Doug Saunders

After traversing kilometres of muddy pathways through flooded rice paddies to enter a village in the most remote northeastern corner of Bangladesh, then dodging oxcarts and hand-pulled rickshaws along earthen streets, I walked through a set of glass doors to find myself facing what might be the world’s most pointless escalator. In a place where a good percentage of families were getting by on less than a dollar a…

In August of 2010, a rusty and dangerously overcrowded ship departed from Indonesia and made a long passage across the Pacific Ocean to Canadian coastal waters off British Columbia, where it was intercepted by the Canadian Coast Guard. Its passengers, 492 Tamil-speaking people claiming to be Sri Lankan citizens, were processed by immigration authorities under Canadian law before being sent to temporary camps and then allowed to settle while awaiting…

I first noticed that something had changed when I visited Damascus in the summer of 2006. Previously, the way to enter Syria without a month-long wait for a visa had involved flying to the capital, having a pre-arranged meeting with a certain man at the airport and giving him an envelope containing $200 in greenbacks. This…