The fabled city of Timbuktu, in north-western Mali, was occupied by armed Islamist groups for almost a year. At the end of January, French and Malian soldiers retook control of the city. Since then, its people have been enjoying the taste of freedom again. But the light-skinned Arab and Tuareg communities are accused of complicity [...]
Since June of last year, the European Union has been touting its new reform plan for its European Neighborhood Policy (ENP), which calls for a complete revamping of the Union’s political and economic relations with the ‘Southern Mediterranean’ countries, most notably North Africa. Among the central tenets of the new ENP is the “more for more” approach, which stipulates greater rewards in economic assistance and EU market access for partner countries in exchange for substantive and far-reaching political reforms. While at first this seems to be a welcome change in rhetoric, and hopefully policy, from the EU, questions remain as to whether this really represents a true policy shift that will help strengthen reform and democratization in North Africa, or if such an approach will simply perpetuate a cycle of mismanaged EU-North Africa relations.
The ongoing post-conflict reconstruction process in Libya is reigniting a crucial debate among transitional justice advocates as to the role the International Criminal Court (ICC) can play in delivering justice and redress to victims of grave crimes. In the midst of the February 2011 revolution, the ICC opened an investigation into crimes allegedly committed in [...]