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In the reams that have been written about the plight of the Rohingya, chronic and utter disenfranchisement is the most consistent thread. The origins of their bottom-tier status are colonial, but were codified in 1982 when the Burmese government passed a law that restricted their movement and access to education, and allowed for arbitrary confiscation of property.

With repatriation stalled, Bangladesh is now exploring relocation. The country has thus far been patient and welcoming, but its willingness to host such a large refugee population is wearing thin.

The atrocities continue to this day, deepening the humanitarian catastrophe in the province of Rakhine. (Myanmar has repeatedly denied carrying out any ethnic cleansing or genocide.)

Myanmar government signed a memorandum of understanding with two UN agencies as a first step toward the Rohingya’s repatriation, they were not consulted. So when 3,450 Rohingya families were offered voluntary return to Rakhine, not a single one took up the offer.

Wave after wave of extreme violence against them culminated in August 2017 with a crackdown that forcibly displaced nearly a million people. At least 9,000 members of their community died in just the first month of the onslaught

Staying here in the camps carries its own risks. Children have had no access to formal education, creating what UNICEF has called a “lost generation,” while human traffickers prey on young girls and boys.

the storm surge during the monsoon often triggers landslides, and the mud, water, and sewage from makeshift toilets in the camps combine to form a deadly cocktail of infectious and waterborne diseases.

Yet somehow, when faced with repatriation to Rakhine or relocation to Bhasan Char, the squalid camps appear the safest option.

For one thing, donor support is in doubt. Bangladesh, itself a poor nation, is struggling to cope with the economic and environmental impact of hosting so many refugees.

At the same time, the conditions in the camps are worsening. Bangladesh directed local telecom operators at the beginning of September to shut down networks in the camps

Last week, the government took the clampdown a step further, announcing that refugees were now expected to stop using Bangladeshi cellphone SIM cards or face potential fines and jail time. Rohingya families rely on internet connectivity to stay in touch with loved ones still in Rakhine

On September 7, a parliamentary committee on defense recommended that a barbed-wire fence be built around the camps, restricting the free movement that refugees are afforded under international law. The decision has essentially created an open-air prison.

This relative unwillingness to criticize either the Myanmar or Bangladesh government—seen by UN agencies as necessary to preserve relationships with the two countries so that they continue to allow them to carry out relief work—has rankled Rohingya leaders such as Ullah, who argue that the language of international politics and humanitarianism is instead being used to mask inaction.

official UN Security Council designation of genocide is critical to activating the 1948 Genocide Convention, allowing perpetrators to be punished and peacekeeping forces to be deployed.

China and Russia, veto-wielding members of the body, are likely to block any action against Myanmar

Two years ago, when foreigners rushed in with aid, the Rohingya expected their plight to improve. They thought they would get a seat at the negotiating tables where their fates are being sealed, so that the human rights enshrined in international law might be extended to them.Instead, Ullah and his fellow Rohingya here are reduced to holding out hope that their children will receive a better education, to at least offer the prospect that their community’s lot will improve in the future.

The Myanmar military has been accused of pursuing a brutal crackdown on the Rohingya -- a largely Muslim ethnic minority not officially recognized by Myanmar -- following an outbreak of violence in August between soldiers and armed militants in Rakhine State, a poor region in the country's west.

Francis has previously decried violence against the Rohingya, calling them his persecuted "brothers and sisters."

The Myanmar government has repeatedly denied allegations they are conducting a systematic campaign of violence against the Rohingya, blaming the widespread damage on a militant insurgency.

Myanmar's military still holds the balance of power in the country after its transition to partial democracy in 2015

Even using the word Rohingya is controversial: the Myanmar government and much of the population regard the ethnic minority as illegal Bengali immigrants, and refuse to call them "Rohingya," despite many being able to trace their roots in the country back centuries.

The government of Burma, including its armed forces, must take immediate action to ensure peace and security; implement commitments to ensure humanitarian access to communities in desperate need; facilitate the safe and voluntary return of those who have fled or been displaced in Rakhine state; and address the root causes of systematic discrimination against the Rohingya,” Nauert said.

The measures announced by the state department are the strongest US response so far to the months-long Rohingya crisis but fall short of the most drastic tools at Washington’s disposal, such as reimposing broader economic sanctions suspended under the Obama administration

The crisis has sparked widespread outcry and condemnation of Burma and its de facto leader, Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. She and her government have said little about the plight of the Rohingya, except to reframe the situation as a national security matter as the new militancy has coalesced.

But their peaceful coexistence ended when Rohingya insurgents launched their attack on police posts. The military crackdown has continued unabated since then, black smoke scudding across the skyline, visible in southern Bangladesh even this past week.

Zubair said he had followed to see what was to become of his vessel. He says he watched in horror as the military began stacking the boat with dead bodies, one after another like lumber, including those of two 13-year-old boys he had known well.

most Rohingya are unwilling to return to Myanmar due to safety concerns. Government officials didn’t have an estimate of how many refugees would be willing to be relocated to the island.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has repeatedly told the U.N. and other international partners that her administration will consult them before making a final decision on the relocation, and that no refugees will be forced to move. Bangladesh attempted to start sending refugees back to Myanmar under a bilateral framework last November, but no one was willing to go. The Rohingya are not recognized as citizens in Myanmar, rendering them stateless, and face other forms of state-sanctioned discrimination.

Suu Kyi’s situation is particularly sensitive as she attempts to persuade the country’s still-powerful military to change the constitution before national elections in 2015 and, among other things, remove a provision that bars her from becoming president.

t critics say that Suu Kyi, a member of the country’s Buddhist, Burman elite, is softening her long-standing support for human rights in an effort to appease the military and protect herself from ruling-party politicians would might play the ethnic card against her

Suu Kyi “is after the majority vote because she wants to be president,”

any Rohingya have lived in Burma — also known as Myanmar — for generations, but their national origins remain a subject of bitter contention. The government considers them illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh.

Hundreds died in riots last year, which left tens of thousands of Rohingya in squalid camps.

Suu Kyi rejected charges that the Rohingya situation amounts to “ethnic cleansing.” She said that both Buddhists and Muslims have fears about each other, noting that there is “a perception that global Muslim power is very great.” While the brunt of recent violence has fallen on Muslims, she equated the two groups’ suffering and said that many Burmese Buddhists who fled military rule also remain stranded as refugees in various countries.

I understand the Western countries are giving pressure about the Rohingya,” Nyan Win said. However, he said, “according to our history and our law, we can’t accept the Rohingya.”

Suu Kyi faces an enormously complicated political situation in a country emerging from decades of isolation. She would undoubtedly seek to heal the country’s political, ethnic and religious divisions as president, they say, if only she got the chance to serve.

Suu Kyi’s situation is particularly difficult given that when it comes to the presidency, she literally cannot win. The military overturned her party’svictory in 1990, put her under house arrest and then wrote a new constitution in 2008 that barred people with foreign spouses or children from becoming president.

A member of the Kachin Peace Network, she has been trying to get Suu Kyi to address the problem of rapes of displaced ethnic women in Kachin State. In a recent news conference, Suu Kyi tiptoed around the issue of sexual violence in conflict zones, saying that ethnic militias are also complicit.

Khon Ja said Suu Kyi had been the “voice of people who were suffering in Myanmar.” But she and other younger Kachin have soured on Suu Kyi, she said.

Mr. Zuckerberg met with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office on Sept. 19, 2019. We don’t know what was said. But from an interview on the sidelines at the World Economic Forum on Jan. 22, we do know what Mr. Trump said about the meeting: Mr. Zuckerberg “told me that I’m No. 1 in the world in Facebook.”

Mr. Trump apparently had no problem with Facebook’s decision not to fact-check political ads. “I’d rather have him just do whatever he is going to do,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Zuckerberg. “He’s done a hell of a job, when you think of it.”

Facebook’s decision not to require fact-checking for political candidates’ advertising in 2020 has flung open the door for false, manipulated, extreme and incendiary statements. Such content is rewarded with prime placement and promotion if it meets Facebook-designed algorithmic standards for popularity and engagement.

Facebook’s design tends to obscure the sources of inflammatory and false content, and fails to adequately punish those who spread false information. Nor does the company effectively warn those who are exposed to lies.

Facebook has been used to cause worse damage in other countries than the United States. In Myanmar, for example, military personnel used Facebook to help incite the public against the Rohingya, who were targeted in a military assault of incredible cruelty including murder, rape and the burning of entire villages: Around 700,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh.

within the last year, Facebook has introduced new features on its mobile app that actually intensify the fire of incendiary political attacks — making them easier and quicker to propagate. The system is cost-free to the poster and revenue-generating for Facebook.

Facebook is a publisher not just a neutral moderator or “platform.” It should be held accountable for the content that appears on its site

I repeat and reaffirm my accusation against Facebook under the leadership of Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg. They follow only one guiding principle: maximize profits irrespective of the consequences

The effective barring of Roth from entering Hong Kong is not an isolated incident, happening days after a U.S. photographer covering the pro-democracy protests was also banned from entering the financial hub.

“I think it’s worth stressing that what happened to me pales in comparison to what is happening to the pro-democracy protesters on the streets of Hong Kong. They’re the ones who are facing tear gas, beatings and arrest, and I just had another 16 hour flight [back to New York],” Roth says. “But what it does reflect is a real worsening of the human rights situation in Hong Kong.”

At a press briefing on Monday after the incident involving Roth, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said that “allowing or not allowing someone’s entry is China’s sovereign right,” adding that foreign NGOs were supporting “Hong Kong independence separatist activities.”

“The justification they put forward was laughable, and insulting to the people of Hong Kong,” says Roth. “They don’t need me to tell them to take to the streets — they are looking to defend their own human rights, their own political freedoms and their own rule of law.”

Roth says Beijing’s explanation for barring him shows how fearful the authorities are of demonstrations in the city, and is an attempt to persuade those in the mainland not to emulate the pro-democracy protests. “They simply cannot admit to people on the mainland that hundreds of thousands Chinese citizens would take to the street in opposition to the increasingly dictatorial rule that is coming from Beijing.”

The Chinese government has attempted to deter, track and deport journalists and foreign investigators from reporting on forced indoctrination and detention of at least a million Uighur Muslims in internment camps in China’s western province of Xinjiang, highlighted in Roth’s lead essay in the HRW report.

On Monday, Chinese state media reported that the semi-autonomous region of Tibet would introduce forthcoming regulations to “strengthen ethnic unity;” echoing language used in regulations introduced in Xinjiang four years ago.

Beyond the worrying crackdown within China’s own borders, HRW’s report highlights Beijing’s efforts to deter the international community from scrutinizing its human rights abuses, taking “full advantage of the corporate quest for profit to extend its censorship to critics abroad.”

And at the individual level, the export of censorship is reaching dissidents and even universities in Australia, Canada, the U.K. and the U.S.; the report notes that students from China who wanted to join campus debates felt unable to do so for fear of being monitored or reported to Chinese authorities.

The export of the Chinese censorship system also permeates governments and international institutions, and has “transformed into an active assault on the international human rights system,”

China has also consistently worked with Russia at the U.N. Security Council to block efforts to investigate human rights abuses in Syria, Myanmar and Venezuela. “China worries that even enforcement of human rights standards someplace else will have a boomerang effect that will come back to haunt it,” says Roth.

Aside from China, the report also looks at several other concerning situations around around the world, including civilians at risk from indiscriminate bombing in Idlib province in Syria, the desperate humanitarian crisis resulting from Saudi-led coalition’s actions in Yemen, the refugee crisis emerging from Maduro’s grip on power in Venezuela, and Myanmar’s denial of the genocide of the Rohingya at the International Court of Justice. And while Roth is encouraged by a growing international response to China’s actions in Xinjiang, particularly from Muslim majority nations, there remains much more to be done. From a U.S. perspective, the report notes that strong rhetoric from officials condemning human rights violations in China is “often undercut by Trump’s praise of Xi Jinping and other friendly autocrats,” as well as the Trump-administration’s own policies in violation of human rights, including forced separation at the U.S.-Mexican border.

For most of their history, the monks who invented kung fu (wushu) used their martial skills mainly in self-defense; however, at certain points, they actively sought out warfare, as in the mid-16th century when they answered the central government's call for aid in the fight against Japanese pirates.

Speaking of Japan, the Japanese also have a long tradition of "warrior-monks" or yamabushi.

In 1932, for example, an unordained Buddhist preacher called Nissho Inoue hatched a plot to assassinate major liberal or westernizing political and business figures in Japan so as to restore full political power to Emperor Hirohito.

Called the "League of Blood Incident," this scheme targeted 20 people and managed to assassinate two of them before the League's members were arrested.

various Zen Buddhist organizations in Japan carried out funding drives to buy war material and even weapons.

One example is in Sri Lanka, where radical Buddhist monks formed a group called the Buddhist Power Force, or B.B.S., which provoked violence against the Hindu Tamil population of northern Sri Lanka, against Muslim immigrants, and also against moderate Buddhists who spoke up about the violence

Another very disturbing example of Buddhist monks inciting and committing violence is the situation in Myanmar (Burma), where hard-line monks have been leading the persecution of a Muslim minority group called the Rohingya.

Perhaps, if Prince Siddhartha was alive today, he would remind them that they should not nurture such an attachment to the idea of the nation.

Many camp clinics are already struggling to fight outbreaks like dengue and cholera, leaving them without the resources to treat chronic conditions, such as diabetes or heart disease. The coronavirus, which has no vaccine or agreed upon treatment regimen for Covid-19, the respiratory disease it causes, could be even more devastating, medical experts warn.

So far, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases among refugees is low, but that may be the result of a lack of testing. Testing is severely limited, and refugees are rarely a priority.

Refugee camps across Africa, the Middle East and Asia are packed with traumatized and undernourished people with limited access to health care and basic sanitation, perfect breeding grounds for contagion. Extended families jam into tarpaulin shelters with mud floors. Food, water and soap are often lacking. Illnesses, from hacking coughs to deadly diseases, go untreated, facilitating their spread.

Daily life in a refugee camp is an ideal incubator for infectious disease. Many lack running water and indoor sanitation. People often stand in line for hours to get water, which is insufficient for frequent showers, much less vigilant hand washing.

Nor are there adequate health systems. The same conflicts that have displaced huge numbers of people have decimated medical facilities, or forced people to live in places where there are none.The war in Syria has sent more than a million refugees into Lebanon, which is facing an economic crisis. Many live in cramped, squalid conditions and suffer from acute poverty.

Many refugees also suffer from poor nutrition and other health conditions that could leave them particularly vulnerable. In Bangladesh, where about 860,000 Rohingya Muslims fled to escape persecution in Myanmar, the authorities fear that the coming rainy season will cause sewage to overflow into flimsy shelters and possibly spread the coronavirus.

A lack of information in the camps has elevated the sense of panic among people already primed for anxiety. In Bangladesh, the government has limited mobile internet access for many Rohingya, creating an information vacuum that has allowed rumors to flourish:

Aid agencies that have contended with donor fatigue at a time when the number of displaced people is at a record high are worried that health and economic crises in the West will mean less money for refugees. Some fear that people in wealthier nations will worry less about people in poor ones when they feel threatened at home.

Women face their own horrors. While sexual violence by the Tatmadaw often goes unreported, rape was systematic and widespread during the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, Human Rights Watch found. The same fate befalls women of other ethnic groups in conflict areas.

Authorities in Myanmar have asked India to return any defectors, to "uphold friendly relations".

Htut, who is 22, says he and other police were paired with members of the military as they patrolled the streets. Protesters who were peacefully banging utensils in support of the pro-democracy movement were threatened with arrest.

n 2017, Myanmar's army responded to attacks on police by Rohingya militants with a deadly crackdown, driving more than half a million Rohingya Muslims across the border into Bangladesh in what the UN later called a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing"

“China’s propensity for coopting, pressuring, and even bullying Southeast Asia’s rulers is creating potentially double-edged swords for Beijing,” Donald Emmerson, director of the Southeast Asia Forum at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, told me.

A reconstruction of Sri Lanka’s descent into violence, based on interviews with officials, victims and ordinary users caught up in online anger, found that Facebook’s newsfeed played a central role in nearly every step from rumor to killing.

Facebook officials, they say, ignored repeated warnings of the potential for violence, resisting pressure to hire moderators or establish emergency points of contact.

Sri Lankans say they see little evidence of change. And in other countries, as Facebook expands, analysts and activists worry they, too, may see violence.

As Facebook pushes into developing countries, it tends to be initially received as a force for good.In Sri Lanka, it keeps families in touch even as many work abroad. It provides for unprecedented open expression and access to information. Government officials say it was essential for the democratic transition that swept them into office in 2015.

where institutions are weak or undeveloped, Facebook’s newsfeed can inadvertently amplify dangerous tendencies. Designed to maximize user time on site, it promotes whatever wins the most attention. Posts that tap into negative, primal emotions like anger or fear, studies have found, produce the highest engagement, and so proliferate.

n developing countries, Facebook is often perceived as synonymous with the internet and reputable sources are scarce, allowing emotionally charged rumors to run rampant. Shared among trusted friends and family members, they can become conventional wisdom.

“There needs to be some kind of engagement with countries like Sri Lanka by big companies who look at us only as markets,” he said. “We’re a society, we’re not just a market.”

Last year, in rural Indonesia, rumors spread on Facebook and WhatsApp, a Facebook-owned messaging tool, that gangs were kidnapping local children and selling their organs. Some messages included photos of dismembered bodies or fake police fliers. Almost immediately, locals in nine villages lynched outsiders they suspected of coming for their children.

Near-identical social media rumors have also led to attacks in India and Mexico. Lynchings are increasingly filmed and posted back to Facebook, where they go viral as grisly tutorials.

One post declared, “Kill all Muslims, don’t even save an infant.” A prominent extremist urged his followers to descend on the city of Kandy to “reap without leaving an iota behind.”

where people do not feel they can rely on the police or courts to keep them safe, research shows, panic over a perceived threat can lead some to take matters into their own hands — to lynch.

“You report to Facebook, they do nothing,” one of the researchers, Amalini De Sayrah, said. “There’s incitements to violence against entire communities and Facebook says it doesn’t violate community standards.”

In government offices across town, officials “felt a sense of helplessness,” Sudarshana Gunawardana, the head of public information, recounted. Before Facebook, he said, officials facing communal violence “could ask media heads to be sensible, they could have their own media strategy.”

now it was as if his country’s information policies were set at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. The officials rushed out statements debunking the sterilization rumors but could not match Facebook’s influence

Desperate, the researchers flagged the video and subsequent posts using Facebook’s on-site reporting tool.Though they and government officials had repeatedly asked Facebook to establish direct lines, the company had insisted this tool would be sufficient, they said. But nearly every report got the same response: the content did not violate Facebook’s standards.

Facebook’s most consequential impact may be in amplifying the universal tendency toward tribalism. Posts dividing the world into “us” and “them” rise naturally, tapping into users’ desire to belong.

Its gamelike interface rewards engagement, delivering a dopamine boost when users accrue likes and responses, training users to indulge behaviors that win affirmation

And because its algorithm unintentionally privileges negativity, the greatest rush comes by attacking outsiders: The other sports team. The other political party. The ethnic minority.

Mass media has long been used to mobilize mass violence. Facebook, by democratizing communication tools, gives anyone with a smartphone the ability to broadcast hate.

Facebook did not create Sri Lanka’s history of ethnic distrust any more than it created anti-Rohingya sentiment in Myanmar.

In India, Facebook-based misinformation has been linked repeatedly to religious violence, including riots in 2012 that left several dead, foretelling what has since become a wider trend.

“We don’t completely blame Facebook,” said Harindra Dissanayake, a presidential adviser in Sri Lanka. “The germs are ours, but Facebook is the wind, you know?”

Mr. Kumarasinghe died on March 3, online emotions surged into calls for action: attend the funeral to show support. Sinhalese arrived by the busload, fanning out to nearby towns. Online, they migrated from Facebook to private WhatsApp groups, where they could plan in secret.

In the decades after Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, about 1.4 million Cubans fled the island, many heading for the United States, where they transformed the social and ethnic fabric of Miami. During the 1980s and 1990s, more than 1 million people — more than a quarter of the population — were displaced during El Salvador’s civil war.

y, the growing Venezuelan diaspora is reshaping cities from Miami to Buenos Aires to Madrid. But most Venezuelan migrants are staying in Latin America, where countries are handling a dire situation in different ways.

Chávez’s handpicked successor, President Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela has reached a breaking point, with lower oil prices and economic mismanagement leading to the world’s highest inflation rate and spiraling indexes of poverty and malnutrition.

Our migration levels are now comparable to Syria or to [the Rohingya going to] Bangladesh,”

leftist firebrand Hugo Chávez became president in 1999, thousands of Venezuelans — especially from the upper classes — moved out of the country

Facing severe food and medical shortages at home, most have stocked up on supplies, or visited hospitals, before returning across the border.

Venezuelans have enjoyed access to special permits good for two years in Colombia’s border region, allowing them to stay up to seven days at a time.

bringing a dramatic surge across the border that reached a peak of 90,000 people a day in December. In early February, President Juan Manuel Santos suspended the issuing of new temporary visas and declared a massive militarization of the border.

The moves cut the daily flow almost in half — though critics say it has only motivated migrants to cross at dozens of illegal entry points along the border, putting them at risk of harm from guerrillas and criminal bands

Locals, meanwhile, are accusing the Venezuelans already here of harming the economy and driving up crime.

They come with fruit they buy for nothing in Venezuela and sell for prices here that I can’t compete with. They come here, killing and robbing Colombians. We need take our city back.”

The family had recently arrived from Venezuela. The little girl was malnourished and also had developed a life-threatening heart blockage. The hospital was petitioning national authorities for funds before proceeding with the costly operation.

Instead, he said, it was carrying out special operations designed to limit the number of Venezuelans without valid visas.

“Like any country, we need to have a safe and secure border,” Martinez said. But many Venezuelans weren’t able to get passports in their homeland because of the cost and long wait.

The operations are sending as many as 100 migrants a day back to Venezuela.

You have to go,” said a female officer. More than a dozen Colombian officers surrounded the thin Venezuelan. “I can’t,” Andie said, her voice breaking. “Please. I’m pregnant, and we won’t survive there.”

"I think often of persecuted peoples: the Rohingya, the poor Uighurs, the Yazidi".

citing terrorism and security risks.

China initially denied the existence of the camps, before saying the internment sites provide job training and education.

central government policies have gradually curtailed the Uighurs' religious, commercial and cultural activities, as large numbers of majority Han Chinese have been encouraged to move to the region.

According to the documents, Facebook is aware that its products are being used to facilitate hate speech in the Middle East, violent cartels in Mexico, ethnic cleansing in Ethiopia, extremist anti-Muslim rhetoric in India, and sex trafficking in Dubai. It is also aware that its efforts to combat these things are insufficient. A March 2021 report notes, “We frequently observe highly coordinated, intentional activity … by problematic actors” that is “particularly prevalent—and problematic—in At-Risk Countries and Contexts”; the report later acknowledges, “Current mitigation strategies are not enough.”

As recently as late 2020, an internal Facebook report found that only 6 percent of Arabic-language hate content on Instagram was detected by Facebook’s systems. Another report that circulated last winter found that, of material posted in Afghanistan that was classified as hate speech within a 30-day range, only 0.23 percent was taken down automatically by Facebook’s tools. In both instances, employees blamed company leadership for insufficient investment.

last year, according to the documents, only 13 percent of Facebook’s misinformation-moderation staff hours were devoted to the non-U.S. countries in which it operates, whose populations comprise more than 90 percent of Facebook’s users.

Among the consequences of that pattern, according to the memo: The Hindu-nationalist politician T. Raja Singh, who posted to hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook calling for India’s Rohingya Muslims to be shot—in direct violation of Facebook’s hate-speech guidelines—was allowed to remain on the platform despite repeated requests to ban him, including from the very Facebook employees tasked with monitoring hate speech.

The granular, procedural, sometimes banal back-and-forth exchanges recorded in the documents reveal, in unprecedented detail, how the most powerful company on Earth makes its decisions. And they suggest that, all over the world, Facebook’s choices are consistently driven by public perception, business risk, the threat of regulation, and the specter of “PR fires,” a phrase that appears over and over in the documents.

“It’s an open secret … that Facebook’s short-term decisions are largely motivated by PR and the potential for negative attention,” an employee named Sophie Zhang wrote in a September 2020 internal memo about Facebook’s failure to act on global misinformation threats.

In a memo dated December 2020 and posted to Workplace, Facebook’s very Facebooklike internal message board, an employee argued that “Facebook’s decision-making on content policy is routinely influenced by political considerations.”

To hear this employee tell it, the problem was structural: Employees who are primarily tasked with negotiating with governments over regulation and national security, and with the press over stories, were empowered to weigh in on conversations about building and enforcing Facebook’s rules regarding questionable content around the world. “Time and again,” the memo quotes a Facebook researcher saying, “I’ve seen promising interventions … be prematurely stifled or severely constrained by key decisionmakers—often based on fears of public and policy stakeholder responses.”

And although Facebook users post in at least 160 languages, the company has built robust AI detection in only a fraction of those languages, the ones spoken in large, high-profile markets such as the U.S. and Europe—a choice, the documents show, that means problematic content is seldom detected.

A 2020 Wall Street Journal article reported that Facebook’s top public-policy executive in India had raised concerns about backlash if the company were to do so, saying that cracking down on leaders from the ruling party might make running the business more difficult.

Employees weren’t placated. In dozens and dozens of comments, they questioned the decisions Facebook had made regarding which parts of the company to involve in content moderation, and raised doubts about its ability to moderate hate speech in India. They called the situation “sad” and Facebook’s response “inadequate,” and wondered about the “propriety of considering regulatory risk” when it comes to violent speech.

“I have a very basic question,” wrote one worker. “Despite having such strong processes around hate speech, how come there are so many instances that we have failed? It does speak on the efficacy of the process.”

Two other employees said that they had personally reported certain Indian accounts for posting hate speech. Even so, one of the employees wrote, “they still continue to thrive on our platform spewing hateful content.”

Taken together, Frances Haugen’s leaked documents show Facebook for what it is: a platform racked by misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy thinking, extremism, hate speech, bullying, abuse, human trafficking, revenge porn, and incitements to violence

It is a company that has pursued worldwide growth since its inception—and then, when called upon by regulators, the press, and the public to quell the problems its sheer size has created, it has claimed that its scale makes completely addressing those problems impossible.

Instead, Facebook’s 60,000-person global workforce is engaged in a borderless, endless, ever-bigger game of whack-a-mole, one with no winners and a lot of sore arms.

Zhang details what she found in her nearly three years at Facebook: coordinated disinformation campaigns in dozens of countries, including India, Brazil, Mexico, Afghanistan, South Korea, Bolivia, Spain, and Ukraine. In some cases, such as in Honduras and Azerbaijan, Zhang was able to tie accounts involved in these campaigns directly to ruling political parties. In the memo, posted to Workplace the day Zhang was fired from Facebook for what the company alleged was poor performance, she says that she made decisions about these accounts with minimal oversight or support, despite repeated entreaties to senior leadership. On multiple occasions, she said, she was told to prioritize other work.

A Facebook spokesperson said that the company tries “to keep people safe even if it impacts our bottom line,” adding that the company has spent $13 billion on safety since 2016. “​​Our track record shows that we crack down on abuse abroad with the same intensity that we apply in the U.S.”

Zhang's memo, though, paints a different picture. “We focus upon harm and priority regions like the United States and Western Europe,” she wrote. But eventually, “it became impossible to read the news and monitor world events without feeling the weight of my own responsibility.”

Indeed, Facebook explicitly prioritizes certain countries for intervention by sorting them into tiers, the documents show. Zhang “chose not to prioritize” Bolivia, despite credible evidence of inauthentic activity in the run-up to the country’s 2019 election. That election was marred by claims of fraud, which fueled widespread protests; more than 30 people were killed and more than 800 were injured.

“I have blood on my hands,” Zhang wrote in the memo. By the time she left Facebook, she was having trouble sleeping at night. “I consider myself to have been put in an impossible spot—caught between my loyalties to the company and my loyalties to the world as a whole.”

What happened in the Philippines—and in Honduras, and Azerbaijan, and India, and Bolivia—wasn’t just that a very large company lacked a handle on the content posted to its platform. It was that, in many cases, a very large company knew what was happening and failed to meaningfully intervene.

solving problems for users should not be surprising. The company is under the constant threat of regulation and bad press. Facebook is doing what companies do, triaging and acting in its own self-interest.

World Health Organization data published in September showed there were twice as many cholera cases in 2022 than in 2021. Outbreaks were recorded in countries where cholera had been under control for years, including Yemen and Lebanon.

2. Mosquitoes on the march

Rising temperatures and frequent floods also unlock new places where disease-carrying insects thrive. The mosquitoes that carry the viruses that cause dengue fever and mala

Nor is the disease confined to developing countries. There are fears that it is spreading in southern Europe, partly owing to the warm weather. More than 8 billion people could be at risk of malaria and dengue fever by 2080, scientists have warned.

3. Human-animal contact

Many existing diseases will get more dangerous, but new illnesses could also emerge as people are increasingly forced into areas where there is wildlife. Diseases can jump from animals to humans. These diseases, such as Ebola, avian flu and Sars, are called “zoonoses” and they make up the majority of new illnesses.

Scientists have found that the climate crisis is helping to circulate diseases between species that previously did not encounter each other. As the planet heats up, many animal species are forced to move into new areas to find suitable conditions.

It has been estimated that zoonoses are responsible for as many as 2.5bn cases of human illness and 2.7m human deaths worldwide each year, and that animals have played a major part in nearly every major disease outbreak since 1970.

4. Severe weather events

Although governments are getting better at preparing for severe weather events, nine out of 10 deaths linked to weather disasters since 1970 happened in small island nations and developing countries in Africa, Asia and South America.

5. The air that we breathe

Outside air pollution has been linked to numerous cancers and diseases and is estimated to be responsible for more than 4m premature deaths globally each year.

Changing weather patterns are expected to make this already bad situation worse as more dust, rain and wildfire smoke are added to the mix. Children are especially likely to get sick from air pollution because their brains, lungs and other organs are still developing.

6. The psychological cost

Environmental deterioration has a knock-on effect on the economic and social systems that keep society productive and happy, setting in motion a downward spiral of psychological hardship.

If crops are destroyed during extreme weather events, children may get less nutritious food, the consumption of which is linked to psychological conditions such as anxiety and depression.

When people can’t get the help they need, they may self-medicate with alcohol or drugs, which in turn makes them more likely to engage in risky behaviour (such as unprotected sex) that could result in infections such as HIV, or illnesses that can result from spending time in crowded places, such as tuberculosis.

In 2021, scientists studying evidence of a potential link between heat exposure and mental health found a 2.2% increase in mental health-related mortality per 1C rise in temperature.

7. Salty water and perilous pregnancies

Drinking water is becoming saltier. One reason for this is that sea levels are rising, so there is more sea water flowing into rivers and other sources of fresh water during floods and tropical storms.

Taking in too much salt can lead to high blood pressure (hypertension). Over time, this condition damages the body’s veins, arteries and major organs (including the brain, heart, kidneys and eyes) since they’re working so much harder overall.

Hypertension is doubly dangerous for pregnant women and their babies

8. Food insecurity

More frequent and severe droughts and floods make it harder to grow the grains, fruit and vegetables that people need to eat to stay healthy. Small island states in the Caribbean, Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Ocean bear the brunt of the effects of the crisis, in part because most people live close to sea level.

As a result, people who live in one of the 39 small island nations are the most likely to die from one of the four main NCDs: cancer, diabetes, heart disease and lung disease.

9. The stress of extreme heat

The scorching temperatures this year broke records in Europe, China and North America. Heat is one of the most dangerous effects of the climate crisis and the top cause of weather-related deaths in the U

When it gets too hot, the body’s temperature rises faster than it can cool itself down, less blood flows to other organs, and the kidneys have to work harder. This puts strain on the heart and can lead to organ failure. Heatstroke is the most serious heat-related illness.

In particular, people whose jobs require long hours of physical labour in the sun face an increased risk of kidney disease as temperatures rise, research suggests. Repeated instances of heat stress can lead to permanent damage and chronic kidney disease.

In June, the Guardian revealed how young migrant workers were returning to Nepal with chronic kidney disease after working in extreme heat conditions in the Gulf and Malaysia. “One factor highlighted again and again is heat. Prolonged exposure to h

10. Millions on the move

It’s hard to predict exactly how many people will be on the move because of the climate crisis, but extreme weather events are likely to make conditions worse for the more than 100 million displaced people around the world.

If nothing changes, the number of people who need humanitarian aid to recover from floods, storms and droughts could double by 2050,

That means more than 200 million people will need aid annually. The displacement of millions of people also means cramped and often unsanitary living. For example, more than 900,000 Rohingya refugees live in makeshift shelters in Bangladesh, often built on unstable ground that’s prone to landslides.