Harvard scholar Art Goldhammer has running commentary on the reception of Dominque Strauss-Kahn’s arrest in France and Philip Gourevitch has weighed in on the New Yorker web-site. Duncan Hollis analyzes whether DSK is entitled to some form of diplomatic immunity (answer: probably not and if he did it could (and most likely would) be waived by the IMF). The Washington Post examines what the scandal means for the IMF. The Greeks were hoping that DSK would help them get a softer loan deal. It may also make it just a little more likely that we’ll finally get a non-European IMF chief (or perhaps someone like Kemal Dervis, a Turkish citizen of German descent). Drezner has more to say on this.
In the mean time, a U.S. report estimates that over a 1-year period in 2006-2007, 400,000 Congolese women were raped. UMASS political scientist Charli Carpenter has much of interest to say on this topic. Among others, she notes that many of the rapes were committed by civilians rather than soldiers, wonders why the study didn’t look at sexual violence targeted at men, and ponders what this report should mean for activism and media coverage on the Congo.