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WPF Policy Brief 11: Combating Maritime Piracy: A Policy Brief with Recommendations for Action
Maritime piracy continues, especially off the Somali coasts, despite significant
efforts by shipping companies, captains, and crews; major international surveillance and
prevention efforts by naval and air task forces; and growing intelligence about the pirates
onshore and offshore. In 2009, pirates attacked a total of 217 ships (22,000 ships passed
through the Gulf of Aden alone, and others traversed the wider waters of the Indian
Ocean), with 47 successful hijackings and the collection, in 2009, of more than $60
million in ransom payments. Some of the captured merchant ships and crew were held off
the Somali coast for as long as nine months before being ransomed. One large oil tanker
was ransomed in 2009 for about $5 million, the largest ransom payment on record until
the reported $5.5 to $7 million ransom paid for a Greek-owned oil tanker in early 2010. To read the complete policy brief, including the thirty-eight recommendations, please click here.
WPF Policy Brief 10: Challenges, Opportunities, and Emerging Issues in sub-Saharan Africa
There are ten critical challenges ahead for sub-Saharan Africa. Each greatly affects the future of the forty-eight nation-states. Responses to each of the challenges by Africa, the individual countries within Africa, and by outside powers—notably the United States, the European Union, and China—will determine whether or not sub-Saharan Africans in this and later decades remain impoverished, conflicted, under-educated, and unhealthy. How Africans cope with the ten critical challenges, and how China and the West seek to help Africans help themselves will determine the positive or negative life experiences of millions of Africans, including generations as yet unborn. To read the entire policy, with the ten challenges facing sub-Saharan Africa further explored, click here.
WPF Policy Brief 9: The 2008 Index of African Governance
Small states, island states, and Botswana and South Africa are the best governed countries in sub-Saharan Africa according to this year’s Index of African Governance, released today by researchers at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Mauritius, an Indian Ocean island-state, tops the list of well-governed territories for the second year, the Seychelles is second, Cape Verde third, Botswana fourth, and South Africa fifth. The remaining five top-ranking states are Namibia, Ghana, Gabon, São Tomé and Príncipe (another island state), and Senegal. Click here to read the entire policy brief, including which countries ranked at the bottom.
WPF Policy Brief 8: China: Good or Evil in Africa?
China is transforming Africa, for good and ill. The United States and other
traditional trading and aid partners of Africa need to pay closer attention
than they are, and with Africans craft bold new policies that welcome
Chinese investment and trade but condemn the taking of African jobs and the
destruction of African industries. Africa and the West also need to persuade
China that supporting Africa’s most reviled dictatorships is bad for Africa
and bad for China as a world power and an Olympics host. Click
here to read the full text, which discusses China’s emerging controversial role
in Africa as investor, trader, buyer, and aid donor.
WPF
Policy Brief 7: Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling: New Perspectives on
an Old Problem
To cope with
the pernicious problem of human trafficking and smuggling, Washington and
its global allies need fundamentally to rethink their assumptions about the
nature and size and the scope of the problem, and also how to combat it. The
anti-trafficking effort should focus on local and global responses
rather than on national ones. We should spend less time trying to isolate
the size of the human trafficking problem and more time rigorously
evaluating existing initiatives. Imperative is better information sharing
among countries, agencies, and among those battling the trade in illicit
goods, not just trade in humans. Only by embracing such recommendations can
we possibly hope to replicate and build on the successes—and avoid repeating
the failures—of past anti-trafficking efforts. Click here to read further about the above recommendations.
WPF Policy Brief 6: Ending Mayhem in the Sudan
Too many lives have been lost for too
long. Misery, pillage, rape, and killing fields have disfigured the Sudan
without effective regional or international intervention. Click
here to learn how best
to end the continuing humanitarian outrages in Darfur, the westernmost
province of the Sudan.
WPF Policy Brief 5: State Building in
Afghanistan
Effective state building in Afghanistan depends on strengthening security,
providing serious new monetary incentives for wheat growing instead of poppy
production, decreasing the hold of narco-terrorists, improving regional
commercial linkages, enhancing the country’s sense of nationhood, and
bolstering good governance. Click
here to learn what
Afghanistan's leadership and the international community should do to
bolster this fragile, growing state.
WPF Policy Brief 4: Terror in Yemen and the
Horn of Africa
Scouring the deserts and highlands of present and future terrorists in the
troubled, war-torn region that comprises Yemen, the Sudan, Ethiopia,
Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia demands urgent, skillful measures that are as
much social, economic, and political as they must be military.
Click
here for the full text, which offers recommendations about what steps
the U.S., the international community, the region, and individual countries
should take to combat the short-, medium-, and long-term threats of
terrorism.
WPF Policy Brief 3: Identifying Rogue States: Issues
of Policy and Action
Which are the true "rogue" states? What is "rogueness" in the international
arena? Do rogue states share certain common characteristics? If so, what
should be done to curtail rogue states? How can rogue states be encouraged
to behave less roguishly?
Click
here for the full text and answers to the above questions.
WPF Policy Brief
2: Nigeria on the Brink of Failure?
Nigeria remains unstable and hard to govern; the nation lacks unity but
is rife with ethnic and sectarian conflicts. The country's oil is both a
blessing and a curse. The future of Africa's largest state, a critical
petroleum supplier to the U.S. thus continues to be of enormous concern to
its citizens as well as policymakers in Africa, the United States, and
Europe.
Click here for the
full text and an analysis of Nigeria's strengths and weaknesses.
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