Daily News Brief

January 24, 2025

Top of the Agenda

International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan applied for warrants yesterday to arrest the Taliban’s top leader and top judicial official, warning additional applications were forthcoming. An ICC probe found them criminally responsible for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds—targeting women, their perceived allies, and LGBTQ+ people—in Afghanistan from the day they took over in August 2021, Khan said. Women’s rights activists inside and outside the country celebrated the application. Since the Taliban took back power in Afghanistan, they have issued over eighty directives limiting women’s rights, stripping them of freedoms to study, travel, and participate in public life. 

The Taliban foreign ministry today rejected Khan’s accusations, calling them “politically motivated.” A three-judge ICC panel will now decide whether to approve the warrants. These are the first warrants the court has sought in Afghanistan since opening an investigation into potential war crimes there in 2007. (ICC, Reuters, The Guardian, AFP)

Analysis

“It is a landmark, because this is the first time a case has been built around crimes of gender persecution. Usually, gender crimes are ancillary, an add-on to a case driven by other [crimes],” the Atlantic Council’s Akila Radhakrishnan tells The Guardian.

“Efforts by not only Malala [Yousafzai] but also Afghan and Iranian women have brought into stark relief the need to powerfully conceptualize the Taliban’s brutal separation and subjugation of Afghan women as a new form of apartheid—gender apartheid—under international law. While these efforts began locally by Afghan women as far back as the 1980s, they are now getting international uptake,” CFR expert Catherine Powell and CFR’s Noël James write for Women Around the World.

Pacific Rim

Thailand’s agreement with Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland will reduce duties on industrial and seafood products and expedite other trade procedures. The deal took almost twenty years to negotiate and was stalled by two coups in Thailand. On the European side, it follows deals the European Union (EU) recently signed with Mexico and South American countries, which European officials have called steps against rising U.S. protectionism. (Nikkei, Euronews)

China: The government for the first time established minimum thresholds that state-owned insurers and mutual funds should be investing in the stock market. It is China’s latest effort to boost the economy, although it did not immediately produce a strong reaction in the stock market. (FT, WSJ)

CFR expert Zongyuan Zoe Liu wades into the daunting task of rebalancing China’s economy.  

South and Central Asia

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are discussing India’s potential sale of Indian-Russian supersonic cruise missiles to Jakarta during the visit, unnamed sources told Reuters. Subianto is this year’s chief guest for India’s Republic Day; the leaders were also expected to explore links in energy and economic development. (Reuters, Jakarta Post)

Middle East and North Africa

Syria’s central bank ordered private banks to freeze accounts linked to the former government of Bashar al-Assad, a document seen by Reuters said. The central bank’s governor was replaced after the rebel takeover. Syria’s foreign minister this week said the government would privatize several state-owned companies as part of its economic overhaul. (Reuters, Central Banking, FT)

Palestinian territories: The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees warned that recent Israeli laws restricting its actions could “sabotage” the Gaza cease-fire, which hinges on aid entering the territory. He met with EU officials in Brussels yesterday, seeking support for reversing the laws. Legal action against them has been filed at the International Court of Justice and Israel’s High Court. (FT)

CFR expert Steven A. Cook writes about the cease-fire’s prospects to actually end the war.

Sub-Saharan Africa

President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law a bill that facilitates government expropriation of land in the public interest. The changes were meant to address racially skewed breakdowns of land ownership that persisted after colonial rule and apartheid. (Bloomberg)

DRC/Rwanda: UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned the current escalation between M23 rebels and Congolese government forces in the country is “heightening the threat of regional war,” urging de-escalation. The Rwanda-backed rebels surrounded the eastern city of Goma yesterday; they briefly captured it in 2012 before withdrawing over intense international pressure. (UN News, NYT)

Europe

New 2024 data from the think tank Ember clocked the milestone yesterday. Eleven percent of the bloc’s power generation last year came from solar, its fastest-growing power source. The European Green Deal climate legislation has helped spur solar’s adoption, as has rising gas prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. (AP, AFP, DW) 

Ireland: A governing coalition of center-right parties elected Micheál Martin as Ireland’s prime minister. It is the parties’ second consecutive government together, though independents have replaced their previous junior partner of the Green Party. (Reuters)

Americas

Marco Rubio’s first overseas trip as secretary of state will kick off in Panama late next week, a spokesperson announced. While she did not detail his agenda, the Panama visit would give Rubio a chance to discuss U.S. President Donald Trump’s concerns about China’s influence on, and use of, the Panama Canal. Rubio will also travel to Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, and Guatemala, where migration policy is expected to be at the forefront of talks. (AP)

This Backgrounder by CFR’s Diana Roy looks at China’s growing influence in Latin America.

Chile/Venezuela: Three witnesses told Chilean investigators that members of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro government ordered the assassination of a Venezuelan dissident residing in Santiago last year, Chile’s attorney general said. Venezuela’s communication ministry did not respond to a request for comment. (WSJ) 

United States

Trump said companies would enjoy “among the lowest taxes of any nation” if they manufacture in the United States, but warned of tariffs if they do not. He also called on the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world to lower interest rates and for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to work to reduce global oil prices. (Reuters, WaPo, BBC)

CFR expert Edward Alden argues that amid debates in his cabinet, Trump will be his own trade czar.

A federal judge temporarily blocked Trump’s Monday executive order that aimed to limit birthright citizenship, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.” Birthright citizenship was laid out in the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. A coalition of states had sued against the order; a new hearing in the case is scheduled for February 6. (WaPo)

Friday Editor’s Pick

Rest of World looks at how the battle over regulating artificial intelligence is playing out differently across the globe.

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