Even if Syria’s armed conflict is somehow resolved, new proxy conflicts between regional actors are emerging on the country’s soil.
Until the jihadist rebel groups are wiped out, there will be more civilian casualties, like this man and young boy in Eastern Ghouta.
Reuters/Bassam Khabieh
Despite a devastating toll in the seven-year conflict, which has seen 400,000 people killed and six million displaced, there is no end in sight for the people of Syria.
The number of Guatemalan children adopted by foreign parents dropped from 4,100 in 2008 to 58 in 2010, after the country drastically curtailed the practice.
Reuters/Jorge Dan Lopez
In 2005, almost 46,000 children were adopted across borders. Ten years later, just 12,000 were. The foreign adoption system is imploding, potentially putting children’s lives in danger.
The vantage point from the Chinese icebreaker Xue Long in the Arctic in 2010.
(Timo Palo, Creative Commons)
With all eyes on China’s intentions in the Arctic, Singapore is flying under the radar. But the tiny Asian nation is also pursuing its own interests in the Arctic.
Russian curler Aleksandr Krushelnitckii faces being stripped of his bronze medal from Pyeongchang.
EPA/Javier Etxezarreta
Russia is a major global power in outlook and reach, locked in a values-based confrontation with the West. But it still lacks all elements of a developed superpower.
Is Donald Trump really the one setting the direction of US security policy?
Reuters/Jonathan Ernst
Mounting evidence suggests we are so mesmerised by the theatre around Donald Trump that we have lost sight of how the US security establishment wields power.
Alexander Tretyakov, one of the Russian athletes whose lifetime ban was overturned in January.
CJ Gunther/EPA
History shows Olympic Games have only very limited ability to promote peace between warring nations.
South Africa’s Jacob Zuma and Russia’s Vladimir Putin meeting in 2015. Should South Africa be relying on Russia for nuclear energy?
Reuters/Ivan Sekretarev
As tensions between the US and Russia escalate, both sides are developing technological capabilities, including artificial intelligence that could be used in conflict.
The cancer Kaposi sarcoma. South Africa has large productivity losses because of deaths caused by it.
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