The Story of Sialkot: The Soccer Ball Capital
In 1996, Life Magazine published an article about Tariq, a 12-year-old boy from Sialkot, Pakistan, who stitched soccer balls for Nike at 60 cents per ball. International media coverage, public outrage, and consumer pressure have forced major multinational corporations...
Taking Stock of the UN’s Femicide Watch Initiative
Image Attribution: Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos from Washington, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons Pictured above is Dubravka Šimonović, the former Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its...
Panda Diplomacy
Bao Bao during her public debut at the National Zoo in 2013. Her birth appeared on the zoo’s live panda cam and generated a surge in viewership that crashed the site. Is there something more to these beloved bears than munching on bamboo and bumbling around? April 16,...
The Future of International Criminal Law in Domestic Courts: Syrian War Crime Trials in Germany
In January 2022 the first war crimes trial for atrocities committed in Syria concluded with a guilty verdict for Anwar Raslan. Raslan was a Syrian intelligence officer charged with committing the crimes of rape, murder, and sexual assault while working at a prison...
The Strange Death of the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline
On March 1st, just five days after Russia’s surprise invasion of Ukraine, Switzerland-based energy company Nord Stream 2 AG filed for bankruptcy. The company’s future had already been imperiled the previous week by the German government’s decision to withdraw...
U.S. Policies in Aiding Ukrainian Refugees: What has been done so far?
Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine on Feb. 24. As many individuals found themselves caught within a dangerous warzone, Ukrainians were “forced to seek refuge in other countries” according to Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas. According...
An Anachronistic Drama: The 2022 Italian Presidential Elections
Per the Constitution, the Italian President must be an Italian citizen over the age of fifty elected by members of Parliament for a seven year term. The office is primarily ceremonial, but the President of Italy is important domestically. The President represents...
How the War in Ukraine has Affected Anti-Corruption Election Efforts in the United States
Russian tampering in United States elections has been making headlines for years. The issue came to the forefront of national media in 2016 with efforts to damage the Clinton campaign, targeted social media ads, and even accessing voter information. This led to a...
The Future of NATO Reexamined: Conflict, Deterrence, and Grand Strategy
What is NATO? The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is a defensive military alliance formed in 1949 by 12 countries in North America and Western Europe. NATO was founded to counter the threat of Soviet expansion in Europe. Its goal is to promote peace and...
Detention Intentions: Prisoners of War and Civilian Detainees in Ukraine and Russia
Since the mid-twentieth century, each generation has been defined by war. War has dominated our society in the worldwide instability that has followed both World Wars and mass global colonization. Since 1947, the number of conflicts in the world have continued to...