Foreign Policy July - August 2015

AMAN SETHI “‘Forget it,’ Sanjit Das, the photographer, said as we drove down yet another alley in southeast Delhi. ‘Why don’t we just get some kebabs?’ It had been a long day in search of the spots where the water mafia fill their tankers, and Sanjit and I were getting nowhere. Everyone we spoke to assured us that we just had to drive along the Yamuna River to find long queues of tankers waiting to pick up their illicit cargo, but no one could point us to the right place. Defeated, we pulled over to a cramped restaurant and, over a plate of kebabs and daal, planned our next steps. We got back into the car and were headed home along the highway when suddenly we spotted a water tanker, painted…

Q: Who should readReinventing the Middle East? A: The book is focused on the MENA region’s socio-economic changes and their wider implications for the region’s political economy. Consequently, it is an excellent update for those with general interest in the MENA region, and specifically for those interested in its geopolitics, business, economy and trade. Q: What gap in the literature on the region does the book fill? A: Unlike most publications focused on political (and military) affairs and day-to-day developments that take place in the region, this book analyzes the region in a macro context. First, it reviews the core social and economic structures of the Arab Middle East and North Africa and illustrates how those structures influenced state-led strategies in the region over the past several decades. Second, it explains how the…

Child’s Pay Each morning before school, Oliver, 12, spends about five hours shouting minibus routes to passengers at an informal bus stop in El Alto, Bolivia. Among the youngest announcers at the station, he is paid around 70 bolivianos per day (roughly $10). Oliver’s work is sanctioned by a July 2014 law that made Bolivia the first country to legalize labor for children as young as 10—dependent on school attendance and their parents’ permission. Human rights groups have condemned the law, but the government has argued that it offers necessary protections to an already widespread practice: Nearly 500,000—or one in four—children ages 5 to 13 work in the country, according to a 2008 study. In December 2014, German photographer Toby Binder spent two weeks documenting these young laborers, who are identified only…

DESIRE NJALWE SPENDS most Fridays and Saturdays pedaling over the bumpy terrain of Masaka, a rural district in central Uganda, on a government-issued bicycle. As a coordinator of village health teams (VHTs)—groups of unpaid medics who, among other things, provide free drugs to sick children—Njalwe distributes fresh supplies to the 20 volunteers whom he oversees. Despite progress over the past few decades, far too many Ugandan children won’t reach their fifth birthday. According to the latest World Bank data, the United States has seven deaths in this cohort per 1,000 births; Uganda has 66. Njalwe himself has buried three of his own eight children. Part of the problem is that, by some estimates, Uganda has just one doctor per 15,000 people; the World Health Organization recommends 10 times that many. In response,…

Since the fall of 2013, the international media have offered a weekly, and sometimes hourly, tick-tock of the successes and setbacks leading up to a nuclear deal with Iran. Largely missed by this exhaustive news cycle, however, have been the human rights abuses that persist in the Islamic Republic. Last year alone saw, by some accounts, more than 700 executions, upwards of 100 Bahais—Iran’s largest non-Muslim religious minority—in detainment, and the imprisonment of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian. ¶ The challenges of covering these types of abuses and the vulnerability of a free press are things with which American photojournalist and MacArthur “genius” grant awardee LYNSEY ADDARIO is all too familiar: She has been kidnapped twice herself—first in Iraq in 2004 and then again in Libya in 2011—for documenting those…

“When the British handed over Hong Kong to China in 1997, the ‘special administrative region,’ it was determined, would follow a policy of ‘one country, two systems.’ Hong Kong was promised democracy; yet the process has stalled. For more than two months last year, thousands of protesters, me included, united for more robust voting rights. And though the student-led demonstrations were peaceful, the police responded with pepper spray and tear gas. For protection, the students used umbrellas; thus, the Umbrella Movement was born. And it isn’t dead: More protests occurred in June, when lawmakers were considering the government’s political reform package. The yellow I use in the ribbons, umbrellas, and banners (‘I want real universal suffrage’) symbolizes our peaceful fight. The red, white, and blue cloth in the foreground is a…