In row with Zambia, NGO abruptly cancels world human rights conference, points to Chinese interference

A gateway near Lusaka's Kenneth Kaunda International Airport
marks Zambia independence from Britain in 1964.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Blaming interference by the Chinese and Zambian governments, global digital rights organization Access Now canceled the 2026 meeting of RightsCon, one of the largest human rights conferences in the world, on April 29, just days before thousands of delegates were to converge on host city Lusaka, Zambia.

I was already in southern Africa for RightsCon when the announcement came. I thought it prudent not to write about the cancellation until I left Zambia. I am home in the United States now.

Those of us in Lusaka naturally were in contact with one another. We agreed that our exchanges of information would be subject to the Chatham House Rule, and furthermore, that we would be non-specific about the nature—time, place, medium, scope—of our communications. Accordingly, there is information in this account that is not attributed but comes from reliable sources.

RightsCon returns to Africa 

RightsCon has been a gathering place for international leaders, thinkers, and organizations to discuss digital rights policy, including internet censorship, electronic surveillance, and technology ethics, almost every year since the first conference convened in Silicon Valley in 2011. Also founded in California, in 2009, global nonprofit Access Now takes the lead in organizing RightsCon, with tech companies and allied civil society organizations around the world contributing expertise and resources.

I was in Tunis, Tunisia, for the first RightsCon meeting in Africa, in 2019; I wrote about it here at The Savory Tort. The 2026 meeting in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, was to mark the first meeting of RightsCon in sub-Saharan Africa. Access Now anticipated 2,600 in-person participants in Lusaka, besides 1,100 more online, representing 150 countries and 750 organizations in more than 500 sessions.

Generally, large, world conferences of any kind are exceedingly difficult to locate in sub-Saharan Africa, outside of South Africa, if only because of infrastructure limitations—airline routes, meeting space, accommodations, food preparation, security. The challenge is often cited as a chicken-or-egg factor in stalled African development, as the lucrative likes of business and medical conferences pass on the region even when they have development on the agenda.

Add to the mix the human rights focus of RightsCon, and its 2026 location amid the fragile democracies, such as Zambia's, in central Africa, and the conference was set to be an especial boon to the region. RightsCon Zambia was conceived to be a game changer, to show what could be done.

The RightsCon ethos condemns rights-oppressive digital manipulation such as internet shutdowns, which are an authoritarian go-to in regimes across sub-Saharan African (e.g., The Guardian). RightsCon also prizes equity in online participation, thus embracing expression by and about women and minority groups, including the LGBTQ community. That's sensitive subject matter in a region in which child marriage, female genital mutilation, and criminalization of same-sex relations are live, hot-button issues.

Access Now was keenly aware of all of these challenges and worked hard to coordinate RightsCon in constant collaboration with Zambian officials, since a first meeting in 2024. More than a few rights activists were critical of Access Now, preferring to eschew sub-Saharan Africa on the theory that the economic advantages and favorable press of a global human rights conference should be withheld from the region.

I rather agree with Access Now that the social and economic opportunity of an event such as RightsCon should be positioned to counterbalance anti-democratic incentives. After all, civil society organizations that advocate for human rights and the protection of women and minority persons continue working in these countries, placing themselves at grave risk, regardless of whether activists from abroad turn up in solidarity. So better to turn up.

RightsCon 2026 goes south

Access Now described what happened in late April in a detailed May 1 statement. According to the statement: "On April 27, one day after a government press release endorsed RightsCon, we received a phone call from MoTS [Zambian Ministry of Technology and Science] about an urgent issue and were told that diplomats from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) were putting pressure on the Government of Zambia because Taiwanese civil society participants were planning to join us in person."

RightsCon 2025 was held in Taipei, Taiwan. I was there and wrote about the conference here at The Savory Tort last year. The programs I highlighted at that RightsCon covered topics such as Chinese surveillance technology, opportunistic Chinese technology investment in Africa, and the vulnerability to malicious actors of undersea information infrastructure in the Pacific.

I was surprised then that such conversations could happen with impunity in Taiwan, just offshore from watchful mainland China. Now, it seems, they could not, not without consequences.

It wasn't Access Now that first called off RightsCon Zambia. After the MoTS phone call, Access Now sought to open dialog with Zambian officials and Taiwanese delegates. Then, on April 28, Access Now was blindsided by a government announcement that RightsCon was "postponed"—a logistical impossibility. Access Now also "received reports of immigration officers telling participants as they arrived that RightsCon had been cancelled."

In Zambian news outlets, Technology and Science Minister Felix Mutati said that "additional time is required to ensure all preparatory arrangements fully align with national procedures, diplomatic protocols, and the broader objective of promoting a balanced and consensus-driven platform."

The "postponement" was restated in an April 29 press statement by the Zambian Ministry of Information and Media. Information and Media Secretary Thabo Kawana wrote: "The postponement was necessitated by the need for comprehensive disclosure of critical information relating to thematic issues proposed for discussion during the Summit. Such disclosure is essential to ensure full alignment with Zambia's national values, policy priorities, and broader public interest considerations."

Access Now learned through informal channels, it wrote in its statement, that "for RightsCon to continue, we would have to moderate specific topics and exclude communities at risk, including our Taiwanese participants, from in-person and online participation."

To do so would have been antithetical to Access Now and RightsCon's very mission. So Access Now itself then canceled RightsCon and urged delegates to abort travel to Zambia.

China pulls strings

When I first read the information ministry release and its reference to "Zambia's national values," I did not yet know about the role of China behind the scenes. I rather suspected that Zambia was turned off by the friendliness of the RightsCon agenda to expressive freedom for women and the LGBTQ community. No doubt my perspective is colored by my own past research on civil rights in East Africa (presented at a Law and Society conference at the University of Cape Town in 2016). 

I wasn't entirely wrong, though. Zambian discontent with other aspects of RightsCon programming meant that officials did not have to have their arms twisted too hard to nix the conference.

Nearly a quarter of girls in Zambia marry before they turn 18, though, it must be acknowledged, that percentage has fallen more than 15 points in recent years thanks to government efforts. Gay sex is illegal in Zambia and punishable by imprisonment. The LGBTQ community is persecuted by blackmail and criminal prosecution (more at Amnesty International). Needless to say, these matters are not mentioned on Zambia's tourism website.

Another source of contention, which I had not recognized, is labor rights, especially in extraction. Weak regulation and abundant unlicensed operations leave quarry and mine workers, sometimes including child laborers, plagued with accidents, yielding some hundred injuries and fatalities annually, besides social and environmental damage. Every year brings a new horror story—a landslide at an open-pit copper mine in 2023 (AP), a quarry collapse in 2024 (Africa News), a pit collapse in 2025 (IJHub).

Chinese interests moreover are implicated in mining hazards. In 2025, a dam collapse at a Chinese-state-owned mine in the Zambia Copperbelt wrought environmental catastrophe. Fifty million liters of toxic waste poured into rivers that supply more than half of Zambians with water. Mass die-offs of fish and birds were immediate, and Kitwe, a city of 800,000, had to shut off its water supply.

Lawsuits have been brought against mine owner Sino-Metals Leach Zambia, and the long-term environmental impact in the Kafue River Basin is still being assessed. The Kafue River flows south from the Copperbelt through ecologically critical and touristically important Kafue National Park. Sino-Metals promised to compensate victims, but is implicated in covering up the scope of the disaster.

A campaign-season banner in Lusaka touts incumbent achievements.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Access Now in its explanation of the RightsCon cancellation fairly chose to emphasize Chinese interference as dispositive, and to gloss over other issues. Rights advocates were concerned, especially after the information minister's reference to "values," that authorities would aim to distract from their subservience to China by scapegoating the LGBTQ community. Such a move is known in the government playbook, as when previous crackdowns on political dissent were willfully mischaracterized as protecting traditional Zambian society from western liberal deviance.

Election season is under way in Zambia with the presidency and legislature in play. Voters go to the polls in August. The cancellation of a conference as large as RightsCon is wreaking adverse economic impact in Lusaka and across the country, in tourism and support-service sectors, not to mention leaving Zambia with an embarrassing black eye among nations. The incumbent president could lose his narrow lead in the polls were the public to come to understand as well that China, author of the Kafue disaster, was pulling Zambia's puppet strings.

Whither America?

When I learned of the RightsCon cancellation, I was not in Zambia, but in neighboring Malawi. Oddly enough, I went to Malawi before RightsCon to have a look at the substantial impact of Chinese infrastructure investment in that country.

I have written here at The Savory Tort before about the dangers to global security of strategic Chinese investment in the developing world, for example, two years before RightsCon Taiwan, in places such as Maldives. I hope to write about what I saw in Malawi later, my experience there being overshadowed now by the RightsCon story. 

Meanwhile, the coincidences piled up when, on April 30, a different story from Zambia broke in international news. Unexpectedly that day, outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Zambia Michael C. Gonzales delivered a farewell speech that sparked a conflagration of domestic debate and intensified discord with Washington. The Lusaka Times described what happened:

What was expected to be a routine diplomatic send-off quickly became a national political flashpoint after Gonzales questioned the credibility of anti-corruption efforts, raised concerns about institutional accountability and warned about governance weaknesses that continue to undermine investor confidence. His remarks landed at a time when political temperatures were already rising and economic frustrations remained deeply embedded among voters confronting high living costs and employment pressures. 

Gonzales was a Biden appointee, but he signed on to the new agenda when Trump went back to Washington. After the radical rollback of U.S. foreign development aid, in statements in 2025 and earlier this year, Gonzales expressed regretful support for the suspension of aid to Zambia for purported reason of the country's inability to corral corruption.

As The New York Times described the situation late last week, Gonzales's remarks came at a critical juncture in negotiation between the United States and Zambia over what "America First" economic relationship will replace the dismantled USAID model. Like China, the United States is eyeing Zambian mineral reserves and, observers allege, seeks to strike a deal on favorable terms of access in exchange for at least a billion dollars in health aid. 

Gonzales denied that mineral access is a bargaining chip in U.S.-Zambia aid negotiations. But a draft State Department memo leaked to The New York Times suggested otherwise. The Times reported plainly in March, "The State Department is considering withholding lifesaving assistance to people with H.I.V. in Zambia as a negotiating tactic to force the government of the southern African country to sign a deal giving the United States more access to its critical minerals."

The U.S. has renegotiated health aid with 20 other African countries, the Times reported, usually upon receiving the nation's commitment to shoulder more of the burden itself on healthcare. Ghana and Zimbabwe walked away from renegotiation. Nations have balked at U.S. demands that they share healthcare data and biological samples, sometimes for longer than the aid term, and without converse guarantees of access to research findings. These issues are at play in U.S.-Zambia negotiations.

Yet the renegotiation with Zambia seems specially to incorporate mineral access, too, according to Times reporting on the leaked draft memo: "[T]he United States is trying to use the deal it is negotiating with Zambia to address a longtime source of frustration: what is sees as China's unfettered access to the country's mineral wealth. Zambia is one of the world's major copper producers, and also has huge reserves of minerals like lithium and cobalt, all of which are key in the green energy transition."

According to Times reporting, some 1.3 million Zambians rely on daily U.S.-funded antiretroviral therapies, besides the country's dependence on U.S. aid to hold tuberculosis and malaria at bay. The United States is threatening cuts on a "massive scale," according to the leaked memo. A Zambian official condemned the equation of mineral access with lifesaving aid, the Times reported—though I saw no public recognition of Zambia's parallel arrangements with China.

On the street in Lusaka, I heard mixed feelings about the U.S.-Zambia row. I expected to hear disappointment and frustration at the termination of USAID and the threatened loss of health aid. But the outrage I heard was directed at Zambians' own government.

Many people I talked to framed their assessments with the experience of family members who depend on aid to live with HIV. Even what would seem a modest cost to a U.S. taxpayer for prescription drugs, mere dollars a day, would put treatment beyond reach for many in Zambia, where median income is about $4 per day.

Though U.S. threats to stop HIV assistance pointed to a deadline in May, Zambians told me that the drugs already are becoming scarce. It's possible that healthcare providers and corrupt officials are hoarding supply.

And therein lies the source of Zambians' frustration. People I talked to agreed with Gonzales and echoed U.S. allegations that aid is improperly diverted by corruption. Characteristically, one man expressed his support for President Trump, saying he liked that Trump "is his own man." Zambians seemed willing to go along with at least economic aid cuts if it would mean an end to corruption and more assistance hitting the ground in the long run.

In retrospect, it makes sense that anti-establishment Trump rhetoric would resonate with African constituents accustomed to self-reliance amid weak public institutions and politicians who promise much and deliver little. Still, I'm not sure an all-access pass for American corporations to Zambian natural resources is going to leave Zambians any better off than they are under the Chinese yoke. 

Zambians I spoke to had little more regard for China. They regarded Chinese investment as having proved self-serving of both Chinese laborers and investors, and having added little to Zambians' economic prosperity. That's pretty much the story on Chinese investment as I've found it elsewhere on the continent. I wonder whether Zambians will be surprised to find that that's now the American strategy, too.

A baobab tree says good night at South Luangwa National Park.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Sub-Saharan Africa navigates new world

Persons working on rights issues in and about Africa agreed that the cancellation of RightsCon under these circumstances is a devastating blow to democracy in Africa and the developing world. Conference organizers boldly endeavored to show that it could be done, that sub-Saharan Africa has the maturity and sophistication to take its seat at the table and to join the global dialog on human rights in the technological age. Now the takeaway is confirmation for the naysayers: reinforcement of the dangerous trope that Africa is a backwater, inexplicably mired in underdevelopment. It will be a generation, one activist lamented, "before anyone tries this again."

I worry even more about the confirmation of the Chinese foreign policy model. The cancellation of RightsCon at the behest of Chinese political demands, while Zambian natural resources are plundered and human capital exploited—soon by America also?—seems to confirm our global retreat from "the end of history" in western liberalism, and, in its place, a terrifying, seemingly inevitable human tendency to cling to the primacy of might.

Bhutan turns tourism into 'Gross National Happiness'

At the Takin Preserve: Bhutanese Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay
with me and visitors from the United Kingdom and United States.

Little more than a half century ago, the Kingdom of Bhutan was walled off to the world.

Today, tourists are welcome, but with strict controls that aim to leverage social and economic development.

Earlier this month, I traveled to Bhutan and had the privilege of meeting the prime minister, the Hon. Tshering Tobgay. The PM was visiting the Motithang Royal Takin Preserve in Bhutan, located just outside the capital, Thimphu.

Takin calf at the preserve.

RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The takin, by the way, is a large mammal native to the Himalayas, a genetic relative of sheep. One subspecies of takin is specific to Bhutan and is revered as the national animal. The preserve provides a sanctuary for the massive herbivores, thus also protecting the environment from their destructive appetite.

Tobgay was not at the preserve for a refresher on Bhutanese fauna; rather, the PM was escorting the 2025-appointed American ambassador to India and special envoy for south and central Asia, Sergio Gor, on a touristic and diplomatic visit. Gor was reciprocating a Tobgay visit to the United States in December.

Tobgay and Gor, at the PM's right, feed a takin.

RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

A longtime Bhutanese politician, Tobgay is American educated. He earned a bachelor's in mechanical engineering at the University of Pittsburgh in the 1980s and then a master's in public administration at the Harvard Kennedy School in the 20-aughts. He published a book in English last year: Enlightened Leadership: Inside Bhutan's Inspiring Transition from Monarchy to Democracy (inset below).

Bhutan is a constitutional monarchy, though still leans heavily on the monarchy part of the description. The crown initiated a policy of democratization in 1952. A first national assembly was appointed the following year and given the power to impeach the monarch. Today, the king formally appoints the prime minister, though in practice the appointee is elected by the legislature. Similarly, final decisions of the Supreme Court formally are referred to the crown for approval.

Supreme Court of Bhutan, Thimphu.

RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

In modern international law, Bhutan is renowned for its commitment to "Gross National Happiness" (GNH), a national policy priority introduced in the 1970s. A holistic measure inspired by Buddhism and informed by factors such as health, education, and living standards, GNH has been embraced conceptually by the international community—Bhutan joined the United Nations in 1971—as an alternative to economic productivity, the conventional measure of a country's success. One Bhutanese host explained to me that GNH does not mean every person is happy; rather, GNH describes the aims that should justify national policy-making.

Bhutan opened to foreign tourism only in 1974 and allowed television and the internet only in 1999. It still guards its borders jealously, allowing a limited number of tourists who must book through state-authorized agents and pay a US$100-per-day sustainable development fee. When I visited, my visa was arranged wholly by the tour service I used.

However restrictive Bhutan's social and political conservatism, I could not argue with the results I saw on the ground. People I met in Bhutan expressed affection for the king and queen, often noting that the royal family lives in a modest home and champions public education. Schoolchildren I happened upon in Thimphu were uniformed and polite, while also cheerful and playful, and they spoke English confidently.

Buddha Dordenma, visible from Thimphu center.

RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The sustainable development fee seems to be well reinvested in infrastructure, such as paved roads, and touristic sites, such as the 177-foot Buddha Dordenma statue, completed in 2015, that towers over Thimphu. A travel companion told me that the winding rural roads we traveled were unpaved when he visited a couple of decades ago. In literacy and life expectancy, Bhutan significantly outpaces its cohort in the "medium" range of the U.N. human development scale.

Thimphu, capital of Bhutan.

RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Insofar as I heard any gripe about government policy from the Bhutanese, it was that high-quality healthcare remains elusive, especially in the countryside. Nevertheless, when an American travel companion asked my guide about the cost of treatment after the guide mentioned a family member's cancer, the guide narrowed her brow in puzzlement. Then she shook her head, understanding the question, and said, "free, of course."

Rinpung Dzong, or "Paro Fort," a 15th-century monastery
and top tourist destination, in Paro, Bhutan's third-largest city.
Owned by RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Thinking over what we had seen, some of my travel companions wondered aloud whether monarchy might not be so undemocratic after all. That struck me as curious after what I heard about some Nepali youth protestors speaking wistfully of monarchy there. Invariably upon such musings, an American, sometimes me, would say that the efficacy of monarchy might depend a bit too much on who is wearing the crown.

The United States does not have formal diplomatic relations with the Kingdom of Bhutan, thus Ambassador Gor's visit as special regional envoy. Gor has some personal connection to, well, at least the Asian continent. He was born in Uzbekistan—"Gor" is a chosen truncation of Gorokhovsky—and migrated with his family to the United States, via Malta. He graduated from secondary school in Los Angeles.

Amb. Gor

How did an L.A. immigrant wind up with an ambassadorship in the Trump administration? Gor has been involved in Republican politics since his post-secondary days at George Washington University. His recent ambassadorial qualifications include fundraising for President Trump and starting a Trump-reverent book publishing company with Donald Trump, Jr.

After the 2024 election, the President appointed Gor to head personnel appointments. President Trump later credited his "great friend" Gor with "nearly 4,000" party-loyal hires in the new administration. Presumably Gor himself included.

Iglesia celebra ordenación en comunidad quechua

Pastor Cruz a la izquierda, con Pastor Zhulleima y su esposa y hijos.
Capture from video at BBC RI media

En mi iglesia de Rhode Island el domingo, fuimos testigos de la ordenación de Gabriel Zhulleima.

Barrington Baptist Church (BBC) dio la bienvenida a la gente de varias iglesias, de Massachusetts y el estado Nueva York, tan lejos como Albany. Las iglesias que se unieron con nosotros incluyen en particular la gente Quechua que viven en esta región. Un grupo de mujeres quechuas honró el evento con una actuación musical en la tradición indígena.

Nuestro propio pastor y misionero Aurelino Cruz, de origen brasileño, sirvió como maestro de ceremonias y traductor del español al inglés. El pastor y misionero Antonio DeLaZerda dío el mensaje, o sermón, a la iglesia en español. Cruz y DeLaZerda ambos sirven con la organización Missions Door.

En el mensaje, Pastor DeLaZerda dijo que lo que describrió como la forma en que América está "cambiando" el mundo crea un problema para cristianos. No dio más detalles, y no quiero atribuirle mi propia interpretación. Pero yo también he tenido inquietudes sobre la incompatibilidad entre la política exterior estadounidense y las enseñanzas de Jesús.

Esto no significa que la religión deba dictar políticas. Pero la ayuda exterior es el motor del "evangelismo" estadounidense sobre la democracia y el estado de derecho. Terminación arbitraria de la ayuda está diezmando nuestros objetivos políticos, a la vez que cobra un precio horrendo en sufrimiento humano. A veces, lo que enseña la Biblia es simplemente bueno juicio.

Dios bendiga el ministerio de Pastor Zhulleima. Una grabación del servicio y la ordenación en la BBC estará disponible en línea esta semana. (UPDATE, May 20: Video publicado.)

Civil conflict in Mali devastates innocents, while indifference, deference to Russia undermine U.S. policy

U.N. peacekeepers, here a Togolese soldier near Mopti in 2018,
provided enough security for local markets to function.
MINUSMA (UN Mission in Mali) photo via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The Putin-backed Wagner Group is among the aggressors responsible for ongoing violence against civilians in Mali, and the United States is sabotaging its own future by ignoring the multiplying atrocities there. 

As the Trump Administration cozies up to Russian President Vladimir Putin, apparently to redraw the borders of Europe Munich Agreement-style, it's worth remembering who our new partner in peace is. Correspondingly, U.S. withdrawal from U.N. aid operations suggests minding what it is we're withdrawing from.

A friend in central Mali, from a village so small it's not on Google Maps, but west of Bandiagara, wrote last week pleading for support for foreign intervention there. He reported civilians murdered and displaced and villages and food stores burned in the region in recent weeks. I am not naming my friend for his security, as he remains in the area.

Mali
ECHO Base Map via GetArchive, public domain

The situation is complex, as both rebel Islamist militants and government counterinsurgent forces, the latter partnered with private contractors such as "Africa Corps" né Wagner, are at war, de facto, with both sides ruthlessly victimizing civilians caught in the middle.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) confirmed in a December report:

The JNIM [al-Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa al-Muslimeen (Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims)] has burned homes and looted livestock in Bandiagara region since June. JNIM fighters attacked several villages in the Doucombo and Pignari Bana district areas, setting over 1,000 homes on fire, stealing at least 3,500 animals, and forcing thousands of residents to flee, according to witnesses. Residents said the attacks were in apparent retaliation against communities that the JNIM accused of collaborating with [a collective self-defense militia organized to secure area villages].

Neither side in the conflict boasts a moral record. HRW reported:

Since May 2024, Malian armed forces and the Wagner Group have deliberately killed at least 32 civilians, including 7 in a drone strike, forcibly disappeared 4 others, and burned at least 100 homes in military operations in towns and villages in central and northern Mali. Two Islamist armed groups, [JNIM] and [Group for the Support] of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), have summarily executed at least 47 civilians and displaced thousands .... Human Rights Watch received credible reports of hundreds more civilians killed, but due to the difficulties of conducting research in central and northern Mali, the numbers in this report are conservative. 

At the request of Malian authorities, a U.N. peacekeeping mission withdrew from Mali in December 2023 after itself coming under attack in the cross-fighting. French forces had withdrawn the previous year. The U.N. mission had been in Mali for 10 years, but its presence did not prevent two military coups in the last five years. The junta now in control of the government seems intent on extinguishing the insurgency at any cost, but it's far from clear whether either side can prevail.

The worsening situation in Mali is indicative of destabilization across west and central Africa. Military coups toppled governments in Burkina Faso in 2022 and in Niger in 2023. Now the three military governments of Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali have withdrawn from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Meanwhile, combatants' calls for U.N. withdrawal are growing in other hot spots, such as DR Congo, where rebels have taken the key city of Goma.

ECOWAS (2018)
St.Krekeler via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0

In my travels in West Africa, I found ECOWAS to be a profoundly stabilizing force and engine of economic development. The free trade group, formerly 15 countries, allowed fragile economies a chance to level the playing field in the global market. A common currency, the "eco," was planned to supplant and surpass the CFA franc.

Indicative of the progress made possible by ECOWAS, my friend in Mali messaged last year, keen to get the word out about his nascent tourism venture. Bandiagara is within a day's travel of Timbuktu, the UNESCO World Heritage Site that has been mostly inaccessible to outsiders for more than a dozen years because of armed conflict.

Now social and economic progress in the region is disintegrating.

To be clear, I do not contend that the United States or the United Nations should ride to the rescue with military force in Mali. Neither side in the conflict there wants western intervention, and we would sink into a lethal quicksand by merely adding a third side in the fighting.

However, diplomatic intervention to start with, and international peacekeeping later, could be vital to save generations of innocent people from murder, abuse, and starvation. I am mindful that my International Law class will soon study use of force, a unit that prompts sorrowful consideration of the western indifference that permitted the Rwandan genocide to play out unhindered.

HRW decried the conflict in Mali for both sides' utter disregard of "the laws of war." Between U.S. willingness to reward Putin's invasion of Ukraine with gained territory and a repeat of willful western blindness to the trampling of human rights in Africa, the entire project of international law that was built upon the ashes of World War II is now in jeopardy.

The Trump Administration seems content to let the United Nations fall by the wayside in favor of a transactional approach to foreign policy. Thus, for example, the key to a Trump peace plan in Ukraine, and any hope that Ukraine would recover lost territory in such a plan, seems to turn on a deal for U.S. access to rare-earth minerals in the country's east.

But it is in fact a transactional foreign policy that I suggest will suffer if we disregard Africa. Development of extractive industries—Mali has diamonds, gold, and uranium—is a desirable goal; the question is, who will benefit?

ECOWAS, after the model of the European economic community, and U.N. peacekeeping, which makes free trade possible, represent a west-leaning African future in which ordinary people benefit from development with rising standards of living. This isn't charity. The United States would benefit from vibrant, free-market commerce with an economically developed West Africa. All boats float.

In contrast, Russia seeks to expand its sphere of influence by undermining democratic participation and capturing governments with authoritarian oligarchy. That means an east-leaning African future in which ordinary people are subordinated and impoverished. The United States loses in that scenario; our only benefit from wealthier eastern oligarchs will be the sale of more prime U.S. property to foreign owners.

As the United Nations has been nothing but a thorn in the side of neo-imperial Russian ambitions, Putin would like nothing better than to put the organization to death. In corollary, he must be delighted by the demise of USAID, which represents our foreign policy leverage in Africa.

The United States lets its influence wane and turns its back on the world at its own peril.

Here is a list of NGOs, IGOs, and charities working in Mali.

Frum invokes Judge Learned Hand on self-doubt to build case for 'uncanceling' Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson, 1912
Library of Congress

In the March Atlantic David Frum pleaded for the "uncanceling" of Woodrow Wilson and gave a shout out to the great Judge Learned Hand.

Frum exhibited his usual eloquence in pleading for understanding that people are complicated and we ought not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Wilsonianism has guided American foreign policy for a century and has done a lot of good in the world, Frum argued persuasively. One cannot pretend away that legacy in an eagerness to embrace the admittedly ample evidence of Wilson's racism and bigotry.

We ought be wary as well, Frum observed, that right and left both are eager to "cancel" Wilson. The left for his racism, of course. The anti-regulatory right, meanwhile, sees Wilson as a forefather of both globalism and the administrative state. Besides his vision for what would become the United Nations, Wilson signed the Federal Trade Commission Act into law in 1914. With the Chevron doctrine presently withering in the Supreme Court, lefties, be careful what you're canceling.

An aside on the subject of left and right: The Economist published a fabulous opinion piece last week that's a balm for classical liberals such as myself who have been rendered ideologically homeless by the ironic Republican embrace of "the state [as] savior." (Every American libertarian, by which I mean most Americans, should read it, so it's unfortunate that it's paywalled.)

In the course of his reasoned plea, Frum further observed:

We live now in a more polarized time [than Wilson's], one of ideological extremes on both left and right. Learned Hand, a celebrated federal judge of Wilson’s era, praised "the spirit which is not too sure that it is right." Our contemporaries have exorcised that spirit. We are very sure that we are right. We have little tolerance for anyone who seems in any degree wrong.

Hear, hear. The line comes from Hand's famous "Spirit of Liberty" speech in 1944. Read more at Judicature.

Torts students know Learned Hand for his also famous formula to describe rational choice as a weighing of burdens against the risk of loss. Hand was prolific, and his subtle influences can be traced through many fields of American law in the 20th century. Indeed, see The Atlantic in 1961.

Just yesterday, as it happens, I was talking after class with a 1L Torts student about the imperative that legal education empower a student to challenge one's own assumptions. I know what you're thinking, but it was she who made the point. "We should question ourselves," she said. "We should never stop questioning."

Wise woman.

Speaking of wise women, hat tip @ my wife for spying The Economist item.

Incidentally, the cover story of the March Atlantic concerns police response to mass shooting events, focusing on, but definitely not limited to, the Deputy Scot Peterson matter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. In June 2023, Peterson was acquitted on all charges after a trial in which authorities alleged felony child neglect and criminal negligence. In January 2024, a Florida court denied a defense motion to dismiss civil suits by 17 families against Peterson, clearing the matter for trial.

Frum's article is Uncancel Woodrow Wilson, The Atlantic, Mar. 2024 (online Feb. 2, 2024) (subscription).

Western myopia marginalizes war in Sudan, Ecuador

My prayers, especially over the recent holidays, have admittedly felt cliché, if not comical, being dominated by desire for "world peace."

In case Ricky Gervais is right and prayer works like a democratic election (jk; it doesn't), I've focused on the conflicts of the world that my otherwise-trusted David Muir & co., reporting on Israel and Ukraine, seem quick to forget: Sudan and Ecuador.

I've written previously about Sudan (Apr. 2023, Sept. 2023). The New York Times in December reported a death toll in excess of 10,000 and displaced persons rounding 6 million. My friend from Khartoum remains safe abroad, but it looks increasingly like there will be nothing to come home to. I just read in Christianity Today that hospitals have been targeted and destroyed by the warring generals in the unscrupulous scorched-earth struggle.

I'm the last to rush to judgment with the r-word, but is there another explanation for seeming western indifference to this ongoing tragedy?

And then there's Ecuador, which in recent weeks also has entered a chaotic kind of civil war. It's a country dear to me for personal history there, but also of professional interest for fascinating and groundbreaking developments in constitutional law in recent years.

The Daniel Noboa Administration declared war on organized crime after drug lords were broken out of prison, almost certainly with the help of corrupt insiders. As Noboa cracked down, the country was besieged by retaliatory violence, especially in the Guayaquil Canton.

Efforts to remedy the desperate situation are closely related to the social and economic prosperity Ecuador experienced in recent decades. Ecotourism, again especially in Guayaquil, an access point for the Galápagos, had been an engine of economic and social development, precipitating recognition of rights of indigenous people and of nature with which the nation's courts were experimenting.

When I was last in Guayaquil about a dozen years ago, it was safe enough to walk around, for me, at least, by day. Security and the economy were on the upswing. On January 9, 2024, in contrast, the world was horrified to see armed terrorists, some of them teenagers, holding guns to the heads of journalists in a Guayaquil news station broadcasting live. My friend Ugo Stornaiolo Silva, an Ecuadorean lawyer living and working in Poland, reports that his family in Ecuador is safe, but the hatches are battened down. Domestic travel is out of the question.

Elected only in November 2023, Noboa promised to get a grip on drug trafficking and restore the rule of law. In a sense, then, the present violence is a promising sign of a much needed reckoning. Yet it remains to be seen whether the cause is winnable. Observers predict a bloody road ahead, or maybe worse if Noboa wavers in his resolve.

Ecuador's problem is part of the wider narrative of drug trafficking and human migration through Colombia and Central America, driven by the wealth, demand, and relative opportunities of the United States. America's backyard is declining into a mega-narco-state, while neither of our only choices of political party has demonstrated the will or ability to tackle the problem even in its domestic dimension.

Say what you will about China, the PRC recognizes that stability in its neighborhood is essential to the country's own national security. The means to the ends of course are problematic, exemplified by Nauru's recent change of alignment from Taiwan to China. But that matter again demonstrates the ascendancy of Chinese foreign policy over America's apparent appetite for isolationism.

Pray for world peace, as a spiritual matter. Know that it will only happen with American commitment, as a political matter.

*     *     *

As often happens in the course of the school year, my personal blogging in the fall semester had to yield to professional workload. I have been logging matters I'm eager to share and will endeavor to catch up in the coming months.

Fighting shatters peace, rips at progress in Sudan

"Our tea lady" and me in Khartoum, November 2020.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

I'm saddened by the outbreak of conflict in Sudan, threatening to set the country back decades in development and economic opportunity.

As I wrote in 2020, Sudan was on a promising trajectory for peace and normalization of relations with the United States. The Trump Administration settled tort litigation over the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings; the attackers were alleged to have planned the operation from Sudan. And in December 2020, after a secular legal reform, Sudan was at last removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. The State Department instructed that U.S. businesses could again trade there, cautioning only that state-owned Sudanese companies ought be regarded warily, as corruption remained a problem.

I was in Sudan in November 2020, and the people bore a palpable optimism. Khartoum was littered with the worn and abandoned husks of American enterprises, such as KFC, and there was expectation that they would come back to life soon. One could imagine that the ruddy cola sold in glass bottles bearing Arabic script might give way to authentic Coca-Cola, for better and worse. From an eager local entrepreneur, I bought ground Sudanese coffee in haute paper packaging printed in anticipation of a new market for exports.

Now military factions are fighting in the streets of Khartoum. Civilian sites, including hospitals and the airport, are under fire. Ordinary people, struggling with food insecurity and climate-change-related dust storms and flooding in the best of times, are caught in the middle.

My associates and I in Khartoum frequented "our tea lady," who ran a thriving street business near a hospital entrance. With unfailing cheer, she brewed tea and fried snacks over hot coals for healthcare workers and passersby. On the sidewalk, she carved out an unexpectedly welcoming space amid the chaos and grime of the city. In a makeshift circle of motley seating on plastic stools and buckets, people from different walks of life and all corners of the world paused, chattered, and laughed.

I hope our tea lady is safe.

Chinese aid in foreign development, Taiwan's dwindling number of allies warrant Western concern

Honduras severed ties with Taiwan and doubled down on ties with China just days before House Speaker Kevin McCarthy met in California with the president of Taiwan.

The severing of diplomatic relations between Honduras and Taiwan is an important sign for global security, well beyond the bilateral significance. The People's Republic of China (PRC) has been executing a methodical campaign to isolate Taiwan from the world, a potential preliminary step to an assertion of control that would test the U.S. pledge to defend the disputed territory.

Chinese development policy is a fascinating subject; I take it up each year in one hour with my Comparative Law class.  Evidence abounds to support disparate theories on what the PRC means to achieve with its foreign aid packages. From well meaning humanitarian goals to Machiavellian world domination: it's anybody's guess what's being said in the highest levels of Beijing briefings. I'll paste below the reading list my class used this year to get a handle on this wide-ranging sub-subject. The discussion always is the best of the course.

Around the world, I have seen the vast reach of renminbi. The infrastructure projects alone are simply stunning. Chinese flags boast of telecommunication investment in distant and dusty towns in West Africa and South America. Bridges soar in Croatia and Montenegro; dams in Thailand and Sudan. Glassy government buildings adorn capitals such as Windhoek and Harare. And then there are the ports, from Togo to Sri Lanka to Peru. That's just a sampling of what I've seen with my own eyes.

A Dutch friend working in the aid sector in the Middle East was puzzled when I first asked for his appraisal of Chinese objectives. It's obvious, he opined. They just don't say it.

He and I were in the remote Indian Ocean island nation of the Maldives in March, where I witnessed Chinese-funded projects: a shining national museum, a bridge connecting the capital to the airport island across open ocean, and a massive new airport under construction. 

The Sinamalé Bridge, or China-Maldives Friendship Bridge, links capital Malé to Hulhulé Island.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Velana International Airport at left; the new Maldives airport under construction at right.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The Maldives National Museum, Malé, opened in 2010.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The list of countries that have severed ties with Taiwan upon PRC quid pro quo has grown so long that it's difficult to track, and countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are well represented. I was in Paraguay last year not long after it asked Taiwan for $1bn to remain friends. Typically of countries in the mix, Paraguay is trying to play both sides for the best deal, which, in the end, probably means just using Taiwan as leverage to get the best deal from the PRC. Heritage reported in late February that Paraguay was one of only 14 remaining countries, then, still maintaining ties with Taiwan. 

Last week, Honduras renounced that club. NPR contextualized the move:

Honduras had asked Taiwan for billions of dollars of aid and compared its proposals with China's, Wu said. About two weeks ago, the Honduran government sought $2.45 billion from Taiwan to build a hospital and a dam, and to write off debts, he added....

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said her government would not "engage in a meaningless contest of dollar diplomacy with China." ....

For decades China has funneled billions of dollars into investment and infrastructure projects across Latin America. That investment has translated to rising power for China and a growing number of allies.

In Honduras, it has come in the form of construction of a hydroelectric dam project in central Honduras built by the Chinese company SINOHYDRO with about $300 million in Chinese government financing.

Honduras is the ninth diplomatic ally that Taipei has lost to Beijing since the pro-independence Tsai first took office in May 2016.

Taiwan still has ties with Belize, Paraguay and Guatemala in Latin America, and Vatican City. Most of its remaining partners are island nations in the Caribbean and South Pacific, along with Eswatini in southern Africa.

As Reuters put it in a headline yesterday, "US, Taiwan seen powerless to stem island's diplomatic losses in Latin America."

When Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen met with McCarthy in California, she was on her way back from visiting Belize and Guatemala. Media reports tended to spin the meeting as a show of tough-on-China Republican policy. I rather assumed the view I heard from one commentator, that meeting in California was a way not to meet in Taiwan, thus, not to poke the dragon as Nancy Pelosi did.

Schooled on 1970s détente, I'm not much of an American imperialist, and these days, I'm not much of an American exceptionalist. But I do worry that we will one day wake up to find ourselves a quirky outpost of remnant democracy in a world of purported harmony under authoritarian paternity.

Here's your Comparative Law homework for two hours on law and development, including a discussion of the PRC.

Historical and theoretical:

• John Henry Merryman, Comparative Law and Social Change: On the Origins, Style, Decline & Revival of the Law and Development Movement, 25 Am. J. Comp. L. 457 (1977).

• Jedidiah Kroncke, Law and Development as Anti-Comparative Law, 45 Vand. J. Transnat'l L. 477 (2012).

Policy:

• Nic Cheeseman, Why There's a Case for Giving Foreign Aid to Authoritarian Regimes, The Conversation (Jan. 14, 2019).

Cheeseman here summarizes his remarks at a University of Birmingham debate in 2019. The whole debate is on video on YouTube, so you can watch it if you like (cued to Cheeseman, who spoke first).

PRC:

• Stephen Paduano, China's Investments in Rwanda Raise Familiar Questions About Debt, The Atlantic (Aug. 3, 2019)Deborah Brautigam & Meg Rithmire, The Chinese "Debt Trap" Is a Myth, The Atlantic (Feb. 6, 2021).

• Keith Bradsher, In Global Slowdown, China Holds Sway Over Countries' Fates, N.Y. Times, (Oct. 7, 2022).James McBride, Noah Berman, & Andrew Chatzky, China's Massive Belt and Road Initiative, Council on Foreign Relations (last updated Feb. 2, 2023).

If you'd like to dig into the numbers of Chinese development aid, have a look at the Global China Initiative at Boston University, especially its recent (Jan. 2023) policy brief.

The older BRI exists alongside more recent, if less extravagant, Chinese policies in the Global Security Initiative (GSI) and the Global Development Initiative (GDI).  The GSI and GDI raise analogous questions. If you would like comparable overviews, I recommend Michael Schuman for The Atlantic (July 13, 2022) on the GSI; Joseph Lemoine and Yomna Gaafar for New Atlanticist (Aug. 18, 2022) on the GDI (pro-Western perspective); and Professor Amitrajeet A. Batabyal for The Conversation (Aug. 4, 2022) on the GDI.

If you would like to learn more about the Chinese debt cancellations in Africa mentioned in the N.Y. Times article, there's a good and fairly even-handed article from Voice of America News (Aug. 25, 2022). One thing I have not given you here is any of the abundant statements from Chinese authorities and state-sponsored media defending Chinese policy; you can find them readily online yourself if you wish to get a flavor.

Conclusion:

Engage with this compelling perspective piece authored by a Harvard law student in 2018. Attorney Sabrina Singh is now an associate in the ESG group at Latham & Watkins in New York City.

• Sabrina Singh, Development Versus Anti-Development: Your Choice Matters, Harv. L. & Int'l Dev. Soc'y (May. 13, 2018).
  

A thanks to my Dutch friend (whom I'm not naming for security) for joining the class from the Middle East via Teams to discuss the delivery of humanitarian aid in conflict zones.

EU leverages trade for sustainable development

Attorney Cyprian Liske presents at the University of Bologna.
Used with permission.

"Sustainability" is the word of our times, and the European Union has more than a decade's experience building sustainability expectations into trade agreements.

At the University of Bologna in October, for a program of the Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities, doctoral candidate Cyprian Liske, my friend, colleague, and former student, presented his research on sustainable development provisions in EU trade agreements concluded from 2010 to 2020. Here is the abstract:

On 27th November 2019, Ursula von der Leyen, at that time President-elect of the European Commission, delivered a speech in the European Parliament, in which she set a concise programme for the next 5 years of her term of office. "Sustainability" was mentioned in this speech no less than 8 times. "We have to bring the world with us and this is already happening," Ms. President said. "And Phil Hogan [at that time Commissioner for trade] will ensure that our future trade agreements include a chapter on sustainable development."

Indeed, the EU has been including trade and sustainable development (TSD) chapters in new-generation trade agreements since the Free Trade Agreement with South Korea (2010). However, such TSD chapters, devoted to the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals, including environmental protection, preventing resource depletion, or protecting workers' rights, differ substantially in agreements concluded with particular countries....

The goal of the project was to comparatively analyse TSD chapters in trade agreements concluded by the EU in 2010-2020, pointing out common elements and differences. The analysis will let us critically explore what the reasons for those differences may be (e.g., the course of negotiations, economic dependency, trade partners’ level of development) and whether the EU is consistent in its sustainability requirements set towards its trade partners. It will also allow us to depict the current tendencies in the way how such TSD chapters are shaped by the EU in comparison with the global trends. The comparative analysis of the EU TSD chapters was conducted by the researcher qualitatively and quantitatively with the use of software (MAXQDA 2022).

The research parses the interests advanced by EU agreements..
© Cyprian Liske; used with permission.

The Biden administration lately has redoubled the U.S. commitment to the developing world, announcing at a December summit, for key example, an investment of $55bn in Africa over the next three years.

Development aid is often viewed skeptically by American taxpayers. That's understandable when the homeland is plagued by homelessness and financial insecurity. Isolationism streaks run through both libertarian and conservative ideologies, evidenced lately by Republican skepticism even of aid to Ukraine. But development aid can be justified with reference simultaneously to socioeconomic benevolence and to the donor's national security, thus, appealing to priorities both liberal and conservative.

Literal signs of Chinese investment are ubiquitous throughout Africa, as here,
in the rural community d'Oukout in the Casamance region of Senegal, 2020.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The United States has a lot of catching up to do. With hotly debated motive, China has invested heavily in the developing world, near and far from its borders. Chinese presence in Africa is ubiquitous, from massive infrastructure projects such as ports and bridges to telecommunication access in the remotest of villages. Russia, too, has lately gone all-in on Africa: a "charm offensive," researcher Joseph Siegle wrote last year, and "[t]he reasons aren't pretty."

Incorporating sustainable development into trade agreements allows western powers to facilitate development goals at less cost than direct investment, and even with potential gains through free trade. There's still a lower-common-denominator problem when competing against proffered Chinese and Russian agreements that attach browbeating strings only on the back end. But access to Western markets brings some incentive to the table.

A practicing lawyer and legal translator, Liske is pursuing his doctorate on the nexus between sustainable development and international trade law in the context of EU external policy. He graduated in law from Jagiellonian University and in business linguistics from the Tischner European University, both in Kraków, Poland, and both with distinction. He also is an alumnus of the American Law Program of the Columbus School of Law of the Catholic University of America, and of the English Law and Legal Methods International Summer Programme of the University of Cambridge.

Historian explores Grant statue's African odyssey

My photo from Bolama in 2020
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Martin H. "Jay" Joyce, author and my colleague in the exploration of historical curiosities, has authored a new article about the origins and winding story of the statue of U.S. President Ulysses S Grant on the island of Bolama in Guinea-Bissau and its two appearances on Bissauan postage stamps.

I have written about the Grant doppleganger's odyssey previously, in March 2020, when I got some of the facts wrong, and in November 2020, when I corrected and updated the record. Now Joyce has dived deep. He teases his piece thus:

In the March-April 2020 issue of Topical Time, Mr. George Ruppel recounted the story of why Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau) issued stamps in 1946 and again in 1970, featuring Ulysses S. Grant. Grant was honored for arbitrating a dispute between Portugal and Great Britain during his presidential administration in favor of Portugal. The crux of the dispute involved territorial rights over the island of Bolama, just off West Africa’s coast.... In the mid-twentieth century, Bolama frequently appeared in the philatelic press because of the Pan-American Airways Clipper airmail routes, which used Bolama as a stopping point before proceeding across the South Atlantic....

An internet search for statues of American presidents around the world rarely includes this statue. Why not? As former ABC News radio commentator Paul Harvey would say, "Here's the rest of the story...."

The article is Ulysses S. Grant in Portuguese Guinea—the Rest of the Story, Topical Time, May-June 2022, at 60. Topical Time is the journal of the American Topical Association.

Joyce is a 1974 graduate of the United States Military Academy. He is the author of Postmarked West Point: A US Postal History of West Point and its Graduates, a winner of a Vermeil award at the 2021 Great American Stamp Show. His forthcoming work from La Posta Publications is The West Point Post Office: 1815-1981: Keeping It All in the Family—Nepotism, Paternalism and Political Patronage, ... and Dedication to the Corps.