Democracy Lab Weekly Brief, August 4, 2014

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Christian Caryl lists nine things to keep in mind when creating your own Islamic state.

Debbie Sharnak warns us not to give Uruguay a free pass on human rights.

Lorianne Updike Toler explains why many Libyans hope to reinstate an old constitution that establishes a monarchy and enshrines Islam as the state religion. Mohamed Eljarh worries that the United States’ decision to evacuate its embassy in Tripoli signals dark times for Libya.

Juan Nagel investigates Venezuela’s odd decision to evict residents of Caracas’s infamous high-rise slum. Daniel Lansberg-Rodríguez reports on how Venezuela managed to save a suspected drug lord from the clutches to the United States. 

Clare Lockhart and Johanna Mendelson Forman offer a recommendation to Haiti, which is still struggling to recover from the 2010 earthquake.

And now for this week’s recommended reads:

Human Rights Watch enumerates human rights issues in African states in time for this week’s Africa summit. Freedom House’s Alyssa Rickard tracks a worrying increase in repression in Africa, as the continent’s leaders rally behind even their most authoritarian colleagues.

In part of the Council on Foreign Relations’ series on child marriage, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon finds that child marriage in fragile states stymies economic progress and contributes to regional instability.

Democracy Digest explains why the outcome of the presidential election in Indonesia amounts to a "second democratic transition."

Reporting for World Affairs, Oussama Romdhani reports on escalating terrorism in Tunisia after an attack on two army encampments resulted in the deaths of 15 soldiers.

In a working paper for FRIDE, Olesia Ogryzko and Kateryna Pishchikova advise the European Union on how it can best support democracy in Ukraine.

Writing for the Atlantic Council, Matthew Timmerman notes that the perpetual poverty that ignited the Arab Spring continues to fuel conflict.

In the Atlantic, Kathy Gilsinan takes a look at ISIS’s al-Khansaa Brigade, its all-female morality police. (In the photo above, Iraqi Shiite children whose families were displaced by ISIS play with toy guns on Eid al-Fitr.)

Writing for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Matthew Kupfer and Thomas de Waal track the politically problematic use of the term "genocide" by both sides of the conflict in eastern Ukraine.