Illuminating the Arts-Policy Nexus 

“Good afternoon,” the video begins, featuring a man in a drab suit directly addressing the camera. “My name is Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano, and unfortunately, if you are watching the message, it is because I was assassinated by President Álvaro Colom.” So begins the final testimony of Guatemalan attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg, who was shot and killed on Sunday in the country’s capital, Guatemala City. In the video, which was recorded only days before his slaying, Rosenberg goes on to accuse not only the Guatemalan president of complicity in his yet-to-come demise, but also the president’s wife, Sandra Colom; the president's private secretary, Gustavo Alejos; and a businessman, Gregorio Valdez. Rosenberg, a respected lawyer, states in the video that he will be killed because of his professional work on behalf of Guatemalan businessman Khalil Musa and his daughter, Marjorie Musa, both of whom were gunned down in Guatemala in March. Rosenberg states that the elder Musa was unaware, when named by Colom to the board of directors of Guatemala’s Banco de Desarrollo Rural S.A. (Rural Development Bank, popularly known as Banrural), that the body was being used as a center for the laundering of drug profits, the deviation of public funds, the siphoning off of state coffers on behalf of the president’s wife, and other nefarious activities.

I'm headed down to Bab al Mandeb—a narrow strait, spanning only 12 miles from the Middle East to Africa—to spend an afternoon with Abdalla Abrahem, a fisherman. He has spent is life trawling these narrow waters, but now he's forced to venture ever further afield, near Somalia and Djibouti, to support his family. Earning, at best, $10 a day, Abrahem lives along the arid Red Sea coastline in the small village of of Dobaba (pop. 600), a community in dire need of food assistance. I arrived in this area after a three-hour drive from Taiz, about 70 miles away from the coast, descending down more than 4,000 feet through a lush, winding canyon dotted with palm trees and camels. By the end of the journey, the temperature must have increased by at least 30 degrees. Upon arrival, it's shocking to see that a human life actually exists in the middle of this unforgiving landscape. Families try to scrape by on the wind-swept plain. It’s one thing to not have enough to eat, but another thing all together to have to buy your own water. Yemen isn’t just food insecure, it also faces a water crisis. Yemenis consume 2.8 billion cubic meters of water annually, but the nation's aquifers supply only about two-thirds of that. Yemen imports the rest. The western part of the country, where nearly 90 percent of the population lives, is expected to run out of water entirely in only ten years. In search of water, Yemenis are drilling deeper and deeper. The average depth of a well in the village of Dobaba is nearly 1,000 meters—compared with only 40 meters only two decades ago. Nothing about this village is sustainable; but  few can afford to travel the long distance to Taiz. And they can't pick up and move to the city, because their skill sets revolve around the sea.