South Sudan’s civil war is the result of a weakly institutionalized state and may require the African Union’s intervention to find peace and stability, says expert Alex de Waal.

Libya’s UN-brokered unity agreement is fragile at best and could fracture in the event of a stepped-up Western intervention against Islamic State forces, says expert Mary Fitzgerald.

The pope’s encyclical on the environment carries a profoundly religious message about care for the earth, wedded to a new call for activism, say religious scholars Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim.

Post-Qaddafi Libya is riven along regional, economic, and religious lines, and may descend into civil war despite a recent flurry of international diplomacy, says journalist Mary Fitzgerald.

One year after Haiti’s earthquake, a contested presidential election, the return of Baby Doc Duvalier, and problems with redevelopment hobble the country’s efforts to rebuild, says Haitian philanthro…