Human Security Archive

Editor’s Note: This story was a Finalist for a 2019 Livingston Award, for excellence in international reporting. In July 2019, it also received an Honorable Mention by the National Press Club for the Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence, which recognizes excellence in reporting on diplomatic and foreign policy issues. SAN SALVADOR—At around 2 a.m. on a Sunday this past May, Ricardo Canenguez sent his girlfriend, Damaris Perez, a text message with a license plate number. The plate belonged to the car of a police officer who, Canenguez said, had harassed him—and struck him—for no apparent reason while he […]

The collapse of a dam this summer in southeastern Laos, which triggered massive flooding that killed dozens and displaced thousands of people, has brought a renewed focus on hydroelectric dams in mainland Southeast Asia. Proponents of hydroelectric dams argue they will bring benefits in the form of national revenue and power generation for local communities, but they also threaten the food security and livelihoods of millions of people in the riparian countries that make up the Lower Mekong region: Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand. In an email interview, Diana Suhardiman, a senior researcher at the International Water Management Institute’s office […]

Cameroonian President Paul Biya is expected to coast to re-election on Oct. 7. But two ongoing conflicts have undermined what he has long pitched as his greatest strength: his ability to maintain peace in an otherwise unstable region. The coming years could be among the most challenging of his decades-long reign. In the grainy cellphone footage, Cameroonian soldiers march two women down a sandy road. One of the women wears a pink t-shirt, large silver earrings and a bright blue headwrap. Her head upright, she carries a baby on her back. The other woman has an outfit of green patterned […]

Last month, Turkey and Russia, largely on opposites sides of the Syrian civil war, struck an 11th-hour deal to prevent a military assault by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces on the last remaining rebel stronghold of Idlib in northwestern Syria. While the agreement, which was reached in the Russian Black Sea resort town of Sochi, won’t end the Syrian conflict, it buys some time to attempt to find a sustainable resolution in Idlib, where there are some 30,000 rebel fighters, perhaps a third of them al-Qaida-linked extremists. But if all things fail, Russian President Vladimir Putin has crafted the agreement in […]