Tag Archive for: Brazil

Australia’s new security threat: cocaine trafficking by Brazilian crime groups

Australia faces an emerging national security threat from Brazilian crime groups. Once only a domestic concern in Brazil, organised crime there has evolved into a powerful narco-insurgency with transnational reach, making the country the world’s second-largest player in the cocaine trade, after Colombia.

Until now, growth in Brazilian organised crime posed no threat to Australia. However, as detailed in ASPI’s newly released report, The Pacific Cocaine Corridor: A Brazilian cartel’s pipeline to Australia, Brazil’s growing role in global cocaine supply and its expansion into new markets (including new Pacific routes), the rising sophistication of its criminal networks, and growing demand in Australia’s lucrative cocaine market are increasing the presence of Brazilian crime groups on our shores.

Brazil’s two major drug syndicates are the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and the Comando Vermelho. The PCC has become a particularly serious transnational criminal threat, exploiting weaknesses in political, legal and economic systems.

Brazil’s long coastline, abundant port facilities, unguarded inland waterways and well-developed air networks provide many channels for global cocaine distribution. Its vast 8000km border with Andean cocaine-producing countries and its 1365km of crossings with Paraguay further facilitate drug trafficking. The Triple Frontier between Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina—much like Asia’s Golden Triangle of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos—serves as a key illicit logistics hub.

Historically, cocaine sent to Australia embarked from Europe, China, South Africa, the United States or Canada, though the drugs originated in South America. Now, the PCC maintains a cocaine distribution network with connections in Oceania, using routes along the Pacific coast of South America. This means that cocaine can be routed to Australia more directly. This may reflect greater prioritisation of the Australian market, and the potential for increased exports to Australia.

Brazil’s new trade route with Vanuatu, primarily for importing chicken meat, presents an increasing drug trafficking risk, as such commodities need refrigerated containers, which are harder to inspect thoroughly. The trade originates mainly from Parana, a state bordering Paraguay and a key entry point for cocaine trafficked into Brazil from Bolivia and Peru.

Vanuatu’s proximity to Australia makes it a potential transit point for illicit drug shipments. New or less scrutinised trade routes, such as the one involving Vanuatu, may have weaker customs controls, increasing the risk of undetected drug trafficking. From there, smaller vessels or yachts can transport cocaine via another Pacific island or directly to Australia, taking advantage of the region’s vast and difficult-to-monitor maritime space.

Australians pay some of the highest prices in the world for cocaine: one kilogram is valued at around $3000 in Colombia, can sell for $10,000 in Brazil and for between $160,000 and $200,000 in Australia. While transporting cocaine to Australia adds cost, the enormous profit margin is understandably driving expanded PCC operations.

Concealing drugs on the submerged parts of ships has become more common. Skilled divers place and receive packages at ports, often at night and without the crew’s knowledge.

In 2020, the Australian Federal Police intercepted a PCC shipment to Sydney comprising half a tonne of cocaine concealed in banana pulp bags.  In 2022, a Brazilian diver was found floating and unresponsive in the Port of Newcastle near packages containing 54kg of cocaine with an estimated street value of around $20 million. This case demonstrated the PCC’s ability to move people across continents and provide logistical support to buyers in Australia.

Like most organised crime groups, the PCC thrives on exploiting gaps in law-enforcement coordination, in financial oversight and in border security. Given its extensive transnational operations, a unified and coordinated effort against it is essential.

To counter the targeting of the Australian market, our report recommends that Australian and regional authorities adopt a comprehensive, strategic approach and work closely with Brazilian and international partners. Strengthening police cooperation and enhancing financial surveillance will help detect and disrupt PCC activities. Timely sharing of criminal intelligence, including travel patterns and aliases, can prevent further PCC infiltration of Australia, while stricter scrutiny of visa applications, detection of forged documents, and the establishment of watchlists will limit movement of PCC operatives. Additionally, collaboration on offender management—such as prison security, post-release monitoring, and reintegration programs—will prevent the PCC from expanding its networks within correctional systems.

By addressing key enablers of the group’s resilience and closing gaps in international information exchange, this approach not only mitigates the immediate threat but also strengthens long-term defences against transnational organised crime.

BRICS is hardly a new fulcrum of world politics

One question that 2025 may begin to answer is whether the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) is becoming the new center of power in world politics. Now that it has added new members (Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates) and come to represent 45 percent of the world population, some believe that it is consolidating the (misleadingly named) Global South and posing a serious challenge to US and Western power. But I remain skeptical of such claims.

When Jim O’Neill, then the chief economist at Goldman Sachs, coined the ‘BRIC’ acronym in 2001, his aim was simply to identify the four emerging economies that were most likely to dominate global economic growth by 2050. But the label soon acquired a political relevance. BRIC became an informal diplomatic grouping at the 2006 United Nations General Assembly and then a formal organisation in 2009, with the first BRIC Summit. Hosted in Russia, the focus then, as it is now, was on advancing a multipolar world order. At the end of the following year, the group got its ‘S’ when South Africa joined.

A Wall Street asset class evolved into an international organisation partly because it aligned with Russia’s and China’s own aspirations to lead the developing world. The BRICS 16th summit in Russia in October 2024 was the first to include its new members. (Saudi Arabia has not yet decided whether to accept the group’s invitation to join, and Argentina’s new government declined.) Some 36 national leaders attended, as did representatives from many international organisations, including UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, and Turkey used the occasion to present its own application for membership.

The 2024 summit focused on fostering ties across the Global South and building a multipolar world, with Russian President Vladimir Putin using the occasion to demonstrate his global diplomatic relevance despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

With more countries showing an interest in joining, it looks like the BRICS could indeed present itself as a leader of the resistance to the US-dominated international order. Some even see it as the successor to the Cold War-era Non-Aligned Movement, whose members refused to choose between the United States and the Soviet Union. But while NAM had a shared interest in resisting the US, it did not have Russia and China as founding members.

In any case, the BRICS is unlikely to succeed in formally organising the so-called Global South. Not only do its largest and most important members—China, India and Russia—all lie north of the equator, but the three are competing for leadership.

Russia and China do have a common interest in countering what they see as an American threat, and they have declared an ‘alliance without limits’. But such slogans mask major differences in their strategic perspectives. While Russia took vast swaths of territory from China in the 19th century, when the Qing dynasty was weak, China’s economy is now 10 times the size of Russia’s. Both countries are vying for influence in Central Asia, and China is uneasy about Russia’s recruitment of its neighbor North Korea to fight in Ukraine.

An even more important limit on the BRICS as an organisation is the rivalry between China and India, which is now the world’s most populous country. Although China is much wealthier than India, it is experiencing demographic decline (like Russia), while India’s population and workforce continue to grow.

Moreover, China and India share a disputed boundary in the Himalayas, where their forces have clashed repeatedly, and the situation is further complicated by China’s traditional friendship with Pakistan. In fact, an abiding concern about China is one reason why India participates in the BRICS in the first place. While it avoids formal alliances, it has also stepped up its participation in the Quad (whose other members are the US, Japan and Australia) for the same reason.

Rather than making the BRICS stronger, the admission of new members merely imports more rivalries. Egypt and Ethiopia are locked in a dispute over a dam that Ethiopia is building on the Nile River, and Iran has long-standing disputes with the UAE and prospective member Saudi Arabia. Far from making the BRICS more effective, these new intra-organisational rivalries will hamper its efforts. The Group of 77 developing countries has even more members, and it is chronically limited by internal divisions.

At their 2024 summit, BRICS+ discussed matters such as economic and security cooperation, promotion of cultural exchanges, and joint development projects focused on infrastructure and sustainability. But such talk usually does not yield significant results. In 2014, the group established the New Development Bank, which is headquartered in Shanghai; but the institution has had only modest results to date.

Likewise, the group’s stated intention of avoiding the dollar and clearing more of its members’ bilateral trade in their own currencies has made only limited headway. Any serious attempt to replace the dollar as a global reserve currency would require China to back the yuan with deep, flexible capital markets and the rule of law—and those conditions are nowhere close to being met.

So, what is the BRICS good for? As a means of escaping diplomatic isolation, it is certainly useful to Russia. As a diplomatic device for projecting leadership of the developing world, it also has been useful to China. As a channel through which to counterbalance China, it has its uses for India. And as a modest stage for touting national development, it has sometimes been useful to Brazil and South Africa. But do these functions make it a new fulcrum of world politics? I think not.

The BRICS effect

A new age of international relations is dawning. With the West accounting for a declining share of global GDP, and the world becoming increasingly multipolar, countries are jostling to establish their positions in the emerging order. This includes both the emerging economies, which are represented by the recently expanded BRICS grouping and seek a leading role in writing the rules of the new order, and the smaller countries attempting to cultivate relationships that can safeguard their interests.

With the BRICS, what began as an asset class has become a symbol of the yearning for a more broadly representative global order, a hedge against Western-led institutions and a means of navigating growing geopolitical uncertainty. All this has proved highly attractive. Earlier this year, the BRICS expanded from five countries (Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa) to nine (adding Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates). And almost three dozen more countries—including NATO member Turkey, close US partners Thailand and Mexico, and Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country—have applied to join.

While the diversity of the grouping’s members (and applicants) highlights the broad appeal of the BRICS+, it also creates challenges. These are countries with very different political systems, economies and national goals. Some are even at odds with each other: China and India have been locked in a military standoff in the Himalayas for more than four years, following China’s stealth encroachments on Indian territory.

Translating shared interests into a common plan of action and becoming a unified force on the global stage was difficult even when the BRICS had just five members. With nine member countries, and possibly more, establishing a common identity and agenda will require sustained effort. But other multilateral groupings that are not formal, charter-based institutions with permanent secretariats, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the G20 and even the G7, also struggle with internal divisions.

Moreover, the BRICS have demonstrated considerable resilience. Western analysts have been predicting from the start that the grouping would unravel or drift into irrelevance. Yet this month’s BRICS+ summit in Kazan, Russia, the first since the expansion, may well bring movement towards further enlargement, as it underscores the West’s failure to isolate Russia following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

This is not to underestimate the challenge of cohesion. The grouping’s founding members do not even agree about its fundamental objectives: whereas China and Russia want to spearhead a direct challenge to the US-led world order, Brazil and India seek reforms of existing international institutions and appear uneasy about any anti-Western orientation.

In this disagreement, however, the enlargement might tip the scales. Six of the group’s nine members, including all four new additions, are formally part of the nonaligned movement, and two (Brazil and China) are observers. This suggests that there will be considerable internal pressure for the BRICS+ to chart a middle ground, focusing on democratising the global order, rather than challenging the West.

That said, when it comes to fostering mutual trust with developing countries, the West has not been doing itself any favours lately. On the contrary, its weaponisation of finance and seizure of the interest earned on frozen Russian central-bank assets have caused deepening disquiet in the non-Western world. As a result, a growing number of countries seem interested in exploring alternative arrangements, including new cross-border payment mechanisms, with some also reassessing their reliance on the US dollar in international transactions and reserve holdings.

All of this could aid the larger designs of Russia and China, two natural competitors that have become close strategic partners partly in response to US policy. China, in particular, stands to gain—for example, from increased international use of the yuan. Russia now generates much of its international export earnings in yuan and stores them mostly in Chinese banks, thereby effectively giving China a share of the returns. China’s ultimate goal, which Western financial warfare is inadvertently aiding, is to establish an alternative yuan-based financial system.

The BRICS are already engaged in institution-building, having established the New Development Bank (conceived by India and headquartered in Shanghai) in 2015. The institution is not only the world’s first multilateral development bank created and led by emerging economies; it is also the only one whose founding members remain equal shareholders with equal voice, even as more countries join. By contrast, the US is the dominant shareholder and holds veto power in the World Bank.

The expanded BRICS+ boast formidable global clout. The grouping dwarfs the G7, both demographically (with nearly 46 percent of the world’s population, compared with the G7’s 8.8 percent) and economically (accounting for 35 percent of global GDP, compared to the G7’s 30 percent). Its economies are also likely to be the most important source of future global growth. Furthermore, with Iran and the UAE having joined their oil-producing counterparts Brazil and Russia as members, the BRICS+ now account for about 40 percent of crude-oil production and exports.

Yes, the group faces significant challenges, not least uniting to become a meaningful global force with defined (and realistic) political and economic objectives. But they also have the potential to serve as a catalyst for a long-overdue revamping of global governance so that it better reflects twenty-first-century realities.

Brazilian soybeans and China’s food security

China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) has announced a three-year plan to reduce the amount of soybean meal in animal feed to help decrease reliance on imports. The proportion of soybean meal in the feed will be cut from 14.5% in 2022 to under 13% by 2025. Estimates suggest that by 2030, the ratio could drop to 12%, lowering China’s soybean imports to 84 million tonnes.

Although China has issued similar guidelines to its animal feed industry in previous years, this announcement comes in an increasingly complex and fractured geopolitical environment, continued competition with the United States, and rising concerns about food security.

It also coincides with the visit of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the new president of agricultural powerhouse Brazil, to Beijing.

The US and Brazil provide over 80% of China’s soybean imports. In 2022, China imported 54.39 million tonnes from Brazil and 29.5 million tonnes from the US, according to its General Administration of Customs.

While China’s central authorities insist that food security plans and decisions are considered from a technical perspective they are, in practice, also political. The removal of a ban on Brazilian beef imports reflected Beijing’s calculation that Sino-Brazilian relations would likely improve under the new government.

China has an enormous appetite for soybeans as the world’s fourth-biggest grower and largest importer, accounting for more than 60% of global trade. MARA says over 88% of its domestic consumption relies on imports.

Most of that consumption is in animal feed, particularly pig feed. Soybean oil, most of it imported, is China’s primary edible oil, accounting for about 40% of oil consumption.

Despite China’s enormous population, the country has limited resources with only 7% of the world’s arable land and scarce water resources, making food security a constant preoccupation. Competing needs for land use, including for other crops such as wheat and corn, make it difficult for China to escape its soybean import dependence.

Memories of the political turmoil associated with the famines and food shortages of the 1950s and 1960s remain in the minds of older generations, including President Xi Jinping and other high-ranking officials. The challenge of feeding China’s enormous population has grown, with contamination levels rising due to industrialisation. Urbanisation, rising incomes, and the expansion of the hungry middle class drive increasing demand for meat and soybean products.

To safeguard its food supplies Beijing has since 2013, sought self-sufficiency in staples such as rice and wheat and in key protein sources, particularly pork. China also relies on the international market for non-staples, particularly soybeans.

Beijing has frequently emphasised the importance of increasing domestic production to safeguard food security through policy measures and targets. Xi has even publicly linked food supplies to national security.

Beijing could increase soybean imports from fellow member of the BRICS economic group, Brazil. Currently, the Sino-Brazil trade flow amounts to US$150 billion annually, while Brazilian exports to China reached $89 billion in 2022, with soybeans, iron ore, and crude oil ranked first, second, and third.

Given the recent bilateral agreements between the two countries, which include food security, and President Lula da Silva’s quest for stronger ties with Beijing, China may increase Brazilian soybean imports and reduce those from America.

According to one estimate, China can reduce soymeal consumption annually by at least 3 million tonnes, the equivalent of 4 million tonnes of soybeans. By 2025, soybean imports could decrease to 82 million tonnes with feed makers using greater quantities of substitutes like rapeseed and synthetic protein.

Additionally, soymeal reduction fits in with Beijing’s push for self-sufficiency. With China’s reliance on foreign soybeans viewed by Beijing as a weak link during the Trump-era trade war, this remains a major concern amid systemic US-China competition. As part of China’s broader efforts to become an agricultural power and achieve self-sufficiency through increased domestic production, it aims to have produced approximately 23 million tonnes of Soybeans, up about 40% from current levels, by the end of 2025.

However, the soybean dilemma has transformed from a production to a food security issue for China. It remains an enormous challenge for Beijing to simultaneously achieve self-sufficiency in foods such as rice, wheat, and corn, and in soybeans.

Further complicating matters, major concerns such as water scarcity and climate shocks including droughts and severe flooding have significantly affected China’s agricultural production, exacerbating fears of shortages. As such events could hinder plans to reduce reliance on imports, Beijing will likely continue diversifying the sources of soybean imports, including more from Brazil, to ensure a stable supply..

Xi has often declared that the rice bowls of China’s 1.4 billion people will always be firmly held in their own hands. Yet, Beijing still faces significant challenges in achieving this. Stronger Sino-Brazil ties, including new food security agreements, could result in stronger bilateral trade and investment for both countries.

Given their shared interests in food security and agricultural exports, the two countries could also establish a food security mechanism in the BRICS to improve food security among its members and for emerging countries.

Nonetheless, Brazil should reconsider its dependence on China as an export market for agricultural products and seek to diversify its exports. Beijing’s reliance on Brazilian soybeans makes Brasilia a key player for now when it comes to safeguarding China’s food security and stability. However, as China continues to search for alternative markets for agricultural imports, including soy, Brazilian exporters could find themselves replaced by cheaper alternatives.

Learning to live with Covid-19

One of Covid-19’s paradoxes has been the way in which some wealthy, high-capacity countries (particularly the United States and the United Kingdom) failed to contain the virus, while some poorer countries and regions with less capacity (including Vietnam, Greece and the Indian state of Kerala) swiftly brought it under control. Now that countries must plan beyond their lockdowns, an equally stark contrast has emerged.

In the US and the UK, ambiguous containment regimes without clear exit plans have resulted in a policy stalemate between maintaining unsustainable lockdowns and recklessly opening up the economy. By contrast, policymakers in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul have used careful planning to learn to live with the virus.

The state began preparing on 2 March, when Governor Eduardo Leite tasked his secretary of planning, budget and management with assembling a data committee to develop and implement a plan for keeping the state’s economy going while combating the spread of the virus. In many other parts of Brazil, the virus remains unchecked, and the country now has the world’s second highest number of Covid-19 cases and the sixth highest death toll. Yet, its fifth most populous state (11.3 million people in 2016) has responded in a way that many rich countries would do well to emulate.

Five components of Rio Grande do Sul’s response stand out.

First, Leite focused from the outset on avoiding the worst possible outcome, rather than simply hoping it would not materialise. Before the pandemic reached Brazil, state officials used data from both Japan and Singapore (where the virus’s impact was limited) and Italy and Spain (where it was horrific) to generate mathematical projections, and set out to avoid outcomes resembling the latter. The governor then announced restrictions in mid-March before the state had reported its first Covid-19 death, thus buying time to strengthen the health system’s capacity while slowing the virus’s spread.

Second, state officials took a data-driven approach to tracking the virus, investing not only in collecting more data, but also in improving systems and hiring outstanding talent to assess the information. The data committee divided the state into 20 regions, each of which has a main hospital with an intensive care unit, and has monitored 11 indicators in each region every week.

About half of the indicators measure the virus’s spread. They include the number of new hospitalised Covid-19 cases (compared to the previous week), the number of active cases relative to recoveries in the last 50 days, and new hospitalisations and deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. The committee also tracks the number of patients in regular and ICU beds with either Covid-19 or acute respiratory distress syndrome, a related lung disease (because Covid-19 cases are typically under-recorded).

The other indicators measure the capacity of each region’s health system. They include the number of available ICU beds relative to both the total population and the number of inhabitants aged over 60, as well as the change in ICU occupancy compared to the previous week.

In addition to intensive data monitoring, the committee convenes health experts and academics on a pro bono basis and makes their reports public. More than 150 experts from government and academia are currently examining Covid-19’s impact on economic activity, social vulnerability, infrastructure, and mobility in the state. Furthermore, the government created a partnership with a university early on to kick off random testing and surveying of people’s habits across the state, which is providing a better sense of the real prevalence of the virus.

The third component of the state’s response is a simple, specific and transparent alert system. Each week, the committee distils the 11 indices into a single figure for each region, which places the region in one of four risk categories. Yellow represents low risk, orange is medium, red is high and black signifies very high risk, with a full lockdown expected in extreme cases. Because the public can examine the data on which the risk classifications are based, the system helps to build understanding and trust.

Fourth, officials carefully examined how to keep the economy functioning, because the already-indebted state could not afford to support out-of-work people for long. The committee has clearly segmented jobs and economic activities in terms of worker safety (given social-distancing requirements) and their economic importance, giving these factors weights of 70% and 30%, respectively. For example, agriculture is relatively safe, because workers are outdoors and at a safe distance from one another, and the industry is also vital for Rio Grande do Sul’s economy. All of the information is publicly available.

Finally, the state government drew up return-to-work protocols for each industry based on consultations with occupational health experts, industry associations, businesses and workers. By publishing early drafts of protocols and inviting comments, the committee helped to ensure an open and transparent process.

Beyond mandatory measures such as cleaning, distancing, wearing face masks and shielding at-risk groups, sector protocols vary depending on the alert level. For example, industry can function at 100% capacity in a yellow region, at 75% under an orange alert, 50% in red regions and 25% in black regions, with exceptions for essential sectors such as food, energy, chemicals and health. Retail, which poses a higher contagion risk, may operate at only 50% capacity under a yellow alert, and must close down under a black alert.

While buses and churches have varying seat restrictions depending on the alert level, no mass events are currently permitted. The state is now debating which educational institutions should reopen first, and when and how to reopen the rest.

Rio Grande do Sul’s work-safety policies have now been in place for three weeks. As of the last week of May, less than 20% of the state’s Covid-19 ICU beds are in use. The state has 56 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 720 per 100,000 in Amazonas state, 390 in Ceará state, and 220 in Rio de Janeiro. And its Covid-19 mortality rate is 1.6 per 100,000 inhabitants, far below the rates in Amazonas (42.4) and Rio de Janeiro (23.1).

Rio Grande do Sul’s leaders have devised a strategy for living with the virus, based on key indicators, expert consultations and enforceable processes. And it has done so in full public view. There are lessons here for governments in richer countries that have yet to develop such a plan.

National security wrap

The Beat

The net closes on Panama Papers suspects

Tax evading high net wealth Australians will be sweating on ATO investigations into Australians allegedly identified in the Panama Papers. The ATO advises that criminal charges may be laid for tax evasion, money-laundering and fraud. This week the AFP, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission and 100 tax officers raided 18 Panama-related targets, seizing documents, electronic media and even 170kgs of silver—worth approximately $150,000—from one Queensland property. The ATO, AFP and AUSTRAC are leading a Serious Financial Crime Taskforce that has identified 1000 Australian entities linked to $2.5b of suspicious cross-border transfers.

Howzat! Brazilian senate dismisses Rousseff

Brazil’s ongoing corruption scandals have claimed the biggest scalp: that of the country’s President. On Tuesday former President Dima Rousseff finally exited Palácio da Alvorada, the official presidential residence, and headed home to Porto Alegre. Rousseff has been investigated for claims that she took unauthorised loans and manipulated fiscal accounts to hide the extent of the budget deficit during her 2014 election campaign. A nine-month impeachment process resulted in her suspension in May and culminated in a 31 August Senate vote (61-20) convicting her of violating budgetary laws. Former vice president and interim President, Michael Temer, has been sworn in and will serve the remaining presidential term through to 2018.

CT Scan

Diminishing Daesh

Daesh continued its stream of propaganda on Tuesday with a new magazine titled Rumiyah (Rome). The publication features a story on previously convicted Australian terrorist Ezzit Raad, who, according to the release, died from shrapnel wounds suffered while fighting in Manbij. Raad is amongst several Australians who’ve been linked to the group. On Monday the Supreme Court handed down a 10-year jail sentence to 19 year-old Sevdet Ramadan Besim over an Anzac Day plot, as well as hearing an ongoing case concerning a Melbourne teen who’d made contact with recruiters in Syria attempted to build an explosive device. Sydney man Hamdi al-Qudsi was also jailed last Thursday for facilitating the travel of seven Australians to fight in Syria. (Read more about al-Qudsi on The Strategist.)

The magazine reiterates the call for attacks on Australian soil—‘kill them on the streets of Brunswick, Broadmeadows, Bankstown, and Bondi. Kill them at the MCG, the SCG, the Opera House, and even in their backyards’. Despite the rhetorical onslaught, the group continues to lose ground in Iraq and Syria. Turkey’s Operation Euphrates Shield continues to push further into Syria, the group’s foothold in Libya is shrinking, and the battle for Mosul looms large.

Debating CVE

Check out the US-based Institute for Social Policy and Understanding’s debate (1 hr) over the controversies (PDF) of CVE programs.

Checkpoint

The taming of the beast

Mexico’s government plans to crackdown on the La Bestia, or ‘the beast’, a cross-border freight train network that has transported millions of migrants into Texas. The north bound route is infamously dangerous—earning several nicknames including the ‘death train’—with migrants risking amputation, death and predation by organised criminals and gangs. On Tuesday 23 August the Secretariat of Communications and Transport unveiled a plan to ‘tame’ the beast by nationalising management of rail lines in southern Mexico. Specific measures will impose new monitoring posts, CCTV cameras and aerial drone surveillance over key checkpoints such as tunnels, train yards, switching stations and urban centres clustered along train lines—areas which migrants will attempt to hop aboard.

UK-Ireland border to remain

British and Irish officials have sought to ease concerns over the future of the Common Travel Area after Britain exits the EU. In speaking to a House of Lords select committee on the European Union on Tuesday, Irish ambassador to the UK Daniel Mulhall expressed confidence that EU authorities are cognisant of the UK-Ireland land border’s ‘unique circumstances’. UK Brexit minister David Davis echoed these sentiments, informing the House of Commons that no hard border will be will be erected in Ireland.

First Responder

Spill the beans

On Saturday, the US and China ratified the Paris Climate Change Agreement in the lead up to the G20 Summit, though 55 nations must still sign for the agreement to go into effect. There’s been some controversy in Australia over the Climate Change Authority’s special review (PDF) on climate action. Two members of the authority, Professors Karoly and Hamilton, released a ‘minority report’ (PDF) blasting the review’s recommendations as ‘not soundly based on climate science’.

Climate scientist Ed Hawkins has produced a visual that maps out global temperature changes from 1850–2016, which clearly shows a planet heating up over the years. And, if you’re anything like us, the threat to your daily cup-a-joe posed by climate change should be enough to raise some alarm bells.

Fire, oil, and food

Ongoing fighting in Nigeria and the Middle East has devastated local communities. While Boko Haram have been pushed back by government forces, the fighting has left North-eastern Nigeria in desperate need of food aid. The UN’s World Food Programme estimates that 4.5 million people are in need of assistance. In Iraq, oil wells captured by Iraqi forces in Qayyara had been set ablaze before ISIS fighters fled, covering residential areas with smoke and oil. There’s also some serious concern over the humanitarian implications of the fight for Mosul and the monstrous task of reconstruction.

Governing the Net: pivotal actors go to NETmundial

A word cloud formed from the key words used in content contributions for NETmundial 2014

The United States, China and Russia have so far been the key players in the Internet governance debate. As we showed last week, while the multi-stakeholder and statist schools of thought have shaped the discussion, neither has gained a decisive upper-hand. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the future of Internet governance won’t be decided by the stalwarts of those opposing sides, but by the actors who occupy the middle ground. With an international consensus unlikely, it’ll be the building of like-minded coalitions that shifts the balance towards either end of the Internet governance spectrum. This week, we look to NETmundial in Brazil as the next big Internet governance forum where the positions taken by pivotal actors may determine how the debate progresses, and how our day-to-day Internet experiences might change.

NETmundial’s origins are inextricably bound to Edward Snowden’s disclosure of America’s NSA surveillance activities. At the UN General Assembly in September 2013, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff spoke strongly against the US and called for the UN to become involved in Internet governance. Two weeks later, ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé was in Brazil recognising that ‘trust in the global Internet has been punctured’, and that it was now ‘time to restore this trust through leadership and through institutions that can make that happen’. Rousseff accepted Chehadé’s invitation to host a global summit on multi-stakeholder Internet governance, and NETmundial was born. Brazil’s joy was short-lived; the US announcement that it was shifting the last of its internet management responsibilities to ICANN muted the significance of NETmundial and empowered ICANN as the premier forum for the debate. Nonetheless, NETmundial will be an important proving ground for ideas that’ll be taken to future ICANN meetings, so it’s useful to explore the positions of Brazil, India and the EU—all pivotal actors who can shape the debate. Read more