Human Security Archive

On Tuesday, the Obama administration announced that it would admit more migrants from Central America into the United States as refugees, expanding a program that observers have criticized as inadequate in the face of an exodus of people, many of them unaccompanied minors, fleeing violence and poverty in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras over the past two years. Under the program to date, unaccompanied Central American children seeking to reunite with their families living in the United States have been allowed to apply for refugee status; since it came into effect in 2014, the program has received some 9,500 applications. […]

Since 2009, the European Union has faced a nonstop string of major crises, from Greece’s debt and Ukraine’s separatist fighting, to the refugee influx and now Brexit. Throughout each one, Germany has found itself leading the EU as it muddles its way to a response. But Germany’s leadership hasn’t always been welcome, and Germany’s own relationship with its role in Europe is complicated. Berlin has always had an important role in the EU, but historically it was the partnership between Germany and France that drove European policy. However, as the eurozone crisis grew into a pressing emergency and France was […]

Hungarian President Viktor Orban announced in early July that Hungary would hold a referendum in October on the European Union’s plan to redistribute 120,000 refugees from Greece and Italy throughout the union through a quota system. Orban, who has clashed with EU leaders in Brussels since he came to power in 2010, has been a vocal critic of the EU’s response to the migrant and refugee crisis since its onset. Hungary was the first country to close its borders to migrants and refugees at the height of the influx, and the planned referendum is his latest rebuke of EU policy. […]

Over the past several weeks a new theme about America and the world has emerged: Everything, everywhere, is coming apart. Multiple terrorist attacks in France compete for headlines against a daily drumbeat of bombings claimed by the so-called Islamic State in Turkey, Iraq and Bangladesh. A failed military coup has raised questions about Turkey’s democratic credentials and stability. And in the United States, a race-baiting populist has just become the Republican presidential nominee, at a time when it seems to be open season on black men and police officers in the streets of America’s cities. For someone like me, who […]

Tunisia is often and rightly lauded for the progress it has made since the popular uprising that toppled longtime strongman Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011. But social inequality and regional asymmetries are undermining Tunisia’s democratic transition and deepening the chasm between a restless and rebellious periphery and an eastern Mediterranean coast that fears and misunderstands the bitter resentment of border communities. These unaddressed challenges are also making it harder to secure the country from internal upheaval and terrorism. Aggrieved youths increasingly express their anger in fiery protests and street violence. This radical projection of grievances risks feeding a […]

The July 14 massacre in Nice, in which a Tunisian-born man living in France, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, drove a truck through densely packed crowds celebrating Bastille Day along the waterfront, came just one week after a parliamentary committee called for an overhaul of the French intelligence services. That call followed an investigation by a nonpartisan parliamentary commission into the response to the two attacks France suffered in 2015: first at the offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket that killed 17 in January; and subsequently at a number of sites in and around Paris, including the Bataclan […]

No reasonable person would predict that a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians is in the cards in the foreseeable future. Even forecasting the most limited progress may seem like a fool’s errand. And yet, a series of recent events reveal an unexpected glimmer of hope and suggest that, despite the pessimism of the majority of both Israelis and Palestinians, modest steps forward may be possible in the coming months. This past Sunday, the region witnessed something that had not occurred in nearly a decade: an openly publicized, high-profile visit to Israel by a high-ranking Arab official. It was […]

NATO leaders meet for their summit in Warsaw today buffeted by crises and conflicts on all sides. Many of them could have been averted. From the global refugee crisis to conflicts across the world, much of the current instability stems from world leaders’ failure to adequately respond to human rights violations, especially if other political or economic interests are at stake. Instead, when a crisis breaks out, when the bodies start piling up, and when refugees flee by the thousands, leaders say they didn’t see it coming, and start yet another discussion about the necessity of new, more advanced early […]

When facing an adversary, the U.S. military always searches for what Carl von Clausewitz, the great 19th-century Prussian theorist of war, called the “center of gravity.” Clausewitz used the term to refer to the primary source of a combatant’s power and strength, which can take many forms, including control over a strategically valuable territory or key command-and-control center, like a capital city; or something more amorphous, like public support for the government or alliance cohesion. Today’s military strategists believe that the most effective way to defeat any enemy is to identify its center of gravity, and then destroy or control […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, and host Peter Dörrie discuss the challenges of building sustainable peace in former conflict zones. For the Report, Ilan Noy joins us to talk about preparing for and recovering from natural disasters. Listen:Download: MP3Subscribe: iTunes | RSS Relevant Articles on WPR: Why This Time’s Different for the Border Clashes Between Ethiopia and Eritrea A Year After Algiers Accord, Flexibility Is the Key to Durable Peace in Mali Instability the Norm in Central African Republic as Rebel Violence Surges New Ways of Defining Success in Post-Disaster Recovery Trend Lines is produced, […]

There has been a resurgence of violence in the chronically unstable and impoverished Central African Republic (CAR), as regional and international efforts to push back against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) continue to fall short, and ongoing tensions between Muslim and Christian militia groups rage. CAR has experienced episodic violence for decades, but instability deepened in March 2013, when a predominantly Muslim rebel coalition known as the Seleka seized power, overthrowing former President Francois Bozize. That precipitated a bloody war between Seleka fighters and the mainly Christian “anti-balaka” militias, fought along religious and intercommunal lines. Since then, approximately 6,000 people […]

The year 2010 started with two large earthquakes less than two months apart. The strongest one, by far, was the earthquake in February in Concepcion, Chile, that killed about 250 people. Unfortunately, the earthquake also generated a tsunami, and since an adequate early warning was not issued along the Chilean coast, the tsunami ended up doubling the death toll. A month before, however, a much weaker earthquake shook another coastal city on the other side of the Americas: Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Tragically and catastrophically, many of the city’s buildings collapsed, and the death toll may have reached more than a quarter […]