Archive for the ‘liberia’ tag
A Story of Liberia #
I’ve of two minds on this story from today’s New York Times Magazine. On the one hand, Helene Cooper is a captivating writer who tell a compelling story of both Liberia and her family. On the other, the excerpt feels like an excerpt and left me mostly wishing that they’d published the book and not a part of it. If you can accept that the story ends too abruptly, and that the book won’t be out until September, I do recommend it.
The Good News in Africa #
Given the ongoing mess in Sudan, the recent chaos in Chad, the shambles of Zimbabwe, and the still-fragile situation in Kenya, it easy to see Africa as a hopeless case. In the Washington Post, Craig Timberg points to the great steps forward that have been made in western Africa in the last decade.
Reborn as well, over the past decade, has been democracy itself here in Ghana and among its neighbors along West Africa’s Atlantic coast. From Sierra Leone east to Nigeria, stability and at least a tentative version of multiparty politics have begun taking hold after many years of coups, military dictatorships and civil war.
(via UN Dispatch)
Justice for Dictators #
In the wake of Charles Taylor — former president of Liberia — going on trial at The Hague, The Economist points to a very hopeful trend: an end to the peaceful and blameless retirement that too many third-world strong men have too long gotten and taken for granted.
However brutal or corrupt, Africa’s leaders used to shield one another from justice for fear that their turn could come next. But the remarkable spread of international justice over the past decade has brought about an equally remarkable change in attitudes towards prosecuting former heads of state, not just in Africa but throughout the world. No fewer than ten former presidents and military dictators are facing legal proceedings for human-rights offences and/or corruption, some in international tribunals, others in their own domestic courts, a few in other countries’ courts.
If you prefer video, Mark Goldberg and Mark Vlassic ably discuss the same topic in this episode of Bloggingheads.