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1. Timeline: Politicization of Sexuality

Author:
Meehyun Nam- Thompson
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
While international organizations and governments move to expand equality for all—regardless of sexual orientation—recent global developments threaten this progress. The timeline begins at a pivotal moment, the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York, widely regarded as a catalyst for the modern LGBT movement. Stonewall is considered the first instance of community solidarity against systematic, state-sponsored persecution of sexual minorities. While the struggle has been ongoing, the most significant developments have occurred in the last 25 years, including expansion of voting rights, social welfare benefits, and political power. We end our timeline, however, with a disturbing new trend—the passage of homophobic legislation in Africa, South Asia, and Russia.
Political Geography:
Africa, Russia, New York, South Asia, and Asia

2. South Africa: A Science Lesson

Author:
Melanie Smuts
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa—Xoliswa, 11 years old, was given a science assignment in class. The worksheet, written in English and handed to her on Monday, was due that Friday. The task was to build a model solar system using paper maché, newspaper, paint, wire, polystyrene, and balloons. Xoliswa's mother, who earns a precarious living through child-care and occasional laundry orders, speaks little English and could offer no assistance. Worse yet, Xoliswa had never heard of paper maché or polystyrene. She arrived with a small packet of water balloons at the Learning Center—an afterschool institution in the affordable housing apartment block where she lives—and wondered if the Center could help her complete the task at hand.
Political Geography:
Africa and South Africa

3. Change Management

Publication Date:
06-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
Pocket change-mountains of it can shape or re-shape society, politics, and most certainly the economy. The rise and fall of governments, democracies, and tyrannies are all too often at the mercy of the ebb and flow of plain, hard cash. Currencies today are very much the defining feature of nations, individually and collectively. A flailing and fragmented Europe seeks to hang together-retain its global reach-on the strength of a single currency that has taken on a life or neardeath of its own, its very existence becoming an end in itself. Across Africa and Asia, the Americas north and south, continents and peoples are all too often held hostage by forces unleashed in the name of money. It is this kaleidoscope of silver, gold, and paper, often in the magnitude of tsunamis, that we set out to explore in the Summer issue of World Policy Journal.
Political Geography:
Africa, America, Europe, and Asia

4. Kimberley's Illicit Process

Author:
Khadija Sharife and John Grobler
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
ANTWERP—Somewhere between Africa's diamond mines and the dazzling diamond bazaars of Dubai and Antwerp, a Belgian company called Omega Diamonds has constructed a financial triangular trade, where at least $3.5 billion worth of diamond profits simply vanished between 2001 and 2008. And, if Belgian investigators are to be believed, there was little anyone could do about it. Not only did Dubai authorities deliberately turn a blind eye to questionable corporate practices of tax evasion and systematic under-invoicing—"tax optimization" being the preferred term—but the Dubai Multi-Commodities Center (DMCC) leadership appears to have actively blocked investigation by other governments. Instead of being busted and black-balled from the industry, Omega Diamonds, owned by two of the largest industry players, was handed a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Political Geography:
Africa

5. Moving On: Iberia's New Muslims

Author:
Marvin Howe
Publication Date:
03-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
LISBON—Mamadu Indjai has given up on Europe and is heading home to the former Portuguese colony of Guinea-Bissau. The 55-year-old West African has spent the past 19 years in Portugal. Yet all he has to show for his labors are the house he was building for his family back in his ancestral village of Caio. "I haven't got the strength to struggle anymore," Indjai sighs.
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, and Portugal

6. Linking People, Crossing Borders: A Conversation with Mo Ibrahim

Publication Date:
03-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
Born in northern Sudan at the end of World War II, educated in England with a Ph.D. in engineering and mobile communications, Mo Ibrahim returned to Africa in 1998, bringing cellular technology with him. At the time of his arrival, there were barely three million landline telephones on the entire continent—the bulk of them in North Africa and the nation of South Africa. Most of sub-Saharan Africa was all but inaccessible to terrestrial telephone lines. The Democratic Republic of Congo had only 3,000 phones to serve its population of about 55 million. Seeing demand for mobile phones and with little competition from landlines, Mo Ibrahim created Celtel, beginning in Kenya, branching quickly into Uganda and Tanzania. The company allowed millions of mobile subscribers to roam freely across borders, recharging with local cards as they went. Quickly, Celtel expanded across Gabon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo, Malawi, Zambia, and finally his native Sudan—a vast pan-African territory almost devoid of telecommunications boundaries. By the time he sold Celtel five years ago, he had linked 24 million people—a number that was growing exponentially.
Political Geography:
Kenya, Africa, Sudan, South Africa, North Africa, and England

7. Nearer, My God, to Thee

Author:
Damaso Reyes
Publication Date:
03-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
BARCELONA—Los Pentecostales de Barcelona is located on a nondescript street near the city's convention center. Twenty minutes before the evening service, the sounds of prayer and soft singing waft down from the second floor sanctuary. The lights have been dimmed, and some two dozen congregants are scattered throughout the large room, some on their hands and knees whispering prayers at their seats. Others hold hands in small groups and sing joyously.
Political Geography:
Africa, America, and Asia

8. The Somali Question

Author:
Mwaura Samora
Publication Date:
09-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
NAIROBI—Throngs of traders haggle and jostle for goods along busy streets, constantly interrupted by the hooting of matatus, local public transport vehicles, and the shouting of pushcart drivers, known as mkokotenis. This neighborhood is no place for the squeamish. The matatus and the mkokotenis make their way through deep, water-filled potholes, splashing thick, dark liquid onto crowded sidewalks. Like the badly damaged roads, the sewage system in Nairobi's Eastleigh district was built by British colonists in the 1920s to service a few hundred working-class Africans and Indians, but now it must bear the waste of over 100,000 residents. Today raw sewage oozes out of thousands of household pipes that have ruptured after decades of neglect. The dark green sludge mixes with runoff in the streets to form a foul porridge of human excrement.
Political Geography:
Africa, India, Somalia, and Nairobi

9. Fools' Gold

Author:
Jonathan Ewing
Publication Date:
06-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
KINSHASA, Congo—Joachim Andersson owned and operated a string of failed businesses before he founded Mineral Invest and began mining for gold in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. During the 1980s, Andersson worked as a pastry chef at an all-night café in a Stockholm suburb. It was the kind of place frequented by taxi drivers and prostitutes. Stolen goods were fenced in the café, and Andersson learned about precious metals. During the 1990s, he began dealing in minerals from Africa, and he was sentenced to five years in prison for tax evasion relating to importing gold.
Political Geography:
Africa and Democratic Republic of the Congo

10. Rethinking Ivory: Why Trade in Tusks Won't Go Away

Author:
John Frederick Walker
Publication Date:
06-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
TSAVO WEST, Kenya—Two years ago, in what was billed as a defiant message to elephant poachers, Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki arrived by helicopter at a dusty airstrip in Tsavo West National Park to set fire to five tons of seized contraband ivory.
Political Geography:
Kenya and Africa