Evan Vucci/AP

Acting Secretary of State John Sullivan listens as President Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House, Monday, April 9, 2018, in Washington.

President Trump wants to get the United States out of Syria. Yet events in Syria may be pulling the US into deeper involvement in that nation’s desperate civil war.

Chemical weapons are the issue at hand. Over the weekend, the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad apparently unleashed an asphyxiating chemical attack on Douma, a rebel-held suburb of Damascus. Images of the aftermath were heartrending.

“Big price to pay,” Mr. Trump tweeted on Sunday, threatening almost certain retaliation for an action that defiantly crossed a red line established a year ago, when the US ripple-fired cruise missiles at Syrian airfields in retaliation for a similar atrocity.

A US military response could come as early as Monday evening, according to administration officials. That represents something of a turnaround. Only last week, Trump was publicly insisting that it is time for US forces in Syria to pack up and come home, given that ISIS has largely been defeated in the region.

“Let the other people take care of it now!” Trump said at a rally in Ohio.

If only things were that simple. Generations of presidents have discovered that the World War II model of armed intervention – win a big victory, bring troops home, case closed – often doesn’t work in today’s world. We’re still in Korea, Iraq (somewhat), Afghanistan, and other trouble spots. Truth be told, it didn’t work entirely after World War II, given that the US still has forces in Europe.

“We think we’re going in for a short term, then we’re leaving. The fact is that kind of analysis is frequently wrong. The mere fact of intervening creates new issues, creates new responsibilities,” says George Edwards III, university distinguished professor of political science at Texas A&M University.

The president’s public statement last week that he wanted to clear out of Syria took his advisers and the Department of Defense by surprise. Trump’s reasoning was that the main US goal had been reached, with ISIS ousted from the Syrian and Iraqi territory that comprised its self-declared “caliphate.” Yes, Syria’s civil war is going on, but it is clearly tipping in favor of Mr. Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies. That’s not as large a US strategic concern, in Trump’s view. He campaigned on a policy of “America First,” after all.

Aides convinced the president that an immediate withdrawal was impractical. But he made it clear that he wanted the troops out as soon as possible, meaning months at most, not years.

Then came the Douma attack, with images of asphyxiated children and other civilians. This apparently raised a conflicting impulse in the president. “We’re talking about humanity and it can’t be allowed to happen,” he told reporters at the start of a cabinet meeting Monday.

According to Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona, Trump’s public declaration of impending withdrawal may have emboldened Assad to use chemical weapons for a final push to clear a stubborn rebel stronghold.

But some other experts said the attack highlights reasons why Trump is urging the correct strategy in this case.

“It almost reinforces my contention that we need to get out. This thing is as chaotic and explosive as it gets,” says Daniel L. Davis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and senior fellow at the think tank Defense Priorities.

There is little or no strategic benefit in continued US involvement in Syria, says Mr. Davis. US forces currently in the region are relatively modest, he says. A continued US presence risks inadvertent fighting between US aircraft or troops and counterparts from Russia, an ally of Assad.

Nor would US retaliation on the scale of last year’s cruise missile attacks do much to deter Assad from future attacks, according to Davis.

“What did we do last year? Twenty-four hours later they were flying aircraft off those airfields. It had zero impact,” he says.

Others say that while Trump is right to emphasize that Russia, Iran, and others should pay to prop up Assad and rebuild destroyed sections of Syria, premature withdrawal of US forces would be a disaster, as was premature withdrawal from Iraq.

Such a withdrawal would deprive the US of leverage in the region, while abandoning the last vestiges of moderate Arab forces in Syria, according to Anthony Cordesman, the Arleigh Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

It would expose the Kurdish forces that were crucial in the fight against ISIS to defeat by Assad and Turkey, writes Mr. Cordesman in an analysis of the current Syria situation. It would undermine US trustworthiness in the eyes of Arab regimes, while appearing to grant Iran and Russia a strategic victory.

“It is a dangerous mistake to assume that withdrawal from Syria can come soon, and to act before ISIS is fully defeated, at a time when other extremist movements are gathering power,” Cordesman writes.

Other presidents have faced similar situations. Some were more fraught, with even higher stakes. Think of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, fully aware that victory in Vietnam was a chimera, pouring US troops into Southeast Asia because he did not want to look weak, or risk losing the region to communism.

Trump ran for president insisting he wouldn’t waste US treasure on foreign wars. He also positioned himself as the opposite of President Barack Obama – who, when it came to Syria, didn’t hit Assad when he should have, in Trump’s view.

Thus Trump is now facing contradictory imperatives. He wants to get out, but he also wants to be strong, and he has already set a precedent for trying to punish bad Syrian behavior.

“Presidents create their own pressures,” says Professor Edwards of Texas A&M.

Hoping to improve the chances for peace where his predecessors failed, the United Nations’ new Special Envoy for Yemen has completed his first meetings with key players in a devastating war.

The good news may be that the envoy, Martin Griffiths, is encouraged about the prospects to ease a conflict that has left some 10,000 people dead in three years and ravaged one of the world’s poorest countries.

“What I heard has inspired me and gives me hope that we can find a path to peace,” Ambassador Griffiths said in Yemen’s capital Sanaa March 31. “All the people I met, both in Riyadh and Sanaa, spoke about their strong desire to move ahead with a political solution. There is no doubt of a desire for peace.”

Yet the bad news is that Griffith’s efforts may be hobbled by UN Security Council Resolution 2216 from 2015, which has been used by the internationally recognized Yemen government and its chief supporter, Saudi Arabia, to legitimize military intervention against Shiite Houthi rebels and create a serious obstacle to negotiations.

Analysts say the conflict has now evolved beyond that resolution, which explicitly requires that the Iran-backed Houthis give up their weapons and leave cities.

Any framework for peace, the analysts say, must also be updated to account for the following:

• widespread Houthi gains in a war that lasted years longer than expected

• fragmented parties and multiple power centers on all sides, many of which benefit from a war economy

• desperately urgent humanitarian needs for millions of Yemenis

• and a war that has ground to a stalemate, despite nearly 17,000 coalition airstrikes, which the UN blames for two-thirds of civilian casualties.

“The fact is, this is a very rigid Security Council resolution, for a conflict that’s been very fluid and evolved quite a bit over the last three years,” says Adam Baron, a Yemen expert with the European Council on Foreign Relations, contacted in Beirut.

“In a lot of ways, 2216 outlines something that – even if parts of it are still valid – it’s something that really does fail to address the complexities of the Yemen conflict as it exists today,” Mr. Baron says.

US and British support

The 2015 resolution was supported by the United States and Britain, allies of Saudi Arabia who have sold billions of dollars of weaponry to Saudi Arabia and its chief coalition partner, the United Arab Emirates, throughout the war. They have also provided intelligence and mid-air refueling services for coalition jet fighters.

Human rights groups accuse all sides of committing war crimes in Yemen, but single out the Saudi-led coalition for “indiscriminate bombing” that has devastated civilian infrastructure and say it is the side most responsible for creating what the UN now calls the “worst man-made humanitarian crisis in the world.”

There are no signs yet that either the US or Britain, as permanent members of the Security Council – much less Saudi Arabia – are interested in a new resolution that would inevitably raise the Houthis’ negotiating status vis-a-vis the internationally recognized Yemen government, which resides in exile in Riyadh.

Eskinder Debebe/UN/AP

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (r. rear) and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (l. rear) watch as their representatives sign a voluntary financial contribution memo for the Yemeni humanitarian response plan, March 27, 2018, at UN headquarters. The Crown Prince presented the United Nations with a check for $930 million, delivering on the January pledge it made with the United Arab Emirates to contribute to the Yemen Humanitarian Fund.

Resolution 2216 has been used by that Yemeni government, Saudi Arabia, and its allies to insist that the Houthis surrender and withdraw – as required by the text – as a precondition for peace talks, analysts say. The Houthis have indicated a willingness to talk, and even to hand over heavy weapons to a government that represents all factions, but only as a result of any talks.

“There is a political solution, but I think the new UN Special Envoy – as much as the former UN Special Envoy – is faced with this impossible precondition to the negotiations,” says Marie-Christine Heinze, a Yemen specialist and president of the Center for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient (CARPO) in Bonn, Germany.

The 2015 resolution “condemns the Houthis, rightly so, for the coup that they did,” says Dr. Heinze. But she adds that today Houthis have little incentive to simply surrender their arms and territory at the outset, before talks begin.

Without a change, or some creative diplomacy, the UN Special Envoy “can’t address all sides on an equal level and broker a solution that keeps the dignity of all sides intact, which is an important precondition for all mediation efforts,” says Heinze.

The humanitarian challenge

And the humanitarian stakes have only grown. A UN pledging conference in Geneva Tuesday generated more than $2 billion in pledges, with $930 million coming from Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres praised the “remarkable success” of the pledge drive, which provided two-thirds of the UN’s 2018 appeal for $2.96 billion to provide “life-saving assistance to 13 million people.” But the UN chief said resources alone were “not enough,” and that also necessary were unrestricted access across front lines and the protection of civilians.

“Above all, we need a serious political process to lead to a political solution,” said Mr. Guterres.

That message is highlighted on the ground in Yemen, too, where the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and other agencies have struggled to cope with an air, land, and sea blockade imposed by the Saudi-led coalition. That nominally eased since November.

WFP monitoring during the final quarter of 2017 and January 2018, for example, showed a “significant deterioration in the food security situation,” with the number of districts facing a higher risk of famine increasing 13 percent, according to Ally Raza Qureshi, the WFP Yemen Deputy Representative in Sanaa.

Though the WFP is targeting 7.6 million Yemenis, with its partners feeding millions of others, the “humanitarian space in Yemen is significantly shrinking and many bureaucratic impediments are being imposed,” says Mr. Qureshi.

Cash pledges “are essential to end this humanitarian catastrophe, but sustainable peace is the only real solution to alleviate the suffering in Yemen,” he says.

And achieving that is the new job of Special Envoy Griffiths.

A new resolution?

Besides navigating the Saudi-led conflict against the Houthis, he will also have to thread his way through a mosaic of power centers that have emerged in Yemen, many of them tied together by profiting from the war economy, says Osamah al-Rawhani, the program director of the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies.

Mr. Rawhani adds his voice to those criticizing Resolution 2216, which he notes helped cause deadlock in previous negotiations and “has not actually helped the cause of Yemen in any sense.”

“Just having one of the warring parties use this as a main pretext, while the other side sees itself as the victim of this resolution, creates another obstacle,” says Rawhani.

“The international community could show its serious commitment to achieve peace in Yemen by working towards a new UN resolution that pressures all sides to bring this conflict to an end,” he says. “Yemenis have suffered for so long.”

The new UN envoy “probably could make a difference” if he maintains his independence from regional powers as well as outside actors like the US and Britain, says Rawhani. “With a very practical approach, he might bring something new to the table.”

Another key factor for the envoy will be the warring sides themselves, and the incentives they have to stop fighting.

“Everyone’s willing to talk, but is anyone willing to take action?” asks analyst Baron in Beirut. Both the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition think they can improve their chances in the talks with time, he says.

“So you’re still at a point where the question is: Are talks about resolving the conflict? Or are talks just about buying more time to improve negotiating positions for the ‘actual’ talks?”

Jessica Mendoza/The Christian Science Monitor

Esther Margaux "Mocha" Uson poses in front of the Philippine flag hanging from a wall in her offices at the presidential complex in Manila, Philippines, on Thursday, March 1. Ms. Uson, an entertainer and performer, became among President Rodrigo Duterte's most vocal supporters during the 2016 campaign. In 2017 she was appointed assistant secretary for social media for the Presidential Communications Operations Office, a post she holds today.

Mocha Uson sweeps into her office at the presidential compound, assistant at her booted heels. She’s late, rushing in from another engagement that ran longer than planned. But she appears composed, almost reserved, as she arranges herself on a faux-leather settee and waits for the interview to begin.

In this setting it’s hard to picture Esther Margaux Uson, known countrywide as “Mocha,” sashaying across a stage in vinyl hot pants or dispensing advice on sex and relationships. Yet for the better part of a decade, provocative entertainment was the core of her career – first fronting for the Mocha Girls, an all-female music group known for racy numbers, and later responding to intimate reader questions via a series of written and video blogs.

Then in 2015, she learned about Rodrigo Duterte.

“He was different from traditional politicians. And at the time … there weren’t any well-known personalities who publicly supported him,” Ms. Uson says in a mix of English and Tagalog. “So I said, ‘I have to make a stand.’ ”

Through the first few months of 2016, she stunned the Philippine political world by converting the Mocha Uson Blog to an online rallying point for supporters of President Duterte. Its transformation was in some ways the singular product of a nation that regularly elects celebrities into government and ranks first in the world in social media use.

Her ascent, however, also reflects an evolving global political landscape, where information is democratized and every opinion has the opportunity to find a platform. Citizens can directly hold institutions like media and government accountable, while the latter can respond to their constituents sans mediator. Given reach and charisma, anybody with a voice – sex symbols, high-school students, TV comedians, real-estate moguls – can scale the heights of political influence and authority.

The price is often decreased civility, and consensus, say experts. Tribal lines are quickly drawn and held, and fact becomes flightier, hard to pin down and easy to manipulate. The social-media savvy – both individual and corporate – possess more power than ever to shape the tone, trajectory, and themes of political discourse.

Few countries today epitomize this new reality as clearly as the Philippines, the social-media capital of the world, with a norm-breaking president whose campaign supporters harnessed this shifting online landscape to win the election. And few individuals embody it as clearly as Uson. As the 2016 campaign season picked up steam, her name became inseparable from the Duterte lobby, drawing animosity and acclaim in near-equal measure from Filipinos at home and abroad. Her Facebook base has since ballooned from 2.5 million to more than 5 million – a figure that remains unrivaled even by the head of state she serves. In May 2017, after a brief stint with the government’s entertainment regulation board, she was named assistant secretary at the Presidential Communications Operations Office.

Uson shrugs when confronted with her apparent success. “The journey has been colorful and exciting. And I have a sense of fulfillment,” she says. But to her, much of the road thus far seems inevitable. Her feelings about Duterte’s candidacy compelled her to speak out on his behalf, she says, and she felt just as obliged to use Facebook to do so. Because what better way to spread an idea than on a platform that boasts up to 67 million users in the Philippines?

“Everything is on social media,” Uson says. “We can’t avoid the fact that it’s the direction information dissemination is going.”

***

Experts around the world have been making similar pronouncements since at least 2008, when Barack Obama became among the first politicians to leverage social networks to get out the vote. Less than three years later, the Arab Spring – the series of revolutionary protests that, thanks to Twitter, swept across Tunisia, Egypt, and the Middle East – became, briefly, a symbol of social media’s potential to reinvigorate democracy. “It was the era of the revolution down through the wires: time was collapsed and geography shrunk by the use of social networking,” Irish novelist Colum McCann wrote for The New York Times in 2011.

Today about 2.6 billion people use social media worldwide, up from fewer than a billion in 2010. From India to Sudan, the US to the U.K., social media – and the very public web of information and misinformation it weaves – has helped elect leaders, birth movements, crush rebellions, and intensify divides.

Mr. Duterte’s election proved to be the watershed moment for social media and politics in the Philippines. Leading up to 2016, frustration with political leadership after decades of what was widely perceived as weak and corrupt government coincided with a rise in affordable mobile data plans. Filipinos yearning for political change had better access than ever to the online political sphere.

“It made it so much cheaper to engage with each other,” says Tony La Viña, former dean of the School of Government at Ateneo de Manila University. “People felt very liberated to be able to participate in debates, to have [their] opinions disseminated.”

For those who understood the social media space, it also meant new opportunities to amass both profit and political capital. Bloggers like Uson – “influencers,” in public relations parlance – rose to prominence, becoming the most powerful voices for those who had felt excluded from public discourse. Indeed, much of the success of social media in Philippine politics has pivoted on the perception that it is the unvarnished and authentic alternative to traditional media: the newspapers, television and radio stations, and online news sites that Duterte supporters say all but ignored the president’s campaign and continue to smear his administration with negative stories.

“It was the erosion of trust in mainstream [news outlets]. People were looking for an alternative voice,” says pro-Duterte blogger Rey Joseph Nieto, also known as “Thinking Pinoy” (a Tagalog slang term for Filipino). “They found me, [blogger] Sass [Rogando Sasot], and Mocha – for better or for worse.”

“Fake news” is a constant preoccupation of bloggers on the other end of the political spectrum, as well. But their goal is to support, not subvert, traditional media.

“Most of my posts are about debunking false propaganda and calling out the shortcomings of government officials,” says Jover Laurio, whose Pinoy Ako Blog (“I am Filipino”) drew attention for its cutting letters addressed to the administration and its allies.

“And to stop the killing,” she adds, referring to the president’s violent antidrug campaign. “Every time I write a letter, I pray that they read it.”

Less conspicuous than the blogger cohort are the PR and marketing firms who manage politicians’ social media campaigns. A report released earlier this year explored the extent to which such firms, and the strategists who run them, have developed a blueprint for manipulating political opinion in the Philippines via social media. Using the techniques of corporate marketing, these “architects of networked disinformation” hire teams of “digital influencers” to push a particular message on Facebook comment sections and Twitter feeds. The campaigns, which can involve seeding revisionist history or hijacking attention through artificial hashtags, are motivated largely by profit, according to the report.

“The thing about social media is, its incentive structures are about visibility,” says Jonathan Corpus Ong, co-author of the report and associate professor of global digital media at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “What comes up on our news feed is the one that is more popular and is most liked. There are ways in which these algorithms can be gamed and manipulated. That’s made it easy for particular operators to weaponize [it] for politics.”

***

Jessica Mendoza/The Christian Science Monitor

Blogger Jover Laurio poses with a fan and a copy of her book at a booth at a rally commemorating the anniversary of the 1986 People Power Revolution in Quezon City, Philippines, on Sunday, Feb. 25, 2018. The book, titled "Resibo" ("receipt"), is a compilation of Ms. Laurio's posts on her site "Pinoy Ako Blog" ("I am Filipino"), where she writes cutting letters to members and allies of President Rodrigo Duterte's administration.

The effects of all this on the Philippine political space have been far-reaching – and familiar, to audiences following social media’s effects in the West. Online vitriol is at an all-time high. Trust in traditional media outlets is at an equivalent low, with Filipino webizens saying they trust social media more than mainstream publications.

And there’s the sense that, especially on social media, there exist two realities. In one, the Philippines is a place of fear and chaos, where innocents are gunned down in the streets and a foul-mouthed despot encourages ruthless justice against those who defy him. In the other, the country is just beginning to ascend to economic heights and international prestige through the ministrations of a strong, if somewhat vulgar, leader willing to do what needs to be done.

In the living room of a modest apartment, Laurio – feeling under the weather, and in pajamas – fumes at the president’s crusade against the news outlets that have criticized his actions. Her own quest to bring the administration to account has led to daily threats against her life and person on Facebook and Twitter. Recently, a stranger pretending to be a cable guy allegedly cased her home, forcing her to move to this borrowed residence.

Laurio grieves most over the deaths that have piled up in the wake of Duterte’s drug war – and the war of perception being waged online over the killings. During his campaign, Duterte vowed to eradicate illegal drugs from the country, however violently, and the ensuing body count has earned international condemnation. Reports, however, conflict on how many have been killed and by whom. The government says some 4,000 suspects who resisted arrest have been killed in police operations, but watchdog groups allege that the total slain runs thousands more.

“What hurts the most in this country today is that we’re not fighting about who was killed,” Laurio says. “We’re fighting over the numbers. ‘There weren’t 13,000 dead, just 3,000.’ It’s like life has no value anymore.”

She casts much of the blame on Duterte’s online defenders. “If these people post fake news and nobody corrects them, how is the ordinary person – many of whom look up to these figures – supposed to know any better?” Laurio asks. “Of course they’ll believe them.”

Crying “fake news,” however, has become an equal-opportunity game – one that many Duterte critics fear has already harmed press freedom. In January, the country’s Securities and Exchange Commission revoked the license of news organization Rappler for violating laws against foreign ownership. Rappler’s management has called the move politically motivated, given the outlet’s coverage of the anti-drug campaign. The outlet is still operating while it appeals the decision, but the presidential complex has barred a Rappler reporter, and the government is now investigating it for tax evasion.

At her office on the other side of town, Uson argues “fake news” is proliferating online, but Filipinos see the truth: a president who drew thousands of supporters to his rallies, rejects the pomp and ceremony of traditional politics, and responds to the needs of the nearly 2 million overseas Filipino workers whose yearly remittances help prop up the economy.

She also dismisses the notion that he curtails free speech. The media, bloggers included, should be held accountable for biases and inaccuracies, says Uson, who has criticized journalists as “presstitutes.” “They’re saying: ‘[We need] freedom of expression,’ but when these ordinary people, Filipino people, execute their freedom of expression, they can’t accept it,” says Uson, emphasizing that she faces her share of venom online.

Perhaps the one thing the two women, and their respective camps, would agree on is that for the foreseeable future, social media will remain a chief battleground over the nation’s prospects and politics – and how the Filipino people see both. And neither Uson nor Laurio have any intention of backing down from the fight.

“We can’t keep going on ‘the straight path,’ because the country gained nothing from it,” Uson says, referring to the previous administration’s platform. “We’re still drowning in poverty … corruption, criminality. That’s why we fought for Duterte.”

“Sometimes I get scared,” Laurio admits. “But I think of the people who tell me, ‘You are our voice.’ People who are afraid to speak out. So whenever I start to regret getting into this, I think about them.”

Part 1 of 2: The Duterte dissonance: One leader, two Philippines?

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Raimundo Espinoza Chirinos (r.) helps local fisherman Jonathan Ortiz Pobon with a underwater camera on March 13, 2018 in Naguabo, Puerto Rico.

Raimundo Espinoza Chirinos leans over the side of a fishing boat and points at a dark blur rising up slowly beneath the choppy water. “Here he comes. He’s got something,” Mr. Espinoza says, as fisherman Julio Ortiz breaks the surface of the water. Mr. Ortiz, wearing a short-sleeved wet suit and small circular mask, treads water as he heaves up a contraption made of red plastic milk crates fastened together with rope.

It’s a fish trap – an illegal one, given that it’s made of plastic – that was lost when hurricane Maria tore across Puerto Rico last year. The estimated hundreds of traps that were swept out to sea in September are not only capturing and killing lobster and fish but also potentially seeping chemicals into water and the seafood people eat.

“There are no markings on the surface [for these lost traps], which means only someone under the water every day is likely to find them,” says Espinoza, founder of Conservación ConCiencia, a nonprofit supported by The Ocean Foundation that works on sustainable fisheries and climate resilience here.

When hurricane Maria crashed into Puerto Rico the morning of Sept. 20, 2017, the entire population suffered. Six months later, tens of thousands of families are still without electricity, and evidence of the homes and livelihoods swept away by the rain and ferocious winds litters communities – and the ocean floor.

Alfredo Sosa/Staff

Raimundo Espinoza Chirinos stands on the boat as local fishermen dive on March 13, 2018 in Naguabo, Puerto Rico. Ray Espinoza runs Conservacion ConCiencia, an organization that hires fisherman to retrieve illegal, or lost, lobster cages off the coast.

Espinoza launched Conservación ConCiencia in 2016, first leading a trip to Cuba for Puerto Rican fishermen to focus on conservation and fishing practices, and later starting Puerto Rico’s first shark research and conservation program. But in the aftermath of the storm, he realized he needed to change gears.

“Everyone kept asking, ‘How’s the ocean? What’s the damage?’ ” Espinoza recalls. “And it became clear that no one knew. Everything was in crisis [on the island], and no one was looking” at the fisheries.

He received funding from a Puerto Rican organization to help replace lost fishing gear, although only items that are considered sustainable and safe for local fisheries. He also teamed up with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to launch an emergency relief project. That’s what he is doing out on the water today with Ortiz, the fisherman.

The project taps into the skill sets of fishermen here and offers added benefits such as economic support and the building of relationships between fishermen, scientists, and government officials. Its premise is simple: When fishermen go out diving for lobster and conch, a common practice here, and see a trap on the ocean floor or in a coral reef, they take note of the GPS location and send it to Espinoza. He then returns with them, documents the removal, and pays them for their time.

Valuing fishermen

It’s a unique project and could set an example for future coastal disasters around the world.

Ortiz and his two sons, Jonathan and Orlando Ortiz Pobon, are all working together on today’s cleanup mission.

They were skeptical when they first heard that someone was offering money to help remove lost traps after the storm. Maybe they’d drive a scientist or official around, but surely they wouldn’t be paid, Ortiz recalls thinking.

Soon after Maria, Espinoza started showing up in fishing ports like Naguabo, bringing food and water from San Juan, the island’s capital. “This was some of the first aid we saw,” says Ortiz, referring to the weeks following the storm. His home in nearby Punta Santiago flooded. The top floor of a neighbor’s home was washed away. The storage lockers on the dock in Naguabo, like those in other fishing towns across Puerto Rico, were washed out to sea, taking with them the fishing gear – and work – of many families here.

Espinoza began meeting fishermen and telling them about his project. Today he’s working with about 25 individuals in five communities.

“We need to change the system that’s always asking favors of fishermen but doesn’t treat them as a valuable resource,” Espinoza says as he adjusts an action camera on Jonathan’s wrist. Jonathan tips backward into the water to look for traps with his father.

The camera is a small but key step in the project. It documents the ocean floor, creating a record of sea-grass growth, coral reefs, and other aspects of the fisheries’ health post-Maria. It also records the process the fishermen use to remove the traps and can be used as a teaching tool for other fishermen joining the project.

Espinoza reports that he and his collaborators removed 155 lost traps from the ocean floor between Jan. 29 and March 13. The fishermen are paid $100 per trap, which comes out to roughly $500 per trip. Today, Ortiz and his sons recovered 10 traps from a small underwater cave about 55 feet beneath the water’s surface.

It’s a vital economic boost at a moment when gear is damaged and the ecosystem is in flux. Ortiz says he earned between $150 and $180 per day fishing before Maria, and that since the storm, key species like conch aren’t where they used to be.

But it’s more than money that motivates the men to participate. “A clean ocean is important for the future of our work and for the health of our fish,” Ortiz says.

“I found 60 lobsters in a [lost] trap,” Jonathan adds. “They were all basically dead. Wasted,” he says.

Earlier that morning, he had surfaced from the water to ask Espinoza to pass him a hammer. He dived back down to whack on a trap wedged in the rocks below.

Hailing from a landlocked city

The water is choppy, and Espinoza mentions he’s feeling a little queasy. Despite his dedication to the sea, this wasn’t the environment he grew up in. Born and raised in the landlocked Andean city of Quito, Ecuador, he became fascinated with marine life following a family trip to the Galápagos Islands when he was in fifth grade.

He went on to earn degrees in environmental studies and sustainable development and conservation biology in the United States, eventually moving to Puerto Rico, where his father had moved for work.

It was during a semester researching sea turtles in Baja California, Mexico, when he realized the importance of social connections in conservation efforts. Outside of his fieldwork, he tutored local children in English, with a focus on vocabulary about the environment. After he talked about protecting endangered sea turtles one day, one of his students told him excitedly that his uncle had given him one for his birthday. Espinoza thought the child was confused: Sea turtles are protected. He probably meant a snapping turtle.

But sure enough, several weeks later the student came in with his sea turtle – and his extended family.

“Just the connections we made talking about sea turtles and their importance in a basic English class led to its release,” Espinoza says.

“It made me realize the strong ties between our ecosystem and community involvement,” he says. “It can’t just be scientists talking about conservation; locals need to be invested, too.”

His project working with fishermen after Maria is true to that philosophy. And it’s gone beyond fishing communities helping him efficiently clean polluting debris from the ocean. They’ve also opened a window into the realities of fishing in Puerto Rico, realities that even government agencies tasked with overseeing the practice weren’t aware of.

Espinoza estimates that some 95 percent of the traps they’ve uncovered are illegal.

“We knew people used illegal traps, but we didn’t know the extent of it, and it’s quite big,” says Ricardo López, director of commercial fisheries at Puerto Rico’s Department of Natural and Environmental Resources. “I think this project ... will not only help clean the waters but better integrate fishermen” into formal environmental protection efforts, he says. It could inform future oversight efforts as well.

After about an hour of diving, the back half of the boat is packed with rectangular plastic traps in red, yellow, black, and white.

“We need to work directly with the fishermen to transition into legal gear,” Espinoza says. “They have a vast knowledge of the water here. Together, I’m confident we’ll see change.”

For more information, visit conservacionconciencia.org.

How to take action

UniversalGiving helps people give to and volunteer for top-performing charitable organizations around the world. All the projects are vetted by UniversalGiving; 100 percent of each donation goes directly to the listed cause. Below are links to three groups whose efforts dovetail with the issues discussed in the accompanying story:

• Miracles in Action provides Guatemalans living in extreme poverty with opportunities to help themselves through sustainable development projects. Take action: Make a donation so a family can learn how to fish or grow food.

• Osa Conservation applies scientific and other expertise to protecting the biodiversity of the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica. Take action: Finance the planting of trees to help restore a rainforest.

• UniversalGiving responds to crises by identifying top-performing nonprofits that are well positioned to lend assistance. Take action: Contribute to UniversalGiving’s Crisis Relief Fund.

Nati Harnik/AP/File

Justin Bainbridge poses for a picture where he works at the Prairie Life Fitness Center in Omaha, Neb., Jan. 25, 2017.

For years, Donald Minor says, he blamed a disability – a lack of muscle control in his arms and legs – for his unemployment. Five years ago, he almost didn’t go to an interview for a job with duties that included lifting boxes.

But he went, and landed his first internship. From there he found a job in customer service with Rails to Trails Conservancy in Washington, D.C., where he’s been for 2-1/2 years.

“Employers need to give people with disabilities an opportunity,” says Mr. Minor. “And people with disabilities need to put themselves out there, learn, and grow.”

People with disabilities are entering the workforce in unprecedented numbers. According to data from the Institute on Disability at the University of New Hampshire and RespectAbility, a nonprofit that advances opportunities for people with disabilities, 343,483 disabled people joined the workforce in 2016, four times as many as the previous year.

“It is fantastic to see the fourfold improvement in one year,” says Jennifer Mizrahi, president of RespectAbility. Changes in legislation, leadership, and media “are starting to have a positive impact.”

That jump suggests a shift in the way the United States thinks about people with disabilities, the largest minority group in the country. One in 5 Americans, or 56 million people, is classified as disabled, according to the US Census Bureau. “At the macro level, we are absolutely seeing a shift in societal attitudes towards people with disabilities,” says Philip Kahn-Pauli, director of policy and practices at RespectAbility.

Experts attribute the dramatic rise in employment of this group to a host of factors: a recovering economy and tight labor market that have employers searching untapped talent pools; government incentives and regulations around hiring people with disabilities; more people identifying themselves as such; and more accessible technology.

And on a cultural level, media is reshaping how we think of this group, says Mr. Kahn-Pauli. “Television reflects and shapes how we think about each other,” he says, pointing to shows like “Born This Way” and “Speechless.” Research shows authentic portrayals of minority characters can positively influence people’s attitudes, he says.

In 1990, Congress enacted the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibited employment discrimination on the basis of disability. In 2014, President Barack Obama signed into law the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, which promotes work for disabled people that is fully integrated with colleagues who don’t have disabilities and makes sure they receive comparable wages and benefits.

“However, policy change doesn’t necessarily equate to culture change,” says Mindy Deardurff, dean of career development at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn. “Getting hired with a disability ... can be incredibly challenging.”

Statistics confirm this. Some 36 percent of adults with disabilities had a job, compared with 77 percent of people without disabilities, according to the 2017 Annual Disability Statistics Compendium. Part of the problem is educational attainment. RespectAbility says 65 percent of students with disabilities finish high school and less than 7 percent complete college. And certain groups are more likely to be left behind. Only 28 percent of African Americans and 37 percent of Hispanics with disabilities have jobs, according to RespectAbility’s report.

The good news is that certain states and corporations offer lessons. North Dakota, for example, leads the nation with 54 percent of its people with disabilities employed, followed by South Dakota (52 percent), Minnesota, and Alaska (both 48 percent). Kahn-Pauli attributes their success to strong state leadership, a recovering economy and legislation including tax incentives for hiring or making adaptations for such people, state goals for contracting with businesses owned by people with disabilities, and mandates for accessible transportation.

The private sector star: Walgreens. In 2007, the company launched bold goals for hiring people with disabilities. In 2016, more than 900 Walgreens employees identified themselves as such, while 1,300 people with disabilities completed retail training.

What Walgreens and other corporate leaders like Starbucks, Pepsi, and IBM know is that hiring people with disabilities isn’t an act of charity. Data show this group has higher productivity, lower turnover, and a better safety record than people without disabilities.

“At the end of the day, our nation was founded on the principle that anyone who works hard should be able to get ahead in life,” Ms. Mizrahi says. “People with disabilities deserve the opportunity to earn an income and achieve independence just like anyone else.”

White Helmets/Reuters

A girl looks on following the alleged chemical weapons attack, in what is said to be Douma, Syria in this still image from video obtained by Reuters on April 8.

The latest chemical attack on civilians in Syria, which killed at least 49 people over the weekend, has evoked a rare response to the conflict from President Trump. “This [attack] is about humanity and it can’t be allowed to happen,” he said. As Mr. Trump and other world leaders now weigh a response, it is worth noting how much his words are an echo of the response to the Holocaust seven decades ago.

Perhaps the best answer to the horrors of World War II was a document, adopted by almost every nation in 1948, called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Such rights, which include the right to life for innocent civilians, did not originate from the United Nations. Rather, as one author, Hernán Santa Cruz, put it, the declaration was a global consensus on the supreme value of each person, a value that lies simply by its “fact of existing.”

Humanity must keep on rediscovering great truths such as rights. Yet one reason atrocities like those in Syria keep occurring is that many nations reject rights as universal. China and Russia, for example, cite values as relative only to a culture or “civilization.” Hungary asserts that people are entitled to rights only “where they live.” In conflict zones like Syria, rights are often reduced to one ethnicity or one brand of religion.

Others contend the universality of rights is not compatible with the sovereignty of the nation-state. The 1648 treaty known as the Peace of Westphalia led to today’s notion of the nation-state, or a political entity that is independent, sovereign, and entitled to borders. Yet the 1948 declaration, which gained legal force in 1976 and whose anniversary is being celebrated this year, is not really a challenge to the nation-state. 

In fact, as UN Secretary-General António Guterres stated in February, “We must overcome the false dichotomy between human rights and national sovereignty. Human rights and national sovereignty go hand in hand. There is no contradiction.”

The historical record shows that when a society enforces human rights, it reinforces its sovereignty. “If we had given much greater attention to human rights globally over the past two decades, millions of lives would have been saved,” said Mr. Guterres.

Seventy years on, the declaration serves as a legal obligation by sovereign states to the sovereignty of each individual and his or her basic rights. Chemical warfare, with its mass killing of civilians, is one of the greatest challenges to those rights. Just how world leaders now respond to the atrocity in Syria will be a measure of how much humanity sees the supreme value of each person as a “fact of existing.”