News Analysis

Insecurity in Nigeria is growing in scale, spread and sophistication, according to recently published research findings by the International Security Studies (ISS). The report says a total of 1,486 people in the country were victims of insecurity in January 2022, with 915 killed and 571 kidnapped. “While no zone or...

Professionals at research organisations are typically split into two categories: academic staff and support staff. As professionals working in research environments in the Netherlands and Australia, we have straddled the dividing lines between these conventional divisions. We’ve also met many other professionals who have operated across this divide. And we...

China’s powerful State Council is calling on research institutions to expand and improve their ethics training. The directive, one of several detailed in a comprehensive ethics statement, is intended to address gaps in oversight exposed when Chinese researcher He Jiankui shocked the world by creating the first babies with edited...

Since Sudan’s military staged a coup six months ago many former allies of toppled autocrat Omar al-Bashir have been allowed to re-join the civil service while others have been freed from jail in an apparent push to form a government and reassure donors. The rehabilitation of the Islamist National Congress...

When abuses were reported in recent weeks in Mali – fake graves designed to discredit French forces; a massacre of some 300 people, mostly civilians – all evidence pointed to the shadowy mercenaries of Russia’s Wagner Group. Even before these feared professional soldiers joined the assault on Ukraine, Russia had...

“It’s been closed for months now,” said Zahra, a former employee, as she walked through empty rooms once used to shelter women fleeing gender-based violence in this city in central Afghanistan. The safehouse for women has been shut since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan last August. Utensils were abandoned on...

The African Union Mission in Somalia – Amisom – has ended its 15-year political and military experiment in post-conflict state building. On April 1, 2022, a shift took place as the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS) came into being. The transition’s mission is to pave the way for...

The Biden administration has announced that it will offer temporary protected status to nationals of Cameroon, shielding them from deportation and enabling them to obtain work permits, amid escalating armed conflict that has spawned a humanitarian crisis in the African country. Some 40,000 nationals of Cameroon, many of whom sought...

On March 27 – a market day in Mali’s central town of Moura – Malian armed forces and suspected Russian mercenaries descended on the town in a helicopter, guns blazing. In an investigation published last week, the advocacy group Human Rights Watch said the troops closed off all exits from...