Southeast Asia Replaces Africa as the World’s Hotbed of Piracy
Sembara Oktafian was in the engine room of a tugboat chugging toward the Philippines when something didn’t sound right. There was shouting on deck, and shots. Gunmen had boarded, and their message was clear: Come with us, or we will kill you. They shot one crew member and kidnapped four ot…
Exploring links between trade, standards, and the sustainable development goals
Trade has a critical role in achieving the sustainable development goals. The movement of goods and services across borders, as well as flows of technology, ideas and people, all enable progress toward ending poverty, improving economic growth and job opportunities, and reducing …
How al-Qaeda Survived the Islamic State Challenge
The Islamic State’s (IS) emergence—with its control of territory, social media proficiency, and unprecedented ability to mobilize supporters—threatened al-Qaeda’s position of dominance within the global jihadist movement. For a time, the majority of analysts believed that IS would eclipse al-Qaeda, …
UN fears third leg of the global financial crisis – with prospect of epic debt defaults
The third leg of the world’s intractable depression is yet to come. If trade economists at the United Nations are right, the next traumatic episode may entail the greatest debt jubilee in history. It may also prove to be the definitive crisis of globalized capitalism, the demise of the liberal free-…
Charting Boko Haram’s Rapid Decline
After being declared the world’s deadliest terrorist organization in 2015, Boko Haram is a menace in retreat. As a whole, the conflict is on pace to claim about 3,500 lives in 2016, a third the number of lives lost in 2015 and the conflict’s lowest total since 2012. As illustrated in Figure 1, durin…
The Zika virus – A mystery no more
A YEAR ago, most people would have drawn a blank if asked about Zika. Since then, an outbreak of the mosquito-borne virus that began in early 2015 in Brazil has spread to more than 60 countries in the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Pacific islands. A study published on September 1st in the Lanc…
How 3D Printers Are Saving Lives in Remote Parts of the World
When a piece of sophisticated technology breaks down in Kinshasa, the largest city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, finding a replacement part can be difficult. And for the doctors and nurses throughout the sprawling city, which contains large swaths of rural area, that can mean the dif…
Hollywood Meets the Sustainable Development Goals
Why did UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon travel to Los Angeles last month to pitch the Sustainable Development Goals to a roomful of entertainment industry writers and producers? What motivated scores of Hollywood’s top show runners, as well as executives from 13 studios and networks, to head to Nor…
Refugees Take UN Center Stage: But Is It All Sound and Fury?
The annual opening of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) is a noisy affair and, like Churchill’s pudding, often lacks a coherent theme. This year is different. World leaders will convene two special sessions to address the flood of refugees and migrants from global conflict zones—and make promises to al…
Afghanistan’s Anti-Taliban Vigilantes: Blessing or Curse?
Given the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, local residents in different parts of the country have – in the absence of sufficient government action against the insurgents – taken up arms to defend themselves. While in some provinces such vigilantes are accused of abuse and harassment, an exa…