Kenya

While only a few countries now protect LGBTI rights in their constitutions, the inclusion of those protections increasingly has become an indicator of the strength and consolidation of democracy.  And constitution-building processes in various countries have opened a social and political space of tolerance and equality within which gender minorities are continuing to claim their rights.

He returned just days before from the DRC, where he pressed the government to deliver on its commitment to take action against rebels in the country’s east, and to hold an inclusive and transparent dialogue with political groups in the country leading up to presidential elections next year.

On February 24, Senator Feingold gave his final speech as U.S. special envoy at the U.S. Institute of Peace, offering his current insights on the DRC, on the prospects for ending the militia violence in the country’s east, and for improving political stability in the Great Lakes region.

Home to burgeoning economies and brutal civil conflicts – sometimes coexisting in the same country – Africa is increasingly prominent in the foreign policy agendas of world powers. In early August, President Obama will convene most of the heads of state of the 54 nations of Africa in Washington, D.C. for the first-ever summit between U.S. and African leaders. There will be no shortage of issues to discuss, from how to harness Africa's economic growth and lift large sections of its population out of poverty, to growing trade between the U.S.

Based on the violent response to Kenya’s 2007 elections in which more than one thousand people were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced, Kenyans and the international community were seized by the possibility of a repetition of the violence following the 2013 national elections.  But Kenya remained relatively quiet through the election process, and Kenya’s economy, and that of the east African region, went undisturbed.