Toya Sarno Jordan/Reuters

Anti-abortion and abortion-rights protesters rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court waiting for the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra case, which remains pending, in Washington, June 22, 2018.

When Kristen Day joined the nonprofit Democrats for Life of America in 2002, she wanted only to be put out of business.

A new mom at the time, she had dreamed of a day when abortion would become a nonpartisan issue; when people who called themselves “pro-life” could support the cause regardless of whether they identified as Democrat or Republican; when a lawmaker’s career would no longer hinge on how he or she voted on an abortion bill. She says she believed that moment was near. 

“I was so naive,” Ms. Day says in a phone interview.

In the years since, as the two political parties have doubled down on ideological purity, liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats have essentially become oxymorons. The partisan divide has grown into a chasm. 

And abortion is often the issue that most sharply cuts in between. Each party has used abortion – with its intensely personal, life-and-death stakes – to motivate voters. If you believe that abortion is murder, how could you ever vote for a Democrat? If you believe it’s not, and think that banning it would deny women control over their own bodies, how could you cast a ballot for a Republican?

Folks like Ms. Day now find themselves shunned by activists on both sides. Attitudes toward abortion, perhaps more than ever, are directly and indirectly shaping the highest reaches of United States politics.

The 2016 election, for instance, turned on factors such as public frustration with politics as usual, the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, and the maturing of social media as a tool for political messaging.

But exit polls also showed that among voters who said that the Supreme Court was the most important basis for their decision, nearly two-thirds voted for Donald Trump. That included evangelical Christians, many of whom were willing to put aside concerns about the president’s personal life in pursuit of the repeal of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion. 

“You can make the argument that a nontrivial reason that Donald Trump is president is because of abortion,” says Mary Ziegler, a law professor at Florida State University who specializes in family, sexuality, and the legal history of reproduction. “Some voters saw a Supreme Court vacancy, and they held their noses and voted for Trump.”

That’s a direct example of abortion’s political impact. But a more intriguing question may be this: If abortion had never become the wedge issue it is today, would our political landscape look anything like it currently does?

A medical – not political – issue

Abortion wasn’t always viewed through a political lens. When it first surfaced as a subject of public debate in the mid-19th century, it was against the backdrop of the medical industry’s effort to professionalize itself – and chip away at midwives’ authority in the process, says Karissa Haugeberg, an assistant professor of history at Tulane University in New Orleans. Then, as the century turned and new immigrants began streaming into the country, concerns over abortion began to center around the declining birthrate among white Americans.

But the issue, while polarizing, was not partisan.

“Even in the 1940s and ’50s, it would have seemed strange to ask someone running for president what their view on abortion was,” says Professor Haugeberg, who traces the history of abortion opponents in her 2017 book, “Women against Abortion: Inside the Largest Moral Reform Movement of the Twentieth Century.”

Some of the earliest supporters of modern abortion rights were Republican women like Constance Cook, the state assemblywoman who co-wrote the bill that legalized abortion in New York three years before the Roe ruling. Catholic Democrats, meanwhile, were early opponents of abortion; among the holdouts against pre-Roe legalization were heavily Catholic states like Rhode Island and Massachusetts.   

It wasn’t until the 1980s that the parties began to realign according to abortion. The GOP, in an effort to win new voters, backed abortion opponents like televangelist Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority in their bid to pass a constitutional amendment banning abortion. When the proposal failed in 1983, the two groups, instead of ending their partnership, settled on a new one: the quest for a reconfigured Supreme Court that could undo Roe.

By 1987, abortion had become the kind of issue that could make or break a Supreme Court nomination, as in the case of failed nominee Robert Bork. By 1992, Democrats were barring abortion-rights opponents like Pennsylvania Gov. Bob Casey Sr. from speaking at the national convention. By 2010, opposition to abortion was driving the tea party revolution, as conservative Republicans picked off congressional Democrats who opposed abortion rights but had voted in support of the Affordable Care Act.

There’s a reason that Democrats for Life endorses only three U.S. senators today, down from about 40 in the late 1990s. It’s the same reason that only two Republicans in the chamber still publicly support abortion rights.

The confirmation of conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court last fall only raised the stakes.

Anticipating that Roe may soon be overturned, abortion-rights activists have doubled down on their support for choice. At their urging, Democratic-controlled states like Virginia and New York have passed some of the country’s most expansive abortion-rights laws to date.

Opponents of abortion, who have been at the forefront of state-level restrictions for years, have pressed for the opposite from GOP state lawmakers. Republicans now are not only working to send a case to the high court that could lead to Roe’s repeal, but also preparing to make abortion illegal in certain jurisdictions as soon as the ruling is overturned. On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” which would place a federal ban on abortion at 20 weeks, with some exceptions. 

It’s a situation ripe for even more ugliness and division – just in time for the 2020 presidential campaign.

“The abortion issue has been an indicator of a larger symptom of our politics of the last 40 years,” says Daniel Williams, a history professor at the University of West Georgia and author of “Defenders of the Unborn: The Pro-Life Movement before Roe v. Wade.” “As long as both sides see it as an inalienable human right, it’s going to be very difficult to find middle ground.”

Nuanced views

The irony is that for decades, polling has found that most Americans don’t see themselves as strictly on one side or the other of the abortion debate. Gallup’s survey data going back to 1975 shows that, on average, about half of Americans think abortion should be legal under some circumstances. Only a quarter say the procedure should be legal under all circumstances, and just under 18 percent say it should be illegal without exception.

Tucked within those figures is even more nuance. Most people are willing to consider factors like whether or not the mother’s life is at risk, how long she’s been pregnant, or if sexual violence was involved.

“There’s this whole range of positions one can have, to the point where the life/choice binary just makes no sense,” says Charles Camosy, an associate professor of ethics at Fordham University and author of “Beyond the Abortion Wars: A Way Forward for a New Generation.”

But when asked to identify as either “pro-choice” or “pro-life” – the most common terms used to frame the debate – Americans split down the middle, at 48 percent each, according to Gallup. The divide is even more stark when political parties are taken into account. Of those who identify as or lean Republican, 69 percent say they are “pro-life” and 29 percent say they are “pro-choice.” The numbers flip among Democrats and those who lean Democratic.

One reason is that binaries – choice versus life, liberal versus conservative, us versus them – work well in both media and politics. A group that can quickly identify its enemy is much easier to mobilize come Election Day. Political candidates love voters who can be convinced on the basis of a single issue, just as the media loves covering conflict – especially if it makes a good headline.

Take the Roe decision, says Professor Ziegler at Florida State. “The pro-life goal is to get rid of Roe, and the choice goal is to save it. It’s easy to understand. It’s easier to generate soundbites and ads. It’s easier to explain to voters who don’t want to think about politics all the time.”

Still, abortion wouldn’t be so politically expedient if a small but vocal group of people didn’t actually feel so strongly about it. To the most ardent supporters of abortion rights, what’s at stake is women’s autonomy and freedom and power over their own bodies.

It’s hard to imagine a more important value than that, Professor Camosy says, “except maybe the very right to life of the most vulnerable.”

“So you have these two wildly important values, at least seemingly in conflict: the well-being of women and the well-being of babies,” he says. “Who wouldn’t be motivated by that?”

Mana Rabiee/Reuters

Activists from the Susan B. Anthony List, a leading anti-abortion group, went door to door in Wheeling, West Virginia, asking residents such as Tammie Cusack to urge their Democratic senator to approve Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh on Aug. 29, 2018.

The link to partisanship

As the parties have diverged, political scientists have found that party affiliation – and the social identity associated with it – is increasingly the top indicator of how a person will vote in any election. That is, voters will often take their party’s position on an issue as opposed to looking substantively at an issue to decide which party suits them best. Very few things have the force to push a voter from one party to another.

But abortion might be one of them. A 2008 study in the journal Political Research Quarterly found that while defections were uncommon, when all else was equal, a “pro-life” Democrat was more than twice as likely to switch parties than the average. A “pro-choice” Republican, over time, was three times as likely to re-identify as a Democrat, the researchers found. “[I]t is difficult to think of many other issues that would rival [abortion] in the capacity to influence partisanship,” they wrote.

Another study, done in 2015 by a pair of scholars for the Centre for Economic Research in London, reported similar findings – and added that once a person had switched parties, his or her other political views often followed suit.

Studies like these raise provocative questions about the extent to which partisanship, and voters’ subsequent political views on a range of issues, might be grounded in beliefs about abortion. Which leads some to ask: Were that not the case, would we be as sharply divided as we are today?

“If it weren’t the deciding issue, people might be freer to think about a variety of issues,” Professor Ziegler says. “It wouldn’t be so coherently about the feminist vote or the religious right, because those people would be breaking down in a much finer-grained way.”

The idea – among some political scientists, anyway – is that if we are to move past the gridlock of partisan polarization, this is the culture war issue we most need to get beyond. It’s the narratives surrounding abortion that are driven by the most extreme elements on each side and where the political discourse is most out of sync with broad public opinion. Tellingly, we don’t even have a shared language or set of facts with which to talk about the experience.

“What happens in pregnancy is so different than anything else that happens in human existence,” says Rebecca Todd Peters, a religious studies professor at Elon University in North Carolina. “If we want to address the public health issues around unplanned pregnancies, we have to diagnose the problem differently.”

One word that frequently comes up in discussions about how to move forward is empathy – for the activists on both sides who are fighting for values they feel are fundamental to humanity, but even more for the women: those who gave up their babies for adoption, those who are raising children they can’t properly care for, and those who chose to end their pregnancies.

Ms. Day at Democrats for Life, who’s spent 17 years trying to end abortion in the U.S., says there’s no reason to shame women who’ve had abortions or punish them for something they can’t change.

“It’s scary when you get pregnant. A lot of times they need healing,” she says. “We need to support women, whatever decision they choose.”

Evan Vucci/AP

President Donald Trump speaks during an expanded bilateral meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (far l.) in the Cabinet Room of the White House, April 2, 2019, in Washington.

NATO, the post-World War II alliance between America and western Europe, is marking its 70th anniversary amid daunting internal tensions. Yet, to slightly misquote Mark Twain, reports of its demise have been greatly exaggerated.

And in an irony Twain himself might have appreciated, it has none other to thank for that than Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

In recent years, NATO had begun to show its age. It wasn’t yet “obsolete,” to use the word favored by candidate Donald Trump on the campaign trail. But having been founded to bond together the United States and the battered postwar democracies of Europe against the emerging power of Soviet Russia, it looked like an old alliance groping for a new defining mission.

Now an old mission – containment of Russian expansionism and deterrence against potential Russian aggression – has refocused NATO. Depending on how successfully it can cope with that role, and crucially, how it adapts to new shared challenges like a rising China, the alliance might even emerge reinvigorated.

Mr. Putin didn’t set out to help NATO. He has long made it clear he views the end of the Soviet Union – and the collapse of Moscow’s Warsaw Pact alliance with its former East European satellites – as the defining tragedy of his lifetime.

He has been moving with increasing assertiveness to reassert influence in Russia’s neighboring states, and in 2014 backed separatist forces in Ukraine, and annexed Crimea. In the Middle East, his military intervention swayed the Syrian civil war in President Bashar al-Assad’s favor, giving Russia a key voice in that country’s future and a Mideast presence last seen in the days of the USSR.

Yet Mr. Putin’s Soviet-vintage view of Russia’s security interests and its geostrategic reach has also helped reinforce NATO.

Francisco Seco/AP

Britain's defense minister Gavin Williamson, (far r.), and Turkey's defense minister Hulusi Akar, (far l.), check papers during a meeting of NATO defense ministers at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Feb. 13, 2019.

The strains are real

The alliance’s internal strains are real. And they’re serious, if only because they involve two main military contributors: the U.S. and Turkey, on NATO’s southern flank, bordering Syria. 

President Trump, escalating previous presidents’ bids to secure fairer “burden-sharing,” has accused NATO’s European members of using the alliance simply to cadge American taxpayers into footing most of the bill for their own defense. There have even been multiple accounts of the president raising with aides the idea of the U.S. walking away.

Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, meanwhile, has been at odds with Washington over the presence in Syria of Kurdish fighters, key U.S. allies against Islamic State. Potentially even more worrisome, he has so far shrugged off warnings of repercussions from the U.S. and negotiated a multibillion-dollar deal to buy a missile defense system from Russia.

At least for now, all sides – the U.S., Turkey, and NATO itself – have good reasons to find some sort of compromise. Turkey is the one potential counterweight to Russian and Iranian influence in postwar Syria. Mr. Erdoğan knows that Turkey’s historic rival, Greece, would remain in NATO even if he left.

And despite Mr. Trump’s skepticism, both major U.S. political parties in Congress have continued to stand foursquare behind NATO, not least out of concern over potential Russian moves in other former Soviet states.

Still, none of that means NATO will necessarily survive for anything like another seven decades. That will mean adapting to new security concerns, not just the Cold War variety. Where Mr. Putin is concerned, for instance, the alliance has yet to put in place a credible response to Russian cybermeddling and use of social media, whether in the 2016 U.S. presidential election or in European states.

Plus there’s a greater, long-term challenge. If only because of its vulnerable economic base, Russia is a superpower on the wane. Even before Mr. Trump’s election, America’s focus was shifting toward Asia and a far more powerful rival: China. 

As evidenced by a fraught trans-Atlantic debate on the involvement of the technology company Huawei in the next 5G iteration of the internet, the U.S. and its NATO partners have yet to find a common approach to the potential security implications of China’s expanding economic and geopolitical role.

China lies outside the founding remit of NATO – an acronym for a North Atlantic alliance. But it has emerged as the main international rival of the U.S. A fundamental difference in approach between Washington and its European partners would inevitably strain NATO’s cohesion.

In Libya, intense fighting in the capital the past several days is threatening to plunge the country into another civil war, topple the United Nations-backed government, and snuff out the flicker of hope for democracy and stability in the North African country.

On one side is the U.N.-recognized government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj, whose Government of National Accord (GNA) and allied militias control Tripoli and large swathes of western Libya. On the other are the advancing forces of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar and his self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA), which for two years has run a parallel government in eastern Libya and has recently captured the oil-rich south.

At stake is more than just democracy in Libya. For regional backers of the opposing sides, it’s about the message being sent to the Arab world.

Q: Why now?

After months of diplomatic deadlock, General Haftar launched his assault on Tripoli on Friday – the very day U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres arrived in the Libyan capital to prepare for a U.N.-backed conference to organize new elections.

Many observers believe General Haftar launched the offensive to either strengthen his position ahead of next week’s talks or ensure the conference never takes place at all. He likely also timed the assault to coincide with Mr. Guterres’ visit to undermine the international community’s and Libyans’ confidence in Mr. Sarraj. The siege also comes at a time of political turmoil in neighboring Algeria, whose military leadership had been wary of General Haftar and his Gulf backers. As such, it is an act of defiance and confidence bordering on arrogance that has been a hallmark of the general’s rise to the top in Libya.

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Q: So who is General Haftar, and what does he want?

A former Libyan general, he was once a key ally of ousted dictator Muammar Qaddafi, whom he had helped seize power in a military coup in 1969. General Haftar fell out with the Libyan strongman after Qaddafi abandoned him as a prisoner of war in Chad following a failed military operation. In the 1990s, General Haftar defected to the United States, where he became a leader of the Libyan opposition in exile.

The general returned to Libya during the 2011 uprising to help lead the fight against Qaddafi. In the power vacuum and infighting since the dictator’s ouster and death, General Haftar has billed himself as a military strongman who would restore stability and prosperity to the country, slowly conquering town after town and allying himself with various militias in the eastern part of the country.

Although he prides himself on being a secular leader cleansing Libya of “terrorists” and “Islamists” such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the general has no stated ideology or platform other than the belief that Libya must be ruled as a military dictatorship – with him at the helm.

General Haftar reportedly is no fan of democracy, pluralism, or individual freedoms; his LNA has cracked down on environmental activists and even organized book burnings in Benghazi. Observers and those who have met the rogue general frequently describe him as a “warlord,” a “proud strongman,” and a “dictator without a state.” Should his LNA forces succeed in taking Tripoli, the general may soon have that state he has longed for.

Q: Who has the upper hand on the battlefield?

Prime Minister Sarraj’s GNA, whose troops are few in number, relies on various militias from cities along the coast, including Misurata and Zawiyah; skilled fighters who played key roles in ousting Qaddafi in 2011. Another core member of Mr. Sarraj’s alliance is the Justice and Construction Party – the Libyan branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Despite billing itself as a unified “national army,” General Haftar’s LNA is a mishmash of militias, tribes, ideologies, and interests, united only in their frustration with the status quo and collective faith that Qaddafi’s former right-hand man can lead them to power and prosperity. Belying the general’s anti-Islamist credentials, the LNA has also absorbed ultraconservative Salafi Islamists who wish to impose an austere form of Islam on Libya.

By offering protection, a sense of belonging, and weapons, General Haftar has quickly grown and broadened his coalition in a few short years. It is believed that in terms of sheer manpower and arms, he has the upper hand.

Q: Who backs whom?

Mr. Sarraj’s government has the backing of the U.N. and Qatar, and the recognition of much of the West and wider international community. However, most of the West has only passively approved of the GNA, offering words of support, but little else.

General Haftar’s LNA has more invested and involved backers: Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, France, and Russia. The UAE has supported General Haftar the past few years, partly due to its rival Qatar’s backing of Mr. Sarraj, but also due to the renegade general’s intention to clear Libya of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is said that Abu Dhabi has provided support and even built an airport within General Haftar’s territory. France, meanwhile, has reportedly provided military and intelligence support to General Haftar at the same time it was acting as a broker between the two sides.

Russia was also quick to ally itself with General Haftar, with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov hosting him in multiple high-profile visits to Moscow the past three years. Singling out the warlord as Moscow’s man in North Africa, Russia has sold weapons to the LNA and even printed Libyan banknotes in exchange for agreements allowing Russian military bases on Libyan soil.

Yet neighboring Egypt is perhaps General Haftar’s staunchest ally. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi sees a kindred spirit in the military strongman waging a crusade against Islamists. Egypt is determined that General Haftar succeeds not only in maintaining a tight grip over eastern Libya along Egypt’s borders, but in rooting out the Brotherhood – the democratically elected group Mr. Sisi overthrew in a military coup in 2013.

Q: How have they responded to the fighting?

As with elsewhere in the Middle East, Libya has become an outlet for regional powers to play out their rivalries. But this time there is a sense of alarm among some of General Haftar’s backers that their proxy has overruled them and is acting unilaterally.

The UAE, ever pragmatic and eager to protect its recent investment projects and planned overhaul of Libya’s oil infrastructure, does not want to see his offensive plunge Libya into civil war, and spoke out against the offensive in a joint statement with the U.S., France, Italy, and the United Kingdom.

Egypt, however, reportedly is pushing the general to continue his march to Tripoli. Observers also link his drive with the rogue general’s meeting last week in Riyadh with Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who have expressed renewed interest in becoming involved in North Africa.

The Saudi monarchy, eager to prevent democracy from spreading from Algeria eastward in a “second Arab Spring,” has allegedly given General Haftar the green light to march on Tripoli, a move that threatens to strain ties between the normally united Gulf monarchies.

Growing up, Irma Yolanda Choc Cac recalls hearing stories about the government-backed violence that tore apart her verdant, mountainous community of Lote Ocho. Her grandparents were killed there during Guatemala’s 36-year civil war, which took the lives of 200,000 people – most of them indigenous, like the Maya Q’eqchi residents where Ms. Choc Cac lives.

“I always thought, ‘How did that happen? If I’m ever in a situation like that, I will fight back,’” she says through a Q’eqchi’ interpreter, sitting by the calm waters of Lake Izabal in eastern Guatemala.

Since 2007, that pledge to stand up for her heritage and land has been put to the test.

Ms. Choc Cac and 10 women from her subsistence-farming community say they were gang-raped by police, military, and security personnel from the nearby Canadian-owned nickel mine as they were evicted from their ancestral lands outside El Estor. After the rapes – some of which the women say occurred in front of their children – their homes and belongings were burned to the ground.

“We were left without anything, sleeping under the mountains,” Ms. Choc Cac says, tugging on her purple woven huipil tunic. She never considered herself an activist: married at 14, she didn’t study, and says she lived a “traditional life like my mother and grandmother before me,” growing corn and beans and tending to animals.

But today, her battle on this patch of land in Guatemala is one of several cases pushing through the Canadian justice system, with the potential to set groundbreaking precedents on what responsibility Canadian headquarters bear for subsidiary operations on the ground.

Morena Perez Joachin/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

The mining operation sits on the far end of the town of El Estor, Guatemala, on the shores of Lake Izabal.

Accusations abound of international companies behaving abroad in ways that would not be tolerated on their home turf, from the targeting of high-profile environmental activists, to widespread intimidation in resource-rich communities, particularly in places with weak justice systems. Often, a string of subsidiaries separate the parent company from day-to-day operations, further complicating legal responsibility. But today’s cases are shifting expectations – both at home and abroad – about holding foreign companies to account for allegations of abuse and negligence outside their borders.

Canada is home to almost half the world’s publicly listed mining and exploration companies – meaning the country’s legal resolution will have consequences around the world. Canadian mining operations are present in more than 100 nations, according to government statistics.

The cases come as shareholders and consumers have been pressing companies for more ethical practices. But these cases are also raising questions, from Canadian judges to rural Guatemalan communities, about current disparities regarding what’s lawful and acceptable.

“You’re starting now to see the lawyers ... understand how the Canadian system deals with human rights and consultation and comparing that to the Guatemalan approach,” says Joe Fiorante, the lawyer for plaintiffs in two of the three cases moving through Canada’s justice system. More people are asking, “If Canada has rules to protect their indigenous people or give them proper consultation, why would indigenous Guatemalans have fewer rights when they’re dealing with a Canadian mining company?”

Crossing countries

Canadian mining firms account for 40 percent of large mining operations in Latin America, and there have long been accusations of abuse at their operations on the ground. But conflicts have grown as exploration has intensified, says Shin Imai, a law professor at York University and director of the Justice and Corporate Accountability Project. Mining Association of Canada (MAC) figures from 2017 show that Canadian direct investment in mining abroad more than tripled from 1999 to 2016. From 2000 to 2015, meanwhile, there were alleged cases of violence and criminal acts involving 28 Canadian mining companies in Latin America, including 44 deaths and 403 injuries, according to tallies by Professor Imai’s group.

A decade ago, Canadian courts were reluctant to try these cases domestically, says Ian Binnie, a former Canadian Supreme Court justice whom lawyers cite as an influence on their arguments about accountability.

“There is a much bigger sense [today] of the interconnectedness of the world and its legal systems,” says Justice Binnie. “I think that the judges are becoming more sensitive to the fact that if they refuse jurisdiction in Canada, assuming the head office is here, that these people won’t have any redress and will be left without a remedy, even though clearly in most of these cases there’s no doubt at all that severe damage was inflicted on the claimants.”

“I think no judge really wants to turn people away from the court knowing they have nowhere else to go,” he adds.

That’s relevant in Guatemala today, where impunity hovers around 98 percent for femicide and 70 percent for homicides overall. A United Nations-backed anti-corruption investigatory group, CICIG, was created in 2006 to weed out some of the hardest-to-tackle corruption cases within the government, military, and organized crime. There were high hopes that it could finally root out systemic corruption and be replicated across the region. In recent years, however, the president and business community have attempted to expel it from Guatemala.

Morena Perez Joachin/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

A view of the mining operation, now operated by the Compania Guatemalteca de Niquel, near El Estor, Guatemala.

“I can’t speak Spanish or read or write, but just because [the mining company] is educated and prepared doesn’t mean my voice should be silenced,” says Ms. Choc Cac.

“I have a lot of confidence in the Canadian justice system,” she adds. “First of all, they are hearing our voices and our stories. They took on our case. Here in Guatemala, my voice isn’t heard. We’ve seen over and over that indigenous communities don’t get justice.”

When she traveled to Toronto in 2017 to share her story with the court – her first time on a plane – the trip “was really hard,” she recalls.

In the end, “it felt good to give my testimony. But to remember everything is to live it again. It affected me a lot: I got dizzy, it was hard to breathe. But I shared my story, and in its own way that takes away some of the shame.”

Cases in motion

Proceedings against three Canadian companies have been breaking new legal ground as they wind through the system. Hudbay Minerals faces three distinct cases, including Ms. Choc Cac’s. (At the time of the alleged rapes, the mine was owned by Canada-based Skye Resources. Hudbay took over the company in 2008.) Another case alleges that security personnel at Tahoe Resources, in another part of Guatemala, opened fire on demonstrations in 2013. The British Columbia Court of Appeal ruled that the case could proceed in Canada, and it is now before the trial court there. In 2017, Guatemala’s highest court suspended the company’s mining operations in the community, finding that it hadn’t properly consulted with indigenous communities.

A third case involves Nevsun Resources Ltd., which has been sued for alleged complicity in a government subcontractor’s use of forced labor at a mine in Eritrea, worked by conscripts in the repressive country’s national service system. The Supreme Court of Canada is weighing whether Canadian courts should recognize civil claims based on breaches of customary international law, and whether the case can proceed – which Nevsun lawyers argue would violate sovereignty of the Eritrean state. The decision, expected later this year, is widely anticipated for its ramifications for any Canadian firm dealing abroad, not just extractive industries.

Cory Wanless, a lawyer who represents the plaintiffs against Hudbay, says that corporations cannot rely on old arguments about being divorced from subsidiaries operating on the ground.

“This is about corporations. They don’t really function within borders,” he says. “I mean they’re all traded on the same stock market. They’re all going after the same money. They all are going after the same projects. And my goal is to make them accountable regardless of where they’re based and regardless of where they operate.”

The mining industry is part of Canada’s national identity, employing more than 400,000 workers directly and almost 200,000 indirectly. And while a 2018 review from the University of Ottawa showed Canadian mining companies to be slightly more socially responsible than other foreign firms operating in the region, conflict has still marred their image, says Mr. Fiorante.

“There is a perception that Canadian companies would, all other things being equal, be presumed to be more socially and environmentally responsible because they’re Canadian,” he says. “These cases challenge the notion that Canadian mining companies are at the forefront of environmental and social responsibility by shining a light on the cases where they are credibly involved in some very serious allegations of human rights abuses.”

The Canadian government has responded to pressure for better business conduct abroad by creating a new ombudsman position last January. They did not name someone to the position, however, until this April, more than a year later.

Many are concerned that the office does not have a sufficient mandate to investigate abuses.

“They want what they call joint investigation, so the company has to agree to the investigations,” says Professor Imai, from York University, of mining companies. “It’s like saying ‘OK, you can investigate the murder, but only if the person accused of murder agrees.’ ”

‘We could defend ourselves’

Benjamin Castillo, a local fisherman and boat captain, cuts through the water of Lake Izabal with his small lancha, moving toward a billow of smoke on shore.

“All of this belongs to the company,” he says, sweeping his arm across the horizon, gesturing to a lush, green mountain range with periodic bare spots unearthed by mining.

Morena Perez Joachin/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Benjamin Castillo talks about the early days of the mining operation, on Lake Izabal near El Estor, Guatemala.

When the mining company moved in the 1960s, it paid good salaries and was well received, Mr. Castillo says. Operations shuttered during the civil war, and when rumors floated in the early 2000s of the mine’s return, many locals had positive expectations.

“This time was different. Trouble started,” he says. He mentions environmental damage and low wages, though he hasn’t heard of many serious human rights violations.

But as the trio of cases work their way through courts, they are influencing mindsets here, some activists say.

María Magdalena Cuc Choc, a community leader and human rights activist, says she was forcibly evicted and lost her brother-in-law at the hands of the mining firm in her area of El Estor.

In my neighborhood, “We were very organized. We knew how to respond” to the mining company, says Ms. Cuc Choc, who speaks Q’eqchi’ and Spanish. “We could defend ourselves – we had families that speak and understand Spanish. But it made me wonder what was happening in these communities that were further afield.” After visiting rural communities like Lote Ocho, she realized the abuses she and her neighbors suffered were the tip of the iceberg.

To some extent, she thinks, the Guatemalan government and international companies here bank on interacting with populations that aren’t aware of their rights and don’t have much of a voice in the Spanish-language justice system, like the women of Lote Ocho.

“If I hadn’t gone to Lote Ocho, I don’t know that these abuses ever would have been discovered,” she says. Most of the women were ashamed by what had happened to them. And their distance from police stations and judges’ chambers – literally and figuratively – meant they put little faith in securing justice through the government.

Access to health care and education are still extremely low in indigenous communities in Guatemala, but Ms. Cuc Choc feels hopeful that the Hudbay case is a sign of progress.

“If these women win this case, it will give a green light for other communities and for other countries that suffer the same thing we’re suffering to stand up and say ‘Enough!’ ” Ms. Cuc Choc says. “You can’t trample on our rights.”

The heavy scuba tank on her back doesn’t seem to weigh Emily Pepperman down as she clambers out of the turquoise water and onto the boat. She beams. “I got a monster!” she exclaims. “I got a big one!”

The other divers gather around Ms. Pepperman as she opens the plastic tube she had been carrying, tipping it over a cooler. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Small reddish-brown and white striped fish with long feathery fins come tumbling out. Then, they stop. With a gloved hand, Ms. Pepperman reaches into the container, jiggling it to ease out one specimen that barely fits. Holding the fish aloft by its mouth, she is careful not to touch the long, needle-like, venom-filled spines protruding from its back.

This monster is a lionfish. Native to the Indo-Pacific, lionfish are prized worldwide as aquarium pets. But they’re also voracious eaters. And after some made their way into Florida waters, they quickly began devastating the reef ecosystems around the state and beyond.

So the lionfish hunt is on.

Events like the March 30 Winter Lionfish Derby in Key Largo are part of a broader effort to keep the lionfish population at bay. Conservation organizations and state agencies alike are incentivizing fishing for lionfish, and encouraging Floridians to eat the invaders. This approach could become a model for tackling other invasive species.

“I can’t think about a better example for invasives, talking about eating them,” says Joe Roman, a conservation biologist and “editor ’n’ chef” of Eat the Invaders. “They taste good, they’re pretty easy to sell, and now most people have heard of it” through derbies and other outreach efforts.

‘The perfect invader’

Eva Botkin-Kowacki/The Christian Science Monitor

Emily Pepperman of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, speared one of the largest lionfish during the Winter Lionfish Derby in Key Largo, Florida, March 30. The invasive species is devastating reef ecosystems off the coast of Florida and beyond.

Lionfish were first spotted in South Florida waters in 1985. By the early 2000s, the invader was established and spreading throughout the Caribbean and up the East Coast.

“Lionfish are the perfect invader,” says Alex Fogg, marine resource coordinator for Florida’s Okaloosa County. They reproduce rapidly, and are indiscriminate, opportunistic eaters. Scientists have found nearly 100 different native fish and crustacean species in lionfish stomachs. One study in the Bahamas found that lionfish can cause a 65 percent decline in native reef fish prey over just two years.

Humans are the only predators equipped to control the invasive species. Larger fish and eels have been spotted trying to eat lionfish, but they’re not adapted to chomp down on the newcomer’s venomous spines.

Even for humans, capturing lionfish is tricky. They’re not enticed by bait on a line, so divers have to track them down with pole spears.

It’s rare that lionfish sit out in the open, says Ms. Pepperman, who has been hunting the invaders for nearly eight years. They like to hang out under coral heads, ledges, or in other nooks and crannies. “It’s like an Easter egg hunt,” she says.

Spearfishing is labor intensive, but it seems to be effective, at least locally. A study on reefs in the Cayman Islands found that targeted culling reduced the abundance and average size of lionfish.

But divers can only go so deep. As the fish begin to infiltrate deeper waters, scientists and engineers are scrambling to develop lionfish-specific traps. One team is working on building a robot that could identify and capture lionfish alive.

“In the whole scheme of things, this is not going to get rid of lionfish” entirely, says Mr. Fogg, an ardent diver himself. But reducing their populations could help save the native fish that lure divers and sustain commercial fishermen.

Eating the enemy

By encouraging people to eat lionfish, conservationists aim to reduce the invader population while creating a new source of income for fishermen.

At first consumers were skeptical about eating these iconic aquarium pets with venomous spines. But the idea has caught on as marine conservation organizations and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission have worked to dispel misconceptions and teach people how to safely remove those venomous spines and eat the tasty white flesh.

“There’s definitely more of a demand than supply at this point,” says Allie McCarthy, a sales representative for Halperns’, a distributor that sells lionfish to restaurants, hotels, and grocers, like Whole Foods.

Conservationists have contemplated eating other invasive species to reduce their numbers, too. But things like the bony Asian carp that ravage the Mississippi River have been a harder sell. As the lionfish story becomes more widely known, says Dr. Roman, it might help open the door to building similar programs around other invaders – the tasty ones, at least.

Eva Botkin-Kowacki/The Christian Science Monitor

A live lionfish is on display at an educational booth at the Winter Lionfish Derby in Key Largo, Florida on Saturday, March 30. At another booth, visitors could learn how to fillet a lionfish or taste lionfish ceviche.

The goal behind this approach might be counterintuitive for fisheries managers, says Dr. Roman. “If you’re telling someone who is starting a new commercial fishery that the goal is to deplete their resource, that’s a bit mind-testing at the beginning,” he says.

In the case of lionfish, that atypical goal of unsustainability has been embraced by fishermen, environmentalists, regulators, and scientists alike. “It’s a group effort,” says Alli Candelmo, the invasive species program coordinator for REEF, the marine conservation organization behind the March 30 derby. “I think that’s the best thing about the lionfish invasion.”

Lionfish hunters

Most derby teams compete independently, but there are three teams aboard the Tropical Serenity on this bright Saturday. That boat is run by local dive company Rainbow Reef as a donation for participants who don’t have a boat or didn’t want to transport theirs to Key Largo.

The teams hail from across the state, and have come with varying experience levels. There’s Ms. Pepperman’s team of four, ProWeb ZooKeeper, who are flush with past derby stories. Then there’s Defenders of the Reef, a team of three that includes Ekaterina Grebenkina, who had never killed a fish before. And two engineers working on the lionfish hunting robot make up team RSE Guardian ROV, although they’re diving without the robot this time.

They’re all there to protect the native ecosystem they love. As Ms. Grebenkina says, “I consider it our duty” as divers to keep the reef pristine.

Derby teams can win prize money for capturing the most, the smallest, and the largest lionfish. All the divers on the boat agree that Ms. Pepperman’s “monster” could be a contender for largest, but on subsequent dives, her teammates haul in others that rival hers. Back on shore, the largest fish from team ProWeb ZooKeeper measures 16.4 inches long, edging out a 16-inch fish for first place.

“Who doesn’t like to win,” says Ms. Pepperman. “I love the competition. But at the same time, we’re all winners if we get lionfish diminished on the reef.”

It’s not all guts and glory for lionfish hunters like Ms. Pepperman, though. “I feel bad for the lionfish,” she says. “It’s not their fault. But they’re doing so much damage to the fish that belong here.”

An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the tank worn by divers. A scuba tank contains oxygen but also includes a mix of gases. 

Reuters

Passengers crowd a window to buy tickets at a railway booking counter in Allahabad, India.

Elections in India, where nearly a fifth of humanity resides, are usually a wonder of democracy. On April 11, when voting begins for a new lower house of Parliament, there may be another kind of wonder. Eight years after India saw mass protests against corruption, voters will decide if the current prime minister, Narendra Modi, has done enough to ensure clean and transparent governance.

Mr. Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party rode into office in 2014 on a wave of resentment against everyday bribery and nonstop scandals. With a personal image of incorruptibility, he promised to channel the outrage into hope and to rid India of corruption by 2022. He is now asking for another five years to complete the task.

If the polls are accurate, voters generally approve of his anti-corruption record, although many disagree with his Hindu nationalist party and his weak performance in job creation. Concern about corruption dropped by 8 percentage points from 2017 to 2018, according to a Pew survey. About a fifth of Indians say there is less corruption. Nearly half believe the court system treats everyone fairly.

Mr. Modi’s boldest move came in 2016 when he attempted to eliminate “black money,” or illicit currency used in corrupt activities. He issued new banknotes and removed those of high value (500 and 1,000 rupees). The demonetization unsettled the economy for a while but it set a high tone. It may have had one good side effect in making more people more honest. Tax compliance rose 80% between 2014 and 2018.

He also began to digitize government business, helped poor people open bank accounts, and greatly reduced the time needed to start a new company. Mr. Modi presided over new legislation aimed at preventing corruption, such as a crackdown on bankruptcies used to defraud creditors. In the World Bank’s rankings of countries based on their ease of doing business, India improved dramatically, going from 142 to 77 over the past four years.

The latest step for Mr. Modi was appointing a powerful anti-corruption agency, known as Lokpal (“people caretaker”). It can independently investigate elected leaders and civil servants – even the prime minister. His delay in setting up the agency was puzzling but, under pressure from anti-corruption activists, he finally did it.

Mr. Modi himself remains a model of integrity. “More and more politicians are rising to power on the argument that their lack of family ties protects them from the temptation to profit from office. Modi, the bachelor prime minister, has made uncorrupted single-hood a centerpiece of his political persona,” writes one expert, Ruchir Sharma, in Foreign Affairs magazine.

The elections, which end May 23, will reveal if Indian voters approve of Mr. Modi and his reforms. The opposition Indian National Congress, led by Rahul Gandhi, is still suffering from its reputation as a corrupt ruling party.

The eruption of public demand for integrity that began in 2011 has helped turn India into a potential model for other countries struggling with corruption. The culture shift preceded Mr. Modi and it may outlast him. For now, he is trying to keep on top of it. Honesty has its rewards.