Many political scientists like political behavior to fall into neat boxes, whether those be typologies cleanly defining terms or spreadsheets in which every row contains a discrete observation. They recognize that there’s always phenomena that won’t fit, cleanly, but those can be the basis of future research—or relegated to the “error term,” the leftover bin for the facts that theory doesn’t explain.
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America's Democracy Was Far Less Peaceful Than Political Scientists Pretended - 0 views
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When the implicit definition of democracy is democracy with American characteristics, the exceptions don’t even register as exceptions—until some event so far out of the comfort zone of mostly white, upper middle-class academics forces us to confront them as if they were brand new.
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The Center for Systemic Peace’s widely used Polity scores, for instance, give the United States between a +8 and +10 from 1809 to 2016—a stable, indeed maximally scoring, democracy. That period includes the Civil War, when the losing side launched a violent conflict rather than accept the election results.
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The United States Political Violence (USPV) database records numerous riots around elections during the mid-19th century. In April 1855, for example, hundreds of nativists “invaded” a German area of Cincinnati, Ohio, and destroyed more than a thousand ballots. Subsequent fighting led to two deaths. In August of that year, nativist Protestants attacked German and Irish neighborhoods in Louisville, Kentucky, killing at least 20. In Baltimore, election violence became routine in the 1850s, with 30 dead and 350 wounded in the 1856 election alone
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The bloodiest efforts came in the repression of Black people. The USPV lists nearly 70 incidents of political riots and assassinations in the decade after the formal cessation of hostilities, mostly in the South but including riots in Philadelphia and Indianapolis
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Widespread political violence around elections only really ended when the federal government conceded that the South would be run by whites. Even then, anti-government violence took place.
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Flattering coding rules used to produce datasets make it too easy to dismiss any aberration when a look at the historical record keeps turning up aberration after injustice after atrocity. Historians, scholars of Black history, and political scientists specializing in race and ethnic politics have long been sharply critical of the idea that that concepts like democracy, sovereignty, or the rule of law can be as bluntly coded as standard datasets long did.
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American democracy did not penetrate to state level until the 1960s. Nearly a quarter of the states denied voting rights to Blacks—who made up a majority in some of those states before the Great Migration—from the late 19th until the mid-20th century
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Despite the abolition of slavery, the imposition of Jim Crow meant that neither Congress nor the presidency were elected by fully democratic, or even representative, means
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Consider Max Weber’s workhorse definition of the state: the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. By that definition, large swathes of the United States approached failed-state status for much of the 19th and early 20th centuries
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just as today, there were voices even at elite institutions counseling patience and unity. An 1898 Yale Law Journal article defended lynching as a natural outcome of Reconstruction having given the ballot to former slaves too early, and urged “education,” not federal intervention, as the cure. Woodrow Wilson, a leading historian and political scientist long before he became president of the United States, defended the Ku Klux Klan and white terrorism as “aroused by the mere instinct of self-preservation.” Such efforts eventually paid off in helping to efface such atrocities from textbooks even as monuments—and popular culture—embraced Lost Cause nostalgia for the Confederacy.
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Revisiting the United States as a partial or flawed democracy means confronting much of the history that celebrants of the liberal world order claim as a series of triumphs for democracy
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social scientists have lately become more skeptical of the conventional verities of progress. The V-Dem Institute in Sweden has compiled indices of democracy that are more sensitive to conditions like racial segregation. They show the United States as substantially less democratic than other countries, like the United Kingdom or Sweden, for most of the 20th century. Political scientists investigate topics that once attracted little attention, like the relationship between American political violence and social transformation, how national economic integration led to the decline of lynching, or how the “carceral state” (more than 2 million people are held in U.S. prisons or jails) degrades U.S. democracy today.
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In the immediate aftermath of the storming of the Capitol, reporters and others turned to the British seizure of the Capitol building in 1814 as the closest analogue. Turning to foreign invasion rather than domestic precedents, however, says a lot. It suggests that people do not know the domestic precedents even exist, and it reinforces the notion that American political violence is “unthinkable.” (Even describing the 1814 incident as “foreign” is complex. The burning of Washington in 1814 was carried out by a British force that included marines previously enslaved by Americans—and motivated by hatred of the slavery system.)
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it’s time to think more openly—and less defensively—about the totality of U.S. political history and behavior at home and abroad
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More Wealth, More Jobs, but Not for Everyone: What Fuels the Backlash on Trade - The Ne... - 1 views
www.nytimes.com/...els-the-backlash-on-trade.html
trade economy US USA China Netherlands EU jobs globalization automation robots
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“More global trade is a good thing if we get a piece of the cake,” Mr. Duijzers said. “But that’s the problem. We’re not getting our piece of the cake.”
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For generations, libraries full of economics textbooks have rightly promised that global trade expands national wealth by lowering the price of goods, lifting wages and amplifying growth. The powers that emerged victorious from World War II championed globalization as the antidote to future conflicts. From Asia to Europe to North America, governments of every ideological persuasion have focused on trade as their guiding economic force. Advertisement Continue reading the main story But trade comes with no assurances that the spoils will be shared equitably. Across much of the industrialized world, an outsize share of the winnings have been harvested by people with advanced degrees, stock options and the need for accountants. Ordinary laborers have borne the costs, suffering joblessness and deepening economic anxiety
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When millions of workers lost paychecks to foreign competition, they lacked government supports to cushion the blow. As a result, seething anger is upending politics from Europe to North America.
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Much of the global economy is operating free of artificial enhancements. Lower-skilled workers confront bleak opportunities and intense competition, especially in the United States. Even as recent data shows middle-class Americans are finally starting to share in the gains from the recovery, incomes for many remain below where they were a decade ago
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The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression has left banks from Europe to the United States reluctant to lend. Real estate bonanzas from Spain to Southern California gave way to a disastrous wave of foreclosures, eliminating construction jobs. China’s slowdown has diminished its appetite for raw materials, sowing unemployment from the iron ore mines of Brazil to the coal pits of Indonesia.
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Trade did not cause the breakdown in economic growth. Indeed, trade has helped generate what growth remains. But the pervasive stagnation has left little cover for those set back by globalization.
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China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 unleashed a far larger shock, but a construction boom absorbed many laid-off workers.
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“We do need to have these trade agreements,” Mr. Bown said, “but we do need to be cognizant that there are going to be losers and we need to have policies to address them.”
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Corporations that used China to cut costs raised their value, enriching executives and ordinary investors. Today’s Headlines Wake up each morning to the day’s top news, analysis and opinion delivered to your inbox. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. Sign Up Receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. You are already subscribed to this email. View all New York Times newsletters. See Sample Manage Email Preferences Not you? Privacy Policy The casualties of China’s exports are far fewer, but they are concentrated. The rugged country of western North Carolina suffered mass unemployment as Chinese-made wooden furniture put local plants out of business. So did glassmakers in Toledo, Ohio, and auto parts manufacturers across the Midwest.
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Even among those who support trade, doubts are growing about its ability to deliver on crucial promises. A 2014 Pew Research Center survey of people in 44 countries found that only 45 percent of respondents believed trade raises wages. Only 26 percent believed that trade lowers prices.
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Workers employed in major export industries earn higher wages than those in domestically focused sectors.Americans saw their choice of products expand by one-third in recent decades, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found. Trade is how raspberries appear on store shelves in the dead of winter.
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In the fallout, the United States maintained limits on unemployment benefits, leaving American workers vulnerable to plummeting fortunes. Social welfare systems have limited the toll in Europe, but economic growth has been weak, so jobs are scarce.
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automation has grown in sophistication and reach. Between 2000 and 2010, the United States lost some 5.6 million manufacturing jobs, by the government’s calculation. Only 13 percent of those job losses can be explained by trade, according to an analysis by the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University in Indiana. The rest were casualties of automation or the result of tweaks to factory operations that enabled more production with less labor.
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if robots are a more significant threat to paychecks, they are also harder to blame than hordes of low-wage workers in overseas factories.“We have a public policy toward trade,” said Douglas A. Irwin, an economist at Dartmouth College. “We don’t have a public policy on automation.”
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China’s relentless development was turning farmland into factories, accelerated by a landmark in the history of trade: the country’s inclusion in the World Trade Organization.The W.T.O. was born out of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, a compact forged in 1947 that lowered barriers to international commerce in an effort to prevent a repeat of global hostilities.In the first four decades, tariffs on manufactured wares plunged from about 35 percent to nearly 6 percent, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. By 2000, the volume of trade among members had swelled to 25 times that of a half-century earlier.
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Mexico — home to about 123 million people — was not big enough to refashion the terms of trade. When China joined the W.T.O. in 2001, that added a country of 1.3 billion people to the global trading system
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The anti-trade backlash, building for years, has become explosive because the global economy has arrived at a sobering period of reckoning. Years of investment manias and financial machinations that juiced the job market have lost potency, exposing longstanding downsides of trade that had previously been masked by illusive prosperity.
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Chinese imports eliminated nearly one million American manufacturing jobs between 1999 and 2011. Add in suppliers and other related industries, and the total job losses reach 2.4 million.
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Mr. Trump vows to slap punitive tariffs on Chinese goods. But that would very likely just shift production to other low-wage countries like Vietnam and Mexico. It would not turn the lights on at shuttered textile plants in the Carolinas. (Even if it did, robots would probably capture most of the jobs.)
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Trade Adjustment Assistance, a government program started in 1962 and expanded significantly a dozen years later, is supposed to support workers whose jobs are casualties of overseas competition. The program pays for job training.But Mr. Simmons rolls his eyes at mention of the program. Training has almost become a joke. Skills often do not translate from old jobs to new. Many workers just draw a check while they attend training and then remain jobless.
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European workers have fared better. In wealthier countries like Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark, unemployment benefits, housing subsidies and government-provided health care are far more generous than in the United States.In the five years after a job loss, an American family of four that is eligible for housing assistance receives average benefits equal to 25 percent of the unemployed person’s previous wages, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. For a similar family in the Netherlands, benefits reach 70 percent.
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Yet in Europe, too, the impacts of trade have been uneven, in part because of the quirks of the European Union. Trade deals are cut by Brussels, setting the terms for the 28 member nations. Social programs are left to national governments.
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In China, farmers whose land has been turned into factories are making more steel than the world needs. Advertisement Continue reading the main story In America, idled steel workers are contemplating how to live off the land.
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a provision that would enable multinational companies to sue governments for compensation when regulations dent their profits.Esso, a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil, the American petroleum company, has operations in the Netherlands. Suppose the government went ahead with plans to limit drilling to protect the environment?“They could sue the Dutch state,” he fumed. “We are not so sure in the Netherlands whether we want to give the multinationals so much power. We are a trading country, but it’s not always that trade should prevail against quality of life.”
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Now, many longshoremen sit in glass-fronted offices set back from the docks, controlling robotic arms via computer terminals.
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Trade deals, immigrant labor, automation: As Mr. Arkenbout sees it, these are all just instruments wielded in pursuit of the same goal — paying him less so corporations can keep more.“When they don’t need me anymore,” he said, “I’m nothing.”
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Europeans agree defense plan after campaign swipes by Trump | Reuters - 0 views
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The European Union on Monday agreed a defense plan that could see it sending rapid response forces abroad for the first time, as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's criticism of allies appeared to galvanize Europe into revamping its strategy.
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"Europe needs to be able to act for its own security," French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters. "This will allow Europe to take a step towards its strategic autonomy,"
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The EU has 17 military and civilian missions underway - many of them out of the classic European theater, from the Democratic Republic of Congo to the Mediterranean where it is seeking to stem migrant flows from Libya and uphold a U.N. arms embargo.
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The election of a Russia-friendly political novice as president in Bulgaria - a member of both the EU and NATO - has given further impetus to French and German efforts to improve common defense operations.
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"Rather than dreaming of a European army, the best approach to the Trump presidency is for European countries to step up their own defense spending," Fallon told reporters in the margins of the meeting.The EU's Mogherini, who chaired the gathering, went out of her way to say there were no plans to form a European army and countries would retain control over their militaries.
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Some eastern and Baltic EU nations worry stronger European defense coordination could duplicate or undermine NATO, while Ireland, Sweden and Austria are more generally cautious.
In Belarus, Teddy Bears Defy Leader, Lukashenko - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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From Poverty to Power by Duncan Green » Blog Archive » Failed States Index 20... - 0 views
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NATO Viewed Favorably Across Member States | Pew Research Center - 0 views
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when asked if there are parts of neighboring countries that really belong to their country, relatively few surveyed agree. However, among NATO member states, majorities in Hungary, Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria agree that parts of other countries belong to them. In many European countries, those with a favorable view of right-wing populist parties are more likely to support this statement.
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In France, favorable views of NATO dropped from 71% in 2009 to 49% in 2019, a decrease of 22 percentage points. In Germany, favorable views of the organization declined by 16 points, and in Bulgaria favorable views are down by 12 points. In nonmember Russia, positive views have been nearly cut in half: In 2007, 30% had a favorable view of NATO. By 2019, just 16% expressed the same sentiment.
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Both Democratic and Republican views of NATO remained generally stable until 2017, when Democrats grew much more likely to support NATO than their counterparts, a difference that has not changed significantly since. In 2017, 74% of Democrats and 48% of Republicans had a favorable opinion of the alliance, a difference of 26 percentage points. Since 2018, U.S. views of NATO have declined among supporters of both parties. Positive views among Democrats fell 15 points, while views among Republicans dropped 7 points.
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Positive ratings of NATO among members range from a high of 82% in Poland to 21% in Turkey, with the United States and Germany in the middle at 52% and 57%, respectively. And in the three nonmember states surveyed, Sweden and Ukraine see the alliance positively (63% and 53%, respectively), but only 16% of Russians say the same.
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Since the late 2000s, favorable opinions of NATO are up 10 percentage points or more in Ukraine, Lithuania and Poland. However, positive opinions of NATO are down significantly in Bulgaria, Russia, Germany and France over the past decade, with double-digit percentage point declines in each of these countries. Favorable views of the organization are also down significantly in Spain and the Czech Republic.
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there is widespread reluctance to fulfill the collective defense commitment outlined in Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty. When asked if their country should defend a fellow NATO ally against a potential attack from Russia, a median of 50% across 16 NATO member states say their country should not defend an ally, compared with 38% who say their country should defend an ally against a Russian attack.
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some Western European publics prefer a close relationship with the U.S., but many others prefer a close relationship with both the U.S. and Russia. Nevertheless, few want to prioritize their relationship with Russia over their U.S. relations
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shared by Ed Webb on 18 Apr 20
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Confucianism Isn't Helping South Korea Beat the Coronavirus - 0 views
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pandemics Korea opinion analysis culture orientalism
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The United States and Europe are suffering from COVID-19 because they saw the virus as an “Asian disease,” somehow unable to reach their own shores. Now, they run the risk of rejecting the best practices of combating the pandemic as they imagine “Asian solutions” that can never be replicated in their countries.
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This is a long-standing pattern of Orientalism. Whenever a social policy seems to work well in an Asian country (usually Japan and more recently South Korea), Westerners—Americans in particular—are quick to claim that such policy was possible only because of Asia’s supposedly homogenous populations and harmonious societies. Such harmony, however, exists only in a racist fantasy that imagines a society made up of meek, compliant Asians.
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In a 2018 study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, South Korea’s score for “average trust in others” was merely 0.32 in 2014. The country was outranked by such so-called individualistic Western societies as Norway (0.68), Sweden (0.65), the Netherlands (0.54), Canada (0.44), and even the United States (0.41).
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In the middle of the most serious global pandemic in a century, South Korea’s politics caused the nation’s foremost experts in infectious disease to cease advising the president.
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Of course, culture is a real thing that guides people’s actions. It is entirely possible to have a sophisticated debate on, for example, how Confucianism influenced the South Korean public’s reception of the government’s response to the coronavirus. (The ancient Confucian philosopher Mencius provides rich material on practical governance in accordance with the Confucian web of obligations between ruler and subject.) But curiously, the Western media’s discussion of South Korea’s Confucian heritage never makes any reference to the actual Confucian texts. Instead, Confucianism is merely an excuse to introduce tired old stereotypes about Asians as mindless drones, ignorant to the true meaning of freedom.
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Just as South Korea did, the United States and Europe could have moved in the earliest stage of the outbreak to implement a mass-scale test-and-quarantine program and minimize the damages of the coronavirus. By writing off South Korea’s response as culturally bound, the West is once again making the same mistake, failing to recognize that Asia’s solution could be its solution too.
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shared by Ed Webb on 05 Aug 20
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EU Policies Forced Refugees Back to War Libya. Now They're Stuck in Rwanda. - 0 views
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Africa Libya Rwanda Eritrea refugees asylum migration migrants EU UNHCR borders mediterranean
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the impacts of hardening European Union border policy, which forces refugees back to a dangerous country where they live at the mercy of Libyan militias
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UNHCR said it had heard allegations of detainees being used as forced labor in the Gathering and Departure Facility, but it could not verify them.) In the months afterward, Alex returned to detention only for his meetings with UNHCR staff. He was interviewed and fingerprinted, and finally given good news: He would be evacuated to Rwanda.
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Over the past three years, the EU has allocated nearly 100 million euros, around $100 million, to spend on the Libyan coast guard, with the aim of intercepting and stopping boats of migrants and refugees who are trying to reach Europe. Tens of thousands of people who could have their asylum claims assessed if they managed to reach European soil have instead been returned to Libya to spend months or years in for-profit detention centers where sexual violence, labor exploitation, torture, and trafficking have been repeatedly documented. They wait, in the unlikely hope of being selected for a legal route to safety.
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2,427 people last year got the option to go with UNHCR either directly to European countries or to a transit country where their cases can be considered for resettlement to Europe or North America. In contrast, nearly 1,000 refugees and migrants were returned to Libya in the first two weeks of 2020 alone.
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Both Niger and Romania have previously been used as transit countries, though the number of people going to Niger have slowed because of problems processing cases. This past September, Rwanda announced it will also begin to take evacuees, following negotiations and a deal signed with the African Union and UNHCR.
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UNHCR is still appealing for funding, saying it hopes to evacuate 1,500 people to Rwanda by the end of 2020, with the program expected to cost nearly $27 million by then. So far, according to numbers provided by UNHCR, the EU has pledged 10 million euros, Norway just over 5 million euros, and Malta 50,000.
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Though a relatively secure country with much-lauded economic development, Rwanda is also a dictatorship and police state with a tightly controlled media
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in a small, bare room in a bar outside the camp that same month, a group of refugees gathered to tell me their stories. For more than a year, they had been sending me evidence of human rights abuses from a network of Libyan detention centers, using a series of phones they kept hidden throughout. Now they say they are grateful to be in Rwanda, but they also resent the time they spent locked up.
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They witnessed deaths from medical negligence and suffered through deliberate food deprivation, torture, and forced recruitment.
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Sonal Marwah, a humanitarian affairs manager with Doctors Without Borders, said survivors suffer from emotional and psychological problems, such as anxiety and depression.
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They feel they can’t trust anyone anymore, convinced everyone around them has tried to profit from them: whether Libyan authorities, smugglers, the U.N., or the Rwandan government.
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Some said that it was only when they signed documents on the night before they left Libya that UNHCR staff informed them they might have to stay in Rwanda for longer. There were consequences for backing out at that stage, too. UNHCR confirmed a “very small number” of refugees in Libya refused to go to Rwanda, meaning the agency will not consider them for resettlement or evacuation again.
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In November, evacuees got another shock when UNHCR’s special envoy for the Mediterranean, Vincent Cochetel, tweeted that refugees in Rwanda have “wrong” expectations. “We have no obligation to resettle all refugees in/from Libya,” he wrote. “They can locally integrate in Rwanda if they want, [while] learning and mentally accepting that there is not just a ‘Europe option.’”
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Others accused UNHCR of using their evacuations as a public relations coup to show the agency is doing something, while promoting the Rwandan government’s charity, instead of prioritizing evacuees’ welfare.
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The evacuation program “risks exacerbating a situation where the vast majority of refugees continue to be hosted in developing countries, while richer ones spend their resources on keeping people out at any cost,”
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UNHCR said it has received 1,150 resettlement pledges from other countries for refugees in Rwanda, with Norway alone pledging to take in 600 refugees (not all of them from Libya). Some Libya evacuees have already been accepted to go to Sweden. The number of available places is still “far outstripped by the needs,”
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At what point does the EU become responsible for refugees it has forced from its borders through externalization policies? How much suffering can they go through before European officials recognize some obligation?
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“Africa is Africa,” he has repeated throughout months of contact from both Libya and Rwanda, saying he’s worried about corruption, repression, exploitation, a lack of freedom, and a lack of opportunity in his birth continent. In Europe, Alex believes, refugees “can start a new life, it’s like we [will be] born again. All the suffering and all the torture, this only makes us stronger.”
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shared by Ed Webb on 13 May 20
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Somalia is Set to Be Ravaged by the Coronavirus, and Terrorists Will Profit - 0 views
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pandemics Africa Somalia Ethiopia Kenya Djibouti hornofafrica health publichealth terrorism failedstates
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Somalia has been spinning on a crisis carousel: war, famine, terrorism, climate stress. Now, the coronavirus pandemic is set to steer the country towards another hemorrhaging of human life. Even with a youth population above 70 percent, the virus will likely compound Somalia’s chronic medley of miseries. With each passing day, an uneasy question looms large: If the pandemic has left such death and upheaval in its wake in the world’s most powerful countries, what impact will it have on one of the world’s most fragile?
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a psychological readiness for catastrophe. Extreme violence has long been a fact of daily life in Mogadishu, under siege by one of the deadliest terrorist groups in Africa, al-Shabab, which, by conservative estimates, has killed more than 3,000 people in the past five years and wounded tens of thousands in the past decade. Somalis, often touted for their resilience amid unrelenting adversity, are no strangers to mass loss of life.
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As of Monday, 1,054 infections—out of a miniscule testing pool—and 51 deaths have been confirmed. The true spread is doubtless far worse.
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Despite testing far less than its neighbors, Somalia has the highest death toll in East Africa. On April 17 and 18, 72 people were tested, out of which 55 were confirmed positive, a staggering 76 percent infection rate. Since this revelation, the Somali government has stopped sharing the numbers of people tested with the public.
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Anecdotal accounts of COVID-19 symptoms and a spike in burials abound. “There is extraordinary community transmission. Infections and deaths are out of control,” explained a Mogadishu doctor on the condition of anonymity. “And why visit a hospital if they can’t treat you?” Somalia’s health infrastructure is mere scaffolding: scarce public hospitals struggling with a lack of equipment, unaccredited doctors in private facilities offering unaffordable services, and medication that is as low-grade as it is scarce.
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Somalia’s best-equipped medical institution, Erdogan Hospital in Mogadishu, was shut down in April after 3 of its doctors were infected. Martini Hospital—kitted with 76 beds—is the only medical facility in the whole country designated to treat the infected
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Answers to this acute health crisis lie in part with the government’s 2020 budget, which allocated $9.4 million for health spending, a mere 2 percent of the national budget. A whopping $146.8 million was reserved for security institutions—a telling indication of a cash-strapped state facing widespread security threats.
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The group heralded the disease as divine punishment for the treatment of Muslims globally. Weaponizing the disease, al-Shabab ushered in Ramadan with an attempted vehicle-borne explosive attack at a military base on the first full day of the holy month.
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Like the virus, al-Shabab transcends national borders and presents risks not only to Somalia but to its pandemic-weakened neighbors, particularly Kenya, which has weathered violent attacks from the group for years. Born out of a power vacuum itself, al-Shabab will capitalize on lapses in states’ security apparatus as governments redirect resources from preempting terror attacks to enforcing curfews
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Kenya’s northeastern towns lying on its border with Somalia have been particularly vulnerable to devastating al-Shabab attacks. In response to the illegal smuggling of people and goods from both Somalia and Ethiopia, Kenyan security authorities have recently ramped up aerial surveillance along its borders, in part, to curtail cross-border infection. Ethiopia’s health minister announced last week that 13 of its new cases were imported via illegal migration from Djibouti and Somalia
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For more than a year now, the central government has been embroiled in a rancorous fight with two of its federal states. This being an election year, the fledgling Somali state finds itself at a critical juncture. It remains to be seen whether federal elections will be postponed, following in the footsteps of neighboring Ethiopia.
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The specter of drought and famine, alongside the unforgiving plague of locusts that has ravaged crops in recent months
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harrowing statistics from across Europe show that Somali communities have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19. In Sweden, Somalis are dying from the virus at “an astonishing high rate” according to the BMJ despite accounting for only 0.69 percent of the population. The World Bank is calling on governments to designate remittance companies as an essential service, a crucial step to easing restrictions on these financial flows.
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The populations most at risk in Somalia are those living in the densely populated camps scattered across the country. More than 2.5 million internally displaced people live in these cramped conditions, already weakened by malnutrition and compromised immune systems, and with limited access to clean water, soap, or bathrooms.
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According to the World Food Programme, the number of food-insecure people in East Africa is projected to reach up to 43 million in the next few months—more than double what it is now—sparking fears of conflict over scarce resources.
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The disappearance of remittances—a lifeline for millions on the continent and estimated at $1.4 to $2 billion annually in Somalia alone—makes the situation all the more desperate. These critical cash flows have dried up as a global recession sets in and incomes of workers in the diaspora shrink.
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will force more people to move, compounding the internal displacement crisis and heightening intercommunal tensions even as it spreads the disease further
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Border closures across the region have throttled migration flows, making it ever harder for people to escape conflict or starvation. This will simply force migration into the shadows, opening up avenues for human trafficking and exploitation. Irregular movement of refugees has already been observed across the Horn of Africa’s highly porous borders.
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During Friday prayers at Mogadishu’s Marwazi mosque on April 10, armed forces tried to forcibly disperse a congregation of worshippers without notice. A massive demonstration broke out, and shoulder-to-shoulder prayers continue across the country today
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Riots swept the streets of Mogadishu again on April 24 in response to the fatal shooting of two innocent civilians by police as they tried to enforce a curfew. Ramadan, replete with nightly rounds of public taraweeh prayers, is likely to catalyze disease spread in the absence of clear communication with communities and Islamic leaders.
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The virus demands self-sufficiency. Countries are forced to make do with their own systems, however broken.
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government’s restrictions on press freedom and access to information about the novel coronavirus to the detriment of its own people
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As has often been the case in the disaster-prone country, it will be up to grassroots community groups, the private sector, and members of the diaspora to mobilize en masse to contain the crisis.
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Two officials at the Ministry of Health have already been arrested on corruption allegations related to COVID-19 response donations, denting public confidence.
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With domestic flights suspended, it is all the more critical to invest in hospital and testing capacity across the country. This cannot be achieved without genuine collaboration between the federal government and its constituent member states.