“As we face a global pandemic that has taken the lives of more than 800,000 people as of right now around the world, we certainly have to recognize the particular impacts that that has had on women and girls and their lives,” said Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), at a recent event hosted by CARE and UNFPA about the global impact of COVID-19 on women and girls. While women make up 70-80 percent of frontline healthcare workers globally, they have also been disproportionately affected during the pandemic by increased rates of gender-based violence, lack of access to sexual and reproductive healthcare, and economic and food insecurity.

Over the past decade, we have seen a resurgence of civil conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, and southeast Asia, as weak states are increasingly threatened by non-state actors, such as organized crime groups, terrorist organizations, and insurgents. These wars endanger millions of people—including some of the world’s most at-risk populations—by exposing them not only to violence, but also displacement, environmental degradation, and economic destruction. To effectively protect them, leaders and policymakers need to be able to predict exactly where, when, and how insurgent violence will break out and spread.

Featured side by side at the top of The New York Times home page recently were two stories: one on the United States and China, the world’s largest producers of carbon emissions, committing to a global climate agreement, another on how rising seas are already affecting coastal communities in the United States.

Overfishing by foreign fleets in West Africa is leading to devastating social and economic consequences. In a report from the Overseas Development Institute, an independent think tank based in London, researchers use satellite data to assess the scale of two kinds of illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing: “reefers,” or large-scale commercial vessels receiving and freezing fish at sea and at port, and large refrigerated container ships that are registered in countries with less stringent enforcement regulations than that of the ship’s owners.

The deadly West African Ebola epidemic has largely faded from headlines, replaced by mounting concern over conflict in the Middle East, terrorism, and refugees streaming into Europe. But while Guinea and Sierra Leone were declared free of the disease in November, Monrovia saw three new cases two weeks later. At least 149 individuals who came into contact with the infected have been identified thus far, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

A new article from the Wilson Center’s own Roger-Mark De Souza explores how population trends can bolster community resilience in the face of climate change and other security threats. De Souza argues that demographic trends such as age structure help determine how well a population is able to respond to and bounce back from shocks, especially environmental ones like drought and famine.

In August, armed men stormed an Ebola clinic in Monrovia, Liberia, releasing infected patients and stealing contaminated bedding. The following month, eight health workers were attacked and killed in a Guinean village as they tried to educate residents about the deadly disease; their bodies were found in a village latrine. Days later, Red Cross workers in western Guinea were assaulted as they tried to collect and bury Ebola victims.