming a personalist dictatorship, revolving around the political ambitions of not just FSLN, but Daniel Ortega and his family.

References 

[1] Levistsky Steven y Loxton James, “Populism, and competitive authoritarianism in the Andes”. 2013. Democratization Magazine vol 20, No 1, 107-136.  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13510347.2013.738864

[2] Lissardy, Gerardo.Nicaragua: “The methods of repression, the hatred, the thirst for revenge that the Ortega government demonstrates overcome the repressive actions of the Somoza dictatorship.” BBC News World. June 28, 2021. https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-57606688

[3] “Observatory accuses FSLN of using public resources in Nicaraguan elections.” SWI. December 22, 2021. https://www.swissinfo.ch/spa/nicaragua-elecciones_observatorio-acusa-al-fsln-de-usar-recursos-p%C3%BAblicos-en-comicios-de-nicaragua/47212718

[4] “Daniel Ortega’s party gets the 153 mayoralties of Nicaragua.”  The Universe. November 8, 2022. https://www.eluniverso.com/noticias/internacional/partido-de-daniel-ortega-consigue-las-153-alcaldias-de-nicaragua-nota/

[5] Quezada Freddy and Terán Silvio.  Political Parties and Social Movements in Nicaragua today. CIELAC, Interuniversity Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies Friedrich Ebert Foundation. 2005. http://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/Nicaragua/cielac-upoli/20120813015327/03partidos.pdf

[6] Urnas Abiertas, International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, Center for Political and Government Studies, Andrés Bello Catholic University.  Nicaragua elections 2021: A painful plan to end democracy. International IDEA Stromsburg -10334 Stockholm, Sweden. 2021. https://www.idea.int/sites/default/files/publications/nicaragua-elecciones-2021.pdf

In a speech delivered in November, Indian Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju, who is tasked with overseeing the judiciary, called the body’s so-called “Collegium” appointment system both “opaque” and “alien to the Constitution.” Interestingly, in the following weeks, the Supreme Court, while inspecting files following the hastened appointment of Arun Goel as the Election Commissioner, questioned the process by which he was selected by the Law Minister, raising similar issues of opacity and lack of transparency. 

Presently, the judiciary’s appointments go through the Collegium whereby the Chief Justice of India, with four senior judges, recommends appointments and transfers. Once the Collegium recommends someone, the Executive (through the President) formally appoints the judges. The sheer lack of transparency in appointments to higher courts, the lack of coherent guidelines on what determines these appointments, and the lack of accountability from any other arm of government or the broader public in the process has resulted in a judiciary that looks like an old boys’ club of upper-caste men. Despite Constitutional amendments to the system, scathing criticisms of unreasonable transfers of senior judges without elevations to Chief Justice positions or the Supreme Court, and walkouts and protests by advocates associations of its arbitrary exercise of power, the Collegium survives. 

The Election Commission (EC) has sprung into Indian discourse recently with a batch of petitions challenging the process, but it too faces issues of opacity. As per 324(2) of the Constitution, the Election Commissioners are appointed by the President, subject to any law made by the parliament in this regard, and under the guidance of the cabinet (the Executive). No checks, no guidelines, no scrutiny. 

In the last month, the appointment of the Election Commissioner has been criticized as hasty, with a “lightning speed, 24-hour procedure,” for filling a post that had been vacant for over six months. However, the appointment of Supreme Court judges has been riddled with concerns about a slow process where the Executive sits on files sent by the Collegium without approving the names of judicial appointments, leading to significant delays in the administration of justice. While the Executive has the sole power in determining the Election Commissioner (a practice currently listed for future Supreme Court review), it only has the power to send names for reconsideration in judicial appointments. 

The exclusive right to appoint an Election Commissioner, combined with a fear of judicial intervention in determining the constitutionality of the process, is perhaps why a “lightning speed” appointment was made. Conversely, the Executive has to technically clear the names sent by the Collegium for judicial appointments, if they have been re-iterated by the Collegium even after a preliminary rejection by the Executive. Instead of such a process, the Executive keeps names pending for months without clearing them, neither rejecting nor accepting them. This leads to judicial vacancies and inordinate delays in appointments. 

The Collegium system of judicial appointments is where the Executive has no role to play except for a review mechanism. In contrast, the Executive directly makes the EC appointments, which is at the heart of this issue. While these two issues are seemingly disparate, the reason for fast-tracking one process while sitting on the other ultimately boils down to a familiar concern democracies around the world have to grapple with: how can one maintain the independence of institutions like the judiciary and EC from executive influence while still retaining accountability in their functioning?

Here, it becomes crucial to appreciate the powers of these two institutions to understand the gravity of maintaining their independence. The Indian judiciary is, by some accounts, the most powerful in the world. It exercises vast executive powers through the PIL (Public Interest Litigation) system, allowing any citizen with “sufficient interest in instituting an action for redressal of public wrong” to move the court. It has extensive judicial review powers, with the power to strike down constitutional amendments if they violate the “basic structure tests,” the ability to initiate suo moto proceedings, and at times, even place stays on legislative actions absent a constitutional basis. 

The EC exercises regulatory power—it directs the number and location of polling stations, decides schedules and the number of phases required for any given election, prepares voter rolls, registers candidates and political parties, oversees the implementation of Code of Conduct rules, etc. While seemingly administrative, taken together, the number and location of booths determine the extent of voter participation, the EC’s allocation of symbols to candidates (a reform undertaken by the EC) determines how illiterate voters access the system, enforcement of the Model Code of Conduct circumscribes the nature of campaigning that can be undertaken, etc. Combined with the deferential approach of courts towards the policies on, for instance, adjudicating party symbols in case of party splits, the power exercised by the EC in electoral outcomes is undervalued but immense. They have, in many cases, been deemed co-equal, if not even greater than parliamentary law when it comes to administrative election matters. 

Thus, the executive need to wield control over these institutions is understandable. The judicial need to insulate these institutions from government influence is also appreciable. Both these institutions are expected to be politically distant to ensure a check on the legislature and run the democratic machine smoothly. However, such insulation inevitably comes at the cost of being “anti-democratic” in character since they cannot be subject to the rules of the legislature (the only arm of government that is democratically elected), when their role is to place rules on said legislature and their parliamentarians. However, as an institution becomes more opaque and less accountable to the public, it is much easier to bend backwards to the Executive when there is no formal mechanism of public scrutiny.

For instance, despite having no role to play in judicial appointments, the judiciary of the infamous Justice Rajan Gogoi was widely known to be an executive’s bench. In retrospect, this is not shocking given his position as a member of the Rajya Sabha (upper house of parliament), a near-perfect retirement under the ruling establishment. The Supreme Court has not once (across electoral bonds, the revocation of Article 370, PM Cares Covid Fund, and demonetization), actually struck down any scheme on constitutional grounds. The EC, for its part, has been mired in controversy around appointments being biased towards the ruling party, for e.g., the partial enforcement of code of conduct rules (most notably concerning Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent road rally during the Gujarat elections), biased scheduling of elections, irregularities in voter lists, and more. However, it is equally significant to illustrate the independence these institutions can exercise. When Modi dissolved the Gujarat assembly elections post the 2002 riots, the EC led by James Lyngdoh ruled out early elections in the state. 

None of this is unique to the current ruling regime. In fact, the nature of the judiciary and the EC as they stand today come from a very specific post-emergency context. It was the Congress (a national political party, and the most dominant party in the early decades of Indian independence) during TN Seshan’s term as Chief Election Commissioner (a fiercely independent head) that the structure of the EC was changed from having one head, to having two additional Election Commissioners. TN Seshan (rightly) argued that by appointing two more Election Commissioners, the then-government the government wanted to “sideline the CEC [Chief Election Commissioner] and to erode his authority so that the ruling party at the center could extract favorable orders by using the services of the newly appointed ECs”. Even the current Supreme Court Collegium system, which firmly has judicial primacy at its heart, is a product of post-emergency India, where the judiciary felt the need to rise as an institution of integrity and protect itself against Executive overreach. 

Thus, while shielding from executive influence is necessary to have independent institutions, it is hardly enough. Furthermore, the more insulated an institution like the judiciary becomes, the harder it is to hold the institution itself to any accountability when it does acquiesce to the whims of the Executive. While this is a tough tradeoff to resolve, transparency is a base-line requirement for these institutions. 

The Collegium conducted a failed experiment in transparency when it decided to publish the resolutions of collegiums concerning the appointment of judges. But since 2019, the resolutions only contain the list of nominated judges without any disclosure about who recommended whom, what considerations were taken into account, the number of people consulted, their feedback, and who concurred and dissented concerning specific appointments. Building accountability and trust must start with more precise guidelines from the Supreme Court when appointing judges or Election Commissioners, as well as public availability of Collegium and Union Law Minister meetings about such appointments. Undoubtedly, it is essential to conceptualize different systems of appointment that strike a balance between accountability and independence. However, transparency in the existing appointment processes is the first step in establishing such a balance. 

References

1. Niranjan Sahoo & Anindita Pujari, “The Indian judiciary @ 75: A crucial pillar of democracy” ORF, August 15 2022. https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/the-indian-judiciary-75-a-crucial-pillar-of-democracy/. 
2. The Mint, “The Judiciary is shifting the balance of power” The Mint, May 18, 2016 https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/lPqfldPjTc9t4aBYupFZKK/The-judiciary-is-shifting-the-balance-of-power.html. 
3. Sanjay K. Jha, “Narendra Modi’s voting spectacle in Gujarat draws fire from Congress and Mamata” The Telegraph India, December 06, 2022. https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/narendra-modis-voting-spectacle-in-gujarat-draws-fire-from-congress-and-mamata/cid/1902180.  
4. Rangin Pallav Tripathy, “Supreme Court Collegium and Transparency” Economic & Political Weekly May 29, 2021. https://www.epw.in/journal/2021/22/insight/supreme-court-collegium-and-transparency.html
5. EPW Engage, “Collegium System in the Indian Judiciary Needs to be Reformed for Greater Transparency and Accountability” https://www.epw.in/engage/article/collegium-system-indian-judiciary-needs-be#:~:text=Without%20a%20transparent%20process%20of,act%20in%20a%20transparent%20manner. 
6. Krishnadas Rajagopal, “Supreme Court questions ‘lightning speed’, 24-hour procedure appointing Arun Goel as Election Commissioner” November 24, 2022. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/supreme-court-questions-appointment-process-of-election-commissioner-arun-goel/article66177483.ece. 
7. Umang Poddar, “Interview: Why the Election Commission’s appointment is being questioned by the Supreme Court” December 02, 2022 https://scroll.in/article/1038308/interview-why-the-election-commissions-appointment-is-being-questioned-by-the-supreme-court. 
8. M Mohsin Alam Bhat, “Governing Democracy Outside the Law: India’s Election Commission and the Challenge of Accountability” Asian Journal of Comparative Law, 16 September 2022. https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/85D606E872CE3FD16077C2170621196D/S2194607821000302a.pdf/div-class-title-governing-democracy-outside-the-law-india-s-election-commission-and-the-challenge-of-accountability-div.pdf.  
9. Khosla, Madhav, Judicial Accountability and Independence (2019), 17 May 2019 Re-forming India: The Nation Today, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3374484. 
10. Atul Dev, 01 July 2019 The Caravan “In Sua Causa: What the judiciary has done to itself” https://caravanmagazine.in/law/what-judiciary-done-itself. 

Scheduled power cuts, commonly known as load-shedding , have threatened the political and economic stability of South Africa since 2008. The state-owned power utility, Eskom, attributes the roots of the energy supply crisis to a lack of resources and maintenance issues at power stations; however, it is evident that mismanagement, debt, corruption, and the lasting effects of Apartheid comprise the lethal combination of factors responsible for South Africa’s energy supply crisis. As well as hindering economic growth, load-shedding has shone a light on the inequality that has been plaguing Black South Africans since the Apartheid Era. Recently, the CEO of the embattled power enterprise has been accused of executing racist strategies which prolong periods of power outages in low-income Black informal settlements, more commonly known as townships, to extend past the proposed hours of planned load-shedding. [1] 

South Africa’s state-owned energy monopoly, Eskom, was established during the Apartheid Era in 1923 and remains responsible for all phases of electricity supply from generation of electricity to distribution. [2] During Apartheid, Eskom was able to generate all its energy from coal, an abundant resource in the country. Eskom functioned using a grid system that was created to distribute energy to geographic areas where the country’s white minority resided, thus diverting energy from historically Black areas. However, in the post-Apartheid years, demand increased due to rapid economic growth and the extension of the national electricity grid to low-income Black townships. Despite the rise in energy consumers, Eskom’s expansion was limited by poor governance and corruption. [3] When the demand for energy surpassed the supply, Eskom began to use load-shedding as a means of reducing the pressure on the power grid. Major geographic areas in South Africa are divided into different load-shedding zones and experience periods of scheduled power outages in which the entire area does not receive electricity for any period from two hours to a full day. [4] 

The current electricity inequality is a direct ramification of the policy of separate development for different racial groups under the Apartheid administration. The majority of South Africa’s Black population was forcibly relocated to informal urban settlements, commonly known as townships, on the outskirts of major cities. One such township, Soweto, emerged in the 1930s as a result of Black laborers from rural areas moving to Johannesburg to find employment. [5] Soweto’s unsystematic growth resulted in the township lacking municipal services and government infrastructure to this day. A scathing report, titled “Energy Racism: The Electricity Crisis in South Africa,” published by the Center for Sociological Research and Practice at the University of Johannesburg, lambasted Eskom for its strategies that continue the legacy of Apartheid and separate development by limiting access to electricity to low-income Black communities in the township of Soweto. [6] The effects of the scheduled power cuts are barely noticeable in wealthy, historically white-only areas. According to the report, the areas that had the most hours of load-shedding over the 30-day period in which data was taken in the South African province of Gauteng were Soweto, the West Rand and the Vaal. Soweto, where 98.5% of the residents identify as Black Africans, experienced load-shedding a staggering 29 times, while the Vaal area, where 72.7% of residents are white, experienced load-shedding a mere eight times.  [7] 

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has ordered Eskom to halt the unfair practice of targeting townships to have extended periods of no electricity compared to wealthy areas. [8] Social media users have voiced their concerns that the load reduction policy unjustly preys on low-income Black communities. Eskom has justified its strategy of prolonged load-shedding in townships by contending that it prevents the theft of electricity by means of illegal connections and vandalism of its infrastructure. [9] The company makes accusations that residents of these townships do not pay their electricity bills, despite people who live in historically white neighborhoods also defaulting on payments. A current Eskom executive who elected to remain anonymous for fear of retribution described the prolonged periods of load-shedding in townships as “indiscriminate blackouts coated as load reductions” and challenged Eskom to release data that supports their stance that there are alleged illegal connections in these areas.  [10]

Overall, load-shedding costs the South African economy over $40 million per day. [11] Electricity shortages negatively affect economic growth through the loss of production, causing damage to equipment, the spoilage of raw materials, and restart costs. Small businesses in townships such as Soweto are more heavily affected by continuous planned power cuts as they cannot afford to invest in contingency plans such as backup power generators like most of the businesses in wealthy urban areas do. Economic activity during business operating hours is limited by the lack of electricity, resulting in less income for workers who are already living below the poverty line. Extended periods of load-shedding has forced Mzee Kutta, a member of the Khayelitsha Business Forum, to close his laundry service business, which was located in the majority-Black township of Khayelitsha.   In Soweto, Most Black South Africans are uneducated, but many of those who turn to entrepreneurship to make a living have become deterred by load-shedding. [12]  The disturbance to the livelihoods of low-income Black workers is a systematic impediment that mirrors the injustices of racial capitalism perpetrated during Apartheid . [13] 

Despite this, many South Africans remain hopeful that the newly elected CEO of Eskom, Andre De Ruyter, will solve the energy crisis. De Ruyter claims he is battling to end the widespread corruption that extended from lower levels of Eskom to the senior and executive management level, particularly in procurement processes. In October 2022, De Ruyter’s predecessor was arrested and charged with corruption, fraud, and money laundering. It is estimated that over $121 million was spent granting construction contracts to unqualified businesses due to political relationships, resulting in the inefficient allocation of funds and the limitation of competition. [14] His arrest showcases progress in combatting widespread corruption in state institutions, but this will not immediately fix South Africa’s energy crisis. 

De Ruyter argues that implementing central control measures won’t solve the problem, but convictions and prosecutions will. Under De Ruyter’s control, Eskom is cooperating with South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority in order to share information that will lead to the prosecution of officials who engaged in corrupt actions such as granting tenders based on personal ties as opposed to competency. [15] 

De Ruyter approximates that South Africa will need to fork out R1.2 trillion or around $68 billion by 2030 to provide enough generation, transmission, and distribution capacity to meet the country’s growing demands. [16] As a solution to the crisis, the South African government has proposed that Eskom be divided into three separate entities each tasked with either generation, transmission, and distribution. This seems to be a viable solution, as it could result in increased competition in the energy sector, making it more efficient. However, influential labor unions have lobbied against dividing the entity out of fear it will lead to privatization and mass retrenchment. Another more expensive but costly solution is for Eskom to turn to renewable energy as an alternative form of electricity generation. However, the company is currently around $25.2 billion in debt, so this will prove a challenging feat. [17]South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has placed reforming Eskom and mitigating the energy crisis high on his agenda, but his administration has thus far failed to deliver. It is clear that South Africa’s energy crisis and electricity inequality reflect a macrocosm of the historical inequalities and economic crisis perpetuated under Apartheid. For the time being, it seems as if the country’s energy Apartheid will persist and low-income Black South Africans living in townships will be left in the dark.

 References

[1] Maggott, Terri, Siphiwe Mbatha , Claire Ceruti, Lydia Moyo , Alice Mporo , Trevor Ngwane , Cleopatra Shezi , and Luke Sinwell . Energy Racism Report: The Electricity Crisis and the Working Class in South Africa. University of Johannesburg. Accessed November 30, 2022. https://www.uj.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/energy-racism-csrp-web.pdf. 

[2]  Rathi, Anusha. “Why South Africa Is in the Dark, Again.” Foreign Policy. Foreign Policy, July 8, 2022. https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/07/08/south-africa-energy-crisis-eskom-power-cut/. 

[3]  Ibid. 

[4]  Daniels, Nicola. “Victims of Apartheid Suffer ‘Energy Racism’.” Independent Online. IOL News that Connects South Africans, April 29, 2022. https://www.iol.co.za/capetimes/news/victims-of-apartheid-suffer-energy-racism-8aa82e0a-1717-4504-bf87-806d89f03831. 

[5] De Selincourt, Kate. “South Africa Takes the Apartheid out of Power: Although More than Half the Electricity Generated in All Africa Is Produced in South Africa, Most of the Country’s Black People Have No Power Supply. but Things Are Changing.” New Scientist. New Scientist, September 6, 1991. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13117852-800/. 

[6] Maggott, Terri, Siphiwe Mbatha , Claire Ceruti, Lydia Moyo , Alice Mporo , Trevor Ngwane , Cleopatra Shezi , and Luke Sinwell . Energy Racism Report: The Electricity Crisis and the Working Class in South Africa. University of Johannesburg. Accessed November 30, 2022. https://www.uj.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/energy-racism-csrp-web.pdf. 

[7] Ibid. 

[8] Makinana, Andisiwe. “Ramaphosa Tells Eskom to Stop Targeting Townships with Prolonged Blackouts.” SowetanLIVE. SowetanLIVE, July 5, 2022. https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/south-africa/2022-07-05-ramaphosa-tells-eskom-to-stop-targeting-townships-with-prolonged-blackouts/. 

[9]  Makwakwa, Thabo. “De Ruyter’s Energy Apartheid: Eskom’s Load Shedding Policy in SA’s Townships Raises Eyebrows.” Independent Online. IOL | News that Connects South Africans, May 18, 2022. https://www.iol.co.za/dailynews/news/de-ruyters-energy-apartheid-eskoms-load-shedding-policy-in-sas-townships-raises-eyebrows-f46ac1ec-e8c7-457e-8a88-eedc26aa18a0. 

[10] Ibid. 

[11] Ibid. 

[12] McCain, Nicole. “’It Has a Ripple Effect’: Load Shedding Bringing Cape Town’s Township Businesses to Their Knees.” News24, June 30, 2022. https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/it-has-a-ripple-effect-load-shedding-bringing-cape-towns-township-businesses-to-their-knees-20220630. 

[13] Ibid. 

[14] Givetash, Linda. “South Africa’s Former Electricity Boss Charged with Corruption.” VOA. Voice of America (VOA News), October 28, 2022. https://www.voanews.com/a/south-africa-former-electricity-boss-charged-with-corruption/6809698.html. 

[15] Omarjee, Lameez. “Corruption ‘Normalised’ at Eskom, but Sending People to Prison Will Help – De Ruyter.” Business, September 1, 2022. https://www.news24.com/fin24/economy/corruption-normalised-at-eskom-but-sending-people-to-prison-will-help-de-ruyter-20220901. 

[16] Staff Writer. “South Africa Needs R1.2 Trillion to End the Energy Crisis: Eskom.” Business Tech, September 28, 2022. https://businesstech.co.za/news/energy/629270/south-africa-needs-r1-2-trillion-to-end-the-energy-crisis-eskom/. 

[17] Staff Writer. “Eskom Crisis: Why the Lights Keep Going out in South Africa.” BBC News. BBC, February 16, 2019. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-47232268. 

On January 1^st of this year, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was inaugurated as Brazil’s 39th president after an unprecedentedly close race against Jair Bolsonaro, beating him by only 0.9% of nearly 119 million votes cast  [1]. Few days after his initial address, groups of Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed the Supreme Court, the presidential palace, and the Congress. The latter has an opposition majority, forcing Mr. Lula to compromise heavily on his anti-austerity measures in one of the countries hit hardest by Covid [2], and narrowing his already tight space for maneuvering around rising inflation, as well as economic slowdowns in the US and China.

He is not the only one facing hardship. The wave of newly elected left-leaning presidents in Latin America face a region devastated by the pandemic. The daunting challenges they face in rebuilding their respective countries, like reestablishing educational standards and restarting growth, are on many leaders’ agendas. The true size of the effects is still unknown, but governments must not wait to invest in social programs and infrastructure, as the World Bank suggests [3].

In fact, the problems have affected the region so deeply and comprehensively that effective solutions may only come from joint action. It is urgent for Latin America to commit to efficient collaboration. It may be the way to break the endemic cycles that riddle the region with seemingly insurmountable problems. Isolationist narratives do not help to construct comprehensive solutions to transnational issues. Though these are never complete transformations, the trend seems to indicate that the region is poised to re-engage regional cooperation in a renewed way. Hopefully a new type of undertaking is achieved through a renewed commitment: it may be the only way for Latin America to turn its fate around. 

Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s new president, is the newest member of the “Pink Wave” of democratically-elected left-leaning presidents across Latin America. It includes six of the largest economies in the region. All throughout the continent, different styles of left have risen to power over the last decade, most notably since 2018 with Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador. These ideological differences run deep, however. Newer electees, like Mr. Boric and Mr. Petro, have more internationalist views, with a strong emphasis on social justice and environmentalism. Others, like Peru’s Pedro Castillo and Bolivia’s Evo Morales, are heavy-handed leaders with an isolationist focus on nationalization. The latter includes dictatorships, such as Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, and former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa [4]. 

There is not a real dichotomy between the two groups. Mr. Obrador has shown enthusiasm for fossil fuels, as has Brazil’s former president (and now poll-leading candidate) [5]. The latter’s views on abortion have been forced by the Evangelical voter base to be considerably more cautious than his progressive counterpart in Chile. Other differences include the degree at which constitutional reforms are applied, from a potential power-grab in Peru to the meticulous Lula ex-presidency. 

All these differences make for a fragmented region in a time when cooperation is of utmost importance. Latin America has been constantly assailed by social, economic, and political crises, all of which were exacerbated with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, being one of the most affected regions. This overlaps with two other crises: economic contractions and a continuous degradation of democratic institutions [6]. 

Trouble in Regional Organizations

Discord runs high in the region’s foremost cooperation agency, the Organization of American States (OAS). Poor leadership, rampant attacks on the organization’s most prestigious branches, as Venezuela’s and Honduras’s assault on the human rights commission, and hesitant support from other members in upholding the institution have caused one of the worst institutional crises in the OAS’s history. Rattled by opportunism and political antagonism, genuine interest in regional cooperation has been fragmented into a plethora of blocs that has rendered chances of cooperation null [7]. 

These issues are not products of simple miscommunication. Nationalist agendas in key countries such as Mexico and Brazil hamper efforts to build significant relations beyond simple market accords. As social unhappiness grows, countries are keen on deflecting blame to their neighbors, and have been negligent in being inflammatory during times of domestic unrest, which has been rampant throughout the region. Tension caused by approaches to pandemic contention created yet another point of difficulty [8]. All these are further increased as public support falls apart, with an already low trust in institutions. 

Transnational Issues 

Historically, Latin America has had an insidious problem of external debt. The events leading up to the infamous “lost decade” and its catastrophic subsequent restructurings have solidified a vicious cycle where an inability to develop industry, and the dependence on extractive industries, cause a need to have a deficit trading balance [9].  As long as there are more imports than exports, the region will maintain an external debt, and its monetary debilitation means that debts are harder to pay [10]. 

A variety of trading blocs have been cropped up in the last decades, like Mercosur and the Pacific Alliance, which focus on intraregional liberalization of both goods and people. Other organizations, like FEALAC and CELAC, have served as vehicles of interregional engagement [11]. Though these are proof of a degree of cooperation, they are not stalwart in their operation, and are quick to be paralyzed in the face of crisis and disagreement, resulting in disjointed periods of interest with little continuing goals [12].

Economic integration makes part of a complex array of transnational phenomena that has manifested in immense challenges for each individual leadership. Evidently, these can only be comprehensively approached transnationally. Migration is a destabilizing agent and an unpredictable force. Rebuilding a resilient health system is another challenge, especially in the light of migration and the pandemic. Security, as well as democracy and human rights, will be high on the priority lists as steep increases in violent crime undo the decrease of political violence, and as the responsible actors operate across borders. Economic integration, both within themselves and in the context of larger geopolitical actors like China , intrinsically needs to be addressed transnationally. Finally, the challenge to American hegemony in the region with China’s increased interest –and welcoming– in Latin America [13] will looming above all presidential offices, including Washington. 

Going Forward 

Not all hope is lost, however. With all its shortcomings, the bases for cooperation are set in most relevant areas for regional integration: jurisdiction, trade, health, and security. Organizations in these areas have a long history of successful cooperation, both in achieving larger economic ends and in defusing tensions within the region, and countries have followed a trend of coming to increasingly shared goals by which depolarization can happen. 

Though historically quarrelsome among themselves, the Latin American countries have a much greater sense of cultural unity than elsewhere. Traditions usually transcend borders, with an Incan past painting large swathes of the Andean states and a vast majority of Roman Catholics (up to 90% of the Latin American population) [14]. This is true in a historical sense too: South American countries, for example, share a Bolivarian independentist root, a cause that has bound the nations together. 

Despite their many deficiencies, what is most encouraging about these organizations is that they show that the groundwork for a heightened stable connection exists. All the relevant areas of regional integration have established commissions: trade, security, health, and politics. 

New leaders show enthusiasm to work with others in the region. Mr. Obrador has shown a break from his cold relations with Latin American leaders as Mr. Boric and Mr. Petro have expressed looking forward to working together with him [15]. Furthermore, ideologically different leaders such as Mr. Castillo and Bolivia’s Luis Arce were included in these statements, showing promise for amendments in the region’s fragmented face [16].

Prospects

Streamlining the operations of organizations like CELAC will help alleviate the region’s pressures in many ways, among them increasing reliance among neighboring countries and taking load out of domestic policy and relations with other foreign powers. This is particularly important in the midst of a change of the international order, and as Latin American countries are being forced to choose between spheres of influence. 

Moreover, being on the same page can provide the opportunity to show a more cohesive interest towards the larger international community. It can increase the weight of Latin American countries’ demands when setting multilateral agreements, like NAFTA, such that they represent their comparative advantages more accurately. 

Cooperation is a key tool for Latin American countries to face up to a renewed set of challenges. Establishing diplomatic synergy has proved difficult in the past, but perhaps the Pink Wave will reposition the continent more favorably. It is necessary that countries overcome narratives of isolation to break the economically unhealthy cycles that have been worsened by the pandemic. It may even be the case that opportunities to emerge arise from this: times of crisis are times of extra possibility. 

References

[1] Person, & Brian Ellsworth, L. P. (2022, October 31). Lula narrowly defeats Bolsonaro to win Brazil presidency again. Reuters. Retrieved February 3, 2023, from https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-votes-heated-bolsonaro-vs-lula-presidential-runoff-2022-10-30/ 

[2] Acosta-Ormaechea, Santiago, Ilan Goldfajn, and Jorge Róldos. “Latin America Faces Unusually High Risks.” IMF Blog. International Monetary Fund, April 26, 2022. https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2022/04/26/blog-latin-america-faces-unusually-high-risks

[3] Latin America and Caribbean Overview: Development news, research, data. (2022, October 7). World Bank. Retrieved February 3, 2023, from https://www.worldbank.org/en/region/lac/overview

[4] “A New Group of Left-Wing Presidents Takes over in Latin America.” The Economist. March 12, 2022. https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2022/03/12/a-new-group-of-left-wing-presidents-takes-over-in-latin-america. 

[5] The Economist. “Left-Wing Presidents.” 

[6] Merke, Federico, Oliver Stuenkel, and Andreas E. Feldmann. “Reimagining Regional Governance in Latin America.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 24, 2021. https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/06/24/reimagining-regional-governance-in-latin-america-pub-84813. 

[7] Merke et al., “Regional Governance.”

[8] Merke et al., “Regional Governance.”

[9] Sims, Jocelyn. “Latin American Debt Crisis of the 1980s.” United States Federal Reserve System. November 22, 2013. https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/latin-american-debt-crisis. 

[10] Jaramillo, Carlos Felipe, and Marcelo Estevão. “Latin America Isn’t at Risk of a 1980s-Style Crisis (but an Era of Missed Opportunities Looms).” World Bank. August 29, 2022. https://blogs.worldbank.org/voices/latin-america-isnt-risk-1980s-style-crisis-era-missed-opportunities-looms. 

[11] “Latin American and Caribbean Regional Organisations.” Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Accessed October 23, 2022. https://www.dfat.gov.au/international-relations/regional-architecture/latin-american-regional-organisations#community. 

[12] Merke et al., “Regional Governance.”

[13] Merke et al., “Regional Governance.”

[14] “Christians,” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, Pew Research Center. 18 December, 2022.

[15] Torrado, Santiago, and Manetto, Francesco. “El Triunfo De Gustavo Petro En Colombia Afianza El Camino De La Nueva Izquierda Latinoamericana.” El País Colombia. June 19, 2022. https://elpais.com/america-colombia/elecciones-presidenciales/2022-06-19/el-triunfo-de-gustavo-petro-en-colombia-afianza-el-camino-de-la-nueva-izquierda-latinoamericana.html. 

[16] The Economist. “Left-Wing Presidents.” 

“If the Olive Trees knew the hands that planted them, their oil would become tears”– Mahmoud Darwish 

Olive Oil and Life

Olive trees have been a key component of the Palestinian economy for years. From the famous Palestinian olive oil to soaps and other holistic uses, the olive tree has been used as a natural remedy all across the world. Remarkably, olive trees contribute to 14% of Palestine’s economy.¹ Since agriculture is the foundation of Palestinian exports, the production of these goods provides the population with the sustenance and support it needs. Family-owned farms carry the responsibility for cultivating the trees and pressing the thousands of olives yearly for exportation. With the already high unemployment rate, it’s crucial to maintain these farms as they are the primary source of income for about 800,000 Palestinian families.² Beyond the monetary value, olive trees have become symbolic of Palestinians attachment to their land. The trees are drought resistant and grow under harsh conditions. Many olive trees date to centuries prior to the Israeli occupation. These trees are a living reminder of resilience and their presence continues to exemplify the Palestinian plight.  

Ripping Out Roots

Since 1967, more than 800,000 Palestinian olive trees have been illegally uprooted by the Israeli authority.³ In August 2021 alone, more than 9,000 have been removed, and on February 9th2020, 50 olive trees were forcefully uprooted and destroyed in the occupied West Bank region of Salfit.⁴ These unprecedented attacks are mainly due to the ongoing expansion of settlements in the West Bank, which are encroaching on the livelihood of Palestinian families. Oftentimes these trees are burned in front of the families, violently ending their livelihood. Beyond physically destroying thousands of trees, Palestinian farmers face several obstacles while harvesting, such as acquiring permits. In 2020, only 24% of land access permits were approved, making it nearly impossible for Palestinian farmers to access farming land year-round.⁵ In the instances when permits are issued, they need to be renewed often with no guarantee of approval. Additionally, militarized Israeli forces restrict water access for the trees. Calculated attacks and vandalization of trees especially spike during the harvesting season.

Environmental Consequences

The environmental consequences of the deforestation of olive trees are devastating. In any context, the removal of trees is directly linked to irreversible climate change, soil erosion, and a reduction in crops. The perennial, woody bark acts as a carbon sink. According to the International Olive Council, the olive tree absorbs 11 kg of CO₂ per liter of olive oil produced.⁶ Uprooting Palestinian olive trees leads to a subsequent increase in food insecurity, aesthetic degradation, and loss of vegetation. All of these result in the catastrophic decline in the livelihood of Palestinians. Israeli courts have failed to provide environmental justice for Palestinians, ultimately further oppressing Palestinian presence in occupied territories. 

Power and Poverty

The destruction and restriction of Palestinian olive trees acts as a method of economic control leveled by Israel. By clearing out groves of trees, Israel has access to more acres of land for further expansion of occupation. Socio-economic impacts include, but are not limited to, greater crime rates, land dispossession, increased police presence, and more. Not only do Palestinians lose the cultural practice of olive agriculture, but they continue to endure a clear violation of their human rights. Just in November 2022, Israeli forces uprooted and destroyed 2,000 olive trees in the Palestinian village of Qarawat Bani Hassan.⁷ It is apparent that Palestinian agriculture will continue to suffer at the hands of the Israeli government, and Israeli forces have no intention of stopping this brutal campaign against olive trees so long as the occupation persists. 

Rebuilding Lost Roots

Despite the decay in olive tree production, non-governmental organizations work alongside Palestinians to rebuild their lost agriculture. However, it can take up to 20 years for an olive tree to grow back and up to an additional 20 years for it to begin bearing fruit.⁸ It’s becoming certain that farmers who lose their trees will be unable to see another harvest in their lifetime. Families continue to lament over the loss of their land, losing thousands of years of historical practices passed through generations. As more Palestinians move towards non-agricultural jobs, uncertainty looms for the future of the olive tree as these agricultural traditions are unable to be passed down. The fate of the olive tree continues to be undetermined, but one thing is necessary: reducing the restrictions and systemic attacks projected onto Palestinian agriculture. Until then, the olive tree will continue to be threatened by Israel’s steady acquisition of the West Bank territory. 

References

[1]“Occupied Palestinian Territory Emergency Appeal 2021 – Occupied Palestinian Territory.” ReliefWeb, March 2, 2021. https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/occupied-palestinian-territory-emergency-appeal-2021. 

[2]“Olive Trees – More than Just a Tree in Palestine Olive Trees Carry More …” Accessed February 10, 2023. http://www.miftah.org/Doc/Factsheets/Miftah/English/factsheet-OliveTrees.pdf. 

[3]Haddad, Mohammed, and Zena Al Tahhan. “Infographic: Palestine’s Olive Industry.” Infographic News | Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera, October 14, 2021. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/14/infographic-palestines-olive-industry#:~:text=The%20olive%20and%20olive%20oil,million%20olive%20trees%20(PDF).

[4]Ibrahim, Noor. “Why the West Bank Olive Harvest Is a Flashpoint for Conflict.” Time. Time, November 1, 2019. https://time.com/5714146/olive-harvest-west-bank/. 

[5]“Israeli Forces Uproot 2,000 Olive Trees in the West Bank.” Middle East Eye. Accessed February 10, 2023. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-forces-uproot-olive-trees-west-bank. 

[6]“Increased Restrictions on Access to Agricultural Land behind the Barrier.” United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs – occupied Palestinian territory. Accessed February 10, 2023. https://www.ochaopt.org/content/increased-restrictions-access-agricultural-land-behind-barrier. 

[7]“The Hidden Beauty of the Plants That Feed the World.” National Geographic, September 23, 2021. https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conservation/2021/09/the-hidden-beauty-of-the-plants-that-feed-the-world.

[8] Ibid., “Israeli Forces”.

[9] “How Fast Do Olive Trees Grow?” Hunker. Accessed February 10, 2023. https://www.hunker.com/13404829/how-fast-do-olive-trees-grow. 

[10] Haddad and Al Tahhan. “Infographic: Palestine’s Olive Industry.” Infographic News | Al Jazeera.

Sports and politics have always gone together, especially when the event is as global as the world cup. While most people believe in football’s reforming power in terms of human rights, diversity, and unity, there is a long-known problematic duo revolving around the structure of FIFA: corruption and conspiracy. The implications for the diplomatic world might be far more significant than expected. 

With Qatar hosting more than 1.4 million football fans in the 2022 FIFA World Cup, it is as if the world is shifting towards a new epicentre of global and financial power, the Middle East. [1,2] It comes as no surprise after the well-known English team Manchester City was bought by a United Arab Emirates-led group or after Newcastle United was bought by a Saudi Arabia-led consortium. [3] The sudden interest of the Middle East in the close-knit football community can be justified—Qatar had never qualified for the World Cup finals after all—but what made the mainly Europe-dominated sport admit such foreign influence?

Indeed, it is a matter of diplomacy. Qatar spent hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure for the tournament, more than all previous countries combined, to prove its wealth and attract global attention. [4] It is also the first country in the Middle East to host the World Cup. It represents not only itself but also countries in the region as a whole. [5] Football is perhaps one of the few sports that has this uniting power over the Arab world, and unity certainly seems like a noble goal. Yet two questions remain: why was Qatar chosen to host and is there a clash between the progressive West and the conservative Middle East in such a decision?

Women

To the Western world gender equality has been an issue for centuries, but in the Muslim reality of Qatar, women only got the right to vote in 1999. [6] That is not even the whole story—women in Qatar are still required under Sharia law to ask for permission to go anywhere or to work from their male guardian, usually a father, brother, or husband. [7] Perhaps it is simply part of their culture, and the Western world ought to respect that. This should not be a problem for foreign women, who are allowed to watch the World Cup, but it might be a question of moral principles rather than respecting the host country. There is a thin line between the two that is mitigated by diplomacy. 

Why would this be even an issue for the majority of football fans, when law in Qatar does not even prohibit men and women to stay together in a hotel? In order to obtain a visa, foreign nationals must have a similar male guardian as much as Qatar claims that women’s access to the World Cup will not be restricted. [8] To that end, the Qatar World Cup CEO Nassar al Khater said that “In Qatar, we have no restrictions on women’s access to stadiums. They have been attending matches for a long time.” According to him, there were even three female referees moderating the games. [9] The most obvious conclusion is that a clash between cultures is unavoidable—the religious law that binds the Middle East might seem oppressive to the Western mind, but it is only through understanding from both sides that events like the World Cup are possible—and progress for that matter.

Homosexuality

At the same time, homosexuality is illegal in Qatar—and can even lead to a death sentence. [10] On that matter, a former Qatari football player Khalid Salman in an interview claimed that homosexuality is forbidden because “it is damage to the mind,” and the interview was stopped right after by an official representative. [11] Allegedly, no football fan would be discriminated against during the World Cup, but Labour MP Luke Pollard asked for an official apology on behalf of the Qatari government for oppressing the expression of homosexuality; [12] this came as a response to foreign secretary James Cleverly asking for mutual respect on both ends. [13] That is not to say that either side is correct, but this is a clear situation when football is most of all about making a point, political or otherwise. In a similar manner, the captains of prominent football teams stood up in order to make a point—the importance of diversity and inclusion:

“The captains of England, Wales, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland had intended to wear the OneLove rainbow armband to promote diversity and inclusion at the World Cup.” [14]

But this did not happen, right after FIFA announced that players who wear these bands would be penalised. [15] At this point, the issue revolves around human rights—whether it is about discrimination towards women before the law and practice or towards members of the LGBTQ+ community, who “can be arrested, imprisoned, and even sentenced to death if they take part in same-sex sexual activity.” [16] Football is about unity now more than ever and stands for values well-supported by leading diplomatic organisations and activists: respect for diversity, inclusion, and humanity. However, just like anything else, it is not as simple and as idealistic as that. 

Immigrant Workers

More than any other World Cup, the 2022 Qatar was about human rights or perhaps the violation thereof. Considering the high temperatures in the host country during summer, the World Cup had to be rescheduled to the winter months. This was particularly controversial since it interfered with top European club schedules and leagues. [17] This meant the massive infrastructure that had to be built was constructed entirely in summer during the extreme weather conditions of the predominantly desert nation—it led to significant health consequences for the immigrant workers that were hired for the construction of seven stadiums and hotels (highest FIFA standards). [18] Taken to the extreme, thousands of workers have died in the construction process due to poor living conditions, lack of sanitation, exhaustion, droughts, and work hazard. [19]

“Human Rights Watch, for instance, highlighted abuses among South Asian workers in Qatar as the World Cup opened. The State Department, in its latest human rights report, cited ongoing illegal forced labor in Qatar and noted construction at “FIFA World Cup-related facilities continued despite crowded worksites and the high risk of COVID-19 transmission.” CNN has not independently confirmed previous reports that thousands of migrant workers have died in Qatar since it was awarded the World Cup in 2010.” [20]

While Qatar wants to attract global attention to the region and gain from tourism in the future, basic human rights of the immigrant workers have not been met, and there is nothing FIFA can do about it despite its constant monitoring. The project cannot be finished without an enormous amount of work, and it is simply difficult to provide living conditions for so many workers; in FIFA’s perspective, there is also no way to move the World Cup to another country in time, and Qatar has already invested the money, so why bother? The immigrant workers have no other place to go and are required to stay under a contract until the construction is finished; [21] their salary oftentimes cannot even cover the rent they are required to pay for a place that is in no way suited for inhabitation—thus, many workers became indebted to Qatar. [22]

Why Qatar?

Perhaps Qatar was chosen to host the 2022 World Cup for no other reason other than the 220 billion dollars they promised to invest. [23] But Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA, in his speech after Qatar was chosen thanked everyone for believing in change. [24] Diversity might be good for the future of football, which continues to be Europe-centred—it is a sport for everyone after all regardless of their background. It is a sport of opportunities and political reform even if it is nothing more than a tangent to the diplomatic world. 

“For instance, Iranian players declined to sing their national anthem in their opening game against England on Monday, in a possible protest about the violent suppression of dissent rocking the Islamic Republic.” [25]

Or let’s think about political statements made otherwise by FIFA president Gianni Infantino about the hypocrisy of ex-colonialist European nations: “Today I feel Qatari. Today I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel a migrant worker.” [26]

The global scale of football, global interest and investment simply cannot make the sport impartial to politics and diplomacy—why haven’t Turkey and China been able to qualify for the World Cup in more than two decades even though they have certainly tried? [27]

Qatar is one such nation that has tried to break the norm, to enter the otherwise exclusive world of European football—it has tried to promote itself and the region in the process just to realise their goal through immoral means. 

REFERENCES

[1]  “Qatar Hosts More than 1.4 Million Visitors during FIFA World CupTM | Qatar 2022TM.” Qatar 2022, https://www.qatar2022.qa/en/news/qatar-hosts-more-than-one-million-visitors-during-fifa-world-cup#:~:text=More%20than%201.4%20million%20fans,FIFA%20World%20Cup%202022%E2%84%A2. Accessed 8 Jan. 2023.
[2]  Collinson, Stephen. “How Politics in the World Cup Explain the Modern World | CNN.” CNN, CNN, 23 Nov. 2022, https://edition.cnn.com/2022/11/23/world/world-cup-politics-modern-world-analysis/index.html.
[3] Collinson  
[4] “Qatar 2022: Controversy, Corruption, and the Cup | VideoLab | ABC News.” YouTube, YouTube, 28 Oct. 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N240i1DZwso.
[5] ABC News
[6] Howse, Imogen. “Qatar Human Rights: 2022 World Cup Host’s Record Explained – How Women, LGBTQ+ People and Migrants Are Treated.” National Wide, National Wide, 20 Nov. 2022, https://www.nationalworld.com/sport/football/world-cup/qatar-human-rights-record-explained-2022-world-cup-women-lgbtq-people-migrants-3924038.
[7] Howse
[8] Howse
[9] Howse
[10] Howse
[11] “Qatar World Cup Ambassador Says Homosexuality Is ‘damage in the Mind’ | Reuters.” Reuters, Reuters, 8 Nov. 2022, https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/qatar-world-cup-ambassador-says-homosexuality-is-damage-mind-2022-11-08/.
[12] Howse
[13] Howse
[14]  Knox, Olivier, and Caroline Anders. “At the World Cup, Politics Shares the Spotlight with the Matches – The Washington Post.” Washington Post, The Washington Post, 22 Nov. 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/22/world-cup-politics-shares-spotlight-with-matches/.
[15] Knox and Anders
[16] Howse
[17] Howse
[18] ABC News
[19] ABC News
[20] Collinson
[21]  Pattisson, Pete. “Migrant Workers in Qatar Left in Debt after Being Ordered Home before World Cup Starts | Qatar | The Guardian.” The Guardian, The Guardian, 22 Sept. 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/sep/22/migrant-workers-in-qatar-left-in-debt-after-being-ordered-home-before-world-cup-starts.
[22] Pattisson
[23] ABC News
[24] ABC News
[25] Collinson
[26] Collinson
[27]  FP Contributors. “The Geopolitics of the World Cup, Past and Present.” Foreign Policy, Foreign Policy, 20 Nov. 2022, https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/11/20/fifa-world-cup-2022-qatar-soccer-tournament-geopolitics/.

The growing crisis between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Myanmar has evolved into a test case as to whether the ‘ASEAN Way’ of non-interference and quiet backroom diplomacy can remain this organization’s abiding policy. Pressure is growing from human rights bodies and member states themselves for ASEAN to assume a more active role in the ongoing conflict in Myanmar, and its relative silence has raised questions about the future of the organization. While many insist ASEAN needs to take a firmer stance to avoid being sidelined, the immense regional diversity and need for consensus-building is a strong case for ASEAN to continue the status quo of neutrality in response to such a polarizing question.  

ASEAN’s recent troubles in Myanmar began in 2017 with the beginning of the Rohingya genocide, when 370,000 Rohingya Muslims fled to neighboring Bangladesh. Hundreds of thousands more turned eastward towards their ASEAN neighbors. The situation worsened in 2021, as a military junta ousted the democratically elected government in Myanmar in a coup. Myanmar faced a legitimacy crisis between this military regime and the opposing National Unity Government (NUG), which formed from ousted lawmakers. International pressure has escalated, as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights described the events as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”^[1] ASEAN also faced an extremely divisive issue: refugees were straining fellow ASEAN nations, and the cruel treatment of Muslims outraged the largely Muslim states, particularly Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. Both external international pressure and internal demands insisted that ASEAN respond decisively. 

Those calling for action stressed not only the numerous humanitarian and refugee concerns, but the potential crisis of legitimacy regarding ASEAN itself. Kavi Chongkittavorn, former special assistant to the ASEAN secretary-general, stated that “ASEAN credibility and its international standing would be severely tarnished if ASEAN remains indifferent to the Rakhine [region with large Rohingya population] crisis.”^[2] Over 150 international organizations signed an open letter demanding action in Myanmar, noting “with disappointment the failure of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations” and calling into question the organization’s effectiveness and purpose.^[3]

As alternative multilateral fora pick up the slack, ASEAN’s reputation becomes further weakened. The International Labor Organization (ILO) has condemned the junta’s behavior and established a commission of inquiry into failing to uphold the 1930 Forced Labor Convention, with precedent of this leading to the organization cutting ties.^[4] Critics emphasize that the passive ‘ASEAN Way’ is advancing down the path of obscurity, and that only a firmer stance against Myanmar’s atrocities would return credibility to the organization.

In fact, ASEAN has made some minor efforts against Myanmar. A few months after army chief Min Aung Hlaing seized control of Myanmar in February 2021, he was invited to an ASEAN conference in Jakarta. There, the Association proposed a “Five-Point Consensus” to bring peace to Myanmar, calling for constructive negotiations and setting reconciliatory terms such as the immediate cessation of violence.^[5] Just two days later, Myanmar’s military junta announced that ASEAN’s suggestions would only be heard “when the situation returns to stability,” and that restoring law and order remained the priority.^[6] Owing to their failure to implement the Five-Point Consensus, representatives of Myanmar’s military government were not invited to the annual ASEAN leaders’ summit in October 2021 or November 2022.^[7] While a diplomatic snub of this sort was unprecedented in this allegedly neutral organization, disinvitations have little real impact and ASEAN’s de facto failure to implement the Five Points has wounded their authority. 

The picture painted of ASEAN as ineffectual and detrimentally neutral, observed most acutely in the Myanmar crisis, is a reoccurring one. Opponents of ASEAN’s behavior stress how much the organization could do given their economic integration, and therefore highlight the potential impact of ASEAN sanctions on Myanmar.^[8] They have also pointed out that ASEAN’s supposed unanimity of decision-making is more flexible than it looks, and the body could take stronger action. As international humanitarian and political pressure has mounted and the influx of refugees causes domestic strife, ASEAN member-states are increasingly unified against Myanmar. Even Cambodia, whose Prime Minister Hun Sen deflected criticism of the military regime and was the first foreign leader to visit Myanmar after the coup, has turned against the junta and continued the policy of disinvitation to ASEAN summits under their chairmanship.^[9] It is unlikely, however, that Cambodia’s decision was based on any real change of heart, and that the pressure of the West and other ASEAN members to isolate Myanmar are the real cause of this disinvitation.^[10] Nevertheless, it does suggest that ASEAN resolve against Myanmar’s military government is growing.

Another approach ASEAN could take to assume a more active role in the conflict is to recognize Aung San Suu Kyi’s NUG as the legitimate government of Myanmar. There is precedent for this. In the UN General Assembly, Myanmar continues to be represented by the NUG, not the military; it is possible for ASEAN to do the same. Moreover, ASEAN could suspend Myanmar’s membership altogether, although this exclusionary proposal was shot down in a 2022 summit discussion.^[11]

However, these strategies to punish Myanmar ignore just how unwelcome such precedents would be among some fellow ASEAN states. Thailand, Laos and Cambodia have pushed back against isolating Myanmar, with Thailand emerging as the junta’s closest ASEAN ally. Despite the state’s struggle to host over 90,000 Myanmar refugees, Thailand insists on a policy of quiet diplomacy and has avoided overt criticism of the military government.^[12] Bangkok has good reason to preserve the principle of neutrality towards member states: Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha himself first came to power after a 2014 coup, and Thailand also sees deadly fighting between Buddhists and Muslims. From Bangkok’s perspective, a punitive response to Myanmar from ASEAN today could similarly be inflicted on Thailand tomorrow. Laos and Cambodia share analogous sympathies. 

ASEAN members represent vastly diverging political regimes and religious majorities, from the socialist dictatorship of Vietnam to the west-leaning city-state of Singapore; from Buddhist Thailand to Muslim Indonesia, or the Christian Philippines. Holding this multifarious organization together is a challenge, and ASEAN has been successful precisely because its decisions describe the region’s lowest common denominator. This does not imply that ASEAN is ineffective; efforts towards economic integration and successfully negotiated trade agreements has prompted some ASEAN members to emerge as the fastest developing states in the world. Economic success has in turn conferred legitimacy on state leaders: “economic growth remains a central basis of political legitimacy in the ASEAN states,” as scholars Amitav and Iain Johnson wrote in Crafting Cooperation (2007).^[13]

ASEAN resists foreign interference in the area, which had so scarred the region in the 1960s. The organization also successfully ratified the Southeast Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty to prevent the production or stationing of nuclear weapons among members. These are tangible successes in trade and security for which ASEAN should take pride, and testaments to the power of regional consensus-building as a means to avoid division and act for the best of the entire multi-state area. Allowing ASEAN to interfere actively with its members in violation of the backseat ‘ASEAN Way’ runs the risk of politicizing and dividing a region that has flourished through cooperation. Other bodies, such as the UN, are more suited to addressing international political disputes; politicization is encroaching into ASEAN, but for many remains unwelcome.

The Myanmar crisis is the toughest threat to ASEAN unity in modern history. Whether ASEAN’s traditional neutrality and non-interference will survive is unclear, but those who demand ASEAN take a tougher stance on Myanmar should not forget the schism this might cause between member states.

ASEAN is not the EU; it is a thinner organization that prides itself on not meddling in the affairs of its members. Its decisions usually represent the limited consensus achievable among such diverse states. This behavior is frequently presented as a recipe for failure, as in the case of Myanmar, but this perspective overlooks how heterogeneous ASEAN is: it is an association of rich and poor, democratic and authoritarian, socialist republics and monarchies. Once the door is opened for states to criticize and compel one another, ASEAN’s divisions could dissolve the organization, undoing the economic and security integration that has so far marked ASEAN’s valuable, if cautious, success. 

References

^[1] “UN human rights chief points to ‘textbook example of ethnic cleansing’ in Myanmar.” UN News. September 11, 2017. https://news.un.org/en/story/2017/09/564622-un-human-rights-chief-points-textbook-example-ethnic-cleansing-myanmar

^[2] John Geddie and Thu Thu Aung. “Rohingya Crisis, Suu Kyi Under the Microscope at Southeast Asia Summit.” US News. November 8, 2018. https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2018-11-08/rohingya-crisis-suu-kyi-under-the-microscope-at-southeast-asia-summit

^[3]  “Global Civil Society Statement on Myanmar.” Human Rights Watch. May 5, 2021. https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/05/05/global-civil-society-statement-myanmar

^[4] “Commission of Inquiry for Myanmar holds its first session.” International Labour Organisation. September 2, 2022. https://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_854807/lang–en/index.htm  

^[5] “ASEAN demands ‘immediate cessation of violence’ in Myanmar.” Aljazeera News. April 24, 2021. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/24/myanmar-coup-leader-in-jakarta-for-southeast-asian-summit

^[6] “Press Release on ASEAN Leader’s Meeting.” Information Team of State Administrative Council. April 26, 2021. https://www.burmalibrary.org/sites/burmalibrary.org/files/obl/GNLM2021-04-27-red.pdf

^[7] Sebastian Strangio. “Myanmar’s Junta Chief Not Invited to ASEAN Summit, Cambodia Confirms.” The Diplomat. October 6, 2022. https://thediplomat.com/2022/10/myanmars-junta-chief-not-invited-to-asean-summit-cambodia-confirms/

^[8] Minn Tent Bo. “The Rift Between ASEAN and Myanmar’s Democracy Movement is Growing Wider.” The Diplomat. November 16, 2022. https://thediplomat.com/2022/11/the-rift-between-asean-and-myanmars-democracy-movement-is-growing-wider/

^[9] Sebastian Strangio. “Cambodian Government Defends PM’s Myanmar Trip, Hails ‘Positive’ Outcomes.” The Diplomat. January 10, 2022. https://thediplomat.com/2022/01/cambodian-government-defends-pms-myanmar-trip-hails-positive-outcomes/

^[10] Jack Detsch. “Cambodia Blacklists Myanmar From an ASEAN Meeting.” Foreign Policy. November 21, 2022. https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/11/21/cambodia-blacklists-myanmar-asean-meeting-coup-violence/

^[11] David Rising and Sopheng Cheang. “Southeast Asian Leaders Struggle With Questions of Myanmar Violence.” The Diplomat. November 11, 2022. https://thediplomat.com/2022/11/southeast-asian-leaders-struggle-with-question-of-myanmar-violence/

^[12] Tita Sanglee. “Explaining Thailand’s Quiet Diplomacy in Myanmar.” The Diplomat. December 22, 2021. https://thediplomat.com/2021/12/explaining-thailands-quiet-diplomacy-in-myanmar/

^[13] Amitav Acharya and Alastair Iain Johnston. Crafting Cooperation: regional international institutions in comparative perspective. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) 50.