MS Risk Blog

Prominent indigenous and environmental rights campaigner in Honduras shot dead in her home

Around 1am on March 3 renowned Honduran environmental and indigenous rights campaigner Berta Cáceres was shot dead by armed assailants at her home in La Esperanza, in Intibucá department, Honduras.

The high-profile murder has sparked international outrage and underlines the significant threats facing social campaigners in one of the world’s most dangerous countries. While Honduras is no stranger to high levels of violent crime, with one of the highest homicide rates globally, few are likely to take seriously any suggestion that Cáceres’ murder was a random act of violent crime.

The campaigner had received multiple death threats in recent years, primarily concerning her involvement in the campaign to halt the development of the partially internationally funded Agua Zarca Damn. In a country where 101 environmental campaigners were killed between 2010-2014,[1] she was aware of the vulnerable nature of her safety. According to local sources, the assailants broke into her house after she had gone to sleep and questions have arisen as to why there was no security service protection. In 2015 the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR) formally called on President Hernández’ government to ensure the protection of Cáceres and other human rights defenders by ensuring precautionary measures. Its failure to do so has sparked widespread criticism from local and international groups, and calls on the government to fully investigate the murder. Yet, impunity remains one of the key challenges in the embattled country, where according to former Attorney General Luis Rubí, more than 90% of crimes go unpunished.

Cáceres was a campaigner for the Lenca indigenous peoples, and in 1993 co-founded the COPINH (Civic Council of Indigenous Organisations in Honduras). In recent years COPINH has been campaigning for the rights of the Lenca community and ensuring the right to free-prior and informed consent before a government/or private company can develop their land, as outlined by the ILO, which Honduras is a signatory too. In particular, Cáceres vociferously campaigned against the Agua Zarca Damn, one of Central America’s biggest hydropower projects in the Gualcarque. The damn is a joint project between Honduran Desarrollos Energéticos SA (DESA) and Chinese state-owned Sinohydro – the world’s largest dam developer.

Following the ousting of former president Zelaya in 2009, the government has pushed through numerous damn and agricultural projects to make way for major extractives investment in the country, an area they claim is necessary to aid the country’s flailing economy, and raise revenues to tackle major social issues. However, many opponents argue this has been done without proper legislation, information and local engagement, and that those who have spoken out have found themselves at the end of the barrel of a gun, with little investigation carried out by the authorities. Speaking about its 2015 report into this, a Global Witness representative called on governments across Latin America to tackle this regional issue more seriously, claiming that rampant impunity allows perpetrators to get away with it, and that the problem is widespread across the region.

On the evening of 3 March violent clashes broke out in the capital Tegucigalpa, where students accused the government of failing to protect the activist by ensuring basic security measures. The protest voice also points to the complex nature of foreign investment in projects with high social risks if effective due diligence is not carried out. The Dutch development bank and other international lenders have come under increasing pressure to pull out of the highly politicised damn project. Cáceres won the prestigious 2015 Goldman award for her grass-roots environmental campaigning, which had placed the issue onto an international stage and raised her global profile and that of her campaign. This is likely to ensure that the government will come under the scrutiny of global investigation watchdogs to investigate the murder fully.

[1] As recorded by the International NGO Global Witness in a 2015 report.

Benin Set to Vote for New President on 5 March

On Sunday, Benin will vote for a new president in a crowded race that is focused on boosting the flagging economy. However logistical problems may keep hundreds of thousands from casting their ballots.

Current President Thomas Boni Yayi is stepping down after two terms in office, leaving thirty-three candidates vying to replace him. While Benin has not seen the levels of political tension that have plagued other recent votes across the country, including in Burundi and Rwanda, where leaders have tested constitutional limits in a bid to stand for a third term, there are concerns that frustrations could rise because of delays in distributing voting cards that have already held up the vote by one week. According to Fidele Marcos, who heads Amnesty International’s Benin branch, “the problem is that many of the old cards had problems that weren’t addressed.” As of Friday, voter identification cards has not been distributed in two of Benin’s twelve administrative districts, where nearly 700,000 voters live.

Campaigning has centered largely on the unemployment, education and economic growth, which has slackened as plummeting oil prices hit Benin’s much larger neighbor and main trading partner, Nigeria. Leading the field is Prime Minister Lionel Zinsou, a former economist and investment banker who has received public backing from both the president and the main opposition Democratic Renewal party (PRD). He however faces strong opposition inside the ruling Cowry Forces for an Emerging Benin (FCBE) party and from trade unions who say that, having spent much of his life away from Benin’s politics in France, he is an outsider and a poor choice to lead. Other top candidates include ex-prime minister Pascal Irenee Koupaki, Abdoulaye Bio Tchane, a former senior official at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and prominent businessmen Sebastien Ajavon and Patrice Talon. Tchane has promised to create 500,00 jobs every year of the five-year term, while Ajavon states that he will reduce youth unemployment through the creation of business incubators. Both Zinsou and Talon have pledged to reform Benin’s education system. If no candidate wins an outright majority in the first round of polling on Sunday, then the top two finishers will progress on a run-off vote within fifteen days.               

The Threat of Russian Hybrid Warfare

On several occasions lately it has been reported that there is a concern with Russia possibly conducting a so called hybrid warfare on European countries. In Finland the flow of migrants coming from the Middle East via Russia is what some consider a form of hybrid warfare. Military researcher Antti Paronen says the vast numbers of asylum-seekers in Europe could be used as a means to keep the Finns and European West off balance and push certain pressure points. Parallels have been drawn between the Somali migrants that overwhelmed Finland after the break-up of the Soviet Union, and the alleged trafficking situation with Afghani migrants that is going on presently in Finnish Lappland. Steering the flow of mass migration is a typical method in the arsenal of the so-called “grey phase” of hybrid warfare. To the Bulgarians the concept of hybrid warfare also include cyber-crime. The Defence Minister, Nikolay Nenchev, has noted that state institutions are taking cyber-crimes more seriously. This comes at a time when attacks have increased lately. Bulgarian institutions such as the National Revenue Agency and the Education Ministry have reportedly been targets of repeated hack attacks over the past months. These attacks have been linked to Russia, by Ukrainian news agencies. Chief of Defence of the Bulgarian Armed Forces has warned that the line between peace and war in the case of hybrid wars is not always clear, and that this is a dangerous thing and often a challenge for states. At the same time, the Latvians have also spotted signs of hybrid warfare directed at them, allegedly from Russia. Instead of migrant flows or cyber-crime the Latvians are considering propaganda. This is not a concern of Latvia alone, but affects several countries throughout Europe. The director of the Latvia-based NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, has said that indications of ongoing hybrid warfare are becoming stronger in Central Europe and Scandinavia. Despite cuts to the Russian budget, propaganda projects like the Kremlin-funded Sputnik news agency, which recently opened a Latvian branch, is still receiving government funds. This could be a signal of an increased Russian budget for producing and using state-propaganda. Sputnik set up a website in Latvian in early February, 2016. The Latvian Security Police said it serves as evidence to Russian attempts to spread propaganda. Such websites can be blocked but there are always tricks to bypass such blocks, not to mention that this might bring up some questions about democratic values. Therefore encouraging people to ignore the websites is the best thing to do as of now. That seems to be where the challenge lies in the case of so called hybrid warfare, because of its nature there is no obvious way to counter it. There is no discussion that adversaries have developed creative uses of the “full-spectrum” of warfare, including the use of regular and irregular tactics across all dimensions of war. In the last decade, some of the most important military forces and coalitions in the world, have attempted to address and counter so-called hybrid threats. This has turned out to be difficult, mostly because there is no agreed upon definition of the word hybrid. It is widely understood as a mixture or a blend of conventional/unconventional, regular/irregular, and information and cyber warfare. In theory any strategy of conducting warfare can be hybrid as long as it is not limited to a single method. Perhaps it is unnecessary to define it, but rather a need to consider war for the complexity that it is and counter each strategy with the appropriate counter measure. Hybrid defence for hybrid threats.

IS Expansion in Libya Timeline

The so-called Islamic State (IS) group, which was targeted by a United States air strike in Libya on Friday 19 February 2016, moved into the North African country in 2014 in the chaos that followed the ouster of dictator Moamer Kadhafi. In recent months, the militant group has captured a city in Libya and has become yet another player in the lawless country, where rival governments and militias are battling for control of territory and major oil reserves. IS’ desires to expand into Libya have prompted international concern, with the US increasingly placing its focus on preventing IS from spreading further into the southern regions of Libya and into the Sahara region of Africa.

2014

• 19 November – The US State Department says it is “concerned” by reports that radical extremists with avowed ties to IS are destabilizing eastern Libya, having already seized vast swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria.
• News reports emerge that the eastern coastal city of Derna is becoming an IS stronghold.
• 27 December – A car bomb explodes outside the diplomatic security building in Tripoli. The bomb, which was claimed by IS, does not cause any causalities.

2015 

• 8 January – IS claims to have killed two Tunisian journalists, Sofiene Chourabi and Nadhir Ktari, who went missing in September 2014.
• 27 January – IS claims responsibility for an attack on Tripoli’s luxury Corinthia Hotel, which killed nine people.
• 15 February – IS releases a video depicting the beheading of twenty-one Coptic Christians, who all but one were Egyptians. The militant groups says that the jihadists firmed the video in January. Egypt carried out air strikes on IS in Derna.
• 20 February – IS claims responsibility for suicide bombings in Al-Qoba, which is located near Derna. The bombings killed 44 people, with the militant group stating that the attacks are to avenge losses in the air strikes.
• 19 April – A new video emerges depicting the execution of 28 Christians who were originally from Ethiopia.
• 9 June – IS announces that it has captured the city of Sirte, which is located east of Tripoli. IS had already controlled the city’s airport.
• 12 July – The group acknowledges that it has been pushed out of Derna after several weeks of fierce fighting with members of the town’s Mujahedeen Council.
• 11 August – Heavy fighting erupts in Sirte between residents and IS militants, with dozens of people reported dead.
• 13 November – The United States bombs IS leaders in Libya for the first time and states that it killed Abu Nabil, an Iraqi also known as Wissam Najm Abd Zayd al-Zubaydi. Libyan officials identify him as the head of IS in Derna.
• 4 December – France announces that it carried out reconnaissance flights over Libya in November, notably at Sirte, adding that it plans to carry out other flights.

2016

• 4 January – IS launches an offensive in a bid to seize oil terminals in Ras Lanuf and Al-Sidra, which lie in an “oil crescent” along the coast.
• 7 January – A suicide truck bombing at a police school in Zliten, which is located east of Tripoli, kills more than fifty people, effectively becoming the worst attack to occur since the 2011 revolution. A second attack kills six at a checkpoint in Ras Lanuf. Both are claimed by IS.
• 19 February – A US air strike on a jihadist training camp near Sabratha, west of Tripoli, kills 41 people, with officials disclosing that a senior IS operative behind last year’s deadly attacks in Tunisia was probably killed in the strike. Serbian official announce that two Serbian diplomatic officials, who were being held hostage since November 2015, were also killed in the airstrike.

A historic agreement between the government and “hold-out” bond-holders in Argentina sees the 15-year saga enter its final act

On 29 February the Argentine government agreed to a historic settlement of $4.65bn with the remaining “hold-out” bondholders, a whopping 75% of the ambitious claims. The agreement holds good on President Macri’s campaign promise to return Argentina to the international financial markets, and reverse the hostile relations with international creditors developed under the 12 years of Kirchner rule.

Since it’s default in 2001, the Argentine government has been locked in one of the most publicised and brutal sovereign debt disputes in history. A small number of bond-holders refused to accept the restructure write-downs in 2005 and 2010, and instead pursued their full payment in the courts in New York. When the judge overseeing the case, Thomas Griesa, declared in 2012 that Argentina could not pay any bondholders until it had reached an agreement with the “hold-outs”, the country was set on course for a technical default. In 2014 the “hold-outs” won a landmark victory in the US courts and Argentina officially defaulted, isolating itself from the global financial markets.

During his election campaign President Macri – who came to office in December 2015 – promised to pay the creditors to ensure Argentina’s return to the financial markets. With a flailing economy, centre-right Macri is determined to move the country away from the populist policies of the past, and regain investor confidence and encourage FDI. Macri has made quick work on his promise, already floating the exchange rate and lifting the controversial export taxes – which had crippled the country’s exports. This latest decision marks a strong handed direction towards building an investor friendly economy, outlining that Argentina is “open for business” again.

While Macri will face strong opposition from some of Fernandez’ former supporters in Congress, and those ideologically opposed to the “bullying” tactics of the “hold-outs”, the legislation is likely to pass, as there is common consensus on the need to return Argentina to the international financial markets. In particular, Macri will be hoping to outline to foreign investors that his presidency is committed to lowering borrowing costs for companies operating in the country and inviting better terms for FDI.

As Argentina swings to the right and tries to take a more central course from the populist policies of the Kirchners, it’s one-time ally Venezuela is struggling with its own pending sovereign debt crisis. Many analysts expect Venezuela to default this year and with few leftist presidencies left in the region, it has few friends to turn to.