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"Europe's far right is rolling back LGBTQ+ rights...."

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Accessed on 21 October 2024, 1935 UTC.

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October 21, 2024

Hello, everyone. Today at WPR, we’re covering recent backtracking on LGBTQ+ rights in EU countries, as well as the role of security in tackling Latin America’s biodiversity challenges.

But first, here’s our take on today’s top story:

Residents play dominoes during a massive blackout after a major power plant failed in Havana, Cuba, Oct. 19, 2024 (AP photo by Ramon Espinosa).

Cuba: The country’s electrical grid has collapsed at least four times since midday Friday, repeatedly plunging around 10 million people into darkness, with the most recent blackout coming yesterday. The grid’s failures follow weeks of planned rolling blackouts and come as Tropical Storm Oscar made landfall in eastern Cuba yesterday evening. (Reuters)

Our Take: Evidently, Cuba was already struggling to restore its power grid before Oscar hit the country yesterday. But the storm will make it much more difficult to restore power, even as the lack of a functioning power grid will worsen the humanitarian impact of flooding and heavy winds in eastern Cuba.

Authorities in the country now say they hope to restore electricity by the end of Tuesday by relying on smaller grids to power each region until the national grid can be stabilized. Still, the prolonged blackout is the result of broader challenges facing Cuba, and those aren’t going away once Oscar passes and power is restored.

The most glaring of those challenges is Cuba’s failed state-managed economic model, which has struggled for decades but has been in full-blown crisis in recent years due to a series of external exacerbating factors:

Since the late 2010s, the political and economic crisis in Venezuela interrupted the flow of affordable oil to Cuba, which for the preceding 15 years had allowed the country to climb back from the economic crisis that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Trump administration reversed virtually all the U.S. policy reforms associated with the Obama administration’s normalization of relations with Havana, reimposing travel bans on U.S. citizens and limits on remittances to the island. The COVID-19 pandemic cratered Cuba’s tourism industry, which represented the country’s last remaining source of hard currency.

There was some expectation that when U.S. President Joe Biden took office in 2021, his administration would move quickly to alleviate the Trump administration’s Cuba policies. But while Biden did reverse the most draconian restrictions, he moved slowly to remove others while leaving many in place. That decision speaks to Biden’s electoral calculations—Cuban American voters in Florida are an important constituency in U.S. presidential politics—but also the conundrum Washington has historically faced in dealing with Havana: how to alleviate the humanitarian impact of U.S. sanctions without benefiting a regime responsible for many human rights violations.

The result of all of these factors is the severe economic crisis in which Cuba now finds itself, and which the regime has shown little capacity to address. After a brief period of piecemeal liberalization to limited sectors of the economy in the late 2010s, the old guard of Cuba’s Communist Party has been on the ascendant, blocking any further reforms. Those that were implemented, including some austerity measures earlier this year, have failed to invigorate the economy.

The worsening cost-of-living crisis has put some pressure on the regime, including rare popular protests in July 2021 that were quickly repressed. But the most noticeable effect of the crisis is a mass exodus, with the most conservative estimates showing a 10 percent decline in Cuba’s population since 2020. More and more Cubans are now arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, prompting the Biden administration to introduce new restrictions for Cuban asylum-seekers last year.

Cuba’s challenges have admittedly been exacerbated by the broader geopolitical environment in which it finds itself, not least the enduring hostile standoff with Washington. Still, alleviating the crisis will require more reforms from Cuba’s regime. So far, it hasn’t shown a willingness to do that.

After heated debate and vocal protests in the Bulgarian Parliament in August, a controversial new bill prohibiting the “propaganda, promotion, or incitement” of LGBTQ+ “ideas and views” in schools passed into law with a large majority.

It was just the latest example of an alarming trend in recent years that has seen several European Union member states take active legislative steps to backtrack on LGBTQ+ rights, protections and freedoms, John Boyce writes.

The Far Right Is Rolling Back LGBTQ+ Rights Across the EU By John Boyce Several EU member states have backtracked on LGBTQ+ rights in recent years. Brussels is doing little to stop them.

*****

South America is dry and aflame as the U.N. COP16 Biodiversity Summit meets in Cali, Colombia, this week. Just months after intense flooding in southern Brazil displaced a half-million people, the lack of water across that country and the continent as a whole is driving several political crises.

The fact that so many of Colombia’s neighbors face environmental emergencies will attract media attention and add greater urgency to a conference that might otherwise be ignored amid the many other political and economic challenges confronting the governments of the region.

But as leaders in the region, Brazil and Colombia shouldn’t just seek to address the softer side of biodiversity issues at the conference. After all, as James Bosworth writes, Latin America also faces hard-power security questions when it comes to the biodiversity challenge.

Petro and Lula Should Put Security on the COP16 Biodiversity Agenda By James Bosworth Colombia and Brazil should tackle security issues head on at the COP16 Biodiversity Summit.

Question of the Day: The Italian government plans to send thousands of migrants and refugees to detention centers in what country while their applications for asylum are processed?

Tunisia Croatia Albania Slovenia

Find the answer in the latest WPR Weekly Quiz, then read Alexander Clarkson’s column about how migration has played a role in growing the influence of the EU’s “peripheral” states.

Vietnam’s National Assembly elected Luong Cuong president, making the military general the fourth official to fill the largely ceremonial role in 18 months. The office had been held by To Lam, who became general secretary of Vietnam’s Communist Party following the death of the long-dominant Nguyen Phu Trong in July.

The military’s growing influence in Vietnamese politics, a shift ushered in by Trong during his time in power, was just one of a number of figurative time bombs Lam inherited from his predecessor, Joshua Kurlantzick wrote in August. Cuong’s election suggests that instead of defusing this particular one, Lam has decided to embrace it.

Trong Left a Lot of Ticking Time Bombs for Vietnam’s Next Leader By Joshua Kurlantzick Aug. 5, 2024 | Nguyen Phu Trong significantly changed Vietnam’s politics and society. He also left a lot of time bombs his successor will have to defuse.

*****

India and China have agreed to a pact that New Delhi said will lead to a “disengagement” of troops along the Line of Actual Control, the long, disputed border between the two countries. India’s Foreign Ministry said the pact was the result of several rounds of talks in recent weeks, although it did not specify if the agreement includes any plans for the withdrawal of troops from the border.

The India-China border has been the source of tensions for more than half a century, but those tensions boiled over into a series of clashes in 2020, significantly hampering bilateral relations. As Anchal Vohra wrote in August, New Delhi’s responses since then have been muddled, confounding observers and creating confusion about what India’s goals are.

India’s Border Standoff With China Has Backed New Delhi Into a Corner By Anchal Vohra Aug. 21, 2024 | Two meetings in July suggested that India and China may finally make progress on their border standoff. Instead, it remains in a state of limbo.

*****

M23 rebels seized the town of Kalembe in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo yesterday. Since the group reemerged in 2022, reportedly with the backing of Rwanda, it has rapidly increased its territorial control, escalating and exacerbating a humanitarian crisis in the region. As Sophie Neiman wrote in August, while the conflict reflects contemporary tensions, it is also deeply rooted in the region’s history, and efforts to bring peace must reflect that.

*****

The Kurdish region of Iraq voted in long-delayed regional parliamentary elections yesterday. The election comes at a time when the balance of power between Baghdad and the Kurdish regional government, which had acted with near autonomy following the U.S. invasion, is shifting dramatically in Baghdad’s favor. Read more in this briefing by Renad Mansour from last year.

Election Results

A slight majority of Moldovans voted to enshrine the country’s goal of eventually joining the EU in the constitution yesterday, while the presidential election will be decided in a run-off vote on Nov. 3. Read more in the Washington Post’s recap.

More from WPR

Holly Rooper and Sagatom Saha on integrating trade and climate policy. Paul Poast on the goal of a nuclear weapons-free world. Hugh Lovatt on increasing violence in the West Bank. Frida Ghitis on the politicization of natural disasters.

Read all of our latest coverage here.

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