Human Security Archive

When assigning homework exercises for a survey course that I teach on American foreign policy, I tell my students that no matter how strong the arguments they use to defend their positions, if they neglect to examine how demographic trends will affect their proposals, they will get an F. What is true for my students is true for global policymakers: Demographic trends will shape our future in a much more profound sense than most of the developments we see on the front page of the New York Times. Four major demographic trends in particular will shape the global security landscape […]

Ahead of a World Health Organization summit bringing 100 countries together for the first meeting of member states on falsely labeled medical products, a group of public health experts is calling for an international treaty on substandard and counterfeit medicines. Some countries have laws prohibiting the sale of fake medicines, but, as the BBC reports, the lack of an international treaty allows organized criminal networks to sell fake drugs out of countries with weak laws. There have been multiple instances of mass deaths due to fake drugs, including in 2008, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration documented 81 deaths […]