Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Hollie Booth, Senior Research Fellow, Conservation Science, University of Oxford; Bangor University

More than one-third of sharks and rays are now threatened with extinction, making them among the most imperilled vertebrates on Earth. Why? Overfishing, both as targeted catches for their valuable fins, meat, gills and liver oil, and as bycatch in nets and lines set for other fish.

In late 2025, governments took sweeping action for sharks and rays. At a global conference on wildlife trade in Uzbekistan more than 70 shark and ray species received new or stronger international trade limits.

Whale shark, oceanic whitetip shark, wedgefish, devil rays and gulper sharks were among those subject to stricter regulations. This is a major political milestone for shark conservation.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: as I outline in my new research paper published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, trade regulation alone won’t save sharks.

Cites, the convention on international trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora, is the main global agreement regulating international wildlife trade, seeking to ensure the survival of the 41,000 species covered by the convention.

Read more:
The world wildlife trade regulator is 50 – here’s what has worked and what needs to change

Countries can only export most of the more than 1,000 shark and ray species covered by Cites regulations if they demonstrate trade is sustainable. A handful of highly threatened species (including sawfishes, manta and devil rays, whale shark, oceanic whitetip shark) are afforded the highest protection, where international trade is permitted only under exceptional circumstances.

In theory, these regulations can reduce fishing pressure. In practice, the pathway from paperwork to population recovery is far from guaranteed.

Promise and pitfalls

International trade is only one driver of shark overfishing. Shark and ray fishing mortality is also a byproduct of wild-caught fish. And, in many small-scale fisheries, sharks and rays are valuable secondary catch – meaning they are not the main target catch, but they still have value to fishers because they are sold in domestic markets or eaten locally.

These local drivers sustain fishing mortality, which means lots of sharks and rays get killed regardless of what happens to international trade.

Some shark fishing isn’t even driven by demand. In many coastal communities, production is supply driven: shaped mainly by the need to generate income and survive.

In Indonesia, when I’ve asked fishers what they’d do if shark prices fell, some say they’ll fish harder, not less, to maintain their income. In such contexts, Cites listings alone are unlikely to reduce fishing pressure unless trade regulations drive efforts to address local causes of overfishing.

Cites is also implemented through each country’s own policies and domestic management measures. Those can range from exemplary – with meaningful, well-implemented trade management that helps wild populations recover (such as the saiga antelope in Kazakhstan) to performative – where regulations exist on paper but are never implemented in practice (this includes, arguably, protection for some sharks, based on recent global trade analyses).

Even trade restrictions implemented with good intentions can backfire. For example, when supply is restricted but demand stays strong, prices rise – potentially incentivising more fishing and black markets.

This dynamic has played out with pangolins and ivory and cannot be ignored for sharks and rays, especially due to the “the snob effect” – when demand for a product increases as it becomes rarer or more expensive. When people consume shark products to display their status, scarcity can make them more attractive – meaning that restrictions on shark fishing might accidentally drive up demand rather than reduce it.

There’s also displacement to consider. When Indonesia protected manta rays, some fishers shifted to catching other unprotected ray species instead. Restrictions in one part of the market can redistribute pressure rather than reduce it.

From paperwork to positive outcomes

Three broad scenarios now lie ahead for sharks and rays.

In the best case, Cites catalyses integrated reforms across trade chains and the entire seafood sector. Supply countries establish sustainable catch limits to manage bycatch and targeted fisheries in small-scale and commercial contexts. Limits are implemented through effective compliance management including fair support for small-scale fishers already on the margins.

On the demand side, targeted demand management for shark products and other seafood with embedded negative impacts weakens the market signals that makes overfishing profitable in the first place. Overfishing halts and populations begin to recover. Evidence from mammals suggests this pathway is possible – but only if Cites triggers a range of global-to-local management measures.

In a business-as-usual scenario, the new listings deliver little. Countries adopt policies on paper while fishing continues unabated. Trade continues legally, in domestic markets or through new international bureaucracies, or moves illegally, through black markets and laundering. Current evidence on global shark trade flows suggests this is the direction of travel, though these new listings may shift the needle.

In the worst case, well-intended restrictions backfire. Prices spike, black markets expand, and fishers – squeezed economically – fish harder and riskier. Policy inadvertently accelerates decline.

Which future unfolds depends on what happens next. New Cites listings represent an opportunity for transformative change. But only if they are seen as a means to an end – one which catalyses broader reforms, from fisheries through to consumption, focused on limiting fishing mortality – rather than a standalone measure.

If the goal is a more sustainable future for both people and nature, then success must be measured in both the abundance and diversity of species and the wellbeing of people, not in the number of new policies. New trade regulations got the headlines. The harder, messier work of making them count starts now.

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Hollie Booth is the Co-Founder and Director of Yayasan Kebersamaan Untuk Lautan, a marine conservation non-profit in Indonesia.

– ref. New limits on global trade of sharks won’t be enough to save them from overfishing – new research – https://theconversation.com/new-limits-on-global-trade-of-sharks-wont-be-enough-to-save-them-from-overfishing-new-research-273256

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Aldo Zammit Borda, Reader, City St George’s, University of London

A recent investigation by the Guardian newspaper and humanitarian NGO Insecurity Insight has exposed how childbirth and reproduction is being weaponised in conflicts worldwide. The evidence is alarming.

In Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict, soldiers reportedly inserted metal objects into women’s wombs. They told victims: “You will never be able to give birth.” In Russian detention facilities, Ukrainian men tell of being subjected to electric shock torture targeting their reproductive organs. Captors declared: “We’re going to sterilise you now.”

During its assault on Gaza, the Israeli military destroyed the territory’s largest fertility clinic in October 2023. The strike eliminated about 4,000 embryos and 1,000 sperm samples. The attack was cited by a UN investigation as a possible example of genocidal intent.

These are examples of reproductive violence. And they are not isolated atrocities. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has defined this as violence that “violates reproductive autonomy and/or it is directed at people on account of their actual or potential reproductive capacity, or perceptions thereof”.

Reproductive violence targets people’s capacity to have children. It is used as a tool of persecution, demographic control and collective punishment.

Serious atrocities such as murder, torture and rape make headlines and should be prosecuted as war crimes, as they often are. But systematic attacks on reproductive capacity remain, as scholars have noted, “in the shadows” of international law.

At the individual level, reproductive violence strikes at something deeply personal: the wish to have children and build a family. When a woman is forcibly sterilised, as has been reported about Uyghur women, the harm goes beyond physical injury. It takes away the possibility of motherhood.

When a man’s reproductive organs are targeted, as has reportedly happened to Ukrainian detainees, it is an assault on identity and future fatherhood. The knowledge that the loss could be permanent compounds the trauma.

At the collective level, reproductive violence enables the slow destruction of a group’s future. Mass killing provokes immediate international outrage. But destroying a fertility clinic or sterilising a population achieves the same outcome over time, with less visible evidence.

As one Uyghur survivor of China’s re-education camps put it: the strategy is “not to kill us in cold blood, but to make us slowly disappear. So slowly that no one would notice”.

Reproductive violence also offers perpetrators plausible deniability. Forced sterilisation can be framed as family planning as China insisted in the case of Uyghur women. Destroyed maternity wards may be explained as collateral damage, as the Israeli government has in the cases of hospitals destroyed in Gaza.

But deniability is not the only reason it is used. Reproductive violence is also devastatingly efficient. When Israeli forces destroyed Gaza’s largest fertility clinic, the United Nations commission of inquiry concluded that “the Israeli security forces knew of the function of the clinic and intended to target it”. One attack, thousands of potential children lost.

A hidden category of harm

While recognition of reproductive violence is growing, it remains poorly understood and rarely prosecuted. Several factors explain this gap.

First, reproduction has historically been classified as belonging to the “private sphere,” outside the proper concern of international law. Forced pregnancies, forced contraception and miscarriages are considered too intimate for public discourse. This creates what international legal scholar Fionnuala Ní Aoláin has called a “zone of silence”.

Second, reproductive violence has traditionally been absorbed into sexual violence. This approach has overshadowed reproductive violence as a distinct category. Rape and other sexual crimes have rightly gained attention. But it has also rendered reproductive violence invisible as a distinct category, with its own victims and its own harms.

As Ní Aoláin observed: “While rape in armed conflict makes headlines, obstetric violence against women and girls generally does not.”

Third, much reproductive violence operates indirectly and may appear almost routine. A woman who miscarries because a maternity ward was bombed has suffered reproductive violence. But there is no direct perpetrator with blood on their hands. The deaths are statistical, diffuse, and emerge over time.

Making the invisible visible

Addressing reproductive violence requires first understanding it. A key obstacle has been conceptual: existing definitions fail to unpack its different harms. While forced pregnancy, castration and forced abortion are all reproductive violence, they affect victims in very different ways.

Research I have published in the International Journal of Transitional Justice develops a new typology. It categorises reproductive violence by its consequences for victims.

Birth-compelling harms force unwanted pregnancies. Birth-preventing harms deprive victims of reproductive capacity. Birth-endangering or terminating harms endanger wanted pregnancies or destroy health infrastructure.

This typology matters for three reasons. It makes visible the distinct harms each category inflicts. It helps investigators spot seemingly isolated acts as part of a concerted plan. And it strengthens the case for accountability under international law.

Recognition is slowly emerging. Today, more organisations treat reproductive violence as a distinct form of gender-based violence. But recognition requires deeper understanding of why reproductive violence occurs and its effects on victims. For too long, the law has treated this violence as incidental to mass atrocities rather than central to their execution.

Perpetrators have always known otherwise: control over whether a people can have children is control over whether that people will exist at all.

Aldo Zammit Borda receives funding from Economic and Social Research Council. He served as Head of Research and Investigation for the informal Uyghur Tribunal (https://uyghurtribunal.com/), and Head of Research for the Yazidi Justice Committee (https://www.yazidijustice.com/). The views herein are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect those of any other person or organization.

– ref. How reproductive violence is being used in conflicts to deny people’s future – https://theconversation.com/how-reproductive-violence-is-being-used-in-conflicts-to-deny-peoples-future-273910

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Louise Thompson, Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of Manchester

A byelection has been set for February 26 in the Manchester constituency of Gorton and Denton. This will be a big test for Keir Starmer’s Labour party and a temperature check on the state of multi-party politics in the North. Although Labour won the seat comfortably in 2024, some early polls are already suggesting Reform could win.

Byelections are awkward beasts and don’t necessarily follow the usual rules. What makes things harder in this case is that Gorton and Denton is a new constituency. It was formed by boundary changes in 2024 from parts of three different Manchester constituencies (Gorton, Denton & Reddish and Manchester Withington).

When we try to understand what might happen in a byelection, we rely on the constituency’s past election results as a marker, which is obviously limited to just one election in this case. Gorton and Denton is also “a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster”, as my colleague Rob Ford has written.

It has an elongated shape and combines areas with huge socio-demographic differences. Its Tameside wards are predominantly white, with a sizeable working class while its Manchester wards have a much higher student and Muslim population.

Labour has everything to lose

Ordinarily, this would be a constituency which Labour should easily win. Manchester is a Labour heartland through and through. Its other five constituencies are all held by Labour MPs, it boasts all but a handful of seats on the City Council and Andy Burnham trounced his opponents in the city’s last mayoral elections with a 68,000 majority.

But byelections are difficult for governments and Keir Starmer’s track record so far is not good. Labour lost a byelection in the Cheshire constituency of Runcorn and Helsby in May 2025 to Reform’s Sarah Pochin. Pochin won on a narrow margin of just six votes but had managed to overturn a majority of over 14,000. That makes Labour’s majority of 13,000 in Gorton and Denton look less than secure.

The real danger here is that Labour finds itself in the squeezed middle. It risks losing voters to Reform on the right and the Greens on the left. This is what happened in the Caerphilly Senedd byelection in November, which saw Labour pushed back into third place behind Reform and winners Plaid Cymru.

Reform has everything to prove

Nigel Farage’s party has the momentum at the moment. Polls suggest they are outperforming Labour nationally right now and the recent high-profile defections of Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman have increased the size of their parliamentary group to 8 MPs.

The Reform candidate in Gorton and Denton, former university academic and GB News presenter Matthew Goodwin, may be the most recognisable candidate to voters, but his political views may not go down well throughout the constituency.

His views on the white working class being left behind may resonate in some of Manchester’s Tameside wards, but his extreme views on immigration and what it means to be British will not play well in others, something the Greens in particular are trying to capitalise on.

Pitching the byelection as a “referendum” on Starmer’s leadership is a sensible strategy by Goodwin, especially as a recent YouGov poll showed that 76% of voters in the North think the prime minister is doing a bad job. Reform may struggle to bring together enough voters ready to sign up to all the party stands for, but may be able to borrow the votes from those who nevertheless want Labour out and would benefit from a split on the left.

Victory in Gorton and Denton would not only mean that Reform will equal the SNP in party group size in the Commons, it will be a further pull for disgruntled or panicking Conservative (or Labour) MPs, ahead of the May 7 deadline Farage has imposed on MPs thinking about defecting to his party. But there is a sizeable chunk of voters across the UK who say they would never vote for Reform, and who could vote tactically for Labour just to keep Reform out.

Green performance could be key

The Greens did not perform brilliantly in Gorton and Denton at the 2024 elections, but nationally the party received 7% of the vote and they hold over 800 seats on local councils. Since the election, they have elected a new leader, Zack Polanski, who has been instrumental in raising the Green voice in the media.

Their candidate is Hannah Spencer, a councillor in the region who stood for mayor in 2024 and finished in fifth place, behind Reform.

Polanski is confident that only the Greens can beat Reform in Gorton and Denton. And while that’s a bold claim, his supporters will be buoyed by the seat they took from Reform in a Derbyshire local byelection last year.

And even if they don’t win, a solid Green performance could be very bad news for Starmer.

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Louise Thompson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Gorton and Denton byelection: Labour won comfortably in 2024 but Reform could benefit from a split vote on the left – https://theconversation.com/gorton-and-denton-byelection-labour-won-comfortably-in-2024-but-reform-could-benefit-from-a-split-vote-on-the-left-274672

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sucharit Katyal, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen

Have you ever made a decision, only to find yourself second-guessing it moments later? Maybe you spoke up in a meeting and immediately wondered if you said the wrong thing, or left a social gathering feeling confident, only to replay your actions in your head and feel uncertain. For many of us, reflecting on our choices doesn’t always reassure — sometimes it fuels self-doubt.

As a cognitive scientist, I am fascinated by this gap between what people objectively know and how confident they feel. Indeed, your level of confidence can affect so many things – whether you speak up or act on your ideas, how much you study for an exam or stick with your decisions. And yet, the way confidence develops — or erodes — can vary dramatically between people.

Two factors in particular can play a big role: anxiety and gender. People with higher levels of anxiety often report feeling less confident about their decisions than non-anxious people, even when their choices are just as accurate. Anxiety can make thoughts spiral: “What if I made the wrong choice?” “Did I miss something?” And these mental loops can erode confidence over time.

Women, on the other hand, tend to report lower confidence levels than men across a variety of tasks, despite performing equally well.

This is thought to arise from social and cultural factors. Feedback, expectations and stereotypes can subtly influence self-perception, making women more likely to underestimate their abilities.

Confidence over time

With these differences in mind, I began to wonder: if confidence is shaped so differently by anxiety and gender, what happens when people spend extra time thinking about a decision? Does reflection help everyone, or might it push some people further into self-doubt?

To answer this, in our new study, my colleagues and I looked at how participants performed different memory and visual discrimination tasks, while rating their confidence after each answer. By tracking how these ratings changed with elapsed time, we could see how confidence changes as people reflect on their decisions — and how these changes differ depending on gender and the severity of anxiety symptoms.

What we found was that participants with higher anxiety were not just underconfident — but that spending more time thinking made them even less sure of themselves. This happened even when their answers were correct.

For women, however, extra reflection had the opposite effect. Carefully reviewing the task allowed them to gradually feel more confident. Over time, this reduced the usual confidence gap between women and men, until both genders were equally certain in their decisions.

In short, the same behaviour — reflecting on a decision — was found to have the opposite effect depending on what factor (gender or anxiety) made a person feel underconfident in the first place.

Why this matters

So why does thinking longer produce such different outcomes? For anxious people, it seems that longer reflection time can become ruminative, amplifying worries and imagined errors. While for women, reflection can be constructive, allowing careful consideration of evidence and performance.

This distinction highlights a simple but powerful point: confidence isn’t about how long you think — it’s about how you think. In other words, deliberation that carefully evaluates evidence can boost confidence, while rumination can erode it.

So what does this mean for future decision-making?

Well, if you tend to be anxious, more thinking isn’t always better. Limit rumination, focus on concrete evidence and set clear decision rules to prevent your confidence from spiralling downward.

And if you you’re a woman and you tend to underestimate your abilities, taking some time to review the evidence and outcomes may well help your confidence better reflect reality.

And what, you might ask, if I’m both a woman and have anxiety — how will I respond? Well, that would depend on which of your biases are more dominant, anxiety-related or gender related.

And if the two are similar, then your underconfidence might stay the same over time: not getting better, but also not worsening. For you, it might be worth trying out both ways of decision-making in a low-stakes situation to see which serves you better.

The bottom line, though, is that there’s no one-size-fits-all rule like “stop overthinking it” or “think more carefully” when it comes to decision-making.

Instead, you should focus on being aware of how your mind’s emotional and social habits shape your levels of confidence, so you can make better choices and trust yourself when it’s justified to do so. This can help turn reflection from a source of doubt into a tool for self-assurance.

This article was commissioned as part of a partnership between
Videnskab.dk and The Conversation.

Sucharit Katyal received a fellowship from Koa Health.

– ref. Some people gain confidence from thinking things through, others lose it – new research – https://theconversation.com/some-people-gain-confidence-from-thinking-things-through-others-lose-it-new-research-273625

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate Editor, The Conversation

This article was first published in The Conversation UK’s World Affairs Briefing email. Sign up to receive weekly analysis of the latest developments in international relations, direct to your inbox.

The US government’s reaction to the killing of Alex Pretti last weekend – and of Renée Good a fortnight earlier – was a grim reminder of George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

In similar fashion, senior members of the Trump administration asked the American people to reject freely available video evidence of the two killings. They claimed that Pretti, a nurse at a local veterans’ hospital, was a “domestic terrorist”, that he was “brandishing a handgun”, and was “an assassin” who “tried to murder federal agents”. Good, a mother of three, supposedly “viciously ran over the ICE officer” who then put three bullets in her head.

Given that video evidence flatly contradicts those statements, this could yet prove a serious overreach on the part of Donald Trump and his lieutenants. Already border patrol commander Greg Bovino, who was in charge of ICE operations in Minneapolis, has been removed. And there’s speculation that Kristi Noem, US secretary of homeland security, is under serious pressure.

One of the more objectionable claims from some of the people looking to blame the victims, writes Andrew Gawthorpe, was the claim made by several Trump officials – and the president himself – that by carrying a gun, Pretti had been asking for trouble.

As you might expect, this drew a sharp reaction from both the National Rifle Association and the Gun Owners of America. These two organisations, who are among Trump’s staunchest backers, reminded the administration of the second amendment right to bear arms, even to a protest – something which also brings in the first amendment right to free expression.

Gawthorpe, an expert in US history and politics at Leiden University, points to the dramatic irony at play here. The express intention of the second amendment was to allow American citizens to arm themselves against a tyrannical government. He concludes: “While some gun rights advocates may have been willing to keep quiet while federal agents were trampling on the rights of migrants and brown-skinned citizens, the murder of Pretti is a bridge too far.”

Read more:
Shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis has put America’s gun lobby at odds with the White House

Meanwhile Mark Shanahan, a professor of political engagement at the University of Surrey, addresses some important points raised by Pretti’s killing. What are federal agents doing on the streets of Minneapolis in the first place, what will the episode mean for Trump’s popularity, and what can be done to prevent further violence?

When it comes to the last question, he argues that the removal of one of the key ICE personnel from the city is a start. Proper congressional scrutiny of ICE’s funding, which is set to sharply increase again this year, would also appear appropriate.

Read more:
Why the shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis is so significant – expert Q&A

George Lewis, a professor of American history at the University of Leicester, reminds us that Americans have fought back against authoritarianism before. From the 1930s to the 1970s, the House Un-American Activities Committee (Huac) terrorised liberal Americans in its bid to root out communism and (vaguely defined) “un-American” activities such as campaigning for civil rights.

However, a concerted campaign by liberal lawmakers including Jimmy Roosevelt inside Congress, as well as legions of well-organised activists, managed to consign Huac to history’s dustbin in 1975.

Read more:
Americans have fought back against authoritarianism at home before

Ukraine: diplomatic stalemate

We’re still waiting to hear whether Vladimir Putin plans to sign up to Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace”. But the signs aren’t all that good. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was making some positive noises earlier this week about the prospect of securing security guarantees from Washington. This followed the latest round of talks in Abu Dhabi – at which, for the first time, representatives of Russia, Ukraine and the US came together to talk about ways to end the war.

But almost as soon as Zelensky had revealed his optimism that a deal might be possible, American sources indicated that in return for US security guarantees, Ukraine would have to accept the loss of the parts of the Donbas region it still occupies. This is a non-starter, as Ukraine considers the territory strategically vital.

As Stefan Wolff points out, we’ve been here before. Zelensky can’t accept this condition – and even if he does, Putin won’t accept US guarantees. Trump, meanwhile, will more than likely blame the Ukrainian president for the lack of a deal.

Read more:
Ukraine: Zelensky upbeat on US deal – but Davos showed the US president to be an unreliable ally

After 12 months of Trump’s second term, the unreliability of the US as an ally for Europe and the rest of Nato is becoming ever more evident. The US president’s Board of Peace appears designed to undermine the United Nations, while his negative rhetoric about US military allies, including the UK, appeared calculated to cause maximum offence (even if Trump later walked back some of his more controversial statements).

David Dunn, a specialist in the US and international security at the University of Birmingham, believes that while Trump may see the world in terms of great power competition, the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland revealed a growing determination on the part of “medium-sized powers” to face up to this new reality – and begin building a new system that does not rely on Washington to make the running.

Read more:
US foreign policy has taken a radical turn in Trump’s first year back in office

War in Iran?

After calling on the people of Iran to keep protesting a fortnight ago, promising that “help is on its way”, the US president has ordered a “beautiful armada” into the Gulf, from where it can put pressure on Iran. In fact, the deployment of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and its strike group appears designed to get the Islamic Republic to dismantle its nuclear programme.

But the likelihood of this developing into full-scale conflict between the US and Iran is very slim, writes Bamo Nouri. He thinks it doubtful that US action can easily dislodge the regime. Despite the widespread recent protests, the Islamic Republic remains firmly embedded and has spent decades preparing for a possible war with the US.

Nouri, a journalist and international relations expert at City St George’s, University of London, believes that any conflict between the US and Iran would almost certainly destabilise the entire Middle East – and would be highly likely to spread. It’s the last thing that America’s allies in the region want, he concludes.

Read more:
Why it would be a big mistake for the US to go to war with Iran

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– ref. Trump’s clash with the gun lobby – https://theconversation.com/trumps-clash-with-the-gun-lobby-274675