Over the weekend, representatives from countries in West Africa and Europe met in Burkina Faso to address the quickly deteriorating political situation in Guinea, which was exacerbated by last week’s assassination attempt of the leader of the country’s ruling military junta. The weekend’s meeting resulted in a final communiqué, jointly issued by both the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which advocates for an international military intervention in Guinea, lead by ECOWAS. The communiqué expressed a “serious preoccupation with the rapid deterioration of the security, humanitarian and human rights situation in the country” and goes on to support ECOWAS in the “establish[ment] with the help of partners [of] an international observation and security mission.” However, a representative of Guinea’s junta rejected the military component of the communiqué, stating that the arrival of foreign troops on Guinean soil would be interpreted as a “declaration of war.” Over the past few decades, ECOWAS has strengthened its foothold in the region, intervening in a variety of conflicts, from Sierra Leone to Liberia to Guinea-Bissau. ECOWAS has been heavily involved in international negotiations with the Guinea’s current leadership since December 2008, when the junta assumed power after the death of the country’s long-time leader, President Lansana Conte.
Over the past few days, Honduras’s embattled former president, Manuel Zelaya, has been in negotiations with the country’s interim leadership about the terms under which he will be able to leave the country. Zelaya, who has been holed up in the Brazilian embassy in the capital city of Tegulcigalpa since mid-September, had hoped to travel to Mexico last week as a “distinguished visitor,” but was denied by Honduras’s current leadership, which demanded that Zelaya take on the title of “political refugee” when he eventually exits the country. While Zelaya initially refused to travel to Mexico under refugee status, his eventual departure from Honduras seems imminent, given an announcement from the interim government that Zelaya must exit the Brazilian embassy by January 27—the day on which his presidential term would have ended. The only stipulation that the acting Honduran government has placed on Zelaya’s travel is that he not seek asylum in a Central American country.
Monday’s negotiations at the UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen almost came to a standstill when a delegation of African countries walked out of the conference in protest of what they perceived to be the potential scrapping of the Kyoto Protocol, which was signed in 1997. Over the course of last week’s negotiations, a rift emerged between developed countries and developing countries over the issue of mandating binding targets on carbon emissions for the world’s poorer states. With China in the lead, a number of developing countries in Copenhagen have been advocating for the continuation of stipulations within the Kyoto Protocol that placed binding targets on carbon emissions for richer countries, but allowed non-binding targets for poorer nations. The focus on the obligations of Western economies has been interpreted by a number of observers as an attempt to shift the debate back to the question of emissions targets and restrictions on the world’s richer states. According to one African delegate, “The industrialized countries want to hammer out a large part of the deal on the last day, when the heads of state arrive. It’s a ploy to slip through provisions that are not amenable to developing country efforts. It’s playing dirty.” Delegates from the United States and the United Kingdom, however, argue that not all of Kyoto’s provisions should be scrapped—just those that allow developing countries to maintain non-binding emissions targets. Many climate change advocates worry that without binding targets on countries like China and India—both now among the world’s largest polluters—any resulting protocol will be ineffective in addressing the larger problem of global warming.