Villoresi irrigation canal in Italy Credit: Nico Saporiti The intake of the Villoresi irrigation canal is a monumental structure of classical beauty: it tames the blue waters of the River Ticino,…

Nico Saporiti |

The events of the Arab Spring took the world by surprise: there were no obvious signs of an approaching storm in the Levant and the Maghreb. Objective measures—used on a regular basis—showed that…

Elena Ianchovichina, Martijn Burger, Efstratia Arampatzi |

The agreement reached by 196 countries at Paris to collectively work to limit the growth of global average temperatures to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is a landmark…

Charles Cormier |

The Climate Change conference in Paris only confirmed what we already knew—that increasingly, there’s an overlap between conventional security threats of a military nature, which are focused on…

Mohamed Abdallah Youness |

Defense budgets are not publicly available, oversight is weak, and information about hidden spending is non-existent, says Transparency International-UK (TI-UK) of defense spending by the 17…

Christine Petré |

PISA measures the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students in reading, mathematics and science. Photo: Simone D. McCourtie / World Bank  Investing in people starts by ensuring that graduates…

Christian Bodewig, Lucas Gortazar |

I wasn’t in Socotra or the southern Yemeni city of Aden when the two cyclones hit them in mid-November, but I have a big family and many friends who live there. As I listened intently to the news…

Ahmad Lajam |

Syrian refugee students listen to their school teacher during math classes.  Photo © Dominic Chavez/World Bank ​In Europe, the year 2015 will be remembered as the year of the “refugee crisis.”…

Christian Bodewig |

Over 25, 000 people have descended on the Bourget in the suburbs of Paris to attend the much anticipated 21st Conference of Parties on climate change, or “COP21”. The first meeting today is due to…

Maria Sarraf, Martin Heger |

Who in the household has decision making power over various things (kids going to school, health seeking behavior of individual members) either alone or jointly with someone else in the household…

Markus Goldstein |