Kleptoscope returns with an evening focussed on Nigeria, a country criticised by former Prime Minister David Cameron as “fantastically corrupt”. Our panel of experts will address the roots of Nigerian corruption, ask why so much of the stolen money ends up in London, and discuss why more isn’t being done to give it back.

Host:

Oliver Bullough is an award-winning journalist and the author of two books about Russian history and politics, The Last Man in Russia and Let Our Fame be Great. He is also an expert guide for the Kleptocracy Tours initiative, which exposes money laundering via property in London.

Speakers:

Chibundu Onuzo is a Nigerian novelist, whose recently-published book Welcome to Lagos is a blackly-comic exploration of corrupt officials, scam artists, idealistic liberals and more in the greatest city in Africa. The Guardian praised its “Nollywood-like storylines and clever turns in plot”, while The Economist loved the way that the words of the “rich and poor, urban and rural, privileged and powerless, Muslim and Christian, Igbo and Yoruba collide to spectacular effect”.

Eva Anderson is a Senior Legal Research Officer at Transparency International’s Defence & Security Team. She has previously worked at Goldman Sachs, the Financial Services Authority, and as a forensic investigator at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. She is a qualified barrister, and an expert in the difficulties faced in attempting to recover the proceeds of corruption that have been stashed in the West.

Matthew Page was, until recently, the US intelligence community’s top Nigeria expert, advising the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon and more. His book Nigeria: what everyone needs to know will be published later this year by Oxford University Press.

Chairing a debate organised in collaboration with the Royal African Society, broadcaster Funmi Iyanda began by asking what could be done to combat the perfect storm of plummeting oil prices, a widening budget deficit, plunging growth rate, and dwindling foreign currency reserves currently threatening Nigeria.

Feyi Fawehinmi, a senior investment accountant at Canada Life, said that while the current crisis represented an opportunity to diversify, over the past year a collective “nervous breakdown and sense of feeling sorry for ourselves” has revealed a country unable to function with oil prices at the current levels, and a “government that is unable to think its way out of this crisis.”

“Can it be beyond the capacity of 170 million people to fight their way out of a problem?”

The key to solving the problem, said Fawehinmi, is finding a way to replace lost dollar income from diminished oil revenues by boosting production and growing exports.

Natznet Tesfay, director of Africa analysis, economics and country risk at IHS, agreed that increasing exports from other sectors was vital to any long-term economic solution. She stressed the importance of boosting agricultural and manufacturing sectors whilst addressing the infrastructure limitations to stimulate growth from non-oil sectors.

Professor Charles Soludo, economist and former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, said that the challenges facing the new administration can be framed by the view of a “Nigeria characterised as a failed state, but also with a failing economy.”

“The challenges are enormous, the government is doing its own bit, but there is a fundamental question, which is whether the government – at a historic point with falling oil prices and a failing state – can actually self-correct without some external undertaking.”

The question, therefore, becomes whether Nigeria can engineer a path in this post-oil, post-primary commodity dependent system. With a new government looking to the failed economic initiatives of the past, “screening Nigeria from the bad ideas can actually be more important than the new ideas we put in place,” said Soludo.

For Iyanda, the current crisis is a direct result of a contradiction at the heart of Nigerian society with “a constitution that seems to prescribe a socialist economy while our objectives, aims and aspirations are to be a capitalist or market based one.”

“Is Nigeria a socialist economy or is Nigeria a capitalist economy by intention and practice?”

The problem, said Soludo, was that that the constitution itself is fundamentally flawed, with an edifice designed for the consumption of oil rent based around sharing.

“The whole apparatus of the government, local states… consisted of everybody talking about their share of the federation, not about production. The fundamental thing is that the music has changed and the dance steps have to change too.”

Soludo summarised it. It is not an economic problem, it is a political problem. And the economic crisis is a symptom. #HowtoFixNigeria

— Nun River (@Nun_River) March 30, 2016

“No economy is run on the back of an infantile nationalism or pseudo-socialist populism,” said Soludo. To fix Nigeria you must address the issues on a macro level, as part of a structural transformation process similar to the one the country went through in the 1980s.

For Fawehinmi, “there is nothing about Nigeria that is inherently communist or socialist.” Instead, he said that “people take their pointers from leadership” and therefore it is up to those in power to be honest with the public about the current situation.

Central to any shift from a consuming to a diversified producing economy is foreign investment. However, with the president categorically refusing to devalue the currency, Tesfay said she remained sceptical in the short term, citing questions over the regulatory environment, the pace of reform, and infrastructure as driving low foreign investor confidence.

“Having said that, you do have Nigerians doing successful business within Nigeria; and then you have the rest of Africa looking at that as a model to follow where you stimulate your own industrial growth. It’s not government led – it is still market led – but this presents, perhaps, a silver lining that leads to a more robust domestic economy that is growing.”

While the consensus was that the current situation for Nigeria remains dire, and will remain so as long as low oil prices continue, the panel agreed it nevertheless represents a blessing in disguise that must not be missed.

Soludo once again described the crisis as “an historic opportunity, one which must be seized with both hands,” to move away from the oil-driven consumption economy of the past and towards a diversified market-driven production base.

“We are waiting for that fundamental thing that says we have turned a corner. If God loves Nigeria he will keep the oil prices down.”

On Wednesday 24 May, an audience gathered at the Frontline Club for a discussion on corruption and its far-reaching implications. Sarah Chayes and Tom Burgis joined freelance journalist and host of Newshour on the BBC World Service, Owen Bennett-Jones, to talk about their experiences in Africa, Afghanistan and beyond. Chayes is an expert on kleptocracy, anti-corruption and civil-military relations, and is currently senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program and the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment. Burgis is investigations correspondent at the Financial Times and has worked extensively in Africa.

L-r: Sarah Chayes, Owen Bennett-Jones and Tom Burgis

It has become increasingly clear that corruption exists at every level around the world. Yet there is an ongoing reluctance to understand its complexities and to commit to workable solutions.

Chayes said, “I think there is a bias against this topic … People’s eyes glaze over. It’s not a sexy topic. There is a tendency to dismiss the seriousness of the problem.”

Chayes did not study corruption in depth until she spent time in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Initially working as a journalist and for a number of NGOs, she devoted her time to helping to repair homes that had been damaged by heavy bombing. Chayes recounted how she could not obtain the materials needed, however, because the Governor would award himself stone and sell it at grossly inflated prices to the international military.

Once Chayes left Kandahar she began to realise the extent of endemic corruption, not just in Afghanistan but around the world. She said, “I came to understand that this isn’t a fraying around the edges kind of government system. This kind of corruption network is structured and organised.”

Burgis spoke about his experiences as a correspondent for the Financial Times in South and West Africa. Africa is often described as a paradox of plenty. While the continent is frequently viewed as a symbol of extreme poverty, it is in many regards one of the wealthiest places on earth in terms of its abundance of basic natural resources.

On the subject of corruption in Nigeria, Burgis said: “It happens because the currency gets distorted… It happens because ultimately if you’re a country whose economies depend on shipping out raw resources, the contract or the deal between the rulers and the ruled breaks.”

Corruption is not just a local issue – there are global implications at every level.

Bennett-Jones asked the panellists: “If you take these situations as you described, how much of it ends up at the top of the system in the City of London, Zurich and the banks in New York and therefore will never be resolved because they are just too powerful to deal with?”

Chayes responded: “The countries that are on the positive end on the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index are the ones that are exporting corruption services to the corrupt governments.”

Why is property market in London so inflated? A lot is fuelled by stolen overseas money. Tom Burgis His book Looting Machine #frontlineclub

— Kate Adams (@KateAdams3) June 24, 2015

Even though the extent of widespread corruption may seem impenetrable, Chayes believes that we can all play an individual role in combatting its influence.

“I have my money in HSBC. I intend to take my money out of HSBC. There’s a role for us as custodians of all of our values to play in piercing some of this hypocrisy.”

More information on The Looting Machine: Warlords, Tycoons, Smugglers and the Systematic Theft of Africa’s Wealth by Tom Burgis is available here.

Click here for more information on Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security by Sarah Chayes.

The Frontline Club was at full capacity on Wednesday 4 February, as a panel of experts discussed the implications of Boko Haram’s presence in West Africa in the lead up to the Nigerian presidential elections on 14 February.

L -R Peter Okwoche, Funmi Iyanda, Mike Smith, Bala Mohammed Liman and Alex Perry.

The panel included: Bala Mohammed Liman, a doctoral candidate at SOAS specialising in the intersection of conflict and identity in Nigeria; Funmi Iyanda, a Nigerian producer, journalist and talk show host; Mike Smith, a foreign correspondent with AFP and former West African bureau chief; and Alex Perry, a contributing editor at Newsweek‘s international edition and author of The Hunt for Boko Haram. The discussion was chaired by Nigerian journalist at the BBC Peter Okwoche  who, by way of an introduction, commented that the panel knew “Nigeria even better than me, which says a lot!”

The discussion began with Smith and Perry explaining why Boko Haram had reached such prominence under the current Presidential term, and the ways in which the Government was at fault for their failure to act.

Smith said: “This is absolutely a national issue now, maybe a regional issue. We don’t want to exaggerate though, Jonathan called it the ‘Al Qaeda of West Africa’, but it is absolutely not that.”

Perry said: “[Boko Haram] has reached the regional level [of importance] because Nigeria has allowed it to. We have to focus on the core issues: a total lack of governance and corruption that people are fed up with. It doesn’t legitimise Boko Haram, but you create a situation where some unrest becomes much more likely in these circumstances.”

Okwoche asked: “Should the buck stop with Goodluck Jonathan?”

Perry answered: “Nothing good that has happened in Nigeria has anything to do with him… look at the disinterest and indifference. It took 20 days for the Government to even notice the Chibok girls were missing. I mean, my God, 20 days to notice a whole school had gone… It was an unbelievable confirmation of the indifference and shows how out of touch the political elite are.”

He continued: “The government in Nigeria, it’s a very dark place, it does something very corrosive to notions of civic trust and culture of public good. If you think everyone in Nigeria is out for himself or herself, it makes you pretty frightened and cornered.

“You can’t trust people to tell the truth, truth evaporates and there is a darker motive behind everything… A solution to this is beginning to disappear, and that is really scary.”

A member of the audience commented on the group themselves: “We speak very little about the Boko Haram organisation itself. Maybe it is the Western media or my ignorance, but it seems like we know relatively little about the hierarchy of the group, the ability of the organisation.”

Smith responded: “My best definition of what we have now, is that Boko Haram…is just a good name to call all the things going on in the insurgency. Some of it may be different cells, or it may be one dominant cell – it gets quite complicated.”

“We have no idea how many members they may have because they recruit at will, and recruit both people who just need money or who are attracted to the ideology.”

Perry said: “This is local town rebels gone slightly, well totally, sociopathic. You can almost say what they are against, but saying what they are for is almost impossible because they are incredibly bad at articulating it.”

He continued: “I am not underestimating their brutality at all…. it has become a death cult. There is an awful lot of ceremony around the beheadings, there are readings from books, and everyone is arranged in a circle. How do you counter an idea when there’s not really an idea there to counter?”

A member of the audience asked how poverty affects Boko Haram’s level of recruitment, and asked the panel to comment on the impact of high unemployment and disillusionment amongst young people in this regard.

Okwoche interjected with a shocking statistic: “Within the age group of 19-25 in Nigeria, the unemployment rate is 40%. That completely blew my mind.”

Perry said: “In the North, I imagine that figure would be double. The marginalisation and exclusion and huge youth bulge could be a great resource, but if it is not tapped, if that energy isn’t re-directed, it’s a time bomb. Social exclusion is the bedrock with which Boko Haram is founded. There is no doubt about it, the area has some of the worst poverty statistics for anywhere in the world…it really is one of the worst places to live on earth. But there is no alternative, there are no jobs, and Boko Haram will pay you.”

The final questions focused on the future of Nigeria, and whether the current situation had a chance of improving in the near future. Iyanda answered with little optimism.

She said: “I keep thinking about this and I don’t like any of the answers. Either we get lucky, we get a good change of Government, or we get a change of heart or strategy from the same Government. Otherwise it would have to be that something really desperate happens. The Nigerian government and its sense of well-being would have to be threatened. I don’t know how that would happen… but I don’t want to find out.”

Watch and listen back below:

The Frontline Club’s First Wednesdays kicked off a discussion on the news story that has dominated all others over the past month: Boko Haram and the hunt for Nigeria’s missing schoolgirls. Channel 4 News’ foreign affairs correspondent Jonathan Miller, chairing the evening’s discussion, began by asking who are Boko Haram? What are their ultimate objectives? How have they evolved to take centre stage in the global media spotlight?

L-R Jonathan Miller, Fatima Akilu, Kayode Ogundamisi, Andrew Walker and Bala Liman

Analysing the group’s evolution from a local spiritually led Islamist organisation driven by the charismatic leadership of Mohammed Yusuf in the early 2000s, to the now-militant cult whose brand of ultra-orthodox sharia law and extreme tactics have made them international ‘bogeymen’, Andrew Walker, a writer and journalist working in Nigeria since 2006, charted the groups repositioning contra-government authority to become “more and more anti-state”.

Miller put to Fatima Akilu, director of behavioural analysis in Nigeria’s office of the National Security Adviser, that this repositioning was initially utilised by state authorities, “that there are political connections with Boko Haram, and at some point the group became a very useful militia which was used to political ends by politicians”.

Effectively representing the government, Akilu confirmed that “the group did work with state governors at the time and helped them to mobilise the youth who were used for election purposes”.

Kayode Ogundamisi, writer and commentator on Nigeria affairs, claimed Boko Harem’s shift towards militancy was a result of the “extra-judicial execution of its spiritual leader Mohammed Yusuf”, leading to the radicalisation of the more extreme elements within the group. Ogundamisi criticised the police for their treatment of Yusuf and several other leaders, claiming that it is they (and, by extension, the state) who are ultimately responsible for the change in tactics that Boko Harem have since adopted.

“This led to what we have today. You cannot accept any state who fights terror with a method of terrorism. The way the government treated Yusuf provided a tool for the terrorist to recruit more sympathisers.”

Bala Liman, doctoral candidate at SOAS examining the nexus between conflict and identity in Nigeria, developed this point further.

“Half of the problem, and why Boko Haram is still existing, is because the military is carrying on these extra-judicial killings, people are getting arrested randomly . . . and, most importantly, the government are capturing [Boko Haram’s] women.”

Liman continued on the subject of the missing schoolgirls, stating that the abduction tactics employed by Boko Haram are as much a personal response to the actions of the government as a terror strategy.

Boko Haram seen as a "northern problem" – this has undermined a united Nigerian response @frontlineclub

— Sandrine Tiller (@sandrinetiller) June 4, 2014

Akilu sought to differentiate the actions of Boko Haram by contextualising the most recent incident, and why it achieved such international attention.

“What was different about these girls [compared to the brutal massacring of girl in the past] was that they took them alive.”

Discussing the potential solutions to the current situation, Walker was quick to point out the difficulties in attempting negotiations between Boko Haram and the government due to the complex internal structure of the group.

“It’s never really sure who you are talking to – whether that’s the full totality of the group. Because of the way it’s arranged, split into factions, means it’s very difficult to organise how to get to these people. I think one of the biggest problems of this whole group is that they are a kind of unknowable empty space in this remote place and all of these fault lines flow through this empty space. We don’t know how Boko Haram organise themselves, we don’t know how they tell themselves whether they are spiritual or not and it’s difficult for people who are outside, be it the presidency or here looking in, to understand what is going on and how to get in there and do anything.”

Likening Boko Haram to a franchise, Ogundamisi responded that while it is irresponsible and dangerous to negotiate with a group whose goal is to Islamise Nigeria, “the first priority is for the state to enforce itself as a state”.

All the panel agreed that what lay at the heart of the issue was the corruption within Nigeria and the inherent mistrust that ordinary Nigerians have for state institutions – from education to the army.

While the panel also recognised a need to prevent the “next generation” of young people becoming radicalised, there was disagreement as to the solutions effected on the ground, be they long term or in dealing specifically with the present abduction crisis.

Quoting Yasser Arafat that “the person you negotiate with is your enemy”, Ogundamisi cited the influence of the hardline core group within Boko Haram, combined with a federal system where power is so centralised in one man, which makes any negotiation virtually impossible and ultimately undesirable.

Watch and listen here:

From left to right: Agnes Odhiambo, Gauri van Gulik, Liz Ford, Liesl Gerntholtz, Rothna Begum and Samer Muscati.

The Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch joined The Guardian’s Liz Ford on Tuesday 13 May to discuss the highs and lows of the challenges faced in improving the lives of women and girls around the world.

The event took place as the world’s attention focuses on Nigeria’s kidnapped schoolgirls and subsequent failure to free the more than 200 victims from militant group Boko Haram.

Shining a spotlight on this specific issue is important, but everyday, harrowing realities are being lived by 39,000 girls subjected to forced marriages globally, said Agnes Odhiambo, researcher for women’s rights in Africa.

“You see it happening so much every day that actually you don’t stop to ask yourself what kind of suffering, what kind of abuses do these girls go through? In South Sudan, some girls actually think that death is better than a forced marriage. There are many cases of girls committing suicide.”

In the African context, she added, children being born into the family are of course celebrated but behind the scenes there may be a far more disturbing story, particularly around the issues of sexual violence and maternal health.

The panel was also keen however to point out successes in the fight for women’s rights, highlighting international treaties and conventions moving forward in earnest as well as grass roots initiatives that aim to tackle abuses against women and girls.

Director of HRW’s Women’s Rights Division Liesl Gerntholtz explained that the work her team is doing by collecting accurate information and evidence across some 90 countries is about “the long game” in making positive change.

“We believe, perhaps naively, that if you can just get the information in front of the right people that of course they will want to stop what is going on on the ground, and sometimes they do and sometimes not so much,” she said. “Particularly in human rights, those of us who work have to be willing to play the long game because change is always incremental.”

The fantastic @hrw women's rights division talk at @frontlineclub "It's all about the long game." pic.twitter.com/Xazvauj17c

— Alex Glynn (@alexglynn1) May 13, 2014

In some instances, the significant advances made grow out of local anger at terrible abuses, which HRW is able to take to the policy makers. In Yemen, marriages were happening at extremely young ages and both local and international outrage were ignited when an eight-year-old girl, Rawan, died of internal bleeding after being married to a man five-times her age.

The incident came in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings and after a transitional government took hold. HRW recognised an opportunity to bring gender issues to the negotiating table in the midst of a national constitutional dialogue.

Yemen now has a Child Rights Act, which includes setting a minimum age of marriage at 18 and criminalising those who take part in child marriage. Additionally, FGM [female genital mutilation] has been criminalised. The Act is going to cabinet, and HRW is pressuring them to pass it and send to Parliament along with other constitutional guarantees, said Rothna Begum, researcher for women’s rights in Middle East and North Africa region.

Still, hard and long fought for rights can be very fragile and quickly rolled back, particularly in post-conflict environments, said researcher for women’s rights in emergencies Samer Muscati, pointing to Iraq as an example where the space for women has shrunk considerably despite constitutional guarantees of parliamentary representation set at 25 per cent.

In Somalia’s Mogadishu, Muscati describes a conflict in which sexual violence is an every day fact of life for women and girls with a backdrop of stigma and lack of services to help them.

“They are on their own. One of the positives is that the international community has worked with Somalia to develop joint commitments. The challenge is trying to ensure that those commitments are met,” he said.

Pressure from developed countries could go far in changing the lives of millions of girls and women around the world, however, the UK is cited as playing a negative role – specifically in the recent initiative to tackle issues of forced labour that includes such categories as domestic workers as well as trafficked sex workers, said Gauri van Gulik, global advocate in the Women’s Rights Division at HRW.

“We hear a lot on one hand from Theresa May and others about how they want to end modern-day slavery. But in these negotiations and at this important moment the United Kingdom is saying we don’t want binding standards we just want a recommendation, or guidelines, which is extremely negative,” she said. “There is actually a lot of work to do in the United Kingdom when it comes to foreign policy.”

The audience was invited to ask questions and issues were raised around gaps in services for elderly women, women living with disabilities, or even highly privileged women bound by strictly patriarchal societies. Also, the audience heard how HRW tries to manage compatibility between the complicated relationships inherent to traditional laws where they may be in conflict with human rights laws.

Ultimately, people questioned how they could get involved apart from sending money to a charity and being directly involved to make a difference.

Gerntholtz replied: “Change is local. The most important thing anyone can do is work in their own communities . . . it creates a community of activists that you are a part of.”

Watch and listen to the full event here:

The recent abduction by militant Islamist group Boko Haram of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls sparked global outrage, leading to the #BringBackOurGirls campaign and military assistance from Britain, the US, France and China.

With attacks in northern Nigeria on the increase we will be bringing together a panel of experts to examine the emergence of Boko Haram and what is being done to combat them. We will be examining the origins of the group, its affiliations and influence in the region.

Nigerian authorities have been heavily criticised for their slow response to the crisis. We will be asking whether they are losing the battle against Boko Haram and what can be done to support efforts to combat them.

Chaired by Jonathan Miller, foreign affairs correspondent at Channel 4 News.

The panel:

Fatima Akilu, is director of behavioural analysis in the National Security Advisors office responsible for drafting Nigeria’s a soft approach to counter terrorism, focusing on de-radicalisation, counter radicalisation and strategic communication. Previously she was head of communications for the Millennium Development Goals in Nigeria.

Andrew Walker is a writer and journalist who has been working on Nigeria since 2006. He is currently writing a book about northern Nigeria to be published next year.

Bala Liman is a doctoral candidate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) where his research is examining the nexus between conflict and identity in Nigeria, with particular emphasis on the emerging culture of conflict in Northern Nigeria. His research also focuses on understanding the Boko Haram insurgency and its effect on the region.

Kayode Ogundamisi is a commentator on Nigerian affairs, he writes independent op-ed articles for major Nigerian media outlets as well as publishing on his blog The Canary. He travels between his base in the UK and his country of birth Nigeria, where he runs a programme on self-empowerment.

We don’t choose the colour of our skin, or the place where we are born. But for people with albinism in Tanzania, their appearance has made them a hunted, sub-human species.

“We are killed. We are dismembered,” says Josephat Torner, one of the albino subjects in Harry Freeland’s documentary, In the Shadow of the Sun, which had a preview screening at the Frontline Club Monday 26 November.

Director Harry Freeland discusses “In the Shadow of the Sun” at the Frontline Club

Since 2006, witchdoctors in Tanzania have made ever louder claims that albino body parts, when used in certain potions or rituals, can cure sickness and bring prosperity – a promotion at work, election to office, or a boom in mining or fishing.

“They call me ‘white medicine,’” an albino child says of schoolyard bullies.

Freeland explained during the Q&A after the screening:

“There’s really three [types of] people responsible for the murders. There’s the people that aren’t in the film at all, that no one’s caught, who are the main people fueling the whole trade … body parts are selling for millions of shillings. So, someone with a lot of money … government officials, policemen, fishermen, people in the mining industry. Witchdoctors have obviously started this rumour … and then it’s the poor people in Tanzania who are carrying it out.”

In the film, Freeland and Josephat travel to a cave to meet a witchdoctor, who admits that he will hide in trees, waiting for the right moment to pounce on an albino. In another scene, an albino friend tells Josephat how a man once leapt from a tree and tried to kill him while he walked alone outside his home one evening.

“There’s always fear,” Josephat said.

Josephat spends his life traveling to places where albinos have been murdered, gaining the support of local chiefs to give talks to their villages.

“If society thinks of me as sub-human,” he explains, “then I need to find a solution, to make them re-accept me.”

“Josephat is so lonely,” Freeland reflected. “No one else really wants to do it. No one else is really doing the same kind of thing he’s doing, he funds it himself. So, he doesn’t get paid that much money, but he, kind of, leaves his family behind, and goes around the country to do those things. I always found that amazing.”

Freeland, Josephat and many others are making an impact. Tanzania’s Prime Minister has adopted two children with albinism, and “stripped all the witchdoctors in northern Tanzania of their licenses [so that] they now have to reapply in what is a quite rigorous process,” Freeland said. Tanzania elected its first albino MP, and the number of killings in 2012 finally declined from the previous year.

Nonetheless, the demand for albino body parts remains.

“Tanzania is definitely the worst,” Freeland said, “but it is spreading into other countries, so in Nigeria, there’s been killings, Mali, South Africa, Burundi. As Josephat would put it, it’s ‘spreading like a fire.’”

More information on future UK screenings and the work of Josephat can be found on the website of In the Shadow of the Sun.

By Nicole Hunt

European leaders gather in Brussels on Monday for an informal meeting of the European Council, during which discussions are set to focus on jobs and the new fiscal stabilisation treaty agreed at their controversial meeting last month. Leaders are planning to iron out the details of the treaty at the meeting, in hopes that it’ll be ready to sign by the time they meet again on 1 March.

While all eyes are on Brussels, two big trials are before the courts in South Africa. In Ventersdorp, Chris Mahlangu and an unnamed teenager are back on trial for the April 2010 murder of Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) leader Eugene Terre’Blanche, postponed from October to allow more time for hearings.

Meanwhile, Henry Okah, former Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) leader, goes on trial in Johannesburg on terrorism charges in connection with the October 2010 Independence Day bombings in Abuja, Nigeria, which killed 12 people.

Monday is also the 40th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

Spanish Magistrate Baltasar Garzon’s abuse of power trial resumes on Tuesday, with the judge himself expected to begin testifying if some preliminary matters are cleared up earlier in the day. There is speculation that the verdict for Garzon’s illegal wiretapping case – which was head on 17 January – could be delivered before Tuesday’s hearing.

The annual Herzliya policy conference kicks off in Jerusalem. Speakers throughout the three-day conference include Israeli President Shimon Peres, World Bank President Robert Zoellick, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, and German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.

Wednesday is all about Supreme Courts. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange begins a two-day hearing at the UK Supreme Court in London, appealing a 24 February, 2010 decision to extradite him to Sweden to face questioning on charges of sexual assault. The court is expected to reserve judgement after the hearing wraps up on Thursday, meaning the legal saga won’t quite be over yet.

In Islamabad, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani is back before the Supreme Court, which is looking into his government’s decision not to investigate corruption among politicians after passing a controversial amnesty law in 2007 known as the National Reconciliation Ordinance. Gilani appeared before the court briefly on 19 January.

A North Korean prisoner amnesty begins on Wednesday, as part of celebrations to mark the 70th anniversary of the birth of recently-deceased Kim Jong-Il in February and the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il-Sung in April.

NATO Defence Ministers begin a two-day meeting in Brussels on Thursday. Discussions are expected to focus on Afghanistan and security transition following the 20 January attack on French troops by an Afghan soldier, which killed four.

Kuwaitis go to the polls to elect 50 members to Parliament. Emir Sheikh Sabah al Ahmad al Sabah dissolved Parliament by decree on 6 December, 2011 citing ‘deteriorating conditions in the country’. 50 members are elected for four-year terms. Four women were elected for the first time in the country’s last elections, which took place in 2009.

On Friday, The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia hears the appeal for Khmer Rouge Special Branch Chief Kaing Guek Eav, aka Duch, who was convicted of crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions in July 2010. Duch, who was head of the infamous Tuol Sleng prison camp, was sentenced to 35 years in prison over the deaths of up to two million people during the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime.

The three-day Munich Security Conference begins Friday; though there’s no word yet on this year’s attendees, the guest list always features the great and good of international politics and defence (or at least the important). The MSC is often the site of important policy announcements, so is well worth looking out for.

Anti-Kremlin groups are scheduled to hold their latest protest in Moscow on Saturday, this one timed to coincide with the two-month anniversary of disputed parliamentary elections on 4 December, and with one month to go until presidential elections on 4 March almost certainly see Vladimir Putin return to the helm.

The month and a half long Rugby 6 Nations tournament begins, with France, Engand, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Italy hoping to end up in the 17 March final. England won the tournament in 2011.

The week closes with the runoff for the Finnish presidential race, following a first round vote on 22 January. Former Finance Minister Sauli Niinisto, who won 37 per cent of the first vote, faces off against Green party candidate Pekka Haavisto, who won 19 per cent of the vote.

At our First Wednesday Special, discuss the cultural and political changes set in motion by the events of 9/11 ten years ago and look ahead to the next decade.

We’ll also be discussing extremism, Somalia, photography in transit and the cult of youth in newspapers and there’s also a great opportunity to hear from industry veterans Martin Bell and the New York Times‘ David Carr and Richard Gizbert of Al Jazeera English.

Our screenings include a double bill of films by John D. McHugh, a special preview of The Debt, insight into the world of teenage miners in Bolivia and human trafficking in Nigeria.

Go to our website for further details of all the talks and screenings, PLUS a preview reading of Bang Bang Bang, a multimedia storytelling masterclass with Brian Storm and third party events on remembering 9/11 and on investigative journalism. 
 
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