Trigger:Growing repression of women’s rights under Taliban rule.

Trigger:The Taliban government abolished the country’s pension system amid an economic crisis. The Taliban has promised to create an Islamic system in the country and used this promise to justify ending pensions because they involve interest, which the Taliban says is forbidden by Islam.

Trigger:The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal.

Trigger:Delays in the announcement of final vote counts from the September 2019 presidential election.

Trigger:The arrest of a popular ethnic Hazara militia commander known as Commander Sword.

Trigger:A truck bombing on May 31, 2017, which killed over 150 people.

Trigger:The Albanian government enacted a year long ban on TikTok beginning March 15.

Trigger:Lawmakers of the conservative Democratic Party of Albania have been protesting the imprisonment of their colleague, Ervin Salianji, on charges of slander. They were also protesting the arrest of former prime minister (and current Democratic Party leader) Sali Berisha.

Trigger:The government is investigating opposition leader Sali Berisha of the Democratic Party for corruption while he was Prime Minister between 2005 and 2013. February 20 was the anniversary of when pro-democracy activists tore down the statue of longtime communist dictator Enver Hoxha.

Trigger:Increasing costs and rising poverty.

Trigger:Rapid increases in food and fuel prices.

Trigger:The fatal shooting of Klodian Rasha by an officer enforcing a coronavirus curfew.

Trigger:Suspicions that Prime Minister Edi Rama engaged in electoral fraud to win the country’s 2017 parliamentary elections.

Trigger:Then president Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s decision to seek a fifth term as president.

Trigger:The Angolan government raised the price of diesel fuel by more than thirty percent, which led to a sharp increase in taxi prices. Many Angolans rely on taxis as their main form of transportation.

Trigger:The government of João Lourenço cut fuel subsidies on June 2, causing the price of fuel nearly to double.

Trigger:The Constitutional Court threw out a complaint by the runner-up of the 2022 election which claimed that the vote was flawed.

Trigger:President Javier Milei vetoed three bills that aimed to increase pensions and disability benefits.

Trigger:The Supreme Court of Argentina sentenced former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to six years of house arrest over corruption charges. The court also permanently banned her from holding public office.

Trigger:International Women‘s Day on March 8.

Trigger:President Javier Milei’s speech at the World Economic Forum, which criticized "woke" culture (including feminism and "gender ideology").

Trigger:President Javier Milei announced his plan to veto a bill that would increase pensions in line with the inflation rate.

Trigger:President Javier Milei has implemented a number of spending cuts that have led to mass layoffs, including cuts to fuel and transportation subsidies. Milei has now cut the budget of public universities.

Trigger:The fiftieth anniversary of the 1976 coup, which brought to power Argentina’s military dictatorship, after which the junta embarked on a dirty war targeting suspected political dissidents on the left. An estimated 30,000 died or disappeared as a result between 1976 and 1983, though President Javier Milei estimates around 9,000 victims in what his critics say is an effort to whitewash the military dictatorship.

Trigger:President Javier Milei announced austerity measures including a 54 percent devaluation of the peso, cuts to subsidies, and closures of multiple government agencies. Milei’s proposed labor reforms include extending the legal job probation period from three to eight months, reducing compensation in case of dismissal, and cutting pregnancy leave. The sovereign bond market rallied in early 2024 as the government recorded its first surplus in years—reached by slashing social security by 30 percent, when adjusted for inflation.

Trigger:Prosecutors requested Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner be sentenced to prison for 12 years for corruption.

Trigger:The government’s adoption of interventionist policies to curb rising prices for agricultural goods; rising inflation across many sectors.

Trigger:Ongoing government negotiations with the International Monetary Fund over debt restructuring.

Trigger:Announcement of continued lockdown measures and introduction of judicial reform bill.

Trigger:Increasing rates of violence and femicide against women under quarantine.

Trigger:Proposal of austerity measures mandated by the International Monetary Fund.

Trigger:On April 19, 2024, the government announced a border delimitation agreement which will cede four territories in Armenia near Azerbaijan’s Qazax region to AzerbaiJanuary These villages were part of Azerbaijan during the Soviet era but have been controlled by Armenia since the 1990s.

Trigger:On September 19, Azerbaijan launched a military operation against the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region and won decisively by September 20.

Trigger:Azerbaijan banned Russian peacekeepers from delivering humanitarian aid to Nagorno-Karabakh on June 15, exacerbating a humanitarian crisis for the people of the region.

Trigger:Announcement of a Russian-brokered peace deal that ceded a sizable part of the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region to Azerbaijan; in May 2022, the government’s announcement that it may have to reduce territorial claims as part of the peace process. In September 2022, a new offensive that resulted in further territorial losses for Armenia.

Trigger:Election of then president Serzh Sargsyan as prime minister, allowing him to subvert presidential term limits.

Trigger:"Australia Day" on January 26, which commemorates the day that the first British colony was established in Sydney Cove.

Trigger:Australian government adopted new farming and environmental policies, including a ban on exports of live sheep, water usage restrictions, and construction of renewable power sources in rural areas.

Trigger:Arrest of three Cambodian activists who shared concerns over the CLV-DTA, an economic agreement between Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.

Trigger:Australia Day, an annual holiday held on January 26 marking the anniversary of when Britain established the state of New South Wales.

Trigger:The imposition of lockdowns and vaccine mandates across many Australian states.

Trigger:Widespread sexual harassment and perceptions of impunity over a rape allegation made by former political aide Brittany Higgins.

Trigger:Death of George Floyd in the United States, sparking protests in Australia against local police brutality and racism.

Trigger:Government response to the Australian bushfires.

Trigger:EU-Mercosur trade agreement, signed December 2024. Reignited farmers’ protests from 2024 in nearby countries (Slovakia and the Czech Republic).

Trigger:Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) won the general elections with 29 percent of the vote.

Trigger:The imposition of vaccine mandates and public health restrictions across Austria.

Trigger:Dozens of Azerbaijanis blocked the Lachin corridor, which connects Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh.

Trigger:Brief conflict with Armenia over the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region, which resulted in the deaths of eleven Azerbaijani soldiers, including then major general Polad Hashimov.

Trigger:Opening of a new criminal case against political prisoner and anticorruption blogger Mehman Huseynov, who had run a Facebook page critical of the authorities.

Trigger:The detention of six opposition activists.

Trigger:Death of political prisoner Husain Barakat from COVID-19 while in police custody.

Trigger:Eighth anniversary of the Rohingya people’s exodus to Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Bangladesh interim leader Muhammad Yunus held a conference the same day on the Rohingya, where he urged the international community to help facilitate a process of repatriation.

Trigger:Bangladesh is expected to hold general elections in 2026. In June 2025, the Supreme Court restored the Jamaat-e-Islami party’s registration, allowing it to participate in elections.

Trigger:Former prime minister Sheikh Hasina planned to deliver a virtual speech to her supporters on February 5.

Trigger:The Anti-Discrimination Student Movement organized a March at the Central Shaheed Minar in Dhaka. In December 2024, Foreign Affairs Adviser Md. Touhid Hossain announced that Bangladesh had sent a formal request to India to extradite former prime minister Sheikh Hasina.

Trigger:On December 2, Bangladesh’s consulate office in Agartala, India, was attacked by a far-right Hindu group. There were also reports that Bangladeshi flags were being desecrated.

Trigger:The Awami League, the political party of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, planned to hold a rally on November 10. The day before the planned rally, Chief Adviser Press Secretary Shafiqul Alam announced that the Awami League would not be permitted to hold its demonstration.

Trigger:The current interim government of Bangladesh has not yet announced a timeframe for the next elections. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party called for a rally in Dhaka.

Trigger:On October 21, President Mohammed Shahabuddin revealed that he had not received a resignation letter from former prime minister Sheikh Hasina before she fled the country.

Trigger:Growing number of attacks against Hindus and the destruction of Hindu houses, businesses, and temples after former prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s resignation.

Trigger:Dhaka court reinstated quota for government jobs (previously abolished in 2018 due to student protests).

Trigger:The World Food Programme cut the monthly food allocation for refugees from $10 to $8, having reduced the ration from $12 to $10 in March due to a reduction in global aid for the refugees.

Trigger:The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) called for massive demonstrations to demand the resignation of the government led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. In February 2023, the government shut down the BNP’s newspaper.

Trigger:The government increased the price of fuel.

Trigger:Circulation of a video of sexual assault.

Trigger:Murder of Abrar Fahad, a student who posted anti-government content on his Facebook feed.

Trigger:Circulation of a social media post that allegedly blasphemed the Prophet Muhammad.

Trigger:Failure by garment industry employers to raise wages to match the cost of living or provide adequate working conditions.

Trigger:Two students killed by a bus driver.

Trigger:The failure of the government to end quotas for jobs in government ministries.

Trigger:The holding of a referendum on whether to adopt a new constitution that would renounce Belarus’s non-nuclear status and allow President Alexander Lukashenko to stay in power until 2035.

Trigger:Arrests of opposition presidential candidates; anger over the perceived fraudulent August 2020 presidential election.

Trigger:A series of meetings between Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trigger:Labor law that would require citizens who work less than half the year and fail to register with state labor exchanges to pay $250.

Trigger:Prime Minister Bart De Wever’s proposed austerity measures, which include changes to the retirement age, pensions, unemployment benefits, and healthcare.

Trigger:Belgian government proposed budget cuts, which include pension reforms and cuts to public service personnel.

Trigger:Farmers’ frustration about rising costs, EU environmental policies, and a plan for cheap food imports from outside the EU, which they fear will undercut their prices. The G20 Summit in November 2024 brought renewed attention to a prospective trade agreement between the EU and Mercosur trade bloc of South America.

Trigger:The Flemish regional government introduced plans to limit nitrogen emissions.

Trigger:The country’s three largest trade unions called for a protest.

Trigger:Rapidly rising prices, especially of fuel.

Trigger:National strike over wages and working conditions, especially among airport and other public transit workers.

Trigger:The imposition of lockdowns and vaccine mandates across Belgium.

Trigger:Prices of staple crops such as corn, garri flour, beans, and cowpeas have risen in recent months. The IMF reported in April 2024 that incomes in sub-Saharan Africa are falling further behind the rest of the world amid tepid economic growth.

Trigger:Incumbent President Patrice Talon’s decision to seek another five-year term in office.

Trigger:Exclusion of five opposition parties from legislative elections and consequent electoral victory of government-aligned political parties.

Trigger:Bolivia’s constitutional court upheld a ruling that banned presidents from serving more than two terms. The decision banned former president Evo Morales from running in the upcoming presidential elections.

Trigger:A Bolivian prosecutor announced that she would issue an arrest warrant against former president Evo Morales, who is under investigation for alleged statutory rape and human trafficking.

Trigger:Arce accused former president Evo Morales of attempting to overthrow his government in a coup. In response, Morales called for his supporters to march against Arce.

Trigger:The government planned to delay the country’s census until after the 2025 general election. In December 2022, Bolivian police arrested opposition leader Luis Fernando Camacho on terrorism charges.

Trigger:Arrest of former interim president Jeanine Añez and other leaders of the political opposition on coup-related offenses.

Trigger:A second delay to the general elections.

Trigger:Then president Evo Morales’s refusal to declare the wildfires in Bolivia a national disaster.

Trigger:Electoral irregularities in the 2019 presidential election, in which then president Evo Morales narrowly avoided a runoff contest in suspicious circumstances. After Morales resigned, his supporters led additional protests, alleging he was the victim of a coup.

Trigger:Months-long negotiations between transport sector workers and the Bosnian government.

Trigger:Severe floods in October 2024 triggered a landslide from an illegally built quarry, which killed twenty-nine people. Authorities have not yet launched an investigation into the incident. Inspired by student protests in Serbia.

Trigger:The United Nations is debating a resolution to commemorate the Srebrenica genocide—when 8,000 Muslims were killed in Srebrenica in 1995 by Bosnian Serb forces—and will vote on this resolution in the General Assembly in May 2024. Bosnian Serb lawmakers adopted a report denying that the killings constituted genocide.

Trigger:A man shot his ex-wife dead and live-streamed the murder on Instagram

Trigger:On March 23, the parliament of the country’s Serb-majority entity, Republika Srpska, passed draft amendments to the criminal code that would recriminalize libel and introduce fines of up to €60,000 for damaging a person’s honor or reputation and for publishing damaging videos, photos, or documents without consent.

Trigger:Perceived fraud in October 2 elections.

Trigger:Suspicious death of a young man named David Dragičević, triggering suspicions that the authorities in the Serb region of Bosnia are obstructing the investigation and protecting his killers.

Trigger:Parliament voted on a constitutional amendment that would allow the president to appoint key civil servants.

Trigger:Bill approved by the Chamber of Deputies that would make it more difficult to charge or arrest lawmakers. The bill could also grant amnesty to former president Jair Bolsonaro and his allies.

Trigger:In July, Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes issued a search warrant against former president Jair Bolsonaro after allegations emerged of Bolsonaro seeking U.S. interference in Brazil’s political affairs. Later in the month, U.S. President Donald Trump imposed a 50% tariff on Brazil, in part to pressure the Brazilian government to drop the charges against Bolsonaro.

Trigger:U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he would enact a fifty percent tariff on Brazil to pressure the Brazilian government to drop the charges against former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Trigger:In February 2025, former President Jair Bolsonaro was formally charged with attempting a coup.

Trigger:Brazil’s nationwide ban on X. Former president Jair Bolsonaro called for a protest in response.

Trigger:The Brazilian legislature proposed a bill that would remove exceptions on second-trimester abortions and allow prosecutions of such abortions as homicide.

Trigger:The government plans to build a railway to transport grain from farm states to Amazon ports for export, which members of the Indigenous community say will destroy the environment of tribal communities. This coincided with the week-long twentieth annual Free Land Camp, in which indigenous communities enact encampments in Brasilia as a form of protest against government wrongdoings.

Trigger:Opposition candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won the 2022 Brazilian presidential election.

Trigger:President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration’s support for loosening restrictions on land use and the imminent announcement of a verdict in a crucial Indigenous land rights case.

Trigger:First round of protests, in January, was triggered by oxygen shortages at hospitals in the city of Manaus and a sluggish rollout of Brazil’s vaccination campaign. Second round of protests, starting in May, was triggered by the government’s slow and inept response amid a third wave of infections and allegations of corruption in vaccine procurement.

Trigger:President Jair Bolsonaro’s poor and slow response to the coronavirus outbreak; and the death of George Floyd in the United States, sparking protests against local police brutality and racism.

Trigger:Cuts in education spending and postgraduate scholarships.

Trigger:Mayor Blagomir Kotsev, a member of the reformist We Continue the Change (PP) party, was arrested over allegations of running a criminal group to embezzle funds. Kotsev has denied the allegations.

Trigger:The Bulgarian government reaffirmed its commitment to adopting the euro by January 2026.

Trigger:The Bulgarian Parliament passed two amendments to the education code that banned LGBTQ+ "propaganda" in schools.

Trigger:The ultranationalist Vazrazhdane (Revival) party called for a protest in Sofia.

Trigger:Bulgaria’s government was about to submit plans to the European Commission that would detail a phase-out of its coal power plants.

Trigger:A Bulgarian man beat up his girlfriend, cut her more than 100 times with a knife, and shaved her head—injuries that required 400 stitches. The man was arrested but a court later released him after rating the woman’s injuries as “light.”

Trigger:European Commission policies to allow Ukrainian farmers to export grains through EU countries—intended to counteract the reduction in grain exports caused by Russian blockades of Ukrainian Black Sea ports—resulted in a glut of Ukrainian grains in Bulgarian markets.

Trigger:Rising inflation.

Trigger:Revelations that National Security Service agents were reserving access of a public beach for a businessman’s private use; police raids on the office of President Rumen Radev; and fresh allegations of corruption against Prime Minister Boyko Borisov.

Trigger:Enactment of lockdown measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

Trigger:The death of Alain Traoré (popularly known as Alino Faso), a Burkinabé activist in custody in the Ivory Coast.

Trigger:Jihadist insurgents killed six people in an attack in the city of Nouna; violence from unidentified assailants killed dozens of other people earlier in the month.

Trigger:Jihadist insurgents killed at least 60 people in an attack in the town of Partiaga.

Trigger:Rising jihadist terror attacks on civilian targets, including a June attack that killed over 130 people. November protests were triggered by a November 14 attack on a gendarmerie camp in the northern part of the country.

Trigger:Severe water shortages that have damaged rice fields. Cambodia has been suffering from severe droughts for the past twenty years.

Trigger:Presidential election held on October 12. Before the election results were released on October 27, the opposition candidate, Issa Tchiroma, claimed that he had won the election. However, partial results from local media showed that the incumbent President Paul Biya was likely to win the election.

Trigger:The military detained about 30 youths for their suspected involvement in rebel activity.

Trigger:Continual violence in separatist struggle in west and terrorism on the border with Nigeria.

Trigger:Call for protest by women’s groups; commemoration of International Women’s Day.

Trigger:The arrest of opposition leader Maurice Kamto.

Trigger:The breakdown of negotiations between representatives of the English-speaking minority and the French-speaking governing majority.

Trigger:On June 18, at least six men assassinated Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist activist living in British Columbia. On September 18, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Parliament that Canadian security agencies were pursuing credible allegations of a link between the assassins and the government of India.

Trigger:The Ontario government invoked the nothwithstanding clause of Canada’s constitution to force education workers not to strike.

Trigger:Enactment of coronavirus restrictions, including mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and lockdowns.

Trigger:Speculations that President Faustin-Archange Touadéra will run for a third term in office. Continued Wagner Group (a Russian private military company) activities in the country.

Trigger:President Faustin-Archange Touadéra announced on May 30 that the country would hold a referendum on a new draft constitution on July 30.

Trigger:President Faustin-Archange Touadera ordered the creation of a committee to rewrite the constitution.

Trigger:On November 28, 2024, the Chadian government announced that it would end its defense cooperation pact with France. However, the announcement did not specify when French troops would be leaving the country.

Trigger:One year anniversary of the government crackdown on the opposition that killed 128 and injured more than 500. Pro-democracy opposition leader Succès Masra announced his plan to return to the country from exile on October 5, leading the military government to issue a warrant for his arrest.

Trigger:The military’s seizure of power in the wake of the death of longtime president Idriss Déby.

Trigger:President Idriss Déby’s nomination by the ruling Patriotic Salvation Movement for a sixth term as president.

Trigger:Recurring delays in the receipt of compensation packages for human rights abuses ordered by the African Union.

Trigger:Growing economic struggles, including high cost of living and poor working conditions.

Trigger:Chile‘s Senate reduced the fishing quota allocated to artisanal fishers in a new bill. A Senate commission delayed a vote on the bill following heavy criticism from artisanal fishers.

Trigger:Rising costs of living; call for protest by the Confech student federation.

Trigger:Increased price of metro fares.

Trigger:Police detained Ma Yuwei, an imam of a local mosque in the Yunnan province.

Trigger:A new company law allowed companies to target former shareholders for unpaid sums, even after they had transferred their shares. The Supreme People’s Court ruled that former shareholders were also liable for unpaid sums after bankruptcy.

Trigger:Renovations were set to begin on a fourteenth century mosque in Nagu, Yunnan province.

Trigger:The government restructured the medical insurance system, cutting some government-provided medical insurance for senior citizens.

Trigger:A fire in an apartment building in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, killed 10 people. Demonstrators believed that COVID-19 restrictions, including makeshift barricades and blockaded emergency exits, hampered evacuation and rescue efforts.

Trigger:Shooting of Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay. Series of bomb and gun attacks in southwestern Colombia.

Trigger:In January 2024, the government enacted a decree that allowed the Ministry of Environment to designate certain areas as natural resource reserve zones.

Trigger:In an effort to phase out fuel subsidies, the government raised diesel prices by fifty cents per gallon.

Trigger:Leftist Gustavo Petro was elected in 2022 on the promise to fight poverty and inequality and end Colombia’s six decades of domestic conflict which has killed 450,000. Petro is struggling to maintain his governing coalition in Congress and his approval rating has declined amid an uptick in violence by rebels. He has proposed legislation to reform Colombia’s healthcare system and turn a government agency into the sole administrator of insurance payouts, thereby sidelining private companies which make up a sizeable portion of insurance providers. Petro is also pushing a change to labor law to make it harder to hire workers on temporary contracts and require additional compensation for any work conducted after 6 p.m.

Trigger:More than 37,000 people across Colombia were affected by violence between January and September of 2023, with Indigenous people disproportionately affected.

Trigger:The president proposed social and economic reforms that aim to combat poverty, improve security, and combat climate change.

Trigger:President Gustavo Petro proposed economic and social reforms that were meant to increase taxes on high-earning individuals and combat inequality.

Trigger:The government’s introduction of a proposal to raise tax rates and eliminate exemptions; a call for protests and strikes by the country’s main labor unions.

Trigger:Circulation of a video of police killing law student Javier Ordóñez by shooting him repeatedly with a stun gun.

Trigger:President Ivan Duque’s undermining of local and regional authorities, citizens’ claims that they were not receiving sufficient social support, and rising number of deaths from the virus.

Trigger:Unsanitary conditions in prisons, which could accelerate the spread of the coronavirus among inmates.

Trigger:Rumored pensions cuts, implementation challenges of the country’s peace deal, and rising violence.

Trigger:Incumbent President Azali Assoumani was declared the winner of the January 2024 election, which was denounced by the country’s opposition parties as fraudulent. Assoumani has been accused of sidestepping the constitution and cracking down on dissent because he has previously outlawed protests.

Trigger:Allegations of ballot stuffing and the improper transport of ballot boxes during the 2019 presidential election.

Trigger:Introduction of proposed constitutional reforms that would render President Azali Assoumani eligible for another five-year term and reduce the relative power of the archipelago’s islands by eliminating the rotating vice presidency.

Trigger:The expulsion of Comorian migrants in the French territory of Mayotte and the announcement of negotiations between the French and Comorian governments.

Trigger:Proposed tax reforms and salary cuts for government workers.

Trigger:Draft law that would impose prison terms on those who leak details of police investigations. Police, prosecutors, judges, or any official who leaks information about police investigations can be sentenced to up to three years in jail. Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said the law does not apply if "the information leaked was in the interest of the public."

Trigger:Revelations that a pregnant Croatian woman was forced to receive an abortion in Slovenia since local hospitals were not equipped to perfom the procedure.

Trigger:Imposition of coronavirus restrictions, including mask and vaccine mandates.

Trigger:Government rejection of teachers’ unions’ salary demands.

Trigger:The country is experiencing power cuts and shortages of food and medicine. There has also been a decline in living conditions on par with that following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The power outages were exacerbated by two hurricanes that struck Cuba in October 2024.

Trigger:Power outages caused by Hurricane Ian.

Trigger:Food and medicine shortages amid a severe economic crisis.

Trigger:Arrest of rapper Denis Solis, who was later sentenced to eight months in prison for insulting a police officer.

Trigger:The government of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus lifted its ban on hijabs in secondary schools.

Trigger:The British RAF Akrotiri base in Cyprus was used to launch strikes against the Houthi militia in Yemen.

Trigger:The Cypriot government struggled to accommodate the large number of migrants who had arrived.

Trigger:Imposition of coronavirus lockdowns and revelations about corruption in a passport-for-investment scheme.

Trigger:The EU waived duties and quotas for imports from Ukraine which put pressure on prices for EU farmers who must follow EU environmental standards. Ongoing negotiations for a trade deal between the EU and the South American Mercosur bloc. New EU environmental regulations, including new subsidy rules which require 4 percent of farmland to be fallow. High energy prices are further undercutting farmers’ profits.

Trigger:Package of $6.7 billion of spending cuts and austerity measures put forward by Prime Minister Petr Fiala’s government, part of his aim to halve the country’s budget.

Trigger:The government considered a proposal to raise the retirement age by four years from 65 to 68.

Trigger:Skyrocketing energy prices; the government’s policy of allowing entrance for Ukrainian refugees.

Trigger:Ongoing pandemic-related restrictions.

Trigger:Corruption allegations against Prime Minister Andrej Babiš and his appointment of a close ally as justice minister.

Trigger:M23 rebel forces made advances toward the city of Goma in eastern DRC.

Trigger:Arrest of Seth Kikuni, one of three key opposition figures to be imprisoned in the DRC. The DRC also applied to be a member of the UN Human Rights Council in August 2024.

Trigger:Widespread violence and a Tutsi-led March 23 (M23) rebellion advancing toward Goma. Western countries provide support for Rwanda, which is accused of backing the Tutsi-led M23 rebellion in the Congo.

Trigger:The incumbent President Felix Tshisekedi won the December 2023 presidential election after the voting period was extended by a day due to logistical issues. The Carter Center noted "serious irregularities" in the election’s administration.

Trigger:Delays and alleged irregularities in a voter registration drive ahead of the country’s December 20 general election.

Trigger:A proposal by six religious groups to install Denis Kadima as head of the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI).

Trigger:National Assembly’s proposed changes to the juidiciary that would include proposals to define the powers of judges, and its decision to appoint Ronsard Malonda as chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, despite his perceived past role in rigging elections in favor of former president Joseph Kabila.

Trigger:Continued attempts by then president Joseph Kabila to stay in power beyond his term limit by delaying elections.

Trigger:The government announced plans to cancel a public holiday to help finance increased defense spending.

Trigger:Indictment of leading political officials and businessmen in a bribery scandal.

Trigger:President Daniel Noboa removed a government subsidy on diesel, which increased fuel prices by more than fifty percent.

Trigger:Four teenage boys (the "Guayaquil Four") disappeared after they were approached by soldiers.

Trigger:Rolling blackouts occurring across the country since September 2024. Ongoing economic crisis and rising crime.

Trigger:State-owned energy firm Petroecuador is extracting crude oil in Amazonian region of Ecuador without adequately compensating locals.

Trigger:The disappearance and murder of thirty-four-year-old lawyer María Belén Bernal.

Trigger:Rising prices for staple goods and the announcement of a strike and circulation of economic demands by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador.

Trigger:The government’s announcement that it would be reducing subsidies on fuel.

Trigger:Announcement of the closure of some state-owned companies and cuts to salaries of public sector workers.

Trigger:Proposal of an austerity package that would increase fuel costs and cut salaries for public sector jobs.

Trigger:Call for protest by exiled opposition leader Mohamed Ali; the demolition of unlicensed homes; and increases in commodity pricing.

Trigger:Revelations that President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and his inner circle used public funds for personal gain.

Trigger:The government’s enactment of a provision to accept bitcoin as legal tender.

Trigger:Authorities arrested four minibus drivers after accusing them of assaulting a female customer.

Trigger:Death of law student Thabani Nkomonye in May, the government’s rejection of petitions, and allegations of corruption against King Mswati III.

Trigger:Low pay for teachers and other public servants.

Trigger:Calls for protests by pro-democracy opposition groups.

Trigger:The suspension of parliament and the introduction of a bill that would impose a fine on those who married foreigners.

Trigger:Although the two-year-long Tigray War ended with a truce in November 2022, millions of people were still displaced and Amhara and Eritrean troops remained inside Tigrayan territory, according to humanitarian workers.

Trigger:The government ordered the integration of the eleven regions’ special forces into the federal military.

Trigger:Water shortages.

Trigger:Murder of activist and singer Hachalu Hundessa.

Trigger:Allegations circulated by opposition leader Jawar Mohammed that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had sent security forces to detain him.

Trigger:Murder of twenty-three ethnic minorities in Ethiopia’s majority-Oromo Oromia region.

Trigger:Citizens’ demands for the release of senior opposition leader Bekele Gerba from prison, after prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn had reneged on his promise to release all political prisoners. Prior protests had begun in 2015, led by the Oromo and Amhara ethnic groups over ethnic discrimination.

Trigger:Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, described as pro-business, sought to make the country’s terms of employment more flexible and cut unemployment.

Trigger:Former prime minister François Bayrou's proposed spending cuts, which would reduce the budget by over 40 billion euros. After Bayrou lost a no confidence vote, Sébastien Lecornu became the new prime minister.

Trigger:May Day, or International Workers' Day, on May 1

Trigger:International Women‘s Day on March 8.

Trigger:Continued anger over the current Iranian regime.

Trigger:International Day for the Elimination of Violence. Pelicot mass rape trial, which had drawn public attention starting September 2024.

Trigger:President Emmanuel Macron appointed Barnier, a center-right politician, as the new prime minister of France.

Trigger:Snap parliamentary elections called by President Emmanuel Macron.

Trigger:Lawmakers in Paris backed a constitutional change that would give anyone over the age of ten on the Pacific archipelago of New Caledonia the right to vote in provincial elections. This would add more than 25,000 people to the voter roll, which has been frozen since 1998—which many say is undemocratic. Indigenous Kanak separatists say this will dilute their political power and benefit pro-France politicians.

Trigger:Farmers cite frustration with government tax on tractor fuel, cheap agricultural imports, water storage issues, excessive restrictions, and red tape. The G20 Summit in November 2024 brought renewed attention to a prospective trade agreement between the EU and Mercosur trade bloc of South America.

Trigger:A teenager was stabbed to death in southeastern France on November 19, with eyewitnesses identifying the assailant as someone of Arab origin.

Trigger:Division within the European Union on legislation proposed by the European Commission to adopt consent-based rape laws throughout the bloc. French law does not define rape in terms of consent. Eve of International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Trigger:The Ministry of the Interior reported that the number of rapes and attempted rapes doubled between 2017 and 2021. International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Trigger:Drought and water scarcity on the French island of Mayotte, where taps tend to work only one day out of three.

Trigger:On June 27, a police officer fatally shot Nahel M., a 17-year-old French citizen of Algerian and Moroccan descent, during a traffic stop. In November 2023, the police officer suspected of shooting Nahel was released from custody pending further investigation.

Trigger:The governments of France and Italy are working to construct a high-speed freight and passenger railway line through the Alps to connect Lyon, France, with Turin, Italy.

Trigger:Plans supported by the French government to construct a reservoir in Sainte-Soline, western France; pension reform protests.

Trigger:In accordance with a European Court of Justice ruling, the French government closed a loophole that allowed sugar beet farmers to use neonicotinoids, a pesticide that the European Union banned in 2018.

Trigger:Government plans for pension reform including a measure that would raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.

Trigger:A gunman killed three people at a Kurdish cultural center and nearby Kurdish cafe in Paris.

Trigger:The French government moved forward with plans to pass legislation that would allow migrants with a deportation order to be put on a "wanted list" in order to streamline deportations.

Trigger:Strikes at oil refineries triggered fuel shortages and exacerbated rising fuel prices.

Trigger:The murder of a 12-year-old girl by an illegal immigrant from Algeria.

Trigger:Commemoration of May Day; call for protest by labor organizations.

Trigger:Introduction of a proposal that would require a “health pass” to access many amenities.

Trigger:A rise in attacks against police.

Trigger:The National Assembly’s consideration of a climate law.

Trigger:The Court of Cassation’s ruling that the killer of a Jewish woman could not be tried due to his “delirious state.”

Trigger:Approval in the Chamber of Deputies of a bill that limits the publication of images of on-duty police officers and the circulation of a video of police beating music producer Michel Zecler.

Trigger:Deaths of George Floyd in 2020 in the United States and Adama Traore in 2016 in France, both at the hands of the police.

Trigger:Government plans for pension reform.

Trigger:Proposal of a new fuel tax.

Trigger:Announcement of plans to reduce retirement benefits, reform unemployment insurance, and permit competition to the national rail service.

Trigger:Changes to private sector labor laws that would reduce damages for fired workers and favor companies in negotiations with workers.

Trigger:Surfing events for 2024 Paris Olympics will be held in the small village of Teahupo’o on the island of Tahiti. Paris 2024 plans to build a new three story aluminum surf tower on a reef, replacing the existing wooden surf tower that has been used for past surfing competitions.

Trigger:The announcement of government plans to reduce access to tuition grants.

Trigger:President Adama Barrow’s administration has faced numerous corruption scandals throughout his presidency.

Trigger:Lawmakers voted to advance a bill to repeal the state’s 2015 ban on female genital mutilation. The practice has increased in frequency in recent years—despite being outlawed and ongoing campaigns to end it.

Trigger:Concerns that President Adama Barrow would renege on his promise to rule for only three years in a provisional government before calling elections and not running.

Trigger:A July heat wave caused power outages

Trigger:Khader Adnan, a high-profile former spokesman of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, died following an eighty-seven-day hunger strike.

Trigger:Tens of thousands of Israelis marched through the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City to celebrate the anniversary of Israeli forces retaking East Jerusalem in 1967.

Trigger:A court decision on whether to evict six Palestinian families from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah; Israeli moves to crack down on Palestinian assembly.

Trigger:Israeli economic blockade of the Gaza Strip, and Palestinian demand for the right to return to land in what is currently considered Israel.

Trigger:The newly elected Georgian government announced on November 28 that it would suspend accession talks with the EU until 2028. The decision was announced amid ongoing protests against the recent parliamentary elections.

Trigger:The Abkhazian parliament had been considering the ratification of an investment deal with Russia to allow Russians to buy land and residences in Abkhazia. On November 11, five opposition activists were arrested.

Trigger:Results of the parliamentary elections on October 26, which gave the ruling Georgian Dream party more than 54 percent of the vote.

Trigger:Mikheil Saakashvili, who spearheaded the Rose Revolution in 2003, was detained in 2021, which rights groups claimed was politically motivated. Twenty-year anniversary of the Rose Revolution.

Trigger:Direct flights resumed between Russia and Georgia.

Trigger:The deterioration of the health of former president Mikheil Saakashvili, an advocate of closer relations with Europe who was serving a six-year prison term.

Trigger:Parliament introduced a bill that would require non-governmental and media organizations that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad to declare themselves as "foreign agents," or face fines and possible imprisonment. In 2024, the Georgian Dream party once again proposed a law forcing NGOs that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad to be registered as "carrying the interests of foreign power."

Trigger:The ongoing detention of former president Mikheil Saakashvili; the announcement of municipal election results favorable to the ruling party, Georgian Dream.

Trigger:The murder of journalist Alexander Lashkarava.

Trigger:The arrest of opposition United National Movement leader Nika Melia.

Trigger:Announcement of electoral results that showed the ruling Georgia Dream party with a significant lead.

Trigger:Parliament’s failure to pass electoral reform that would change the political system to one based on proportional representation.

Trigger:Russian lawmaker’s entry into the Georgian Parliament, during which he took the speaker’s seat.

Trigger:Easter holiday. Since the 1960s, activists have organized a march for peace on Easter, called Ostermärsche (Easter march).

Trigger:International Women‘s Day on March 8.

Trigger:Friedrich Merz, the conservative opposition leader, worked with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party to push an anti-immigration bill through parliament.

Trigger:The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party held a convention ahead of the upcoming February 23 elections.

Trigger:Reports that a group of officials from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party met with neo-Nazis at a hotel in Potsdam to discuss the possibility of a mass deportation scheme. Holocaust Memorial Day. Regional elections. The AfD is polling in second place in Germany for the June 2024 European Parliament elections.

Trigger:Germany proposed cuts to diesel subsidies and tax breaks for agricultural vehicles.

Trigger:Berlin authorities were moving closer to approving a plan to extend the city’s autobahn into the former East Germany.

Trigger:The Free Democratic Party stalled efforts by the coalition government to pass climate policies related to transportation, including a phase out of internal combustion engines.

Trigger:The German government continued to arm Ukraine one year after the Russian invasion.

Trigger:The state government of North Rhine-Westphalia and the national government reached a deal with utility company RWE to destroy the abandoned village of Luetzerath and build a coal mine there.

Trigger:Rising prices, especially of fuel.

Trigger:Perceived government inaction on climate change.

Trigger:Death of George Floyd in the United States, sparking protests against local police brutality and racism in Germany.

Trigger:Enactment of strict lockdown measures and vaccine mandates.

Trigger:Cooperation between the state branches of far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD), the center-right Christian Democratic Union and left-leaning Free Democratic Party (FDP) to oust the state premier of Thuringia, Bodo Ramelow, and replace him with Thomas Kemmerich, a member of the FDP. The pact was a visible violation of mainstream political norms that opposed cooperating with far-right parties.

Trigger:The main opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), accused the electoral commission of tampering with the voter register by illegally transferring voters to different stations, removing the names of eligible voters, and including the names of deceased voters.

Trigger:Continued illegal mining (also known as galamsey) in Ghana.

Trigger:Democracy Hub, a governance advocacy group, called for a protest. The opposition party, the National Democratic Congress, called for protests in Accra to oust the governor of the central bank and two deputies, blaming them for inflation and high cost of living caused by their reckless financing of the government.

Trigger:Rapidly rising prices. Inflation hit 37% in September 2022.

Trigger:The government introduced price hikes and a tax on electronic payments.

Trigger:Call for protests by activists on social media after tax hikes and increases in fuel prices.

Trigger:Proposed reforms to Greece’s labor laws, which include extended working hours for private sector workers and changes to rules on annual leave.

Trigger:High cost of living. Greece’s wages in terms of purchasing power standards are one of the lowest among EU countries.

Trigger:The Greece-Bulgaria water deal, which provided crucial water resources to Greek farmers, expired in July 2024. The Greek government has not specified whether it would renew the deal.

Trigger:Rising food and housing prices.

Trigger:EU environmental regulations such as new legislation requiring 4 percent of farmland to be left fallow in order to receive subsidies. Tax on diesel amid surging energy prices. Delayed compensation for damage to crops and livestock caused by flooding in the Thessaly region in 2023.

Trigger:Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is expected to submit a bill to parliament which will permit private universities to operate in Greece.

Trigger:A Roma youth was shot dead by police after a car chase.

Trigger:The Greek government was planning to introduce new identity cards.

Trigger:A fishing boat that set sail from Tobruk, Libya, on June 10 sank off the coast of Pylos, Greece, on June 14. Authorities quickly confirmed eighty-two deaths with hundreds more missing and presumed dead.

Trigger:A train crash killed 57 people.

Trigger:Rapidly rising prices, especially of fuel.

Trigger:A call for protest by two of the country’s largest labor unions.

Trigger:Introduction and adoption of a labor reform bill that relaxed employer restrictions on overtime and employee hours.

Trigger:The Kryiakos Mitsotakis government’s enactment of a stringent law on demonstrations.

Trigger:Twenty-four-hour strike in response to proposed pension reform.

Trigger:Guatemala’s top prosecutor ordered the suspension of the Seed Movement party, which came in second place in the first round of the country’s presidential election. Officials raided the Supreme Electoral Tribunal headquarters in search of evidence the following day. Anti-corruption candidate Bernardo Arévalo won the election but the incumbent has tried to block his transition. In November 2023, prosecutors announced they plan to strip Arévalo and his copartisans of immunity for allegedly making social media posts that encouraged students to take over San Carlos University in 2022.

Trigger:A court denied an indigenous candidate’s application to register for the country’s presidential election due to a dispute over the paperwork that her vice presidential candidate filed.

Trigger:The firing of Juan Francisco Sandoval, the head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity, by Attorney General Maria Porras.

Trigger:Adoption of a government budget bill that included spending cuts for public health, education, the judiciary, and social support programs while increasing stipends for lawmakers.

Trigger:Though the military junta agreed in 2022 to begin a democratic transition by December 31, 2024, the junta failed to announce any plans for new elections by the deadline.

Trigger:Months-long energy crisis leading to repeated power cuts. On March 13, 2024, power cuts in Conakry plunged the capital into darkness.

Trigger:The arrest of three opposition leaders at the hands of the military government.

Trigger:Suspicions that President Alpha Condé would seek a third term by amending the constitution.

Trigger:Delays in the announcement of final vote results for the 2018 municipal elections and a concurrent call for strikes by teachers to protest low pay.

Trigger:Residents in Port-au-Prince reported hearing threats of a gang invasion in the city.

Trigger:Under the unelected government of Prime Minister Ariel Henry who assumed office after the 2021 assassination of the country’s last president, Jovenel Moïse, Haiti has seen violent gangs form alliances to expand their control across the capital of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding area.

Trigger:Gangs, which controlled an estimated 80 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince, continued to kill and rape civilians.

Trigger:The killing of six police officers in an armed attack against a police substation in Haiti’s Artibonite valley.

Trigger:The government requested security assistance from international actors to quell gang violence and economic crisis protests.

Trigger:Rapidly rising prices, especially of fuel.

Trigger:President Jovenel Moïse’s assertion that his five-year term as president would end in February 2022 rather than February 2021, the assassination of Moïse in July 2021, and rising levels of criminal violence.

Trigger:Anniversary of International Human Rights Day and enactment of a new law on public security.

Trigger:Revocation of fuel subsidies and revelations of President Jovenel Moïse’s direct involvement in a corruption scandal.

Trigger:Introduction of new taxes on cigarettes, passports, and other goods.

Trigger:President Xiomara Castro’s Libre party pushed through the election of a new interim prosecutor without approval from the legislature.

Trigger:Proposed reforms to the education and healthcare sectors and revelations that President Juan Orlando Hernández received contributions from drug traffickers.

Trigger:Significant irregularities in the reporting of the results of the December 2017 presidential election, which President Juan Orlando Hernández won narrowly.

Trigger:Authorities planned to construct six facilities as part of a land reclamation and rubbish processing project.

Trigger:The arrest of forty-seven prominent pro-democracy activists.

Trigger:In 2019, introduction of a bill that would permit extradition of criminal suspects from Hong Kong to China. In 2020, introduction of a new national security law that would criminalize acts of secession, subversion of the central government, terrorism, or conspiracy with foreign influences, as well as permit Chinese law enforcement agencies to operate in Hong Kong.

Trigger:Sentencing of three leaders of the 2014 Umbrella Movement to six to eight months in prison on the charge of unlawful assembly.

Trigger:Anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán held another rally earlier in the day.

Trigger:New bill proposed by the ruling Fidesz party that allows the government to monitor, restrict, and potentially shut down organizations (e.g., media, NGOs, businesses) that receive foreign funding.

Trigger:On March 18, the Hungarian parliament passed a law that bans LGBTQ+ organizations from holding Pride events. The law also allows authorities to use surveillance technologies (e.g., facial recognition software) to identify any individuals participating in banned Pride events.

Trigger:Prime Minister Viktor Orbán‘s speech on March 15 (the anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution). During his speech, Orbán promised to eliminate a supposed "shadow army" of NGOs, journalists, and politicians that the U.S. and Brussels were paying.

Trigger:EU-Mercosur trade agreement, signed in December 2024. Reignited farmers’ protests from 2024 in nearby countries (Slovakia and the Czech Republic).

Trigger:Quadrilateral agreement between the Hungarian government and three judicial representative bodies, signed in November 2024. The government agreed to raise the salaries of judicial workers in exchange for judicial support for the government’s proposed judicial reforms. Many judicial workers have criticized the agreement and the circumstances under which it was signed.

Trigger:The leader of the opposition Tisza Party, Péter Magyar, called for a protest at the headquarters of Hungary’s state media corporation, Médiaszolgáltatás-támogató és Vagyonkezelő Alap (MTVA).

Trigger:The former secretary of state for infrastructure in the Ministry of National Development, Pál Völner, was charged in 2022 for accepting bribes from the former head of court bailiffs, György Schadl, who was also arrested. Both have pleaded not guilty. In March 2024, lawyer and businessman Péter Magyar, formerly close to the Fidesz government, published a recording of a conversation with Judit Varga, then his wife and Hungary’s justice minister, in which Varga detailed an attempt by aides to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s cabinet chief to interfere in the cases facing Völner and Schadl.

Trigger:Hungarian President Katalin Novák pardoned a man convicted of helping cover up sexual abuse in a children’s home.

Trigger:The EU waved entry restrictions on Ukrainian lorries following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Trigger:Sixty-third anniversary of the Hungary uprisings of 1956. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán delivered a speech blasting the EU after returning from a visit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in China.

Trigger:The Hungarian government, led by Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz Party, passed laws to suppress queer visibility, including in 2021 banning the “display and promotion of homosexuality” among those under the age of eighteen in books and films.

Trigger:The state media corporation, MTVA, devoted minimal coverage to teacher protests, which began in September 2022.

Trigger:Teachers who joined early protests for higher wages were sacked.

Trigger:The government amended the law to require healthcare providers to present women with evidence of life of the fetus, widely interpreted as a heartbeat, before proceeding with the abortion.

Trigger:Government loosening of logging regulations to increase supply of firewood in response to surging gas and electricity prices.

Trigger:The government increased the tax rate for hundreds of thousands of small businesses.

Trigger:Introduction and adoption of a law that bars teaching about same-sex relationships or LGBT issues to youth.

Trigger:The privatization of the University of Theater and Film Arts and the reorganization of its board under the control of an Orban ally.

Trigger:Legislation that would increase the amount of overtime employers could demand from employees and the creation of a parallel court system.

Trigger:The Supreme Court upheld the government’s decision to revoke Article 370 of India’s constitution, which gave limited autonomy to the region. The day after four Indian soldiers were killed in an ambush by rebels fighting against Indian rule, the Indian army detained eight civilians. Three of the detainees died in military custody, with locals accusing the Indian army of torturing the detainees to death.

Trigger:Two activists were hospitalized after a hunger strike led by climate activist Sonam Wangchuk.

Trigger:The Election Commission of India (ECI) initiated a revision of the voter rolls in the state of Bihar, which is expected to hold legislative elections in November 2025. The revision impacts the voter registration of nearly 80 million people. Bihar is known as an electoral battleground state.

Trigger:Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s economic policies, which include the privatization of public sector businesses and reforms to labor laws to attract foreign investment.

Trigger:A local court in Sambhal ordered an archaeological survey of the the Shahi Jama Masjid, a mosque in Sambhal, after hearing a petition that claimed the mosque was built on the site of a destroyed Hindu temple.

Trigger:Gautam Adani, an Indian billionaire businessman, was indicted in the United States for allegedly defrauding investors and bribing Indian government officials.

Trigger:Reignited ethnic violence between Hindu Meiteis and Christian Kukis in Manipur, India. Armed groups launched drone attacks that killed several civilians.

Trigger:In July 2024, the Union Ministry of Labour & Employment began efforts to implement four labor codes, which had been passed by Parliament in 2020. The labor codes condense forty-four preexisting labor laws.

Trigger:Rape and murder of a female trainee doctor at the R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata.

Trigger:Release of results from the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (Undergraduate), or NEET (UG), which had an abnormally large number of high scores. (NEET (UG) is an entry exam for undergraduate medical schools.) Cancelation of the University Grants Commission–National Eligibility Test (UGC-NET), an exam used to determine the eligibility of PhD candidates or candidates for postdoctoral positions, due to leaking of paper questions.

Trigger:Arvind Kejriwal, New Delhi’s top elected official and leader of the opposition Aam Aadmi Party (which is part of the opposition coalition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance challenging Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2024 elections), was arrested based on accusations that he and his party had accepted $12 million in bribes from liquor contractors. Kejriwal’s party denies these accusations, claiming they were fabricated by allies of Modi’s government.

Trigger:Farmers claim that the cost of cultivation has jumped in recent years, while their income has remained constant, making farming a loss-making enterprise.

Trigger:Frustration among lawmakers and ministers from India’s southern states against what they say is discrimination in the distribution of federal funds by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. India’s five southern states are ruled by regional parties or rivals of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Karnataka contributes the second highest taxes in the country, thanks to its booming tech industry, but has seen its transfers decline from 4.71 percent of total national taxes collected to 3.64 percent in the last four years. General tension between more developed southern states and less developed northern states.

Trigger:A mosque and a seminary in the northern state of Uttarakhand were demolished because they were said to be built on public land. Amnesty International has documented "unjust" targeting of Muslim homes, businesses, and places of worship for demolition. During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tenure, Hinduism has increasingly become a marker of national identity, despite India’s founding as a multiethnic secular republic.

Trigger:India has become increasingly autocratic under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has gone after the opposition on multiple occasions and suspended over a hundred opposition members of Parliament. Opposition leaders have faced arrests and investigation by federal agencies in the lead up to the 2024 election. They accuse Modi of election interference and using state agencies to further his political agenda.

Trigger:Police raided the offices of NewsClick, a digital media outlet critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 3. Under Modi, India’s freedom of the press has declined markedly, including a raid of the BBC’s New Dehli and Mumbai offices days after it broadcasted “India: The Modi Question.”

Trigger:The Indian Supreme Court ordered the government of the state of Karnataka to release 5,000 cusecs of water from the Kaveri River to the neighboring Tamil Nadu state.

Trigger:One day after ethno-religious violence broke out in the state of Manipur in May 2023, a group of Meitei men stripped two Kuki women naked and paraded them through the streets while groping them. It is alleged that the men gang raped the two women and killed two of their male family members. Video of the incident went viral after the internet was restored to Manipur two months later.

Trigger:One of India’s most decorated female wrestlers accused Brij Bhushan, the president of the Wrestling Federation of India, of sexually harassing several young female wrestlers.

Trigger:The Manipur High Court asked the state government to consider the petition of the Meitei community to be recognized as a scheduled tribe.

Trigger:Several states increased their pension benefits for public employees.

Trigger:The government introduced a tax hike on a range of products and services.

Trigger:The government’s announcement of a plan to recruit soldiers on four-year contracts.

Trigger:Call for protest and strike by major Indian labor unions after the government proposed a series of labor reforms.

Trigger:The imposition of a ban on wearing headscarves in educational institutions in Karnataka state and the circulation of a video that showed a Muslim woman being harassed by a mob of Hindu men.

Trigger:Passage of bills on agricultural market reform and contract farming.

Trigger:Migrant workers’ demand to receive back wages and to be permitted to return home to local villages.

Trigger:Publication of government statistics predicting slowing economic growth.

Trigger:Passage of a bill, the Citizenship Amendment Act, amending India’s citizenship law. It offers conditional amnesty and a path to citizenship for non-Muslim religious minorities from three neighboring countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan) who did not migrate to the country legally. The bill contains no such exemptions for Muslim migrants, fueling criticism that it discriminates against Muslims.

Trigger:Recent Supreme Court decision stating that the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Act (SC/ST Act), which had served to protect lower castes and Dalits from discrimination and violence, had been “rampantly misused.”

Trigger:Demands by the Maratha community, which has been historically reliant on farming, for reserved quotas for government jobs and college admissions.

Trigger:Challenges facing Indian farmers in different regions, including low crop prices, droughts, and mounting debt owed to banks or moneylenders.

Trigger:President Prabowo Subianto’s 2026 budget, which proposed cuts to regional funding. Regional governments drastically raised property taxes to account for the loss of national funding. In the region of Pati, Regent Sudewo raised property taxes by 250%.

Trigger:Local media revealed that parliamentarians were being paid over 100 million rupiah, including a housing allowance of 50 million rupiah.

Trigger:Indonesia‘s parliament passed revisions in its military law that allow active military officers to serve in civilian government posts. The revisions also raised the retirement age for most military ranks.

Trigger:President Prabowo Subianto’s austerity measures, which include cuts to education and infrastructure budgets.

Trigger:The House of Representatives’ Legislative Body (Baleg) drafted revisions to local election laws that would overturn two rulings from the Constitutional Court: one that lowered the threshold for parties to nominate candidates in local leadership positions and another that raised the minimum age of candidates for governorship or deputy governorship to thirty years of age.

Trigger:A new broadcasting law restricts broadcasting of journalistic investigations, content portraying LGBTQ+ "behavior," and content that shows "negative behaviors or lifestyles that could potentially be imitated by the public."

Trigger:While outgoing President Joko Widodo did not endorse a candidate for the February 2024 election, he made public appearances with the frontrunner Prabowo Subianto. Widodo’s son is on the ballot as vice president to Prabowo Subianto. Prabowo Subianto won, but protesters attribute this to election fraud.

Trigger:Over 1,500 Rohingya refugees have arrived in Aceh province on the island of Sumatra since November.

Trigger:The government announced plans to evict thousands from residents of Rempang Island to make way for a multibillion-dollar Chinese-owned glass factory and "eco-city." Residents were told to leave the island by the end of September.

Trigger:Indonesia was set to host the FIFA U-20 World Cup from May 20 to June 11. Israel was among the countries participating.

Trigger:The president signed an emergency presidential order to replace the country’s 2020 Jobs Creation law and urged parliament to make the order permanent.

Trigger:The government increased subsidized fuel prices by 30%.

Trigger:The government’s announcement of plans to split the provinces of West Papua and Papua into administrative divisions.

Trigger:Enactment of an omnibus Jobs Creation Bill, which reformed labor and market regulations.

Trigger:Consideration of a new criminal code that could violate the rights of women, religious minorities, and LGBTQ groups, and passage of a bill to weaken the country’s anticorruption commission. In 2022, parliament resumed efforts to codify proposed changes.

Trigger:Racist remarks made by military officers and nationalist militia directed against Papuan citizens.

Trigger:Outbreak of active hostilities between Iran and Israel.

Trigger:Teachers say the education sector needs to be dramatically reformed. They also claim they face discriminatory and oppressive treatment by authorities.

Trigger:Death of Armita Geravand after an alleged confrontation with Iran’s morality police in the Tehran subway over her lack of a headscarf.

Trigger:Oppression of Baluchi minority groups in Zahedan Province as well as Sistan and Baluchestan Province.

Trigger:Thousands of Iranian schoolgirls from hundreds of schools fell ill over the course of several months in what protesters and some government officials characterized as deliberate attacks on the students.

Trigger:Morality police arrested twenty-two-year-old Mahsa Amini for violating the country’s hijab law; she died in custody.

Trigger:The death of dozens of people in a residential building collapse in Abadan.

Trigger:A reduction in government subsidies for eggs, chicken, dairy products, and cooking oil, as well as heightened wheat and flour prices.

Trigger:Rising costs of living and stagnating salaries for public sector employees.

Trigger:Severe water shortages amid Iran’s worst drought in decades. The July 2021 protests were focused on water shortages in Khuzestan Province. The protests beginning in November 2021 started in Isfahan. The protests beginning in August 2022 started in Hamadan Province.

Trigger:Iran’s military acknowledged that it had launched missiles that brought down a Ukraine International Airlines jet near Tehran, killing all 176 people on board.

Trigger:Increase in gasoline prices due to the growing budget deficit.

Trigger:Undrinkable water in the cities of Khorramshahr and Abadan.

Trigger:Concerns over a weak economy and the high prices of basic goods, as well as the publication of a government budget that would slash cash subsidies and increase fuel prices.

Trigger:Recent widespread arrests of activists involved in the 2019 Iraqi protests.

Trigger:The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps launched strikes against an Israeli "spy headquarters," killing an Israeli businessman and his family.

Trigger:Civil servants in Iraqi Kurdistan were not being paid.

Trigger:On June 28, Salwan Momika, an Iraqi immigrant living in Sweden, tore pages out of a Quran and burned them in front of a mosque in Stockholm. The incident took place on Eid al-Adha, a major Islamic holiday.

Trigger:A court in Baghdad sentenced Hayder Hamid al-Zaidi, a 20-year-old Iraqi activist, to three years in prison for a tweet he allegedly posted that insults Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the former deputy commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces.

Trigger:The inability of political parties to form a government after the 2021 parliamentary elections.

Trigger:Demotion of a popular counterterrorism leader who was fighting government corruption; the violent response to antigovernment protests in early October 2019; and the killing of activists by militias.

Trigger:Three children and a woman were stabbed outside of a school in Dublin. Rumors circulated that a foreign national was responsible for the attack after Irish right-wing news platform Gript suggested the perpetrator was Algerian.

Trigger:Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his decision to dismiss Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar from his position after losing confidence in Bar.

Trigger:Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed Gallant from his position as defense minister on November 5.

Trigger:The government announced on March 28, 2024, that it had not agreed on an extension to exempt ultra-Orthodox Jews from conscription, after the Supreme Court ruled that such exemptions were discriminatory. The court gave the government until April 1 to agree on an extension. Failing to meet this deadline, the Supreme Court instructed the government to suspend special education subsidies to those who fail to answer military call-ups.

Trigger:The Supreme Court ruled that the current system of conscription—which requires most Jewish men to serve nearly three years, and Jewish women two years, in the Israeli military, but exempts ultra-Orthodox from conscription if they are studying in religious seminary full-time—was discriminatory. The court cited the need for the burden of military service to be shared across society. It gave the government until April 1 to present a bill for a new system.

Trigger:Ongoing Israel-Hamas war, which some Israelis assert Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is mishandling.

Trigger:The government introduced plans to overhaul the country’s judicial system; the plan would weaken the Supreme Court by giving parliament the power to overturn court decisions with a simple majority vote, among other proposed changes.

Trigger:A court decision on whether to evict six Palestinian families from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah; Israeli moves to crack down on Palestinian assembly.

Trigger:Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s expansion of authority during the coronavirus outbreak, such as using phone surveillance technology, shutting down the court system, adjourning parliament, and planning to annex parts of the West Bank.

Trigger:Passage of a nation-state law that would affirm Israel’s Jewish character and potentially marginalize non-Jewish citizens.

Trigger:Draft law that would end the existing practice of having police recommend to prosecutors whether to indict suspects, while also preventing police recommendations from being made public and penalizing leaks from investigations. Suspicions that the law’s implications could affect an ongoing investigation into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trigger:New security law which increases sentences for various acts (e.g., illegal squatting, blocking traffic). The law also provides greater protection for security personnel.

Trigger:Proposed EU rearmament plan, which aims to invest 800 billion euros in defense spending.

Trigger:International Day for the Elimination of Violence.

Trigger:Growing discontent with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government and its policies.

Trigger:EU environmental regulations which farmers say undercut their ability to compete with foreign imports made using cheaper inputs and under fewer regulations. New EU legislation requires 4 percent of farmland to be left fallow to receive subsidies. High energy costs.

Trigger:COP28 was held in Dubai and left many climate activists dissatisfied.

Trigger:22-year-old student Giulia Cecchettin was killed, allegedly by her former boyfriend. On average, one woman is killed every three days in Italy. International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Trigger:The government proposed a budget for 2024 which includes 24 billion euros in tax cuts and spending increases projected to raise the deficit by 15.7 billion euros.

Trigger:Rapidly rising prices, especially of fuel.

Trigger:The victory of far-right parties in the country’s general election.

Trigger:Perceived government inaction on climate change.

Trigger:The imposition of vaccine mandates, public health restrictions, and the enactment of a rule requiring employees to have a “Green Pass,” which shows vaccination or negative coronavirus test status, in order to enter workplaces.

Trigger:Overcrowding in prisons during the coronavirus outbreak. Government decision to suspend or limit family visits to more than two dozen prisons for the next two weeks, due to coronavirus concerns.

Trigger:Announced investment and pension reform that unions viewed as inadequate to combat economic stagnation and high unemployment.

Trigger:On June 4, Ivory Coast’s electoral commission banned Tidjane Thiam, the main opposition leader, and three other opposition candidates from running in the upcoming presidential elections.

Trigger:Announcement that President Alassane Ouattara would seek a third term in office, despite a two-term limit.

Trigger:Constitution Day on May 3.

Trigger:Arrest of three Cambodian activists who shared concerns over the CLV-DTA, an economic agreement between Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.

Trigger:The Japanese Diet proposed an amendment on the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law that would allow the permanent residency status of foreigners to be more easily revoked.

Trigger:The death of George Floyd in the United States, sparking protests against local police brutality and racism in Japan, most recently manifesting in police violence against a Kurdish man.

Trigger:Ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, which particularly resonates with Jordan’s Palestinian diaspora.

Trigger:An increase in fuel prices.

Trigger:The announcement of a deal between Israel and Jordan that would provide Israeli firms access to Jordanian solar energy resources in exchange for water from Israel.

Trigger:The government’s failure to abide by a pay raise agreement between the education ministry and the Teachers’ Syndicate union.

Trigger:Tax hikes and price increases for electricity and fuel.

Trigger:China has been accused of human rights violations against Kazakhs, Uyghurs, and other Turkic-speaking ethnic groups in Xinjiang. Protesters say many are detained "simply because they are practicing Muslims."

Trigger:Two-year anniversary of anti-government protests that spiraled into riots. Security forces fired on demonstrators, and at least 238 people were killed.

Trigger:The lifting of price caps on liquid petroleum gas.

Trigger:Recent presidential election results that were seen as undemocratic/illegitimate.

Trigger:The deaths of five children in a house fire that occurred while both parents were working overnight shifts.

Trigger:The death of a blogger, Albert Ojwang, in police custody.

Trigger:The Ministry of Health announced that the national government would no longer be able to fund the Universal Health Coverage (UHC) program, which employs thousands of healthcare workers. County-level governments announced that they would not absorb UHC workers without receiving adequate funding and clarification from the national government.

Trigger:The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights reported that eighty-two government critics had allegedly been abducted by security forces since the finance bill protests in June 2024.

Trigger:Long-standing issue of femicide in Kenya. According to Kenyan police, ninety-seven women were murdered from August 2024 to October 2024.

Trigger:Approval of the Kenya Finance Bill 2024 by the parliament, which proposed a new tax system to raise $2.7 billion in additional taxes.

Trigger:President William Ruto declared his intention to disregard court orders, asserting that some justices have colluded with the opposition to obstruct the administration’s agenda.

Trigger:Recent rise in violence against women and femicide. At least 500 women have been killed in acts of femicide since 2016.

Trigger:Inflation rose to 9.2% in February 2023 despite the president’s promises to bring down costs of living; on April 28, 2023, the Kenya Treasury Cabinet Secretary presented Parliament a proposed finance bill that would hike taxes on fuel and housing.

Trigger:Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission declared William Ruto winner of the presidential election despite some claims of "opaque" vote verification.

Trigger:Increasing prices of staple foods.

Trigger:Revelations that over $100 million had been embezzled from Kenya’s National Youth Service.

Trigger:The publication of electoral results that showed that incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta had been reelected.

Trigger:Prime Minister Albin Kurti told Western diplomats that he would reopen the main bridge in the city of Mitrovica for vehicle traffic.

Trigger:The Kosovo government announced that the Serbian dinar would no longer be used as legal tender, with all future payments in the country done in euros.

Trigger:A woman was killed at the hands of an alleged hitman hired by her husband.

Trigger:A special war crimes court in The Hague is prosecuting former Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) guerillas who are accused of committing war crimes against Serbia. The former president Hashim Thaçi was indicted for murder, torture, and persecution.

Trigger:Kosovo held mayoral elections to fill four vacancies in Serb-majority municipalities, which Serbian parties and candidates by and large boycotted. Ethnic Albanian candidates won all four races without competition. Serb citizens of these municipalities sought to prevent the Albanian officials from taking office. Kosovar police escalated the situation by taking control of municipal buildings and escorting the elected mayors inside

Trigger:The rape of an 11-year-old girl by five men in Pristina.

Trigger:The announcement of new laws that would require ethnic Serbs crossing into Kosovo to show identity cards and license plates provided by the Kosovar government instead of the special status documents provided by the Serbian government.

Trigger:Allegations of corruption against parliament speaker Marzouq al-Ghanim.

Trigger:Eleven Kyrgyz politicians, journalists, and activists were arrested in October 2022 for their protest against the 2022 Kyrgyz-Uzbek border delimitation deal, in which Kyrgyzstan handed over the Kempir-Abad water reservoir to Uzbekistan. Sixteen other protesters were placed under house arrest for their involvement in the demonstrations.

Trigger:Police in Kyrgyzstan are investigating a case in which an underage girl was allegedly raped by numerous men near Bishkek. The parents of the girl allege that as many as ten men systematically raped their daughter for months and threatened her into silence. It is believed that many rape victims in the country do not come forward for fear of shame by socially conservative members of their communities. The protests occurred on March 8, International Women’s Day.

Trigger:The government planned to introduce a new tax system that will lead to an overall increase in taxes. The plan will also require vendors to use electronic cash registers and pay taxes on each item sold.

Trigger:President Sadyr Japarov, who has expanded his office’s powers and reduced those of Parliament, proposed a change to the state flag to make the center emblem look more like a sun instead of a sunflower in an effort to project strength and independence.

Trigger:Allegations of vote-rigging and intimidation amid parliamentary elections.

Trigger:The proposal of a law that would allow authorities to block “fake news” online.

Trigger:Circulation of a report that alleged that over $700 million in public funds had been misappropriated in a money laundering operation.

Trigger:The arrest of opposition leader Omurbek Tekebayev on charges, which protesters alleged were politically motivated.

Trigger:Fifth anniversary of the 2020 Beirut port blast.

Trigger:The Israeli army claimed that Iran was using civilian planes to smuggle cash to Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group. In response, Lebanese authorities prohibited two Iranian planes from landing in Beirut, which left dozens of Lebanese passengers stranded in Iran.

Trigger:The investigation into the 2020 Beirut blast remained frozen for more than one year.

Trigger:Overcrowding in prisons during the coronavirus outbreak.

Trigger:Introduction of taxes on tobacco, petrol, and WhatsApp voice calls. In August 2020, the protests were reinvigorated by the explosion at the Port of Beirut.

Trigger:Liberia’s ongoing drug crisis.

Trigger:Growing economic hardship. Government corruption. Issues of police brutality.

Trigger:The House of Representatives attempted to remove Speaker Jonathan Fonati Koffa, an opposition politician facing corruption allegations, from office. The decision came after months of tension between the majority and the opposition over Koffa’s allegations.

Trigger:Rising costs of food and fuel.

Trigger:Protest organized by the opposition to highlight rising prices and allegations of corruption.

Trigger:Violence broke out between rival armed groups in Tripoli, resulting in the death of eight civilians. Shortly after, Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah ordered armed militias to be dismantled, which sparked another wave of fighting.

Trigger:In the town of Derna, two dams broke on September 11, causing flash floods that killed thousands of people.

Trigger:Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen announced that he had met secretly with Najla el-Mangoush, foreign minister for Libya’s Tripoli-based government, in Italy the week prior.

Trigger:Extended cuts to power and water services and gasoline supply disruptions.

Trigger:Newly appointed Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene’s plan to include the Nemunas Dawn party in her coalition government by selecting Ignotas Adomavičius as the culture minister. The leader of Nemunas Dawn, Remigijus Žemaitaitis, is currently on trial for antisemitism.

Trigger:The Social Democratic Party announced that it would form a coalition government with Nemunas Dawn and For Lithuania. The leader of Nemunas Dawn, Remigijus Žemaitaitis, is currently on trial for antisemitism.

Trigger:Frequent water and power cuts, which can last up to twelve hours at a time.

Trigger:President Andry Rajoelina resigned from his position as head of state to launch his reelection campaign on October 10 (as is required for an incumbent candidate by the state’s constitutions). Ten of 13 candidates called for a boycott of the election, accusing Rajoelina of seeking out unfair advantages to ensure his victory.

Trigger:Rising cost of living and rolling blackouts.

Trigger:Passage of new electoral laws that opposition candidates saw as preventing them from running for elections, with additional unfavorable provisions on campaign financing and media access.

Trigger:A Dutch NGO worker and a Malawian transgender woman separately faced charges under colonial-era legislation outlawing sodomy. Malawi’s High Court was set to hear their case on July 17; the pair was seeking to have bans on same-sex marriage and gay sex overturned.

Trigger:Rapidly rising cost of living, a scandal in which the government paid to procure fertilizer that never materialized.

Trigger:Price hikes on fuel and other commodities; call for protest by a human rights CSO.

Trigger:Enactment of strict lockdown measures, including restrictions on social interaction and business operations.

Trigger:Suspicions that the May 2019 election, which President Peter Mutharika won by only 159,000 votes, was rigged.

Trigger:High cost of living and high unemployment rates. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s economic policies, which include increased taxes and subsidies. Judicial appointment crisis in July 2025, which triggered a protest in the same month.

Trigger:Political crisis caused by Tengku Maimun binti Tuan Mat’s retirement as chief justice of Malaysia. A leaked memo of a Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) meeting corroborated allegations of executive interference in the judiciary, as well as allegations of misconduct against Federal Court Judge Ahmad Terrirudin Mohd Salleh, a candidate for to be new chief judge.

Trigger:Perceived government mismanagement of rising coronavirus cases.

Trigger:Order by the Supreme Court for the government to release opposition leaders from prison, which the government disobeyed. Security forces later arrested two out of five Supreme Court justices, blocked off parliament, and arrested several opposition leaders.

Trigger:Military junta's plan to extend the junta's rule to 2030 and dissolve all political parties.

Trigger:Killing of 160 villagers in an interethnic conflict.

Trigger:Worsening of the security situation in Mali’s northern and central regions.

Trigger:EU environmental regulations, including new subsidy rules which require 4 percent of farmland to be fallow, which farmers say undercuts their ability to compete with foreign imports. Lowering of trade barriers, including renewed negotiations for a trade deal between the EU and the South American Mercosur bloc. High energy prices.

Trigger:The Maltese parliament introduced a bill that would permit legal abortion in cases where the mother’s life is at risk.

Trigger:Developments in the investigation of the 2017 death of a journalist.

Trigger:Reelection of President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani.

Trigger:Call by opposition leaders for protests after government-backed presidential candidate Mohamed Ould Ghazouani was proclaimed the winner.

Trigger:The spillage of over 1,000 tons of oil from the wreckage of the oil tanker MV Wakashio.

Trigger:The Guerreros Buscadores de Jalisco, a volunteer group dedicated to finding missing people, discovered a mass grave in Jalisco, Mexico with the remains of hundreds of bodies.

Trigger:Former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s proposed judicial reform bill, which would require all judges to be elected by popular vote. The reform also lowers the number of Supreme Court justices to eleven, shortens their terms to twelve years, and reduces the required years of experience to five.

Trigger:President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has called to defund the country’s independent electoral agencies ahead of the presidential election on June 2, 2024.

Trigger:In 2014, forty-three male students at a teachers’ college in Iguala, Guerrero, were kidnapped and—as later revealed—killed after they commandeered buses for an annual drive to Mexico City to mark the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre. A 2022 truth commission concluded that the disappearance was a "state crime" which involved local, state, and federal authorities. Another student was killed in March 2024 during a confrontation with police. The police officers responsible for that student’s death are under investigation.

Trigger:In 2014, forty-three male students at a teachers’ college in Iguala, Guerrero, were kidnapped and apparently killed after they commandeered buses as part of an annual tradition to drive to Mexico City to mark the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre. A 2022 truth commission concluded that the disappearance was a "state crime" which involved local, state, and federal authorities.

Trigger:International Safe Abortion Day was September 6.

Trigger:The international prices for corn, wheat, and sorghum fell.

Trigger:President Andrés Manuel López Obrador introduced a package of constitutional reforms to Congress that would overhaul the nation’s electoral authority and the National Electoral Institute, and would require judges to be elected via popular vote.

Trigger:Rise in robberies and extortion on Mexican highways, with about two truck drivers killed every month on the roads.

Trigger:A fire at a migrant processing center in Ciudad Juárez killed 40 migrants.

Trigger:The president introduced a plan to overhaul the National Electoral Institute (INE), the country’s agency responsible for organizing federal elections.

Trigger:Perception that the government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has mismanaged the public health and economic crises stemming from the corronavirus pandemic.

Trigger:In March 2020, triggered by the murder of a twenty-five-year-old woman and seven-year-old girl. In March 2022, protests were triggered by rising femicide rates and commemorations of International Women’s Day. In March 2023, protests were triggered again by commemorations of International Women’s Day.

Trigger:Worsening inflation, especially in fuel prices.

Trigger:Supreme Court’s decision to annul the results of the mayoral election in the capital.

Trigger:Corruption allegations against Prime Minister Luvsannamsrain Oyun-Erdene and his family—specifically, over extravagant spending by Oyun-Erdene's son and his son's fiancée.

Trigger:Allegations that corrupt officials stole and sold 385,000 tons of coal from the national stockpile for private gain.

Trigger:High inflation, food shortages, and rising fuel prices.

Trigger:The circulation of a video of a mother and her newborn being given substandard care during a transfer to a coronavirus quarantine facility.

Trigger:Corruption allegations against the speaker of parliament and other political figures.

Trigger:Mass shooting on January 1 that killed twelve people, including two children.

Trigger:Formation of government with both pro-European parties and Andrija Mandić as speaker, despite his ties to Serbian nationalists and pro-Kremlin views. Fear Mandić will block EU accession.

Trigger:The country’s parliament introduced and passed a controversial law that strips the president of his decisive role in appointing the prime minister.

Trigger:Efforts by the Democratic Party of Socialists to form a minority government.

Trigger:Government plans to rewrite a law in order to keep hundreds of Serbian Orthodox monasteries under church ownership rather than transferring them to the state.

Trigger:Passage of a law that would mandate the creation of a register for all religious buildings and sites owned by the independent kingdom of Montenegro before 1918, when Montenegro became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which was later renamed Yugoslavia. Any faith group that could not provide evidence that they owned the property could lose rights to the property.

Trigger:Allegations of corruption against President Milo Đukanović.

Trigger:Neglect of public services, including education and healthcare. The deaths of eight pregnant women at a public hospital earlier in the month. Government investment toward stadiums and other sports infrastructure.

Trigger:Annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank in Marrakech.

Trigger:The death of a fourteen-year-old girl named Meriem who had been raped; she died on September 6 of an unsafe, illegal abortion.

Trigger:Increasing prices of basic goods, including grain and fuel.

Trigger:Anniversary of the Arab Spring uprising. Discontent over fixed-term contracts for teachers, limited opportunities for low-ranking teachers, and temporary government contracts that provide limited healthcare or pension benefits.

Trigger:Arrest of leaders of the Hirak Rif protest movement.

Trigger:The death of scavengers in an abandoned coal mine in the Jerada region.

Trigger:The opposition candidate, Venâncio Mondlane, called for a nationwide strike to dispute the provisional election results, which showed that the ruling party, Frelimo, was likely to win. Two days before the planned demonstration, two opposition figures were killed.

Trigger:Accusations of voter fraud levied against the ruling party, which was declared the winner in most towns. The U.S. Embassy noted "many credible reports of irregularities on voting day and during the vote tabulation process."

Trigger:The death of rapper Edson da Luz, known as “Azagaia,” an anti-government critic, from an epileptic seizure.

Trigger:Continued air strikes in northern and central regions of Myanmar.

Trigger:The February 1 coup d’etat orchestrated by the Burmese military against the National League for Democracy (NLD) and civilian government.

Trigger:The arrest of two Reuters journalists by Burmese authorities for allegedly violating the Official Secrets Act.

Trigger:The announcement of government plans to construct statues of state founder Aung San.

Trigger:A parliamentary debate over an agreement with Germany to recognize the genocide during its colonial occupation.

Trigger:Online movements like #NepoKids that highlighted the lavish lifestyles of the children of Nepalese politicians. On September 4, the government placed a ban on major social media platforms.

Trigger:Gyanendra Shah, the former king of Nepal, returned to Kathmandu after a tour of western Nepal.

Trigger:The monarchy was abolished in 2008. Demonstrators perceive the democratic government as corrupt and inadequate.

Trigger:Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli’s move to dissolve parliament and call early elections.

Trigger:Proposal of a bill that would affect a historical trust system (the guthi system) that helps maintain temples and other traditional public spaces, while helping organize public events. The bill would have established an authority governing all guthis and would have ended the current system of ownership by communities or families.

Trigger:Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam Freedom Party (PVV) won the most seats in the November 22 general election.

Trigger:Perceptions that the Dutch government has not done enough to address climate change. General election the following week.

Trigger:The climate activist group Extinction Rebellion called a protest in The Hague.

Trigger:The government’s announcement of plans to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide and ammonia, which are both byproducts of agricultural processes.

Trigger:Ongoing pandemic-related restrictions.

Trigger:The new center-right coalition government has reversed policies which gave prominence to the Māori language, claiming these policies afford preferential treatment on the basis of race. The government also shuttered the Māori Health Authority, which was established to address health inequity. In November 2024, the government also introduced the Treaty Principles Bill, which would reinterpret the Treaty of Waitangi, the founding document that established British and Māori governance of New Zealand.

Trigger:The government introduced plans to tax greenhouse gas emissions from livestock.

Trigger:The imposition of vaccine mandates and public health restrictions across New Zealand.

Trigger:Death of George Floyd in the United States, sparking protests against local police brutality and racism in New Zealand.

Trigger:Proposal of reforms to the social security system.

Trigger:The United States has an air base in the northern city of Agadez and over a thousand troops in Niger. The United States has provided training to Niger’s forces for fighting insurgents and the countries have undertaken multiple joint counterinsurgency operations. The United States had already said it would begin plans to withdraw troops from the country before the protests began. Russian troops arrived the week before protests broke out to provide security to the country’s junta.

Trigger:France refused to withdraw its nearly 1,500 soldiers from a military base in Niger or its ambassador from Niamey despite the Nigerian junta’s request that France do so.

Trigger:On July 26, soldiers from Niger’s presidential guard deposed President Mohamed Bazoum in a coup d'etat.

Trigger:Announcement of electoral results that declared ruling party candidate Mohamed Bazoum the victor over former president Mahamane Ousmane.

Trigger:The introduction of a finance law that imposed taxes on consumer goods while subsidizing utility companies.

Trigger:A popular Afrobeats star known as Mohbad died under suspicious circumstances on September 12.

Trigger:Inspired by the finance bill protests in Kenya. Growing economic hardship; inflation rate in July 2024 was the highest it had been in Nigeria in twenty-eight years.

Trigger:The government stopped subsidizing fuel, which caused the price of fuel to rise dramatically.

Trigger:Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission declared ruling party candidate Bola Ahmed Tinubu the winner of the country’s presidential election.

Trigger:The central bank introduced new currency and planned to phase out the old banknotes, creating cash shortages during the transition.

Trigger:Call for protest by activists, imposition of the ban on Twitter, and rising insecurity across the country.

Trigger:Circulation of a video of police brutality.

Trigger:On March 16, a fire broke out during a concert at a nightclub in Kocani, leading to the death of fifty-nine people.

Trigger:Media reported that organized crime networks had for years been stealing cancer drugs from the country’s leading oncology treatment center and selling them on the black market. On September 1, authorities raided the clinic to gather evidence.

Trigger:North Macedonia’s Parliament was considering two draft bills: one on gender identity and the other on gender equality.

Trigger:The government considered a proposal that involved several concessions to North Macedonia’s Bulgarian population as part of a compromise to overcome Bulgarian objections to the country’s EU membership.

Trigger:Call by the opposition VMRO-DPMNE party for protests in response to over a dozen former party officials being sentenced to prison time for their role in a mob invasion of parliament in 2017.

Trigger:Two wind farms in central Norway continued to operate despite an earlier Supreme Court ruling that the wind farms violated the rights of Indigenous people.

Trigger:A spate of mass layoffs, rising unemployment, and the imposition of new taxes.

Trigger:Failure of government job programs to adequately reduce unemployment among citizens.

Trigger:Unsuccessful discussion between the Jammu & Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), the regional government, and federal ministers over the JAAC’s charter of thirty-eight demands.

Trigger:New amendments to the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) that target the spread of false information online. The amendments include the establishment of new regulatory and investigative bodies, as well as harsher punishments for spreading false information.

Trigger:On October 6, the Pakistani government banned the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), a social rights group for the Pashtun ethnic minority, on the grounds that the PTM’s activities threatened the security of the country. The ban was imposed just days ahead of the Pashtun National Jirga (a traditional Pashtun assembly), which was scheduled for October 11.

Trigger:The killing of Dr. Shahnawaz Kumbhar, who was in custody after being accused of blasphemy.

Trigger:The Higher Education Department (HED) announced an e-transfer policy on August 6, 2024. According to the HED, the goal of this policy is to create transparency during the HED’s efforts to transfer professors to understaffed schools in remote regions.

Trigger:In June 2024, the Pakistan government approved military plans against extremist violence and terrorism in the area.

Trigger:Militant attack in Bannu on July 15, which killed eight people.

Trigger:Arrests of Baloch people and growing exploitation of resources.

Trigger:Former prime minister Imran Khan has been in jail since January 2024 on charges of corruption. His party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, remains popular. His supporters and legal team claim that his rights were violated during his trial.

Trigger:Chief Justice of Pakistan Qazi Faez Isa dismissed charges of blasphemy against a member of the Ahmadi community jailed for distributing Islamic literature.

Trigger:Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e Insaf (PTI) party won a plurality of seats in the February 8 parliamentary elections, but two rival parties—Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s Pakistan People’s Party—are working to reach an agreement to form a coalition government. Khan could not run in the election due to criminal convictions against him, which he claims are politically motivated.

Trigger:Balaach Mola Bakhsh, a man in a remote town of Balochistan Province, was arrested for alleged possession of explosives and was killed in a shootout between security officials and insurgents—which Bakhsh’s family claims is a false flag.

Trigger:Citing security concerns and mass immigration from Afghanistan, Pakistan ended "easement rights," which had allowed residents living along the Durand Line border to cross between the two countries without passports.

Trigger:Pakistani people started receiving higher electricity bills because Pakistan had agreed to levy an electricity tariff as part of an IMF bailout.

Trigger:On June 28, Salwan Momika, an Iraqi immigrant living in Sweden, tore pages out of a Quran and burned them in front of a mosque in Stockholm. The incident took place on Eid al-Adha, a major Islamic holiday.

Trigger:Assailants shot and killed the driver of a school bus and injured two children in October 2022; two explosions at a compound for counterterrorism police killed at least 15 people and wounded dozens more in April 2023.

Trigger:A government hike in electricity tariffs; high inflation.

Trigger:The government removed fuel subsidies to try to salvage an IMF agreement, increasing prices.

Trigger:Imran Khan was ousted in a no-confidence vote on April 10.

Trigger:The introduction and approval of a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Trigger:A call by the leadership of Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), an outlawed far-right group, for a “long march” from Lahore to Islamabad.

Trigger:Discovery of the bodies of four young men in a ditch outside the city of Bannu and accusations that the security services had tortured and murdered them.

Trigger:Call by a coalition of opposition parties for protests against the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Trigger:Antigovernment march from Karachi to Islamabad to hold a sit-in on the capital’s main highway.

Trigger:The acquittal of a Christian woman in a highly publicized blasphemy case.

Trigger:The extrajudicial killing of ethnic Pashtun Naqeebullah Mehsud by police.

Trigger:A proposal to change Pakistan’s electoral oath that would alter a reference to the Prophet Muhammad.

Trigger:Panama-U.S. military agreement signed in April 2025, which grants U.S. troops access to Panamanian air and naval facilities. President José Raúl Mulino’s pension system reform. Mulino’s plans to reopen the Cobre Panama copper mine.

Trigger:Canadian mining company First Quantum Minerals was awarded a contract by President Laurentino Cortizo that allowed the company to operate a copper mine in Panama for at least 20 years. Opponents alleged corruption.

Trigger:Rising prices for key goods including fuel and food staples.

Trigger:The government had a dispute with police officers and other public services regarding wages, which protesters claim resulted in a pay cut.

Trigger:A new civil service law, which includes changes to the hiring and promotion processes for civil servants, as well as changes to certain employee benefits. The law also grants the Ministry of Economy and Finance the authority to annul collective contracts.

Trigger:Paraguayo Cubas came in third place in the country’s April 2023 presidential election.

Trigger:A surge in coronavirus infections, strains on the health system, and a slow vaccine rollout.

Trigger:President Dina Boluarte’s government passed a law that would require all adults to join a private pension provider.

Trigger:Rising number of deaths in attacks against transportation workers, construction workers, and business owners connected to extortion from gangs.

Trigger:President Dina Boluarte visited the southern region of Ayacucho, where ten people were killed in anti-government protests in 2022.

Trigger:Congress removed Pedro Castillo from the presidency on December 7, 2022. He was then arrested and sentenced to eighteen months of pretrial detention on rebellion charges. Vice President Dina Boluarte was sworn in as president that same day.

Trigger:Prosecutors opened six criminal investigations into President Pedro Castillo for alleged corruption.

Trigger:Rapidly rising prices of fuel and shortages of fertilizer.

Trigger:National police seized and destroyed equipment and supplies used in illegal mining operations.

Trigger:Rapidly rising prices for key goods including fuel and food staples.

Trigger:Announcement of very close electoral results between presidential candidates Keiko Fujimori and Pedro Castillo in the June 6 presidential election.

Trigger:An Agrarian Promotion Law that gave exporting companies tax benefits but led to cuts in labor rights and low wages for farm workers.

Trigger:A surprise vote by Peru’s opposition-led Congress to impeach and remove incumbent president Martin Vizcarra on the grounds of “moral incapacity.”

Trigger:Then president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski’s pardon of former president Alberto Fujimori, who was convicted for corruption and human rights violations.

Trigger:Corruption scandal involving incomplete or nonexistent flood control projects allegedly used by government officials and contractors to embezzle funds.

Trigger:On March 11, former president Rodrigo Duterte was arrested under a warrant from the ICC over charges of crimes against humanity.

Trigger:Anniversary of the People Power Revolution (February 25, 1986), a series of prodemocracy demonstrations that eventually ousted Ferdinand Marcos from power.

Trigger:Three impeachment complaints filed against Vice President Sara Duterte in December 2024 over accusations such as incompetence, political graft, and misuse of government funds. National Rally for Peace, which occurred earlier in January.

Trigger:Three impeachment complaints filed against Vice President Sara Duterte in December 2024 over accusations such as incompetence, political graft, and misuse of government funds.

Trigger:Growing rifts between the current government and the nationalist-conservative opposition party, Law and Justice (PiS).

Trigger:The EU waived duties and quotas for imports from Ukraine, which put pressure on prices for EU farmers, who must follow EU environmental standards. Ongoing negotiations for a trade deal between the EU and the South American Mercosur bloc. New EU environmental regulations, including new subsidy rules which require 4 percent of farmland to be fallow.

Trigger:The former PiS government’s Interior Minister Mariusz Kamiński and Deputy Interior Minister Maciej Wasik were arrested after being convicted of abuse of power. The Polish court barred Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government from probing the Central Bank Head.

Trigger:The Law and Justice party (PiS) failed to win a majority of seats in the October 2023 parliamentary elections. Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the Civic Coalition party formed a coalition government, and in so doing assumed control over the public broadcasting stations, which were highly politicized when controlled by PiS. Tusk has announced significant changes, including suspending the channel TVP Info, which was a bullhorn for PiS.

Trigger:The EU waved entry restrictions on Ukrainian lorries following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Trigger:2023 Polish parliamentary elections on October 15.

Trigger:Dorota Lalik, 33, died on May 24 of sepsis related to a miscarriage in her fifth month of pregnancy. Her family believed that she could have survived if she had been offered a abortion.

Trigger:The government proposed a bill that would establish a commission to investigate anyone suspected of being subject to Russian influence and potentially bar them from running for public office.

Trigger:European Commission policies to allow Ukrainian farmers to export grains through EU countries—intended to counteract the reduction in grain exports caused by Russian blockades of Ukrainian Black Sea ports—resulted in a glut of Ukrainian grains in Polish markets.

Trigger:The parliament resumed efforts to pass a law centralizing control over schools.

Trigger:A ruling by Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal that contested the supremacy of EU law.

Trigger:PiS party-led efforts to enact a law restricting foreign ownership of media outlets in Poland.

Trigger:A ruling by Poland’s Constitutional Court that deemed abortion illegal in all cases except those involving rape, incest, or a threat to the mother’s life.

Trigger:Draft law that would permit government sanctions against judges who question the legitimacy of the ruling party’s judicial reforms and that would prohibit judges from engaging in any political activity.

Trigger:Signing of a law that forced many Supreme Court justices into early retirement and created a judicial disciplinary chamber.

Trigger:On October 21, police shot and killed Odair Moniz, a forty-three-year-old Black man. While the police initially claimed that Moniz had been holding a knife, Portuguese media later clarified that Moniz had not been holding a weapon.

Trigger:Growing housing and rent prices caused by factors such as a shortage of affordable housing, the influx of wealthy foreigners seeking tax breaks, and a tourism boom.

Trigger:In November 2023, Prime Minister António Costa approved hazard pay raises for the criminal investigation police. The raise amounts to 700 euros a month, but was not given to he Public Security Police or the National Republican Guard.

Trigger:Rapidly rising prices in conjunction with stagnating wages.

Trigger:Portugal’s public prosecutors had asked the constitutional court to declare unconstitutional a law that criminalizes the mistreatment of pets.

Trigger:Negotiations over wages and working conditions between teachers unions and the Ministry of Education broke down.

Trigger:Death of George Floyd in the United States, sparking protests against local police brutality and racism in Portugal.

Trigger:Recent education reforms, which include increased working hours for teachers, increased limit of class size, restructuring of small schools, and cuts to scholarships. The reforms are part of the Romanian government’s ongoing austerity measures.

Trigger:Annual pride parade. Rising hate crimes and anti-LGBTQ sentiments in the country.

Trigger:The Romanian Constitutional Court annulled the 2024 presidential elections because of alleged election interference.

Trigger:Călin Georgescu, a far-right presidential candidate, won the first round of Romania’s presidential elections.

Trigger:High insurance rates and slow subsidy payments for farmers and truckers. Frustration with Ukrainian lorries, which truckers claim undercut their market status, and the cheap import of Ukrainian agricultural goods, which is hurting Romanian farmers.

Trigger:Last-minute negotiations between education unions and the government failed.

Trigger:European Commission policies to allow Ukrainian farmers to export grains through EU countries—intended to counteract the reduction in grain exports caused by Russian blockades of Ukrainian Black Sea ports—resulted in a glut of Ukrainian grains in Romanian markets.

Trigger:Rapidly rising prices, especially of fuel and food.

Trigger:The imposition of coronavirus restrictions, including mandatory masking and vaccine orders.

Trigger:Government attempts to decriminalize corruption offenses, limit judicial independence through reforms, and obstruct anticorruption investigations.

Trigger:Southern Russia has been increasingly experiencing power cuts and water supply interruptions during the summer.

Trigger:A dam broke in the southwestern Ural region, flooding over 10,000 homes. The regional government is providing monthly payments of about $100 to flood victims for the next six months, which protesters say is insufficient.

Trigger:The 2024 election was neither free nor fair and served as a rubber stamp of approval for Putin. As such, prior to his death earlier in February 2024, political prisoner Alexei Navalny urged supporters to vote at noon on the last of three days of voting, Sunday, March 17, to display opposition to Putin, given most other avenues for dissent and protest are no longer accessible following authoritarian hardening in Russia after its invasion of Ukraine in February 2024.

Trigger:Alexei Navalny died in an Arctic prison on February 16, 2024. Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, alleged that Navalny was murdered and Putin was responsible.

Trigger:Activist Fail Alsynov was found guilty of inciting ethnic hatred and sentenced to four years in a penal colony.

Trigger:A Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reporter with the Tatar-Bashkir Service, Alsu Kurmasheva, has been in police custody since October 11 for failing to register as a foreign agent because she holds dual citizenship in the U.S. and Russia. Broader crackdown on independent media in Russia since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Trigger:Partial mobilization of Russian troops in September 2022 to fight in Ukraine.

Trigger:The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian military.

Trigger:Arrest of opposition leader and anticorruption activist Aleksei Navalny.

Trigger:Arrest of the popular regional governor Sergei Furgal on murder charges.

Trigger:Economic implications of the shutdown and self-isolation measures established in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Trigger:Constitutional changes that could allow President Vladimir Putin to stay in power past 2024, as well as the five-year anniversary of the death of an opposition leader.

Trigger:Banning of some opposition politicians from running in Moscow city council elections.

Trigger:Publication of a video by opposition politician Alexei Navalny, alleging that then prime minister Dmitry Medvedev had accumulated luxury mansions, yachts, and vineyards.

Trigger:President Macky Sall abruptly postponed elections scheduled for February 2024 until December 2024. This was done after police expelled opposition members from the National Assembly, prohibiting them from voting against the postponement of the election, which passed by a vote of 105 to 1.

Trigger:The gendarmes of Dakar’s Ngor district planned to construct a gendarmerie post on a 6,000 square meter parcel of land.

Trigger:Opposition leader Ousmane Sonko faced trial for libel charges.

Trigger:The government’s decision to invalidate the Yewwi Askan Wi opposition coalition’s candidate list for upcoming parliamentary elections; call for protest by coalition leader Ousmane Sonko.

Trigger:Arrest of opposition leader Ousmane Sonko.

Trigger:On November 1, a concrete roof above the entrance of a train station in Novi Sad collapsed. As of March 2025, sixteen people have died from the roof collapse.

Trigger:Two LGBTQ individuals were reportedly subjected to abuse, torture, and sexual harassment in their apartment by police on February 26, 2024. LGBTQ people report facing discrimination and some fear targeted violence.

Trigger:The Russian Supreme Court declared the "international LGBT movement" to be extremist.

Trigger:The December 2023 parliamentary election, won by the Serbian Progressive Party, was called unfair by multiple international observers due to media bias favoring the ruling party, improper influence exerted by President Aleksandar Vučić, and irregularities such as vote buying.

Trigger:Two mass shootings in two days left eighteen people dead.

Trigger:The president of Serbia said that he would consider a plan that EU and U.S. officials proposed for normalizing relations between Serbia and Kosovo.

Trigger:Call for protest by thirty environmental groups over plans to develop a lithium mine; introduction of laws to ease expropriation of land and the holding of referenda on environmental issues.

Trigger:Announcement that the government would reimpose a curfew and other restrictions amid a surge in COVID-19 cases—just two weeks after the country’s parliamentary elections that opposition leaders decried as illegitimate.

Trigger:Violent attack on an opposition leader, and President Aleksandar Vučić’s mockery of the ensuing protests.

Trigger:Samura Kamara, the leader of Sierra Leone’s leading opposition All People’s Congress party, called for the country’s electoral commissioners to resign after the commission did not release a detailed voter registry.

Trigger:Rising prices of food and fuel

Trigger:Prime Minister Robert Fico’s austerity measures, which include increased insurance prices and added taxes on certain food items.

Trigger:Draft bill that would categorize NGOs as lobbyists and require them to disclose their funding sources.

Trigger:Prime Minister Robert Fico’s various meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trigger:Thirty-fifth anniversary of the Velvet Revolution.

Trigger:Prime Minister Robert Fico’s government has criticized Europe’s military aid to Ukraine and pushed to renew ties with Russia.

Trigger:Prime Minister Robert Fico’s government has planned to replace the current public radio and television outlet with a new organization led by a seven-member council whose members are appointed by the government. The current broadcaster’s director was elected by Parliament with a term set to end in 2027, but the plan (drafted by "ultra-nationalist" Culture Minister Martina Šimkovičová) is seen by many—including President Zuzana Čaputová, opposition parties, local journalists, international media organizations, and the European Commission—as an effort to politicize state media to the government’s benefit. Fico has labeled several private media outlets as his enemies. Šimkovičová said the takeover is needed because the current broadcaster is biased, giving space only to mainstream views and censoring the rest.

Trigger:The EU waived duties and quotas for imports from Ukraine, which put pressure on prices for EU farmers who must follow EU environmental standards. Ongoing negotiations for a trade deal between the EU and the South American Mercosur bloc. New EU environmental regulations, including new subsidy rules which require 4 percent of farmland to be fallow. High energy prices are further undercutting farmers’ profits.

Trigger:The EU waived entry restrictions on Ukrainian lorries following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Trigger:Prime Minister Robert Fico has fast-tracked criminal law changes, including abolishing a special prosecutor’s office dedicated to high-profile corruption, limiting protection for whistleblowers, and reducing criminal sentences for financial crimes.

Trigger:Rising prices, especially of fuel.

Trigger:Ongoing pandemic-related restrictions and the commemoration of Slovenia’s national Fight for Freedom and Democracy Day.

Trigger:Murder of a journalist who was at the time investigating connections between the Italian mafia and high-ranking Slovakian politicians.

Trigger:Prices continued to rise and the government was not increasing pensions commesurate with the inflation rate.

Trigger:Allegations of corruption, illiberalism, and declining freedom under the government of Prime Minister Janez Jansa.

Trigger:Call for protests by Malaita for democracy amid growing tensions between the government of Malaita Province and the national government over relations with China and the United States.

Trigger:Ethiopia and Somaliland signed a pact giving Ethiopia access to Somaliland’s ports on the Red Sea in exchange for eventual Ethiopian recognition of Somaliland.

Trigger:Talks between the Somaliland autonomous region’s government and opposition regarding the November 2022 presidential election broke down.

Trigger:The fatal shooting of two civilians by security forces enforcing coronavirus lockdown restrictions.

Trigger:The leakage of information on the unified national secondary school exam on social media, and an announcement that the exams would be rescheduled.

Trigger:Government failure to give fifteen months of back pay owed to soldiers.

Trigger:Dutch King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima traveled to South Africa for the first time and visited the Slave Lodge in South Africa, where Dutch colonists had enslaved thousands.

Trigger:Cape Town authorities impounded many minibus taxis for violations of a municipal bylaw that prohibits driving without a license, failing to display number plates, and overloading.

Trigger:State-owned energy firm Eskom was unable to deliver sufficient power to avert prolonged outages.

Trigger:Public sector unions rejected a government offer to increase civil servant wages by 3%; union leaders had demanded an increase of 10%.

Trigger:Water shortages across the country.

Trigger:Rising inflation and power cuts.

Trigger:Imprisonment of former president Jacob Zuma after he was found guilty of contempt of court.

Trigger:Spate of femicides.

Trigger:Ouster of popular African National Congress finance minister Pravin Gordhan.

Trigger:New visa-free entry program for Chinese tourist groups.

Trigger:On December 14, President Yoon Suk-yeol was impeached by the National Assembly.

Trigger:On the night of December 3, President Yoon Suk-yeol declared martial law in the country, accusing the opposition party, the Democratic Party of Korea, of engaging in anti-state activities and threatening the state of democracy.

Trigger:Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the Democratic Party of Korea and a presidential candidate in the 2022 elections, was convicted of violating the Public Official Election Act and sentenced to a suspended prison term.

Trigger:Political scandal involving first lady Kim Keon-hee, surrounding various allegations such as accepting political bribes and interfering in the candidate nominations for the People Power Party (PPP), the party of President Yoon Suk-yeol.

Trigger:In July, the South Korean Supreme Court upheld a ruling from the Seoul High Court that acknowledged the right for same-sex couples to receive spousal benefits from state health insurance.

Trigger:Arrest of three Cambodian activists who shared concerns over the CLV-DTA, an economic agreement between Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.

Trigger:President Yoon Suk Yeol’s government announced that they would increase medical school admissions by about 2,000 in the 2025 academic year, with the aim of eventually adding 10,000 new spots by 2035 in order to remedy doctor shortages.

Trigger:The ruling party plans to pass a bill that will enforce a ban on dog meat.

Trigger:One-year anniversary of when 159 young people were killed in a Seoul nightlife district.

Trigger:A teacher who claimed to have suffered at the hands of abusive parents died by suicide in July 2023.

Trigger:The Japanese government announced plans to start releasing wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean within weeks.

Trigger:Talks between the government and the truckers union failed to resolve disputes over pay.

Trigger:Allegations of corruption against the then justice minister, Cho Kuk, who had pushed for prosecutorial reforms.

Trigger:Revelations that Choi Soon-sil, the confidante and old friend of then president Park Geun-hye, exercised undue influence. Choi allegedly urged businesses to donate to her own foundations in return for political favors, accessed classified government documents despite lacking the necessary authorization, and played a role in selecting presidential aides.

Trigger:Videos on social media depicted the alleged killings of South Sudanese civilians by Sudan’s military and allied forces in El Gezira, Sudan.

Trigger:A new political scandal involving a leaked audio recording, which suggested that a member of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) organized a smear campaign against the police unit in charge of investigating corruption allegations against Sánchez’s inner circle.

Trigger:International Women‘s Day on March 8.

Trigger:On October 29, catastrophic floods struck eastern and central Spain (Valencia, Andalusia, Castile–La Mancha, and Catalonia). More than 200 people died, making it Spain’s deadliest natural disaster in decades.

Trigger:Plataforma por la España Constitucional, a group of around one hundred right-wing and far-right organizations, called for a demonstration in Madrid against Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

Trigger:Growing environmental and economic harm caused by over-tourism.

Trigger:Farmers claim EU environmental regulations, such as a new EU requirement that 4 percent of farmland to be left fallow to receive subsidies, undercut their ability to compete with external prices. They also object to renewed negotiations to establish a trade deal between the EU and the South American Mercosur bloc.

Trigger:The socialists are backing an unpopular mass pardon of hundreds of Catalan separatists in a bid to gain the backing of the region’s parties to get back in government.

Trigger:The government introduced plans to reduce the amount of water taken from the Tagus river to irrigate agricultural land in the country’s southeast.

Trigger:Policies implemented by the conservative regional government in Madrid, which protesters said was dismantling the public health system in favor of private providers.

Trigger:Policies implemented by the socialist government, including a modified criminal code which eliminated the crime of sedition and a law against sexual violence that increased punishment for rape but lowered sentences for other sexual crimes.

Trigger:High rates of gender-based violence and femicide; the passage of a law against sexual violence that increased punishment for rape but lowered sentences for other sexual crimes.

Trigger:Rapidly rising prices.

Trigger:Parliament introduced a bill that would penalize prostitution customers and sex club owners or pimps with sentences of up to four years in prison.

Trigger:Rising prices for food, fuel, and energy.

Trigger:The arrest of rapper Pablo Hasél, a supporter of Catalonian independence who was convicted of terrorism-related offenses in the wake of the Catalan independence movement.

Trigger:Protesters’ claims that the government misrepresented the extent of the health crisis, violated citizens’ rights by confining them to their homes and ruling by decree, and damaged the economy.

Trigger:Sentencing of Catalan separatist leaders to prison.

Trigger:Sri Lankan officials had not convicted or sentenced anyone in connection with the April 2019 Easter bombings that killed 269 people and wounded some 500 more.

Trigger:The government implemented several measures, including an income tax hike, to secure a bailout from the International Monetary Fund to address the country’s economic crisis.

Trigger:The government postponed local elections, claiming that the country’s economic crisis strapped authorities of funds to hold the vote.

Trigger:Rapid depreciation of the Sri Lankan rupee, soaring prices, and widespread shortages of goods. In January 2024, citizen outrage over taxes, the rise of fuel and electric costs, and a general rise in price levels reactivated protests.

Trigger:Lack of accountability for abuses during the twenty-six-year civil war.

Trigger:Then president Maithripala Sirisena’s dismissal of then prime minster Ranil Wickremesinghe and the suspension of parliament.

Trigger:Recurring militia attacks in the Darfur region.

Trigger:Slow transition from military elite control to civilian control, the repeal of Islamic legal restrictions, and a lack of accountability for anti-protester violence. From October 2021, the major trigger was the military’s seizure of power on October 25.

Trigger:Lack of punitive action against members of former president Omar Bashir’s inner circle.

Trigger:Hike in bread prices during a period of high inflation.

Trigger:The president ended state subsidies for fuel and electricity on the recommendation of the International Monetary Fund.

Trigger:Anti-Islam activist Salwan Momika burned a copy of the Quran in Malmo on September 3.

Trigger:The Swedish government continued to fall short of its climate targets.

Trigger:Türkiye held up Sweden’s accession to NATO, citing Sweden’s refusal to extradite to Türkiye dozens of individuals whom Türkiye linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorist group.

Trigger:Anniversary of Women’s Strike Day on June 14.

Trigger:Elections were scheduled for under one month later.

Trigger:The imposition of vaccine mandates and public health restrictions across Switzerland.

Trigger:Deadly clashes in the city of Sweida between Bedouin Sunni tribes and Druze militias.

Trigger:Turkish police detained 282 people with alleged ties to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Kurdish militant group. The five-day-long raid follows ongoing efforts by Turkish authorities to remove pro-Kurdish-opposition mayors.

Trigger:Intensified fighting between the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Trigger:A video posted on social media showed masked individuals burning down a Christmas tree. The video was taken in Suqaylabiyah, a Christian-majority town. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the main Islamist group that led the uprising against former president Bashar al-Assad, announced that they had detained the foreign fighters responsible for the arson attack.

Trigger:Funeral procession of Mazen al-Hamada, a Syrian activist who was imprisoned and recently found dead in a hospital in Damascus.

Trigger:Anti-Syrian and anti-refugee protests in Türkiye, where Syrian houses, businesses, and cars were destroyed or vandalized.

Trigger:The government slashed fuel subsidies, nearly tripling the price of petrol.

Trigger:A number of Arab states moved to normalize relations with Syria and proposed returning Syria to the Arab League.

Trigger:Assailants belonging to Jaish al-Sharqiya, a splinter group of Ahrar Sharqiya, shot and killed four Kurdish civilians celebrating the Nowruz holiday.

Trigger:The country’s deteriorating economic situation.

Trigger:Imposition of U.S. sanctions that decreased the value of the Syrian pound by two-thirds.

Trigger:The ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) pushed for a recall petition that would allow voters to remove legislators from office before the end of their term. This DPP campaign was aimed at removing opposition legislators from office.

Trigger:Ko Wen-je, the former mayor of Taipei, was re-arrested as part of an ongoing investigation over allegations of corruption. His political party, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), called for a rally in support of Ko.

Trigger:The Kuomintang and Taiwan People’s Party passed legislation in Parliament giving lawmakers power to ask the military, private companies, or individuals to disclose information deemed relevant by parliamentarians. The law gives Parliament power to punish those who fail to comply with these requests. It also criminalizes contempt of Parliament by government officials and requires the president to give regular reports to Parliament and answer lawmakers’ questions. Several Kuomintang senior officials have visited China this year to keep open lines of communication as China refuses to talk with President Lai Ching-te or the Democratic Progressive Party, claiming they are "separatists." Members and supporters of the Democratic Progressive Party fear collusion between the Kuomintang and China—although the Kuomintang denies being pro-China.

Trigger:High taxes and the unfair handling of tax disputes.

Trigger:Pension reform plans.

Trigger:The police killing of Gulbiddin Ziyobekov in November 2021 and the government’s subsequent rejection of demands to investigate the death and address other grievances.

Trigger:Presidential elections held on October 29. Earlier in the year, the two main opposition candidates were barred from running.

Trigger:The National Electoral Commission announced a new National Election Plan for the upcoming October 2025 elections, which dissolved various districts, villages, and hamlets, including villages in the Ngorongoro regions.

Trigger:Political scandal involving a leaked phone call between Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and the former Cambodian prime minister, Hun Sen.

Trigger:The price of rice in Thailand has dropped to the lowest level since 2022.

Trigger:Thailand’s parliament voted to prevent Pita Limjaroenrat of the opposition Move Forward Party from standing for election for the premiership for a second time.

Trigger:Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha refused to step down upon the date which activists considered to be his term limit.

Trigger:Government failure to boost the economy during the pandemic, kidnapping of a leading political activist, and protesters’ desire to repeal Thailand’s strict royal defamation law.

Trigger:Move by judicial and electoral authorities to disband the pro-democracy Future Forward Party.

Trigger:Construction of a luxury apartment complex on forested land in Chiang Mai.

Trigger:The parliament approved a $4 million plan to purchase cars for all sixty-five MPs.

Trigger:Faure Gnassingbé was sworn in as the president of the Council of Ministers, a recently established role as the head of government with no term limits. Gnassingbé’s family has ruled Togo for fifty-eight years, with Gnassingbé himself having led the country since 2005.

Trigger:Ruling party lawmakers—many of whom are serving beyond when their term was set to expire—passed a new constitution in late March 2024, which awaits President Faure Gnassingbé’s final approval. The new constitution grants parliament the power to choose the president, doing away with direct elections.

Trigger:Demands for presidential term limits on President Faure Gnassingbé.

Trigger:Chisinau refused to scrap newly introduced duties on imports and exports to and from the region.

Trigger:Ongoing tensions between the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) and President Kais Saied’s administration. The UGTT held a three-day strike in the previous month.

Trigger:Fourth anniversary of President Kais Saied’s power grab (July 25).

Trigger:A Tunisian court convicted key opposition figures, lawyers, and human rights activists of conspiracy charges.

Trigger:The electoral commission rejected a ruling by the Administrative Court that reinstated three prominent candidates for the October 6 presidential election. Weeks later, Parliament introduced a bill to take away the Administrative Court’s jurisdiction over electoral disputes.

Trigger:Migrants from southern Africa hoping to reach Europe by boat have used the coastal towns of Tunisia as launching pads and pitched encampments in El Amra and Jebeniana, disrupting agricultural production.

Trigger:Nearly three years after President Kais Saied’s 2021 "self-coup," the economy has stagnated. Additionally, a wave of arrests has targeted journalists, lawyers, activists, and members of the opposition, including Sonia Dahmani, a lawyer popular for her fierce criticism of Saied.

Trigger:Facing protests against President Kais Saied and demands for a free and fair election, police stormed the bar association’s headquarters on May 13, 2024, and arrested Mahdi Zagrouba—who has criticized Saied—after arresting another lawyer, Sonia Dahmani, days prior. The bar association and human rights groups reported that Zagrouba was tortured during his detention and that he was suffering from severe bruises and traces of violence. The Interior Ministry denies the accusations of torture. Two journalists were also arrested.

Trigger:Seventh anniversary of the assassination of Hamas executive Mohamad Zouari in Tunisia.

Trigger:Nizar Issaoui, a Tunisian soccer player, died by self-immolation to protest abuse by Tunisian police officers. Issaoui claimed that police accused him of terrorism when he complained about the price of bananas.

Trigger:A fire at a landfil in the city of Sfax created dangerous smoke.

Trigger:After 18 Tunisian migrants traveling to Europe died in a shipwreck, authorities buried four in a cemetary for recovered bodies of sub-Saharan migrants without attempting to identify the bodies.

Trigger:Authorities shot and killed Moshen Zeyani, 23, on the suspicion that he was smuggling cigarettes; a month later, Malek Selimi, 24, died from injuries sustained during a police chase.

Trigger:The government introduced price hikes on gas cooking bottles and fuel as part of a plan to reduce energy subsidies.

Trigger:President Kais Saied’s efforts to seize governing power by suspending constitutional provisions, ruling by decree, and dismissing parliament.

Trigger:A surge in coronavirus infections that has devastated Tunisia’s public health infrastructure and spurred economic insecurity.

Trigger:Death of Ahmed Ben Ammar in police custody on June 8.

Trigger:High youth unemployment and dire economic prospects for young people, especially amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Trigger:High unemployment, failing infrastructure, the killing of a young man by police, and the underdevelopment of southern Tunisia’s economy and private sector.

Trigger:May Day, or International Workers' Day, on May 1

Trigger:International Women‘s Day on March 8.

Trigger:The Turkish government raised the monthly minimum wage for 2025 to 22,104 Turkish lira, which was a 30 percent increase from the 2024 minimum wage.

Trigger:International Day for the Elimination of Violence. More than 400 women have been murdered in Türkiye in 2024.

Trigger:Ahmet Özer, the mayor of Istanbul’s Esenyurt district and a member of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), was arrested over an alleged connection to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a banned Kurdish militant group. In November 2024, three more mayors across Türkiye were removed on terrorism charges. In March 2025, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was arrested on accusations of corruption and assisting the PKK. Imamoglu was considered a top rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Trigger:Turkish authorities arrested a Syrian man accused of sexually abusing a seven-year-old girl.

Trigger:The commemoration of International Women’s Day.

Trigger:Türkiye experienced a magnitude 7.8 earthquake on February 6 that killed more than 40,000 people in the country.

Trigger:A criminal court sentenced Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu to two years in prison and banned him from politics for insulting public officials in a speech he made after he won Istanbul’s election in 2019.

Trigger:A call for protest by the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) after the conviction and sentencing of Canan Kaftancıoğlu, leader of the Istanbul branch of the CHP.

Trigger:Turkish govenrment’s announcement that it would withdraw from the 2011 Istanbul Convention on violence against women.

Trigger:President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s appointment of Melih Bulu as rector of Bogazici University.

Trigger:Reports that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was considering withdrawing Türkiye from the Istanbul Convention, which put forward principles to fight violence against women.

Trigger:Government move to replace elected Kurdish mayors with state-appointed officials.

Trigger:Rising cost of living, high inflation, and “Yellow Vests” movement in France.

Trigger:Announcement that the government would extend a nationwide state of emergency a seventh time.

Trigger:End of twenty-five-day “March for Justice” against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Trigger:Government failure to provide aid after a severe storm hit the city of Turkmenabat.

Trigger:Allegations of corruption against Parliament Speaker, Anita Among. Also inspired by the Finance Bill protests in Kenya.

Trigger:According to protesters, Ugandan police used excessive force to disperse various events organized by female lawmakers in their local constituencies in the weeks prior.

Trigger:Rising prices of food and fuel.

Trigger:Declaration by the Ugandan electoral commission that incumbent President Yoweri Museveni had won reelection amid widespread allegations of electoral fraud and manipulation.

Trigger:Arrest of opposition presidential candidates Bobi Wine and Patrick Amuriat.

Trigger:Announcement of government plans to introduce a tax on social media and online communication platforms.

Trigger:Introduction of a legislative proposal to remove the age limit on the presidency, empowering President Yoweri Museveni to stay in power beyond 2021.

Trigger:President Volodymyr Zelensky signed into law a bill that would give the prosecutor general—a position appointed by the president—authority over two anti-corruption agencies (the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office). Zelensky stated that the bill would help cleanse the agencies of alleged Russian influence.

Trigger:Discontent with spending by the Kyiv City Council on urban renewal projects during the war. Allegations of corruption in Ukraine

Trigger:26,000 Ukrainians missing since Russia launched its invasion in February 2022. General mobilization of men aged 25-60 since the invasion.

Trigger:President Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to grant special status to a separatist region in eastern Ukraine as part of a larger deal with Moscow.

Trigger:COP28 was held in Dubai.

Trigger:The UK Supreme Court ruled that transgender women were excluded from the legal definition of a woman.

Trigger:Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister), presented major budget reforms to Parliament in October 2024. One of the reforms proposed a 20 percent inheritance tax for farms worth more than 1 million pounds. Since 1992, farms have been exempt from inheritance taxes under the agricultural property relief scheme.

Trigger:Farmers’ frustration with trade deals signed since the country’s exit from the European Union in 2020, which lack import checks and allow poorer quality food to enter the UK from countries with less regulation, undercutting domestic prices. Additionally, farmers have seen rising costs and a decrease in seasonal workers since Brexit.

Trigger:The government approved new immigration policies on December 12 that include sending asylum seekers to Rwanda via boat for permanent resettlement.

Trigger:On July 31, the UK government announced that it would issue new licenses for oil and gas exploration in the North Sea.

Trigger:Policy decisions of the UK government that protesters believed were insufficient to address climate change.

Trigger:The coronation of King Charles III.

Trigger:Movement organizers called for a mass demonstration to coincide with Earth Day 2023.

Trigger:The British Medical Association, a union representing doctors in the UK, called a strike to put pressure on the government to increase wages for junior doctors.

Trigger:High and increasing costs of childcare in the United Kingdom.

Trigger:Rising prices for many goods, including fuel and food; call for protest by labor unions.

Trigger:The government issued new licenses for the exploration, development, and production of fossil fuels.

Trigger:Introduction of a crime bill that broadens police powers to regulate protests, and aggressive police response to violence against women protests.

Trigger:Widespread sexual harassment and the murder of Sarah Everard.

Trigger:Death of George Floyd in the United States, sparking protests against local police brutality and racism in the UK.

Trigger:Enactment of lockdown measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

Trigger:Discontent with the state of Brexit negotiations between the British government and the EU, and popular demands for a second Brexit referendum.

Trigger:President Donald Trump pushed Texas lawmakers to redraw the state’s congressional map as to allow the Republican party to win more congressional seats in the upcoming midterm elections.

Trigger:Immigration raids conducted in numerous cities across the country by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Trigger:Actions of President Donald Trump and his administration. The U.S. Army 250th Anniversary Parade on June 14, which also fell on Trump's birthday.

Trigger:May Day, or International Workers' Day, on May 1

Trigger:Various actions of the Trump administration (e.g., federal funding cuts, tariffs, and deportation of immigrants).

Trigger:President Donald Trump‘s funding and job cuts in health, science, and other research-related government agencies.

Trigger:Early actions of President Donald Trump’s new administration, such as the mass firing of federal workers, the crackdown on immigration, and the attacks against transgender rights.

Trigger:Ongoing constitutional crisis triggered by the standoff between the federal government and Texas Governor Greg Abbott at Eagle Pass over the unfurling of miles of concertina wire and buoy barriers in the Rio Grande to deter unauthorized border crossings. In early 2024, a bipartisan immigration bill supported by the White House fell apart. The White House blamed the bill’s collapse on political pressure from former president Donald Trump, who said he would fight to ensure it was not passed.

Trigger:Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the APEC summit in San Francisco for his first trip to the U.S. in six years.

Trigger:The United Nations General Assembly was scheduled to hold its High-Level Week from September 18–22 in New York City.

Trigger:A shooting at a private elementary school in Tennessee killed six people including three students.

Trigger:The Atlanta City Council voted to approve plans for a $90 million, 85-acre Public Safety Training Center to train police officers, firefighters, and emergency phone operators, to be situated within a 300-acre forest in southwest unincorporated DeKalb County; in January 2023, police shot and killed protester Manuel Esteban Paez Teran, 26.

Trigger:The 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, which found a constitutional right to abortion in the United States.

Trigger:The circulation of a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn the court’s prior ruling in Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed abortion rights; reignited in June 2022 by the court overturing Roe v. Wade in a decision issued on June 24.

Trigger:Allegations leveled by President Donald Trump and his allies that vote counts were inaccurate and that there had been significant electoral fraud.

Trigger:Excessive use of lethal force by police officers against unarmed Black civilians.

Trigger:Rising number of coronavirus cases in Arizona immigrant detention facilities.

Trigger:Extended business closures due to stay-at-home orders, conspiracy theories about vaccines, as well as restrictions on movement.

Trigger:Leak of Puerto Rico government officials’ racist and homophobic messages.

Trigger:Conditions in migrant detention camps.

Trigger:President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy, which separated children from their parents at the U.S. border with Mexico.

Trigger:President Donald Trump’s executive order preventing travelers from seven Muslim-majority nations from entering the country.

Trigger:Rising taxes for farmers and rising fuel prices.

Trigger:The government announced plans to reduce the Karakalpakstan region’s autonomy.

Trigger:National Electoral Council (NEC) announced that President Nicolás Maduro has been reelected to a third consecutive term.

Trigger:Rapidly rising prices.

Trigger:Collapse of gasoline supply chains and degradation of water and energy infrastructure.

Trigger:Opposition leader Juan Guaidó’s self-declared claim to be the president of Venezuela.

Trigger:Attempt by Venezuelan Supreme Court to dissolve the opposition-controlled legislature.

Trigger:A bill that would allow foreign investors to occupy land in three special economic areas, and a cybersecurity law that would require tech companies to store data of Vietnam-based users in the country.

Trigger:Israeli forces Hamas militant killed Abdul Fattah Kharushah, 49, in a raid in Jenin.

Trigger:A court decision on whether to evict six Palestinian families from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah; Israeli moves to crack down on Palestinian assembly.

Trigger:Rapidly rising prices and security chaos.

Trigger:Death of Nizar Banat, a critic of the Palestinian Authority, while in police custody.

Trigger:Outbreak of active hostilities between Iran and Israel.

Trigger:On March 16, the U.S. launched airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen, killing dozens.

Trigger:On July 20, 2023, two men kicked and partially destroyed a Quran in front of the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm, Sweden. On July 24, two other men burned a Quran outside the Iraqi embassy in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Trigger:A rapid drop in the value of the Yemeni rial.

Trigger:Government’s failure to pay salaries of public sector employees.

Trigger:A decline in the value of the Yemeni rial.

Trigger:End of government fuel subsidies, and a subsequent price increase of 130 percent.

Trigger:Delay in the announcement of presidential election results.

Trigger:Military takeover of power, after which protesters began demanding that then president Robert Mugabe step down.

Trigger:Growing repression of women’s rights under Taliban rule.

Trigger:The Taliban government abolished the country’s pension system amid an economic crisis. The Taliban has promised to create an Islamic system in the country and used this promise to justify ending pensions because they involve interest, which the Taliban says is forbidden by Islam.

Trigger:The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal.

Trigger:Delays in the announcement of final vote counts from the September 2019 presidential election.

Trigger:The arrest of a popular ethnic Hazara militia commander known as Commander Sword.

Trigger:A truck bombing on May 31, 2017, which killed over 150 people.

Trigger:The Albanian government enacted a year long ban on TikTok beginning March 15.

Trigger:Lawmakers of the conservative Democratic Party of Albania have been protesting the imprisonment of their colleague, Ervin Salianji, on charges of slander. They were also protesting the arrest of former prime minister (and current Democratic Party leader) Sali Berisha.

Trigger:The government is investigating opposition leader Sali Berisha of the Democratic Party for corruption while he was Prime Minister between 2005 and 2013. February 20 was the anniversary of when pro-democracy activists tore down the statue of longtime communist dictator Enver Hoxha.

Trigger:Increasing costs and rising poverty.

Trigger:Rapid increases in food and fuel prices.

Trigger:The fatal shooting of Klodian Rasha by an officer enforcing a coronavirus curfew.

Trigger:Suspicions that Prime Minister Edi Rama engaged in electoral fraud to win the country’s 2017 parliamentary elections.

Trigger:Then president Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s decision to seek a fifth term as president.

Trigger:The Angolan government raised the price of diesel fuel by more than thirty percent, which led to a sharp increase in taxi prices. Many Angolans rely on taxis as their main form of transportation.

Trigger:The government of João Lourenço cut fuel subsidies on June 2, causing the price of fuel nearly to double.

Trigger:The Constitutional Court threw out a complaint by the runner-up of the 2022 election which claimed that the vote was flawed.

Trigger:President Javier Milei vetoed three bills that aimed to increase pensions and disability benefits.

Trigger:The Supreme Court of Argentina sentenced former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to six years of house arrest over corruption charges. The court also permanently banned her from holding public office.

Trigger:International Women‘s Day on March 8.

Trigger:President Javier Milei’s speech at the World Economic Forum, which criticized "woke" culture (including feminism and "gender ideology").

Trigger:President Javier Milei announced his plan to veto a bill that would increase pensions in line with the inflation rate.

Trigger:President Javier Milei has implemented a number of spending cuts that have led to mass layoffs, including cuts to fuel and transportation subsidies. Milei has now cut the budget of public universities.

Trigger:The fiftieth anniversary of the 1976 coup, which brought to power Argentina’s military dictatorship, after which the junta embarked on a dirty war targeting suspected political dissidents on the left. An estimated 30,000 died or disappeared as a result between 1976 and 1983, though President Javier Milei estimates around 9,000 victims in what his critics say is an effort to whitewash the military dictatorship.

Trigger:President Javier Milei announced austerity measures including a 54 percent devaluation of the peso, cuts to subsidies, and closures of multiple government agencies. Milei’s proposed labor reforms include extending the legal job probation period from three to eight months, reducing compensation in case of dismissal, and cutting pregnancy leave. The sovereign bond market rallied in early 2024 as the government recorded its first surplus in years—reached by slashing social security by 30 percent, when adjusted for inflation.

Trigger:Prosecutors requested Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner be sentenced to prison for 12 years for corruption.

Trigger:The government’s adoption of interventionist policies to curb rising prices for agricultural goods; rising inflation across many sectors.

Trigger:Ongoing government negotiations with the International Monetary Fund over debt restructuring.

Trigger:Announcement of continued lockdown measures and introduction of judicial reform bill.

Trigger:Increasing rates of violence and femicide against women under quarantine.

Trigger:Proposal of austerity measures mandated by the International Monetary Fund.

Trigger:On April 19, 2024, the government announced a border delimitation agreement which will cede four territories in Armenia near Azerbaijan’s Qazax region to AzerbaiJanuary These villages were part of Azerbaijan during the Soviet era but have been controlled by Armenia since the 1990s.

Trigger:On September 19, Azerbaijan launched a military operation against the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region and won decisively by September 20.

Trigger:Azerbaijan banned Russian peacekeepers from delivering humanitarian aid to Nagorno-Karabakh on June 15, exacerbating a humanitarian crisis for the people of the region.

Trigger:Announcement of a Russian-brokered peace deal that ceded a sizable part of the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region to Azerbaijan; in May 2022, the government’s announcement that it may have to reduce territorial claims as part of the peace process. In September 2022, a new offensive that resulted in further territorial losses for Armenia.

Trigger:Election of then president Serzh Sargsyan as prime minister, allowing him to subvert presidential term limits.

Trigger:"Australia Day" on January 26, which commemorates the day that the first British colony was established in Sydney Cove.

Trigger:Australian government adopted new farming and environmental policies, including a ban on exports of live sheep, water usage restrictions, and construction of renewable power sources in rural areas.

Trigger:Arrest of three Cambodian activists who shared concerns over the CLV-DTA, an economic agreement between Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.

Trigger:Australia Day, an annual holiday held on January 26 marking the anniversary of when Britain established the state of New South Wales.

Trigger:The imposition of lockdowns and vaccine mandates across many Australian states.

Trigger:Widespread sexual harassment and perceptions of impunity over a rape allegation made by former political aide Brittany Higgins.

Trigger:Death of George Floyd in the United States, sparking protests in Australia against local police brutality and racism.

Trigger:Government response to the Australian bushfires.

Trigger:EU-Mercosur trade agreement, signed December 2024. Reignited farmers’ protests from 2024 in nearby countries (Slovakia and the Czech Republic).

Trigger:Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) won the general elections with 29 percent of the vote.

Trigger:The imposition of vaccine mandates and public health restrictions across Austria.

Trigger:Dozens of Azerbaijanis blocked the Lachin corridor, which connects Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh.

Trigger:Brief conflict with Armenia over the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region, which resulted in the deaths of eleven Azerbaijani soldiers, including then major general Polad Hashimov.

Trigger:Opening of a new criminal case against political prisoner and anticorruption blogger Mehman Huseynov, who had run a Facebook page critical of the authorities.

Trigger:The detention of six opposition activists.

Trigger:Death of political prisoner Husain Barakat from COVID-19 while in police custody.

Trigger:Eighth anniversary of the Rohingya people’s exodus to Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Bangladesh interim leader Muhammad Yunus held a conference the same day on the Rohingya, where he urged the international community to help facilitate a process of repatriation.

Trigger:Bangladesh is expected to hold general elections in 2026. In June 2025, the Supreme Court restored the Jamaat-e-Islami party’s registration, allowing it to participate in elections.

Trigger:Former prime minister Sheikh Hasina planned to deliver a virtual speech to her supporters on February 5.

Trigger:The Anti-Discrimination Student Movement organized a March at the Central Shaheed Minar in Dhaka. In December 2024, Foreign Affairs Adviser Md. Touhid Hossain announced that Bangladesh had sent a formal request to India to extradite former prime minister Sheikh Hasina.

Trigger:On December 2, Bangladesh’s consulate office in Agartala, India, was attacked by a far-right Hindu group. There were also reports that Bangladeshi flags were being desecrated.

Trigger:The Awami League, the political party of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, planned to hold a rally on November 10. The day before the planned rally, Chief Adviser Press Secretary Shafiqul Alam announced that the Awami League would not be permitted to hold its demonstration.

Trigger:The current interim government of Bangladesh has not yet announced a timeframe for the next elections. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party called for a rally in Dhaka.

Trigger:On October 21, President Mohammed Shahabuddin revealed that he had not received a resignation letter from former prime minister Sheikh Hasina before she fled the country.

Trigger:Growing number of attacks against Hindus and the destruction of Hindu houses, businesses, and temples after former prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s resignation.

Trigger:Dhaka court reinstated quota for government jobs (previously abolished in 2018 due to student protests).

Trigger:The World Food Programme cut the monthly food allocation for refugees from $10 to $8, having reduced the ration from $12 to $10 in March due to a reduction in global aid for the refugees.

Trigger:The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) called for massive demonstrations to demand the resignation of the government led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. In February 2023, the government shut down the BNP’s newspaper.

Trigger:The government increased the price of fuel.

Trigger:Circulation of a video of sexual assault.

Trigger:Murder of Abrar Fahad, a student who posted anti-government content on his Facebook feed.

Trigger:Circulation of a social media post that allegedly blasphemed the Prophet Muhammad.

Trigger:Failure by garment industry employers to raise wages to match the cost of living or provide adequate working conditions.

Trigger:Two students killed by a bus driver.

Trigger:The failure of the government to end quotas for jobs in government ministries.

Trigger:The holding of a referendum on whether to adopt a new constitution that would renounce Belarus’s non-nuclear status and allow President Alexander Lukashenko to stay in power until 2035.

Trigger:Arrests of opposition presidential candidates; anger over the perceived fraudulent August 2020 presidential election.

Trigger:A series of meetings between Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trigger:Labor law that would require citizens who work less than half the year and fail to register with state labor exchanges to pay $250.

Trigger:Prime Minister Bart De Wever’s proposed austerity measures, which include changes to the retirement age, pensions, unemployment benefits, and healthcare.

Trigger:Belgian government proposed budget cuts, which include pension reforms and cuts to public service personnel.

Trigger:Farmers’ frustration about rising costs, EU environmental policies, and a plan for cheap food imports from outside the EU, which they fear will undercut their prices. The G20 Summit in November 2024 brought renewed attention to a prospective trade agreement between the EU and Mercosur trade bloc of South America.

Trigger:The Flemish regional government introduced plans to limit nitrogen emissions.

Trigger:The country’s three largest trade unions called for a protest.

Trigger:Rapidly rising prices, especially of fuel.

Trigger:National strike over wages and working conditions, especially among airport and other public transit workers.

Trigger:The imposition of lockdowns and vaccine mandates across Belgium.

Trigger:Prices of staple crops such as corn, garri flour, beans, and cowpeas have risen in recent months. The IMF reported in April 2024 that incomes in sub-Saharan Africa are falling further behind the rest of the world amid tepid economic growth.

Trigger:Incumbent President Patrice Talon’s decision to seek another five-year term in office.

Trigger:Exclusion of five opposition parties from legislative elections and consequent electoral victory of government-aligned political parties.

Trigger:Bolivia’s constitutional court upheld a ruling that banned presidents from serving more than two terms. The decision banned former president Evo Morales from running in the upcoming presidential elections.

Trigger:A Bolivian prosecutor announced that she would issue an arrest warrant against former president Evo Morales, who is under investigation for alleged statutory rape and human trafficking.

Trigger:Arce accused former president Evo Morales of attempting to overthrow his government in a coup. In response, Morales called for his supporters to march against Arce.

Trigger:The government planned to delay the country’s census until after the 2025 general election. In December 2022, Bolivian police arrested opposition leader Luis Fernando Camacho on terrorism charges.

Trigger:Arrest of former interim president Jeanine Añez and other leaders of the political opposition on coup-related offenses.

Trigger:A second delay to the general elections.

Trigger:Then president Evo Morales’s refusal to declare the wildfires in Bolivia a national disaster.

Trigger:Electoral irregularities in the 2019 presidential election, in which then president Evo Morales narrowly avoided a runoff contest in suspicious circumstances. After Morales resigned, his supporters led additional protests, alleging he was the victim of a coup.

Trigger:Months-long negotiations between transport sector workers and the Bosnian government.

Trigger:Severe floods in October 2024 triggered a landslide from an illegally built quarry, which killed twenty-nine people. Authorities have not yet launched an investigation into the incident. Inspired by student protests in Serbia.

Trigger:The United Nations is debating a resolution to commemorate the Srebrenica genocide—when 8,000 Muslims were killed in Srebrenica in 1995 by Bosnian Serb forces—and will vote on this resolution in the General Assembly in May 2024. Bosnian Serb lawmakers adopted a report denying that the killings constituted genocide.

Trigger:A man shot his ex-wife dead and live-streamed the murder on Instagram

Trigger:On March 23, the parliament of the country’s Serb-majority entity, Republika Srpska, passed draft amendments to the criminal code that would recriminalize libel and introduce fines of up to €60,000 for damaging a person’s honor or reputation and for publishing damaging videos, photos, or documents without consent.

Trigger:Perceived fraud in October 2 elections.

Trigger:Suspicious death of a young man named David Dragičević, triggering suspicions that the authorities in the Serb region of Bosnia are obstructing the investigation and protecting his killers.

Trigger:Parliament voted on a constitutional amendment that would allow the president to appoint key civil servants.

Trigger:Bill approved by the Chamber of Deputies that would make it more difficult to charge or arrest lawmakers. The bill could also grant amnesty to former president Jair Bolsonaro and his allies.

Trigger:In July, Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes issued a search warrant against former president Jair Bolsonaro after allegations emerged of Bolsonaro seeking U.S. interference in Brazil’s political affairs. Later in the month, U.S. President Donald Trump imposed a 50% tariff on Brazil, in part to pressure the Brazilian government to drop the charges against Bolsonaro.

Trigger:U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he would enact a fifty percent tariff on Brazil to pressure the Brazilian government to drop the charges against former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Trigger:In February 2025, former President Jair Bolsonaro was formally charged with attempting a coup.

Trigger:Brazil’s nationwide ban on X. Former president Jair Bolsonaro called for a protest in response.

Trigger:The Brazilian legislature proposed a bill that would remove exceptions on second-trimester abortions and allow prosecutions of such abortions as homicide.

Trigger:The government plans to build a railway to transport grain from farm states to Amazon ports for export, which members of the Indigenous community say will destroy the environment of tribal communities. This coincided with the week-long twentieth annual Free Land Camp, in which indigenous communities enact encampments in Brasilia as a form of protest against government wrongdoings.

Trigger:Opposition candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won the 2022 Brazilian presidential election.

Trigger:President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration’s support for loosening restrictions on land use and the imminent announcement of a verdict in a crucial Indigenous land rights case.

Trigger:First round of protests, in January, was triggered by oxygen shortages at hospitals in the city of Manaus and a sluggish rollout of Brazil’s vaccination campaign. Second round of protests, starting in May, was triggered by the government’s slow and inept response amid a third wave of infections and allegations of corruption in vaccine procurement.

Trigger:President Jair Bolsonaro’s poor and slow response to the coronavirus outbreak; and the death of George Floyd in the United States, sparking protests against local police brutality and racism.

Trigger:Cuts in education spending and postgraduate scholarships.

Trigger:Mayor Blagomir Kotsev, a member of the reformist We Continue the Change (PP) party, was arrested over allegations of running a criminal group to embezzle funds. Kotsev has denied the allegations.

Trigger:The Bulgarian government reaffirmed its commitment to adopting the euro by January 2026.

Trigger:The Bulgarian Parliament passed two amendments to the education code that banned LGBTQ+ "propaganda" in schools.

Trigger:The ultranationalist Vazrazhdane (Revival) party called for a protest in Sofia.

Trigger:Bulgaria’s government was about to submit plans to the European Commission that would detail a phase-out of its coal power plants.

Trigger:A Bulgarian man beat up his girlfriend, cut her more than 100 times with a knife, and shaved her head—injuries that required 400 stitches. The man was arrested but a court later released him after rating the woman’s injuries as “light.”

Trigger:European Commission policies to allow Ukrainian farmers to export grains through EU countries—intended to counteract the reduction in grain exports caused by Russian blockades of Ukrainian Black Sea ports—resulted in a glut of Ukrainian grains in Bulgarian markets.

Trigger:Rising inflation.

Trigger:Revelations that National Security Service agents were reserving access of a public beach for a businessman’s private use; police raids on the office of President Rumen Radev; and fresh allegations of corruption against Prime Minister Boyko Borisov.

Trigger:Enactment of lockdown measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

Trigger:The death of Alain Traoré (popularly known as Alino Faso), a Burkinabé activist in custody in the Ivory Coast.

Trigger:Jihadist insurgents killed six people in an attack in the city of Nouna; violence from unidentified assailants killed dozens of other people earlier in the month.

Trigger:Jihadist insurgents killed at least 60 people in an attack in the town of Partiaga.

Trigger:Rising jihadist terror attacks on civilian targets, including a June attack that killed over 130 people. November protests were triggered by a November 14 attack on a gendarmerie camp in the northern part of the country.

Trigger:Severe water shortages that have damaged rice fields. Cambodia has been suffering from severe droughts for the past twenty years.

Trigger:Presidential election held on October 12. Before the election results were released on October 27, the opposition candidate, Issa Tchiroma, claimed that he had won the election. However, partial results from local media showed that the incumbent President Paul Biya was likely to win the election.

Trigger:The military detained about 30 youths for their suspected involvement in rebel activity.

Trigger:Continual violence in separatist struggle in west and terrorism on the border with Nigeria.

Trigger:Call for protest by women’s groups; commemoration of International Women’s Day.

Trigger:The arrest of opposition leader Maurice Kamto.

Trigger:The breakdown of negotiations between representatives of the English-speaking minority and the French-speaking governing majority.

Trigger:On June 18, at least six men assassinated Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist activist living in British Columbia. On September 18, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Parliament that Canadian security agencies were pursuing credible allegations of a link between the assassins and the government of India.

Trigger:The Ontario government invoked the nothwithstanding clause of Canada’s constitution to force education workers not to strike.

Trigger:Enactment of coronavirus restrictions, including mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and lockdowns.

Trigger:Speculations that President Faustin-Archange Touadéra will run for a third term in office. Continued Wagner Group (a Russian private military company) activities in the country.

Trigger:President Faustin-Archange Touadéra announced on May 30 that the country would hold a referendum on a new draft constitution on July 30.

Trigger:President Faustin-Archange Touadera ordered the creation of a committee to rewrite the constitution.

Trigger:On November 28, 2024, the Chadian government announced that it would end its defense cooperation pact with France. However, the announcement did not specify when French troops would be leaving the country.

Trigger:One year anniversary of the government crackdown on the opposition that killed 128 and injured more than 500. Pro-democracy opposition leader Succès Masra announced his plan to return to the country from exile on October 5, leading the military government to issue a warrant for his arrest.

Trigger:The military’s seizure of power in the wake of the death of longtime president Idriss Déby.

Trigger:President Idriss Déby’s nomination by the ruling Patriotic Salvation Movement for a sixth term as president.

Trigger:Recurring delays in the receipt of compensation packages for human rights abuses ordered by the African Union.

Trigger:Growing economic struggles, including high cost of living and poor working conditions.

Trigger:Chile‘s Senate reduced the fishing quota allocated to artisanal fishers in a new bill. A Senate commission delayed a vote on the bill following heavy criticism from artisanal fishers.

Trigger:Rising costs of living; call for protest by the Confech student federation.

Trigger:Increased price of metro fares.

Trigger:Police detained Ma Yuwei, an imam of a local mosque in the Yunnan province.

Trigger:A new company law allowed companies to target former shareholders for unpaid sums, even after they had transferred their shares. The Supreme People’s Court ruled that former shareholders were also liable for unpaid sums after bankruptcy.

Trigger:Renovations were set to begin on a fourteenth century mosque in Nagu, Yunnan province.

Trigger:The government restructured the medical insurance system, cutting some government-provided medical insurance for senior citizens.

Trigger:A fire in an apartment building in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, killed 10 people. Demonstrators believed that COVID-19 restrictions, including makeshift barricades and blockaded emergency exits, hampered evacuation and rescue efforts.

Trigger:Shooting of Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay. Series of bomb and gun attacks in southwestern Colombia.

Trigger:In January 2024, the government enacted a decree that allowed the Ministry of Environment to designate certain areas as natural resource reserve zones.

Trigger:In an effort to phase out fuel subsidies, the government raised diesel prices by fifty cents per gallon.

Trigger:Leftist Gustavo Petro was elected in 2022 on the promise to fight poverty and inequality and end Colombia’s six decades of domestic conflict which has killed 450,000. Petro is struggling to maintain his governing coalition in Congress and his approval rating has declined amid an uptick in violence by rebels. He has proposed legislation to reform Colombia’s healthcare system and turn a government agency into the sole administrator of insurance payouts, thereby sidelining private companies which make up a sizeable portion of insurance providers. Petro is also pushing a change to labor law to make it harder to hire workers on temporary contracts and require additional compensation for any work conducted after 6 p.m.

Trigger:More than 37,000 people across Colombia were affected by violence between January and September of 2023, with Indigenous people disproportionately affected.

Trigger:The president proposed social and economic reforms that aim to combat poverty, improve security, and combat climate change.

Trigger:President Gustavo Petro proposed economic and social reforms that were meant to increase taxes on high-earning individuals and combat inequality.

Trigger:The government’s introduction of a proposal to raise tax rates and eliminate exemptions; a call for protests and strikes by the country’s main labor unions.

Trigger:Circulation of a video of police killing law student Javier Ordóñez by shooting him repeatedly with a stun gun.

Trigger:President Ivan Duque’s undermining of local and regional authorities, citizens’ claims that they were not receiving sufficient social support, and rising number of deaths from the virus.

Trigger:Unsanitary conditions in prisons, which could accelerate the spread of the coronavirus among inmates.

Trigger:Rumored pensions cuts, implementation challenges of the country’s peace deal, and rising violence.

Trigger:Incumbent President Azali Assoumani was declared the winner of the January 2024 election, which was denounced by the country’s opposition parties as fraudulent. Assoumani has been accused of sidestepping the constitution and cracking down on dissent because he has previously outlawed protests.

Trigger:Allegations of ballot stuffing and the improper transport of ballot boxes during the 2019 presidential election.

Trigger:Introduction of proposed constitutional reforms that would render President Azali Assoumani eligible for another five-year term and reduce the relative power of the archipelago’s islands by eliminating the rotating vice presidency.

Trigger:The expulsion of Comorian migrants in the French territory of Mayotte and the announcement of negotiations between the French and Comorian governments.

Trigger:Proposed tax reforms and salary cuts for government workers.

Trigger:Draft law that would impose prison terms on those who leak details of police investigations. Police, prosecutors, judges, or any official who leaks information about police investigations can be sentenced to up to three years in jail. Prime Minister Andrej Plenković said the law does not apply if "the information leaked was in the interest of the public."

Trigger:Revelations that a pregnant Croatian woman was forced to receive an abortion in Slovenia since local hospitals were not equipped to perfom the procedure.

Trigger:Imposition of coronavirus restrictions, including mask and vaccine mandates.

Trigger:Government rejection of teachers’ unions’ salary demands.

Trigger:The country is experiencing power cuts and shortages of food and medicine. There has also been a decline in living conditions on par with that following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The power outages were exacerbated by two hurricanes that struck Cuba in October 2024.

Trigger:Power outages caused by Hurricane Ian.

Trigger:Food and medicine shortages amid a severe economic crisis.

Trigger:Arrest of rapper Denis Solis, who was later sentenced to eight months in prison for insulting a police officer.

Trigger:The government of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus lifted its ban on hijabs in secondary schools.

Trigger:The British RAF Akrotiri base in Cyprus was used to launch strikes against the Houthi militia in Yemen.

Trigger:The Cypriot government struggled to accommodate the large number of migrants who had arrived.

Trigger:Imposition of coronavirus lockdowns and revelations about corruption in a passport-for-investment scheme.

Trigger:The EU waived duties and quotas for imports from Ukraine which put pressure on prices for EU farmers who must follow EU environmental standards. Ongoing negotiations for a trade deal between the EU and the South American Mercosur bloc. New EU environmental regulations, including new subsidy rules which require 4 percent of farmland to be fallow. High energy prices are further undercutting farmers’ profits.

Trigger:Package of $6.7 billion of spending cuts and austerity measures put forward by Prime Minister Petr Fiala’s government, part of his aim to halve the country’s budget.

Trigger:The government considered a proposal to raise the retirement age by four years from 65 to 68.

Trigger:Skyrocketing energy prices; the government’s policy of allowing entrance for Ukrainian refugees.

Trigger:Ongoing pandemic-related restrictions.

Trigger:Corruption allegations against Prime Minister Andrej Babiš and his appointment of a close ally as justice minister.

Trigger:M23 rebel forces made advances toward the city of Goma in eastern DRC.

Trigger:Arrest of Seth Kikuni, one of three key opposition figures to be imprisoned in the DRC. The DRC also applied to be a member of the UN Human Rights Council in August 2024.

Trigger:Widespread violence and a Tutsi-led March 23 (M23) rebellion advancing toward Goma. Western countries provide support for Rwanda, which is accused of backing the Tutsi-led M23 rebellion in the Congo.

Trigger:The incumbent President Felix Tshisekedi won the December 2023 presidential election after the voting period was extended by a day due to logistical issues. The Carter Center noted "serious irregularities" in the election’s administration.

Trigger:Delays and alleged irregularities in a voter registration drive ahead of the country’s December 20 general election.

Trigger:A proposal by six religious groups to install Denis Kadima as head of the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI).

Trigger:National Assembly’s proposed changes to the juidiciary that would include proposals to define the powers of judges, and its decision to appoint Ronsard Malonda as chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, despite his perceived past role in rigging elections in favor of former president Joseph Kabila.

Trigger:Continued attempts by then president Joseph Kabila to stay in power beyond his term limit by delaying elections.

Trigger:The government announced plans to cancel a public holiday to help finance increased defense spending.

Trigger:Indictment of leading political officials and businessmen in a bribery scandal.

Trigger:President Daniel Noboa removed a government subsidy on diesel, which increased fuel prices by more than fifty percent.

Trigger:Four teenage boys (the "Guayaquil Four") disappeared after they were approached by soldiers.

Trigger:Rolling blackouts occurring across the country since September 2024. Ongoing economic crisis and rising crime.

Trigger:State-owned energy firm Petroecuador is extracting crude oil in Amazonian region of Ecuador without adequately compensating locals.

Trigger:The disappearance and murder of thirty-four-year-old lawyer María Belén Bernal.

Trigger:Rising prices for staple goods and the announcement of a strike and circulation of economic demands by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador.

Trigger:The government’s announcement that it would be reducing subsidies on fuel.

Trigger:Announcement of the closure of some state-owned companies and cuts to salaries of public sector workers.

Trigger:Proposal of an austerity package that would increase fuel costs and cut salaries for public sector jobs.

Trigger:Call for protest by exiled opposition leader Mohamed Ali; the demolition of unlicensed homes; and increases in commodity pricing.

Trigger:Revelations that President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and his inner circle used public funds for personal gain.

Trigger:The government’s enactment of a provision to accept bitcoin as legal tender.

Trigger:Authorities arrested four minibus drivers after accusing them of assaulting a female customer.

Trigger:Death of law student Thabani Nkomonye in May, the government’s rejection of petitions, and allegations of corruption against King Mswati III.

Trigger:Low pay for teachers and other public servants.

Trigger:Calls for protests by pro-democracy opposition groups.

Trigger:The suspension of parliament and the introduction of a bill that would impose a fine on those who married foreigners.

Trigger:Although the two-year-long Tigray War ended with a truce in November 2022, millions of people were still displaced and Amhara and Eritrean troops remained inside Tigrayan territory, according to humanitarian workers.

Trigger:The government ordered the integration of the eleven regions’ special forces into the federal military.

Trigger:Water shortages.

Trigger:Murder of activist and singer Hachalu Hundessa.

Trigger:Allegations circulated by opposition leader Jawar Mohammed that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had sent security forces to detain him.

Trigger:Murder of twenty-three ethnic minorities in Ethiopia’s majority-Oromo Oromia region.

Trigger:Citizens’ demands for the release of senior opposition leader Bekele Gerba from prison, after prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn had reneged on his promise to release all political prisoners. Prior protests had begun in 2015, led by the Oromo and Amhara ethnic groups over ethnic discrimination.

Trigger:Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, described as pro-business, sought to make the country’s terms of employment more flexible and cut unemployment.

Trigger:Former prime minister François Bayrou's proposed spending cuts, which would reduce the budget by over 40 billion euros. After Bayrou lost a no confidence vote, Sébastien Lecornu became the new prime minister.

Trigger:May Day, or International Workers' Day, on May 1

Trigger:International Women‘s Day on March 8.

Trigger:Continued anger over the current Iranian regime.

Trigger:International Day for the Elimination of Violence. Pelicot mass rape trial, which had drawn public attention starting September 2024.

Trigger:President Emmanuel Macron appointed Barnier, a center-right politician, as the new prime minister of France.

Trigger:Snap parliamentary elections called by President Emmanuel Macron.

Trigger:Lawmakers in Paris backed a constitutional change that would give anyone over the age of ten on the Pacific archipelago of New Caledonia the right to vote in provincial elections. This would add more than 25,000 people to the voter roll, which has been frozen since 1998—which many say is undemocratic. Indigenous Kanak separatists say this will dilute their political power and benefit pro-France politicians.

Trigger:Farmers cite frustration with government tax on tractor fuel, cheap agricultural imports, water storage issues, excessive restrictions, and red tape. The G20 Summit in November 2024 brought renewed attention to a prospective trade agreement between the EU and Mercosur trade bloc of South America.

Trigger:A teenager was stabbed to death in southeastern France on November 19, with eyewitnesses identifying the assailant as someone of Arab origin.

Trigger:Division within the European Union on legislation proposed by the European Commission to adopt consent-based rape laws throughout the bloc. French law does not define rape in terms of consent. Eve of International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Trigger:The Ministry of the Interior reported that the number of rapes and attempted rapes doubled between 2017 and 2021. International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Trigger:Drought and water scarcity on the French island of Mayotte, where taps tend to work only one day out of three.

Trigger:On June 27, a police officer fatally shot Nahel M., a 17-year-old French citizen of Algerian and Moroccan descent, during a traffic stop. In November 2023, the police officer suspected of shooting Nahel was released from custody pending further investigation.

Trigger:The governments of France and Italy are working to construct a high-speed freight and passenger railway line through the Alps to connect Lyon, France, with Turin, Italy.

Trigger:Plans supported by the French government to construct a reservoir in Sainte-Soline, western France; pension reform protests.

Trigger:In accordance with a European Court of Justice ruling, the French government closed a loophole that allowed sugar beet farmers to use neonicotinoids, a pesticide that the European Union banned in 2018.

Trigger:Government plans for pension reform including a measure that would raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.

Trigger:A gunman killed three people at a Kurdish cultural center and nearby Kurdish cafe in Paris.

Trigger:The French government moved forward with plans to pass legislation that would allow migrants with a deportation order to be put on a "wanted list" in order to streamline deportations.

Trigger:Strikes at oil refineries triggered fuel shortages and exacerbated rising fuel prices.

Trigger:The murder of a 12-year-old girl by an illegal immigrant from Algeria.

Trigger:Commemoration of May Day; call for protest by labor organizations.

Trigger:Introduction of a proposal that would require a “health pass” to access many amenities.

Trigger:A rise in attacks against police.

Trigger:The National Assembly’s consideration of a climate law.

Trigger:The Court of Cassation’s ruling that the killer of a Jewish woman could not be tried due to his “delirious state.”

Trigger:Approval in the Chamber of Deputies of a bill that limits the publication of images of on-duty police officers and the circulation of a video of police beating music producer Michel Zecler.

Trigger:Deaths of George Floyd in 2020 in the United States and Adama Traore in 2016 in France, both at the hands of the police.

Trigger:Government plans for pension reform.

Trigger:Proposal of a new fuel tax.

Trigger:Announcement of plans to reduce retirement benefits, reform unemployment insurance, and permit competition to the national rail service.

Trigger:Changes to private sector labor laws that would reduce damages for fired workers and favor companies in negotiations with workers.

Trigger:Surfing events for 2024 Paris Olympics will be held in the small village of Teahupo’o on the island of Tahiti. Paris 2024 plans to build a new three story aluminum surf tower on a reef, replacing the existing wooden surf tower that has been used for past surfing competitions.

Trigger:The announcement of government plans to reduce access to tuition grants.

Trigger:President Adama Barrow’s administration has faced numerous corruption scandals throughout his presidency.

Trigger:Lawmakers voted to advance a bill to repeal the state’s 2015 ban on female genital mutilation. The practice has increased in frequency in recent years—despite being outlawed and ongoing campaigns to end it.

Trigger:Concerns that President Adama Barrow would renege on his promise to rule for only three years in a provisional government before calling elections and not running.

Trigger:A July heat wave caused power outages

Trigger:Khader Adnan, a high-profile former spokesman of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, died following an eighty-seven-day hunger strike.

Trigger:Tens of thousands of Israelis marched through the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City to celebrate the anniversary of Israeli forces retaking East Jerusalem in 1967.

Trigger:A court decision on whether to evict six Palestinian families from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah; Israeli moves to crack down on Palestinian assembly.

Trigger:Israeli economic blockade of the Gaza Strip, and Palestinian demand for the right to return to land in what is currently considered Israel.

Trigger:The newly elected Georgian government announced on November 28 that it would suspend accession talks with the EU until 2028. The decision was announced amid ongoing protests against the recent parliamentary elections.

Trigger:The Abkhazian parliament had been considering the ratification of an investment deal with Russia to allow Russians to buy land and residences in Abkhazia. On November 11, five opposition activists were arrested.

Trigger:Results of the parliamentary elections on October 26, which gave the ruling Georgian Dream party more than 54 percent of the vote.

Trigger:Mikheil Saakashvili, who spearheaded the Rose Revolution in 2003, was detained in 2021, which rights groups claimed was politically motivated. Twenty-year anniversary of the Rose Revolution.

Trigger:Direct flights resumed between Russia and Georgia.

Trigger:The deterioration of the health of former president Mikheil Saakashvili, an advocate of closer relations with Europe who was serving a six-year prison term.

Trigger:Parliament introduced a bill that would require non-governmental and media organizations that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad to declare themselves as "foreign agents," or face fines and possible imprisonment. In 2024, the Georgian Dream party once again proposed a law forcing NGOs that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad to be registered as "carrying the interests of foreign power."

Trigger:The ongoing detention of former president Mikheil Saakashvili; the announcement of municipal election results favorable to the ruling party, Georgian Dream.

Trigger:The murder of journalist Alexander Lashkarava.

Trigger:The arrest of opposition United National Movement leader Nika Melia.

Trigger:Announcement of electoral results that showed the ruling Georgia Dream party with a significant lead.

Trigger:Parliament’s failure to pass electoral reform that would change the political system to one based on proportional representation.

Trigger:Russian lawmaker’s entry into the Georgian Parliament, during which he took the speaker’s seat.

Trigger:Easter holiday. Since the 1960s, activists have organized a march for peace on Easter, called Ostermärsche (Easter march).

Trigger:International Women‘s Day on March 8.

Trigger:Friedrich Merz, the conservative opposition leader, worked with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party to push an anti-immigration bill through parliament.

Trigger:The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party held a convention ahead of the upcoming February 23 elections.

Trigger:Reports that a group of officials from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party met with neo-Nazis at a hotel in Potsdam to discuss the possibility of a mass deportation scheme. Holocaust Memorial Day. Regional elections. The AfD is polling in second place in Germany for the June 2024 European Parliament elections.

Trigger:Germany proposed cuts to diesel subsidies and tax breaks for agricultural vehicles.

Trigger:Berlin authorities were moving closer to approving a plan to extend the city’s autobahn into the former East Germany.

Trigger:The Free Democratic Party stalled efforts by the coalition government to pass climate policies related to transportation, including a phase out of internal combustion engines.

Trigger:The German government continued to arm Ukraine one year after the Russian invasion.

Trigger:The state government of North Rhine-Westphalia and the national government reached a deal with utility company RWE to destroy the abandoned village of Luetzerath and build a coal mine there.

Trigger:Rising prices, especially of fuel.

Trigger:Perceived government inaction on climate change.

Trigger:Death of George Floyd in the United States, sparking protests against local police brutality and racism in Germany.

Trigger:Enactment of strict lockdown measures and vaccine mandates.

Trigger:Cooperation between the state branches of far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD), the center-right Christian Democratic Union and left-leaning Free Democratic Party (FDP) to oust the state premier of Thuringia, Bodo Ramelow, and replace him with Thomas Kemmerich, a member of the FDP. The pact was a visible violation of mainstream political norms that opposed cooperating with far-right parties.

Trigger:The main opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), accused the electoral commission of tampering with the voter register by illegally transferring voters to different stations, removing the names of eligible voters, and including the names of deceased voters.

Trigger:Continued illegal mining (also known as galamsey) in Ghana.

Trigger:Democracy Hub, a governance advocacy group, called for a protest. The opposition party, the National Democratic Congress, called for protests in Accra to oust the governor of the central bank and two deputies, blaming them for inflation and high cost of living caused by their reckless financing of the government.

Trigger:Rapidly rising prices. Inflation hit 37% in September 2022.

Trigger:The government introduced price hikes and a tax on electronic payments.

Trigger:Call for protests by activists on social media after tax hikes and increases in fuel prices.

Trigger:Proposed reforms to Greece’s labor laws, which include extended working hours for private sector workers and changes to rules on annual leave.

Trigger:High cost of living. Greece’s wages in terms of purchasing power standards are one of the lowest among EU countries.

Trigger:The Greece-Bulgaria water deal, which provided crucial water resources to Greek farmers, expired in July 2024. The Greek government has not specified whether it would renew the deal.

Trigger:Rising food and housing prices.

Trigger:EU environmental regulations such as new legislation requiring 4 percent of farmland to be left fallow in order to receive subsidies. Tax on diesel amid surging energy prices. Delayed compensation for damage to crops and livestock caused by flooding in the Thessaly region in 2023.

Trigger:Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is expected to submit a bill to parliament which will permit private universities to operate in Greece.

Trigger:A Roma youth was shot dead by police after a car chase.

Trigger:The Greek government was planning to introduce new identity cards.

Trigger:A fishing boat that set sail from Tobruk, Libya, on June 10 sank off the coast of Pylos, Greece, on June 14. Authorities quickly confirmed eighty-two deaths with hundreds more missing and presumed dead.

Trigger:A train crash killed 57 people.

Trigger:Rapidly rising prices, especially of fuel.

Trigger:A call for protest by two of the country’s largest labor unions.

Trigger:Introduction and adoption of a labor reform bill that relaxed employer restrictions on overtime and employee hours.

Trigger:The Kryiakos Mitsotakis government’s enactment of a stringent law on demonstrations.

Trigger:Twenty-four-hour strike in response to proposed pension reform.