Since 2004, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has funded HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment programs credited with extending the lives of millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa, including South Africa, which has received the majority of PEPFAR funding, reaching more than $500 million annually. In a place where a positive diagnosis of HIV/AIDS used to be a death sentence, America brought hope for longer lives.

African Union and European Union countries should work together to strengthen protections for human rights defenders in Africa and migrants in Europe, Human Rights Watch said in recommendations to the AU and EU released today. The annual AU/EU human rights dialogue will be in Brussels on November 20, 2013.

A week ago, Taiwan enjoyed formal diplomatic relations with 23 countries, largely concentrated in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. As of November 15, that number is down to 22, thanks to a surprise announcement by Gambian President Yahya Jammeh that his country would cut its diplomatic ties to Taiwan. As J. Michael Cole wrote elsewhere on The Diplomat, it’s unclear whether The Gambia will officially establish diplomatic relations with China, and what that would mean for the “diplomatic truce” between China and Taiwan.

Two Islamist groups in Nigeria have been added to the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations for killing thousands of people and threatening Westerners in West Africa, U.S. officials said Wednesday. Boko Haram and a splinter group, Ansaru, were named to the federal roster of terrorist groups after U.S. officials determined that they had received training and some financing from the Al Qaeda affiliate in North Africa.

When Marie Antoinette wanted to escape the confines and pressures of courtly life, she retreated to her quaint Petit Hameau where she and her companions donned their finest peasant frocks and pretended to be poor. A century later, fashionable Londoners took that pauper fantasy to a new extreme -- nocturnally touring East London's slums, where they gawked at ladies of the night and coined the phrase "slumming it."

If it hadn’t been drowned out by the ongoing wars in Mali and Syria, you would have heard all about the brutal civil war that broke out in the Central African Republic (CAR) in December of 2012. I guess there's only so much war you can read about at any given time, but the one currently tearing through the bush of the Central African Republic is a significant one. One UN official is even claiming a high threat of genocide in the coming months as Christian and Muslim militias face off in a war of escalating sectarian violence.

Soon after the end of the M23 rebellion that threw parts of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) into conflict for much of the last two years, a blog post titled "We Stopped M23" appeared on the website of a California-based nonprofit called Falling Whistles. The slick homepage describes the organization as “a campaign for peace in Congo." It urges visitors to “be a whistleblower for peace” by purchasing stylish metal whistles, hung on a chain or black cord, from the organization's online store.

In 2010, I returned to London to meet again with the nation-branding consultants I had interviewed three years earlier. I expected to encounter a very different portrait of the field from the one that had been painted for me a few years earlier. Aftershocks from the global financial crisis of 2008 – 2009 continued to make themselves felt, upending the foundations of market value.