In the Issue

• Annual Reader Survey
• Sudan and the Implications for Responsibility to Protect
• Securing Vulnerable Nuclear Materials: Meeting the Global Challenge
• Burga Ban Enters Into (Un)Familiar Territory
• Interpol and UN Join Forces

Features

Annual Reader Survey. This month we are celebrating the fourth birthday of think. You can help us celebrate by completing a short reader survey. The first 200 readers to complete our survey will receive a complimentary think. T-shirt! We need your responses by Monday, November 30, so please complete the survey now.

Sudan and the Implications for Responsibility to Protect. The "Responsibility to Protect" doctrine agreed to by 175 countries in 2005, including the United States, is supposed to protect populations from genocide and other atrocities. Even though the carnage in Sudan began in 2003, inaction by the international community on this agreement has contributed to what Ambassador Richard Williamson calls "a genocide in slow motion." In a new policy analysis brief for the Stanley Foundation, Williamson writes of the complexities faced in fixing the problems in Sudan and why the international response has been "anemic." Read the full brief.

Securing Vulnerable Nuclear Materials: Meeting the Global Challenge. President Obama set out an ambitious goal at his Prague speech in April to secure all vulnerable fissile materials worldwide in four years. This laudable, and highly technical, goal is of great value not only to reduce the threat of terrorists gaining access to the material necessary to make a bomb but also to create the conditions necessary for eventual nuclear disarmament. Nearly ten months into his presidency, existing international commitments and sovereignty concerns highlight the need for a greater global consensus if there is to be any hope of meeting—or approaching—the president’s four-year goal. Noted specialist and former senior Energy Department official Kenneth N. Luongo lays out a road map to meet this critical global security objective in the latest Stanley Foundation policy analysis brief.

Beyond the Headlines

Burga Ban Enters Into (Un)Familiar Territory. Bans on burqas seem to have traveled beyond secular Europe and into what might seem an odd place to forbid Islamic garb—the Arab Middle East. Egypt is the latest country to become embroiled in the controversy surrounding the burqa, a traditional Islamic head-to-toe women’s veil (also referred to as the niqab). Fierce debate was sparked when France banned girls in state-run schools from wearing them in 2004 and again in June when President Nicolas Sarkozy declared that full veils symbolize the subjugation of women and are not welcome in France. Turkey recently upheld a ban on wearing them in public universities. In Germany, teachers are not allowed to wear them in class, and in Great Britain, a justice minister asked women to remove them in his office.

Following a young woman’s refusal to remove her veil at the request of a religious leader addressing Al-Azhar University last month, the Grand Sheikh issued a religious edict banning the burqa in all-female settings at public universities in Egypt. Barring the burqa in Egypt is seen by many as a way to counter growing Islamic extremism in a country that was once considered secular. While the ban is considered as one way of ideological reform, this complicated issue has yet to be fully uncovered.
 

Interpol and UN Join Forces. International criminals, be warned: A partnership between Interpol and the UN will provide critical new resources for UN peacekeeping forces taking on criminals partaking in illicit activities ranging from organized crime enterprises to human kidnapping operations. More than 60 justice, interior, and foreign affairs ministers were in attendance in Singapore where the agreement was reached. Among other things, UN police would be able to access the Interpol criminal intelligence database where police officers in 187 countries share and examine information.

Viewed as a great opportunity to tighten security in unstable areas such as post-conflict zones, the partnership will "promote greater respect for the rule of law in the most troubled parts of our world" according to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in a video address. Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble agrees. He sees this development as an opportunity to provide basic security in criminal havens such as Afghanistan where heroin trafficking has essentially funded Taliban insurgent and terrorist operations. The implications of this new partnership could be far reaching. Suddenly, the idea of real-time intelligence sharing between agencies (such as the International Atomic Energy Agency and Interpol) to curb the threat of terrorist networks camped in destabilized regions from acquiring nuclear materials does not seem as far off.