Sanctions and Militant Violence

Image available at: https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/mappingmilitants/profiles/revolutionary-armed-forces-colombia-farc By Treyton Zanutto- Texas A&M '22 Introduction  Sanctions are an important and increasingly common part of the modern globalized world. The importance of sanctions has become more evident as the western world has responded to the present Russian invasion of Ukraine with the large-scale implementation of sanctions. However, as these sanctions...

Egypt: Dictatorship or Democracy?

By Sophie Polgar, UNC 2022 Since rising to power, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has secured his position as an authoritarian dictator. He has expanded the institutions under his control, allowing them to exercise sweeping powers over the population without checks or balances. These state institutions act legally but without accountability, a phenomenon called “resurgent...

The Effectiveness of Cash Transfers

by GABRIEL BROSHY, '20 Many argue that we ought to refrain from giving money directly to the poor. Since it was their faulty decision-making that caused their current predicament, giving money directly to these individuals would only perpetuate the cycle of poverty. At least in developing countries, this line of reasoning has been brought into...

An Empirical Examination of Boko Haram’s Female Suicide Bombers

by EMMA MADDEN, '18 On December 9th, 2016, two schoolgirls entered a crowded marketplace in Madagali, Nigeria. The young girls, posing as customers, paused to shop at a stall selling grain and second-hand goods. Suddenly, they detonated the two suicide vests hidden under their clothing, killing and wounding over 100 civilians.1 Instances like this have...

“Never Again:” How Guilt Over Rwanda Fueled African Genocide

by Ezra Max "The sharpness of the tongue defeats the sharpness of the warriors. Language is better than weapons." —Rwandan proverb[1] Preface In 1995 Susan Rice (then the National Security Council’s director for international organizations and peacekeeping), acknowledging the tepid nature of America’s response to the atrocities of the Rwandan Genocide the previous year, “swore...