Nigeria’s worst flooding in at least a decade has overrun hundreds of communities across the country. Sporadic floods have been occurring locally for months, but they intensified in September and have since spread. The flooding is expected to end in the coming weeks, but its impact will take much longer to repair.
More than 7.1 million Venezuelans have now fled the country, making the exodus the largest migration crisis in the world. But while most Venezuelan migrants had previously sought a safe haven in other countries in South America, migration patterns have shifted toward the U.S. under the false hope that things will be better there.
“The worst is yet to come.” That’s the message from the International Monetary Fund about what to expect in 2023. For Latin America, the IMF’s bad news about the year to come will add to a pile of years’ worth of other economic and political problems and will be critical to every political story in the region for the year to come.
EU leaders are gathered in Brussels, where they are locked in a heated discussion about Europe’s energy crisis. But as they try to hammer out an agreement, they’re also keeping a nervous eye on the protests brewing in France over inflation and the cost-of-living crisis, which could tip over into widespread civil unrest.
With the United Nations COP 27 Climate Change Conference set to take place in the Egyptian city of Sharm El-Sheikh beginning on Nov. 6, many observers have raised concerns about the country’s human rights and environmental records and what this will mean for the conference as well as climate justice more broadly.
Across the world, there have been more than 8,200 protests and riots in response to the rising cost of living in the first seven months of this year alone. Although the actors involved represent broad, heterogeneous demographics, there are some clear patterns and takeaways that have already emerged.
Between October 2021 and August 2022, U.S. authorities at the U.S.-Mexico border took undocumented migrants into custody more than 2 million times—a record number that has generated nonstop commentary about a “border crisis.” But the numbers fail to convey a dramatic shift in the migrant population over the past nine years.
The novel coronavirus caught many world leaders unprepared, despite consistent warnings that a global pandemic was inevitable. And it has revealed the flaws in a global health architecture headed by the World Health Organization, which had already been faulted for its response to the 2014 Ebola pandemic in West Africa. Will there be an overhaul of the WHO when the pandemic is over?
Some observers have suggested that celebrities using their status to catalyze political involvement by their fans represents a new kind of celebrity activism, with more of an emphasis on inspiring action than taking action. But is that the case? And can celebrity activists, in inspiring such action, actually make a difference?
Russia unleashing the destructive power of a nuclear weapon in Ukraine would be catastrophic, but not solely because of the physical damage the weapon would cause. Instead, Russia’s use of a nuclear weapon would be catastrophic because it would cause us to enter a new world, one transformed in three permanent ways.
Just eight months after seizing power in Burkina Faso, Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba conceded the presidency to his rival, Capt. Ibrahim Traore, in a countercoup. What the change in leadership will mean for Burkina Faso’s deteriorating security situation and transition back to democratic elections is unclear.
Over the past decade, Greece has experienced a major wave of outward migration, driven by the country’s prolonged economic crisis. To prevent significant stress on Greece’s societal, economic and cultural fabric, the Greek government must tackle the root causes of outmigration and create incentives for those who have left to return.