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Maps, although seemingly objective representations of the world, hold immense power. They shape our understanding of space, navigate our journeys and define political boundaries. But beneath the veneer of neutrality lies a potential for manipulation.

The history of warfare is littered with examples of maps used to dehumanise the enemy. Some of these are very explicit. Satirical maps were produced by all sides in the first world war, depicting Europe as a series of caricatures to dehumanise enemy states and push a victorious war narrative.

Other examples are less obvious. In the Vietnam war, the US military produced maps that designated specific regions of Vietnam as “free-fire zones”, meaning any person or activity within that zone could be considered hostile and targeted with military force. This tactic effectively erased the civilian population from the map, treating the entire area as an enemy stronghold.

A map of Europe produced in Germany at the outbreak of the first world war depicting each country as a satirical human figure.
US Library of Congress / Wikimedia

The dehumanising effect of maps stems from their inherent abstraction. Maps simplify reality by reducing a complex landscape teeming with life and history into lines, symbols and colours. While necessary for clarity, this simplification often has the consequence of stripping away the human element.

For example, the below map shows the locations of known Russian military strikes and ground attacks after its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The map uses symbols to simplify the conflict. Later we would learn that one of these cartoon-like icons represents the Bucha massacre in which 458 Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war were reportedly killed by Russian forces.

A map showing the locations of Russian military strikes and ground attacks inside Ukraine as of February 28 2022.
Associated Press

Fuelling conflict

Maps can also be used to reinforce the “us v them” mentality that fuels conflict. They create a visual distinction between “our side” and “theirs” by starkly delineating enemy territory.

In the lead-up to the Rwandan genocide in 1994, extremist Hutu media outlets produced maps that categorised Rwandans by ethnicity: Hutu and Tutsi. These maps weren’t just geographical representations, they were tools for identification and targeting.

The maps often used contrasting colours to sharply divide Hutu and Tutsi areas. This visual distinction created a clear separation between the in-group (Hutu) and the out-group (Tutsi), promoting the idea that Tutsis were not part of the Rwandan fabric.

Read more:
Rwanda genocide: 30 years on, why Tutsis are at the centre of DR Congo’s conflict

Some maps went further, using symbols like machetes or snakes to represent Tutsis, portraying them as violent and dangerous. These maps were widely distributed through newspapers and radio broadcasts. They not only identified Tutsis but also served as visual propaganda that justified violence against them.

This visual separation fosters a sense of distance and difference, making it easier to view the enemy as an abstract threat rather than fellow human beings. Propaganda maps exploit this effect by exaggerating the size of enemy territory or depicting enemy populations as faceless masses.

Removing the human from the map

The Israel Defence Force’s introduction of grid maps to Gaza in December 2023 has introduced another way of dehumanising populations. Similar to the free-fire zones of the Vietnam war, Israel has divided Gaza into more than 600 blocks, ostensibly to aid in evacuating civilians.

Each block on the map, which can be accessed through a QR code on leaflets and social media posts, can receive evacuation warnings before the bombardment of a given square. However, aid workers have warned that the map risks turning life in Gaza into a “game of battleships” in which the flattening of any grid square is justified under the pretence that it is an empty space on a map.

Maps also have an impact on the way we, as observers, view conflict. This can extend beyond the battlefield. Maps often depict refugees as a homogeneous mass, neglecting the individual stories and desires that drove them from their homes.

In the early stages of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for example, the BBC came under fire for one map in which it used arrows to depict the movement of refugees. People on social media suggested that these symbols insinuated invasion rather than fleeing. Following criticism, the BBC updated the map to use proportional circles instead.

Lessons are being learned

The dehumanisation inherent in war maps is not inevitable. Including civilian infrastructure and population density on military maps, for instance, can serve as a constant reminder of the human cost of conflict. Oral histories and community mapping projects can also offer alternative perspectives on the land, highlighting the human stories often erased by military cartography.

The Gaza conflict has shown that lessons are being learned about how better to use maps during conflict. Reuters, for example, has employed maps alongside other text and visual elements to help tell a fuller story and complete what maps alone might never be able to do.

Ultimately, maps are tools that can be used for good or ill. We must strive to see beyond the lines and symbols, and remember the human beings whose lives are impacted by the conflicts depicted on maps. Läs mer…

Guadeloupian writer Maryse Condé, who has died aged 90, left a body of work which includes many deeply nuanced and wide-ranging responses to the centuries of often violent contact between cultures and societies.

Take her bestselling pair of historical novels Segu (1984) and The Children of Segu (1985). Set in an early 19th-century royal court in what is now Mali, these books explored the profound changes brought to a highly complex society by the slave trade, the arrivals of Islam and then Christianity, and European colonialism.

Condé’s work always challenged simple solutions to complex problems. It drew upon the intersections of class, ethnicity, gender, origins and race, and the myriad competing perceptions of social status that sought to establish a basis in any of these.

Condé’s startling work won her The New Academy Prize in Literature, known as “the alternative Nobel prize”, in 2018, among many other awards. It is hard to choose which of her books are among her best, so here are five which resonate with many of our current debates about identity, memory and our troubled shared histories.

1. Tituba, Black Witch of Salem) (translated by Richard Philcox)

University of Virginia Press

Her 1986 novel Moi, Tituba sorcière… Noire de Salem(published in English as Tituba, Black Witch of Salem with a foreword by American feminist activist and thinker Angela Davis) is considered by some to be the greatest novels about slavery, power and perceptions of witchcraft.

The story draws in part upon what remains in the historical record of a young woman called Tituba, who was sold into slavery in the Caribbean and then North America in the late 17th century. Tituba was among the first women to be accused of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials.

Condé crafts a richly imagined life for Tituba, setting the first half of the book in the brutal violence of the slave economy in Barbados. The second half is set in Boston and Salem, where a more insidious violence is politely buried under layers of hypocrisy before exploding in the Salem persecutions.

Condé’s novel speaks powerfully to the divisive legacies of slavery and colonialism, as well as to the growing awareness that what counts as “knowledge” – in the novel, as opposed to “witchcraft” – has not been decided equally.

2. Crossing the Mangrove (translated by Richard Philcox)

Penguin Classics

The complexity of Caribbean identity is at the heart of Crossing the Mangrove (1989) Each chapter is narrated by a different character as they attend the night-long wake of the mysterious Francis Sancher.

In this short novel, the rich diversity of this one small community is set out, with class, colour, education, gender, history and political commitment all playing a part in the characters’ thoughts of the deceased Sancher, of themselves, and of each other.

Secrets, blind spots, lies and prejudices emerge over the course of the night. Some will be revealed to the community, but some are only clear to the reader. Condé portrays the rich diversity of Caribbean society, alongside the universal experience of loss and grief.

Some have linked the title to Lord Alfred Tennyson’s poem Crossing the Bar (1889), which is interpreted by some as an elegy about passing into the afterlife. Others have pointed to the difficulty of moving through a mangrove, with its multidirectional roots, which could be seen as a metaphor for the complexity of identity.

3. Heremakhonon (translated by Richard Philcox)

Three Continents Press

Condé also explored the idea of roots in her first novel, Heremakhonon (1976), a novel that traces the itinerary of a young black Guadeloupian woman who absorbed the lesson both from her family and from the French education system that she was “French”.

Yet when she arrives in Paris to continue her studies, she is told she is really African, and should go there to find her authentic roots. She does so, only to be told she is not truly African, but Caribbean.

Condé writes with verve and a great deal of acute social critique, pointing to what happens to an individual when their identity is dragged into grand theoretical ideas of any stripe.

4. Tales From the Heart: True Stories From My Childhood (translated by Richard Philcox)

Soho Press

Condé returned to these themes in several of her autobiographical texts, particularly Le cœur à rire et à pleurer : souvenirs de mon enfance (2001), published in English in as Tales From the Heart: True Stories From My Childhood . She describes her childhood in a comfortable middle-class Guadeloupian family and her gradual political awakening to what her brother calls “alienation”.

In the book she writes of how her parents fetishise and impose on their children a certain fantasy version of metropolitan white French culture. They disdain Guadeloupian culture, the Créole language and any connection to a Black identity.

Towards the end of the book, the teenage Condé realises “I was a ‘black skin, white mask’ and Frantz Fanon was going to write a book with me in mind”. Here Condé references the seminal text, Black Skin, White Masks, by the Martinican theorist and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, which explored the effects of colonialism and racism on the psyche, and the experiences of people of colour in a white-dominated world.

5. The Journey of a Caribbean Writer (translated by Richard Philcox)

One of Condé’s last books, The Journey of a Caribbean Writer (2014), collects some of her lectures and essays, along with two previously unpublished texts.

It gathers many of her thoughts on the relationships between the Caribbean and Africa; the space the sociologist Paul Gilroy called the Black Atlantic. This describes the mixing of black cultures with other cultures from around the Atlantic; diaspora and globalisation; and the happenstance of the places we are born and the languages and cultures we inherit and encounter.

This book alone is a worthy introduction to the work of one of the most complex, most honest, and yet most engaging and hopeful of contemporary thinkers. Läs mer…

Germany has become the latest country to resume its funding to Unrwa, the United Nations agency that provides essential relief services to nearly 6 million Palestinian refugees. The decision came after an independent review found no evidence to support Israel’s claim that the agency has been infiltrated by Hamas.

Germany is the agency’s second-biggest funder – and the move is especially striking in view of its extremely close political alignment with Israel, which is now coming under increasing strain.

All eyes are now on the US, the agency’s largest supporter, to see if it will reinstate the US$350 million (£280 million) it typically provides each year. Meanwhile in the UK, MPs have written to foreign minister David Cameron, demanding that funding is restored “without delay”.

Reaction from the Israeli government has been hostile. In a statement, Israel’s foreign ministry spokesman said that “this is not what a true and comprehensive investigation looks like”, adding “it is impossible to say where Unrwa ends and Hamas begins”. The Israeli government did not provide any further detail or evidence for this claim.

Israel alleged in January that 12 of Unrwa’s 13,000 employees in Gaza had participated in the October 7 attacks. Shortly afterwards, the government went on to claim that hundreds of Unrwa employees are members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad, in breach of the UN’s neutrality principles.

In response, Unrwa commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini immediately fired nine of the accused 12 (of the other three, two are dead and one is missing). Meanwhile, the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, ordered an independent review into Unrwa’s neutrality practices.

That review was chaired by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna and carried out by staff of Nordic research bodies – the Swedish-based Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, the Norwegian Chr. Michelsen Institute and the Danish Institute for Human Rights.

The report makes good reading for Unrwa. Colonna and her team described its work as an “indispensable lifeline” for Palestinians and noted the agency’s robust neutrality framework.

Crucially, they also found that Israel has provided no evidence for its allegations that a significant number of Unrwa employees belong to militant groups.

Donor response

In response to the original Israeli allegations, 16 governments paused or suspended funding to the agency. This threw Unrwa’s work into an escalating crisis. With the agency having already suffered from a serious financial deficit for many years, management warned that it could run out of money entirely in a matter of weeks.

The withdrawal of core funds heightened the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, where Unrwa provides essential services to 87% of the population, including food assistance to 1 million Palestinians. The UN special rapporteur on the right to food advised that the defunding made famine in Gaza inevitable.

Not long afterwards, a group of aid organisations confirmed that human-made famine has now taken hold.

Catherine Colonna: evidence doesn’t support Israeli allegations about Unrwa.
EPA-EFE/Sarah Yenesel

With the Colonna report finding no evidence to support the allegations, serious questions are now raised about the speed with which so many states withdrew their funding. Many governments had already reinstated funding for Unrwa after Colonna’s interim report was released last month. These included Australia, Japan, Finland, Iceland,
Sweden and Canada.

Since the final report’s publication, EU humanitarian chief Janez Lenarcic has called on others to follow suit. But there are so far no signs that the US – Unrwa’s biggest donor for decades – will.

Congress recently passed a budget banning any financing of Unrwa for the next 12 months. This means there is little possibility of a policy reversal, even if the Biden administration was amenable to it. By the time that budget expires in March 2025, the next US presidential election may have returned the White House to Trump – who completely defunded the agency during his previous presidency.

The UK government has also so far resisted calls to reinstate funding to Unrwa, meaning there may be a limit to the Colonna report’s impact on this front.

Israel’s stance

The accusations levelled against Unrwa in January follow years of Israeli attacks on the agency. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, first called for Unrwa to be disbanded back in 2017 and has repeated his demand regularly since then.

Observing this, several observers, including Omar Shakir, the Israel-Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, have concluded that the Israeli discourse on Unrwa is really driven by the political objective of undermining Palestinian refugee rights.

They may now point to further evidence of this in the Colonna report, which notes that although Unrwa has provided Israel with its staff lists annually since 2011, the government had never previously raised any concerns.

Vital: Unrwa is the main UN agency responsible for the welfare of Palestinian refugees.
Christoph Soeder/dpa-Pool/dpa

The report also throws further doubt on Netanyahu’s post-war plan for Gaza, which proposes that Unrwa be shut down and replaced by other international aid groups. It is unclear how this would work in practice, as Israel has provided no specifics.

What’s more, Colonna and her team found that Unrwa actually has “a more developed approach to neutrality than other similar UN or NGO entities” – raising questions about whether neutrality is really the issue here.

Amid the political discussions, it is crucial not to lose sight of what is at stake. A man-made famine is threatening lives across the Gaza Strip. More than 2 million Palestinians are struggling to survive after Israeli attacks have killed more than 34,000 people over the past six months.

With Unrwa providing a critical lifeline, any decision about its funding has serious repercussions – with the most vulnerable people in Gaza paying the ultimate price. Läs mer…

An artificial sweetener called neotame can cause significant harm to the gut, my colleagues and I discovered. It does this harm in two ways. One, by breaking down the layer of cells that line the intestine. And, two, by causing previously healthy gut bacteria to become diseased, resulting in them invading the gut wall.

The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Nutrition, is the first to show this double-hit negative effect of neotame on the gut, resulting in damage similar to that seen in inflammatory bowel disease and sepsis.

To reduce childhood obesity, six years ago this month, the UK government introduced a soft drinks industry levy. This “sugar tax” required a levy to be paid for any soft drink – equivalent to manufacturers adding 72p for a three-litre bottle of soft drink.

Since the levy was introduced, there has been a nearly 50% decrease in the average sugar content of soft drinks. While reducing sugar content certainly addresses childhood obesity, it does not give the same sweet taste perception that consumers are used to experiencing in their diet. That’s where artificial sweeteners can make a real difference.

The sugar content of soft drinks has been reduced by nearly 50% since the UK introduced the sugar tax.
Matthew Horwood / Alamy Stock Photo

Artificial sweeteners are chemical compounds are up to 600 times sweeter than sugar with very few (if any) calories, and are cheap and easy for manufacturers to use.

Traditional artificial sweeteners, such as aspartame, sucralose and acesulfame potassium (acesulfame K) have been found in a wide range of foods and drinks for many years as a way to increase the sweet taste without adding significant calories or costs.

However, in the last few years, there has been controversy in the field. Several studies have suggested potential health harms associated with consuming these sweeteners, ranging from gastrointestinal disease to dementia.

Although none of these harms have been proved, it has paved the way for new sweeteners to be developed to try to avoid any possible health issues. These next-generation sweeteners are up to 13,000 times sweeter than sugar, have no calories and no aftertaste (a common complaint with traditional sweeteners). An example of this new type of sweetener is neotame.

Neotame was developed as an alternative to aspartame with the aim of being a more stable and sweet version of the traditional sweetener. It is very stable at high temperatures, which means it is a good additive to use in baked goods. It is also used in soft drinks and chewing gum.

Neotame has been approved for use in more than 35 countries, including the UK, although the European Food Safety Agency is currently reviewing the sweetener as part of a series of evidence‐based risk assessments of certain sweeteners.

While neotame has been shown to change the profile of gut bacteria, very little research has investigated the effect of neotame at the cellular level.

Kills the cells that line the gut wall

The new study my colleagues and I conducted aimed to fill that gap in our knowledge. We used a cell model of the human intestine and model bacteria from the human gut microbiota to study how neotame consumed in the diet could affect gut health.

We found that, at higher concentrations, neotame can kill the cells that line the gut wall and, at lower concentrations, the sweetener can cause the gut to become more susceptible to leaks. Both these effects could result in inflammation of the intestine, which is linked to inflammatory bowel disease and sepsis.

We found that exposure of human gut cells to the acceptable daily intake, as decided by food safety agencies, of neotame causes cells to die. However, it is worth noting that, because neotame is so intensely sweet, it is unlikely that a person would consume enough sweetener in their daily diet to achieve this amount.

At lower concentrations of neotame, which could be seen in the diet, we still found a breakdown of the gut barrier was sufficient to be associated with an increased chance of infection in the body.

In the gut bacteria models, a type of E coli and E faecalis, neotame did not kill the bacteria but instead increased their ability to form “biofilms”. When bacteria form a biofilm, they cluster together as a protective mechanism which makes them more resistant to antibiotics. Our study also shows that neotame increases the ability of the E coli to invade and kill human gut cells.

These findings are very similar to those with traditional sweeteners, such as sucralose and aspartame, in terms of their effect on gut bacteria and human gut cells.

This suggests that the next-generation sweeteners may not be the solution that had been hoped for. So we are still stuck with the vexing question: how do we enjoy a sweet taste in our diet without the health harms that sugars, and now sweeteners, seem to give? Läs mer…

It looks like spring, but it doesn’t feel anything like it. The trees have green leaves, the flowers are blooming, yet it’s hard to believe that next week is May, because it feels so cold.

It won’t come as a surprise that temperatures have been well below average this week, especially in eastern areas of the UK where they’ve stayed stubbornly in single digits. The atmospheric observatory at the University of Reading indicates the average daily maximum temperature for April so far is 14.4°C – that’s 0.4°C above average. This follows the warmest March recorded globally at 1.68°C above our pre-industrial climate and the tenth consecutive record warm month.

How we feel, whether it’s warm or cold outside, depends on more than just the actual air temperature though. The wind, both its speed and direction, plus the amount of sunshine all play a big part in how the weather feels to us.

My back garden faces north east and when the wind blows from the chilly North Sea in the spring, it feels cold. Sitting out the front in the Sun with some shelter feels much warmer though. That’s partly because the sunshine is as strong in April as it is in August. The Sun sits at a higher angle in the sky and its energy is more intense in late spring and summer compared to the autumn and winter.

Read more:
’April showers’ – a rainfall scientist explains what they are and why they are becoming more intense

By the end of March, I was looking ahead and hoping again for some high pressure to end the deluge of rainfall through winter and bring some much needed drier weather. High pressure comes from a heavy atmosphere, caused by air sinking towards the ground. Once settled in, that high pressure blocks the usual low pressure weather systems that tend to sweep across the UK throughout the autumn and winter.

Chill factors

Fortunately, there was high pressure in the forecast. Unfortunately, that high pressure was in the “wrong” place for it to feel like spring had arrived. The high pressure has been mainly across the Atlantic out to the west or north west of the UK. Air circulates around the centre of the high in a clockwise direction. This means the air has travelled to the UK from far north near Greenland in the Arctic where the seas are freezing at this time of year.

The Arctic air is also very dry. You might have noticed your skin feeling drier than usual lately, or that you can see for miles with wonderful views from the top of a hill or a building. This dry Arctic air blown from the north makes it feel colder compared to moist air, even when the air temperatures are the same.

Soon, different weather fronts are due to bring warmer temperatures to the UK.
William Perugini/Shutterstock

Feeling cold can be offset by strong spring sunshine, but generally there’s been a fair amount of cloud trapped under the high pressure with nowhere to go.

The windier it is, the more our bodies cool and feel the cold. With low pressure to the east of the UK, the northerly wind has been squeezed and strengthened across central and eastern places. Wind chill can effectively halve the actual temperature, so 8°C can feel like 4°C.

So, when will it feel like spring? Probably not this weekend. But there is a change on the way as the high pressure gives in and a spell of unsettled weather moves in from the west. Notice the change in wind direction bringing milder air picking up moisture (and more rain) from the Atlantic. It will start to feel warmer and a little more settled by early next week, and temperatures will start to rise as we head into May.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 30,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far. Läs mer…

Copper is in the headlines after Australian mining giant BHP made a bid for UK-based rival Anglo American, valuing the company at US$39 billion (£31 billion). Together, the two companies would control around 10% of the world copper market.

Though Anglo American has rejected the offer as too low, the received wisdom is that it is the start of a takeover battle, and that it could also kick off a round of consolidation in the mining sector with copper at the centre. We asked commodities specialist and Professor of Economics Sambit Bhattacharyya of the University of Sussex to explain why copper is becoming so popular and what it means for the future.

Why the dash for copper?

The global economy is going through a transition in various ways. Emerging markets are expanding their industrial capacity quite rapidly and copper is a critical industrial metal, so that’s creating demand. Simultaneously, countries are moving away from fossil fuels to renewable energy to meet their targets to address climate change. For example, there’s a move to electric vehicles and solar panels, and copper is essential for both the electrical wiring and batteries.

Copper price (US$/lb):

Chart shows prices on the copper futures market.
Trading View

Furthermore, economies around the world are becoming increasingly digital, meaning more computer-based solutions and more dependence on computing power. Again, that means more electrification of the economy and therefore more need for copper. So the expectation is that demand for copper will increase rapidly over the next decade in both developed and developing markets. It’s quite likely that you could see a 5% annual growth rate in demand.

Why are the mining companies consolidating?

It allows them to reduce fixed costs and exploit economies of scale. In anticipation of increased demand for copper, the big miners would like a bigger market share to be able to set prices and provide higher returns to their shareholders.

BHP is specifically attracted to Anglo American’s copper assets in Peru and Chile. Having said that, the game has only just started here. I am sure other major miners, including Rio Tinto and Glencore, are also watching and may be waiting to make their move.

There are also risks associated with this potential takeover. This relates to nickel, which is another highly important strategic mineral for the renewable energy industry. Its price has been down (before recovering a little recently), which has affected Anglo American for example.

Copper v nickel price change:

Chart is showing the percentage change in value since late 2022. Copper = orange; nickel = blue.
Trading View

Nickel prices are under pressure because of Indonesia, whose mines are not controlled by the big mining companies. Indonesian nickel is relatively poor quality, but can be refined at a low cost, and has been undercutting demand for copper products from other countries.

Demand for copper and nickel runs hand-in-hand, since you need both if you are making electric vehicles, solar panels and so forth. Having seen what has happened with nickel, investors are likely to believe something similar could happen in the copper market.

For example, China might choose to pick up copper from Russia or South East Asia, and again those assets are not controlled by the western mining conglomerates. This could happen as a result of tense political relations between China and Australia, which is home to BHP and Rio Tinto. Although relations between these countries have improved somewhat, both companies are heavily reliant on the Chinese market so there’s a risk there.

So copper is not likely to become a geopolitical pawn in the same way as the rare earths?

It’s certainly possible, but my sense is that the market and the producers will be able to manage those risks. There could be trade restrictions and so on, but buyers and sellers will still find ways to conclude economic transactions. Trade restrictions typically lead to trade diversion – look at Russia exporting fossil fuels to Europe via India, for instance.

The future is orange.
RHJPhotos

My sense is that the globalisation trends that were put in motion in the late 1980s are irreversible. The global supply chain is so diversified, and also many firms are adopting AI and other new technologies to become more efficient, which they won’t want to stop. Obstructionist policies are typically slow to react, and they are likely to fail. We will find out in ten years’ time that this is probably right.

Is a rising copper price likely to have implications for the green transition?

Copper is well spread across continents, and a 10% share of the market is not a massive share. So I wouldn’t say that a takeover like this would give the miners enough power to derail the green transition. In any case, national governments can influence prices by brokering favourable long-term deals with the miners for their industrial operations.

How are the major copper-producing countries likely to be affected by surging demand?

It depends on the contracts. For example, Chile has benefited quite a lot from its mining operations. It has modernised rapidly and transformed itself from a low income to a high income country. It has a highly sophisticated, well functioning government which is able to handle these contracts well to ensure benefits for its own people while not harming investments in its mining industry.

Top 10 copper producers:

Nasdaq

Africa is probably the wild card. Many countries have struggled during the post-colonial era to offer well-functioning government to their populations. Of course the continent has been a victim of injustice and pillage both during the colonial era and the pre-colonial slave trade.

These days, African countries don’t seem to have national champions in their mining industries to the same extent as others. They also tend to have weaker institutions and fragile governments.

Large multinationals have a strong incentive to exploit these weaknesses and take home even bigger profits. Needless to say that this is not beneficial for the local population. I can only hope that we will see more representative and effective governments in that region, so that people can benefit from their mining assets. Läs mer…

Interrogations of university leaders spearheaded by conservative congressional representatives. Calls from right-wing senators for troops to intervene in campus demonstrations. Hundreds of student and faculty arrests, with nonviolent dissenters thrown to the ground, tear-gassed and tased.

We’ve been here before. In my book “Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America,” I detail how, throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s, conservative activists led a counterattack against campus antiwar and civil rights demonstrators by demanding action from college presidents and police.

They made a number of familiar claims about student protesters: They were at once coddled elitists, out-of-state agitators and violent communists who sowed discord to destroy America. Conservatives claimed that the protests interfered with the course of university activities and that administrators had a duty to guarantee daily operations paid for by tuition.

Back then, college presidents routinely caved to the demands of conservative legislators, angry taxpayers and other wellsprings of anticommunist outrage against students striking for peace and civil rights.

Today, university leaders are twisting themselves in knots to appease angry donors and legislators. But when Columbia University President Minouche Shafik called in the NYPD to quell protests, she was met with a firm rebuke from the American Association of University Professors.

If the past is any indication, the road ahead won’t be any easier for college presidents like Shafik.

Lawfare from the right

Throughout the 1960s, students organized a host of peace and civil rights protests, which conservatives characterized as communist.

Students spoke out against American involvement in the Vietnam War, the draft and compulsory ROTC participation. They demanded civil rights protections and racially representative curricula. The intervention of police and the National Guard often escalated what were peaceful protests into violent riots and total campus shutdowns.

From 1968 into the 1970s, conservative lawyers coordinated a national campaign to sue “indecisive and gutless” college presidents and trustees whose approach to campus demonstrations was, in conservatives’ estimation, too lenient.

The right-wing organization Young Americans for Freedom hit 32 colleges with lawsuits, including private Ivy League schools like Columbia, Harvard and Princeton, as well as public land-grant universities like Michigan State and the University of Wisconsin.

The legal claim was for breach of contract: that presidents were failing to follow through on their end of the tuition agreement by not keeping campuses open and breaking up the protests. Young Americans for Freedom sought to set legal precedent for students, parents and broadly defined “taxpayers” to be able to compel private and public institutions to remain open.

Conservative students further demanded that their supposedly communist peers be expelled indefinitely, arrested for trespassing and prosecuted.

Expulsions, of course, carried implications for the draft during these years. A running joke among right-wing activists and politicians was that protesters should be given a “McNamara Scholarship” to Hanoi, referencing Robert McNamara, the U.S. secretary of defense and an architect of the Vietnam War.

A pro-Vietnam War pin suggests dumping protesters in North Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi.
Stuart Lutz/Gado/Getty Images

Meanwhile, right-wing activists hounded college leaders with public pressure campaigns by collecting signatures from students and alumni that called on them to put an end to campus demonstrations. Conservatives also urged donors to withhold financial support until administrators subdued protesting students.

Cops on campus

Following the massacre at Kent State in 1970, when the National Guard fired at students, killing four and wounding nine, nearly half of all colleges shut down temporarily amid a wave of nationwide youth outrage. With only a week or two left of the semester, many colleges canceled remaining classes and even some commencement ceremonies.

In response, conservatives launched a new wave of post-Kent State injunctions against those universities to force them back open.

With protests ongoing – and continued calls from the right to crack down on them – many university administrators resorted to calling on the police and the National Guard, working with them to remove student protesters from campus.

In fact, this very moment brought about the birth of the modern campus police force.

Administrators and lawmakers, afraid that local police could not handle the sheer number of student demonstrators, arranged to deputize campus police – who had historically been parking guards and residence hall curfew enforcers – with the authority to make arrests and carry firearms.

State and federal lawmakers attempted to further stifle student dissent with reams of legislation. In 1969, legislators in seven states passed laws to punish student activists who had been arrested during protests through the revocation of financial aid, expulsion and jail sentences.

President Richard Nixon, who had excoriated campus disruptions during his successful White House run in 1968, encouraged college presidents to heed the laws and applauded them for following through with expulsions.

Is ‘antisemitism’ the new ‘communism’?

As the U.S. presidential election approaches, I’ll be watching to see how the Trump and Biden campaigns respond to ongoing student protests.

For now, Trump has called the recent protests “antisemitic” and “far worse” than the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. Biden has similarly condemned “the antisemitic protests” and “those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”

Both are repeating the false framework laid out by GOP Reps. Elise Stefanik and Virginia Foxx, a trap that university administrators have fallen into during House inquiries since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

There indeed have been antisemitic incidents associated with pro-Palestinian demonstrations on university campuses.

But in these hearings, Stefanik and Foxx have baited four women presidents into affirming the right’s politicized framing of the protests as rife with antisemitism, leading the public to believe that isolated incidents are instead representative and rampant.

Like their association of civil rights and peace demonstrators with communism throughout the Cold War, politicians on both sides of the aisle are now broadly hurling claims of antisemitism against anyone protesting Israel’s war in Gaza, many of whom are Jewish.

The purpose then, as it is now, is to intimidate administrators into a false political choice: Will they protect students’ right to demonstrate or be seen as acquiescent to antisemitism?

A counter-protester holds a sign during an anti-Vietnam War event in New York City in 1969.
Harvey L. Silver/Corbis via Getty Images Läs mer…

Our addiction to plastics is trashing the planet, exacerbating global heating and threatening our very survival. Since 2022, the UN has been convening negotiations on a Plastics Treaty to address this crisis.

In one of the greatest success stories of the negotiations, an International Alliance of Waste Pickers representing 460,000 of them in 34 countries has ensured that the draft treaty includes a just transition for waste pickers.

As my research shows, there are a host of reasons why this should happen. Among them are the fact that waste pickers provide an important service to society. In addition they are producers of knowledge and ideas. Because they go through our trash and leave behind everything without value, they know better than anyone which plastics should be eliminated. They are also the only people with significant experience collecting recyclables in developing countries.

According to the alliance, a just transition for waste pickers involves: recognising and formalising waste pickers’ role; registration; meaningful involvement in policy-making and implementation; social protection and fair remuneration; and capacity building and organisational support.

The global plastics treaty needs to ensure commitment to waste pickers in the agreement.

South Africa’s approach to waste picker integration demonstrates how they can be protected.

A working model

As the Reclaim, Revalue, Reframe website my colleagues and I created explains, South Africa’s just transition for waste pickers is grounded in an approach that I call “participatory evidence-based policy-making”.

I first used this approach when I facilitated the three-year process to develop government’s Waste Picker Integration Guideline for South Africa. A series of education workshops combined waste pickers’ knowledge with analysis of academic research. In this way, a working group of various stakeholders agreed on the content of the guideline.

The key to our success was to start by agreeing on what existed.

In the past, government and industry treated waste pickers as poor, marginal people in need of help.

But research showed waste pickers collected 80%-90% of the used packaging and paper recycled in South Africa.

It became clear that it was waste pickers who were subsidising government and industry and that they were the experts on getting recyclables out of the environment.

Based on this analysis, the working group defined waste picker integration as the creation of a formal, planned recycling system that:

values and improves the present role of waste pickers
builds on the strengths of their existing system for collecting and revaluing recyclables
includes waste pickers as key partners in its design, implementation, evaluation and revision.

The group also agreed on integration principles. They include redress, improved incomes and working conditions, and valuing waste pickers’ expertise.

Now, South African municipalities and industry are required to make this work in practice.

South Africa has regulations which make producers responsible for the impact of their products after consumption. The rules require industry to pay a service fee to waste pickers registered on the South Africa Waste Picker Registration System. This is a vital step in addressing racial capitalism, as the entire recycling industry has exploited black waste pickers’ free labour.

It is difficult to register waste pickers, as they are understandably reluctant to give their personal information to municipalities and industry. Including them in the process of developing the registration system helped to create trust.

Justice delayed

South Africa’s potential to be the world leader in a just transition for waste pickers is at risk, however, because of weak implementation, monitoring and enforcement.

Industry is paying the service fee to only a handful of the registered waste pickers.

Few municipalities have integration programmes that comply with the guideline.

It is unclear what the government is doing to address these legal violations.

Fixing the loopholes

The solution lies in using the participatory evidence-based approach again – this time for implementation.

First, the government should establish a permanent multi-stakeholder Waste Picker Integration Committee to develop and oversee the implementation of a national integration strategy.

Second, the government should work with waste pickers and other stakeholders to create a municipal waste picker integration support programme.

Third, the government should include waste pickers and other experts in monitoring producer responsibility for waste. Stiff penalties must be imposed on industry for noncompliance.

Fourth, companies that committed themselves to waste picker integration by signing the Fair Circularity Initiative Principles should push South African industry to meet its legal requirements to pay and integrate waste pickers.

Lessons for the Plastics Treaty

The South African experience demonstrates what’s possible.

The International Alliance of Waste Pickers proposed how the Plastics Treaty could incorporate their concerns.

The South African experience also shows that achieving a just transition requires participation at all stages: implementation, monitoring and enforcement.

The Group of Friends of Waste Pickers nations should keep partnering on implementation. Läs mer…

Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s first minister, has suddenly terminated the Bute House agreement, the pact between the Scottish National Party and the Scottish Greens, which ensured a majority for the Scottish government in the Scottish parliament.

By ending their deal, Yousaf removed two Scottish Greens as government ministers. As a result, the SNP must now continue as a minority government. The party has only 63 members of the Scottish parliament out of the 129 sitting members, leaving it two seats shy of a majority.

It should be noted, however, that the Scottish parliamentary system was designed to be fragmented in this way. The idea was to provide a less confrontational style of politics and part of that goal was an electoral system that was expected to produce coalitions, minority administrations and governments that would need to sign inter-party agreements (such as the Bute House agreement).

Indeed, Scotland has witnessed two formal coalitions, two periods of SNP minority government (2007-11 and 2016-21), one SNP majority (2011-16) before having this Bute House agreement, a more informal coalition, from 2021. So, this could be a case of back to the future.

However, there are always political ramifications when ending inter-party deals. That was immediately the case for Yousaf. He scrapped the deal on April 24 – a Wednesday and therefore the day for first minister’s questions in the Scottish Parliament. So, just hours after terminating the agreement with the Scottish Greens, Yousaf was facing a very public verbal onslaught from the other opposition parties.

Shortly afterwards, the Scottish Conservative leader, Douglas Ross, has formally called for a no-confidence vote in the first minister. The Scottish Greens have confirmed their support for this motion. The Scottish Labour party also appears to have indicated support, which is unsurprising given they have polling much closer to the SNP in Scotland amid the recent turmoil.

Why an election is unlikely

However, a vote of no confidence in the first minister of Scotland does not automatically result in the downfall of the Scottish government and does not automatically trigger an election. Nor is it immediately clear that all the parties in the parliament would even support an election at this time. In fact, the party leading the charge for a no-confidence vote in the first minister, the Scottish Conservatives, are actually the ones who may have the most to lose from one. Polling clearly indicates a significant drop in support for the Conservatives. An election would very probable leave them the third-largest party, rather than the second.

Scottish Green Party co-leaders Lorna Slater and Patrick Harvie, pictured following the termination of the Bute House agreement.
Alamy

A key point in all this is that this is a call for no-confidence vote in Yousaf personally, not the Scottish government. It’s not clear how he is required to respond should he lose. It may be that he would not find such a situation politically survivable and he may well have to resign – but it is not clear that he would have to.

If Yousaf does resign, the SNP, would have up to 28 days to appoint another leader, who would become the first minister. At that point, the idea of an election would be moot so there is every incentive for the SNP to make the situation work.

Scotland is not due an election until May 2026 and a snap election has never been called before. To make an unscheduled election happen, two-thirds of MSPs have to vote in favour – which of course would require a sizeable number of SNP members to be on board. Given that polls indicate a clear loss of seats for both the largest (SNP) and second-largest (Scottish Conservatives) parties, would either of them want such an election?

Yousaf’s immediate fate is unclear. There are other parties and players involved in the parliament. The Scottish Liberal Democrats have four MSPs, and there is also the sole Alba party MSP, Ash Regan. She was previously a member of the SNP, and was one of the contenders for the SNP leadership, but defected to the Alba party in October 2023. She has written to Yousaf, seeking assurances around specific policy issues before she decides on how to vote in the confidence motion.

The political mathematics of the current situation may be somewhat unclear, but the situation remains that this is a vote of no confidence aimed squarely at the first minister, rather than the whole Scottish government. Scottish Labour may seek a vote of no confidence in the government in the hope of triggering an early election, but it is in few other party’s interests to give them what they want. There could be a change of first minister, but Scotland is less likely to be going to the polls around this issue anytime soon. Läs mer…

At least 4,000 doctors are employed in Kenya’s public healthcare sector. Almost all of them went on strike on 14 March 2024, demanding the implementation of a labour agreement signed with the government in 2017. The agreement promised higher salaries, better working conditions and the recruitment of doctors. The Kenyan government said it didn’t have the money to honour the agreement, which was signed by a previous regime. Kahura Mundia teaches medical law and ethics, and is the deputy chair of the doctors’ union leading the strike. He explains the issues.

What grievances led to the doctors’ strike?

Doctors have taken several actions over the last seven years to get their grievances addressed. Doctors working in public hospitals have been pushing for the implementation of a collective bargaining agreement signed in 2017 between the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union, the national government and the country’s 47 county governments.

This agreement came about after all parties agreed to end a 100-day doctors’ strike that began in December 2016 and ended in March 2017. The agreement defined the basic terms of employment and benefits for all doctors. It was to be implemented fully and immediately from 1 July 2017, but it was not.

The latest doctors’ strike began on 14 March 2024. The government and the managers of one of Kenya’s top public hospitals went to the employment and labour relations court to stop the strike. The court suspended the strike on 15 March. It ordered that employers and doctors agree on the number of doctors, dentists, pharmacists and specialist doctors required to cover public health facilities and provide emergency care. This was set at two medical officers, two dentists, two pharmacists and two specialist doctors per facility. The court also ordered that union and government officials attend conciliation meetings to get a return-to-work formula.

Doctors’ union and government officials then held several meetings without being able to reach agreement.

The doctors’ grievances include:

a lack of comprehensive health insurance
delayed posting of medical interns
proposals to reduce interns’ salaries by close to 80%
staffing shortages in hospitals
a lack of staffing standards and norms.

National and county governments have additionally failed to facilitate training and development by denying doctors postgraduate study leave and not paying training fees for the past six years.

These are the same issues that occasioned the 2017 collective bargaining agreement.

Under the Abuja Declaration of 2001, African countries committed to allocating 15% of their government budgets to health. Kenya’s funding to the health sector has consistently fallen short of this target. Additionally, the allocation doesn’t ring-fence how much should be for the management of human resources.

This is one of the reasons there has been constant sectoral unrest – the failure to prioritise healthcare human resources. A collective bargaining agreement is meant to be reviewed every four years. In 2021, a new collective bargaining agreement proposal was shared with employers at national and county levels. No negotiations followed.

What are some of the gaps in Kenya’s healthcare provision?

Kenya has a large shortage of doctors. Current statistics show there are 2.3 doctors for every 10,000 people. The World Health Organization recommends a ratio of one doctor per 1,000 people.

The cost of healthcare is high. The average spend per person on healthcare is US$83.40. This is higher than the spend in neighbouring Uganda (US$33.90) or Tanzania (US$39.31). As a result, a majority of Kenyans can only afford to access healthcare in public facilities, which are inadequately staffed and equipped.

How have past negotiations shaped the latest strike?

Over the last 10 years, there has been labour unrest in the health sector because of failed commitments to fulfil the demands of healthcare workers.

The doctors’ union was established on 30 August 2011 after the enactment of the Kenyan constitution of 2010. Before this, attempts to register a union had been blocked by the government. This meant doctors couldn’t agitate for better working conditions.

The 2010 constitution also introduced county governments, which came into effect in 2013. Before this, doctors working in the public sector were centrally employed and managed by the health ministry. After 2013, doctors were posted across the 47 county governments. This made it more difficult to address issues touching on doctors’ welfare between national and county administrations.

Doctors’ first collective bargaining agreement was signed in 2013 with both levels of government. The implementation of this agreement, however, did not happen, which led to the 2016-2017 doctors’ strike. This ended with the signing of the 2017 deal, which was not implemented.

Kenya has had three government administrations since the doctors’ union was established. Each government administration has made commitments to improve working conditions but failed to honour them.

What have been the barriers to reaching a resolution?

The conditions placed by government officials have been a barrier – the first one being that doctors should call off the strike. In draft dispute settlement proposals in late April 2024, disagreement arose after issues raised in the strike notice were addressed without a comprehensive implementation plan. This led to a collapse in talks, owing to a lack of good faith and honest negotiations.

Good faith engagements entail coming up with clear and elaborate comprehensive solutions to each of the issues raised in a strike notice.

Doctors’ push for fair labour practices and collective bargaining has been guided by the provisions laid out by the Kenyan constitution and International Labour Organization conventions.

Dialogue on labour relations should be deliberate, fruitful, intentional and progressively undertaken. As a democratic country, keen on respecting the rule of law, Kenya cannot afford to mismanage doctors’ affairs by legitimising the violation of collective bargaining agreements, or discriminatory and exploitative labour practices. Läs mer…