When Michelle Bachelet, former United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights, pointed to what she called “the reality of multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination” in December 2020, she also highlighted the importance of factoring them into any analysis and policymaking in the human rights space.  

Zhang Jian, a rural Chinese citizen living in the greater Kunming municipal region, readied himself for resettlement. After the state zoned his village for conservation, the next step for him and his rural comrades appeared to be resettlement into an urban high-rise apartment. Ecological migration is the official term used by the Chinese government for state-led processes of resettlement in the name of environmental protection. Journalists and researchers have predominantly focused on such resettlement programs in China’s west, particularly those related to grazing and anti-desertification campaigns. Less attention has been given to the ecological migrations occurring in China’s municipal regions, which are precipitating the movement of millions of rural landholders into, mainly, high-rise apartments.

In 2021, 1.9 million stillbirths occurred globally. A baby who dies at or after 28 weeks of pregnancy,* and is born with no sign of life is classified as a stillbirth. Stillbirths can be caused by pregnancy and childbirth-related complications, like hemorrhage, placental abruption, and pre-eclampsia; maternal infections during pregnancy, including malaria and sexually transmitted infections; prolonged pregnancy to 42 weeks or more; and pre-existing health conditions. Other risk factors include maternal age and smoking during pregnancy.

News about global climate impacts that elevate mortality, wreak weather havoc, and create massive displacement is inescapable. And those are just the stories that make the headlines. Droughts in Africa are estimated to impact 250 million people and displace 700 million more by 2030. Climate impacts brought on by El Niño are devastating the food supply chain, exacerbating Guatemala’s struggle to reduce childhood malnutrition.

Gunfire erupted at the border of the Afghan Nimroz Province and Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan Province on May 27, 2023, amid rising tensions over water rights, killing troops on both sides.

Iranian and Afghan government officials have blamed each other for triggering the incident. But whatever the cause, the tensions over water flows between these nations have been simmering for at least a century. Indeed, in 1999, under the first iteration of the Taliban, flows were restricted completely causing damage to the delicate Hamoun Region—a registered UNESCO biosphere site of social and ecological importance.

Two centuries ago, extinctions were rare. Islands were hotspots, losing flightless bird species like the dodo and other animals that were hunted out of existence by European traders and colonists or killed off by introduced rats and cats.

Dazzling skyscrapers, kung-fu movies, and live seafood restaurants are what people think of when they contemplate small and densely populated Hong Kong. So, it is a shame that we rarely talk about Hong Kong’s “wilder” side—such as the approximately 40 percent of our land area that is designated as country parks, or the more than 200 offshore islands that include sites of the Hong Kong UNESCO Global Geopark.