I know I already made this claim about halfway through the year, but the Council on Foreign Relations provides 10 more reasons to shout it from the rooftops:
- “The World Health Organization reports in October that global measles deaths have decreased by more than 80 percent since 2000 to an estimated ninety thousand last year.”
- “Colombia’s largest Marxist rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), completes its disarmament process in June, six months after it reached a peace agreement with the government, bringing to a close Latin America’s oldest and bloodiest civil conflict. The second-largest rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), agrees to a temporary cease-fire in September.”
- “The hole in the earth’s ozone layer is the smallest it has been since 1988, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports in October.”
- “Women’s rights advance in several Arab countries with the passage of legal reforms[.]“
- “Eight countries adopt legal protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation, bringing the total to eighty-five, according to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association.”
- “The number of people living in extreme poverty, making $1.90 or less per day, continues its steady drop, falling from roughly 35 percent of the world’s population in 1990 to 8.4 percent in late 2017, according to the Vienna-based World Data Lab.”
- “Gambia’s longtime authoritarian president, Yahya Jammeh, steps down on January 20, 2017, weeks after losing his reelection bid to Adama Barrow and a day after troops from the regional bloc ECOWAS cross into the country. Barrow’s government releases hundreds of political prisoners, holds legislative elections deemed free and fair, and announces plans for a truth and reconciliation commission.”
- “Maritime piracy declines in the first nine months of 2017 compared to the same period in 2016, dropping 14 percent to 121 incidents, according to the International Chamber of Commerce.”
- “After resolving Argentina’s billion-dollar dispute with bondholders in 2016, President Mauricio Macri continues promarket reforms that have lifted the Group of Twenty economy.”
- “The eurozone economy grows 2.5 percent more in the third quarter of 2017 than in the same period a year prior. The increase puts the zone’s economy on track to see its highest annual growth since before the 2008 global financial crisis. Unemployment in the single-currency area drops to 9.1 percent, its lowest level since early 2009.”
