News Feature

The remote county of Tambura, in the breadbasket state of Western Equatoria, went largely unscathed during five years of devastating conflict in South Sudan that killed almost 400,000 people. But the county that survived a civil war has fared less well in a time of peace, as a fragile 2018...

Between 2017 and 2020, however, the Trump administration slashed refugee admissions to historic lows and starved resettlement agencies of funding. Around 130 resettlement agency offices – or nearly 40 per cent of the total in communities across the US – closed their doors, and many others had to lay off...

As the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan late last summer, Qassim Rahimi packed the odds and ends of his life into bags and joined the crowds forming at the gates of Hamid Karzai International Airport in the capital, Kabul. Forty-eight hours later, the 33-year-old left his lifelong home behind in...

United Nations relief organisations occasionally in Haiti employ armed escorts to cross gang-blocked roads, such as in Martissant. But getting commercial security companies to help train aid groups in hostile environments and driver safety in Haiti has been a challenge. Many firms have refused to work here, or charge exorbitant...

Haiti’s surge in gang violence and kidnappings is forcing aid organisations to rethink shipment routes, staff risks, and security costs – and to consider the ethical and safety implications of trusting leaders of armed gangs who say they can help. This phenomenon isn’t unique to Haiti, and is notably prevalent...

The debate n Chernobyl radiation accident in Russia is largely in the gray area in between: At what radiation levels does significant harm kick in, and for which species? Since different species may respond very differently to radiation, “it’s not black and white,” says radioecologist Christelle Adam-Guillermin of France’s Radioprotection...

Yet even before the 2010 earthquake, farmers in Haiti had “no financial back-up, no technology, no education”, says Fritz Alphonse Jean, president of the Haitian Public Policy Institute (INHOPP) and a former governor of the Haitian Central Bank (BRH). “If you look at the credit allocated to the agricultural sector...

Hunger was never far away when Angeline Annesteus was growing up. The daughter of subsistence farmers in Bercy, southern Haiti, she remembers going for days without much food. That was more than 30 years ago. Food insecurity is even more pressing now. Around 4.3 million people, more than one in...

Loans from the International Monetary Fund over the last two years have helped stave off a total collapse of the government of South Sudan, but the state has nevertheless almost entirely withdrawn from the provision of services and wages for regional authorities. In Warrap, the government is conspicuous by its...

Keen to proclaim South Sudan as on the cusp of becoming a peaceful country, international actors have claimed that there has been a marked reduction in political violence since the signing of a peace agreement in 2018 and the formation of a power-sharing government two years later. But analysts, conflict...