Standing amid a sprawling camp of makeshift tents, Suado Hassan Abdi, a Somali mother with five young children, can’t even calculate the scale of her family’s losses.

The worst drought to strike Somalia in 40 years – marked by four failed rainy seasons in a row, with a fifth likely to come –  desiccated the crops she had planted with her husband, leaving no food or fodder.

At the door of her tent, Ms. Abdi struggles to take stock, days after arriving in this congested camp on the outskirts of Baidoa, the drought-stricken epicenter of a nation stalked by famine.

Three of her children hover listlessly beside their new abode: mud-smeared layers of tarps pulled across a small frame of tree branches.

How many camels, cows, and goats did they lose?

“Uncountable,” replies Ms. Abdi, looking down. “They died.”

The unfolding tragedy that triggered this family’s decision to move, to escape the clutches of drought and conflict, echoes widely among the hundreds of thousands of newly destitute Somalis who, forced to abandon their pastoralist lifestyle in search of water and food, surge to cities like Baidoa.

The displaced families are the sharp end of a burgeoning humanitarian catastrophe in Somalia that the United Nations and international aid agencies warn may become unprecedented in both scale and lethality – with 1.5 million children alone at risk of acute malnutrition – unless there is a further infusion of lifesaving aid and compassion.

Government-controlled Baidoa is surrounded on all sides by Islamist Al Shabaab militants and can only be supplied by air.

Ms. Abdi’s children have survived, and now play with scoops of dirt on tin plates in this bleak camp. But not every Somali family here can say the same. Many children were buried during the journey, others after funerals in the hundreds of camps that ring Baidoa.

Today in Baidoa’s main hospital, cases of acute malnutrition among the smallest children – each one usually comforted by an anxious mother as they undergo emergency feeding – attest to Somalia’s hard-fought battle to keep famine at bay.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

A security guard walks among makeshift huts and solar panels charging lights and phones in the Hagarey Hoos Tumal camp outside Baidoa, Somalia, Nov. 9, 2022. Somalis displaced by drought and war have flocked to more than 500 camps, supported by the United Nations and relief agencies, near the city surrounded by Al Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab militants.

Somali officials and foreign aid workers alike say the country remains at the tipping point, and that the response in coming weeks will determine whether another devastating famine is notched in Somalia’s modern history, or whether it will show that the worst was largely averted.

“We are knocking on the door of famine right now,” says Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame, the president’s envoy for drought response, in an interview in Mogadishu. “If we don’t get the right, timely response, timely humanitarian assistance, we are facing a catastrophe of famine.”

He weaves into his plea a theme being heard with more urgency in the developing world, that poorer societies are bearing the brunt of climate-related calamities made worse by decades of carbon emissions from wealthy, industrialized nations.

“It’s a shame for the international community. ... Nobody should die from hunger, especially children,” Mr. Warsame says. “That’s why I am saying, ‘Help us. This is a moral obligation. This is what you have caused.’”

Scope of the challenge

Half of Somalia’s population of 15.7 million is affected by the drought and facing “acute food shortages,” with 1.1 million displaced by both drought and conflict, according to U.N. figures. Across the Horn of Africa, a chronic shortfall of rain that is attributed to climate change is affecting 36 million people.

But there are key differences between today’s crisis and the droughts of decades past that could help limit the human toll: Well-honed data collection mechanisms are available to better forecast and pinpoint needs, and government structures now exist to share the burden and help coordinate priorities.

The government of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, which has only been in office since May, inherited a crisis management system broken by years of official neglect, political deadlock, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Though it has not yet declared a famine – focusing instead on a new offensive against Al Shabaab – the government is credited with a serious effort to facilitate a humanitarian response that will keep more Somalis alive.

“We’re still teetering on the brink; the mortality rates are increasing in some areas,” says a U.N. humanitarian official in Mogadishu who asked not to be further identified. Still, urgent appeals are starting to be heard, with a significantly scaled-up response and a 300% increase in the amount of assistance reaching Somalis.

With European Union and British donor funds having shrunk due to the Ukraine war, the United States – which traditionally has funded 50% to 55% of Somalia’s food needs – is now funding 70% of that assistance. The U.S. has nearly doubled its funding, from $460 million in 2021 to $888 million in 2022.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Somali mothers comfort their children in the transition ward for those recovering from severe malnutrition at Banadir Hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia, Nov. 10, 2022. The United Nations and Western relief agencies are warning of famine if there is not an immediate boost of assistance.

Even if food targets are reached, however, other areas critical to fending off famine such as improving poor sanitation, hygiene, and access to clean water are getting less attention and cash.

“What’s driving the high malnutrition rates is not the lack of food. It’s cholera; it’s poor sanitation,” says the U.N. official. “So to prevent the increasing rates of malnutrition, there needs to be a real investment in those core sectors ... to then prevent people getting to the need for nutrition assistance. So until that happens, there is a vicious cycle.”

That grim dynamic is clear at Mogadishu’s Banadir Hospital for mothers and children, where the severest malnutrition cases are those recovering from measles.

“Somehow they will survive; it depends on their condition – some arrive with shock,” says Dr. Mohamed Yassin Hirey. The numbers of those hospitalized have “increased significantly” in the past four months, he says, with more than 20 new patients being admitted each day.

Surge of displaced people

The U.N. formally sounded the alarm when it published drought response plans in December 2021 and June 2022, though neither made waves as Russia’s war against Ukraine got underway.

But a “final warning to all of us” on Somalia did take hold in early September, when Martin Griffiths, the U.N.’s top humanitarian and emergency relief coordinator, said he was “shocked to my core” during a visit “by the level of pain and suffering we see so many Somalis enduring.”

He said conditions today are worse than those seen in 2010-2011, when famine in Somalia claimed some 260,000 lives. The “unprecedented” combination of dangers, he said, will last at least through March 2023. The U.N. last week issued a revised funding requirement of $2.26 billion – up 55% from previous estimates – to deliver “immediate, lifesaving assistance” into early 2023.

In Baidoa, local officials describe an exponential surge in the number of exhausted and needy arrivals at camps for displaced people in recent months, and put the total now at nearly 900,000.

Dubbed the “City of Death” for its high casualties during the 1992 famine, this dusty city is defined by inhospitable heat, patchy sharp scrub, and thorn trees that stretch to the horizon in every direction – a barren view now often populated by an ocean of domed huts.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

One-year-old Adan Macalin Ali is held by his mother, Hawo Abdi Adan, after being measured at the Danwadaag Mother and Child Health Center in Baidoa, Somalia, Nov. 9, 2022.

Early November brought a taste of rain. It triggered a blush of green, which may just be enough to feed livestock, but likely not to plant crops – or end the drought.

Indeed, the deleterious effects of drought have been compounded by chronic insecurity, including Al Shabaab destroying water sources and crops. Most of those displaced in Baidoa have left areas controlled by Al Shabaab. The militants have warned them not to return.

“The state and donors are collectively working to respond to the influx ... so that is why there are less people dying,” says Baidoa Mayor Abdullahi Ali Watiin, whose city has been surrounded by Al Shabaab for 12 years.

Yet handling the current emergency is only part of the picture for Mr. Watiin, who says officials are “thinking how we can adapt to this climate change,” including finding alternatives to rain-fed farming.

Improved coordination

Coping on the drought front line are agencies like Concern Worldwide, an Irish charity that has worked in Somalia for more than 30 years, and in the camps provides everything from built latrines and clean water to hygiene kits and solar lights.

Other relief agencies fill other gaps, as identified in weekly meetings hosted by local officials.

It is a real improvement from the 2011 famine, when lack of coordination meant “some people were getting too much, and next to them people were dying,” says Ahmed Ali Issack, who heads the Concern Worldwide office in Baidoa. “Now the existence of the government structure, at district and state levels, facilitates this coordination.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Somalis displaced by drought and war wait to fill water jugs at the Hagarey Hoos Tumal camp near Baidoa, Somalia, Nov. 9, 2022. Warnings are sounding that famine has come and will bite hard if there is not an immediate boost of assistance to affected areas.

Chairing those meetings is Dini Abdinur, head of the regional Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management.

“There are animal deaths, high malnutrition – some children are dying,” says Mr. Abdinur. “The government and NGOs are trying their best to minimize the death rate.”

While the new government started taking steps in late spring, more could have been done by all sides, says a second U.N. official in Mogadishu, who also requested anonymity.

“Though we probably started seeing famine-like conditions in May, we didn’t have the data for decision-makers to decide whether to act early,” the official says. “But we could have started systematically much, much earlier.”

That is not news to Asieh Hussein Buule, who cradles her 20-day-old baby daughter, Aisha Hassan Haro, while sitting on a tiny wood-frame platform that keeps the mother and her nine children a few inches off the ground in their branch-frame shelter.

The family has only the very basics in their Baidoa camp. But Ms. Buule’s gratitude – for making it this far, with all her children alive, to a place of security and survival – is clear on her face, as she affectionately holds and plays with her children.

Mary Altaffer/AP

A receptionist works in the lobby of Twitter’s office in New York, Oct. 26, 2022. Last week, hundreds of workers left the social media company after new owner Elon Musk gave them a choice to pledge to work “hardcore” or resign with severance pay.

Elon Musk has proved visionary in defying conventional wisdom. When others said electric cars were the technology of the future, he made them a profitable venture in the present. When others claimed private space travel was a niche, he created an industry that looks as if it could boom in the next few years.

But when last week he gave Twitter employees an ultimatum – become “hardcore” workers or quit – he sounded to many like a throwback. In the United States and many nations in the West, post-pandemic workers appear to be looking for balance and flexibility rather than long hours at the office.

It’s a vision “almost like the 1930s,” says Daniel Hamermesh, an economist at the University of Texas at Austin, “that people work as hard as he tells them to because they haven’t got any alternatives. But clearly right now, they’ve got lots of alternatives.”

By Thursday, hundreds of remaining employees quit. (Mr. Musk had already laid off or fired about half of Twitter’s employees.) The chaos was so great that the company denied all workers badge access to its buildings, asking them to work from home temporarily. Then, Mr. Musk called an in-person meeting for Friday at 2 p.m. for “anyone who can write code.”

Mr. Musk is shaking up worker relations on several fronts: demanding employees to go “hardcore,” firing workers who disagree with him, and overhauling Twitter’s mission and corporate ethics around radical free speech, including antisemitic and racist commentary. On all these fronts, Mr. Musk’s brash personal style has brought with it complications. Either Mr. Musk is playing the contrarian, foreseeing a future labor force driven by the same workaholic passion that powered his drive to the top, or he has made a serious management mistake that threatens the viability of the company he just bought for some $44 billion.

Back to the office

Mr. Musk is hardly alone in asking employees to return to the office and commit to full days of in-person work. In June, Starbucks’ CEO said he was doing all he could to coax staff back to the office. In October, Goldman Sachs revealed it had convinced about two-thirds of its staff to return to the office five days a week, not far from its pre-pandemic norm. Last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook reiterated his call that employees ditch full-time work from home.

Mike Blake/Reuters/File

Twitter CEO Elon Musk, shown at the E3 gaming convention in Los Angeles in 2019, has made sweeping changes in the weeks since he purchased the social media company Oct. 27, 2022.

But Mr. Musk and the rest of corporate America have met with resistance from workers. In September, a survey of about 3,500 workers in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. found that nearly 6 in 10 said it was time to ditch the 40-hour workweek.

That may explain why these companies have coaxed and urged workers rather than issued ultimatums. The employee turmoil at Twitter is only the latest apparent misstep in Mr. Musk’s one-month ownership of the social media company and threatens to tarnish his reputation as a manager. It also hints that even the world’s richest man has financial limitations.

“Musk directionally has some good ideas” for Twitter, says Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities. “His execution has been a train wreck.”

Twitter Blue’s rough launch

He has wasted no time in making changes. In less than a month, Mr. Musk has shaken up Twitter’s board, fired key executives, and laid off 3,600 workers. And that was before last week’s ultimatum, when more workers quit. His suggestion that users pay for verified status angered many celebrities, news organizations, and charities, who up to now got the designation for free because they were influential users whose brands were deemed important to defend against copycats.

Indeed, Twitter launched the Twitter Blue service, allowing anyone to become a verified user for $8 a month. Spoofers immediately began to pose as PepsiCo; Eli Lilly, tanking the pharmaceutical company’s stock by announcing that insulin would be “free”; and even Mr. Musk’s own Tesla, claiming proudly that the carmaker was using child labor. Twitter has now paused the service. But it, too, is now vulnerable to reputational harm since Mr. Musk eliminated its communication department, charged with protecting the brand.

If Mr. Musk were an ordinary entrepreneur, these moves might be understandable. Company founders often make lousy CEOs. By the time a typical startup company lists itself on a stock exchange, more than three-quarters of its founders have left the company, points out Noam Wasserman, author of “The Founder’s Dilemma” and dean of Yeshiva University’s business school in New York. “Founding skills are very different – often the opposite – from later-stage CEO skills,” he writes in an email, “which is both why a change in CEO is often needed as the company grows and why it’s rare to find someone who can do both well.”

Mr. Musk joins the ranks of exceptional founders, like auto pioneer Henry Ford and Microsoft’s Bill Gates, who successfully ran the companies they started. He’s pulled off the even rarer feat of successfully founding multiple companies and taking over others. The late Steve Jobs founded and managed two companies – Apple and NeXT computers – and took over Pixar, which became a computer-animation leader. Mr. Musk has founded four companies and taken over two: Tesla, his most profitable success so far, and Twitter.

So how is it that the consummate entrepreneur-CEO, who has demonstrated the ability to balance competing priorities by leading Tesla and SpaceX to the forefront of their respective industries, could fall flat on his face with Twitter?

For one, the model of a part-time CEO is not one that is widely embraced as best practice in the corporate world. “This is just weird,” says Eric Talley, a corporate law professor at Columbia Law School. “Who has a part-time CEO that’s a major company?”

Three of Mr. Musk’s four companies are transportation-based, which provides some overlap for his limited time to oversee each one. Also, Twitter is a much bigger and more established takeover for Mr. Musk than Tesla was, writes Mr. Wasserman.

Then there are the multiple financial challenges that may be straining even Mr. Musk’s considerable resources. He became a hero in Ukraine earlier this year when he offered free access to his satellite-based internet service, Starlink, to keep its war-torn populace connected. But it was such a financial drain that he threatened to cut off that access. The uproar was such that Mr. Musk continued the free service even though it could cost his SpaceX company $400 million over the next 12 months.

That sum may not sound like much for someone reportedly worth $180 billion. But as a startup, SpaceX is still dependent on rounds of funding from private sources. These investors may not take kindly to a $400-million-a-year drag on profitability.

By contrast, Tesla is a public company and quite profitable. But it faces an ever-growing list of competing electric vehicles from the world’s largest automakers. Even Mr. Musk’s whopping pay at Tesla is under attack from a shareholder suit claiming the company paid the “part-time CEO” too much in 2018.

Twitter’s own financial woes are also a burden. Twitter was struggling even before Mr. Musk came on the scene. By piling on extra debt to buy it, he now faces the challenge that its revenues won’t cover the payments needed to service that debt, says Professor Talley. From that perspective, Mr. Musk’s rush to raise revenue and cut workforce costs makes sense. In meetings with employees, he has reportedly painted a bleak picture of the company’s future without serious changes.

The political overtones surrounding the Twitter acquisition complicate his task. In 2021, two days after the storming of the Capitol, the social media company permanently banned its most famous user – then-President Donald Trump – because of the risk of further incitement to violence. That move alienated many conservatives, who moved to other platforms. On Saturday, after conducting a poll of Twitter users, Mr. Musk reinstated the former president’s account, which risks alienating liberal users. In the interim, Mr. Trump helped start a new social media company, Truth Social, and so far has expressed disinterest in returning to Twitter.

In the first five days after the libertarian billionaire took over, more than a million users deactivated or suspended their accounts, according to one estimate. That’s a drop in the bucket for a platform with more than 230 million daily active users, from which Twitter can profit. The bigger danger for Mr. Musk is that the turmoil at Twitter leaks over to his other companies, especially Tesla.

Are his bluntly expressed politics turning off potential Tesla buyers? Will his managerial missteps at Twitter cause Tesla investors to reevaluate the carmaker’s high value?

In a way, Mr. Musk faces his own version of the founder’s dilemma in trying to recover his reputation and managerial balance. Either he gives up Twitter leadership to someone more experienced or he risks failure by moving forward. The serial entrepreneur has stared bankruptcy in the face before and proved his naysayers wrong.

There are “a lot of challenges in the next three to six months,” says Mr. Ives, the Wedbush analyst. “If he gets through this dark storm, there are better days ahead.”

For Salote Nasalo, from the island nation of Fiji, newly promised climate aid for developing nations can’t come quickly enough.

As a specialist on so-called loss and damage from climate change, she came here to this year’s United Nations climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, and was among those who tirelessly pushed for the cause of a relief fund. 

Those efforts paid off, as the world’s governments agreed to establish a fund for countries hardest hit by climate disasters – hailed as a win for diplomacy after marathon negotiations went 40 hours overtime and nearly collapsed. 

But in Ms. Nasalo’s home country, 50 hours and multiple plane rides away, family and friends were preparing for cyclones and historic flooding. 

“Often the poorest communities are the ones that need the help the most, and they have not been given the tools or the funds to either rebuild or prepare for the next extreme event,” Ms. Nasalo says. “We now need to find ways to make sure funds get to these communities so they can rebuild and better prepare for the next crisis.” 

The promises made here at the COP27 climate summit represent a start. The next step will be follow-through on what many see as a vital issue of global fairness and responsibility.

Experts and governments called the fund for vulnerable countries a “win for multilateralism” that has gone a long way toward rebuilding the trust of developing countries, affected communities, and young people, in a climate process they viewed as favoring rich nations and failing to factor in their views and increasingly urgent needs. 

Developing nations, particularly the group G77, stood their ground the entire two weeks of arduous talks, insisting on a separate fund for communities hit hardest by climate disasters – in the face of stiff resistance from the U.S. and other Western countries, who finally relented. 

“This certainly demonstrates that a just and fair cause backed by science and with enough interest groups supporting it, eventually will gain traction and progress will be made,” says Emily Wilkinson, senior research fellow at the London-based ODI think tank.

“If developing countries reach a united position and can speak both to hearts and minds, this process shows that they can be successful,” adds the loss and damage expert, who was present at negotiations. “It is a good example of how small states collectively can have a huge influence in a multilateral arena.”

The agreement here was a rare triumph for developing countries in the face of wealthy nations which had long resisted establishing such a fund out of fear that it may open the door to discussions of historical liability for climate change and reparations. 

“This loss and damage fund will be a lifeline for poor families whose houses are destroyed, farmers whose fields are ruined, and islanders forced from their ancestral homes,” Ani Dasgupta, CEO of World Resources Institute, said in a statement.  “This positive outcome from COP27 is an important step toward rebuilding trust with vulnerable countries.”

Yet as Sunday’s agreement was hailed as a recognition of the outsized impact of climate change on poorer nations and an expression of collective responsibility, many criticized the world’s governments for walking away from the conference without securing commitments to further cut emissions needed to avert rapid warming. 

It raises questions about whether this improved sense of trust and cooperation can truly be called climate justice without a clear plan to reduce fossil fuel reliance.

Loss and damage fund

This is the 27th COP or Conference of Parties on climate, and the issue of loss and damage isn’t a new one. But this year it was the top priority for the majority of COP27 attendees, a rallying cry for those seeking relief from intense climate events – with the devastating flooding in Pakistan, drought and famine in Africa, and rising sea levels in Pacific Islands fresh on minds.

Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters

Delegates applaud as COP27 President Sameh Shoukry delivers a statement during the closing plenary at the U.N. climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Nov. 20, 2022.

As part of the decision reached over the weekend, a transitional committee will be formed to make recommendations on how to operate the fund to present at next year’s COP, with the first meeting of the fund committee to meet by March 2023. 

In the text agreement, there are no commitments to the amount of finance to be placed in the fund or who should pay into it, with the text vaguely referring to a “variety of sources.”

The agreement also calls for the reform of multilateral banks and international financial institutions to ease access to climate finance and funds to developing countries – another key demand.

Until now, affected communities and developing countries have had to pay from their own limited budgets to rebuild from climate disasters or adapt to severe weather changes, pushing poorer nations further and further into debt.  

“It’s a relief,” teenage Kenyan activist Rahmina Paulette and conference attendee says of the agreement.

“My own people are affected by floods and poor disposal of plastics, waste, and sewage. Across Africa we have high cases of debt, malnutrition, hunger, and poverty because of the effects of the climate crisis. We hope this leads to immediate relief.”

Critically, negotiators also decided to activate the Santiago Network, a previously agreed network designed to provide technical assistance, knowledge, and solutions to communities and developing countries most affected by climate change.

Experts hope that affected countries will now be able to get both the expertise to adapt and prepare for extreme climate events and the funds to do so. 

Job Half Done?

Yet while the conference made ground-breaking progress on climate financing and damages, it failed to advance on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. 

The COP27 agreement text does not mention once the words “phasing out” or “phasing down” fossil fuels, critical language that would hold countries to account to meet emissions cuts as laid out in the landmark 2015 Paris Accords.

Loren Elliott/Reuters/File

Ratusela Waqanaceva wades through seawater that's come in over an ineffective sea wall at high tide, as his community experiences flooding in Serua Village, Fiji, July 15, 2022. "We have less than 27 years before our communities and villages in the South Pacific disappear under the sea," says Salote Nasalo of Fiji, who attended the COP27 summit to push for stronger climate action.

Likewise, a follow-through on last year’s pledge at COP26 to phase down coal use was also absent. 

“We need to drastically reduce emissions now – and this is an issue this Cop did not address,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, whose intervention on Thursday helped save the talks from breaking down, warned in a statement. “The world still needs a giant leap on climate ambition ... our planet is still in the emergency room.”

Climate campaigners at Sharm el-Sheikh consistently expressed their concern that energy companies and petrostates were actively watering down language from “phasing out” fossil fuels to “phasing down.” Activists held impromptu protests at the tightly-controlled and restrictive conference.  

In the end, most language on transitioning away from fossil fuels was excised completely from the final text.

In a conference described by some as a last chance to keep the 2015 Paris Agreement goal “alive,” the final deal barely mentioned the Paris target of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees C beyond pre-industrial levels.

Some Western delegates privately accused COP27 host Egypt – which has been reliant on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for financial support since current president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s ascension to power in 2013 – of watering down language on fossil fuels at the behest of its allies. 

“It is mind boggling that countries did not muster the courage to call for phasing down fossil fuels, which are the biggest driver of climate change,” Mr. Dasgupta said.  

“We need action ... now”

The lack of action on carbon emissions has placed a spotlight on the outsized presence of energy firms and fossil fuel-producing countries at this year’s conference. 

Fossil fuel firms sent 680 delegates to COP27, more than some entire regions of the world. 

In addition to a large pavilion, Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer, was given a separate dome and zone to show off its climate initiatives and pitch a large-scale “carbon-catch” technology it claims can offset carbon emissions without the need to transition away from fossil fuels. 

Oil- and gas-producing UAE, host of next year’s COP, sent more than 1,000 delegates, by far the largest of any country, from an emirate of 1.5 million citizens. 

While the establishment of a loss and damage fund has revived a sense of fairness and trust in the COP process, those on the frontlines of climate change say world governments still have a long way to go and rapidly diminishing time to avert a wider crisis – with a growing number of lives at stake.

“COP has been going on as long as I have been alive. We don’t need a COP 28 and 29 to cut fossil fuels emissions, we need action on mitigation now,” says Ms. Nasalo from Fiji.

“We have less than 27 years before our communities and villages in the South Pacific disappear under the sea, and the process of COP is too slow to accommodate that. We have made progress on trust, but we also need to consider the survival of humankind.”

C.J. Bartunek

Campers enjoy a fall day at Russian Camp MN at the Kiwanis Scout Camp in Marine on St. Croix, Minnesota, Oct. 21, 2022. The recent camp season saw 400 children from across the U.S., including newly arrived young people from Ukraine, participating in a range of sessions where language immersion is the focus.

To look at them running and playing on the campground in the autumn sunshine, they might be any kids enjoying Minnesota’s fall vacation from school. But listening to them, and to the adults cheering them on, reveals something unique about the gathering: Everyone is speaking Russian. 

At the year’s final session of “Игра. Unplugged,” or Russian Camp MN, in southeastern Minnesota, the overall peacefulness feels especially precious. Many staffers and campers, some of whom have recently arrived from Ukraine are concerned about family members there and in Russia. Opposing views of the war between those countries have brought tension among some expatriates. 

Yet the camp community has remained intact, as its members negotiate new understandings of what it means to be Russian-speaking Americans and work together to support Ukrainians. Some in the group also struggle at times with identity and their ties to Russian culture, but seeing young people’s kindness and openness gives them hope for the longer term.   

“It’s our chance to bring them up as advocates for peace and understanding,” says the camp’s director and founder, Tamara von Schmidt-Pauli. “In the future they can be the people who bring democracy and normalcy back to Russia.”

“It’s our common language”

Responding to the war has inspired some adjustments here in the woods along the St. Croix River, where campers ages 6 to 18 from across the United States gather to be immersed in Russian without the distraction of their cell phones and tablets. This year families chose from three overnight sessions, including five days in October, and from day camps held in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

Many in the camp community now talk in more detail about their families’ cultural heritage, discussing the regional or religious traditions that have shaped them. The Russian Empire’s vast conquests and the former Soviet Union’s edict that Russian be the official language throughout its republics mean that people from more than a dozen nations speak the language. 

C.J. Bartunek

Daria Dzhalalova, one of the camp's co-organizers, reads letters sent through the Owl Post at Russian Camp MN, June 16, 2022. The June session of the camp had a Harry Potter theme.

Larissa Rudashevsky, one of the counselors, grew up in Belarus. Her husband is Jewish and from Lithuania. In their family, there’s “not a drop of Russian blood, but it’s our common language,” she explains. 

Parent Natasha Taylor of Maple Grove, Minnesota, has sent her youngest son to the camp for the past four years. She is from St. Petersburg but also has Ukrainian heritage; her husband is from Ukraine and has a brother in Kyiv, the country’s capital. Her son, who is 14, is practicing language skills that help him better communicate with Ms. Taylor’s mother, who does not speak English. “We are all so interconnected and intertwined,” she says of Russian and Ukrainian people living in the U.S. While she has seen “cracks in relationships” between people who disagree about the war, she has not observed this happening with the camp. 

Besides more discussions around diversity, there have also been other changes, say Ms. Von Schmidt-Pauli and her co-organizers Daria Dzhalalova and Irina Safonov.

“We no longer play Battleship,” Ms. von Schmidt-Pauli says, referring to the popular submarine-themed game. She adds, “Injured, drowned, killed – these words aren’t abstract to kids now.” And they’ve stopped singing “Katyusha,” an iconic Russian folk song that is closely associated with Russia’s military.

The camp’s lodge is also no longer known as the Kremlin, Russia’s symbolic seat of government. But the cabins, all part of a Kiwanis Scout Camp, are still named after cities across the former Soviet Union. And the footpaths are named for thoroughfares in the Russian cities of St. Petersburg and Moscow, and Kyiv in Ukraine. 

While the organizers hope the camp offers respite from worrying about the war, meeting peers who have faced it firsthand has given the American campers a more intimate view of its realities. “It’s one thing to hear something on the news,” Ms. von Schmidt-Pauli says. “It’s another thing to sit around the campfire and hear a teammate tell you something.” 

Welcoming refugees

Masha Kryvoruchko, a seventh grader from Ukraine who came to Minnesota in the spring with her mother to escape the war, is a camper at the fall session. When asked through a translator what her favorite activities have been, she smiles and quietly replies, “Everything.” She elaborates that she’s liked playing a live-action version of the popular video game “Among Us”; making pirozhki, a type of bun with sweet or savory fillings; and playing the piano in music class. 

C.J. Bartunek

Masha Kryvoruchko (left), who attended two sessions of the Russian language camp this year, sits with the founder and director Tamara von Schmidt-Pauli, Oct. 20, 2022. Masha came to Minnesota this spring with her mother to escape the war.

Speaking Russian at the camp – and at home with her mother and father, the camp’s music teacher – has allowed 17-year-old Paulina Frayman, now a counselor-in-training, to connect with Ukrainian newcomers who did not speak any English when they started this year at her high school in the Twin Cities area. “They get thrown into the mess of things, and they just have to adapt to everything,” she says. “I got to meet them and help show them that there is someone here that can help them get around the school and that if they need help with anything they can ask.”

Since March, approximately 900 Ukrainians have accessed support services in the state, a spokesperson from the Minnesota Department of Human Services says, noting that others may have arrived but not used services. The camp’s organizers estimate that between 45 and 50 Ukrainian children have attended a day camp or overnight session since June, with some children attending more than once and the camp covering their tuition. About 400 children overall attend the various camp sessions, including the one in the fall.

Though many Ukrainians embraced the Ukrainian language after the USSR dissolved in 1991, most people in the country still speak and understand at least some Russian, and in some areas Russian remains predominant. This year many Russian-speaking Ukrainians have become passionate about learning Ukrainian, says Walter Anastazievsky, interim community outreach manager at the Ukrainian American Community Center in Minneapolis. He encourages that, but he also welcomes all supporters of the country and its people, regardless of what language they speak. “It doesn’t need to be a point of division,” he says. 

A common mission

Ms. von Schmidt-Pauli grew up in St. Petersburg and immigrated to the U.S. when she was 20. She loved teaching her American friends about her home country and later sharing its language with her students at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she is an instructor in Russian Studies, and with her American-born daughters. She launched the sleep-away camp in 2017. When Russia attacked Ukraine, she felt a crisis of identity. She struggled for a time this year, unable to feel proud of Russian language and culture. 

She and other camp members have found that their shared opposition to the war and advocacy for its victims bind them together as much as their common language. Despite having concerns, she says that not one family withdrew from any of the 2022 sessions. Instead, supporting Ukraine has brought many of them closer, with families working on fundraisers and gathering clothing and medical supplies to send to Ukrainian soldiers. 

Camp organizers are already brainstorming ideas for next year’s sessions. “I am very grateful to the camp community,” Ms. von Schmidt-Pauli says, “who trust us and keep coming and keep staying together as a community without hate.”

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the camp’s location. It is in southeastern Minnesota.

Buffy Sainte-Marie believes that successful persuasion requires two ingredients: love and patience. 

When the Indigenous songwriter wrote the 1964 anti-war song “Universal Soldier,” she imagined how a college student might write an essay to sway a professor who thought differently. That anthem became a folk-rock standard. But two other songs she wrote that year, “Now That the Buffalo’s Gone” and “My Country ’Tis of Thy People You’re Dying,” weren’t wholly embraced. Many people weren’t yet receptive to messages about the mistreatment of North America’s Indigenous people. Despite that experience, the songwriter remains undaunted about how she tackles difficult subjects.

“I do it with a good heart,” she says during a conversation via Zoom. “You’re not there to scold someone for not knowing.”

That approach has served Ms. Sainte- Marie well over a storied career that’s being celebrated in a new documentary on PBS, “Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On,” which airs Tuesday, Nov. 22.

The Cree musician, born on an Indigenous reserve in Saskatchewan, Canada, and raised by adoptive parents in the United States, is a pathfinder. The new film chronicles how she’s often had to wait for the stragglers to catch up to the trails she’s forged by composing genre-defying music, trying out cutting-edge musical technology, and advocating on behalf of Indigenous people. To paraphrase the Academy Award-winning song Ms. Sainte-Marie co-wrote for “An Officer and a Gentleman,” the documentary lifts her up where she belongs.

“They call her the First Lady of Indigenous music,” says Indigenous singer Leela Gilday in a Zoom call. In September, Ms. Gilday performed at “Starwalker,” a televised tribute concert to Ms. Sainte-Marie hosted by Canada’s National Arts Centre. “Music [has] been at the forefront of every revolution. It’s a powerful tool for impacting people’s hearts and minds and creating social change. And she’s well aware of that. So she has always used her music to fire those movements.” 

Ms. Sainte-Marie, a self-taught musician championed by Bob Dylan in the folk music scene of New York’s Greenwich Village, was crowned best new artist by Billboard magazine in 1964. The following year she wrote “Until It’s Time for You To Go,” which was subsequently covered by many artists including Elvis Presley, Neil Diamond, and Cher. But upon the release of “Illuminations,” a 1969 album featuring a primordial synthesizer that manipulated her vocals, she says, “the folkies held their noses and ran the other way.” She laughs without bitterness at the memory. 

The octogenarian’s most recent albums, “Power in the Blood” (2015) and “Medicine Songs” (2017), utilize electronic sounds to create chiaroscuro contrasts with the organic textures of powwow vocal chants. They include fresh recordings of old songs. She believes listeners are ready to reassess those lyrics in light of the findings of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Its 2015 report concluded that the country’s residential schools for Indigenous children enacted a form of “cultural genocide.” 

“In the early ’60s, I may have been very naive, but what I believed about ‘Now That the Buffalo’s Gone’ is that if only these nice people knew they would want to help,” she says. “In many cases they did want to help and they continued to learn, and many did help and showed up. Of course, a lot more didn’t. ... It wasn’t for another 50 years that Truth and Reconciliation brought forth the necessary background so that other people can understand it.”

When Ms. Sainte-Marie performs live, one stage prop she often uses is a red dress on a hanger. It represents missing and murdered Indigenous women. The songwriter says she doesn’t carry a grudge and doesn’t have an ax to grind. Her goal is to educate others about the history and heritage of Indigenous people – something she did as a regular guest on “Sesame Street” in the 1970s. More than that, Ms. Sainte-Marie is a proactive philanthropist.

“The nicest thing that’s ever happened to me hasn’t been my Academy Award, or even there’s this wonderful documentary that they made about me,” she reflects. “It really was when I found out ... that two of my earliest scholarship recipients went on to become the presidents and founders of tribal colleges. They started the tribal college movement.”

When the songwriter isn’t tending to the goats and chickens in the Hawaiian home that inspired her 2015 song “Farm in the Middle of Nowhere,” she’s stockpiling new songs. “I try to understand and interpret in art some of the hard things that just plain exist that we need to make better,” she says, adding that the tone of her work is often “soft.” 

She realizes that progress is a process that sometimes spans generations. “What I learned on five years of ‘Sesame Street’ was that there’s always a new crop of 5-year-olds,” she muses. “If you really understand that, you don’t give up hope.” 

AP

Artists perform next to Ghanim Al Muftah, ambassador for the FIFA World Cup, during the opening ceremony of the Nov. 20 sporting event in Qatar.

The Arab states in the Gulf, which account for nearly half of the world’s oil supply, also hold the lowest combined rankings for democratic freedoms and rights. The two characteristics help explain why democracies face a balancing act to live up to their values while doing business with these vital sources of energy.

Last Friday, for example, U.S. President Joe Biden drew fire by affirming immunity for Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman despite U.S. intelligence reports that link the de facto Saudi leader to the 2018 killing of a Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. In the United Kingdom, meanwhile, the House of Lords plans a debate on how the government might "address human rights abuses in the Gulf States.”

Though valid, these actions may overshadow an important shift already underway in the six states of the Gulf: an emerging generation of youth demanding economic opportunity, religious freedom, and social equality.

On Sunday night, during the opening ceremony of the World Cup in Qatar, the rest of the world heard a powerful voice for such young people. “With tolerance and respect, we can live together under one big home,” said Ghanim Al Muftah, who at the age of 20 may already be his country’s most prominent public figure. A political science student born without legs, he has more than 7 million followers on TikTok, more than 3.3 million on Instagram, and a million more on YouTube. In a 2018 TED Talk, he measured individual worth by “love of life, strength, giving back, patience, and hope.” 

Mr. Al Muftah’s reach through social media underscores the interconnectedness of Arab youth. His message shows the sharp contrast between the aspirations of his generation and the overly restrictive rules they reject.

People under the age of 25 make up 60% of the population across the Arab world. One in 5 is unemployed, and young Arab women are twice as likely to be jobless than their male counterparts. Lack of economic opportunity for younger Arabs has been a long-standing problem, but there’s a new wrinkle. As the world moves toward a post-oil future, the basic social contract of Arab societies is changing. The age of the petrodollar welfare state is ending, giving way to a new age of entrepreneurial independence and individual liberty.

A Zogby poll of Arab youth in July found that two-thirds believe religious leaders should not interfere in politics, and 43% said they intend to start their own businesses. Significantly, 34% of startups have female founders, and as high as 57% of science, technology, and engineering graduates are women. In one important trend, as state scholarships for study in overseas universities have decreased in recent years, more young Arabs are funding their educations themselves.

The region’s regimes are paying attention. The United Arab Emirates, for example, has created a youth council to participate in government. Its youngest minister is 22.

“Only through critical self-reflection can Muslim societies truly address their political and socioeconomic problems,” wrote Ahmet T. Kuru, a political scientist at San Diego State University, in The New Arab last year. “Muslim societies need open, meritocratic, and competitive systems where political, religious, intellectual, and economic classes can operate autonomously.”

States often struggle to find the balance between their economic interests and moral values. But changes within Arab societies are showing that aspirations for equality, compassion, and liberty ultimately bend even the most hardened regimes.