Social Studies

Suriname, with its pristine environment, has become a pawn in a new Great Game as the balance of power in the Americas shifts from the United States toward China.

Europeans drew Africa’s borders long ago. Today these lines are often deserted and sometimes dangerous. Mali is the legacy: A crumbling state, rump of ancient empire between desert and forest.

Anonymous and spoken, landai , two-line Pashtun poems, have served for centuries as a means of self-expression for women. Today they are an important vehicle of public dissent.

An immersive, transmedia book project for the iPad on the birth of the world's newest country from photographer Trevor Snapp and reporter Alan Boswell.

With the same ruthless skill it uses to keep its population in check, North Korea also keeps journalists in the dark. But much can be learned from the outside looking in.

From Tijuana to Tierra del Fuego, climate change is gripping Latin America. Simeon Tegel reports on the human consequences of drought, hurricanes, and melting glaciers.

Scotland is set for a vote on independence. It is expected to take place in 2014, meaning that the United Kingdom could be dissolved in 2015. Tim Judah looks at defense and foreign policy implications.

Nairobi’s Dandora Municipal Dump Site has been officially "full" for years and is implicated in a host of diseases--yet provides employment to scavengers. Views from the dump and from those nearby.

Across the world more attention needs to be focused on children's needs so that girls as well as boys will attend school and learn to read, and that all will have safe water and access to healthcare.

UN peacekeepers have been stationed throughout Haiti to help stabilize the country and protect Haitians. But repeated allegations of human rights abuses have sent their popularity to an all-time low.

From the slums of Nairobi to the sugar plantations of the Dominican Republic to the far reaches of Bangladesh, entire communities live without citizenship rights. They are “the stateless”.

Popular demonstrations against the rule of Vladimir Putin are sweeping across Russia. Will the demands of the middle class protesters force Putin to liberalize—or keep him from returning to power?