Borders

Two human rights advocacy groups have listed hundreds of incidents of human rights violations by immigration officials that include physical violence, verbal abuse and sexual harassment — including some cases that have been fatal.

This coming school year, high school students in Russia will receive new history textbooks. They offer a rewritten rendition of Russian history that reflects the Kremlin’s narrative about the war in Ukraine. The textbooks are part of a wider effort by the state to tighten control over the flow of information.

Since Russia pulled out of the Black Sea Grain Initiative in July, its troops have been attacking Ukraine’s ports, destroying 220,000 metric tons of grain in the past week alone. But US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that the grain deal could be brought back to life.  

​​​​​​​ In order to prevent Russian troops from advancing toward Kyiv, Ukrainian forces destroyed a dam on the Irpin River early on in the war. The flooding, as it turned out, created new wetland areas. Some conservationists hope to see the wetlands stay. Even residents whose cellars remain flooded are glad the water came and the Russian troops did not. 

Ukraine is now considered the most heavily mined country in the world. Nearly 1,000 civilians have been killed or injured by landmines and unexploded ordnances since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022. And about a third of the country needs to be cleared of these explosives. Much of that land is farmland.

Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh are seeing shortages in basic necessities and are calling on the US and EU to step in.

The Ukrainian government is doing an unusually thorough job of documenting environmental damages being caused by Russian attacks. Their primary goal, according to the Ministry of the Environment, is to eventually win compensation for these damages.

Liberia has been on and off the State Department's human trafficking watch list for years. In this desperately poor country, people accept jobs from agents to work as domestic servants in other countries. Usually, they are trapped, earning little money and subject to abuse. But several hundred Liberian women used social media to escape their traffickers in 2022.

New York City has opened 188 shelters, including several humanitarian relief centers. But with 56,200 migrants currently living there, the shelter population is at an all-time high.