Commodities traders are looking to countries beset with internal unrest to make high-risk bets for high rewards.

Between enthusiasm for President Obama's pro-democracy message and appreciation for the Democratic Party's support for the anti-apartheid movement, South Africans strongly favor Obama's reelection, says Moeletsi Mbeki.

This weekend's successful nationwide elections are a major first step in a long process of building new political and civic institutions, says CFR's Isobel Coleman.

The West may no longer be the main target for terrorist organizations; turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa has given rise to an increased number of more locally-focused attacks in the last year.

Victoria Taylor leads a conversation on Tunisia's attempts to reconcile a role for religion in what had been, until last year's pivotal revolution, a staunchly secular society.

UN Security Council Resolution 788 regarding Liberia was adopted on November 19, 1992.

Muammar Qaddafi's was overthrown more than eight months ago, but now violence in the south of the country is even worse than it was during the struggle to oust him, writes Nicolas Pelham. Although last October Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the National Transitional Council chariman, declared an end to the civil war, Libyans are still being killed and injured every day, and tens of thousands are being displaced in ethnic feuding.

Steven A. Cook says that regardless of whether the June 17 decree by Egypt's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces was in fact a military coup, precedent in Turkey in Algeria shows that officers' interests are safeguarded, and society as a whole will pay.

Two groups wage a bitter fight for control over the West African nation, writes Andy Morgan for al-Jazeera.

Any action Brazil takes in Africa should be based on peaceful cooperation and not military escalation, writes Nikolas Kozloff.

CFR Senior Fellow Isobel Coleman speaks with Boris Weber, director of ICT4Gov at the World Bank Institute, on how technology is being leveraged to promote good governance and increased transparency in fragile states and emerging markets.

This was a meeting of the Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy Roundtable series.

With Mali's north under rebel control, fears are growing that a breakaway Islamist state could emerge, writes Xan Rice at the Financial Times.

In this United States Institute of Peace special report, freelance journalist Andrew Walker explains the history of Boko Haram, an extremist Islamic sect in Nigeria, that has created havoc across the north of the country and its violent attacks on government offices, the United Nations, and churches.

In this policy review by the Hoover Institution, Nicholas Eberstadt and Apoorva Shah discuss the current demographic changes taking place in the global Muslim population.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres explains how the increasing number of new crises around the world, in areas such as Syria, Sudan/South Sudan, and Mali, has revealed that the capacity of the international community to present conflict is considerably limited.

This meeting is part of the Arthur C. Helton Memorial Lecture series, which was established by the Council and the family of Arthur C. Helton, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who died in the August 2003 bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad. The Helton Lectureship is an annual event at which one or more speakers address pressing issues in the broad field of human rights and humanitarian concerns.

Micah Zenko and Emma Welch map out the launch pads for Obama's secret wars.

December 2008 ECOWAS Abuja Declaration ("Political Declaration on the Prevention Of Drug Abuse, Illicit Drug Trafficking and Organized Crimes in West Africa") was adopted in December 2008.

The African Union Plan of Action on Drug Control and Crime Prevention Enforcement Mechanism was adopted on December 7, 2007 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The ECOWAS Transnational Action Plan on Organized Crime was released on July 2, 2010 at the ECOWAS session in Cape Verde.