Lionel Messi continues to face anger from Chinese fans for missing a game in Hong Kong.
Franck Robichon / EPA
Messi will not start a war in China, but this is not to say that football lacks political relevance.
South Sudan delegates sign a peace deal to end civil war in 2018.
Ashraf Shazly/AFP via Getty Images
A major hurdle in South Sudan is the presence of detractors who could undermine the successful implementation of peace agreements.
Members of the rebel Ta'ang National Liberation Army standing guard in Shan state, Myanmar.
STR/AFP via Getty Images
Beijing is losing patience with Myanmar’s military, as well as its influence with resistance groups.
Protesters in Lagos during Nigeria’s 60th Independence Day anniversary on 1 October 2020.
Olukayode Jaiyeola/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Colonialism set Nigeria up for failure as a united country. But successive governments since independence have a lot to answer for too.
Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi speaks in parliament.
GCIS/Flickr
Buthelezi should not be dismissed as a mere stooge during apartheid. Yet, he deserves little praise as an advocate for human rights and civil liberties.
South Sudan President Salva Kiir (left) and Vice President Riek Machar.
Peter Louis/AFP via Getty Images
The political elite have held on to power through power-sharing arrangements rather than the ballot. How will that change?
Myanmar’s seat was left empty at a recent meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Achmad Ibrahim/AFP via Getty Images
As current chair of the regional body ASEAN, Indonesia is tasked with resolving a conflict that has killed thousands. Progress has been slow.
Lilian Ngoyi, one of the leaders of the 1956 women’s march against apartheid, is immortalised on an abandoned building.
Justin Pearce
The sites provide a rare tangible record of the international solidarity that existed during the Cold War.
More than 600,000 soldiers died during the American Civil War.
Keith Lance/Digital Vision Vectors via Getty Images
There was one central reason the Civil War happened.
A Houthi fighter patrols an area during Yemen’s civil war.
Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images
Yemen’s brutal civil war has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. But a recent Beijing-brokered rapprochement between two regional powers could unlock a path to peace.
People who have been evacuated from Sudan arrive in Greece.
Marios Lolos/Xinhua//Alamy
Evacuations offer some hope, but only for those that qualify for them.
A village elder stands outside a school destroyed by aircraft fire in Shan State.
Mai Thomas/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Since seizing power in a 2021 coup, Myanmar’s military has killed more than 3,000 civilians and pro-democracy activists. But the army has struggled to contain an armed resistance movement.
Guerillas from the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) pictured in 1990.
Richard Hoffmann/Sygma via Getty Images
Policies that reduce poverty, inequality and socioeconomic insecurity lower the incentive to engage in or tolerate terrorism.
Syrian refugees watch health workers visiting a refugee camp in Lebanon in October to help contain a cholera outbreak. More than half the country’s population is still displaced.
Bilal Hussein/AP
More than half a million people have died in Syria’s war with half the population displaced. The suffering will continue until there is a reckoning with Assad and his allies.
Arizona election officials released this image as one example of armed people watching ballot drop boxes.
Maricopa County Recorder's Office via CBS News
What deep-dive polls reveal at the political landscape of America as the 2022 midterm election approaches.
The Tadamon neighbourhood pictured in 2018.
Louai Beshara/AFP
Two academics have identified the perpetrators of a massacre committed in 2013 by Syrian loyalist forces. An episode that says a lot about the reality of Syria in the last 10 years.
Angolan girls in front of a patriotic slogan on a wall.
Photo by Eric Lafforgue/Art In All Of Us/Corbis via Getty Images
A prolonged economic recession triggered by falling oil prices and worsened by the COVID pandemic has deeply affected the everyday lives of Angolans.
Chautauqua’s lectures and performances drew hundreds of people with their promise of self-transformation.
L.E. Walker/New York Public Library
The Chautauqua movement symbolized progressive reformers’ hopes that public learning could create a healthy democracy.
Protests demanding better living in Angola have become common since 2011. This one was in November 2020.
EFE-EPA/Luso
Angola’s 2022 election is the first in which citizens born after the war are old enough to vote.
Former Vice President Mike Pence is seen presiding over the counting of the votes on Jan. 6, 2021, during a hearing of the House January 6 committee in Washington, D.C., on June 16, 2022.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
The attempt by Donald Trump’s supporters to reverse the 2020 presidential election results shows the need to update the nation’s landmark law for counting presidential votes.