June 1997

After the collapse of the Mobutu regime Zaire, now renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo, has been left stripped of resources, in spite of the mineral wealth being eyed covetously by foreign investors. Elsewhere, the International Monetary Fund’s figures point to a significant improvement in sub-Saharan Africa. However, imposing structural adjustment, privatisation and deregulation policies has resulted in impoverishing the populations of heavily indebted countries at the mercy of (...)

Six years on from the end of the Gulf War, the Arab world looks quite unchanged. Everywhere else in the world liberal parliamentary democracy has left its mark, but in the Middle East and the Maghreb authoritarian regimes survive without major reform. This Arab anomaly should not be attributed to some quirk of culture. It has much to do with the policies pursued by Western governments eager to maintain cheap access to oil and alarmed at the growing power of Islamist opposition movements.

The “Asian values” of the military regime in Burma (or Myanmar) have little to do with democracy. Since 20 May, followers of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi have once again been rounded up in a wave of arrests. The crackdown coincided, to the day, with the United States’ ban on further US investment in Burma. It did not however alter ASEAN’s decision to admit the Burmese junta.

Delegates of the 136 countries which have ratified the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) will meet this month in Zimbabwe to decide the future of many animal species. Though scarcely recovered from the mass slaughter of the recent past, pressure for a resumption in international trade is increasing.

Oslo’s death throes may be recognised in the United States, but Washington seems to have drawn only one conclusion: allow more time. But each day the tension rises in the still occupied territories. And each day sees more settlers move in, convinced that this is their own God-given land.

Japan is still paying the price for speculation during the bubble economy years. A series of economy recovery plans costing over $500 billion from 1992-95 have failed to trigger a return to growth. 1995 and 1996 saw a record number of corporate bankruptcies, along with a dramatic deterioriation in public finances. But the energy shown by some new sectors of industry, a growing trade surplus and the younger generation’s aspirations for a profound transformation of society argue against an over-pessimistic view.

The publication early last year of Hitler’s Willing Executioners, by American academic Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, sparked off a stormy debate about the destruction of the European Jews. With the book now available in French translation, the controversy continues, fuelled by a great deal of media hype. But it would be a pity if it blinded us to the rich contributions made to our understanding of the Holocaust in the first half of the 1990’s, which have shed new light on the origins of the massacre, the conditions under which it was decided on and perpetrated, and the personalities and motives of the killers.

Fifty years ago General George Marshall set out the basis of his plan to rescue Europe. Bill Clinton and Jacques Delors have both recently made reference to the plan. The countries now held up as models of economic success have received massive aid in the past - one more reason for calling for dozens of new Marshall plans throughout the world.

Despite the civil war raging in neighbouring Algeria, Morocco looks to be about to move towards peaceful political change. Local elections are taking place on 13 June and should, for the first time, be free of the “dirty tricks” of the past. The outcome will show whether the government has actually abided by the pact signed last February, designed to promote the process of democratisation. If all goes well, a general election could be held next September. That has still more important implications: although the Islamist vote is an unknown factor, various surveys suggest that the left is well-placed to win and implement its programme of (moderate) reforms. This would be an historic event for the whole of the Arab world in a country ridden with inequalities and where the social situation is volatile in the extreme.

Of 441 Nobel prizes only 11 have gone to women. The only two women prize-winners in physics were Marie Curie and Maria Goeppert-Mayer. The American Barbara McClintock, who made the vital discovery that chromosomes shape identity, had to wait till she was 82 before receiving the Nobel prize. Few people remember the importance of the German Emmy Noether to modern algebra, or of Sonia Kovalevskaia, the first woman university professor of mathematics (at Stockholm University). Europe’s resistance (bar the Nordic countries) to women in politics may seem astonishing, as is their near absence in certain fields (science, engineering and new technology) . It has always been fashionable for the media to discuss how the different hemispheres of the brain work. But they have produced no conclusive evidence. So what keeps women away from the “hard” sciences? Why do they not opt for these key fields when they leave school?

Seventeen years after independence 4,000 white farmers own 60% of the best land. Twenty per cent of the population work on these farms in dire conditions. In the final years of the Mugabe regime acute differences between affluence and poverty are making for a political, social and racial crisis.