Human Security Archive

As international pressure builds on Saudi Arabia over the brutal murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in its consulate in Istanbul early last month, the costs for Riyadh continue to rise. The damage to the country’s image and reputation will haunt its political elite for years, especially now that the CIA has blamed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for having authorized the operation. The backlash was already visible in late October, when many Western political and business leaders at the last minute canceled their trips to Riyadh for the big-ticket Future Investment Initiative, the so-called Davos in the Desert. While […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series on immigration and integration policy around the world. The Chilean government began sending Haitian immigrants back to Haiti this month under President Sebastian Pinera’s new “humanitarian repatriation program.” Two planeloads of Haitians have flown out so far under the policy, which provides a free ticket home for any Haitian immigrant who agrees not to return to Chile for nine years. According to Cristián Doña-Reveco, director of the office of Latino/Latin-American studies at the University of Nebraska Omaha, Pinera is making a populist appeal to rising anti-immigrant sentiment in Chile. In […]

MEXICO CITY—Geovanni Martinez Hernandez fled Honduras after being threatened by one of the most vicious gangs in the Americas: Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13. “It was because of my sexual orientation,” said Martinez Hernandez, who is gay. “I just want a place where I can live without being abused, where I can walk without discrimination or fear.” He had hoped to find that in Mexico. But, while traveling alone in late May through Tapachula, a city in far southwestern Mexico bordering Guatemala that is one of the first stops for Central American migrants and asylum-seekers making the trek north […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series on food security around the world. Over the past 30 years, as economies in the region developed and democratic gains were made, Latin America has undeniably seen major progress in the fight against hunger. Since 2000, the number of Latin Americans suffering from undernourishment has dropped from more than 60 million to 39 million. From Mexico to Argentina, leaders have felt optimistic. Compared to Africa and Asia, few places in the developing world were tackling food security and nutrition-related health risks with quite the same rigor and effectiveness. It was […]

The slaying earlier this month of a prominent human rights lawyer in the Philippines who worked on behalf of poor suspects accused of drug-related crimes has sparked a renewed outcry over President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on drugs. The lawyer, Benjamin Ramos, was gunned down by two unidentified assailants on Nov. 6—the 34th lawyer to be killed since Duterte took office in 2016. In an interview with WPR, Imelda Deinla, a research fellow at the Australian National University’s School of Regulation and Global Governance, explains why Philippine lawyers are being targeted and how this wave of violence is affecting the […]

What does a small spat in the Security Council over the Central African Republic, or CAR, tell us about the state of major power relations? Last week, the council was unable to agree on the terms of a six-month extension to the 13,000-strong United Nations stabilization mission in CAR, known by its French acronym MINUSCA. The diplomats gave themselves a month to fix their differences over the operation’s mandate. There seem to be three main points of contention. One is Moscow’s insistence that the council endorse a Sudanese-Russian effort to mediate the fragmented country’s conflicts. France, the former colonial power, […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series on immigration and integration policy around the world. The Netherlands has had one of the toughest integration policies for immigrants in Europe since new laws were passed in 2013 with the support of far-right members of parliament. But there is now agreement across the political spectrum that those stricter policies, which placed higher burdens on immigrants for passing required examinations on Dutch language and society, have not produced the desired results. A draft set of proposed changes, if passed by parliament, could go into effect as soon as 2020. In […]

Late last week, the Trump administration declared in a proclamation that it would deny asylum applications to anyone who entered the country through illegal ports of entry, even though it has been clear for months that asylum-seekers are being denied access at official ports of entry. It was the latest attempt by the administration to discourage migrants, primarily from Central America, from coming to the United States. In the recent pre-election fervor, President Donald Trump likened the caravan of Central Americans, which is slowly making its way north from Honduras and into southern Mexico, to an invasion. Yet the latest […]

Peace is complicated. That is the overriding, if unintended, message of this week’s Paris Peace Forum, a new multilateral conclave initiated by the French government to commemorate the end of World War I. The organizers claim that the event is based on the “simple idea” that “international cooperation is key to tackling global challenges and ensuring durable peace.” That is pretty much where the simplicity ends, however. Over 100 groups from around the world are in Paris to present their ideas about peace to 2,500 participants. Their approaches to the issue are, to put it mildly, eclectic. One organization hopes […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series on food security around the world. Ensuring an adequate and balanced food supply has never been easy for Gulf Arab nations, which are both extremely water-scarce and reliant on food imports. The situation will only get more difficult in the coming decades, as climate change threatens global agricultural production and energy demand shifts away from fossil fuels—the Gulf region’s primary export. In an interview with WPR, Eckart Woertz, a senior research fellow at the Barcelona Center for International Affairs and author of “Oil for Food: The Global Food Crisis and […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, and associate editor, Elliot Waldman, discuss why Asia’s two main economic rivals, China and Japan, are now trying to improve their ties. For the Report, Obi Anyadike talks with WPR’s senior editor, Robbie Corey-Boulet, about his reporting from Nigeria, where in the past six months, an estimated 600 Nigerian soldiers have been killed in the fight against Boko Haram. Soldiers are poorly equipped and overstretched, and their morale is dangerously low. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. “I came only to confirm to people that I am for peace. The past is gone. We have opened a new chapter for peace and unity.” That was Riek Machar, South Sudan’s opposition leader and former vice president, who returned to the war-torn country Wednesday after more than two years away. His upbeat tone was matched by President Salva Kiir, who similarly described the event as a turning point in a civil war that’s nearly five years old and, […]