The Gambia + democracy = <3

So many good headlines this week:

• The Gambia and democracy are falling in love with one another
• Bosnia is busy catching supervillains
• Germany used its Rome Statue superpowers to sentence a former ISIS member from Iraq to life in prison (for the very first time)
• Indonesia was like, 'Indigenous people in West Papua, we got your back'
• And so much more.

what happened last week

We voted in The Gambia for the very first time since the fall of a dictator who ruled for 22 years
The Gambia elected a "new" president last weekend. The country's current president, Adama Barrow, has been... re-elected (this is how he looks like).

Why this matters:
Africa's smallest mainland country used to have a pretty complicated relationship with elections. Not anymore. Bloomberg called this election 'the biggest test of its democracy.' Why? For 27 years, you couldn't have an election in this West African nation without Yahya Jammeh being one of the candidates; if not the only one. He ruled the country for 22 years until 2016 where he was forced into exile. This is the first time, he wasn't on the ballot.

• Recommended: Amat Jeng for Al Jazeera wrote an opinion article about this election and how he believes that it can serve as a model for societies who are just getting out of dictatorships. Jeng is a Gambian academic at the Uppsala University in Sweden.

Fun fact:
Gambians vote with marbles. No kidding. This very unique voting system was introduced in the early 1960ies because a lot of people back then didn't know how to read or write. CNN shows how it looks like, voting with marbles. It's simple but difficult to cheat. Alieu Sanneh explained it in detail on The Conversation. Sanneh is a political scientist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, United States.

Who's Barrow? Is he a good guy?
I don't know if he's a good guy but he's built roads and a lot of infrastructure in places that had none before, and for that a lot of people are thankful. But he did say, in 2019, that he'd only serve as a short-term transitional leader after the dictatorship and look, it's already 2021. There are also those that say, 'he is a thief'. He also should have made public a report of human rights abuses under Jammeh's regime.

Is there an alternative to Barrow?
Yes, even though all six candidates in the presidential race were men. For example, his former mentor Ousainou Darboe. He is the leader of the main opposition party, the United Democratic party, short UDP. The opposition party is also at the moment looking into some 'irregularities' aka they think the election was rigged and are looking for proof.

What else is the country talking about?
Climate change. It's one of those countries that are feeling the effects of it already. Its beaches are disappearing, and the country is relying economically on tourism. Experts say, 'if the status quo remains as it is there will be climate refugees.' They also talk about FGM, child marriage, and so on.

Btw, Berlin people:
In case you thought that The Gambia 'is soooo far away', you might be getting your drugs from someone from there; like Jawara. Read his interview with VICE this summer; the 23-year-old Gambian has been a street drug dealer in Görlitzer Park since his claim for asylum was rejected.

And London people:
Same goes for you. Go and visit one of Sanneh's Gambian cooking classes at Migrateful. She arrived in the UK from The Gambia six years ago and I've been told she makes great yassa chicken and a warming pepper soup. Or just follow the incredible journalist work of Essau Williams, who covered the elections for BBC like a true future-Pulitzer-Prize-winner.

We caught 12 people who we think were responsible for a lot of war crimes during the Bosnian Genocide
These past two weeks, police in Bosnia has been busy arresting people for war crimes that happened more than 25 years ago.

Wait, what happened?
Well, first, it arrested seven (Serb) people who are suspected of killing 22 (Bosniak) civilians in 1992. A couple of days later, it arrested five (Bosnian) people who are suspected of war crimes against more than 100 (Serb) civilians in and around Sarajevo between 1992 and 1994.

Why this matters:
More than 100,000 people were killed during the war between 1992 and 1995 in Bosnia. The country's Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats fought against each other. The victims were mostly Bosniak civilians. To this day, justice hasn't been served, not all bodies have been found and families are still looking for closure, even if it's just a legal one. This does not make reconciliation and healing easier.

**What's the vibe like in...