Stroll to The Hague

The way we estimate climate’s effect on conflict could be wrong ... The way we estimate climate’s effect on conflict could be wrong... Received this from a friend? [SUBSCRIBE]( CRITICAL STATE Your weekly foreign policy fix. [The World]( [INKSTICK]( If you read just one thing… ...read about how the way we estimate climate’s effect on conflict could be wrong. Last year, a [study]( in the journal Nature suggested that, so far at least, climate change has played a minor role at most in increasing levels of armed conflict in the world. Last week, one of the authors of that study [cautioned]( that the study’s methodology, while valid for explaining the past, may not tell us very much about the future of climate-driven conflict. The problem is that the study — which reflects the current consensus among political scientists about how to study the connection between climate and conflict — relied on within-country variations to measure climate effects. In layman’s terms, the study measured the difference between, say, Venezuela in wetter versus dryer years, rather than comparing Venezuela to any other country. That method can tell us a lot about the effect of climate shocks, but it doesn’t say much about the way that climate shapes the state system as a whole. If, as some studies suggest, maintaining a state that meets the specifications of the current state system is just overall harder in areas with harsher climates, then as harsh climates spread, the state system itself could change. That shift could be a driver of conflict independent of any particular climate shock. Iraq’s failing health sector A Reuters[investigation]( dug into Iraq’s crumbling medical infrastructure as the country confronts its first cases of COVID-19. Years of sanctions, followed by systematic underinvestment in public health since the US invasion, have left Iraq lagging well behind its neighbors in key health indicators. Iraq’s per capita health spending is less than half the regional average, and such money isn’t buying much. Iraq has only 1.2 hospital beds per 1,000 people, leading to horrible hospital overcrowding even in parts of the country that were not devastated by the war with ISIS. One way Iraqi doctors get around the hassle of a centralized but underfunded health system is by taking advantage of Iraq’s federalism and buying drugs through Iraqi Kurdistan, which has its own health ministry. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( Department of Uneven Distribution People in Buenos Aires, Argentina, are getting a [preview]( of the surveillance-heavy future that seems in store for many democracies, and it doesn’t look great. Since last April, the city’s subway cameras have been connected to facial recognition software that evaluates everyone in the system against a list of — notionally — Argentina’s most-wanted criminals. Of course, that’s not quite how it has played out. For starters, there are the false positives. One man, Guillermo Ibarrola, spent nearly a week in police custody after cameras identified him as another guy named Guillermo Ibarrola, who is accused of armed robbery. The [porteño]( Ibarrola had never been to the city where the alleged crime took place. Worse, the system doesn’t actually limit itself to accused violent criminals. Petty crimes like theft can get you into the facial recognition file, and, even more ominously, a United Nations (UN) report pointed out that nearly 30% of people in the system have no crime whatsoever specified in their file. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( [ ] MIDNIGHT OIL This week on Midnight Oil, we speak to Sherizaan Minwalla, a human rights attorney based in Erbil, Iraq. Her work focuses on gender-based violence and protection in the US and Iraq; access to justice for survivors of gender-violence and human trafficking; and the intersection between gender persecution and immigration, asylum and refugee law. She has a new [article]( out in Feminist Media Studies, co-authored with Johanna Foster and Sarah McGrail, on the media’s treatment (and mistreatment) of Yazidi women who were abducted by ISIS in 2014. WHAT IS THE HARDEST PROBLEM YOU WORK ON? The most difficult problem I have encountered for more than a decade of working in Iraq is to identify long-term legal options to prIf someone is still inside their home country, we say it is that country’s responsibility to provide protection, but we know that often countries do not meet those responsibilities. In Iraq, for example, not only is there pervasive persecution directed toward women and girls on account of their gender, but they face heightened barriers if they want to flee specifically because of their gender. Laws restrict women’s freedoms, and women’s families and communities make it more difficult for women to move freely compared to men. I have encountered women and girls as well as gay men and women and transgender individuals who are trying to flee severe domestic violence, forced marriage, sex trafficking, threats of honor killing and other forms of gender-based violence that would rise to the level of persecution under refugee law. Unfortunately, many governments such as Iraq do very little to seriously address these issues. In the most extreme case, we saw the utter failure to protect Yazidi women and girls as a group who, consequently, were subjected to genocidal rape at the hands of ISIS militants. HOW DO YOU GO ABOUT TRYING TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM? Unfortunately, there currently is no systematic way to respond to this problem, but I’m a practitioner first and foremost so I try to find ways to help individuals I meet. Inside Iraq, this often means I am introduced to women in shelters where their lives are protected by the government, but where they can remain stuck for years without any hope of leaving and reintegrating into society. This is a soul-crushing experience for these women; meanwhile, those who threaten them continue their lives uninterrupted. We need a systemic change that first identifies the problem, and then works with various UN agencies such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and states that receive refugees to resettle women and girls who would otherwise qualify for refugee protection, but who can’t because they cannot flee their home country. I have a paper coming out shortly that addresses this issue, “Trapped Between Borders: A Proposal to Apply International Legal Protection to Persecuted Women and Girls who are Unable to Flee.” I hope to advocate for a policy change on this issue once this paper comes out. There are many service providers struggling to find durable solutions for persecuted women and girls in Iraq and other countries, and we have seen exceptions made within refugee processes in other contexts. I am sure if people understood what these individuals are facing, many would agree that we should extend refugee protection to persecuted women and girls while they remain in their country of origin. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( [• • •] SHOW US THE RECEIPTS Moira Lavelle [spoke]( to refugees living in an overcrowded camp on the Greek island of Chios, a short distance from the Turkish coast, about Turkey’s recent decision to open its borders with Europe in an attempt to lessen its refugee population. The border had been closed as part of a deal in which the European Union (EU) paid Turkey some $6.8 billion in exchange for limiting refugees’ ability to enter Europe, but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has recently decided to abrogate that deal and is now actively bussing refugees to the border. Refugees on Chios are apprehensive about the policy change, as they may spell more people entering a camp that is already at six times capacity and which, by Greek and EU law, the refugees are not allowed to leave while their asylum applications are being processed. Emma Claire Foley [advocated]( for a shift in how we think about public health. Since 9/11, American public health funding has been driven largely by national security concerns about biological weapon attacks. That has made emergency response the primary focus of public health planning, leaving efforts to improve the systems through which most people seek care in public health crises on the back burner. By returning to thinking of public health as a question of human safety rather than national security, Foley argued, we could expand the toolbox available for confronting threats like COVID-19. One country that has leaned into public health as a matter of human safety is Mexico. Jorge Valencia[reported]( on three Mexican nurses who have become minor international celebrities for their music video explaining correct handwashing technique. The video was made in 2016 as part of a contest for Global Handwashing Day, but it has shot to prominence in the coronavirus moment, which has drawn attention to manual hygiene in a way that Global Handwashing Day could only dream of. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( [ ] WELL PLAYED One of the few upsides to the climate crisis turning every day into a new round of “why is this on fire?” is that sometimes the answer is [incredible](. Tell your friends to sign up for Critical State: the e-mail newsletter that won’t [send]( you the coronavirus! A handy [meme]( for remembering the “father of the atomic bomb” and his strange relationship to his most infamous child. Naming a burger [restaurant]( after a famous hunger striker is the galaxy brain version of anti-colonial solidarity. Royal Dutch Shell took advantage of International Women’s Day to plumb new depths of cynicism by [renaming]( one of its service stations “She’ll” even as its products [disproportionately]( harm vulnerable women around the world. One activist had a suggestion for a more concrete [form]( of corporate social responsibility. Even under quarantine, internet teens stay [winning](. If you say tweets about daylight savings aren’t relevant to a security newsletter, [this]( tweet is about you. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( Follow The World: [fb]( [tw]( [ig]( [www]( [DONATE TO THE WORLD]( Follow Inkstick: [fb]( [tw]( [ig]( [www]( [DONATE TO INKSTICK]( Critical State is written by Sam Ratner and is a collaboration between The World and Inkstick Media. The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX, BBC, and WGBH. With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.” Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. [Preferences]( | [Web Version]( [Unsubscribe](