Our guest on this episode is USIP Research Fellow, Zinaida Besirevic, a Ph.D. candidate in human development and cognition at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation compares children and adults in their reasoning about violations of Human Rights and infringements on human dignity. Together we discuss if moral reasoning changes with development, and whether and why we become more likely to tolerate harm.
Increasing scrutiny and exposure of global internet scams based in Southeast Asia has sparked fast-moving developments to quash the schemes and countermoves by the organized gangs behind them. Recent months have seen crackdowns, arrests and internet cutoffs by law enforcement agencies and regional governments. Meanwhile, Cambodia and Myanmar continue to be the most egregious havens for criminal operations, while Laos seems to be demonstrating early signs of concern for the impact of organized crime on its sovereignty.
The Taliban’s new vice and virtue law, which places sweeping restrictions on women’s dress, mobility and public presence, is facing pushback from Afghan religious scholars, civil society, the wider Muslim community and even the Taliban themselves.
Transnational crime groups in Southeast Asia, hit with intense scrutiny and law enforcement action earlier this year, are moving into new areas and adapting their operations as they revive and expand global scam operations. In Myanmar — a key center of this internet-based criminal activity — extreme political instability combined with the connivance of the country’s military and its militias continue to provide fertile ground for crime groups, albeit in new configurations. At the same time, a sudden shift in China’s posture toward Myanmar’s military regime has eased pressure on the scam industry, allowing criminal networks to further scale up their malign activities.
Sexual violence is a heinous crime that can affect anyone in conflict zones around the world. However, those with disabilities are often at greater risk of sexual violence than their counterparts without disabilities. Despite this, programs and policies for addressing conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) rarely focus on how people with disabilities are uniquely affected, yet alone the best ways to prevent such violence, support survivors and seek justice.