Introduction

On January 1, 1959, dictator Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba, leaving Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement in power. This marked the end of years of guerrilla warfare and popular uprising against the violent oppression of the Batista regime. In a matter of days, Castro entered Havana and began to establish a provisional government. In the four years to come, Havana and the island at large would undergo a series of agricultural, educational, and urban reforms. Castro’s government was in search of a way to materialize the revolution in Cubans’ daily lives; it was in that moment that housing and the built environment acquired political significance. In the immediate aftermath of the Revolution, not many understood that “in a matter of months and in the context of the Cold War, the Soviet Union would displace the United States as Cuba’s main political ally and trading partner.”¹ And so, Cuba rapidly bore witness to the importation of Soviet urban planning principles like standardization and collective services, the transfer of institutional planning to the Ministry of Construction of Cuba (MICONS), and the adoption of Soviet housing infrastructure and neighborhood layouts.² Determining the effectiveness of early Soviet urban planning in Havana after the revolution requires the examination of Soviet development precedents from 1922 to the Khrushchev era alongside an exploration of Havana’s urban design inspirations before and after 1959. It is also essential to study the progression of Havana’s newly acquired structures as Soviet influence and financial aid increased as a means of arriving at a measure of success in a client-state context. While Soviet urban planning in post-1959 Havana offered a framework for socialist engineering, its selective adaptation to Cuban conditions produced an uneven and ultimately unstable built environment that revealed as much about the limits of Soviet transfer and economic constraint as it did about the island’s revolutionary ambition.

Early Soviet Urban Planning

From the perspective of Cubans observing these transformations, Soviet principles were inextricably linked to socialism. After a more careful analysis of the historiography of mass affordable housing, this connection becomes less evident. What came to be known as the Soviet concrete panel housing system in client states like Cuba was not necessarily uniquely “socialist”. In the United States, for instance, Levittowns were built as early as 1947. These constructions were a post-World War II remedy; when veterans returned to American soil, “adequate housing was almost non-existent, so the government turned to developer William Levitt, who created this country’s first large-scale suburban housing complex on New York’s Long Island, christening it ‘Levittown’.”³ Like the mikrorayony, Levittowns were composed of rapidly constructed and simply designed identical affordable living spaces. Similarly, Western Europe was faced with the need for reconstruction of towns virtually destroyed and rendered permanently uninhabitable. In 1950, the First Housing Act was passed in West Germany, which “established the concept of ‘social housing’ and laid out a program of construction of 300,000 dwelling units each year up to 1956.”⁴ The speed, standardization, and affordability we associate with Soviet mass housing were well in existence before Khrushchev. The distinction between these earlier versions of centralized urban planning in capitalist cities and their Soviet counterparts, therefore, lies in the state purpose and social programming attached to it. Soviet construction was meant to integrate collectivist services and identity, redefining communal living as well as family life.

Early Soviet existence was centered around the idea of striving to build a new world. The material reimagining of the country’s landscape was tied to the idealism of revolutionizing and altering everything else. Soviet citizens saw themselves as “participants in a historic process of transformation, their enthusiasm for what was called “the building of socialism.”⁵ Construction plans were not just for the purpose of their utility. Instead, the Soviet Union characterized building through its relationship with lived space: privacy, communal services, queues, childcare, domestic labor. These goals were rooted in events that preceded the existence of the Soviet Union. Richard Stites notes, “In the Russian Revolution, architects and town planners had visions of reshaping an entire nation, of aligning the structures and anti-structures with high-speed economic development plans, of providing “social condensers” for the nurturing of a new socialist race of people.”⁶ This process involved the consideration of distance, in both a physical sense (population density) and a communal one (privacy and time spent in the home).  

The success of this vision had a symbolic element, as the foundations for the Soviet model were being conceived in the 1930s. The “General Plan for the Reconstruction of Moscow” was intended to set a precedent, and “provide a model of the socialist capital for foreigners and Soviet citizens to marvel at.”⁷ And, indeed, the Soviet urban planning model came to be an example for aspiring socialist countries like Cuba.⁸ “By 1963, almost every aspect of Cuba— including its political system, social structure, foreign relations, trading partners, and cultural production— had been transformed profoundly,…[reflecting] a period of heroic idealism.”⁹

But these ideals were soon met with the reality of different conditions on the ground, including the need to accommodate intergenerational family living—customary in Cuba—and access to communal services like groceries and personal items. At the onset of adopting socialist planning strategies on the island, the state of urban development revealed the remnants of the American presence that had been dominant just a few years earlier.  

Havana, being the capital of Cuba, was naturally in the midst of a modernizing urban project before the Revolution. At the time, the goal was to develop in order to accumulate capital and increase profit from the tourism sector.¹⁰ Plan Piloto (Pilot Plan) was overseen by Town Planning Associates, a design firm in New York City. It detailed the renovation of space in a modernist context, such as recommending that “a web of streets and green spaces must tie together the distant parts of Havana’s center.”¹² This direct context of innovative planning (1955-1958) prevents us from simply attributing modernist intervention in Havana as a product of “Sovietization”. That being the case, the years of 1959-61 encompassed rapid deviations from previous plans to reflect socialist policies. Felipe J. Prestamo became the first director of the Department of Physical Planning, which was established in 1960 to oversee city planning processes.¹³ In a paper he wrote years after immigrating to the United States, Prestamo recounts that “it became evident that the main concern of the government was to modify the dominant role of the city of La Habana”, essentially decentralizing the country and redirecting resources away from the capital.¹⁴ Beyond departing from the pre-revolutionary, market-oriented planning, this shift laid the institutional groundwork through which Soviet models of spatial organization would later be selectively adopted or resisted within the Cuban context. 

Figure 1. Urban comparison map from Plan piloto de La Habana.¹¹

Tracing the development of key Soviet urban planning principles requires visiting the places in which they were first tested, before being formulated and exported during the mid-twentieth century. These visions of standardization, zoning, and community living were tested and tried under the New Economic Policy (NEP). Baku, Azerbaijan, for instance, was a formerly capitalist city whose urban landscape transformed from 1924-1927.¹⁵ In her book Spatial revolution: architecture and planning in the early Soviet Union, author and professor Christina E. Crawford argues: “Although the 1935 General Plan for Moscow has been cited as the working model for the Soviet city, Baku in the mid to late 1920s was its proving grounds… [they included] provision of housing, walkability, and collective services.”¹⁶ Crawford’s assessment positions Baku as not just a precursor to later Soviet plans, but an experimental testing ground in which planners began to confront the challenge of translating socialist ideology into spatial form. Their material aspirations advanced under real economic and social constraints.

Figure 2. Baku Plan, 1927.¹⁷ 

Under the guidance of Aleksandr Ivanitskii, a professor and engineer by training, the 1927 General Plan for Baku came to fruition. It advocated regionalism, housing and industry were recognized as inextricable, linkages across urban space and into the periphery were crucial, public institutions and services were evenly distributed, planting plan to ensure quality of life.¹⁸

These early Soviet experiments revealed both the ambitions and limits of socialist urbanism; during the postwar period, these principles were actually consolidated into a standardized and transferable model. In the Khrushchev era, much like other post-WWII countries, the USSR faced the need for reconstruction at an unprecedented pace. Nikita Khrushchev came to power in 1953, after Stalin’s death. Although his ascendancy to power came eight years after the end of the war, there remained a severe housing crisis. Under his leadership, the Soviet Union embarked on a process of modernization. “‘Khrushchev modern’ signified grand transformations in both the form and meaning of Soviet dwelling.”¹⁹ Even thirty years after Baku, the Soviet identity and its building blocks continued to be altered. “Standardized designs (tipovye proekty) dating from the early 1950s that kept buildings to a minimum of four to five floors so that elevators were not required, and stipulated that kitchens be small and ceilings low, also enabled construction workers to erect buildings more quickly and inexpensively—two key aims of housing construction.”²⁰ Khrushchev’s campaign to perfect industrialized buildings expanded the availability of rapid, cheap, and replicable housing.

In addition to these structural components, the Soviet envisioning of an urban model accounted for the planning of space and communal services. These strategies were overseen by Gosplan, the Soviet government agency responsible for central economic planning. L. M. Sabsovich, a prominent urbanist during the first five-year plan, was responsible for the most ambitious urbanist scheme. He envisioned “the coordination of all food producing operations in order to transform raw food products into complete meals, deliverable to the population in urban cafeterias, communal dining rooms, and the workplace.”²¹ This transformative political project also became a heavily social one. Sabsovich and other Urbanists wanted to free women of domestic labor—cooking, childcare, education—and therefore redefine longstanding gender norms. The pursuit of social equality as part of a collective welfare pushed previous restrictions on the private household and cultural life. The doctrine of the “social condenser” was meant to do away with “excessive privatization, hoarding, inwardness, egoism, and coziness” characteristic of the bourgeois domestic way of life.²² During Khrushchev’s reforms, the proposed “microdistrict… grew out of similar ideas in the 1920s and early 1930s for the socialization of everyday life in the designs for the dom-kommuna (house commune).²³ Although physical structures evolved to reflect technology and demand, the idea of shared social space was a core component of Soviet planning. 

A fundamental component of these plans was their search for the fulfillment of a utopian environment, an ambition that repeatedly collided with economic constraints and material shortages. As Sheila Fitzpatrick notes, “the utopian vision of the 1930s was of a human and natural world transformed through industrialization and modern technology.”²⁴ Unfortunately, the conditions necessary to realize this were largely absent. Bureaucratic inefficiencies, limited resources, and shifting state priorities led to the neglect of residential housing construction and manufacture of consumer goods. The industrialized future that Soviet citizens were promised was only partially attainable, a fact that did not stop the heirs of revolutionary utopianism from trying. Stites expresses their fervor, stating “those who took utopia down from the light blue skies of Russian fantasy into living experimentalism enriched the revolutionary process… they attempted to bring the theory alive in a physical setting.”²⁵ The drive to design socialist life encompassed the encountering of a persistent tension between conviction and material realities.

An integration of economics and politics emerged at the core of Soviet state planning beginning with the New Economic Policy (NEP), a series of measures that brought developments that were hard to reconcile with Bolshevik visions.²⁶ Under NEP, capitalist concepts of profit were introduced to the planned economy model of the Soviet Union, a necessary making of concessions to kickstart policy-making. These constraints persisted, eventually shaping the USSR’s Cold War economic strategy. Professor and historian Oscar Sanchez-Sibony found that Soviet global influence during this period depended not only on ideology but also on what the USSR could practically finance, supply, and sustain abroad; “exporting” the Soviet models was inseparable from economic capacity.²⁷ These limits were correct in the Cuban case, where the merging relationship between both countries was based on the USSR’s “economic limitations” and “political objectives”.²⁸ Planning functioned as a negotiated process based on contingency, in which ideological ambition was continually recalibrated against material capacity, geopolitical priorities, and economic constraint. What the Soviet Union could transfer to Cuba, therefore, was not a fully realized socialist blueprint, but a selective assemblage of planning practices shaped as much by necessity as by doctrine.

Havana after 1959

It is therefore important to understand the context in which the Cuban Revolution emerged and its ambitious promises of change through reform for the Cuban people. Nationalism on the island is rooted in a long history of colonial struggle. In 1902, when the country finally gained independence from Spain, it was met with another reality: a dependence on the United States and its market to sell its sugar.²⁹ Shortly after, the Platt Amendment was signed alongside the new constitution, leasing a portion of Cuban land known as Guantánamo Bay to the U.S. indefinitely, which has since become infamous for its role as a U.S. naval base, former CIA black site, and detention center.³⁰ Both symbolically and physically, the U.S.’s imperialism was evident, as it wielded the power to “intervene in Cuban affairs whenever order was threatened.”³¹It was based on the subsequent societal dynamics that developed over the course of six decades that the Castro-led revolution triumphed. In the search for affirming their national sovereignty against the United States, the support of the Soviet Union became crucial. The USSR provided material support as well as an alternative to capitalism.

One of the major methods of enacting this shift in political theory and international alliances was an extensive plan for national development, especially the transformation of the urban landscape. In 1961, mass organizations like the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) were established and tasked with overseeing the reparation of individual homes, thereby creating “‘increased participation among the people in all activities related to public matters.’”³² The first plans for urban reform combined the economic and social aspects of revolutionary Cuba, sometimes even exaggerating the role of centralized programs to actualize socialism into everyday urban life.³³ This first stage of development was put into effect after a consolidation of power by the Revolutionary Movement, culminating in the first socialist master plan for Havana (1963-64).³⁴ The plan, meant to decrease the population growth rate, included the diffusion of certain industries to other parts of Cuba. It also accounted for a need to increase green space and is credited with the idea of the Metropolitan Park (Parque Metropolitano).³⁵

During this time, Cuba had been sending engineers to the Soviet Union to adopt their infrastructure practices. Victor O’Reilly, for instance, was a Cuban engineer who was in Moscow in 1963 “taking a course on prefabrication”.³⁶ After the natural disaster of Hurricane Flora that year, “Khrushchev proposed to donate a factory to produce housing, with a production rate between 1400 and 1700 dwellings per year—which was the I-464 system.”³⁷ Issues quickly arose, however, as the design of the housing was intended to suit Russian conditions. And so, a selective implementation of the Soviet KPD large concrete panel housing system was set in motion with the help of a Cuban commission.³⁸ This was just one of many ways in which the Soviet Union and Fidel’s Cuba were becoming inextricably linked to one another. Cuban architects and engineers engaged in a process to modify panels to their own social contexts.

While some initiatives were born out of Cuban revolutionary priorities, others came as a result of direct Soviet instruction. Regardless, they reflected an emerging affinity with socialist spatial thinking that would only deepen in the years that followed. These efforts led to the much more socially ambitious Master Plan of 1971. Prepared by architects in the Institute of Physical Planning, the plan was centered around making improvements to the 1963-64 version, including “location of housing zones near production, teaching, and research centers.”³⁹ This reinforced the construction of apartment buildings through centers of work and the national urbanization project.

Figure 3. Map insert from The 1971 Master Plan.⁴⁰ 

The 1971 plan worked with a greater awareness of Havana’s problems and attempted to give special planning attention to areas that needed it, emphasizing “both shopping areas and services as well as workplaces and housing.”⁴¹ Havana’s planning logic was increasingly mirroring socialist aspirations of urban integration, where residence, labor, and everyday life would become linked. The division of districts into “cells and productive units,” an approach with origins in 1966, was derived from Stalinist plans for the USSR before World War II.⁴² Not only was this aimed at reorganizing the country’s capital city, but also at testing how socialist ideology could be embedded in lived space. 

The final stage of the transition from a market economy to a socialist model was evident with the passing of Cuba’s first Five-Year Plan in 1975. As noted by Prestamo, “this plan included the organization of local authorities, Poder Popular (Popular Power), modelled after the Soviet reforms of 1965.”⁴³ This move formalized a Soviet-style administrative logic in Cuba, embedding centralized planning into local governance and institutionalizing mass participation as a mechanism of socialist legitimacy. Simultaneously, the delegates of the Cuban congress approved a platform stating “that socialism in Cuba is irreversible” and that Cuba would “strengthen its ties with the Soviet Union and the Socialist world.”⁴⁴ These declarations crystallized both ideological alignment and material dependency, confirming that Cuba’s urban and economic future was being shaped through the frameworks and expectations of the Soviet bloc. However, the Cuban government also inherited the problems of the Soviet model, including an incompatibility between socioeconomic development plans and urban design programs.

Havana’s post-1959 trajectory reveals how anti-imperial sentiment and socialist internationalism converged to create a revolutionary built environment. In seeking an alternative to U.S. dependence, the Cuban leadership turned to the Soviet Union for support that ranged from credit and trade to prefabricated mass housing, neighborhood units organized around work and services, and comprehensive master planning. But these models never materialized as a simple blueprint. Cuban planners selectively adopted, adapted, and sometimes resisted Soviet techniques in order to accommodate local family structures, climate, and existing urban fabric. By the mid-1970s, an imported model had been forged, while the contradictions and limits that accompanied it had only begun to surface.

Soviet Transfer: Havana on the Ground

From the early 1960s onward, Havana’s landscape was reshaped in materially visible and socially transformative ways. Its residents witnessed the construction of completely new communities like Cojímar and Alamar in the city’s eastern outskirts. These physical changes were accompanied by social reforms, particularly in education and childhood development. Across the city, círculos infantiles (state-run early childhood centers) were set up to promote structured child development. The founding of the Lenin College Preparatory School in Havana (IPVCE) in 1972 bolstered a technocratic socialist elite; conceived as “a prestigious leadership-training boarding school… specialising in science and technology,” it trained many of the country’s professionals in the decades that followed.⁴⁵ Meanwhile, Tarará, a once gated town in east Havana, was repurposed at first into a children’s pioneer camp for primary school students, subsequently, in the aftermath of the 1986 Chornobyl disaster, into a medical complex for children impacted by the nuclear accident.⁴⁶ These reforms were symptoms of a Soviet partnership in Havana’s spaces and institutions. 

Beyond a political alignment, Soviet-Cuban relations took on a tangible dimension through the physical presence of Soviet power on Cuban soil. Almost immediately after the establishment of relations with the USSR, Cuba’s affinity for the Soviet Union took on a concrete strategic dimension, as it housed a number of Soviet military bases and intelligence installations. Among the most significant was the Lourdes SIGINT facility, an “electronic intelligence listening post at Lourdes on the outskirts of Havana” that was fully operational by the late 1960s.⁴⁷ This relationship was further cemented by visits to Havana from senior Soviet officials. In February 1960, Soviet Deputy Prime Minister Anastas Mikoyan visited Cuba, an event that “marked the first official state visit by a high-ranking Soviet representative to Cuba.”⁴⁸ His presence formalized the alliance and also underscored how rapidly Soviet influence became embedded in Cuba’s physical landscape.

In the meantime, Cubans continued to endure housing crises and an alarming gap between the ambitious plans set forth by the revolutionary government and their unlikely realization. As mentioned, the efforts to modernize living conditions inspired by Soviet-style planning led to the construction of multi-family, multi-storey concrete housing meant to embody progress. Yet these developments frequently disrupted existing social and environmental relationships in Cubans’ livelihoods. As architect from the José Antonio Echeverría Technological University (CUJAE) Dania González Couret notes, “the rural population were accommodated in multi-family, multi-storey concrete buildings, losing their connection with the land, animals and nature.”⁴⁹ Additionally, the new settlements failed to deliver the necessary social services promised by modernization. Residents “lacked the benefits of urban services and facilities, so experienced the negative aspects of both urban and rural life,” revealing a lived contradiction between ideological aspiration and material reality.⁵⁰ The projects that emerged after socialist influence served to further compound housing inequality.

Along with these spatial and military transformations, Havana’s public service infrastructure was also reshaped under socialist planning. The revolutionary government, often drawing upon Soviet models of centralized provisioning, sought to expand and rationalize access to electricity, potable water, sanitation, and other essential urban services as tangible markers of socialist progress. In reality, while selected neighborhoods benefitted from infrastructural improvements, many others faced persistent shortages, unreliable water supply, intermittent electricity, and deteriorating hygiene conditions. Barrios insalubres (shantytowns) were characterized by having “flood plains and under high-voltage power lines.”⁵¹ These inconsistencies revealed the inherent fragility of state-led modernization and the strain placed upon Havana’s networks by rapid expansion and limited resources. In the years to come, albergues (transitional homeless shelters on the streets) would be the only refuge for those whose dwellings had serious structural issues, reinforcing patterns of scarcity that would continue to fashion Havana’s urban experience well beyond the Cold War period.

Today, Havana stands as a reflection of the once-aspirational—and soon thereafter abandoned—hopes of Cuban socialism. Citizens continue to live in the Soviet apartments of the 1960s, except now they are stripped of their original paint. The once-modified facade panels from Soviet-inspired panel factories, carrying “Cuban design adaptations,” are no longer noticeable.⁵² Several buildings across the city have either been repurposed or abandoned. Recreational community spaces, such as parks, are marked by rusted benches and peeling playground equipment. Public institutions, too, struggle to function under their current conditions. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Periodo Especial (Special Period; period of economic crisis in Cuba beginning in 1991), they operate within reduced spaces. Even the Lenin Vocational Pre-University Institute of Exact Sciences is a symbol of structural decay; only two of the six institutional buildings remain functional.

The remnants of these urban plans are reflective of the disillusionment at large among the Cubans who envisioned the reconstruction of the very fabric of their society through the fulfillment of socialism. Their path to building a new world akin to that of Soviet citizens has been riddled with many practical setbacks and economic underpinnings. The undertaking of a national planning project, informed by Soviet spatial ideals, eventually clashed with Cuba’s reality. In most of these buildings, the exterior peeling facades coincide with intermittent water and power supply; these inconveniences have become an ordinary part of a Cuban’s everyday experience. For many Habaneros (the people of Havana), a tension has emerged between their nostalgia for the early period after revolutionary triumph and the endless frustrations in the years to follow. 

Conclusion

When analyzing the phenomenon of Soviet influence in a decolonial world, Mervyn Bain, a senior lecturer in International Relations at the University of Aberdeen, observes: 

Many countries in the developing world that had newly gained their independence were attracted to Moscow because the Soviet development model from the 1930s had brought about rapid modernization and industrialization; and in the Western Hemisphere, Russia lacked a colonial past in the traditional sense, unlike other European powers like France, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom, among others.⁵³ 

Cuba’s post-1959 trajectory reveals precisely the kind of ambivalent relationship Bain describes. Havana, a country deeply entrenched in its colonial past, did not simply imitate Soviet planning out of ideological devotion. Instead, the revolutionary state, in need of a development model capable of materializing social change at a pace that matched its political ambition, turned to the Soviet Union. This new partner distinguished itself from former colonial rulers that had long taken advantage of populations in the Caribbean and Latin America. The Soviet Union was positioned as a power that actually understood the Cuban struggle and followed through on its solidarity with newly decolonizing nations. Throughout the course of this relationship, urban planning principles transferred from the USSR to Cuba were much more than technical; they became a way to signal sovereignty and effectively distance Cuba from its North American past.

The built environment was the physical embodiment of the terrain on which post-revolutionary aspiration and geopolitical alignment converged. Soviet precedents with roots in the New Economic Policy of the 1920s brought with them a distinctive understanding of space as something that could be engineered to reshape social life. Castro and his revolutionary leadership were also intent on creating a new kind of citizen and society; on this shared goal did the ideas of the Soviets strongly resonate. In Cuba, the prospect of housing blocks represented environments in which collective identity could be fostered, and socialist belonging could be ultimately lived. The establishment of schools, early childhood centers, new neighborhoods on Havana’s outskirts, and vast administrative projects reinforced a sense that the future could be planned and inhabited in advance. Nonetheless, the very qualities that made Soviet urban planning appear attractive—its scale, speed, and alleged efficiency—also contributed to the struggle that later emerged when attempting to execute Soviet practices. Cuba’s adoption of Soviet-inspired planning had to work with existing modernization plans and was constrained by the island’s persistent economic fragility. The process of “transfer” was never linear. To account for the actual differences in the Cuban society and economy, the assumption of Soviet principles was adaptive and negotiated: Cuban engineers modified imported prefabrications to suit local conditions; state planners mediated between imported models and the city’s existing urban fabric; and residents continuously molded the spaces they inhabited through their everyday practices.

The failures of Soviet-style planning in Havana were rooted in broader structural conditions: the economic strains of the Cold War, Cuba’s dependency on Soviet aid, the fragility of central planning under scarcity, and the mismatch between abstract urban theory and lived experience. The Soviet Union promised industrial capacity and ideological solidarity without being capable of fully providing the sustained economic support required to maintain the massive infrastructural plans it helped set in motion. After the end of the Cold War and the ensuing collapse of Soviet backing, Havana’s project was left without the means to materially sustain itself. The city’s Soviet-era neighborhoods, decaying institutional buildings, and compromised infrastructure remain ingrained as part of the island’s physical landscape as active, lived environments. These structures bear witness to a moment when architecture and planning were expected to transform society, and when socialist alignment appeared to offer a path to modernization that deviated from capitalism and empire. But the reality of Havana’s post-1959 built environment stands as both testimony and warning, and planned utopias like it leave material legacies that outlive their first political projects as well as continue to shape the social conditions of the people who must live within them.

References

Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: Havana, Photo by Pedro Szekely | Image sourced from Flickr | CC License, no changes made

¹ Luis Martínez-Fernández, Revolutionary Cuba: A History (University Press of Florida, 2014), 46.

² Roberto Segre, “Medio siglo de arquitectura cubana (1953-2003): Variaciones sobre el tema del Comunismo,” Revista de historia y teoría de la arquitectura, 7-28.

³ John Petrakis, “Wonderland’ Surveys Levittown, the Prototypical Postwar Suburb: North Sports Final, CN Edition,” Chicago Tribune (1963), October 4, 1998.

⁴ Robert G. Wertheimer, “The Miracle of German Housing in the Postwar Period,” Land Economics 34, no. 4 (1958): 340.

⁵ Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 68.

⁶ Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 190. 

⁷ Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, 69. 

⁸ Pedro Ignacio Alonso, “How a Soviet Concrete Panel Housing System Came to Cuba and Chile,” Journeys and Translations, no. 14 (2016). 

⁹ Luis Martínez-Fernández, Revolutionary Cuba, 46.

¹⁰ Paul Lester Wiener, José Luis Sert, and Paul Schultz, Plan piloto de La Habana: directivas generales, diseños preliminares, soluciones tipo (Havana: Town Planning Associates, 1959), 32.

¹¹ Paul Lester Wiener, José Luis Sert, and Paul Schultz, Plan piloto de La Habana, 34. 

¹² Paul Lester Wiener, José Luis Sert, and Paul Schultz, “Plan for Havana, Cuba,” Ekistics 8, no. 45 (1959): 9–15.

¹³ Felipe J. Prestamo, “City Planning in a Revolution: Cuba, 1959-61,” Planning Perspectives 9, (1993): 191.

¹⁴ Felipe J. Prestamo, “City Planning in a Revolution,” 192. 

¹⁵ Christina A. Crawford, Spatial revolution: architecture and planning in the early Soviet Union. (New York: Cornell University Press, 2022), 17-18. 

¹⁶ Christina A. Crawford, Spatial Revolution, 83.

¹⁷ Christina A. Crawford, Spatial revolution, 102.

¹⁸ Christina A. Crawford, Spatial revolution, 117.

¹⁹ Christine Varga-Harris, Stories of house and home: Soviet apartment life during the Khrushchev years, (London: Cornell University Press, 2015), 28.

²⁰ Christine Varga-Harris, Stories of house and home, 31. 

²¹ Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams, 199.

²² Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams, 201.

²³ Steven Harris, Communism on tomorrow street: mass housing and everyday life after Stalin, (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2013), 193. 

²⁴ Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, 67. 

²⁵ Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams, 10.

²⁶ Alan Ball, “Building a new state and society: NEP, 1921–1928,” in The Cambridge History of Russia, ed. Ronald Grigor Suny, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 171.

²⁷ Oscar Sanchez-Sibony, Red globalization: the political economy of the Soviet Cold War from Stalin to Khrushchev, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 65-80. 

²⁸ Radoslav Yordanov, “The Long Misunderstanding: Cuba’s Economic Ties with the Soviet Bloc,” Journal of Cold War Studies 25, no. 4 (2023): 24. 

²⁹ Marifeli Pérez-Stable, The Cuban revolution: origins, course, and legacy, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 3. 

³⁰ Ada Ferrer and ProQuest, Cuba: An American History, (New York: Scribner, 2021), chapter 14.

³¹ Marifeli Pérez-Stable, The Cuban Revolution, 4. 

³² William Thomas Kelly, “Revolución Es Reconstruir: Housing, Everyday Life, and Revolution in Cuba, 1959-1988,” (Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey, School of Graduate Studies, 2021), 67.

³³ Joseph L. Scarpaci, Roberto Segre, and Mario Coyula, Havana: Two Faces of the Antillean Metropolis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 131. 

³⁴ Joseph L. Scarpaci, Roberto Segre, and Mario Coyula, Havana, 146. 

³⁵ Joseph L. Scarpaci, Roberto Segre, and Mario Coyula, Havana, 147.

³⁶ Pedro Ignacio Alonso, “How a Soviet Concrete Panel Housing System Came to Cuba and Chile,” para. 2.

³⁷ Pedro Ignacio Alonso, “How a Soviet Concrete Panel Housing System Came to Cuba and Chile,” para. 3.

³⁸ Pedro Ignacio Alonso, “How a Soviet Concrete Panel Housing System Came to Cuba and Chile,” para. 4.

³⁹ Joseph L. Scarpaci, Roberto Segre, and Mario Coyula, Havana, 151.

⁴⁰ Joseph L. Scarpaci, Roberto Segre, and Mario Coyula, Havana, 150.

⁴¹ Joseph L. Scarpaci, Roberto Segre, and Mario Coyula, Havana, 151. 

⁴² Felipe J. Prestamo, “City Planning in a Revolution,” 204.

⁴³ Felipe J. Prestamo, “City Planning in a Revolution,” 207.

⁴⁴ “Cuban Communist Party Votes Guidelines of First 5-Year Plan,” New York Times, December 22, 1975, 14.

⁴⁵ “La Lenin Transnational: Schooling and the Reproduction of Elites in Socialist Cuba,” COMPAS, 2014.

⁴⁶ Alin Ulloa, civil engineer and graduate of the Lenin School and CUJAE, interview by the author, Miami, Florida, December 15, 2025. 

⁴⁷ Mervyn J. Bain, “Havana and Moscow, 1959–2009: The Enduring Relationship?” Cuban Studies 41, no. 1 (2010): 133.

⁴⁸ Radoslav Yordanov, “The Long Misunderstanding,” 28.

⁴⁹ Dania González Couret, “Sustainable urban development. Cuban challenges,” International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development 14, no. 1 (2022): 410. 

⁵⁰ Dania González Couret, “Sustainable Urban Development,” 410.

⁵¹ Mario Coyula and Jill Hamberg, “Havana, Cuba,” The Challenge of Slums: Case Studies for the Global Report on Human Settlements, 2003: 11.

⁵² Hugo Palmarola and Pedro Ignacio Alonso, “Tropical assemblage: The soviet large panel in Cuba,” Beyond imported magic: Essays on science, technology, and society in Latin America (2014): 166.

⁵³ Mervyn J. Bain, “Havana and Moscow, 1959–2009: The Enduring Relationship?” Cuban Studies 41, no. 1 (2010): 128.

On December 5, 2025, in a Washington ballroom draped in the flags of nations, FIFA President Gianni Infantino stepped to the podium and handed the President of the United States- Donald Trump a golden trophy the size of the World Cup itself, as requested by the White House. “This is what we want from a leader,” Infantino told the room, bestowing upon Trump the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize, an award invented weeks earlier after Trump was passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize, and which the White House had reportedly demanded be literally as large as the real thing. No nomination process, no independent committee, no transparency. FIFA’s Human Rights Advisory Board was not consulted. FIFA’s own governing council had not been informed. The world’s most powerful sports body had, in a single ceremony, collapsed the distance between a self-professed champion of global unity and an administration that, within months, would bar the fans of four qualifying World Cup nations from entering the host country. 

This is a prime example of democratic sportswashing, a phenomenon for which international law has even fewer answers than it has for the authoritarian kind. 

The Asymmetry of Accountability 

The concept of sportswashing entered the global lexicon through the Gulf: Saudi Arabia’s purchase of Newcastle United, the LIV Golf merge, and Formula 1 in Jeddah and Bahrain. The logic was straightforward:– authoritarian states exploiting sport’s apolitical aura to launder reputations-stained executions, torture and the occasional assassination. The critique is coherent: authoritarian states exploit the apolitical prestige of sport to launder their image before a global audience that would rather watch a race than read a human rights report. The legal problem is equally coherent: because sports federations like FIFA are private bodies registered in Switzerland, they sit outside the reach of binding international human rights law and can do as they please. The 2026 World Cup in the United States asks a harder question: what happens when the “sportswasher” is a democracy? 

The discomfort is structural. The international human rights accountability framework-such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), the Universal Declaration, the ICCPR, the Convention Against Torture was architected to constrain states and, increasingly, corporations from abusing the vulnerable. It was not designed to reckon with a scenario where a rights-violating host government is simultaneously a P5 Security Council member, the world’s largest economy, and the nominal guardian of the liberal international order. When Bahrain hosts an F1 race, human rights organizations can pressure the FIA, the FOM, and their European corporate sponsors under nascent mandatory human rights due diligence (HRDD) frameworks. When the United States hosts the World Cup, the pressure has nowhere to go because the United States writes, funds, and, when convenient, defunds those very frameworks. 

The World Cup Brought to You by the Travel Ban 

The facts are not in dispute. The US State Department has imposed full or partial travel bans on 39 countries, suspending visa issuance entirely for 19 of them. Four of those countries namely Iran, Haiti, Ivory Coast, and Senegal qualified for the 2026 World Cup on merit. Fans from Iran and Haiti are categorically barred from entering the United States, even with valid match tickets. For five African nations whose teams qualified, Algeria, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Senegal, and Tunisia, the administration imposed a $15,000 visa bond requirement, reversed only in May 2026, weeks before the June 11 kickoff, and only for those who could produce a match ticket. Jordanian fans, though not under a blanket ban, found their visa appointments cancelled after the US Embassy in Amman shuttered. 

FIFA’s response has been consistently breathtaking in its inadequacy: “Such things are outside its remit.” This formulation is worth examining. FIFA, which generated over $11 billion in revenue from the 2026 World Cup cycle, which required host countries to submit human rights strategies as part of the bidding process for the very first time and embedded UNGP compliance obligations into its host city contracts, now claims that the exclusion of qualifying fans based on their nationality falls beyond its institutional mandate. One hundred and twenty civil society organizations, led by the ACLU, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the NAACP, and Reporters Without Borders have called this precisely what it is: FIFA “paying lip service to human rights while cozying up with the Trump administration.” 

When the Guardian Becomes the Problem 

There is a particular irony in FIFA’s predicament that its leaders appear constitutionally unable to acknowledge. The 2026 World Cup is the first FIFA tournament in which human rights criteria were woven into the bidding architecture, a reform championed, in part, as a response to the catastrophe of Qatar 2022 and the deaths of migrant workers in stadium construction. FIFA’s FWC26 Human Rights Framework explicitly protects migrant workers and vulnerable populations regardless of immigration status. The framework commits FIFA to “constructively engaging with relevant authorities” when human rights commitments are at risk. Instead, Infantino attended Trump’s inauguration, shared Instagram posts proclaiming that Trump “def deserves” the Nobel Peace Prize and told an American business forum that the world “should support” what the Trump administration was doing. 

This is not mere personal eccentricity. It is institutionally significant. FairSquare, a human rights organization, filed a formal complaint with FIFA’s ethics committee identifying four distinct violations of FIFA’s own political neutrality obligations. The complaint found no traction. Meanwhile, FIFA cancelled anti-discrimination messaging campaigns ahead of the tournament, an act that combined with the Peace Prize affair led Amnesty International to characterize the organization as “normalizing an increasingly authoritarian US government.” An internal FIFA source told The Guardian in January 2026 that senior officials felt “deep embarrassment” but no one would act because Infantino controlled the institutional machinery. 

The structural parallel here is instructive: just as Saudi Arabia’s sportswashing operates through the FIA’s financial dependence on Gulf hosting fees, American democratic sportswashing operates through FIFA’s financial dependence on US hosting revenue and its president’s political alignment with the sitting administration. The mechanism is the same; a private international sports federation captured by its most powerful host, but the democratic packaging makes accountability harder to demand and easier to dismiss. 

Iran Plays in Los Angeles; Its Fans Watch in Tehran 

There is an image that captures this World Cup’s central contradiction more sharply than any policy document. On March 20, 2026, Iran’s national team secured a place in the tournament, becoming the second team to qualify for the 2026 World Cup. As the players celebrated on the pitch, the fans who had watched them from Tehran knew they would not be able to follow. Iran’s first match, against New Zealand, was scheduled for June 15 in Los Angeles, home to the largest Iranian diaspora outside Iran. As of May 21, 2026, the Iranian squad was photographed outside the US Embassy in Ankara, applying for visas in Turkey because the US Embassy in Tehran no longer operates. Players and coaches are technically exempt from the travel ban, but even this exemption rested on the fragile goodwill of an administration that had authorized military strikes on Iran in February 2026. 

The fans, of course, needed no appointment. They simply needed to not be Iranian. Fans from Iran and Haiti are categorically barred from attending any match on US soil, regardless of their possession of valid tickets. FIFA PASS, the priority visa appointment system FIFA designed in coordination with the White House, is functionally useless for citizens of countries that have been refused visa issuance entirely. The $15,000 bond waiver, hailed by FIFA as evidence of “continued cooperation with the White House,” was announced three weeks before the tournament and applied only to fans who had already bought tickets, they could not previously guarantee entry to use. As the ACLU’s Jamil Dakwar put it: “FIFA has unique leverage right now to pressure the U.S. government to respect the fundamental human rights of every person visiting and attending the games. FIFA has yet to offer meaningful assurances.” 

The Accountability Gap and Its Democratic Cover 

The legal vacuum here is identical to the one that shields F1 in Bahrain, and its existence in a democratic context is both more damning and harder to remedy. The UNGPs impose a corporate responsibility to respect human rights on FIFA as a non-state actor. As a non-binding instrument, the UNGPs generate no enforceable obligation before any court. The ICCPR’s non-discrimination provisions in Articles 2 and 26 bind state parties, not sports federations. FIFA, registered in Switzerland, is subject to Swiss private law and the jurisdiction of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, neither of which has developed meaningful doctrine on the exclusion of fans by nationality.federations. FIFA, registered in Switzerland, is subject to Swiss private law and the jurisdiction of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, neither of which has developed meaningful doctrine on the exclusion of fans by nationality. 

What distinguishes the democratic sportswashing case is this: in authoritarian contexts, the state and the rights-violating actor are the same entity. The demand that the FIA or FIFA refuse to hold events in Saudi Arabia or Bahrain is at least conceptually coherent as it asks a private body to exercise leverage against a foreign government. In the 2026 World Cup context, the demand that FIFA exercise leverage against the United States requires a private Swiss association to confront the most powerful government on earth, with which it has just co-produced a peace prize ceremony on live television. There is no body of international law, no enforcement mechanism, and no institutional appetite for it. 

For communities already living with the consequences, this is not a theoretical gap. Latino communities in all eleven US host cities Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Atlanta, Seattle, Dallas, San Francisco, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Houston, and Boston have reported that fear of ICE operations is suppressing their participation in the event. In a country where 11 million undocumented people reside, many of them forming the backbone of the hospitality, construction, and service sectors that the World Cup infrastructure depends on, the human rights question is not only about foreign fans. It is about the people who will build the venues, clean the stadiums, and serve the food and who have no recourse under the FWC26 Human Rights Framework if detained. 

Conclusion: The Flag, the Trophy, and the Question 

In July 2026, the final will be played in New Jersey. Billions will watch. The production values will be extraordinary. The football, as one expects, will be thrilling. Anad the lesson the 2026 World Cup will have taught international human rights law is an uncomfortable one: that the architecture of accountability which took the post-war world eighty years to build has a very large blind spot, and the blind spot is shaped exactly like a democratic superpower. Authoritarian sportswashing is a cynical exploitation of law’s gaps. Democratic sportswashing is something slightly worse, it is those gaps being enforced by the actor that wrote them. 

FIFA’s first-ever human rights bidding requirements, the FWC26 Framework, the UNGP commitments in the host city contracts were not meant to be empty promises. They were genuine reforms, won through years of pressure by people who believed institutions could be made better. They were also, faced with a travel ban, a $15,000 bond, and a peace prize ceremony, entirely unequal to the task. The game has always promised that on the pitch, the only thing that matters is what you can do with a ball. Off it, in 2026, what matters is the colour of your passport. FIFA got a trophy for that. The fans of Iran and Haiti got a livestream.  It is, in the end, a very American kind of welcome: boundless in its rhetoric, precise in its exceptions. 

Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: “England-Ghana World Cup 2026 Boston 04,” Image Sourced from Wikimedia Commons | CC License, no changes made

Rethinking the matter of autonomous vessels in International Maritime Law

In the spring of 2022, a vessel slipped quietly out of a Norwegian port carrying a cargo of mineral fertilizer. No captain stood at the helm. No crew walked the decks. The Yara Birkeland, the world’s first fully electric, zero emissions, autonomous container ship, had entered into operation. Developed by Yara International and Kongsberg Maritime, the vessel was designed to eventually operate entirely without crew, replacing 40,000 annual diesel truck journeys.

This ship is not a singular instance of such inquisitiveness. Alongside it, many research projects have emerged, such as the MUNIN (Maritime Unmanned Navigation Through Intelligence in Networks), DNV GL’s Revolt, and Nippon Yusen Kaisha’s autonomous vessels trials, which test the technical feasibility of autonomous ships. They signal a shift towards how goods and people are going to move across the world and across oceans. The question is no longer whether autonomous ships can sail internationally, it is whether international law is prepared for them when they do.

The current legal landscape

International Maritime Law is one of the oldest and most developed bodies of Public International Law. It has several instruments which make up the current architecture of governance, these include: United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) Convention, the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGs), the Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers (STCW) Convention, and the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC).

Despite the development in this field, there is a stark challenge that maritime law faces with autonomous vessels. Every one of these instruments was built on a single assumption: that a human being would always be on board and would bear ultimate responsibility for the vessel.

The Mass Code: A roadmap not a rulebook yet

Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (“MASS”) are vessels that operate independent of human action to varying degrees. The International Maritime Organization (IMO), has a taxonomy of degrees of autonomy for MASS vessels. This framework is essential to establish the ambit of the existing regulatory framework and includes 4 degrees of automation, with degree 1 having the most human involvement and degree 4 being fully autonomous.

An IMO scoping exercise, concluded in May 2021, aimed at mapping the adequacy of existing conventions, the need for amendments, and the conventions/provisions, which had gaps, in dealing with autonomous vessels. The diagnosis of this exercise was sobering. Most major conventions need significant amendments to accommodate these developments.

Subsequently, a joint working group developed a goal-aligned MASS code. At the 109th session of the Maritime Safety Committee (MSC 109), the IMO agreed to a revised roadmap which involved a non-mandatory MASS code to be finalized and adopted by May 2026. This would be followed by an experience building phase till 2028, leading to a finalized mandatory code to be adopted by 1^st July 2030 that will enter into force on January 1st, 2032.

This roadmap is significant, but pertinent in understanding what the MASS code will and will not do. The code will be goal-based instead of prescriptive. It will provide a framework “against which a vessel using autonomous technologies can be assessed and certified for commercial operations within IMO’s structure,” but will not mandate specific technical methods. The responsibility for developing a compliance stratagem falls largely on industry, flag states, and classification societies.

It is pertinent to note that autonomous shipping is currently not fully regulated by the International Association of Classification Societies (IACS) or the IMO. This means that individual flag states must decide how to regulate MASS within their own jurisdictions, creating a fragmented, uneven global picture.

Where the law falls overboard

The scoping exercise identified gaps across virtually every major international maritime instrument; they cluster into five critical areas, each having legal challenges. Liability and accountability are the largest challenges. Thus the question remains: Who is responsible when an autonomous vessel causes a collision; the owner, the software developer, the remote operator, or the algorithm itself? Collision regulations (COLREGS compliance) require human judgement. Thus, we extend our question further, asking if artificial intelligence will be able to exercise the ‘ordinary practice of seamen?’

The status of seafarers is a further question as well. SOLAS, STCW and MLC all presuppose crew on board. Remote operators have no clear legal status under existing conventions. UNCLOS requires a genuine link between a vessel and its flag state, developing this concept around the presence of human nationals.

Fully networked autonomous vessels face new threat vectors. A possible hijacked navigation system could become a weapon scaled at the volume of a ship with no crew to intervene. Furthermore, search and rescue and salvaging are heavily impacted by the duty to render assistance at sea, as enshrined in UNCLOS Article 98 and SOLAS Reg. V/33. How does an unmanned ship fulfil this duty of helping other people in peril at sea?

The liability labyrinth

There is a particularly troubling dimension: the “black box” nature of AI decision-making. If a neural-network navigates a vessel into a collision, recovering the sequence of decisions that led to the incident and attributing fault becomes technically impossible. Evidence-gathering in maritime litigation already depends on voyage data recorders (VDRs); the opacity of the machine learning and decision making process significantly compounds the difficulty in tackling this challenge enormously.

Traditional maritime law assigns ultimate responsibility to the master, who is the human being commanding the vessel. When something goes wrong at sea, the legal chain involves the master, the shipowner, and the insurer. Autonomous vessels introduce multiple new parties into play: manufacturers, AI software developers, remote operators, and algorithmic decision-making systems that may act in ways their creators did not anticipate them to.

In the United States, this problem has been recognized to have taken a legal form by the identification of the “Pennsylvania Rule.” The Pennsylvania rule is a federal maritime doctrine under which a party in a collision, who has violated a regulation intended to prevent that type of collision, is presumed liable. The rule presents unique challenges for cases involving autonomous ships because causation for these collisions or other incidents may be difficult to attribute. Principles like the Pennsylvania Rule, are now increasingly pushed to be incorporated in maritime liability allocation as seen in recent allisions and collisions cases. 

The COLREGs problem

The 1972 Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGs) is the “road code” of the ocean. Every collision case before an admiralty court is ultimately measured against it. Rule 2(a) holds that no vessel, owner, master, or crew can be absolved from the consequences of neglecting the rules. Rule 5 mandates a “proper look-out by sight and hearing.” Rule 8 requires that any action taken to avoid collision be “large enough to be readily apparent to another vessel observing visually.”

These rules presuppose human perception, judgment, and moral responsibility. The COLREGs contain subjective requirements and deviations from the written rules may be required by “the ordinary practice of seamen, or by the special circumstances of the case.” This rule sets a standard for professional wisdom and contextual reasoning. We can conclude that the 1972 COLREGs require amending, for the rules that are presently laid forth are not compatible with the operation of fully autonomous vessels. 

Remote operators in the legal web

Whether the ship is operated from the shores or operates independently without any crew, as is the case for Degree 3 and Degree 4 MASS ships, the question of the legal position of the “master” is spectral. SOLAS defines a master as a person in command of a ship. STCW requires specific training, certification, and watchkeeping standards for officers on board. The MLC defines a seafarer as “any person who is employed or engaged or works in any capacity on board a ship.” None of these instruments contemplate someone sitting in an office in Oslo, overseeing the movement of a container ship passing through the Malacca Strait.

There are suggestions that remote operators should be treated as masters, “by perpetuating the notion of the master, retaining their status as the final entity of responsibility for the ship,” but these are merely suggestions and are not the law just yet. IMO’s own working groups have begun differentiating between “MASS crew/seafarers” and “remote operators,” but no clear legal regime for remote operator qualifications, duties, or liabilities currently exists under international law.

Cybersecurity: another crew member

“Ships are now interconnected with many devices and the shore. The communication and devices used have cyber vulnerabilities.” For a conventionally crewed vessel that experiences  a cyberattack, a crew can respond, improvise, and override the attack. For a degree 4 autonomous vessel with no crew on board, the same attack could result in total loss of control with no human recourse available.

The IMO’s MSC resolution 428 on Maritime Cyber Risk Management in Safety Management Systems provides a starting point to addressing cybersecurity concerns, but it is noted that the IACS has identified “the human element and careless habit of employees” as the weakest link in cyber security, This forms a factor that shifts dramatically in character when there is no human on board at all. 

Frameworks for a hybrid future

The question of how to close these legal gaps is not merely technical. It sits at the intersection of commercial interests, labour rights, environmental imperatives, and geopolitical competition. Any framework that hopes to succeed must “ensure that the uniform and consistent enforcement of UNCLOS provisions” is maintained while making space for technology that did not exist when these provisions were written.

The move by the IMO to adopt a goal-based approach for the development of the MASS Code, is in part an experience learnt from aviation regulations. The Chicago Convention on international civil aviation, and the standards issued by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), have successfully regulated unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) using a similar framework. Maritime lawyers and academics have pointed to the aviation precedent as an instructive, yet  imperfect, model.

A few goal-based suggestions

There are a few mechanisms that can be adopted and would aim at bridging the gap that exists at the moment between current regulations and prospective regulations that would comprehensively accommodate autonomous vessels.

First, COLREGs regulations need amending to replace anthropocentric language (“ordinary practice of seamen”) with outcome-based substitutes, such as collision avoidance that is “effective, and verifiable.” This preserves the safety objective while allowing AI navigation systems to meet the standard by any technically adequate means.

Second, ensuring increased algorithmic transparency. Existing VDR requirements should be extended to mandate logging of AI decision-making processes in a standardised, interpretable format. Without this safeguard, post-incident liability allocation is arbitrary and practically  guesswork.

Third, mandating the IMO’s existing MSC resolution on cyber risk management. The currently non-binding nature of these resolutions is evidently inadequate for fully networked autonomous vessels. A new SOLAS provision should establish minimum cybersecurity standards for MASS, including requirements for intrusion detection and fallback systems.

Charting a Course Forward 

The human cost of autonomy is not a secondary concern, the question of the maritime workforce cannot be set aside as a downstream consequence of automation; it must be addressed as a central feature of any regulatory framework. Aspects of the seafaring profession, like situational awareness, improvised engineering, and diplomatic negotiation cannot be replicated by AI yet. 

The challenge before regulatory and educational bodies is not to mourn the demise of shipping careers but to plan for a shift in focus such that the vast reservoir of knowledge within the shipping sector is utilized to fulfil new roles.

Autonomous maritime vehicles are no longer a theoretical problem: they are a commercial reality. Vessels are already in service, more are under development, and the legal framework has not yet fully adapted. The IMO deserves credit for recognizing the regulatory lacunae and taking serious steps to remedy it. But the roadmap to a mandatory code by 2032 is a decade away, and commercial pressure to deploy autonomous shipping will not wait for legal surety.

What the MASS Code must deliver is a framework that is technologically neutral in its standards, human-centred in its values, and international in its reach. It should determine whether the voyage is safe, the environment is protected, the workers are treated fairly, and someone can be held accountable when things go wrong.

The boat still needs a captain. The question is where that captain sits.

Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: “35th anniversary of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) International Maritime Law Institute (IMLI) at IMO Headquarters in London, England on 22 April 2024,” Image Sourced from Wikimedia Commons | CC License, no changes made

New Name, Familiar Tale

On March 7, 2026, leaders from across Latin America and the Caribbean gathered in Doral, Florida, at the invitation of U.S. President Donald Trump to inaugurate what was presented as a renewed framework for hemispheric security cooperation. Framed in the language of peace, stability, and shared prosperity, the initiative signaled the emergence of a “new” regional security architecture. Yet for Latin America, such moments rarely represent rupture as much as repetition.

Hemispheric security cooperation has historically oscillated between multilateral coordination and asymmetrical dependence, from the 1947 Rio Treaty to more recent counternarcotics partnerships such as the Mérida Initiative and Plan Colombia. The proposed “Shield of the Americas” appears less as a departure from this trajectory than its latest evolution.

Gradually, these attempts at hemispheric cooperation have eroded to give way to coercive action between relevant players in the Americas. We may think of the recent U.S. military incursion in Venezuela in January 2026 or the repeated question mark over American intervention in Mexico posited by President Trump. The game, however, is just as important as the players within it. Much like a prudent player of classic titles such as The Elder Scrolls or any other RPG, it seems the U.S. and its regional allies are investing heavily in defense, both as a principle of their foreign policy toolboxes and as justification for the creation of new multilateral regimes. After all, it is often said that “a good defense is the best offense,” and seemingly this has proven true for allowing Washington to broaden its military operations as far south as Ecuador.

Latin America now finds itself increasingly preoccupied with the offensive capabilities of its northern neighbor, compelled to reconsider how far it is willing to go to defend its people and national vision. Much the same as any prudent, yet astute, RPG player, it increasingly appears that the United States has hidden the sword behind the shield, deploying the language of defense in ways that expand the political legitimacy of intervention across the hemisphere.

The “Return” of Security: A Snake Eating Its Own Tail

The construction of security policy, as discussed by authors linked to security studies, such as Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver, or Thierry Balzacq, has rested upon a government’s ability to define what threats we should be worried about and, as such, the justification to go after them. In truth, Trump’s bid to frame Latin American criminal networks, cartels, gangs, and illegal mass migration as a mortal threat to the peace of mind of U.S. citizens and the nation has come accompanied by mechanisms designed to legitimize action, including multilateral initiatives such as the Shield of the Americas.

Would similar U.S. operations be received the same way if these threats were not collectively recognized as legitimate security concerns? Security theory suggests otherwise. Shared threat narratives allow states to gradually expand the boundary between cooperation and intervention, normalizing actions that might otherwise provoke resistance.

As such, Latin American discussions on security become even more entangled. Like a snake eating its own tail, critics argue the willingness to participate in this new security strategy will come at the cost of a new era of American interventionism, in essence, that most feared by the staunch defenders of Latin American autonomy and anti-American politics in the region. 

Is a Shield Truly Ever Without a Sword?

A shield, nevertheless, must be analyzed as a harbinger of retaliation. The United States has made the nature of “defense” quite clear, positioning itself and her hemispheric allies as clear defenders against an onslaught of illegality and criminality. This, in the eyes of the Trump administration, has remained the savage and untamed beast of the Western Hemisphere; a beast that only responds to a language of violence and heavy-handedness. Under such a framing, the region easily finds itself equating military power with social security.

“The heart of our agreement is a commitment to using lethal military force to destroy the sinister cartels and terrorist networks [in the Western Hemisphere]…”

More captivating, however, is the way in which Latin American security policy has echoed this statement and continues to do so. Ecuador’s President Noboa no doubt used this same sentiment when allowing for his country’s security gap to be filled partially by direct military cooperation with the U.S. earlier in March 2026. Likewise, El Salvador’s hard-hitting security reforms ushered in by Bukele followed this same line of action through policies of exception restricting the right to self-defense and high incarceration rates. Even my own country, Mexico, has seen its security policy fall back and forth between open war against drug trafficking networks and political reframing of security under former President López Obrador. 

Aside from the purely political nature of security policy, one thing remains constant within these cases; the general population of Latin America is increasingly frustrated by the nature of security and desperate for answers. Across the region, efforts to confront insecurity have often fallen into crisis, making reliance on the United States’ protective “shield” appear increasingly attractive, even as the protection it offers risks expanding Washington’s capacity to intervene once again, whether through its military or political recognition. All the same, the message remains explicit: cooperation is a relationship regulated by Washington for the region, rather than alongside it.

“I want to thank members of the coalition, most of whom are friends of mine… many of whom I endorsed…”

One thing has become clear: a shield, no matter how defensive, is nevertheless a weapon when used in new and creative ways. Across Latin America, worried observers find themselves increasingly on edge as the Shield of the Americas reinforces a growing inertia in regional cooperation. The region now appears to be drifting toward competing visions of hemispheric security, further widening existing fractures between states, as seen in the visible diplomatic tensions between Mexico and Ecuador, Mexico and Peru, and Argentina and Brazil.

Security’s Game: Shields, Swords, and Subordinates

If players are shaped by the games they play, then the hemispheric player operating from Washington appears to do so from a position few can truly challenge. Much like an experienced RPG player, the United States does not need to master every role when its Latin American partners are expected to fill them.

The question, then, is what role these partners are meant to play. The meeting in Doral suggests that they may remain secondary actors within a system largely defined by U.S. security protagonism, shaped by decades of sluggish cooperation and unresolved tensions. In this sense, Latin America risks becoming both the shield invoked to safeguard U.S. interests and the region most affected by its weight. 

Supporters of the Shield of the Americas may argue that it offers a concrete response to problems long addressed through softer cooperation. Yet as security once again becomes the region’s dominant political language, it remains unclear whether this new arrangement will lead to genuine partnership through the development of a unified security agenda or to the familiar return of American influence and boots on the ground.

Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: “LAAD Defence & Security – 2025 (54425241592),” Image Sourced from Wikimedia Commons | CC License, no changes made

When Ugandan authorities arrested two young women for sharing a Valentine’s Day kiss and charged them with offences related to homosexuality and indecency, they upheld a law written and imposed by the colonisers. When colonisers departed, they left behind legal systems that criminalised same-sex conduct, a burden the colonised were made to carry long after independence. Given the size of the empire and the height of its power, British law did not merely travel; it calcified, embedding itself into the legal DNA of nations that would later become their own tradition. A recent wave of conservatism has swept across Africa, with activists decrying an assault on LGBTQ+ rights, especially in East Africa. Half of all countries worldwide where homosexuality is outlawed can be found in Africa, according to a global review by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association (ILGA), a statistic that reflects the uniformity of colonial legislation. In some countries, offenders are punished by death or lengthy prison terms, enshrined in statutes drafted in colonial capitals. 

This column traces how laws enforced by the colonisers have been weaponised into a modern instrument of oppression, and what it means for the millions living under its shadow. It does so in five parts: first, the historical origins of anti-sodomy legislation and how it travelled; second, what pre-colonial African societies actually recognised about sexuality; third, how this inheritance is being actively reinforced and expanded today; fourth, how a second and more contemporary wave of imported intolerance is compounding it; and fifth, the human cost of both.

The historical development of anti-sodomy laws

In 1534, under the reign of Henry VIII, British law took its first legislative aim at homosexual acts. The legislation punished ‘… the detestable and abominable Vice of Buggery committed with mankind or beast.’ The word ‘abominable’ was taken from Leviticus. The term buggery traces back to ‘bougre’ or ‘heretic’ in Old French, and to the Latin ‘Bulgarus’ for ‘Bulgarian’, a reference to Orthodox Christian heretics. ‘Heresy’ was a common euphemism in the Middle Ages for a group of sexual sins, so the 1534 wording was not innovative. Derived from ecclesiastical law, the religious character of this criminalisation was hardly new. A criminal law prohibition based on Leviticus travelled through early Christianity, Roman law, and ecclesiastical law to become a standard non-religious criminal offence in Europe, including Russia. The Protestant Reformation ended the church Courts in much of Europe, requiring them to be handled by secular law. This uniform pattern was broken by the Napoleonic Penal Code of 1810, which drew no distinctions between homosexual and heterosexual acts, a legal innovation adopted by the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, resulting in only British colonies having inherited the prohibition. In Asia and Africa, the legacy of 1534 is now hidden behind the language of the 19^th-century Indian Penal Code (IPC), imposed on colonial India in 1861, before it travelled to parts of Africa.

The most telling illustration of colonialism’s uneven legal afterlife lies in the diverging fates of s. 377 of the IPC. Drafted by Thomas Babington Macaulay, the section stated that “whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal” would be punished with imprisonment or fines. It travelled with the empire, exported to colonies across Asia and Africa as a standardised instrument of moral policing. 

The empire that exported this moral code was slow to reckon with it on its own soil. In 1966, the year before partial discrimination through the Sexual Offences Act, 1967, some 420 men were convicted of gross indecency in Britain; by 1974, that number had surged to 1,711, a rise of over 300%. Full reform did not arrive until the Sexual Offences Act of 2003, meaning that for 470 years, England and Wales maintained a criminal code that penalised gay sexuality, the same code it had spent centuries exporting. Scotland’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws were not repealed until 2013. India, inheritor of the same provision, did not strike down s.377 until 2018, over 150 years after it was imposed. The slowness of the coloniser’s own reform is not incidental; it is precisely what made the inheritance so durable and so devastating for those on whom it was imposed. Their survival after independence reflects not only legal continuity but also the willingness of postcolonial governments to deploy them in the service of nation-building, moral politics, and claims of cultural authenticity.

Sexuality in Pre-Colonial Africa 

Colonialism shaped the archives through which Africa came to be understood: same-sex intimacies were frequently ignored, misrepresented, or relegated to the margins of colonial records, creating silences that continue to distort contemporary understandings of Africa’s sexual past.

The claim that homosexuality is ‘un-African’ collapses under the weight of the historical record. Long before colonial law arrived to declare it criminal, same-sex relationships and gender-nonconformity were documented across more than 40 pre-colonial African societies. Among the Langi of northern Uganda, effeminate males known as ‘mudoko dako’ were treated as women and could marry men. In Angola, the Chibados male diviners were believed to carry female spirits and occupied recognised spiritual roles within their communities. Woman-to-woman marriages were equally documented, a practice so perplexing to European travellers that it provoked, in the words of one Portuguese soldier writing in 1681, accusations of ‘sodomy’ and ‘filth’. What unsettled the colonisers was not deviance, but the difference they had no framework to understand. As legal scholar Sylvia Tamale of Makerere University puts it, “it is not homosexuality that is alien to Africa, but homophobia.”

The deployment of African culture as a shield against LGBTQ+ rights is not a natural outgrowth of the continent’s traditions; it is a political construction with a familiar precedent. When Mobutu Sese Seko built his decades-long dictatorship on the ideology of authenticité, he justified it by reference to African culture, ‘Democracy is not for Africa,’ he said, ‘there was only one African chief.’ Yet paradoxically, Mobutu was not recovering African tradition but deploying European colonial stereotypes about it, borrowing from colonial predecessors the very ideas he claimed to reject. The same logic is now deployed against sexual minorities, with homophobia dressed as heritage. Yet the historical record tells a different story. In ancient Egypt, same-sex intimacy was, at certain periods, legally recognised. Among the Azande of pre-colonial Sudan, male same-sex marriage was legally acknowledged, with dowry paid to boy-wives and damages awarded for infidelity. African culture was never homogeneously heterosexual; it was diverse, varied, and far more accommodating than the colonial legal code imposed upon it. What is rarely acknowledged is that the homophobic rhetoric currently rising across Africa is not organically domestic; it is funded and sustained by Western, specifically American, conservative campaigns, making it contemporarily manufactured. As historians Murray and Roscoe conclude, the colonialists did not introduce homosexuality to Africa but rather the intolerance of it, and systems of surveillance and regulation for suppressing it.

Contemporary Africa: The Inheritance Enforced 

The scale of inheritance is telling. Across Africa, 32 of 54 countries, according to ILGA, criminalise same-sex relations, a uniformity that reflects colonial standardisation. What is more alarming than the number is the direction of travel; these laws are not relics being passively retained, they are actively being reinforced, expanded, and, in several cases, made more severe. 

Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2023 stands as the most egregious example, imposing life imprisonment for homosexuality and the death penalty for ‘aggravated homosexuality,’ while organisations found guilty of ‘promoting homosexuality’ face fines up to USD 266,000 and permanent suspension of their licenses. Senegal amended its Penal Code as recently as March 2026, increasing prison terms for ‘acts against nature’ from one to five years to five to ten years, and separately criminalising the funding of any activity deemed to promote homosexuality. 

The Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni, has called on African leaders to reject the promotion of homosexuality, believing it to be a real danger to humanity and a big threat to the procreation of the human race. Across Africa, so-called ‘family values’ conferences have proliferated, bringing together international organisers, local lawmakers, and faith leaders under the banner of defending traditional family life, a banner that, on closer inspection, doubles as a coordinated campaign against LGBTQ+ existence and abortion rights. In Uganda, the Catholic church has become the institutional reference point for political leaders wishing to speak against homosexuality, with government ministers publicly arguing that it is alien to Ugandan culture and a threat to the country’s traditions. What is presented as cultural sovereignty is, upon examination, a colonial inheritance, one that the coloniser quietly set down while the colonised were left to enforce it.

A Second Wave 

Ironically, what goes largely unacknowledged is that Africa is also the target of a more contemporary importation of intolerance. In 2009, American evangelical pastor Scott Lively travelled to Kampala at the invitation of the Ugandan Parliament, briefing lawmakers on how to address homosexuality, a visit widely regarded as a catalyst for the Anti-Homosexuality Act that followed. He was not an isolated actor. Family Watch International, led by Sharon Slater and “described as a hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Centre, has sponsored trips for politicians from Kenya, Uganda, and beyond, training them on what activists “describe as an extremist anti-LGBTQ+ agenda.” In April 2023, the organisation hosted an inter-parliamentary conference in Uganda, attended by leaders from 22 African countries, after which a Kenyan MP vowed to table an anti-gay bill in parliament. “There is nothing organic about the wave of anti-homosexuality bills we are seeing,” said Muthoni Ngugi of the East Africa Legal Service Network. As Dr Kapya Kaoma concludes, these organisations are losing the culture wars at home and seeking quick gains elsewhere. 

The Human Cost 

“It is crucial to acknowledge that these challenges faced by LGBTI people in Africa extend beyond the realm of legality, encompassing a profound struggle for the hearts and minds of societies. However, the abuse of law has undoubtedly heightened their vulnerability and underlines the urgent necessity for coordinated regional and international intervention,” observed Samira Daoud, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for West and Central Africa. 

The evidence bears her out with devastating precision. In January 2011, David Kato, Uganda’s most prominent gay rights activist, was beaten to death at his home in Kampala, weeks after a local tabloid published his name and photograph under the headline ‘Hang Them.’ He had just won a court case against the publication. Kato’s murder was not an isolated act of violence but a consequence of a climate that legislation actively creates. In Burkina Faso, following the junta’s criminalisation of homosexuality in September 2025, LGBTQ+ people report living in fear of a ‘witch hunt,’ with photographs shared on social media as evidence and lists of meeting places passed to authorities. “With this law, people will feel they have a mission: to hunt down homosexuals,” testifies Quentin, a gay Burkinabe man living in Ouagadougou. 

The consequences extend beyond persecution into public health. Criminalisation drives LGBTQ+ people away from healthcare, creating conditions in which HIV thrives invisibly. Rates are estimated at 27 times higher than for other men in eastern and southern Africa and 199 times higher than for other men in western and central Africa. Anti-LGBTQ+ policies, which strengthen stigmatisation and control of people living with HIV/AIDS, undermine progress towards mitigating the epidemic. The COVID-19 pandemic compounded these vulnerabilities further, as restrictions on public gatherings, diverted resources and heightened surveillance. These laws thereby put Africa’s fight against HIV in ‘great jeopardy.’ In Uganda alone, police raided shelters for homeless LGBTQ+ youth, arresting dozens and subjecting some to forced anal examinations, a practice Human Rights Watch has “described as cruel, degrading, and constituting torture.” In August 2021, 54 civil society groups were indefinitely suspended. Sexual Minorities Uganda, which had provided education and healthcare advocacy for LGBTQ+ people since 2004, was ultimately banned entirely. Behind every statute and every amendment, a person is paying the price for someone else’s imported conviction.

Conclusion 

The two women arrested for sharing a Valentine’s Day kiss in Uganda did not violate an ancient cultural prohibition. They were caught in the machinery of a legal code drafted in a foreign capital, exported across an empire, abandoned by its authors, and then handed down as tradition. That is not heritage. That is inheritance, and inheritance, unlike tradition, can be refused.

Across the continent, some are refusing it. Namibia decriminalised same-sex relations in 2024. Botswana formally removed the colonial prohibition from its penal code in 2026. These are not concessions to Western pressure; they are corrections of a Western imposition. The demystification of homophobic pseudo-history and the detachment of homophobia from African-ness are, therefore, a necessary first step in the promotion of LGBTQ+ rights, not as a foreign agenda, but as a reclamation of what the continent’s own history has always shown to be true. In Botswana and Namibia, the government has recognised that enforcing the private moral views of a majority does not justify criminalising another’s freedom. That criminalisation itself is a public health failure, one that bars LGBTQ+ populations from accessing the treatment and care they are owed.

But for the millions still living under laws they never chose, written by hands that have long since washed themselves of them, and now reinforced by a second wave of foreign moral entrepreneurship, the weight of the inheritance remains. It is measured in raids, in bans, in bodies, and in the quiet daily cost of living under a law written for you by someone who never asked. The first wave of intolerance arrived with the coloniser’s penal code. The second arrived with the missionary’s chequebook. Both called it tradition. Neither was.

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2026 has begun with a dramatic and rapidly unfolding geopolitical crisis centered in Venezuela. In late 2025, the United States initiated a significant military buildup in the southern Caribbean and off the coast of Venezuela, deploying multiple naval assets—including guided‑missile destroyers—and thousands of personnel as part of what the U.S. government described as an expanded counternarcotics and security operation. 

This deployment marked the most substantial concentration of U.S. military power in the region in decades, with carrier strike groups, amphibious forces, and supporting aircraft operating within striking distance of Venezuelan territorial waters. The buildup contributed to heightened regional uncertainty and strained diplomatic relations, particularly as sources from Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, characterized it as a hostile encroachment on its sovereignty.

Tensions escalated further on September 2, 2025, when the United States conducted its first acknowledged strike against a vessel in the Caribbean suspected of transporting illicit drugs originating from Venezuela. U.S. officials framed the action as part of an expanded campaign against transnational crime, but the operation also set the stage for a series of 32 known kinetic strikes on small boats later publicly linked to alleged drug trafficking activities—actions that drew scrutiny from international bodies and regional governments alike. 

The escalation reached its climax on January 3. The US carried out a “Large-Scale Strike” on Caracas which culminated with the arrest of Nicolas Maduro. This event has led to a wide range of discussions regarding the role of the US in world affairs and the return of interventionism into Latin America, a region haunted by US intervention in their national affairs, foreign affairs, and an overall lack of respect for international law.

This brief analysis, rather than simply arguing that international law should be respected (a point largely uncontested), will rather focus on a more difficult question raised by the U.S. operations in Venezuela. The paradox at the heart of the international legal order is created: an intervention may appear morally compelling yet remains legally prohibited under existing international law. Furthermore, this text would like to push back on the popular idea of the uselessness or death of international law. International law, as I argue later on, both as a concept and a structure is not dead. Our usual conception of it has reached its boiling point, and new conceptions must be grappled with. 

International law as a practice and not just norms. 

One of the key issues that differentiates international law from national law is that international law lacks any real way of being enforced. There is no world tribunal that can sentence and punish states for breaking international norms, just in the same way that a national court can prosecute and sentence an individual to prison. The only international institution that manages to fill this niche within international society is the International Court of Justice, yet it also suffers from limitations. 

Articles 36 and 59 of the ICJ Statute the Court’s binding power is limited and conditional. The ICJ may issue legally binding decisions only where states have consented to its jurisdiction and once jurisdiction exists, judgments are binding exclusively between the parties and only with respect to the specific case. The Court may also indicate provisional measures under Article 41, which are legally binding, but these do not constitute punitive or coercive enforcement. If a state fails to comply with an ICJ judgment, the Court itself has no enforcement mechanism. Even the institution that most closely resembles a world court cannot enforce all sentences. The idea that international law can and should function like national law shows its limitation.  

The Venezuelan intervention invites a reassessment of how we view international law and how we think it functions in practice. International law isn’t solely the norms written in treaties, but also the way these norms operate and are practiced in the real world. 

This practice-oriented understanding of law is further developed by the New Haven School of international law, which defines law not as a static system of rules but as a “continuous flow of authoritative and controlling decisions.” In this framework, authority is not derived solely from formal legal sources, but from community expectations regarding who is entitled to decide, by what procedures, under which conditions, and in light of which values. Power refers broadly to the resources used to shape behavior, while authority constitutes the specifically legal dimension of decision-making. A decision is authoritative when it aligns with these shared expectations, even in the absence of centralized enforcement.

In a system without centralized enforcement, the law’s practical force is shaped by power asymmetries which can provide some states the capacity to act unilaterally and resist being held accountable for violating legal rules. The Venezuela case makes this tension visible, revealing the gap between international law’s formal prohibitions and its uneven application in practice. Legal realism offers a framework for understanding this disjunction. Realism argues that law is best understood through the actual practices of legal decision-makers, emphasizing how social, political, economic, and institutional forces shape legal outcomes. Norms, in this view, do not disappear— they derive their operative meaning from how they are interpreted, invoked, ignored, or selectively enforced in concrete cases.

The Venezuelan intervention underscores the need to rethink international law as a set of practices, not merely prescriptive norms. Law is not only what states ought to follow, but how norms are interpreted, deployed, and contested in concrete political contexts. International law emerges through state action, institutional responses, and patterns of justification rather than abstract textual authority alone. If international law is to remain relevant, its dominant conception must evolve alongside the geopolitical realities that continuously reshape it.

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The word “Bauhaus” literally translates from German to “house of building.” Originally, the Bauhaus was a school of design, architecture, and applied arts in Germany that emerged in response to the rapid social and technological changes following World War I. Its founder, architect Walter Gropius, sought to end the schism between art and technical craftsmanship by fusing functionality with aesthetics. In 2020, the European Union launched the New European Bauhaus (NEB) as part of the European Green Deal to bridge climate action with culture and creativity. Though the initiative draws on a legacy now a century old, it arrives at a moment of urgent relevance. The 1920s Bauhaus movement embodied a wider intellectual undertaking aimed at societal transformation. Today, the NEB continues this legacy, with a special focus on environmental protection, social justice, and urban regeneration. Yet while the NEB successfully revives the Bauhaus spirit of uniting design with social purpose, its revolutionary potential is undermined by structural barriers in implementation, persistent inequalities in access, and a funding model that privileges execution over imagination.

The NEB is an EU policy and funding program designed to make the green transition in the built environment “attractive and convenient for all.”  Its functioning includes grassroots-level engagement, tools and guidance for tailor-made solutions, the incorporation of stakeholders’ views, and a focus on people and social inclusion whilst maintaining strategic economic policies. The NEB follows a bottom-up approach, inviting citizens, stakeholders, and professionals to share perspectives to co-create solutions for their respective neighborhoods. Prizes were first awarded in 2021 in what has since become a well-established annual competition. In total, more than 5,700 applications have been received, and over €2 million has been awarded across the two competition strands: one for existing and completed projects and one for new concepts. 

Many NEB projects have been qualified successes. The NEB has been widely referred to as the “soul” of the European Green Deal, adding cultural and social aspects to ecological targets to ensure community values are part of the collective climate response. It has also inspired a range of innovative local and grassroots projects. In the Champions’ strand—recognizing existing, completed work—Spain’s Green Axes and Squares reclaims streets for the public and greenery, Austria’s cooperative die HausWirtschaft combines affordable housing with shared work and childcare, and Ukraine’s Promprylad transforms a former factory into a cooperative center of innovation and social investment. In the Rising Stars’ strand for new concepts, Barcelona’s Superblock project is recognized as an exceptional pilot that addresses green space shortages, climate change, air and noise pollution, road safety, and the rehabilitation of degraded urban areas through a single systemic framework. Outside individual projects, the NEB’s co-design process drew more than 2,000 contributors from over 85 countries, indicating the breadth of its ambition.

However, the NEB encounters serious impediments to long-term transformation. The project, CoolCo’s—Cooling Corners and Corridors, in Budapest, Hungary, serves as an example of a case where execution falls short. CoolCo’s was a small-scale urban heat adaptation installed in the summer of 2023 in the dense, socioeconomically vulnerable neighborhood of Józefváros. Following the engagement of community residents in the design and prototyping process, modular shaded seating structures, plants, water features, and information panels were installed in public spaces. However, the project failed to account for the friction between their need for rapid decision-making and the slow, procedurally rigid municipal systems, resulting in significant delays. Further, the co-design process at the beginning of the project was a one-off engagement that failed to establish an ongoing relationship, thus leaving gaps in long-term communal ownership. This was compounded by the generalized distrust of public institutions in the neighborhood, complicating participation efforts. Ultimately, the NEB principles supplied useful guiding ideals but offered little practical guidance for handling the realities of small, bottom-up, and community-driven projects. 

The NEB’s funding model, however, presents the most fundamental tension. While the initiative claims to privilege creativity and interdisciplinary experimentation, the distribution of prize money and financial support tends to favor already established, implementation-ready projects over early-stage or speculative ideas. The Champions strand winner receives €30,000—double the €15,000 award of the Rising Stars’ strand winner. The logic is understandable: completed projects have demonstrated results and offer higher potential for replication. But this creates a structural imbalance. Projects with existing institutional backing, technical maturity, or proven feasibility are far better positioned to secure meaningful funding, while more radical or untested concepts receive comparatively less support. 

This pattern matters because revolutionary design ideas often emerge from high-risk conceptual exploration as opposed to incremental refinements to present models. By allocating significantly less funding to new ideas, the NEB risks narrowing the scope of innovation to what is already scalable and administratively viable within existing EU frameworks. In effect, the NEB initiative privileges execution over imagination, contradicting what they claim to foster. This can also discourage participation from smaller actors, such as independent designers and undersourced municipalities, who may lack the capacity to develop fully realized proposals without substantial upfront investment. The result is a feedback loop where established actors continue to dominate, and even the NEB’s stated pledge to inclusion and co-creation is quietly undermined. If the initiative genuinely intends to inspire a completely new design paradigm, it must invest more heavily in the uncertain, conceptual stages of innovation. Otherwise, it risks becoming a showcase for polished projects rather than a generator of fundamentally new ones. 

The history of the original Bauhaus yields a cautionary precedent. Throughout its short life, the school endured rising political pressure from conservative forces in Weimar Germany, forcing it to relocate twice before the Nazis shut it down in 1933. Despite Walter Gropius’s repeated attempts to depoliticize the institution, its avant-garde, anti-bourgeois ideals made it structurally vulnerable not only to external hostility but also to internal tensions. The Bauhaus did not fail for a lack of vision. It failed because visionary institutions, without structural protection and political durability, cannot survive on ideas alone. 

The NEB, too, has a powerful vision and a constrained execution. To fulfill its potential, it needs dedicated funding streams, equity-focused criteria, and a willingness to invest in ideas that have not yet proven themselves. The deeper question the NEB raises is whether the design-led policy can drive genuine societal transformation, or whether institutional logic will always tame the radical impulse that makes such movements worth launching in the first place. The original Bauhaus changed how the world thinks about design. Whether the New European Bauhaus can do the same or will be undone by the same tensions that closed its predecessor remains to be seen. 

Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: “Dessau-Bauhaus,” Image Sourced from Wikimedia Commons | CC License, no changes made

Over 10,200 miles from Paris in the South Pacific Ocean lies the French overseas territory of New Caledonia. The archipelago currently sits at the center of one of the world’s most complex decolonization and self-determination debates. Shaped by a long history of colonization, indigenous marginalization, and decades of negotiation over sovereignty, the territory has recently entered a new era of political uncertainty following French parliamentary votes that may have just opened the door to independence. In this article, I will examine the historical and political development of New Caledonia under French rule, the long-term marginalization of the indigenous Kanak population, and the recent political crisis surrounding independence movements and constitutional reform. New Caledonia is closer to independence than at any other point in its modern history, as recent constitutional crises, contested reforms, and shifting political alliances have exposed the fragility of French authority over the territory. 

Melanesian peoples first settled the islands around 3000 BC, whose descendants are now known as the Kanak population. Their societies developed complex social and political systems rooted in land, kinship, and clan identity. European contact began in the late 18th century when British explorer James Cook visited the region. Despite early British contact and the islands’ later naming after Scotland, France formally annexed the territory in 1853. However, colonial rule quickly created tension as land was confiscated, taxes were imposed, and Kanak sovereignty was dismantled. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Kanak resistance movements repeatedly challenged French authority.

Following the suppression of these uprisings, colonial policy deliberately attempted to reshape the islands’ demographic structure. French policies encouraged European settlement and the development of plantation agriculture, primarily around coffee. Indentured laborers from Asia and nearby Pacific islands were also introduced, further transforming the population. Over time, these demographic changes reduced the Kanak population to a minority within their own territory. Even though the Kanaks were granted French citizenship in 1946, along with the right to vote, structural inequality and land dispossession continued to limit their political influence. Gradually, frustration surrounding marginalization strengthened a unified Kanak identity.

Another major economic, political, and social transformation occurred during the nickel boom between 1967 and 1972. Today, nickel accounts for roughly 90% of the territory’s exports and 10% of its GDP. Driven by rising global demand for stainless steel and industrial metals, New Caledonia’s vast nickel reserves became central to French economic interests in the Pacific. Rapid industrial expansion followed, as new mining operations increased production and attracted significant investment from the French government and multinational firms. As a result, immigration surged as labor demand grew, which further reshaped the demographic balance of the island. These developments intensified feelings of marginalization among the Kanak population, particularly as open-pit mining operations destroyed their historic homeland. Nickel soon became the backbone of the territory’s economy, but its dominance also deepened political tensions between pro-independence groups and loyalist factions.

Tensions reached a breaking point after the 1984 establishment of Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS), a major pro-independence political party. Violence emerged as independence activists clashed with French and right wing loyalist settlers. While the Matignon Agreements of 1988 ended the immediate conflict, it wasn’t until the Nouméa Accord of 1998 that a long-term framework was established. The Nouméa Accord outlined a twenty year gradual transition plan aimed to end colonization, enhance infrastructure and education, and organize future independence referendums. A key provision also restricted electoral eligibility to long-term residents and their descendants, which intended to protect Kanak political influence. Despite these measures, tensions over sovereignty remained unresolved.

In 2024, tensions escalated again when the French government proposed a controversial electoral reform to expand voting rights to more recent residents of New Caledonia. While supporters described the bill as democratic modernization, many Kanak leaders viewed it as a deliberate attempt to dilute their electoral influence. The proposal triggered widespread protests that quickly developed into violent unrest. As a result, mistrust between pro-independence groups and the French state deepened significantly. With key industries, including nickel mining, disrupted and widespread property damage occurring, the French government responded with emergency measures, which included security crackdowns and restrictions on social media platforms such as TikTok. Many critics argued that these actions violated freedom of expression, but supporters of these measures claimed they were necessary to restore order and prevent further violence. By the end of the unrest, fourteen people had been killed and economic losses exceeded $2.4 billion.

Following the protests, France and New Caledonian political factions entered renewed negotiations. However, these discussions exposed deep internal divisions within New Caledonia itself. The territory has long been divided on the issue of independence. For example, in the 2020 independence referendum, 53.26% of voters wished to remain a part of France while 46.74% sought independence. With a voter turnout of 85.6%, the 2020 referendum truly captures the narrow split between New Caledonian residents. Many who support remaining within France are descendants of European settlers, known as Caldoches. Meanwhile, the independence movement is largely supported by the Kanak population, who make up approximately 41% of the territory. Although Kanak communities represent a significant ethnic group, they continue to experience significantly higher levels of poverty and unemployment, along with reduced access to education and housing. Caldoche wealth is primarily rooted in New Caledonia’s colonialist history, which is reflected by their dominant ownership of businesses, industry, and wealth. These economic and political divisions have produced competing visions for the territory’s future, and weakened the independence movement’s ability to act as a truly unified force. 

Negotiations between French and New Caledonian representatives culminated in the 2025 Bougival Accord, which proposed to redefine New Caledonia’s political status. Instead of remaining an overseas territory, New Caledonia would be elevated to the level of statehood. The agreement granted expanded autonomy, formal recognition of Kanak identity, and the possibility of a distinct New Caledonian nationality alongside French citizenship. It also included commitments to further institutional reform and a future referendum on the proposed arrangement. Pro-independence groups agreed to expand voter eligibility and adjust the number of seats in Congress for two majority Kanak areas. Meanwhile, loyalist factions agreed to provisions for dual nationality and future consultation on political status. In accordance with the Bougival Accord, the Elysée-Oudinot Accord was signed in January of 2026 to formalize economic, cultural, and institutional arrangements. However, implementation quickly stalled. 

Three months after the signing of the Elysée-Oudinot Accord, New Caledonian pro-independence MP Emmanuel Tijbaou introduced a motion to reject the proposed constitutional bill required to enshrine the both accords into the French Constitution. His motion successfully passed 190 votes to 107. Tijbaou’s motion blocked the ratification of the accords from being ratified into French law. Despite FLNKS previously signing the agreements, many within the movement supported the rejection. FLNKS members believed the reforms constrained meaningful self-determination and over-expanded voting rights. Subsequent talks between French PM Sébastien Lecornu, FLNKS leaders, and anti-independence factions have produced little progress, as disagreements centered on voting rights and the scope of future sovereignty. At the same time, the recent rejection also exposed divisions within French politics regarding the extent of decentralization and decolonization, resulting in a political stalemate.

Despite persistent internal divisions, recent political developments suggest that New Caledonia is closer to independence than ever before. Repeated failures to implement constitutional reforms have weakened confidence in France’s ability to manage a stable long-term relationship with New Caledonia. As debates over electoral rules and Kanak representation remain unresolved, each new cycle of negotiation has intensified skepticism among pro-independence groups. Many, such as the FLNKS, view French proposals as incremental extensions of control rather than genuine steps toward sovereignty. Although the independence movement is not united and French political resistance remains strong, the accumulation of political crises has shifted the debate away from whether change will occur toward how and when it might happen. Additionally, an independence referendum has not occurred in over five years, so current public opinion is uncertain. It is possible, however, that the 2024 protests along with the ongoing disagreements between France and New Caledonian political factions may have shifted attitudes toward independence. 

New Caledonia now stands at a crossroads of competing visions of identity, governance, and sovereignty. At the heart of the issue lies a fundamental question regarding who has the authority to define membership in the territory’s future state. Equally important and unresolved is the meaning of self-determination, and whether it can exist within a French framework. While no outcome is guaranteed, the recent patterns of unrest, stalled reforms, fractured negotiations, and French hesitance have transformed independence from a distant aspiration into a tangible and increasingly plausible outcome.

Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: “Flag Map of New Caledonia using their second official flag and pro-independence flag,” Image Sourced from Wikimedia Commons | CC License, no changes made

On May 11, 2025, members of Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa al-Musileen (JNIM) entered the northern town of Djibo in Burkina Faso. Over the next eleven hours, JNIM insurgents killed more than one hundred people and destroyed homes, businesses, and roads. Shortly after, JNIM seized the city of Diapaga, setting buildings, vehicles, and governmental infrastructure ablaze. Oddly, JNIM remained in the town for two additional days, departing from their typical pattern of rapid assault, loot, and withdrawal. The prolonged occupation has marked a new phase in insurgent strategy, indicating an ambition to control.  

Over time, attacks by Islamist insurgent groups, like JNIM, have intensified in both frequency and devastation. Across Burkina Faso’s northern border, Mali has also been crippled by the devastating attacks of the JNIM. On November 6th, JNIM surrounded the capital city of Bamako, inciting panic, causing gas shortages, and power was severed. The JNIM and other Islamist insurgent groups appear to be focused on tightening their rule over captured areas rather than merely destabilizing them. Meanwhile, the Burkinabé government has struggled to effectively respond to these groups. In this article, I will examine the recent political history of Burkina Faso, the effects of Islamist insurgents on the state, and how President Ibrahim Traoré has used the threat of extremism to justify his authoritarian regime. I argue that the rise of Islamist insurgents in Burkina Faso is inseparable from the country’s political instability, which has been intensified by decades of Western intervention, and that Traoré has exploited this crisis to consolidate his own power. 

Since gaining independence from France in 1960, Burkina Faso has faced many crises of governance. Coups, single-party rule, and authoritarianism have eroded the government’s stability and public trust. Moreover, foreign intervention from France and the United States has exacerbated these problems. French counterterrorism operations, particularly Operation Barkhane and Serval, placed a militarized foreign presence in Burkina Faso. Burkinabé saw France’s military presence as a neo-colonial effort that violated Burkina Faso’s national sovereignty. These foreign interventions do not establish stability, but empower military elites and foster resentment among civilians who view outside involvement as a continuation of neo-colonial governance. 

In 2022, Burkina Faso experienced two military coups within just nine months. The latter, orchestrated by Ibrahim Traoré, installed the current regime. Many onlookers optimistically envisioned Traoré as a successor to the revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara,who governed from 1983 to 1987. He sought to break the country from dependency on the West, promoting anti-imperialist reform, women’s rights, environmental activism, education, healthcare, and social welfare programs. His 1987 assassination, supported by foreign intelligence networks and executed by his close ally Blaise Compaoré, symbolized the fragility of Burkinabé politics and anti-imperialist movements. Compaoré’s subsequent 27 year rule ingrained corruption into the government and intensified the repression of political and civil rights. Following Compaoré’s ousting in 2014, Burkina Faso experienced eight leaders in eight years. By the time Traoré seized power in 2022, the state had been severely undermined by instability, internal conflict, foreign interference, and authoritarian rule. 

Ibrahim Traoré has since established his own authoritarian regime, promising to restore national sovereignty. Instead, Traoré has escalated the anti-democratic policies put into motion by Colonel Damiba, who disbanded the nation’s elected parliament and dissolved the Constitution in January of 2022. Shortly after seizing power, he suspended all political parties, indefinitely postponed all elections, and replaced democratically elected officials with military loyalists. He abolished the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI), dismissing it as financially wasteful, ineffective, and vulnerable to foreign interference. As a substitute, Traoré transferred all electoral responsibilities to the Ministry of Territorial Administration, which operates under his direct control. By entrusting his junta government with control over election management and certification, Traoré has deprived all future elections of independence and credibility. Despite pledging to restore democracy within three years of his coup, Traoré has extended his rule through a transitional charter. Even though there are regional demands for democracy, Traoré has systematically dismantled democratic institutions while maintaining the face of legality. Additionally, in addressing anti-imperalist issues, Traoré has consolidated the executive power under his own authoritarian power. 

Beyond political centralization, Traoré has overseen widespread repression of dissent. Human rights organizations, many with Western funding, have been expelled, with their workers detained and their reports censored. Traoré has framed these actions as necessary to end western neo-colonialism. Opposition politicians and journalists who criticize his government have been labeled “unpatriotic” and expelled from the powerless national assembly. Egregiously, Traoré has used forced military conscription as punishment. Former foreign minister Ablasse Ouedraogo, who is seventy years old, was arrested and forced to fight on the front lines against Islamist insurgents. Judges who have investigated corruption allegations were similarly detained or drafted. In September 2024, the junta extended its repression by criminalizing homsexuality, further restricting personal freedoms. All of these actions have capitalized on legitimate public fear and resentment toward Western influence. Together, historic Western interference and Traoré’s repressive rule have reinforced the internal instability that contributes to the very political vacuum that Islamists insurgent groups like JNIM seek to exploit.   

When Traoré seized power, insurgents groups controlled roughly 40% of the country. Since then, they have expanded their control. Despite promising quick victory over these Islamist groups, Traoré’s government has continued to lose authority. The rise of insurgents linked to al-Qaeda and ISIS has destabilized the country and strengthened Traoré’s justification for autocratic rule. Following a major attack in 2023, Traoré suspended various media outlets for reporting on the deteriorating security crisis. He warned that journalists who “communicate for the enemy” will “pay for it.” His government has criminalized online criticism under the cover of combating those who incite terrorism. Yet, dissenting reporters and regular citizens have faced censorship, intimidation, and imprisonment. Ultimately, Traoré has weaponized the country’s increasing insurgent activity to legitimize his authority and suppress any opposition. 

Meanwhile, the government’s inability to secure territory has forced it to redirect resources away from vital social programs. As a result, schools, hospitals, and courts have closed. Additionally, public trust has collapsed, and rural communities have been forced to rely on insurgent groups for food, medicine, and protection. Traroré has used these failures to rationalize deeper centralization of power. He’s continuously insisted that strong executive control is the only path to defeating terrorism. Overall, these insurgents have become a threat and a political asset, allowing Traoré to suppress dissent, eliminate democratic institutions, and justify prolonged military rule in the name of national security.

Islamist insurgents, like JNIM, in Burkina Faso cannot be separated from the country’s political and imperial history. Decades of coups, corruption, and foreign intervention have eroded the national government’s legitimacy, leaving millions vulnerable to the threat of terrorism. Traoré’s authoritarian governance has not restored order, but has instead maintained the very instability that insurgents exploit. By silencing civil dissent, dismantling democratic institutions, and prioritizing regime survival over public welfare, his government has ceded the proper legitimacy and capacity to rule. Lasting stability in Burkina Faso will depend not on defeating jihadist forces, but on the construction of a stable, inclusive, and trustful government that is free from the cycles of foreign intervention.

Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: “Captain Ibrahim Traoré, President of Burkina Faso, Head of State,” Image Sourced from Wikimedia Commons | CC License, no changes made

When Carolina entered the United States, she imagined the opportunities that the United States were to bring. Instead, she found herself stuffing plastic bags, moving quickly enough so the pounding machinery would not nick her fingers. Living with a family member she had never met, she stated, “sometimes I get tired and feel sick, but I’m getting used to it.” But Carolina isn’t alone. Rather, these factories are filled with child migrant workers who live under the care of government “vetted sponsors” through the unaccompanied minor system.  

The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) vets sponsors to send unaccompanied children to live with. Once a UAC is in United States custody, they can be sent to relatives or other vetted sponsors while they wait for immigration proceedings. Yet, when a watchdog probed into the system of vetting these sponsors, they found that there were serious systemic failings with assessing the viability of sponsors. These findings correspond with a 152% increase in illegal child labor since 2018, highlighting a trend that suggests that these unaccompanied minors are at risk of child exploitation and human trafficking. In order to protect these vulnerable children, many of whom migrate to the United States alone, the Office of Refugee Resettlement must re-evaluate and adapt their vetting procedures and hold leadership responsible to ensure these children are not being exploited by their sponsors.

This article focuses on how the system fails this vulnerable group in cases where sponsors are not properly vetted before release. There are many successful cases, however, in which UACs are properly sponsored. This article aims to take a comprehensive approach to the issue, one that transcends political administrations, and identify changes necessary to protect UACs.

The Unaccompanied Children (UAC) System

The UAC system allows migrant children to be paired with a government vetted sponsor to live lawfully in the United States as immigration proceedings continue. For many families, sending their children to the United States alone is an opportunity to escape high crime rates and poverty, even if under the care of a sponsor or relative they hardly know. It’s then no surprise the number of unaccompanied minors that were released by ORR to sponsors skyrocketed to over 100,000 over the last four years, a massive jump from around 16,000 in 2020.

While in many cases, these unaccompanied minors are successfully paired with sponsors that are credible, many being family members, there is a worrisome fraction that are susceptible to abuse in a system that is not fit to protect them. By placing these children in the hands of irresponsible, improperly vetted sponsors, it makes them vulnerable to illegal work, human trafficking, and exploitation. Children as young as 12 and 13 are forced to work in factories, and, while the exact number is disputed and exaggerated by many sources, thousands of children go missing or become unresponsive under this system. The vetting and sponsorship system becomes a formality, and these migrant children are put at serious risk because of lackluster frameworks. 

Holes in the System

In 2024, the Department of Health and Human Service’s (HSS) Office of the Inspector General found that 16% of children’s case files lacked documentation on what checks were conducted and 19% of children’s case files who were released to sponsors with pending documentation were never updated. When questioned by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the ORR Director was unable to properly answer questions about the 85,000 children that HSS had lost contact with over the last year. Between lack of transparency and lack of accountability, the very people who have the authority to directly protect these children put them at risk. An inability to properly communicate issues, and clear undesire to directly assess them, places the system at a disadvantage. 

Additionally, as applications flood the ORR, it makes genuine efforts to ensure credible sponsors more difficult. In many of these cases, it appears that information was not properly dealt with. Rather, unaccompanied children were carelessly sent to unfinished profiles that lacked documentation. Reports in 2021 from the Office of the Inspector General suggest that 35% of the files had “legibility concerns” from documents provided by the sponsors. When understaffed offices deal with a third of their documentation being near illegible, it becomes clear how these migrant children can be collateral damage in what becomes a lazy job. When combining how during the vetting process information is overlooked, and after there is no accountability or transparency, it paints a clearer picture of the situation. Those in power are unable to properly screen or follow up on their promises, with the lives and health of the children becoming a secondary issue that they provide no insight on how to remedy. 

Additionally concerning, however, is the perverse incentive of many sponsors to take on children and use debt to leverage power. In many of these cases where UACs are working essentially illegal jobs, sponsors leverage their position to enforce a debt system, where the children “owe” their sponsors monetary compensation for allowing them to be in the United States. For these individuals, many of whom are bad actors and not legitimate sponsors, they target the unaccompanied minor system as a way to exploit child labor for financial gain. 

Adjusting the System

With bad actors throughout all steps of the system, it can be difficult to construct meaningful changes and policies to reflect the interests of unaccompanied minors. However, it is critical to hold those in charge accountable, while providing clearer and  more comprehensive frameworks throughout the process to protect this vulnerable group from exploitation and human trafficking.

Prioritizing proper vetting of sponsors is critical to ensuring the safety of unaccompanied minors before they are able to be exploited. This includes instituting a more comprehensive follow-up system. Currently, sponsors are subject to interviews, background checks, forms, and fingerprinting to become a viable sponsor. However, as demonstrated above, many times proper documentation can slip through the cracks. It is important to conduct extensive interviews on candidates, including asking their reasons for applying to become a sponsor. Additionally, proper oversight of documentation and filing must be done. In many cases, sponsors will fill out multiple forms claiming that a UAC is their family member. When layered together, these sponsors allege to have unreasonable numbers of family members migrating. Some even use the same address under different names. It is important for the ORR to hire adequate amounts of people to search through these documents, ensure that all information is received before an unaccompanied minor is released, and follow-up with their cases in a timely manner. The follow-up procedure must be documented alongside the profile, whether it be by phone or in-person, and the Office should require that all unaccompanied minors are met with in-person upon a month, six months, and a year of release. Having the bandwidth to do this may be difficult, requiring the hiring of professionals who are able to satisfactorily ensure the work is done. However, these steps are critical to properly vet sponsors before UACs are released to them.

To combat the issue of transparency and accountability for the ORR, there must be guidelines in place, including reporting from the ORR of proper numbers and frequent checks on the Office to uphold their responsibilities. Allowing the Director of the ORR to be unresponsive to the thousands of children that may go missing under their office is unacceptable. Rather, real, coercive measures should be implemented to ensure that there is incentive for the ORR to act responsibly and credibly. This can include frequent House or Senate hearings about their work, mandating reporting, and checks from other HSS Offices. Ultimately, the ORR must be held accountable for their work and be transparent about the number of unaccompanied children that may be mistreated within their system in order to reform it. 

Conclusion

When unaccompanied minors show up to the United States, they come in the most vulnerable forms: exhausted, starved, and alone. In order to protect these children, it is critical that the government, and the systems that vet their sponsors, take accountability and adequately carry out their responsibilities. When children, like Carolina, are subject to harsh working conditions in the United States, it can exacerbate the already heavy mental toll. Ultimately, it is on the onus of the United States government to increase transparency and accountability, and provide more strict frameworks in the vetting system to protect these children against the very exploitation they came to the United States to escape. 

Featured/Headline Image Caption and Citation: “South Texas Border – U.S. Customs and Border Protection provide assistance to unaccompanied alien children after they have crossed the border into the United States,” Image Sourced from Wikimedia Commons | CC License, no changes made