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China’s increasing attention to the Pacific region has created an uncomfortable bind for Australian foreign policy: should Canberra try to compete on economic grounds, knowing that it can’t outspend Beijing, or find another way to differentiate itself? Last week, former Department of Foreign

On 21 June, Ethiopians voted in long-awaited and twice-delayed parliamentary elections. These were the first polls held under the premiership of controversial Nobel Peace Prize winner Abiy Ahmed, in a country now embroiled in a civil war in the northern region of Tigray, a border dispute with

In his first overseas trip as US President, Joe Biden has flagged he intends to rally European allies in a critical “battle between democracies and autocracies”, and “make it clear to Putin and to China that Europe and the United States are tight”. Biden is not the only one in

On 1 June, I woke up to the news that the Chinese government had announced that it will allow all couples in the country to have three children, an increase from two. I joked to myself, “Finally, I’m legal!” I was born illegally as the third child of my family. At the time, the notoriously

The April election in Samoa has set off a constitutional crisis that finds two rival leaders in a deadlock over the prime minister’s office and threatens the foundations of the country’s political institutions. Samoa is not the first country in the region to find itself in such a predicament.

Book review: Gëzim Visoka, John Doyle and Edward Newman (eds) Routledge Handbook of State Recognition (Routledge 2019) At the school hall in Buka, in that heady hour after the declaration of Bougainville’s referendum result in December 2019 – a thumping 97.7% in favour of independence –

Book Review: Elliot Ackerman and James Stavridis, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War (Penguin 2021) The book begins with a clash in the South China Sea – an imagined conflict, this being a work of fiction, but the authors explain having felt compelled to write because, in the tradition of

Tax and spend US President Joe Biden may be grabbing the global headlines by boosting world growth with his big spending and international security with his telephone diplomacy. But US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen seems to be doing the real heavy lifting in restoring American credibility in

The Interpreter team is off for a break. Publishing will be light for Friday and Monday, but we’ll be back to it on Tuesday

Last week, the United Nations held the 65th Commission on the Status of Women in New York, and virtually, with the theme “women’s full and effective participation and decision making in public life, as well as the elimination of violence, for achieving gender equality and empowerment of all

One of the many consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic is that other critical heath issues have fallen off the agenda in Australia and globally – including female genital mutilation (FGM). A lack of attention to gendered healthcare issues over the last year, such as FGM, could have serious impacts

The waters off Mozambique are becoming a major new security hotspot in the Indian Ocean. An Islamist insurrection in northern Mozambique that the government seems powerless to suppress has also increasingly led to disruption in the Mozambique Channel, a key global shipping route. The Quad countries

Book review: Daniel Drache, A.T. Kingsmith and Duan Qi, One Road, Many Dreams: China’s Bold Plan to Remake the Global Economy (London, Bloomsbury, 2019). The economic fallout of the pandemic has been global, but not equal. If the often-necessary lockdowns have uniformly resulted in economic

“Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” – this recognition was a central focus of the 1996 World Food Summit. Today, Covid-

The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda is a global framework for the protection of women’s rights in conflict-affected settings, which encourages women’s participation in peace and security institutions and processes, and ultimately seeks to prevent armed conflict and thereby alleviate the

Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari fully supported the candidature of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to become Director-General of the World Trade Organisation. Even though the two are the products of different political philosophies, in June 2020 Buhari nominated Okonjo-Iweala, who served as Nigeria’s

Australia’s defence of the rules-based international order is based on enlightened self-interest. As the 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper made plain: “We will act on the principle that Australia will be safer and more prosperous in a global order based on agreed rules rather than one based on the

In remarks delivered at the US State Department in early February, President Joe Biden championed the rule of law as part of “America’s abiding advantage” and spelled out his vision for a nation leading “not just by the example of our power but by the power of our example”. In its swing

The dispute over the ownership of Diego Garcia and the rest of the Chagos Archipelago involves a complex array of legal, human rights, security and geopolitical issues. The United Kingdom wants to retain the islands it calls the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). Mauritius wants to see the