U.S. Urges Americans to Leave Haiti Amid Worsening Instability |
The U.S. Embassy in Haiti urged all American citizens (WaPo) yesterday to leave the country “as soon as possible” amid the island’s increasingly deteriorating security situation. Last month, the United States evacuated nonemergency government personnel and diplomatic family members from its embassy in Haiti’s capital.
Haiti has been besieged by gang violence since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021. As instability grows, the United States has backed a UN plan for a Kenya-led multinational police force in Haiti. Rights observers are calling for safeguards to be put in place to protect Haitians from experiencing human rights abuses before the force is approved. In a letter to the UN Security Council earlier this month, Amnesty International called for a full examination of Kenya’s human rights record and condemned the Kenyan police’s unlawful use of force against protesters in March.
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“The last UN-led military mission to Haiti left a legacy of trauma and disease,” journalist Monique Clesca writes for Foreign Affairs. “By taking the place of Haiti’s police and military, plus its government agencies and civil society—without sufficiently reinforcing or supporting reforms in any of them—UN forces weakened Haitian institutions and exacerbated problems in governance that led to the current crisis.”
“The long delay in assisting Haiti now calls for a thoroughgoing reconstruction of the nation’s most vital institutions, starting with the government itself, and including private businesses of all shapes and sizes, schools and universities, hospitals and other medical facilities, and religious centers,” the Inter-American Dialogue’s Peter Hakim writes. “It will be up to the United States and other high-income countries to provide the needed support. Kenya cannot help on this score.”
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Japan Issues Record Defense Spending Request for FY2024 |
The defense ministry’s request of nearly $53 billion is its largest ever (FT) and includes funds to build advanced warships with U.S. technology. The proposal is part of a five-year strategy to significantly increase defense spending amid escalating tensions with China and North Korea.
China: President Xi Jinping will join Russian President Vladimir Putin in skipping (Reuters) the Group of Twenty (G20) summit in New Delhi next month, according to two unnamed Indian officials. China and India did not immediately comment.
This Backgrounder by Anshu Siripurapu and CFR’s Noah Berman and James McBride explains the role of the G20.
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Troubled Indian Conglomerate Accused of Using ‘Opaque’ Offshore Funds |
Two investors with close ties to the Adani Group “spent years” trading hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Adani stock through offshore structures, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project said in a new report.
India: The Indian company JSW Group is in the early stages of talks (Reuters) with Chinese carmaker Leapmotor to license the technology needed to build electric vehicles (EVs) in India, according to people familiar with the matter. New Delhi aims to increase national EV sales to 30 percent by 2030, up from 2 percent last fiscal year.
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Middle East and North Africa |
Palestinian Motorist Targets Checkpoint in the West Bank |
At least one Israeli soldier was killed (AP) in the attack, Israeli authorities said. It comes a day after Israeli police killed a fourteen-year-old Palestinian boy who had stabbed a man at a light-rail station in Jerusalem and Palestinian militants detonated a bomb near a convoy of Israeli troops. The Center for Preventive Action tracks the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
U.S./Middle East: The United States expanded restrictions (The Guardian) on exports of artificial intelligence (AI) chips made by the U.S.-based tech company Nvidia to the Middle East. The company did not say which countries are affected.
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At Least 73 Dead in Johannesburg Fire |
Another fifty-five people were injured (AP) in South Africa’s overnight fire that engulfed a five-story building, which emergency services said was occupied by homeless people. The cause of the fire is not yet known.
Zambia: Inflation hit a sixteen-month high (Bloomberg) this month, a week after the country’s central bank increased its benchmark interest rate for the third consecutive time.
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Russia Vetoes UN Proposal to Extend Sanctions on Mali |
The proposal would also have kept a UN independent monitoring team in Mali, where the Russian private military company Wagner Group has been active. Thirteen of the fifteen UN Security Council members voted in favor (Al Jazeera) of the extension, while China abstained. This In Brief by William Rampe looks at Wagner’s activity in Africa.
Germany: The government yesterday classified Georgia and Moldova as “safe countries of origin,” a first step in allowing Berlin to more quickly process and deport asylum seekers from those countries. The regulation still requires approval (AP) from parliament.
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Chile Launches Search for Missing People From Pinochet Era |
Under Augusto Pinochet Ugarte’s rule, almost 1,500 people went missing (WSJ) and thousands more were imprisoned and tortured. The plan’s announcement comes nearly two weeks before the fiftieth anniversary of the military coup that brought him to power. |
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FEMA Restricts Spending as Disaster Fund Approaches ‘Exhaustion’ |
The restrictions limit (Politico) the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to spending disaster funds on life-saving measures and emergency housing only, and could temporarily halt thousands of state projects aimed at rebuilding infrastructure damaged by natural disasters. The move comes as Tropical Storm Idalia moves over South Carolina (NBC) hours after making landfall as a Category 3 hurricane in Florida.
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Council on Foreign Relations |
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