Egypt’s President Morsi is doubling down. Just last week, he tried to assuage the concerns of opponents by giving the constitutional assembly another two months to work out their differences on a new constitution. Facing mounting opposition from secular opponents, and the real prospect of the judiciary once again dissolving the Islamist-dominated constitutional assembly, he put the current draft to a vote in a surprise move today. As of this writing, the assembly has already approved about a fifth of the constitution’s 234 articles. Once the assembly approves the whole draft, Morsi’s intention is to hold a national referendum, perhaps within a couple of weeks. Read more »

Well, at least President Morsi knows when to retreat. Last week, basking in the glow of having helped broker a cease-fire in Gaza, Morsi issued a decree that in essence gave Egypt’s president power over the judiciary. But in the face of growing street protests, he now appears to be backpedaling away from that brazen push for broad new powers. Read more »

As the international military presence in Afghanistan winds down, fears of unrest, civil war, and backsliding on fragile gains loom large. An October 2012 International Crisis Group (ICG) report states that “Afghanistan is far from ready to assume responsibility for security when U.S. and NATO forces withdraw in 2014,” arguing that “…steps toward a stable transition must begin now to prevent a precipitous slide toward state collapse. Time is running out.” The increase of green-on-blue attacks and green-on-green attacks—Afghan soldiers and police attacking international forces colleagues and one another—raises serious questions about the state of the Afghan forces. Mohammad Ismail Khan, a former mujahadeen member who was ousted from his position as governor of Herat by President Hamid Karzai in 2004, recently called on his supporters to rearm, another ominous sign that former warlords are once again preparing for war. Read more »

• The World in 2060: Currently the United States produces 23 percent of global GDP against 17 percent for China and 7 percent for India. By 2060, says an OECD report, these shares will be flipped: China will account for 28 percent, India 18 percent, and the United States only 16 percent. Likewise, while China and India today combine for less than half the G7’s GDP, in 2060 their economies will total more than 1.5 times the G7’s. With this growth, GDP per capita in China and India stands to increase by more than seven times, the OECD says. But strikingly, this will not erase “significant gaps in living standards between advanced and emerging economies.” According to an Economist analysis of the OECD’s figures, GDP per capita in China will be just 59 percent of the U.S. level in 2060. For India the figure will be 27 percent, for Brazil about 40, and for Mexico about 50. Read more »

I have been visiting schools in Upper Egypt (the governorates of Qena and Aswan) this week doing research for a new book on education in the Middle East. With young people across the region protesting about a lack of opportunity, improving education is understandably a high priority. Over the last several decades, Egypt’s focus has been on increasing access to education. As its population has more than doubled since 1980, it has worked hard to keep pace with an enormous influx of new students, managing to enroll a higher percent of children in schools and to reduce the overall number of children out of school. In 2000, over 500,000 primary school age children were out of school. In 2009, the last year statistics were available, fewer than 200,000 primary school age children were not attending school. The percentage of girls enrolled in primary school has also increased, climbing from 87.4 percent in 2000 to 94 percent in 2009. Read more »

This guest post is written by my colleague Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, a fellow at CFR and deputy director of the Women and Foreign Policy Program. She tells the story of several technology entrepreneurs who are defying the odds to build successful businesses in Afghanistan. As she writes, these entrepreneurs are not only seeking profits; they are also aiming to build a more peaceful and prosperous future for their country. A post by Tae Yoo of Cisco last week on CFR’s Development Channel also highlighted technology’s role in driving development in Afghanistan. Read more »

As 2015 approaches, debate among global development scholars and practitioners is turning to what should succeed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a topic explored on CFR’s Development Channel earlier this fall. Among the contributions to the debate so far is a thoughtful report recently released by Canada’s Centre for International Governance Innovation and the Korea Development Institute. Several members of the team behind this effort visited the Council on Foreign Relations this week, where they discussed their report at an event hosted by my colleague Stewart Patrick, director of CFR’s International Institutions and Global Governance program. (Stewart also wrote a blog post about the report yesterday.) Read more »

The world’s poorest struggle to survive day to day, living with almost no safety net. This makes them particularly vulnerable to financial risk. They are one illness or one injury away from losing their businesses or defaulting on a loan. When that happens, families go hungry and children are pulled from school. Read more »