Important but under-the-radar climate milestones, Latin America’s rightward swing, efforts to update civilian protection in conflict even as humanitarian catastrophes unfold: in a year of nonstop news of major proportions, it was easy for significant stories to fall under the radar. Continuing a year-end idea originated by our former Editorial Director Kate Brannen and revived in 2023, we reached out to members of our wonderful Just Security community, including our brilliant Editorial Board, to ask what news items they thought deserved more attention in 2025 – with a particular eye on those that are likely to inform the law and policy landscape in 2026.
In some cases, these might be topics that were under-covered. Others received significant coverage but still may have implications that merit more attention.
There are of course far more developments that are noteworthy than a single recap can capture, and we encourage you to keep an eye out for other “looking back, looking ahead” style articles on Just Security in the days and weeks ahead. But in the midst of a news environment dominated by attention-grabbing headlines and algorithms commodifying our attention, we hope that this compilation will provide an opportunity to step back and reflect on some of the important trends shaping our world today.
Climate Milestones and Misses
Global climate progress in 2025 was, in a word, uneven, reflecting an ever-widening gap between ambition and the ability to mobilize that ambition into concrete global action. Two highly-anticipated advisory opinions – from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in May and from the International Court of Justice in July – took strong positions with respect to States’ obligations in relation to climate change, as analyzed on Just Security here and here.
But in practice, climate diplomacy produced relatively weak results; at COP 30 in Belém, for example, there was little progress on crucial questions such as countries’ specific individual commitments to emissions reduction. Earlier this year, analysts described a much-anticipated climate announcement from China as likewise underwhelming, and the year of course was also marked by the United States’ highly visible retreat from global climate engagement – with some signs that U.S. state and local governments may be seeking openings to engage even as the national government pulls back.
Meanwhile, one relatively undercovered story in climate diplomacy was the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement (BBNJ), or High Seas Treaty, which received sufficient ratifications this fall to enter into force in January 2026. It creates the first comprehensive legal framework for protecting biodiversity on the high seas, an area covering nearly half the earth’s surface, and is notable as a milestone in climate-biodiversity governance and as a sign that international treaty-making continues to function even in an environment of increasing uncertainty.
(Readers may also be interested in Just Security’s Climate Archive.)
In the Age of Generative AI, How Do We Know What We Know?
This year saw what seemed to be a near-constant rollout of generative AI tools, including new versions of consumer-facing large-language models (LLMs), an explosion in AI video content, and the continued development of sector-specialized generative models. Among the many complex questions raised by the ubiquity of generative AI, one relatively under-covered angle involved epistemic risks: how society and institutions create and understand knowledge, and how we validate what information to trust.
This can play out in different ways across different types of use. Some specialized AI models used for professional purposes may develop faster than users – even very expert users – can fully understand the model’s inputs, limitations, and biases, potentially degrading the quality of knowledge production and eroding public trust in information. In general consumer uses, the ubiquity of AI-generated content may threaten the (already tenuous) social agreement about reality. AI video, for instance, presents new challenges for civilian protection and evidence collection: not only that manipulated images will be taken as true but also that very real evidence, including of atrocities, might be dismissed as AI.
Scholars have been grappling with these questions for several years now. But with the explosion of public-facing AI, the risk becomes that products will move into common use, and policymakers will be charged with regulating them, before the relevant public fully understands those risks and limitations. In July of this year, for example, some scholars expressed concern about this very knowledge gap when the EU released its General-Purpose AI Code of Practice, providing guidance on how the 2024 AI Act should be applied to general-purpose AI tools like LLMs.
With AI now shaping our physical world as much as our digital one, understanding and communicating about these epistemic gaps is likely to be a key theme of 2026.
(Readers may also be interested in Just Security’s archive of artificial intelligence articles.)
“A Tale of Two Courts” at the ICC
The story of the International Criminal Court (ICC) this year was, in the words of Just Security Editorial Board member and former ICC Prosecutions Coordinator Alex Whiting, “a tale of two courts.”
On the one hand, developments like sanctions in connection to the Palestine situation and allegations against Prosecutor Karim Khan, now on leave pending investigation, drew headlines.
But against that backdrop, the Court also managed to continue its work and achieve meaningful progress in many areas this year: the arrest of former President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, convictions in the Sudan Situation and a case from the Central African Republic, the first arrest and surrender of an accused in the Libya Situation, the confirmation of charges in absentia in the Joseph Kony case, and launching of new policies, including on environmental crimes and cyber-enabled crimes. (Readers may also be interested in Just Security’s ICC coverage, in which authors analyze a number of these developments.)
Observes Whiting: “This is not to minimize the challenges faced by the Court, or some of the structural problems that may exist within the Rome Statute, but under the direction of the Deputy Prosecutors and the judges, the Court is continuing to function and do its work. The Court is not invulnerable, but it is resilient.”
ICRC Updates Civilian Protection Guidance to Reflect Realities of Modern Warfare
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) this year published its updated Commentary on the Fourth Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilians (GCIV), the core humanitarian treaty governing civilian protection in international armed conflict and occupation. This marks the last in a cycle of modernizing the commentaries to the Geneva Conventions, after which the ICRC will turn to the Additional Protocols.
The Commentaries provide interpretive guidance on how the Geneva Conventions’ rules should be applied in real-world situations. Given the importance of GCIV in the protection of civilians while under increasing threat in conflicts around the globe (see, for example, the next entry on this list), and the many ways in which armed conflict has changed in the 60-plus years since the last round of Commentaries, this update was particularly anticipated. There is no expectation, of course, that it will provide a panacea, but by updating the guidance to reflect the conditions of today’s armed conflicts, the ICRC reaffirms the centrality of the fundamental legal protections owed to civilians.
Watch this space for a series from international humanitarian law experts analyzing the updated Commentary, coming jointly from Just Security, the ICRC, and EJIL:Talk! early in the new year.
Humanitarian Catastrophe in Sudan
The brutal civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), now well into its third year, has triggered the largest displacement crisis in the world, with approximately 12 million people forcibly displaced as of Dec. 1, and estimates from earlier this year of over 30 million people in need of humanitarian aid. Civilians are subjected to direct and brutal violence from the conflict itself, while also suffering from a health system under strain; malnutrition, and in some areas famine; and repeated outbreaks of cholera, dengue, and other diseases.
As authors writing on Just Security and elsewhere have repeatedly observed, the scale of global attention – in the press, from the public, and from policymakers – fails to match the scale of the atrocities. At the same time the global community faces the urgent task of addressing the humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan, it also faces the question of how one of the worst global crises has unfolded with so little international attention.
A Power Vacuum in Public Health Leadership
While the Trump administration’s controversial cuts to public health programs, including the dismantling of Centers for Disease Control initiatives, the dissolution of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), dominated headlines, a less-publicized consequence was the response to the resulting power vacuum in public health leadership.
Within the United States, regional public health alliances emerged, primarily among Democratic-led states in the west and northeast. However, even as state and local governments stepped in to fill the gaps, they faced deep budget cuts from federal health programs.
Globally, a July 2025 study in The Lancet estimated that U.S. cuts to public health aid could lead to 14 million additional deaths by 2030. A December 2025 response from other scholars argued that the study’s assumptions were being contradicted by real-world developments. “People, institutions, and governments in several countries have responded to the moment,” they noted, by shifting budgets, reforming supply systems, and increasing aid from other nations—challenging the notion that U.S. leadership is indispensable to global health efforts.
But while European countries, China, and global solidarity networks have been suggested as alternatives to fill the gaps, a real funding shortfall remains. The UK and European Union member states, led by Germany (which recently became home to a new WHO center) have visibly assumed a more prominent role in global public health leadership. However, many are also scaling back their overseas development assistance due to their own budget constraints. China’s public health contributions, especially in Africa, are notable but far smaller than the resources previously provided by USAID.
Ultimately, these cuts have sparked efforts to explore alternative solutions, both domestically and internationally, but these initiatives are constrained by undeniable resource limitations.
(Readers may also be interested in the Collection: Just Security’s Coverage of Trump Administration Executive Actions.)
The Double-Edged Sword of U.S.-Belarus Rapprochement
From Just Security Washington Senior Editor Viola Gienger, who curates much of the site’s content on rule of law and diplomacy related to eastern Europe:
Belarus generally garners little attention in the Western news media, and that includes this year’s curious rapprochement between the Trump administration and longtime Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenka, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Trump overtures even merited the appointment of a specific U.S. special envoy for Belarus, former Trump lawyer John Coale.
The result has been several major releases of Belarusian political prisoners in exchange for easing of sanctions — the husband of opposition leader in exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya in June, a mass release of 52 prisoners in September and another of 123 in December, the latter of which included Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski and opposition figures Maria Kolesnikova and Viktar Babaryka.
Despite the recent prisoner releases, Lukashenka (whose 2020 electoral “win” was widely recognized by impartial monitors as fraudulent) continues to play a double game, cracking down on dissent and jailing others, under conditions of abuse and torture, even amid the periodic releases.
Lukashenka has played the West off against Putin for decades, and he became an influential, though still minor, factor after Putin’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when the longtime Belarusian leader allowed Russian troops onto his territory for their military operations against Ukraine while at the same time declining to send his own forces to aid the Russians on the battlefield. There also have been persistent reports that Lukashenka allowed Russian nuclear weapons onto Belarus territory, and he played a role in the saga of the failed apparent coup against Putin by Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2023 that ended in his demise a few months later in a plane crash. Given this history, Lukashenka’s latest opening to the West merits a close watch as the United States seeks to broker a peace agreement to end Russia’s assault on Ukraine.
U.S.-Canada Tensions: More Than a Meme
While new U.S. alliances emerged in 2025, other longstanding partnerships faltered. Perhaps nowhere was this more evident than in diplomatic fractures that appeared between the United States and Canada, long one of the world’s most stable relationships.
Although President Donald Trump’s repeated suggestions to make Canada the “51st state” generated headlines, memes, and jokes, the absurdity of the situation itself became the story, obscuring a more consequential and potentially lasting geopolitical shift.
The Canadian public, already sensitive to issues of sovereignty and autonomy, increasingly viewed U.S. rhetoric as disregard for the bilateral relationship. In an Ipsos poll this fall, six in ten Canadians surveyed said they could never trust Americans in the same way again, while seven in ten anticipated similar trade and economic disputes between the countries for at least several years to come.
Despite these tensions, Canada and the United States continue to maintain productive diplomatic relations on issues like mutual defense under the North American Aerospace Defense Command and Arctic cooperation. However, Canada is also exploring new partnerships, including closer links to Europe. And while it has often followed the U.S. lead on foreign policy issues such as China, it may soon face new questions about whether to chart its own independent path in the new geopolitical landscape.
Latin America’s Rightward Swing
In Chile, a presidential candidate who openly praised former dictator Augusto Pinochet won with a tough-on-crime and anti-immigration platform. In Bolivia, after two decades of socialist rule, a centrist candidate triumphed, his closest opponent not from the left but from the right. In Argentina, libertarian President Javier Milei’s party enjoyed a “decisive” congressional elections win despite governing amidst continued economic turmoil, with voters apparently unconvinced they would fare better under left-wing policies.
Elections in Latin America in 2025 didn’t universally swing right; in Honduras, for example, left-wing incumbent President Xiomara Castro appears to have won against a Trump-backed challenger. (Author’s note, Dec. 26: In fact, conservative candidate Nasry Asfura was finally declared the winner of the Nov. 30 election on Dec. 24, with claims of irregularities still maintained from both sides.) But there was certainly an observable trend, as populist rhetoric, “law and order” pledges, and economic frustration seemed to fuel a shift toward more conservative or centrist candidates in a region where the left had done well in recent decades, and where right-wing governance had often been associated with the legacy of dictatorship.
But as a recent Foreign Affairs article observed, “the idea that the right is inherently or uniquely authoritarian has lost traction in today’s Latin America, where all three cases of clear-cut dictatorship are on the ideological left: Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.” Traditional left-wing promises of social progress appear to be less convincing to voters than frustration with the political establishment’s perceived failures to address crime and inflation.
High-profile elections in the region will continue in 2026, including in Peru, where one of the leading candidates is the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, who was convicted for human rights abuses from his time in power in the 1990s; and Brazil, where recent polls have the left-wing incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ahead of potential rivals, including the son of imprisoned ex-president Jair Bolsonaro. But with the elections months away, much can still change.
