Liquid Marbles: An Emerging Technology Could Solve Carbon Capture and Storage Problems

So what’s stopping us?

February 3, 2022 by Sustainability Times 


By The Conversation

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been touted, again and again, as one of the critical technologies that could help Australia reach its climate targets, and features heavily in the federal government’s plan for net-zero emissions by 2050.

CCS is generally when emissions are captured at the source, such as from a coal-fired power station, trucked to a remote location and stored underground.

But critics say investing in CCS means betting on technology that’s not yet proven to work at scale. Indeed, technology-wise, the design of effective carbon-capturing materials, both solid and liquid, has historically been a challenging task.

So could it ever be a viable solution to the fossil fuel industry’s carbon dioxide emissions?

Emerging research shows “liquid marbles” – tiny droplets coated with nanoparticles – could possibly address current challenges in materials used to capture carbon. And our modelling research, published yesterday, brings us a big step closer to making this futuristic technology a reality.

Issues with carbon capture

Under its Technology Investment Roadmap, the Australian government considers CCS a priority low-emissions technology, and is investing A$300 million over ten years to develop it.

But the efficacy and efficiency of CCS has long been controversial due to its high-operational costs and scaling-up issues for a wider application.

An ongoing problem, more specifically, is the effectiveness of materials used to capture the CO₂, such as absorbents. One example is called “amine scrubbing”, a method used since 1930 to separate, for instance, CO₂ from natural gas and hydrogen.

The problems with amine scrubbing include its high costs, corrosion-related issues and high losses in materials and energy. Liquid marbles can overcome some of these challenges.

This technology can be almost invisible to the naked eye, with some marbles under 1 millimetre in diameter. The liquid it holds – most commonly water or alcohol – is on the scale of microlitres (a microlitre is one thousandth of a millilitre).

The marbles have an outer layer of nanoparticles that form a flexible and porous shell, preventing the liquid within from leaking out. Thanks to this armour, they can behave like flexible, stretchable and soft solids, with a liquid core.

What do marbles have to do with CCS?

Liquid marbles have many unique abilities: they can float, they roll smoothly, and they can be stacked on top of each other.

Other desirable properties include resistance to contamination, low-friction and flexible manipulation, making them appealing for applications such as gas capture, drug delivery and even as miniature bio-reactors.

In the context of CO₂ capture, their ability to selectively interact with gases, liquids and solids is most crucial. A key advantage of using liquid marbles is their size and shape, because thousands of spherical particles only millimetres in size can directly be installed in large reactors.

Gas from the reactor hits the marbles, where it clings to the nanoparticle outer shell (in a process called “adsorption”). The gas then reacts with the liquid within, separating the CO₂ and capturing it inside the marble. Later, we can take out this CO₂ and store it underground, and then recycle the liquid for future processing.

This process can be a more time and cost-efficient way of capturing CO₂ due to, for example, the liquid (and potentially solid) recycling, as well as the marbles’ high mechanical strength, reactivity, sorption rates and long-term stability.
So what’s stopping us?

Despite recent progress, many properties of liquid marbles remain elusive. What’s more, the only way to test liquid marbles is currently through physical experiments conducted in a laboratory.

Physical experiments have their limitations, such as the difficulty to measure the surface tension and surface area, which are important indicators of the marble’s reactivity and stability.

In this context, our new computational modelling can improve our understanding of these properties, and can help overcome the use of costly and time-intensive experiment-only procedures.

Another challenge is developing practical, rigorous and large-scale approaches to manipulate liquid marble arrays within the reactor. Further computational modelling we’re currently working on will aim to analyse the three-dimensional changes in the shapes and dynamics of liquid marbles, with better convenience and accuracy.

This will open up new horizons for a myriad of engineering applications, including CO₂ capture.

Beyond carbon capture

Research on liquid marbles started off as just an inquisitive topic around 20 years ago and, since then, ongoing research has made it a sought-after platform with applications beyond carbon capture.

This cutting-edge technology could not only change how we solve climate problems, but environmental and medical problems, too.

Magnetic liquid marbles, for example, have demonstrated their potential in biomedical procedures, such as drug delivery, due to their ability to be opened and closed using magnets outside the body. Other applications of liquid marbles include gas sensing, acidity sensing and pollution detection.

With more modelling and experiments, the next logical step would be to scale up this technology for mainstream use.

Australia’s second-richest person is suing Facebook over the use of his image in scams


BY JAMES FARRELL
FEBRUARY 03 2022

An Australian billionaire launched a legal case against Facebook Inc. today, alleging that the company didn’t do enough to prevent the spread of scam ads with his face in them appearing on the platform.

The billionaire in question, mining magnate Andrew Forrest (pictured), says Facebook breached Australia’s anti-money laundering laws regarding the spread of cryptocurrency scams. Forrest, who is the chairman of the Fortescue Metals Group, accused Facebook of being “criminally reckless” in not taking down clickbait cryptocurrency ads, or at least not taking them down fast enough.

His face appeared in some of those ads, as did those of other well-known celebrities, which as usual promised that initial small investments in a certain digital currency could lead to great wealth. The lawsuit, which was filed at the Magistrates Court of Western Australia, says Facebook “failed to create controls or a corporate culture to prevent its systems being used to commit crime.”

How it works is that people see a targeted ad on their timeline and if they click the ad, they’re taken to a website that contains a bogus story about an investment. Since most people who use Facebook have likely seen one, you could say they are not rare. The website will then ask for a small investment of perhaps $250, but then the person will be asked to put more money in.

The Guardian reported that an elderly woman in Australia fell for this, initially investing a small amount. This original ad did indeed contain the face of Forrest. The woman eventually lost everything she had, about $80,000, and was unable to get the cash back. Another person lost a whopping $670,000, with the ad again showing Forrest’s face and a fake endorsement. Forrest said Facebook “knowingly profits” from such ads.

“I’m concerned about innocent Australians being scammed through clickbait advertising on social media,” he said in a statement today. “I’m acting here for Australians, but this is happening all over the world.”

“We take a multifaceted approach to stop these ads, we work not just to detect and reject the ads themselves but also block advertisers from our services and, in some cases, take court action to enforce our policies,” Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc. said in a statement.

Photo: Mines and Money/Flickr

Is Momentum Shifting Toward a Ban on Behavioral Advertising?

Published on February 3, 2022

Above: Photo / Adobe Stock

Data-driven personalized ads are the lifeblood of the internet. To a growing number of lawmakers, they’re also nefarious

Earlier this month, the European Union Parliament passed sweeping new rules aimed at limiting how companies and websites can track people online to target them with advertisements.

Targeted advertising based on people’s online behavior has long been the business model that underwrites the internet. It allows advertisers to use the mass of personal data collected by Meta, Google, and other tech companies as people browse the web to serve ads to users by sorting them into tens of thousands of hyperspecific categories.

But behavioral advertising is also controversial. Critics argue that the practice enables discrimination, potentially only offering certain groups of people economic opportunities. They also say serving people ads based on what big tech companies assume they’re interested in potentially leaves people vulnerable to scams, fraud, and disinformation. Notoriously, the consulting firm Cambridge Analytica used personal data gleaned from Facebook profiles to target certain Americans with pro-Trump messages and certain Britons with pro-Brexit ads.

The 2016 U.S. presidential election and the Brexit vote, according to Jan Penfrat, a senior policy adviser at European digital rights group EDRi, were “wake-up calls” to the Europe Union to crack down. Lawmakers in the U.S. are also looking into ways to regulate behavioral advertising.
What Will the European Parliament’s New Regulations Do?

There’s been a long back and forth about how much to crack down on targeted advertising in the Digital Services Act (DSA), the EU’s big legislative package aimed at regulating Big Tech.

Everything from a total ban on behavioral advertising to more modest changes around ad transparency has at some point been on the table.

On Jan. 19, the Parliament approved its final position on the bill. Included is a ban on targeted advertising to minors, a ban on tracking sensitive categories like religion, political affiliation, or sexual orientation, and a requirement for websites to provide “other fair and reasonable options” for access if users opt out of their data being tracked for targeted advertising.

The bill also includes a ban on so-called dark patterns —“design choices that steer people into decisions they may not have made under normal conditions—such as the endless clicks it takes to opt out of being tracked by cookies on many websites.”
watch video

That measure is critical, according to Alexandre de Streel, the academic director of the think tank Centre on Regulation in Europe, because of how tech companies responded to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the EU’s 2016 tech regulation.

In a study on online advertising for the Parliament’s crucial Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, de Streel and nearly a dozen other experts documented how “dark patterns” had become a major tool used by websites and platforms to persuade users to provide consent for sharing their data. Their recommendations for the DSA—which included more robust enforcement of the GDPR, stricter rules about obtaining consent, and the dark patterns ban—were included in the final bill.

“We are going in the right direction if we better enforce the GDPR and add these amendments on ‘dark patterns,’ ” De Streel told The Markup.

German member of European Parliament Patrick Breyer joined with more than 20 other MEPs and more than 50 public and private organizations last year to form the Tracking Free Ads Coalition. Though its push for a total ban on targeted advertising failed, the coalition was behind many of the more stringent restrictions. Breyer told The Markup the new rules were “a major achievement.”

“The Parliament stopped short of prohibiting surveillance advertising, but giving people a true choice [of whether to be targeted] is a major step forward, and I think the vast majority of people will use this option,” he said.

The EU will address digital political advertising in a separate bill that could potentially be more stringent around targeting and using personal data.

Despite passing the European Parliament, the DSA is far from settled. Due to the EU’s unique law-making process, the legislation must now be negotiated with the European Commission and the bloc’s 27 countries. The member states, as represented by the European Council, have adopted an official position considerably less aggressive—opting for only improved transparency on targeted advertising—and, according to Breyer, are “traditionally very open to [industry] lobbying.”

Whether the DSA’s wins against targeted advertising survive this process “will depend to a large degree on public pressure,” said Breyer.
How Has Big Tech Responded?

So far, Big Tech companies have publicly tread lightly in response to the European push to limit targeted advertising.

In response to The Markup’s request for comment, Google spokesperson Karl Ryan said that Google supports the DSA and that it shares “the goal of MEPs to continue to make the internet safer for everyone….”

“We will now take some time to analyze the final Parliament text to understand how it could impact us and our different users,” he said.

Meta did not respond to a request for comment.

But privately, over the last two years, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft have ramped up lobbying efforts in Brussels, spending more than $20 million in 2020.

The advertising industry, meanwhile, has been public in its opposition. In a statement on the recent vote, Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe director of public policy Greg Mroczkowski urged policymakers to reconsider.

“The use of personal data in advertising is already tightly regulated by existing legislation,” Mroczkowski said, apparently referencing the GDPR, which regulates data privacy in the EU generally. He further noted that the new rules “risk undermining” existing law and “the entire ad-supported digital economy.”

On Wednesday, the Belgian Data Protection Authority found IAB Europe–which developed and administered the system for companies to obtain consent for behavioral advertising while complying with GDPR—in violation of that law. In particular, the authority found that the pop-ups that ask for people’s consent to process their data as they visit websites failed to meet GDPR’s standards for transparency and consent. The pop-up posed “great risks to the fundamental rights” of Europeans, the ruling said. The authority ordered IAB to delete data collected under its Transparency and Consent Framework and has six months to comply.

“This decision is momentous,” Johnny Ryan, a senior fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, told The Markup. “It means that digital rights are real. And there is a significance for the United States, too, because the IAB has introduced the same consent spam for the CCPA and CPRA [California Consumer Privacy Act and California Privacy Rights Act].”

In a statement to Tech Crunch, IAB Europe said it “reject[s] the finding that we are a data controller” in the context of its consent framework and is “considering all options with respect to a legal challenge.” Further, it said it is working on an “action plan to be executed within the prescribed six months” to bring it within GDPR compliance.

Google and Meta may be preparing for whichever way the wind is blowing.

Google is developing a supposedly less-invasive targeted advertising system, which stores general topics of interest in a user’s browser while excluding sensitive categories like race. Meta is testing a protocol to target users without using tracking cookies.

A handful of European companies like internet security company Avast, search engine DuckDuckGo (which is a contributor to The Markup), and publisher Axel Springer see tighter rules around data privacy as a means to push the industry toward contextual ads or tech that matches ads based on a website’s content, and to therefore break the Google-Meta duopoly over online advertising.

What’s Happening in the U.S.?

On Jan. 18, Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) introduced legislation to Congress to prohibit advertisers from using personal data to target advertisements—particularly using data about a person’s race, gender, and religion. Exceptions would be made for “broad” location information and contextual advertising.

“The hoarding of people’s personal data not only abuses privacy, but also drives the spread of misinformation, domestic extremism, racial division, and violence,” Booker said in a statement announcing the bill in January.

While there is bipartisan desire to rein in Big Tech, there is no consensus on how to do it. The bill most likely to pass the divided Congress is designed to stop Amazon, Apple, Google, and other tech giants from privileging their own products. Congressional action on targeted advertising does not appear likely.

Still, it is possible the Federal Trade Commission will take action.

Last summer, President Biden issued an executive order directing the FTC to use its rulemaking authority to curtail “unfair data collection and surveillance practices.” In December, the FTC sought public comment for a petition by nonprofit Accountable Tech to develop new data privacy rules.

Meanwhile, many U.S. digital rights activists, such as nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, are hopeful that new rules in Europe will force changes globally, as occurred after the GDPR. “The EU Parliament’s position, if it becomes law, could change the rules of the game for all platforms,” wrote EFF’s international policy director Christopher Schmon.

It’s still early days, but many see the tide turning against targeted advertising. These types of conversations, according to Penfrat at EDRi, were unthinkable a few years ago.

“The fact that a ban on surveillance-based advertising has been brought into the mainstream is a huge success,” he said.

This article was originally published on The Markup By: Harrison Jacobs and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

 

Priscila E. Coronado Elected as Harvard Law Review’s First Latina President

The Harvard Law Review elected Priscila E. Coronado as the first Latina president in its 136-year history. By Awnit Singh Marta

By Anne M. Brandes and Elizabeth K. Roosevelt, Crimson Staff Writers

a day ago

The Harvard Law Review elected second-year law student Priscila E. Coronado as its president late last month, making her the first Latina to hold the role in the journal’s 136-year history.

A California native, Coronado completed a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of California, Los Angeles, and worked at the Disability Rights Legal Center in Los Angeles before arriving in Cambridge to study law. Coronado wrote in an email that she chose to scratch plans to attend medical school after discovering a passion for reading and writing.

Coronado wrote that she joined the Law Review to pursue those interests and meet like-minded peers.

“I got involved with HLR because I knew that I loved reading, writing, and research,” she wrote. “I also thought it would be a great way to meet others who are interested in legal scholarship and that it would be an intellectually stimulating experience.”

In addition to her involvement in the Law Review, Coronado serves as a board member of First Class, an organization for first-generation law students, and La Alianza, a group geared towards Latinx students. She previously worked at the Law School’s Education Law Clinic and currently works with the Child Advocacy Program Clinic.

Coronado wrote that she plans to pursue litigation, focused on education law and disability rights, after finishing her law degree.

She added that she believes her experiences growing up in an immigrant family are integral to her legal outlook.

“I don’t want to downplay the achievement or the tangible way that growing up in a two-Mexican-immigrant, working-class household has shaped my perspective of the law,” she wrote in her email. “They are fundamental to the editorial perspective I bring.”

At the same time, Coronado wrote that she hoped her historic election would not be used to serve a “model-minority narrative.”

“I believe with every ounce of my soul that there are countless other Latinas who are equally incisive in their logic and reasoning but will never get an opportunity like this because of something as out-of-their-control as where they were born,” she wrote.

Coronado’s election comes one year after another historic first — her predecessor Hasaan Shahawy ’16 was elected as the Law Review’s first Muslim President. Only four years prior in 2017, the Law Review elected ImeIme A. Umana ’14 as its first Black female president.

Reflecting on the journal’s efforts to diversify its ranks, Coronado wrote that the publication has made “important progress” but still has work to do.

“I’m hopeful that we will take further steps in my year as President,” she wrote. “I’m convinced that diversity is essential to our mission of publishing rigorous scholarship.”

Coronado also wrote that she hopes to maintain the Law Review’s quality during her presidency.

“My goal for this year is to keep the Review running as smoothly as it always does,” Coronado wrote. “That would be a victory, since the Review’s normal operations put it at the vanguard of legal scholarship written in the United States.”

Biden signs executive order boosting rights of 200,000 construction workers
Reuters
February 03, 2022


By Nandita Bose

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Joe Biden will sign an executive order on Friday requiring "project labor agreements" in federal construction projects over $35 million, a potential boost to construction workers and unions that negotiate these deals, and a shift the administration says will speed up building times.

The order will apply to $262 billion in federal construction contracting and impact nearly 200,000 workers, according to a draft of the executive order seen by Reuters.

Project labor agreements are collective bargaining agreements between building trade unions and contractors, which set wages, employment conditions, and dispute resolution on specific projects. Democratic presidents in the past have typically supported applying such agreements to the massive U.S. federal contracting budget, while Republican presidents have rescinded them.

The order, which will go into effect immediately, comes on the heels of a $1 trillion infrastructure bill signed into law by Biden that invests in the country's roads, ports and bridges.

Much of that money will flow through federal agencies to states and local governments. The new executive order excludes projects funded by grants to non-federal agencies, a senior administration official said, adding that will make up for a bulk of the projects under the bill. But it will apply to billions of other federal spending on waterways, military bases and other areas.

Biden will visit Ironworkers Local 5 in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, Friday to sign this executive order, the White House has said. Details on the contents of the order have not been previously reported.

The U.S. construction industry - including workers, owners, developers, contractors - has been one of the hardest hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, due to a slowdown of available goods and labor and the termination of entire projects.

Biden has vowed to strengthen unions and increase membership in the United States after years of steady decline, and to increase salaries for hourly workers in construction, health care and other jobs.

"Contractors who offer lower wages or hire less qualified workers will need to raise their standards to compete with other high-wage, high-quality companies," the order says. Earlier executive action by Biden requires federal contractors in new or extended contracts to pay a $15 per hour minimum wage.

Biden's move also found support from some contractors.

"This streamlines the negotiation process and gives employers access to a highly skilled pool of craftworkers," Daniel Hogan, chief executive of the Association of Union Constructors, that represents 1800 contractor companies, told Reuters.

Tiger Farms Doing Little to End Wild Poaching, Vietnam Consumer Study Shows

Tiger farming, where the animals are raised exclusively for commercial purposes, first sprang up in China in the 1980s in an effort to reduce poaching of wild tigers.

By Carolyn Cowan
February 3, 2022 

Mongabay

More than 8,000 tigers are kept in captivity in China, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam in commercial facilities ranging from residential basements to licensed venues operating under the guise of tourism, and battery-farm operations holding hundreds of tigers.
Evidence shows that captive tigers and their body parts enter the legal and illegal trade, where they perpetuate the demand for tiger-based traditional medicines and decorative curios, primarily in China and Vietnam.

A new study that investigates the motivations of consumers of “tiger bone glue” in Vietnam reveals that consumers prefer products from wild tigers and would carry on purchasing illegal wild products even if a legal farmed trade existed.

The findings back up calls from conservationists and wildlife trade experts to phase out tiger farming entirely since it doesn’t alleviate pressure on wild tigers, and only encourages the consumption of tiger parts.

Acting on a tipoff, Vietnamese police pried open a basement door in Nghe An province and flicked on the light switch. Videos from the August 2021 raid show officers filing down an aisle past cage after cage of adult tigers. Starved of daylight, malnourished and raised as livestock in concrete cells, each tiger was destined for slaughter to supply skins, bones and other body parts to the illegal wildlife trade. One clip focuses through vertical iron bars onto a skinny striped body, hunkered in a corner, lungs heaving and eyes dilated from the commotion and sudden rush of tungsten light.

In total, the authorities arrested four suspects and confiscated 17 adult tigers from two home basements. But this wasn’t an isolated incident; evidence shows that tiger farming to satisfy mainly Chinese and Vietnamese demand for tiger-based traditional medicines and decorative curios is proliferating across Asia. In Nghe An alone, experts estimate that dozens more tigers remain in similar holdings.

While only 3,900 tigers are estimated to remain in the wild globally, a 2017 investigation by U.K.-based nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) calculated that more than 8,000 tigers are kept in captivity in China, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. Over the past decade, around 40% of tigers seized from illegal trade were of captive origin, according to the report.

Tiger farming, where the animals are raised exclusively for commercial purposes, first sprang up in China in the 1980s in an effort to reduce poaching of wild tigers. Gradually spreading to nearby countries, breeding facilities now range from small-scale illegal setups, like the basements in Nghe An, to government-backed, licensed venues operating under the guise of tourism, and battery-farm operations holding hundreds of tigers.

Wild tigers in demand

Now, a new study that investigates the motivations of “tiger bone glue” consumers in Vietnam adds to the body of evidence that demonstrates that tiger farming cannot be legitimized as a means to alleviate pressure on wild populations. Tiger bone glue, or cao hổ as it’s known locally, is the primary driver of the illegal tiger trade in Vietnam. It’s made by boiling down tiger skeletons to a viscous paste that users then infuse with wine. Although medically unsubstantiated, the mixture is believed to treat rheumatism and boost virility.

Through interviews with 228 buyers and potential users of tiger bone glue, researchers found that consumers overwhelmingly favored products derived from wild tigers rather than farmed ones.

“Most of the buyers we interviewed prefer tiger bone glue from wild tigers over farmed ones because they believe wild bones are more potent,” Hoai Nam Dang Vu, a doctoral candidate at the University of Copenhagen and lead author of the new study, told Mongabay.

As with many illegal wildlife products, tiger bone glue is considered a high-status luxury product, popular in an affluent stratum of society that is “part of a patriarchal hierarchy and notoriously averse to investigation,” Nam said. To engage with these unapproachable individuals, he and his research assistants had to earn their trust by learning to “speak their language.”

Driving a borrowed $300,000 Porsche and primed with newly acquired knowledge of real estate markets, luxury watches, antiques and Cuban cigars, Nam and his team began to infiltrate exclusive sports clubs and luxury condominiums in Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi, to converse with government officials, business owners, and members of the upper echelons of society, many of whom routinely use tiger bone glue.

Crucially, when the researchers asked consumers to choose between bone glue from wild tigers and from a hypothetical legal and regulated farmed tiger trade, one-third of consumers said they would still purchase bone glue derived from tigers poached from the wild, irrespective of legality or price.

The findings, published in the Journal for Nature Conservation, lend credence to calls from conservationists and wildlife trade experts for the governments of tiger-farming countries to phase out the practice. They say it perpetuates the demand for tiger products and removes the stigma associated with their use. Furthermore, as the new study illustrates, the preference among consumers for products derived from wild specimens means wild tigers continue to be killed by poachers.

“All tiger farming has done is increase the accessibility and acceptability of tiger parts in trade, perpetuated desirability and stimulated demand, and made a lot of money for criminal enterprises and wealthy business persons,” Debbie Banks, campaign leader for tigers and wildlife crime at EIA, told Mongabay in an email.

The recent extinction of tigers in countries that tolerate tiger farming, such as Laos and Vietnam, is also a stark reminder that farming does not ease pressure on wild populations.

Culture of minimal risk

The new study is the first to engage with a significant number of actual tiger bone buyers and potential consumers in Vietnam, according to Nam, whereas prior studies have been based largely on interviews with the general public.

Interviewees shared their consumer preferences candidly, Nam said, since possession of tiger bone glue carries minimal risk in Vietnam and traders and consumers consider themselves untouchable. It’s notoriously difficult to identify tiger DNA within bone glue, so prosecutions for possession are rare. Instead, authorities prioritize crackdowns on suspects caught directly trading tigers or their parts, as in Nghe An.

“There are a lot of loopholes and grey areas in current legislation in Vietnam that tiger product traders can abuse to sell the final product,” Nam said. “Some traders have even shown me tiger bone glue from their fridge … without any fear of [legal] sanctions.”

The profile of tiger bone glue buyers from the study will be critical to design effective campaigns that shift consumer behavior toward sustainable medical alternatives, Nam said. Buyers tend to be middle-aged, affluent and well-connected, with a penchant for luxury goods and traditional medicines, and have knowledge that helps them circumvent legal sanctions.

“Campaigns should be well designed and based on these insights into the actual buyers of tiger glue, not the general public, because this product is only coveted by a specific group of consumers — it is like Porsche or Rolls-Royce,” Nam said.
Governments must take action

While behavior change campaigns and phasing out tiger farming are solutions that could help wild tigers over the long term, an immediate audit of all tigers currently kept in captivity is vital, according to experts. DNA profiling and stripe pattern databases would identify the source of any tigers that end up in the trade so that the tiger facilities feeding the demand can be detected. These measures have been promised by authorities in tiger-farming countries for years, yet they remain to be implemented.

Alongside captive-tiger databases, Banks said that recovery of wild tiger populations will depend on governments in tiger-farming and -trade countries taking action to strengthen conservation laws and wildlife crime enforcement, and to clean up policies that facilitate commercial breeding of tigers in contravention of CITES regulations. “Mixed messages and a lack of leadership from the top have meant that not only are wild and captive tigers feeding demand, but other big cats that are being passed off to consumers as ‘tiger’ are at risk,” she said.

As host to the U.N. Biodiversity Conference in Kunming in April 2022, China has a unique opportunity to lead the way in phasing out tiger farming and ending the tiger trade, Banks said. She also called on tiger range governments to apply lessons learned from parts of the world where wild populations are beginning to recover, such as India and Nepal, where tigers are not treated as commodities and commercial breeding is prohibited.

“We are seeing signs of wild tiger population recovery in India,” she said, “where strong conservation laws, deep-rooted cultural connections to the tiger and incredible tolerance among those living with tigers have been complemented by sustained government investment, including in inter-agency, intelligence-led enforcement to disrupt some of the more persistent criminal networks involved in trafficking.”

—

This post was previously published on mongabay.com and under a Creative Commons license CC BY-ND 4.0.

Essential oils conquered medicine cabinets across the West. But do they work?

Loyal customers keep buying products while essential oils skeptics scoff. But the question lingers: What does the science say?

By Eric Schulzke Feb 3, 2022,

Zoë Petersen


Don’t look now, but deep in your eyelids you likely have tiny mites called demodex.

Don’t worry, they (probably) won’t hurt you.

They’re usually benign and sometimes even beneficial, says Keyur Savla, a Ph.D. candidate in vision science at the University of Alabama, as they can perform dead-cell cleanup. But these microscopic creatures also cause serious irritation and infections if they proliferate, which is more common among immune-compromised patients.

Despite years of training in vision science, Savla hadn’t heard of demodex until his Ph.D. adviser began reviewing demodex treatments for a prestigious British publisher. Savla assisted in the research, spending over a year parsing through existing studies, culminating in a July 2020 article in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, titled “Tea Tree Oil for Demodex Blepharitis.”

Yes, tea tree oil.

As in, an essential oil — those tiny dark glass bottles of aromatics found in nearly every medicine cabinet along swaths of the I-15 corridor, where essential oils have become a source of good scents, wealth and some healthy skepticism. Critics say the products are overpriced and oversold; boosters swear by them. But many others simply wonder whether there’s evidence that the products work.

Two of the industry’s biggest players: Young Living and doTERRA, each of which do well over $1 billion in annual sales, are headquartered in the Beehive State. Given the volume of sales, there’s little question about the product’s popularity — each month thousands of homes are continually infused, suffused and amused by a potpourri of some 90 different essential oils products sold in 10 mL vials. But skeptics say the science to support the broadest claims of these oils has been elusive at best.

Suddenly, though, essential oils are popping up in legitimate medical research reviews. It’s worth asking: Have essential oils arrived?

Interviews with medical professionals and industry experts, along with hundreds of pages of research and marketing materials, reveal a growing, and in some cases promising, scientific effort to understand what if any benefits are derived from essential oils. Currently, many of the hopes and claims that are marketed still appear to outpace scientific support. Whether these two realities can be reconciled remains to be seen.

That essential oils have “arrived” at hospitals across America is now a matter of record. No, they’re not curing COVID-19, but major American research hospitals, from Harvard to Stanford, are in fact using aromatic oils as part of a growing push toward “integrative medicine.”

The aim is to incorporate promising nontraditional methods into more mainstream medical settings, says Ana Baldioli, a physical therapist and the Inpatient Integrative Medicine Coordinator at UCLA Health in Los Angeles.

“Hospitals are stressful,” Baldioli says. “So we try to engage the ‘parasympathetic’ nervous system, which helps the body rest and digest, to counter the ‘sympathetic’ system, which triggers fight or flight.”

At UCLA Health, integrative medicine runs a gamut from therapeutic massage, energy healing (Reiki), traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture, music, animal therapy, essential oils and more.

UCLA Health provides three essential oils at every nursing station: lavender, lemon and peppermint, chosen for their popularity and lack of side-effects. The oils are not diffused into the air, Baldioli explains, but rather put on a tissue or cotton ball.

In explaining the role essential oils play, Baldioli cites an example of a reluctant patient who needed a PICC line inserted in her vein. The stress was too much until she was offered a back massage, followed by soothing music, lavender oil and a foot massage during the procedure.

Another case involved an older man with cardiac trouble who was struggling to sleep, his heart racing at 120 bpm. “They played music and gave him lavender oil,” Baldioli says, “and within a few minutes his heart rate had dropped to 80 and he was snoring.”

Baldioli says UCLA practitioners are careful not to make medical claims regarding the results. And the examples Baldioli cites are anecdotal, not clinical. Anytime she cites possible benefits, Baldioli is quick to use the phrase “patients report.”

Some tools used in integrative medicine programs, like Reiki massage, are at least as controversial as essential oils: research is disputed, and skeptics believe the placebo effect is doing some (if not all) of the heavy lifting.

But Baldioli thinks placebo would be a feature, not a bug. “We want the placebo effect,” Baldioli tells me. “If we can leverage the power of the mind, give someone something to believe, we’ll use it.”

A woman fills a capsule with essential oils at her home in Santa Clara on Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2019. Ravell Call, Deseret News Purchase Photo

Essential oils are volatile chemicals. They release from a leaf, flower or bark when plants are heated by steam. The oils are “hydrophobic,” so when the steam cools into water, the evaporated oils separate for capture.

The term “essential oils” has been widely used since the 1750s, but the term is still easily misunderstood. It doesn’t mean that the oils are “essential,” as in indispensable, but rather that they are the “essence” (i.e., smell or taste) of the plant or tree from which they’re distilled.

Steam distillation is an old art, probably originally spreading from Persia and the Middle East. In 1556 a German physician named Walter Reiff wrote that lavender oil “is commonly brought to us from the French Provence, filled into small bottles, and sold at a high price.”

He could have been describing modern day Utah County.

Those tiny bottles were used medicinally at a time when bad air — “miasma” — was thought to cause various diseases. No surprise, then, that aromatic herbs and oils, which at the very least do smell good, were viewed as cures or preventions. Much later, in the 1880s, germ theory displaced ideas about miasma.

But the science and industry of plant aromatics was just getting started.

In 1871 the first major essential oils company, Fritzsche Brothers, was founded in New York City, and in the 1920s, a Fritzsche executive by the name of Ernest Guenther began decades of research and world travel, culminating in 1947 in his six-volume “The Essential Oils.”

Guenther’s contribution drives home the chemistry of essential oils. That they are emitted by plants with pleasant odors can mask the fact that these are, first and always, chemicals. If these oils have any salubrious effects beyond placebo, it will be because of these chemicals.

The chemical in tea tree oil that fights demodex, for instance, is “terpinen-4-ol.”

Guenther’s work remains a classic, but a 1949 review in the journal “Nature” hits at a point that still resonates: on the question of what actual function these oils serve, the reviewer notes “too many tentative solutions … for any of them to seem very satisfying.”

In the intervening years, essential oils have found their way into foods, cleaning supplies, fragrances and cosmetics. Fritzsche Brothers prospered, and in 1990, Fritzsche’s successor company was bought by Givaudan, a Swiss corporation, which remains the world’s dominant player in flavors and fragrances with annual sales of around $7 billion.

As the plodding science drags against soaring consumer hopes and revenue demands, some essential oil companies have overplayed their hand.

Sellers have been warned by The Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission that they cannot “advertise that a product can prevent, treat, or cure human disease” without offering “reliable scientific evidence, including, when appropriate, well-controlled human clinical studies.”

Multilevel-marketing firms and their distributors may be held accountable for making misleading or unsubstantiated product claims. Some essential oil companies try to walk the line between marketing and science by deploying bendable phrases that imply potential benefits, but avoid asserting claims. They often use phrases like “said to” or “thought to” or “often used for” in marketing materials.

But sometimes a company will just let ‘er rip.

One smaller firm, for example, begins its web description of Angelica Root Oil cautiously enough with “has a reputation for” and “in China is used to,” but then suddenly says the oil has the ability to “clean infections, fight viruses, assist with respiratory ailments, help with indigestion, regulate menstruation, and aid sleep.”

Oh, and it might also “purify the blood.”

More prosaically, and more typical of the industry, another company claims its oils help aid against “the threat of seasonal illnesses.”

According to Nicole Stevens, Director of Clinical Research at doTERRA, the “immune support” claims boil down to something very similar to what Ana Baldioli at UCLA told me: They support the immune system by helping convince the brain to “rest and relax” instead of entering “fight or flight” mode.

“Lifestyle experiences (such as sleep, diet, stress, drugs, etc.) can put strain on the immune system,” Stevens said via email, adding that essential oils can “help the body function better overall, including the immune system, through mechanisms like stress reduction and improved sleep.”

Essential oils company do TERRA’s sprawling campus in Pleasant Grove is pictured on Thursday, July 8, 2021. Spenser Heaps, Deseret News Purchase Photo

But others hold out hope that the oils can do much more, and they’re waiting on science to prove it.

One prominent, level-headed optimist is Robert Tisserand, known for his book “Essential Oil Safety: A Guide for Health Care Professionals,” now in its second edition. An icon in the field, he helps direct an eponymous institute in Southern California.

In our conversation, Tisserand cited ongoing research in Brazil looking at how citrus oil may help fight an aggressive brain cancer. He also said essential oils could soon be helping fight antibiotic resistant bacteria, in synergy with traditional antibiotics. The oils may disarm a key weapon the bacteria use to expel the antibiotic, he says.

Tisserand can name many other such examples of ongoing research, some of it promising but still early. He discusses a study showing that diffusing certain oils into the room can lower bacterial, fungal and viral counts. But these, too, have not yet reached the stage of any systematic review. And, on the flip side, not much is known about the impact of diffused oils on indoor air pollution.

But Tisserand also points to a handful of essential oil products that are moving into the medicine cabinet. In Germany, lavender oil is used in oral capsules to fight anxiety, with support in clinical trials. Another essential oil has been commercialized to treat acute bronchitis, also supported by randomized controlled studies.

And then there’s the farm.

“Essential oils are now widely used in raising pigs and chickens and other animals instead of antibiotics,” Tisserand tells me. Typical mixtures might involve “cinnamon, thyme and oregano.”

And what about tea tree oil, the nemesis of our friends, the demodex? While Keyur Savla’s research for Cochrane Review looked at six studies with 562 participants, they concluded that they still lacked high confidence in tea tree oil, although some are willing to recommend it.

Peppermint oil has a similar story. The herb has long been thought to be effective in treating the upper and lower digestive tract, and Tisserand referred to a sizable body of research on the topic.

But not so fast, says Dr. Ellen Stein, a gastroenterologist at Rutgers University. She cites recent controlled research that has shown high placebo effects and only slight benefit from the oil itself. But Stein said she still suggests peppermint to patients. “It’s low cost and low side effects,” she says over the phone. “I advise patients if it works for them, they should use it.”

Settled science, of course, can be a moving target and Stein knows that the shadow of placebo is there. But like Baldioli at UCLA Health, she can live with that, just like so many consumers who swear by the products.

Robert Tisserand does urge caution about ingesting essential oils.

“For most essential oils,” Tisserand says, “there is no information about what would be an appropriate dose.”

The same is true, really, of any delivery method for these products.

For example, some marketing for “Thieves Oil” makes reference to an elaborate backstory about its purported use during the black plague outbreak. Thieves Oil, the Young Living website says, offers “immune system support” and is “cleansing to the digestive system.” The website also recommends its use on the feet during “cold winter months.”

When I asked about the foot rubbing advice, a Young Living spokesperson replied via email, “Some customers choose to rub oils on their feet because they contain larger pores, which is believed to assist in the absorption of the oil and provides a soothing effect.”

But other questions remain about how much of a given oil is prudent to put on one’s foot to absorb, and for what measurable effect? Or, how much of another oil should one put in a diffuser, and for how large a space? Or, how much, if any essential oil is safe to ingest?

DoTERRA’s website, for instance, recommends ingesting cinnamon oil, aka casia, “to support healthy cardiovascular, metabolic, and immune function.” Nicole Stevens points to studies that do show metabolic benefits from cinnamon, including a 2020 study led by Giulio Romeo at Harvard that used 500mg daily over 12 weeks, with promising results for pre-diabetic subjects.

But it’s unclear whether ingesting “one or two drops” of cinnamon oil in lemon oil and water, as suggested on doTERRA’s website, could measurably improve metabolic health — or how the oil compares to swallowing an alternative, like, say, cinnamon powder.

DoTERRA’s research team has published over 20 peer reviewed papers, with more on the way. Some of doTERRA’s current work includes clinical trials testing current products. Other work is basic lab research, including agar plate testing to look at whether an oil can fight specific bacteria, viruses or fungi.

This kind of research may be a long way from clinical trials, but it’s a movement in the direction of more rigorous study by larger distributors like doTERRA and Young Living, something that has been too often missing in an industry marked by sales pitches and lofty claims.

Some in the industry are hopeful that change will come as research grows, allowing sellers to be more narrow and also more accurate in their claims. Tea tree oil, for example, has also been studied for gum disease, and substantive research suggests that a diluted tea tree oil mouthwash may be as effective as commonly prescribed chlorhexidine, but with fewer side effects.

And then there’s lavender oil. A 2017 research review in the journal Mental Health Clinician has the headline, “Essential oil of lavender in anxiety disorders: Ready for prime time?” Scholars review evidence “from multiple high-quality randomized trials suggests a role … in the treatment of anxiety disorders.” They also note its low cost and low side effects.

In another win for lavender, research at the University of Kentucky suggests that putting the oil on a nearby object reduced hospital intensive care stays for infants who had pre-birth narcotics dependency. An added bonus in this study: The NICU setting eliminates placebo on the patient side.

So while Ana Baldioli and her team at UCLA Health may be open to placebo as a side benefit, there is some evidence that more may be in play.

“We don’t have all the answers in peer-reviewed publications, but the science is proceeding exactly as it should to fill in the gaps of our understanding,” says Nicole Stevens at doTERRA. “Our mindset has been to do the best we can with current scientific knowledge, and when we know better, do better.”

But reviewing the marketing materials, it’s clear the industry is still riddled with vague and often unsupportable claims.

“So many pressing questions,” René-Maurice Gattefoss wrote in his groundbreaking “Aromatherapy” book in 1937, “but we will answer them as best we can on the basis of our experience, meager as it is before the immensity of the problem. At least the questions have been raised.”

That was some 85 years ago. For critics, that’s a long time to wait for answers. But science does move slowly. The question is whether marketing materials can keep the same pace.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Newly Public Documents Allege Allstate Overcharged Loyal California Customers $1 billion

on February 3, 2022
By Creative Commons

Above: Photo / Adobe Stock

A 2020 Markup investigation found the company pursuing similar goals in other states

Apair of newly public documents filed with a California administrative law judge show experts accusing the company of systematically overcharging customers it believed to be the most loyal around $1 billion over the past decade.

This practice of charging higher premiums to customers an insurance company suspects are unlikely to defect to a competitor is termed “price optimization” and was the subject of a 2020 Markup investigation that found Allstate was attempting to use a new pricing algorithm for auto insurance in Maryland that would have unfairly targeted its highest-paying customers—and that the algorithm had been approved in several other states.

Nearly every state, including California, bars insurers from setting car insurance rates on factors apart from the actual risk the drivers pose. Insurance regulators in 18 states and Washington, D.C., have explicitly declared price optimization illegal.

The new documents, which were initially filed in late October by the California Department of Insurance and Consumer Watchdog, a consumer advocacy group allowed by the state to intervene in the case and provide expertise, consist of written testimony from insurance industry experts who examined how Allstate set its prices.

They allege that Allstate was engaging in price optimization by giving smaller than appropriate discounts to the least-price-sensitive among its customers with clean driving records who held multiple policies with the company or who had several decades of driving experience.

Edward Cimini Jr., a senior casualty actuary with the California Department of Insurance, said he reviewed internal Allstate documents, documents the company submitted to the state describing its auto insurance pricing plan, and depositions of company employees and found that Allstate gave smaller discounts to drivers with more than 39 years of experience, a group he said is unlikely to shop around. “Since Allstate’s selections were not based on underlying costs, the final rates that Allstate charged these policyholders were actuarily unsound and unfairly discriminatory,” he said.

Allan Schwartz, an actuarial consultant hired by Consumer Watchdog to review Allstate’s pricing practices, estimated that Allstate overcharged California drivers who were owed discounts “about $1 billion.”

“Those policyholders were known by Allstate to have a lower elasticity of demand and were more likely to renew with Allstate even though they were charged premiums in excess of those based upon an actuarially sound estimate of the cost of risk transfer,” he said.

The company denies the allegations. “Allstate does not employ, and has never employed, price optimization in determining premiums in California because Allstate does not take into account an individual’s or class’s willingness to pay a higher premium relative to other individuals or classes,” Allstate spokesperson Ben Corey wrote in an email to The Markup.

In its court filings, Allstate points out that in 2011 the California Department of Insurance reviewed and approved the 2011 plan without highlighting the issues now raised in the long-running class action that triggered this hearing.


The company was sued in 2015 over alleged price optimization practices in California. Allstate moved to have the case thrown out, arguing in part that it wasn’t a matter for civil courts but rather for the state department of insurance. In 2016, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California put the case on hold and referred it to the authority of the Commissioner of the California Department of Insurance for its opinion, which triggered the administrative law proceeding. Last week, the parties agreed to enter voluntary mediation.

Two years ago, The Markup published an investigation revealing that a new method of calculating rates for car insurance customers that Allstate was trying to implement across the country attempted to charge higher rates to customers who were already paying a lot for their car insurance—essentially creating a “suckers list” of big spenders and squeezing even more money out of them.

The investigation was based on details the insurer provided to regulators in Maryland as part of its 2014 filing there that revealed the current and proposed rate for policyholders in the state. Using statistical regressions, we found that the rating factor, called CGR, would charge more—and severely limit discounts—to big spenders. Maryland regulators rejected Allstate’s plan over price optimization concerns. We found Allstate was using similar algorithms in 10 other states, but we were not able to determine if they worked exactly the same way in those states because we lacked the data we had in Maryland. Allstate did not answer our questions about the algorithms.

Consumer Watchdog founder Harvey Rosenfield, who has long been critical of Allstate’s pricing practices, said that the company found a different method of achieving the same goals in California, which only allows insurers to use a limited number of approved factors—like driving record, type of car, or number of years behind the wheel—to determine how much customers have to pay in premiums.

“What we’re contending is they took their knowledge of price elasticity and figured out a pretty straightforward way of doing it without saying so,” Rosenfield said. “Their actuaries selected relativities to set people’s premiums that punished people who Allstate knew were inelastic, who fit the profile of being less sensitive to price changes. They charged those people more.”

California isn’t the only place where Allstate has faced litigation over its use of price optimization. Shortly after the publication of The Markup’s Maryland investigation, the company was hit with a class action lawsuit in Texas that directly referenced The Markup’s reporting. That suit alleges that the company was “charging higher premiums to its more tenured policyholders than it charges otherwise identically-situated newer policyholders for the same or materially the same coverages.”

That case is still ongoing.

Northeast Syria: Fate of Hundreds of Boys Trapped in Siege Unknown

Protect and Clarify Conditions of Detainees Recaptured from ISIS

February 4, 2022

Click to expand Image
Fighters with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces deploy around al-Sina’a prison in the Ghweran district of al-Hasakah, northeast Syria, on January 25, 2022, midway through the 10-day battle to recapture it from the Islamic State (ISIS). 

© 2022 AFP Photo via Getty Images

(New York) – The Kurdish-led armed force in northeast Syria should ensure the humane treatment of all men and boys it has evacuated or recaptured from a prison that the Islamic State (ISIS) assaulted and held for several days, Human Rights Watch said today. The regional fighters and US and UK forces supporting them should assess whether their forces complied with the laws of war during operations to recapture the prison and take all feasible measures to protect civilians during operations to find ISIS members and escaped detainees.

ISIS fighters assaulted al-Sina’a prison in the Ghweran section of al-Hasakah city on January 20, 2022. The Kurdish-led armed force, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said it regained full control on January 30 following a battle backed a US-led coalition against ISIS that left more than 500 people dead. The prison held about 4,000 male ISIS suspects or family members, including 700 boys, most from Syria and Iraq and the rest from dozens of other countries. The foreigners had been unlawfully detained in dire conditions for nearly three years.

“The Syrian Democratic Forces began evacuating men and boys from the besieged prison days ago, yet the world still has no idea how many are alive or dead,” said Letta Tayler, associate crisis and conflict director for Human Rights Watch. “The detaining authorities in northeast Syria should end their silence on the fate of these detainees, including hundreds of children who were victims of ISIS.”

The SDF should immediately allow international humanitarian groups to visit the detainees it has evacuated or recaptured from al-Sina’a prison and provide them with essential care. They should make public how many detainees, including children, were killed, wounded, and evacuated during the battle to retake the prison.

The US-led coalition against ISIS said the detainees were being held at a more secure facility, which two sources told Human Rights Watch was a new, UK-funded prison near al-Sina’a. About 300 detainees were transferred on January 24 to Alaya prison in the city of Qamishli, the Rojava Information Center told Human Rights Watch, but it was not clear if they remained there.

“Everyone is in safe places. They receive good care,” Siyamend Ali, media commander for the SDF, told Human Rights Watch, but he did not provide any details.

The Syrian Democratic Forces said that ISIS used the detained boys as human shields during the 10-day battle and that they had taken steps to protect the children in their counter attacks on the prison, but did not clarify what those steps were.

Reports of Children Killed

Midway through the prison battle, two foreign detainees still inside the prison told Human Rights Watch that many detainees were killed in the fighting, including children. A Canadian detainee said he believed “tens” of children were killed and described a child bleeding to death in his arms. A 17-year-old Australian boy who said he was hit in the head and hand in an Apache airstrike estimated at least 15 to 20 children were killed including two teenage friends who he said were shot down in front of him.

“I was just sitting in my cell and an explosion happened,” the Australian boy said in a panicked message midway through the siege. He asked not to be identified by name, but Human Rights Watch has verified his identity. “There was shooting at our building [cell block]. I ran out with my friends and on the way my friends got killed in front of me, a 14-year-old, a 15-year-old. …”

“I kept running,” the Australian boy said, but “I got injured in my head and my hand. I lost a lot of blood.” The boy said he saw “a lot of bodies, dead bodies, and there’s a lot of injured people screaming from pain.” He added: “There's no doctors here, there's no one who can help me. I'm very scared. I need help. Please.”

The Canadian man as well as a detainee who described himself as an 18-year-old US citizen told Human Rights Watch that the men and boys inside the prison had run out of food, drinking water, and medicine during the siege.

“We're starving. We're thirsty. There's no food, there's no water, there's no medical supplies at all,” the 18-year-old said. “We’re scared. We just need someone to help us get out of here, to help get us to safety.”

Boys had been held separately from adults but when ISIS stormed al-Sina’a, chaos ensued and adults and children were mixed together, including the injured and other detainees needing care such as people with tuberculosis or mental health conditions, the Canadian detainee said. Human Rights Watch has received reports since 2020 of deadly tuberculosis outbreaks and acute shortages of medicines and other supplies in al-Sina’a and other prisons for ISIS suspects in northeast Syria.

Human Rights Watch lost contact with the detainees on January 26.

The SDF should work with aid groups to get word to family members on whether their relatives in al-Sina’a are alive, dead, or injured, Human Rights Watch said. Many family members have not heard from their imprisoned relatives for years.

“I pray there is a way to know that he is okay,” a woman related to a Western detainee who had been held in al-Sina’a told Human Rights Watch.

Human Rights Watch has received a number of allegations from detainees, family members, or their lawyers since 2019 of the Syrian Democratic Forces abusing detained ISIS suspects but cannot verify the allegations. The Kurdish-led force and members of the US-led coalition against ISIS, including US and UK forces supporting the current operations, should ensure humane treatment of all those who surrendered or were evacuated or recaptured, and to allow independent monitors access to the detainees.

Under international law, all parties to a conflict are required to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians from harm. In case of doubt that a person is a valid military target, that person should be considered a civilian. Forces may target the military objectives only if the anticipated military gain outweighs the anticipated harm to civilians or civilian property. Indefinite detention without charge amounts to collective punishment of detainees and their family members, which is a war crime.

The foreign detainees in al-Sina’a are among nearly 45,000 men, women, and children from nearly 60 countries held in deeply degrading and often inhuman conditions in northeast Syria as ISIS suspects and family members. The vast majority of these foreigners are young children held with their mothers in locked camps. The Syrian Democratic Forces and other regional authorities have repeatedly called on countries to bring them home, saying they lack the resources to care for them and to prosecute those suspected of serious crimes. But few countries outside of Central Asia have repatriated their nationals or taken other significant steps to end their abuse.

Recapturing the prison does not resolve the international crisis created by the indefinite and arbitrary detention of these foreigners, Human Rights Watch said.

All countries with nationals detained in northeast Syria should repatriate or help bring home their nationals for rehabilitation, reintegration, and, as appropriate, prosecution. The US-led coalition, United Nations bodies, and countries involved in the northeast Syria crisis should help resettle other detainees, also with prosecutions as appropriate, in third countries if they are at risk of ill-treatment in their countries of origin. All of these detainees should be immediately released to safety unless they are brought before an independent judge who can rule on the legality and necessity of their detention.

Governments that actively contribute to this abusive confinement may be complicit in the unlawful detention and collective punishment of thousands of people, most of them women and young children.

“The al-Sina’a prison crisis was the predictable result of governments turning a blind eye to the fate of their nationals and all others held in horrific conditions in northeast Syria,” Tayler said. “This assault should be a wakeup call to countries that outsourcing responsibility for their nationals won’t make this problem go away. It will only increase the suffering of these detainees, most of them young children, and deprive ISIS victims of justice.”

Scant Casualty and Recapture Details

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced on January 31 that 77 prison employees, 40 of its fighters, and 4 civilians were killed in the 10-day battle to retake the prison, as well as 374 “Daesh [ISIS] terrorist detainees and attackers.” They provided no breakdowns, such as the number of detainees killed and how many were children, the number of injured, the number of detainees who joined the uprising, the number of adults and children back in their custody, or the number of adults and children unaccounted for, despite repeated queries from Human Rights Watch and media.

On January 31, a commander for the SDF acknowledged that imprisoned children had been killed after The New York Times reported seeing the bodies of two teenage boys who had been shot dead near the prison and appeared to be escaped detainees. The Times said locals told them the boys were shot by the SDF, but it was unable to confirm any details about them or their deaths. The commander said only that “a very small number” of the dead were children.

The SDF said as many as 300 ISIS fighters had stormed al-Sina’a prison. It said on January 27 that 3,500 detainees – nearly the entire prison population – had surrendered, but its announcement a day earlier that it had regained total control of the prison turned out to be premature, raising questions about those figures.


Click to expand Image
Main damage observed through satellite imagery and video analysis on al-Sina’a prison, al-Hasakah city, northeast Syria from January 25 to 29, 2022. Satellite imagery acquired on January 28, 2022, as well as videos and photos shared online from January 25 to January 29, 2022, shows extensive damage to al-Sina’a prison and adjacent areas. Eight days after the battle started on January 20, 2022, the roofs and facades of the buildings throughout the core of the prison compound are extensively damaged. Debris is spread across the prison yard and burn scars are visible on the ground and some of the roofs. Walls and fences that separate the different areas of the prison have been struck, including the main gate, which is riddled with bullets. A one-story building close to the entrance gate is severely damaged, potentially the result of the use of a larger munition. Human Rights Watch was not able to corroborate the type of munitions used and the nature of the strikes. Credit: Satellite imagery © 2022 Maxar Technologies

US and UK-Backed Military Operations

The US-led coalition against ISIS said it conducted air strikes, reportedly with Apache helicopters and F-16 fighter jets, and the Pentagon said the US had provided ground support in support of the SDF during the battle to recapture the prison. UK special forces also assisted according to media and the Rojava Information Center. Satellite imagery and videos analyzed by Human Rights Watch showed extensive damage to the prison compound.

During and after the prison siege, the SDF searched house-to-house for ISIS members in nearby areas and elsewhere in northeast Syria, displacing tens of thousands of local residents and in some cases destroying homes where they suspected armed militants were hiding.


Before

After

JuxtaposeJS
Before: December 14, 2021: Satellite imagery © 2022 Planet Labs Inc. After: January 28, 2022: Satellite imagery © 2022 Maxar Technologies
Satellite imagery recorded before and after the assault on al-Sina’a prison in the Ghweran section of al-Hasakah city, northeast Syria. © 2022 Human Rights Watch.

Unlawful Detentions

Backed by the US-led coalition, the SDF rounded up tens of thousands of Syrian and foreign men, women and children, including most of the men and boys they then detained in al-Sina’a, during the fall of the last ISIS-held territory in northern Syria in February and March 2019. None of the foreign detainees have been brought before a judge to determine the necessity or legality of their detention, making their indefinite detention arbitrary and unlawful.

The conditions for detainees in al-Sina’a were often inhuman and life-threatening, marked by severe overcrowding, scarce access to the outdoors and sunlight, and insufficient medicine and food, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations independent expert on counterterrorism said. The children were to start receiving education through a nongovernmental organization in early 2022 but the prison assault threw that timeline into doubt, an organizer told Human Rights Watch.

Most if not all the detained foreign boys were brought to Syria by their parents. About 400 of the boys imprisoned at al-Sina’a were Syrian, up to 200 were Iraqi, and 100 or more were from other countries, northeast Syrian authorities told Human Rights Watch. Some of the 700 imprisoned boys were as young as 12, the SDF said. Detainees told Human Rights Watch and media reported that some were as young as 10. Under international law, all children associated with armed groups should be treated first and foremost as victims and detained only as an exceptional measure of last resort.

Although the US-led coalition has spent millions of dollars to improve security and other conditions at al-Sina’a and the UK has spent US $20 million to build a nearby prison, these measures do not change the fact that indefinite detention without judicial review is unlawful, Human Rights Watch said.