Achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6.1 for safe, sufficient, and available water has always been important. Compounding challenges—from climate change and increasing migration within and across borders to COVID-19 and its multiple variants—makes achieving the human right to water more urgent. But what is often missed in discussions related to water access is that what determines access to safe and sufficient water is about more than gaps in governance or lack of funding—it is intertwined with entrenched inequality in societies, including the planning of urban spaces.

The Security Transition Plan in Afghanistan is a high-risk political game. Decreasing the presence of foreign troops is not just a military strategy; it signifies a concomitant reduction in international commitment to Afghanistan after 2014. This development could spell disaster for Afghanistan’s counter-narcotics policy, which relies heavily on international donors for military infrastructure and financial resources.

Cape Town is running dry. But thanks to its sophisticated water management efforts, the city may ride out the crisis. However, other cities that lack these capacities are less likely to survive Day Zero. Especially in developing countries, where urban water services are often provided by informal or illegal actors, running out of water could have dangerous ripple effects for peace and security.

As migration, urbanization, and climate change transform the world, cities lie in the crosshairs—most of the world’s population will become urban. Based on the framework of “fragile cities”, scenarios of violent political instability seem imminent in cities in developing countries. While concerns of whether cities absorb disturbances introduced by these sea changes or experience instability are well founded, the “fragile city” lens falls short to the task of making sense of dynamic challenges.

On November 23, 2018, the Chinese consulate in Karachi came under attack by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA). Soon after, the attack was framed within the narrative of the separatist insurgency in Balochistan and external players sabotaging the prospects of Chinese investment through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).