The Week That Was: Global News In Review

Foreign Policy Brief #148 | By: Ibrahim Castro | July 12, 2024

Featured Photo: latimes.com

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President Xi, left, meets President Putin on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Astana [Sergei Guneev/Sputnik via Reuters]

Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit

Last week in Kazakhstan’s capital of Astana, the 24th gathering of leaders from the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) took place. The SCO is a regional bloc that was founded in 2001, but has grown to greater importance in recent years. The group is made up of China, Russia, Belarus, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who was visiting Central Asia also attended the summit, showing support for the bloc. Turkey, a NATO member, recently expressed interest in joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a full member. China’s President Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin voiced their ambitions at the summit for closer security, political and economic cooperation between countries of the Eurasian region as a counter to Western alliances.

A man holds up a flag of Kenya as police use tear gas to disperse protesters during a demonstration in Nairobi, Kenya [Monicah Mwangi/Reuters]

Kenyan Protests

Waves of protests have swept through Kenya, triggered by controversial proposed tax hikes, the movement has evolved into a wider campaign for more accountable governance in the country. The protests, dubbed “occupy parliament”, were co-ordinated and mobilized on social media, Kenyan President William Ruto, who at first claimed the protests were illegitimate and orchestrated by criminals, finally gave in and agreed to shelve the contentious tax hike legislation, called Finance Bill 2024, on 26 June.

Despite the win, demonstrators vowed to press on and demand for president Ruto to resign in a wider campaign against his rule under the hashtag “RutoMustGo”. Kenya’s national debt stands at around $80 billion, about three quarters of its annual economic output, and 65% of annual revenue goes to repaying the country’s debt. Most of the unpopular policies fall under a set of reforms that Kenya has agreed to implement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Kenya is just the latest country on the continent to have experienced large-scale fallout stemming from the economic pain.

Palestinian schoolchildren stand at the courtyard of a school in the West Bank village of Urif, south of the northern city of Nablus, backdropped by buildings of the Israeli settlement of Yitzhar [File: Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP]

Israel Approves Three Settlement Outposts, Thousands of Homes in West Bank 

The Israeli government has approved plans to build nearly 5,300 new homes in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. The move comes on the heels of the Israeli government having approved the largest West Bank land seizure in more than three decades. The construction of Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory is illegal under international law and settlement expansion is widely seen as a major obstacle to the viability of a Palestinian state.

The far-right Netanyahu administration is itself dominated by settlers. The hard-line nationalist finance minister, Bazalel Smotrich, himself a settler, is in charge of settlement policy and has said his rapid expansion drive is in intended to ensure a Palestinian state cannot be created. In an escalation over past months, settlers have carried out more than 1,000 attacks on Palestinians towns and villages, causing deaths, damaging property and in some cases prompting Palestinians to flee villages.

Damaged houses and building along the shore are seen in a drone photograph after the passage of Hurricane Beryl, on the island of Carriacou, Grenada [Arthur Daniel/Reuters]

Mexico and Caribbean Battered by Hurricane Beryl

Last week Hurricane Beryl swept through Jamaica, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, northern Venezuela, and Mexico. While passing through the Caribbean the storm left at least eleven people dead in its wake before then making its way to Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula where it then moved into the Gulf of Mexico and, where it is forecast to take a path toward Mexico and southern Texas. The Hurricane reportedly damaged or destroyed a staggering 95% of homes on a pair of islands in St Vincent and the Grenadines. This storm has been recorded as the fiercest storm ever this early in the Atlantic hurricane season, a new reality scientists say has been fuelled by climate change.

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