Human Security Archive

2020 dawns with the multilateral system in crisis. The next 12 months will determine whether the world is capable of controlling nuclear proliferation, arresting runaway climate change and restoring faith in the United Nations. Some pivotal events will shape success or failure in the coming year. Preserving the Nuclear Regime. Of the several potential catastrophic risks confronting humanity, the specter of nuclear war remains the most terrifying. Since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the world has escaped the horror of nuclear weapons. Much of the credit, beyond deterrence and plain dumb luck, goes to the Treaty on […]

Editor’s Note: Guest columnist Richard Gowan is filling in for Stewart Patrick this week. Christmas is a time to revisit comforting stories and traditions. And so, this Yuletide, I feel a warmth on returning to World Politics Review to analyze the tale of the Three Magi. Five years ago, while writing a weekly column for WPR, I used a festive piece to make light fun of the Magi—or Three Kings, or Three Wise Men—who feature in the Gospel of Matthew. The Magi famously approached Herod, then king in Jerusalem, to ask directions to a baby “born king of the Jews” […]

The annual United Nations Climate Change Conference wrapped up Sunday in Madrid, after nearly two weeks of wrangling. Despite a two-day extension that made this the longest round of U.N. climate talks ever, the meeting was a massive failure. Instead of setting more ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, negotiators went home mostly empty-handed, having punted the most difficult climate-related questions to next year’s conference in Glasgow, Scotland. “The international community lost an important opportunity to show increased ambition on mitigation, adaptation & finance to tackle the climate crisis,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres declared in a tweet Sunday. The […]

Demonstrators have taken to the streets over the past three weeks in a series of massive antigovernment rallies in Colombia, making it the latest Latin American country to be convulsed by protests. While the ongoing unrest has not yet reached the scale of other recent crises elsewhere in the region, such as Bolivia or Chile, it nonetheless poses a stiff challenge to conservative President Ivan Duque, who has come under criticism in recent months for his unpopular economic and security policies. The demonstrations began with a general strike on Nov. 21, with hundreds of thousands of people gathering in cities […]

More than five years after Russia annexed Crimea, with the war in eastern Ukraine grinding on, is a détente between Moscow and Kyiv finally within reach? It might have been tempting to think so with the summit this week in Paris between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was only a few months ago, after all, that Putin and Zelensky had their first phone call, which led to Russia and Ukraine swapping dozens of prisoners and agreeing to consider reopening talks over the political future of the breakaway Donbas region. Yet despite some progress in Paris, […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Flash floods and landslides are devastating East Africa, just a month after severe rains flooded countries in the center of the continent. To the south, Zimbabwe and Zambia are in the midst of droughts that have slowed Victoria Falls to a trickle, even as heavy rains batter South Africa and submerge entire neighborhoods. With global leaders gathered in Madrid this week for COP25, this year’s annual U.N. climate summit, the severe weather events across Africa underscore the impact that climate change is […]

When Hurricane Dorian, a Category 5 storm, struck the Bahamas in September, it killed dozens of people, displaced tens of thousands more and, according to a recent report, inflicted $3.4 billion worth of damage—roughly a quarter of the country’s GDP. It was the latest sign of the outsized impact that climate change is having on the Caribbean. Many of the region’s small island nations have limited habitable land, much of it barely above sea-level, which is one reason why storms like Dorian, which are becoming more frequent and intense due to climate change, can have such a devastating impact. The […]

Amid a growing perception that immigrants are taking away jobs and eroding the city-state's cultural identity, immigration to Singapore has emerged as a hot-button political issue. Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing series on immigration and integration policy around the world. Between 300 and 400 people organized a rare public rally in Singapore last month to protest the government’s immigration policies, which have historically been welcoming. But many Singaporeans blame immigrants, who make up 40 percent of the city-state’s population, for driving down wages and raising the cost of living. In an email interview with WPR, Leong […]

French President Emmanuel Macron has maintained a frosty rapport with the national media since taking office in 2017, giving just two press conferences and accusing journalists of “no longer seeking the truth.” So it was a bit out of character when in late October he sat down for a lengthy interview with the magazine Valeurs Actuelles, to outline his priorities for the second half of his five-year term. Immigration—notably, how to reduce it—was chief among them. Valeurs Actuelles isn’t mainstream or widely read. It’s a conservative weekly magazine known for alarmist tropes against migrants and Muslims, so it seemed like […]