Foreign Policy November - December 2016

Japanese Notebook Turns the Page for Infant Health Every day, refugees fleeing strife-torn countries have to make painful decisions about what to bring with them on harrowing journeys. Aboessa, a 20-year-old Syrian refugee and mother—in a story recounted by the International Rescue Committee—knew that besides medications, clothes, and baby food she absolutely had to have one thing for her and her 10-month-old infant inside her small bag: a colorful notebook. Aboessa is one of the millions of mothers around the world who have received a copy of “Boshi Kenko Techo” or Maternal and Child Health Handbook. This deceptively simple notebook started as the Maternal Handbook, which was first designed and distributed in Japan by the government in 1942, consisting only of records for pregnancy to birth on topics like maternal care, health…

MAURICIO ALEJO “Most of the time, there’s a bit of a struggle to translate an idea into a final photograph. I use all kinds of materials to build the props for my shoots, and I often don’t know what colors or textures to use until I set out to make it. For this one, however, I knew right away I wanted the material for the Earth to look natural, something stonelike. Instead of simply using a pre-constructed globe, I decided to make it from scratch out of cement. It made sense with the open crack, where flowers were supposed to spring. It just neatly conveyed the concept: the clear contrast of a dry and sterile surface from which lively flowers nonetheless grow.” Dave Eggers is the author of A Hologram for the…

An ugly strain of populism reared its head in America this year. After months of spewing sexist, racist, homophobic, and xenophobic rhetoric, Donald Trump stunned pollsters—and the citizens whose ballots earned Hillary Clinton the popular vote— by winning the White House. Accusations of corruption, fraud, and sexual assault could not halt the reality TV star’s candidacy, seemingly yanked from a Black Mirror plot, nor could his promises to tear up international treaties and alienate allies. Nativist politics won out, and Americans joined other populations, including Brexit supporters and Colombians who rejected the long-awaited peace deal, in voting against their self-interest. Through democratic means, fear surpassed reason repeatedly in 2016, leaving many wondering who will handle the unprecedented crises that the world faces—the war in Syria, mass migration, climate change—and how. Yet…

Rene can’t find decent work in Havana. In recent years, Cuba’s youth unemployment rate has hovered around twice the national average. Today, according to government estimates, the official average monthly salary is about 700 pesos ($25). Even after the thaw in U.S.-Cuban relations, economic forecasts are grim. “You go [out] every day, and you think it will be different,” says 31-year-old Rene, “but it’s always the same shit.” So he waits until sunset, when he and his friends—seen here meeting one evening on an outcrop of an abandoned Spanish fort—gather with other members of Havana’s tightly knit electronic music scene. At dance parties, Rene is a DJ. On a good night, spinning can earn him up to $50. American photographer Michael Christopher Brown documented Havana’s electronic underground in the spring of 2015.…

UNEARTHING BOMBS is old hat for Sok Chenda. For nearly 20 years, he’s been removing unexploded ordnance from his country’s fields and forests as an employee of the Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC). But a May 2015 mission in search of an MK-82 warhead had the veteran, in his own words, “worried about everything.” It was the team’s first underwater operation, and the Mekong River didn’t make the job easy. “We couldn’t see anything. It was difficult to identify and to figure out when to pull it up,” Chenda, now 39, recalls. Cambodia is littered with active weapons: During the Vietnam War, America dropped some 500,000 tons of explosives there. The Khmer Rouge’s reign and a subsequent civil war left the country among the most heavily mined in the world. Since…

“This fall, for the first time, the United States placed seven types of bees under the protection of the Endangered Species Act. It was the latest development in a decade-long saga of bee colonies dying off and governments scrambling to save them. Pesticides, invasive species, loss of habitat, and climate change threaten hives—and, consequently, parts of our food supply: Every year, billions of dollars in U.S. crops depend on bee pollination. Here, I depict a scene of slaughter. The fluorescent colors denote urgency; the bees’ outsize figures point to the vital role they, and their deaths, play in nature. My hope is to deliver a warning that although these creatures are tiny, what’s happening to them is a drama of massive proportions.” -THE ARTIST…