Mission 1: Guyana's income per person is more than three and a half times Sri Lanka's. Why do they have exactly the same HDI?

Development has many dimensions

• Human development is about people's lives, not only a country's output: health, knowledge, living standards, rights and choices.
• Because it has many dimensions, no single number captures it. Geographers use indicators (one measure, such as life expectancy) and indices (several indicators combined).
• Exam move: the guide calls development "multidimensional". Say which dimension your evidence measures.

The SDGs as criteria

• In September 2015 the UN announced 17 Sustainable Development Goals with 169 associated targets for 2030.
• Each target is tracked by indicators. The global framework now holds 234 unique indicators, refined most recently in March 2026.
• Goals → targets → indicators: the SDGs set the criteria by which progress is judged.

How far has the world got?

• The UN's 2026 progress report could assess 139 targets with trend data.
• Of these, 36% are on track or making moderate progress, 49% are moving too slowly, and 15% have slipped below their 2015 baselines.
• "None of the gender equality targets are on track".

The Human Development Index (HDI)

• Three dimensions: a long and healthy life (life expectancy at birth), knowledge (expected and mean years of schooling), a decent standard of living (GNI per capita, 2021 PPP $).
• Each indicator becomes an index from 0 to 1 between fixed goalposts: life expectancy 20–85 years; expected schooling 0–18; mean schooling 0–15; income $100–$75,000, using logarithms.
• The HDI is the geometric mean of the three dimension indices: (I_health × I_education × I_income)^(1/3).

Same HDI, different lives

The last row compares each country's world rank on income with its rank on the HDI, both for 2023.

Validity and reliability

• Validity: does the indicator measure what it claims to? (Does GNI per capita measure how well people live?)
• Reliability: would repeated, careful measurement give the same result, and are the data comparable between places and over time?
• An index can be reliable but not valid (a precise measure of the wrong thing), or valid in principle but unreliable in practice (poor data).

Limits to the HDI's validity

• Income is not well-being. Guyana's oil and gas reserves "have contributed to rapid GDP growth since 2019"; real GDP grew 43.8% in 2024 and 19.3% in 2025. Income can jump before health and schooling change.
• Averages hide inequality between regions, groups and genders within a country.
• Narrow dimensions: the HDI leaves out rights, security and the environment.
• Built-in judgements: income above $75,000 adds nothing to the HDI, a ceiling nine countries exceeded in 2023.

The Gender Inequality Index (GII)

• The GII measures gender-based disadvantage in three dimensions, from 0 (women and men fare equally) to 1:
  • reproductive health: maternal mortality ratio and adolescent birth rate
  • empowerment: share of parliamentary seats, and people aged 25+ with at least some secondary education
  • labour market: labour force participation.
• 2023: Denmark 0.003 (rank 1); Yemen 0.838 (rank 172); world 0.455.

Limits to reliability

• Coverage: the HDI ranks 193 countries, but the GII only 172, because the data are missing elsewhere.
• Timeliness: the GII's maternal mortality figures refer to 2020, while its other indicators refer to 2023. WHO's newer global estimate is 197 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2023.
• Revisions: UNDP recalculates past years each time it revises data, so compare HDI ranks only within one report.

Limits to the GII's validity

• The empowerment indicator counts the share of seats held by women. It cannot show how members were chosen (elected or appointed), or what powers the chamber has.
• In June 2019 a UAE presidential resolution required women to make up at least 50% of each emirate's representatives in the Federal National Council. A rule like this changes the indicator directly; other evidence is needed to judge what it changes in practice.
• Sri Lanka's GII is 0.367 (rank 93); women held 5.3% of its parliamentary seats in 2023.
• Exam move: a quota can change an indicator quickly. Ask what other evidence shows about the outcome.

Exam move: evaluating an index (AO3)

• Weigh strengths (simple, comparable, broader than income, linked to SDG targets) against limits (averages, choice of indicators, data quality, out-of-date figures).
• Use a located example: Guyana and Sri Lanka show that the same score can hide very different lives.
• Finish with a judgement: an index is a starting point for questions, not an answer.

Mission 2: Nearly half of the 2.4 million elected members of India's rural local councils are women. Can reserving places close a development gap?

Empowerment and affirmative action

• Empowerment: gaining the power to make choices and act on them, in the home, the economy and politics.
• Affirmative action: policies that reserve or prefer places (seats, jobs, university places) for a group that has been disadvantaged, to narrow a gap.
• Other approaches target spending, services or partnerships at a group without reserving places.

Reserved seats in India's rural local councils

• India's Constitution (Article 243D) reserves not less than one-third of the directly elected seats in rural local bodies (Panchayati Raj Institutions) for women.
• 21 states and 2 union territories have gone further, to 50%.
• On 25 November 2025, 1,206,013 of the 2,424,108 elected representatives in these bodies were women: 49.75%.

Evidence 1: what women leaders chose

• From 1998, one-third of village council leadership posts in West Bengal were randomly reserved for women.
• The 2001 working-paper version of the study, covering 165 councils in Birbhum district, West Bengal, found that "women invest more in infrastructure that is directly relevant to the needs of rural women (water, fuel, and roads), while men invest more in education".
• Women were also more likely to take part in decision-making when the leader was a woman.

Evidence 2: girls' aspirations

• A study of 8,453 adolescents and their parents in 495 villages compared villages assigned a woman leader for two election cycles with villages never reserved.
• The gender gap in aspirations "closed by 20% in parents and 32% in adolescents"; the gap in adolescents' educational attainment "was erased".
• But there was "no evidence of changes in young women's labor market opportunities".

Limits: proxy representation

• Seats held by women can be run in practice by male relatives (pradhan pati, "chief's husband").
• In 2023, after a Supreme Court order, India's Ministry of Panchayati Raj set up a committee on this, which recommended "exemplary penalties" where husbands act as proxies (news-reported).
• Exam move: a reserved seat changes who holds office; whether it changes who decides needs further evidence.

Brazil's university Quota Law

• Law 12.711 (August 2012) requires federal universities to reserve at least 50% of places for students who completed secondary school in public schools.
• Half of those places go to students from families with income of up to one minimum wage per person (2023 wording).
• Within these places, a share at least equal to their share of the state's population at the last census goes to self-declared pretos (Black), pardos (brown), Indigenous and quilombola students and people with disabilities.

Brazil: what changed?

• In 2018, pretos or pardos came to make up 50.3% of students in public higher education (all public institutions, not only the federal ones the law covers), against 55.8% of the population. The census agency's release does not say what caused the change.
• A study of the reforms found that affirmative action "increases enrollments of low-SES individuals not only mechanically but also through behavioral responses" (SES: socio-economic status).

Indigenous rights: a global agreement

• On 13 September 2007 the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
• Four states voted against (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States) and 11 abstained. All four have since reversed their position and support it.
• The UN's own page gives the votes in favour as both 143 and 144: check totals before quoting them.

Australia's Closing the Gap (2020)

• The National Agreement on Closing the Gap (July 2020) has 4 Priority Reforms and 19 socio-economic targets across 17 outcome areas.
• It was "developed in genuine partnership" between Australian governments and the Coalition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peak Organisations.
• It works through targets, shared decision-making and community-controlled services, not reserved places.

Closing the Gap: progress by 2026

• The Productivity Commission's data report (29 July 2026) assessed the 19 targets:
  • met: 1 (preschool enrolment); on track: 3 (employment; land and sea, Targets 15A and 15B)
  • improving but not on track: 5; no change: 2
  • worsening: 4 (including adult imprisonment, children in out-of-home care and suicide); cannot be assessed: 4.

Exam move: does targeting close the gap? (AO3)

• Scale: India's rural local bodies have about 1.2 million elected women; Brazil's quotas apply to federal universities.
• What changes: who holds office or a place is easy to measure; spending, aspirations and enrolment need careful studies; in India, young women's job opportunities did not change.
• Limits: proxies, and gaps that keep widening despite targets.
• Conclude: targeted policy can narrow particular gaps, but it is one lever among several.

Mission 3: In 2006 a bank for poor villagers won the Nobel Peace Prize. Do small loans and fairer prices really lift people out of poverty?

Social entrepreneurship

• Social enterprises use business methods to meet a social goal, such as income for poor households or fair prices for farmers.
• Two models in the guide: microfinance (small loans, savings and insurance for people banks ignore) and alternative trading networks (such as Fairtrade).
• Both work through flows of money and goods between places, from local to global.

Microfinance

• In 2006 Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank (Bangladesh) shared the Nobel Peace Prize "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below".
• In 2018, microfinance institutions reported 139.9 million borrowers: 80% women, 65% rural. Their loans totalled an estimated $124.1 billion.
• South Asia had 85.6 million borrowers, 89% of them women.

Networks: lenders here, borrowers there

• Kiva lets people lend from as little as $25 to entrepreneurs abroad. Kiva says 5 million people have used its loans, and 2 of every 3 loans have gone to women.
• Each loan is a spatial interaction: savings from one place become working capital in another.
• Networks also link institutions: data, funding and investment flow between microfinance lenders and global investors.

The evidence: six randomised trials

• Six randomised evaluations in six countries on four continents tested what happens when people gain access to microcredit.
• The summary: "a consistent pattern of modestly positive, but not transformative, effects".
• Microcredit helps some households manage money and run small businesses; it has not, on average, lifted large numbers out of poverty.

Andhra Pradesh, 2010: the boom

• By 2010, microfinance institutions in India had reached 27 million borrowers, growing at 80% a year.
• In Andhra Pradesh, a survey found that 83% of households had loans from more than one source.
• CGAP concluded that households there had "too many loans and too much debt" for their income levels.

Andhra Pradesh, 2010: the response

• In October 2010 the state passed an ordinance "to protect the women Self Help Groups from exploitation by the Micro Finance Institutions", placing new conditions on lenders.
• Loan collections for microfinance institutions in Andhra Pradesh then "dropped dramatically".
• Exam move: a regulation can protect borrowers and also cut off their credit. Weigh both.

Fairtrade: how it works

• Fairtrade sets a minimum price, a floor paid when market prices fall below it. For washed Arabica coffee it rose from $1.40 to $1.80 per pound for contracts signed from 1 August 2023.
• Buyers also pay a Fairtrade Premium, which producer organisations invest collectively.

Fairtrade's scale (2024)

• 1,824 producer organisations, 1.87 million farmers and workers, and €201.6 million of Premium.
• 75% of the farmers and workers were in Africa and the Middle East.
• Products carrying the FAIRTRADE Mark are sold in more than 140 countries.

Does Fairtrade work? Mixed evidence

• A review in the Journal of Economic Perspectives notes that Fair Trade coffee was 1.8% of global coffee exports in 2009, and that its benefits are "hotly debated".
• A study for the UK government in Ethiopia and Uganda found that "in some cases" wage workers in areas with Fairtrade producer organisations were "significantly worse paid" than in comparable areas without them.
• Fairtrade itself says its Premium data show where money is spent, but not "outcomes or impacts".

From a town to the world

• The Fair Trade Towns campaign began in Garstang, UK, in 2000. By 2017 there were over 2,000 Fair Trade Towns in 29 countries on 6 continents.
• Local choices (a town council's purchasing, a school's tuck shop) link to farmers in producer countries.
• Exam move: this is a spatial interaction across scales: local campaign, national labelling body, global standards, local producer co-operative.

Mission 4: After a factory building collapsed in Bangladesh in 2013, more than 200 brands signed a deal to make factories safe. Almost nine years on, how many factories had fixed every problem found?

Corporate social responsibility (CSR)

• CSR: a company's responsibility for its effects on workers, communities and the environment, including in its supply chain.
• CSR frameworks range from voluntary (codes, pledges, reporting) to binding (contracts that can be enforced, and laws).
• Exam move: place any example on this spectrum, and ask who checks and who enforces.

Global frameworks

• The UN Global Compact is a UN initiative that companies and other organisations join; it listed about 25,600 participants in more than 160 countries in October 2026.
• The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights were unanimously endorsed by the Human Rights Council in resolution 17/4 of 16 June 2011. They rest on:
  • states' obligations to protect human rights
  • businesses' duty to comply with laws and "to respect human rights"
  • "appropriate and effective remedies" when rights are breached.

A binding agreement: the Bangladesh Accord

• The Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh was signed on 15 May 2013, after the Rana Plaza collapse in April, by over 40 companies, 2 global unions and 8 Bangladeshi unions.
• More than 220 brands and retailers later joined. It describes itself as a "legally-binding agreement between brands & trade unions", with independent inspections.
• The 2021 International Accord extended it; Pakistan's Accord took effect on 1 January 2023.

What the inspections found and fixed

• As of 17 March 2022: 1,392 factories covered; overall initial remediation progress 92%; 401 factories had completed all of their initial remediation.
• Still outstanding then: 1,009 factories without a fire alarm and detection system verified to standard; 511 yet to complete structural remediation. 204 factories had been made ineligible for business with Accord brands.
• By 1 September 2024, with more factories covered (including newly inspected ones), 572 of 1,809 had completed their initial remediation, and average progress was 87%.

From voluntary to law: the EU directive, 2024

• In June 2024 the EU adopted Directive (EU) 2024/1760 on corporate sustainability due diligence.
• It sets "obligations for companies regarding actual and potential human rights adverse impacts and environmental adverse impacts" in their own operations, their subsidiaries' and their business partners'.
• Unlike the Global Compact, a directive is law: EU member states must put it into national law.

Narrowed in 2026

• Directive (EU) 2026/470 of 24 February 2026 limited the main scope to companies with "more than 5 000 employees on average" and "a net worldwide turnover of more than EUR 1 500 000 000"; the turnover threshold had been EUR 450 million.
• It postponed application for all companies to 26 July 2029, and repealed the climate transition plan provisions "to streamline obligations".
• Exam move: EU law moved from voluntary toward binding, then narrowed. Date each change precisely.

Evaluating CSR and global agreements (AO3)

• Strengths: set shared standards; the Accord's inspections found and fixed most hazards; binding rules can be enforced.
• Limits: voluntary codes depend on companies' goodwill; agreements cover only the factories and brands that sign; progress is slow (28.8% fully remediated after almost nine years).
• Who decides? The Accord gave trade unions a place beside brands; most CSR codes do not.

Synthesis: one T-shirt, many scales

• Global: UN Guiding Principles; brands' Accord commitments.
• Regional: EU law sets due-diligence duties for the largest companies.
• National: Bangladesh's factory regulation; Pakistan's Accord.
• Local: a factory's fire exits, and the workers inside it.
• Actions at each scale affect the others: shoppers' and investors' pressure in Europe can change working conditions in Dhaka.

Mission 5: Nearly half of the world's languages are endangered, yet 4 in 10 Londoners were born abroad. Is the world becoming more alike or more diverse?

Culture, ethnicity and identity

• Culture: the shared, learned ways of life of a group: language, religion, food, music, dress, customs. A cultural trait is one element.
• Ethnicity: belonging to a group that shares a sense of common origin and culture. Identity: how people see themselves; individuals can hold several identities at once.
• The spectrum of diversity is the range of traits and identities in a place, at any scale.

Measuring diversity

• Geographers measure diversity with indices. One is Simpson's diversity index: D = 1 − Σp², where p is each group's share of the population.
• D = 0 means everyone is in one group; D close to 1 means many groups of similar size.
• Language is often used, because censuses ask about it.

Narrowing: languages at risk

• Of about 7,000 documented languages, "nearly half are considered endangered" in the research literature.
• In a database of 6,511 spoken languages, 37% were threatened or worse, and 13% of those are no longer spoken.
• Without intervention, "at least 1,500 languages" could stop being spoken by 2100.
• The areas with the most endangered languages include New Guinea, Central America, the Himalayas and Yunnan, and Central and West Africa, partly because they have the most languages.

Why languages are lost

• The same study found that "greater road density, which may encourage population movement, is associated with increased endangerment".
• Higher average years of schooling was also associated with greater endangerment, "evidence that formal education can contribute to loss of language diversity".
• "Counter to common perception", contact with other languages in itself was not a driver of loss.
• UNESCO: 40% of the world's people do not have access to education in a language they speak or understand.

Widening: more diverse places

• In 2021, 16.8% of usual residents of England and Wales were born outside the UK, up from 13.4% in 2011.
• In London the share was 40.6% (36.7% in 2011); in the London borough of Brent, 56.1%.
• At the local scale, migration is widening the spectrum of diversity, even as the global number of languages shrinks.

Diffusion and cultural imperialism

• Diffusion: the spread of cultural traits from place to place, through migration, trade, media and the internet.
• Cultural imperialism: the view that powerful countries' culture, spread by their media and companies, displaces local culture.
• Evidence for it: US films took 63% of cinema admissions in Europe in 2024 (69% in 2023); European films took 32.8%.

Counter-flows

• Diffusion is not one-way. Netflix's most-watched non-English series is South Korea's Squid Game (season 1): 265.2 million views in its first 91 days.
• Netflix's top five non-English seasons also include a Spanish series (Money Heist) and a French one (Lupin).
• In Europe, national films' market share rose in 22 of 32 markets with data in 2024.

Exam move: differing evidence and perspectives (AO3)

• Homogenisation: places are becoming more alike (language loss; US films' share).
• Heterogenisation: places are becoming more diverse (London and Brent; counter-flows from South Korea).
• Hybridisation: traits mix into something new (Mission 6).
• The answer depends on scale and on which indicator you choose: global language counts point one way, local census data the other.

Mission 6: There are more than three times as many KFC restaurants in China as in the USA. Why does KFC in China sell rice porridge?

Glocalization

• Glocalization: adapting a global brand or product to local tastes, laws and customs, while keeping the brand.
• A global company gains local customers; local culture shapes the global product.
• It is a two-way interaction, not simply the global replacing the local.

KFC in China

• KFC opened its first restaurant in China in Beijing in 1987; the company says it was the first major global restaurant brand to enter China.
• By 31 December 2025 there were 12,997 KFC restaurants in over 2,500 cities across China.
• The menu includes "beef burgers, pork, seafood, rice dishes, congees, fresh vegetables, desserts, coffee, tea" alongside chicken.

Who owns the local brand?

• Since 2016 KFC in mainland China has been run by Yum China, a separate company that holds an exclusive licence to the brand for 50 years from 31 October 2016.
• Yum China listed on the New York Stock Exchange on 1 November 2016 and has its principal executive offices in Shanghai and Plano, Texas.
• It pays a continuing fee of 3% of system sales to Yum! Brands. The brand is American, the operator is China-based, and money flows back to the US owner.

Cultural hybridity

• Cultural hybridity: cultural traits from different places mix to create something new.
• KFC in China puts fried chicken, congee, tea and coffee on one menu, and its KCOFFEE cafés grew from about 50 in 2023 to about 2,200 in 2025: an American brand, run by a China-based company, mixing food cultures.
• Glocalization is something a company does; hybridity describes the cultural result.

The built environment: converging skylines

• The cultural landscape is the visible imprint of culture on a place: buildings, streets, signs, places of worship.
• In 2024, 138 buildings of 200 m or taller were completed in 55 cities; 97 of them (about 70%) were in China.
• The tallest completed in 2024 was the Iconic Tower in Cairo (393.8 m), the first supertall building on the African continent.
• Tall towers of similar international design make skylines on different continents look more alike: homogenisation of the built environment.

The built environment: new traditions in new places

• The BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in Neasden, London, was inaugurated in August 1995.
• About 5,000 tonnes of Italian and Indian marble and Bulgarian limestone were "hand-carved in India" by 1,526 craftsmen, then assembled in London.
• A global flow of stone, skill and people put a traditional Indian temple into a London suburb: diversification of a local cultural landscape.

Mission 7: 18.5 million people born in India live in other countries, more than from any other country. How do they change places at both ends?

What is a diaspora?

• A diaspora is a population living outside its country or region of origin, with links to it, including descendants born abroad.
• Diasporas are networks: people, money, ideas and goods flow between origin and destinations.
• The guide asks how diasporas influence diversity and identity "at both global and local scales".

The world's largest diaspora

• UN estimates for 2024: 18.5 million people born in India lived in other countries, the most of any country of origin. Next: China 11.7 million, Mexico 11.6 million.
• India's emigrant stock was 6.6 million in 1990.
• These are migrant stocks: people born in India, counted where they live.

Who counts as the diaspora?

• India's Ministry of External Affairs counts 37.3 million "Overseas Indians" (as of January 2026): 17.8 million Non-Resident Indians (citizens abroad) plus 19.5 million Persons of Indian Origin.
• The UN counts people born in India; the ministry also counts descendants.
• Some members of the diaspora were born elsewhere. After Uganda ordered the expulsion of all Asians on 4 August 1972, just over 28,000 people came to the UK. A census counts people born in Uganda as Uganda-born.

Where the India-born live

• United Arab Emirates 3.25 million · USA 3.17 million · Saudi Arabia 1.95 million · Kuwait 1.23 million · UK 1.04 million · Canada 1.02 million.
• Western Asia (including the Gulf states) as a whole: 8.33 million.
• Two streams: contract work in the Gulf, and longer-term settlement in North America, Europe and Australia.

Changing the origin: money home

• Personal remittances to India were US$150.7 billion in 2025: 3.8% of GDP.
• Kerala, in south-west India, had about 2.2 million emigrants in 2023, and received ₹2.16 lakh crore (₹2.16 trillion) in remittances.
• The UAE has the most emigrants from Kerala. Remittances build houses, pay for schooling and support families, but tie household incomes to jobs abroad.

Changing a destination: Leicester

• Leicester has the highest share of India-born residents of any local authority in England and Wales: 16.2% (59,842 people) in 2021.
• Gujarati was the main language of 12.6% of residents aged 3 and over; English of 70.0%.
• Leicester's Diwali is described by the University of Leicester as "one of the largest Diwali celebrations outside of India", with the Golden Mile lit by 6,000 lamps.

Changing the world: global scale

• On 11 December 2014 the UN General Assembly proclaimed 21 June as the International Day of Yoga (resolution 69/131), on a draft "proposed by India".
• A practice that "originated in India" now has a UN day: cultural diffusion at the global scale, promoted by India's government.
• Temples such as the Neasden mandir (screen 6.8) add Indian architecture to cities abroad.

Identity and hybridity: evaluation (AO3)

• Many cultures, not one: Gujarati in Leicester, Malayali (Kerala) migrants in the Gulf. The Indian diaspora is not one culture.
• Hybrid identities: children of migrants can hold several identities, such as British and Indian, and many live with two languages.
• Costs as well as gains: families separated by contract work; skilled people leaving India ("brain drain").
• Exam move: name the scale (household, city, nation, world) and the direction of each influence (origin ↔ destination).

Mission 8: In 2000, after mass protests in Cochabamba, Bolivia, the government cancelled a water contract with a company part-owned by a US TNC. When does local resistance to global forces succeed?

Forms of local resistance

• Rejection of globalized production: campaigns against a TNC's presence or practices; boycotts; buying local food and goods.
• Political resistance: votes, laws and movements to limit flows of goods, capital or people.
• Resistance happens at different scales, from a neighbourhood campaign to a national referendum.

Cochabamba, 1999–2000: the trigger

• Aguas del Tunari, a consortium in which Bechtel held a 27.5% interest, began running Cochabamba's water and sewer system on 1 November 1999.
• Bechtel says the government raised water rates by an average of 35% from January 2000, then rolled them back in February. Earthjustice, an environmental law NGO, says rates rose "by more than 50 percent and in many cases much higher".
• Bechtel says the unrest, which peaked in April 2000, had several causes, including a national groundwater law. That April the government rescinded the contract.

Cochabamba: the global response

• The company took Bolivia to the World Bank's arbitration centre (ICSID); the case was registered on 25 February 2002.
• Earthjustice reports that the claim was for US$50 million, and that citizen groups from 43 nations backed a petition to open the case to the public.
• In January 2006 the parties settled, and the case was discontinued. Earthjustice reports the settlement as a token payment "equal to thirty cents".

Local sourcing: Slow Food

• Slow Food began in Rome in March 1986, after "the opening of a fast food restaurant near the Spanish Steps" sparked national protest.
• Its 1989 manifesto, signed in Paris by delegates from Italy and 14 other countries, made it international. From 1999 its "Presidia" have supported local food producers.
• Resistance to global food chains became a global network for local food.

Anti-immigration movements: the context

• Anti-immigration movements campaign to reduce or limit immigration.
• In Switzerland, citizens can force a national vote on a change to the constitution (a popular initiative), so support for proposals to limit immigration can be measured.
• International migrants were 18.7% of Switzerland's population in 1990 and 31.1% in 2024 (UN estimates); the world figure in 2024 was 3.7%.

Switzerland's votes, 2014–2026

• 9 February 2014, "Against mass immigration": 50.3% yes, accepted (12 full and 5 half cantons in favour).
• 27 September 2020, "For moderate immigration (Limitation Initiative)": 38.3% yes, rejected.
• 14 June 2026, "No to Switzerland of 10 million! (Sustainability Initiative)": 45.2% yes, rejected.
• Turnout was 56.6%, 59.5% and 58.9%.

What each proposal said, and the government's view

• 2014: the Federal Council said the initiative "calls for quotas for all foreign nationals", and recommended rejection, citing firms' need to recruit abroad and the risk to the bilateral agreements with the EU.
• 2020: the initiative "aims to end the free movement of persons with the EU". The Federal Council said ending free movement would threaten jobs in Switzerland and risk the first package of bilateral agreements.
• 2026: Switzerland's population "must remain below 10 million until 2050", with action required above 9.5 million. The Federal Council said it threatened Switzerland's prosperity and security, and the bilateral path with the EU.
• The initiatives' titles give their supporters' framing: against "mass" immigration, for "moderate" immigration, for "sustainability".

From vote to policy

• In December 2017 the Federal Council adopted rules implementing the constitutional article on steering immigration (Article 121a).
• The main measure, from 1 July 2018, is a job vacancy registration requirement, to help place job seekers registered at regional unemployment centres.
• Exam move: compare what a proposal asked for (the 2014 initiative's quotas) with the measure later adopted. A vote's result and its implementation can differ.

Mission 9: In 2020 Indonesia stopped exporting nickel ore. By 2025 it mined most of the world's nickel. Who gains when a country closes a door?

Trade restrictions

• Protectionism: restricting imports (tariffs, quotas, rules) to protect domestic producers.
• Resource nationalism: a state taking greater control of its natural resources, for example by banning raw exports so that processing happens at home.
• Both are geopolitical constraints on global interactions, decided by national governments.

Indonesia's nickel ore ban

• Indonesia reinstated its ban on direct-shipping nickel ore from January 2020, two years earlier than announced, "reportedly in order to conserve ore for the domestic processing industry".
• Nickel is used in stainless steel and in electric-vehicle batteries.
• Mine production (USGS): 2019, 800,000 t of a world total of 2.7 million t (estimates at the time); 2025, 2.6 million t of 3.9 million t (estimates).

Consequences beyond Indonesia

• The global nickel market has been in surplus since 2022. USGS says prices fell, "largely owing to continued surplus of nickel from Indonesia".
• In 2025 Australia's production fell by an estimated 54% "after multiple companies placed mines into care-and-maintenance status owing to low prices", and the Philippines' by 24%.
• Indonesia gained output and processing at home; higher-cost mines elsewhere closed or cut production.

The trade dispute

• The EU took the ban to the World Trade Organization. On 30 November 2022 a panel found the export ban and the domestic processing requirement inconsistent with GATT Article XI:1, and not justified by Indonesia's defences.
• Indonesia appealed on 8 December 2022. The WTO's Appellate Body is non-operational, so the case has no final ruling.
• Exam move: the international rules said one thing; the national policy continued.

Mission 10: In 2025 Access Now recorded at least 313 internet shutdowns. Can citizens win back the freedom to connect?

Controls on personal freedoms: shutting down the internet

• Governments can restrict people's freedom to take part in global interactions: blocking platforms or websites, censoring content, switching off the internet.
• The #KeepItOn coalition recorded at least 313 internet shutdowns in 52 countries in 2025, up from 304 in 2024.
• Myanmar had at least 95, the most of any country for the second year.

Controls in conflict

• "For the third year, conflict was the lead trigger": 125 conflict-related shutdowns across 14 countries, 40% of the total.
• Armed groups can impose controls too. In Sudan in February 2024, a #KeepItOn coalition statement says, "the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized control over internet service providers (ISPs) in Khartoum", and a telecommunications blackout followed.
• Governments usually give security or public order as the reason (screens 10.5 and 10.9).

Civil society and international-mindedness

• Civil society: organisations outside government and business, such as NGOs, unions, faith groups and campaign networks.
• International-mindedness: seeing issues from more than one country's perspective, and acting across borders.
• Access Now launched the #KeepItOn campaign in 2016; its coalition is "a global network of over 370 organizations from 106 countries".

Example 1: Nigeria suspends Twitter, 2021

• On 4 June 2021 Nigeria suspended Twitter. Days earlier, Twitter had deleted a post from President Buhari's account and suspended the account for 12 hours, saying the post broke its rules on abusive behaviour.
• In court, the government justified the suspension by "relying on the corporate existence of Nigeria citing the case of END SARS protest", protests it alleged Twitter's founder had sponsored, and argued that freedom of expression "is not absolute".
• Twitter was blocked on most major networks, and the government "threatened to prosecute Nigerians accessing Twitter through circumvention tools".

Nigeria: the legal challenge

• SERAP, a Nigerian NGO, and other applicants took Nigeria to the ECOWAS Court of Justice, the regional court of the Economic Community of West African States.
• On 22 June 2021 the court ordered Nigeria to "refrain from prosecuting any media outfit or citizens using Twitter", but declined to order the ban lifted.

Nigeria: how it ended

• Twitter became accessible again in January 2022. The authorities said Twitter had agreed to conditions, including opening an office in Nigeria; "the company, however, has not acknowledged agreeing to these conditions".
• On 14 July 2022 the court declared the suspension "unlawful and inconsistent with the provisions of Article 9 of the ACHPR and Article 19 of the ICCPR" (the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights).
• It found no "specific law or order of a competent Court" behind the suspension, and ordered Nigeria to lift it and "guarantee a non-repetition".

Example 2: Turkey blocks Wikipedia, 2017

• On 29 April 2017, Turkey's internet regulator blocked all language versions of Wikipedia (Wikimedia Foundation).
• Turkey's Constitutional Court records that the block was made under Article 8/A of Law no. 5651, after two articles described Turkey as one of the major external actors in Syria's civil war and claimed it supported opposition forces, including terrorist organisations.
• The stated grounds were "maintaining national security and public order"; a court rejecting a challenge said the content "tarnished the State's reputation".

Turkey: how it ended

• The Wikimedia Foundation and some Wikipedia users took the case to Turkey's Constitutional Court.
• On 26 December 2019 the court found a violation of freedom of expression (Article 26 of the Constitution). The lower courts had not shown a pressing need for the restriction, and an indefinite block of the whole site was disproportionate. It ordered a re-trial.
• The judgment was published on 15 January 2020, and that day an Ankara court ruled to lift the ban: more than two and a half years after the block began.

Evaluating challenges to restricted freedoms (AO3)

• Courts set principles: in Nigeria, limits on expression must be "expressly and specifically provided for by legislation"; in Turkey, a blanket, indefinite block was disproportionate. But they act slowly.
• Timing differs: Nigeria restored access after announcing that the company had agreed to conditions, before the ruling; Turkey restored access after the judgment.
• Workarounds: circumvention tools keep some people connected, at a legal risk.
• Networks: coalitions in over 100 countries document shutdowns and keep them in the news.

Synthesis: acceptance and resistance across scales (AO3)

• Forms: protest (Cochabamba), consumer networks (Slow Food), votes (Switzerland), state policy (Indonesia), courts (ECOWAS, Turkey's Constitutional Court).
• Scales: local (a city's water), national (a referendum, an export ban, a constitutional court), regional (ECOWAS), global (WTO, #KeepItOn).
• Acceptance and resistance coexist: the same Swiss electorate accepted one immigration limit and rejected two; Nigeria's government blocked Twitter, then let it return.

How Unit 5 is examined (Paper 3)

• Paper 3 is HL only: 1 hour, 28 marks, 20% of the HL grade.
• There is a choice of three extended-answer questions, one on each HL unit. Each has two parts: Part A (12 marks) and Part B (16 marks).
• Unit 5 is examined only here, so revise it for depth and for links to other units.

Part A: the top band (10–12 marks)

• "The response addresses all aspects of the question; the analysis is explained using evidence integrated in the paragraphs, and it is well structured".
• Detailed evidence (facts, statistics, examples or theories) is integrated in sentences; definitions are clear and correct.
• In Part A, "No evidence of synthesis or evaluation is expected": explain well, rather than evaluate at length.

Part B: the top band (13–16 marks)

• The analysis is "explained and evaluated", and "Synthesis and evaluation is required at this level".
• Links to "(sub)topics from the guide are explained and supported by the evidence", for example from microfinance to the diaspora's remittances, or from glocalization to resistance.
• Your view is linked to the evidence, "including critical analysis of the relative certainty of evidence used, describing other perspectives", as with Cochabamba's two rate figures or the two diaspora totals.

The big ideas

• Development is multidimensional. The SDGs set criteria; the HDI and GII measure parts of it, with limits of validity and reliability (Guyana and Sri Lanka).
• Reserved places narrowed some gaps (India's rural local councils, Brazil's quotas). Closing the Gap shows mixed progress: 4 of 19 targets met or on track (2026).
• Microfinance and Fairtrade help modestly. The binding Accord fixed most hazards found, but only 401 of 1,392 factories were fully remediated by March 2022.
• Diversity narrows globally (languages) and widens locally (London). Diffusion runs both ways; glocalization and hybridity mix cultures (KFC in China).
• Diasporas change both ends (India: remittances, Leicester, yoga).
• Resistance takes many forms and scales: protest (Cochabamba), votes (Switzerland), export bans (Indonesia), courts (Nigeria, Turkey).

Final screen. Score, the mission list ticked, and "Next: test yourself in the Verify stage" (links to the Verify quiz).