In 1986, global nuclear weapons stockpiles peaked at nearly 70,000 warheads. By the beginning of 2013, there were just over 17,000, with only 4,400 kept operational. This dramatic reduction was the fruit of a negotiation process that began in the late 1940s. In spite of incredible tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, negotiators were able to make progress once they focused on building trust with small, pragmatic steps, rather than starting with the complete elimination of all weapons. [Video Below]

A new law in Peru encouraging investment in the country’s extractive industries has reignited debate on the lack of power indigenous women have in the mostly rural societies where they often live. The International Indigenous Women’s Forum, which drew more than 60 native women from across the world to Peru last month, highlighted this important issue.

The fight for control over “the most dangerous dam in the world” is raging.

Since its capture by Islamic State (IS) militants on August 7 and subsequent attempts by Iraqi government and Kurdish forces to take it back, Iraq’s Mosul Dam has been one of the central components of the government’s surprising and rapid collapse in the country’s northern and western provinces. In fact, one might see the capture of the Mosul Dam as the moment IS ascended from a dangerous insurgent group to an existential threat to Iraq as a state.

Under international law, someone who flees their country because of conflict or persecution is a refugee, but someone who flees because of inability to meet their basic household needs is not. In the case of Somalia, it is increasingly difficult to make any meaningful distinction between the two.

Since the early 1990s, the rising price of crude oil and other key natural resources – and the resulting drive by governments and private companies to extract those resources – has led to sharp conflicts in Latin America. At the core of these disputes is the clash between national economic interest and the rights of indigenous people inhabiting the land where most natural resources are located.

Sunni militants captured the Mosul dam, the largest in Iraq, on Thursday as their advances in the country’s north created an onslaught of refugees and set off fearful rumors in Erbil, the Kurdish regional capital.

“You can’t build a peaceful world on an empty stomach,” Secretary of State John Kerry said yesterday at a high-level working session on resilience and food security, quoting Norman Borlaug, the father of last century’s “Green Revolution.”