Why It Matters

West Africa is losing many of its best and brightest. Across the region, doctors, lawyers, and engineers are leaving, depriving some of the world’s youngest countrie...

In the past thirty years, sixty countries have expanded access to abortion care as an underpinning of maternal health. The 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision overturni...

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the most popular man in India. On track to be elected for a third term, he has boosted the country’s global standing and propelled st...

In a wide-ranging conversation, Foreign Affairs Editor Dan Kurtz-Phelan joins Why It Matters to discuss nonpartisan publishing in a polarized political climate, the ...

Thirty years ago, Rwanda’s government began a campaign to eradicate the country’s largest minority group. In just one hundred days in 1994, roving militias killed ar...

Many Americans are losing faith in the benefits of internationalism. But whether it’s wars in the Gaza Strip and Ukraine, worsening extreme weather as a result of cl...

Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are real. And the truth about them is often hidden from the public, for reasons related to national security. That secrecy has fed...

Every January, CFR’s annual Preventive Priorities Survey analyzes the conflicts most likely to occur in the year ahead and measures their potential impact. For the f...

Billions of people will take to the polls next year, marking the world’s largest-ever electoral field. But this historic scale is not the only thing that will make 2...

Scenes from the Israel-Hamas war have reverberated across the world. In the United States, debate about the conflict has intensified, and it has resurfaced long-stan...

International trade has shaped the world for much of the past century. Countries benefited from the global flow of goods, and the world became richer and safer. At t...

Over the past few years, a new threat has emerged as a leading cause of death in the United States: fentanyl. Yet even as the drug wreaks havoc on Americans lives, p...

Russia has caused unprecedented damage in Ukraine. And with no diplomatic end in sight to the conflict, many Ukrainians are wondering when, if ever, they will be abl...

For decades, U.S. homeowners have counted on property insurance to protect them from catastrophic loss if their homes are destroyed—and the U.S. economy has rested o...

Female representation in politics leads to numerous benefits, but the vast majority of the world’s most powerful politicians are men. Using the Council on Foreign Re...