Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post covers April 30 to May 6.

Invoking historical rough justice and persistent infantilization by the West, African countries have, to widespread astonishment, refused to give a full-throated backing to Western sanctions against Russia. Seventeen of the thirty-five abstainers from the United Nations General Assembly vote on March 2, 2022, to condemn the Russian “aggression against Ukraine” were African. More troublingly, even more African countries abstained from voting on the UN April 7, 2022, resolution to suspend Russia from the UN Human Rights Council over “gross and systematic violations and abuses of human rights” in Ukraine. The latter list included South Africa, Cameroon, Ghana, and Nigeria, which hitherto had joined 140 other UN members to condemn the Russian invasion.

The apparent reluctance of many African countries to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caught many Western governments, diplomatic experts, and observers of Africa’s international relations by surprise. Although twenty-eight African countries voted in favor of the March 2, 2022, UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution demanding that Russia “immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders,” notably, seventeen African nations abstained while no votes were recorded from another eight. Unsurprisingly, Eritrea, whose leader Isaias Afwerki enjoys a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and who has long staked out an anti-Western diplomatic stance, joined Belarus, North Korea, Russia, and Syria in voting against the resolution. In total, 141 (out of 194) UN member states endorsed the resolution.

Former U.S. Senator from Wisconsin Russ Feingold reflects on his time as U.S. Special Envoy for the Great Lakes and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other diplomatic roles he has held throughout his career.

How will African countries react to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and what diplomatic fissures are likely to be opened by the conflict as it drags on? The tone for this appears to have been set by the rousing speech in defense of national sovereignty by Kenya’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Martin Kimani. Invoking historical parallels, Kimani pulled no punches in decrying Russian aggression and rejecting “irredentism and expansionism on any basis, including racial, ethnic, religious or cultural factors.”