World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

In the last two weeks, there have been 50 food riots in Venezuela.  The riots are a consequence of the almost complete collapse of the Venezuelan economy due to the continuing misrule by President Maduro and the inability of the Venezuelan Congress to pass laws that are enforced by the courts which are controlled by Maduro’s appointments.  According to surveys conducted by local universities in Venezuela, almost 87% of Venezuelan families say they do not have enough money to buy food, and food prices command more than 70% of the average family’s monthly wage. The country will likely collapse into total violence very soon.

The UN reported that a record number of people–65 million–have been displaced by war or persecution in 2015.  That number is 5 million more than last year.   SOme of the information includes:

• Measured against the world’s population of 7.4 billion people, one in every 113 people globally is now either a refugee, an asylum-seeker or internally displaced – putting them at a level of risk for which UNHCR knows no precedent.
• On average, 24 people were forced to flee each minute in 2015, four times more than a decade earlier, when six people fled every 60 seconds.
• Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia produce half the world’s refugees, at 4.9 million, 2.7 million and 1.1 million, respectively.
• Colombia had the largest numbers of internally displaced people (IDPs), at 6.9 million, followed by Syria’s 6.6 million and Iraq’s 4.4 million.

Turkey and Lebanon are the host countries for the largest number of refugees and both are straining to address the needs of those people.

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has struggled to introduce education reforms into the Mexican educational system and his efforts have been strongly resisted by the teachers’ unions.  In the state of Oaxaca that resisted erupted in violence with 6 protesters killed in clashes with the police.  There is little question that the Mexican educational system needs reform, but the government has been notably ham-fisted in dealing with the reforms.  These protests have been going on for years and little progress has been made.