South Asia Archive

By 2050, hundreds of millions of people in developing countries will have left their homes as a result of climate change—a mass displacement that will make already-precarious populations more vulnerable and impose heavy burdens on the communities that absorb them. Unfortunately, the world has barely begun to prepare for this impending crisis. Those displaced by climate change are neither true refugees nor traditional migrants, and thus occupy an ambiguous position under international law. The world needs to agree on how to classify environmental migrants, as well as what their rights are. It also needs to strengthen its capacity to manage […]

The United States and the Taliban signed an agreement in late February that sets a timetable for a U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. The negotiations leading up to the deal were long and fraught, and they almost fell apart last September, after President Donald Trump suspended talks and canceled a planned summit with Taliban leaders at Camp David. But as difficult as the talks were, they pale in comparison to what lies ahead: launching, sustaining and successfully concluding a formal intra-Afghan peace process between the government in Kabul and the Taliban, as well as other Afghan political leaders. Questions abound […]