By Abdul Tejan-Cole
DAKAR – The Ebola epidemic is threatening not only West Africans’ lives, but also the progress toward democracy, economic growth, and social integration that Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea have made in the last decade. In order to protect their achievements, the three countries’ governments, which comprise the Mano River Union, must buttress their response to the current epidemic with a coordinated strategy to prevent future outbreaks.
By Gareth Evans
Canberra- – There is a long history of misconceived and over-reaching foreign military intervention in the Middle East, and it is to be hoped that US President Barack Obama’s decision to wage war against the Islamic State will not prove to be another. No terrorist group more richly deserves to be destroyed outright than these marauding, genocidal jihadists. But as the US-led mission is currently conceived and described, it is not clear whether its objectives are achievable at acceptable costs in terms of time, money, and lives.
By Carlos Lopes
When in March this year Guinean authorities reported the first positive tests for Ebola in the West African region, the news came as a surprise for scientists and were treated passively by most. After all Ebola had killed over a period of thirty years more than two thousand people, since it was first discovered in Yambuku, in the DRC. Never did it surface outside the Great Lakes and it has never been perceived as a threat for an entire country.
