In-Depth Archive

By a fortuitous coincidence I found myself in Japan the week of the 70th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which preceded the Japanese surrender in World War II. A special panel advising the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, was divided over the wording of the government’s official statement, which is issued on major anniversaries of the war’s end. Should the words “aggression” and “apology” be used, or was “remorse”—the oft-employed substitute for a stronger expression—enough? Abe’s refusal to apologize for Japan’s colonial past, including its treatment of Koreans and other wartime atrocities, has divided Japanese political elites and […]

They’ve gone from little-known hobby toys and military machines to an international phenomenon, with eager civilians snapping them up from China to Colombia: Whatever you may personally think of them, unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, are here to stay. Civilian-focused drones are already proving profitable in the private sector, with sales exceeding an estimated 1 million units in the U.S. and companies from movie studios to construction firms working to integrate the devices into their work. The development sector is also starting to utilize drone technology, for uses ranging from quick post-disaster mapping and documenting environmental abuses to property surveillance. […]

On July 22, thousands of diaspora Eritreans from across Europe protested in front of the Palais des Nations, the United Nations’ office in Geneva, against a recently released report by the U.N. Human Rights Commission (HRC). The report details grave human rights violations, including arbitrary arrest, torture and forced labor, which could represent crimes against humanity. If confirmed, this would result in Eritrea being referred to the International Criminal Court. In the view of the demonstrators who protested against this characterization of their country, Eritrea is being demonized by an international system that never wanted Eritrea to be an independent […]

In the first half of August this year, something snapped inside Ban Ki-moon. The secretary-general of the United Nations demanded that the leader of the U.N. operation in the Central African Republic (CAR), Senegalese Gen. Babacar Gaye, should resign. The mission, known by its French acronym MINUSCA, was buckling under the weight of stories about sexual abuse by U.N. troops. “Enough is enough,” Ban told the press. Gaye did not go quietly. He had, he pointed out in his resignation letter, insisted on a “zero tolerance” policy toward the abuse. He previously served the U.N. in the Democratic Republic of […]

This past May, the European Commission announced a strategy for a Digital Single Market (DSM)—a single seamless market that would expand the European Union’s single market for physical goods and services into the digital domain. The DSM is projected to provide economic gains of as much as €415 billion annually for the EU. Identifying the DSM as one of his 10 priorities as he assumed office in 2014, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker explained his hopes for the DSM: “I want to see pan-continental telecoms networks, digital services that cross borders and a wave of innovative European start-ups. I want to […]

Editor’s note: The following article is one of 30 that we’ve selected from our archives to celebrate World Politics Review’s 15th anniversary. You can find the full collection here. There was a time when “affairs of state” were seen as having nothing to do with women. That time is now over. Today we have a strong evidentiary base that links the situation and security of women to state-level outcomes across a wide variety of issue areas—from health, wealth and governance to national security and stability. These linkages are no longer obscure. And because they have been made visible, policymakers have begun […]