abducted international aid workers. While the Nigerien army continues to collaborate with Opération Barkhane, the French regional counterterrorism operation based in Chad, in June 2018 Islamist militants destroyed the headquarters of the G5 Sahel multinational counter-terrorism force, established in 2017 between Niger and its neighbours. In El Salvador, national security is threatened by high levels of killings linked to gang violence with its roots in late-1990s US deportation policies. Criminal gangs have committed an array of human rights abuses, including murder of journalists, government officials and security personnel. They have also perpetrated widespread sexual violence and recruitment of children. Government efforts to address deep-seated socio-economic issues underlying the proliferation of gang violence have come up short, as have heavy-handed, militarized repression tactics, which have further victimized many Salvadorians. In 2018, the number of missing persons reached a new high at nearly 3,400 cases. Internal displacement resulting from gang violence has recently become a major issue, with civil society and international organizations placing the number of affected people in the tens or hundreds of thousands. It remains to be seen whether Nayib Bukele, a social media star who became President in February 2018, can parlay his massive popularity into productive policy. After years of relative stability, Nicaragua is a new entrant and the country that has leapt furthest up the Peoples under Threat rankings. From April to August 2018, President Daniel Ortega’s government brutally quashed protests against increasingly unpopular policies related to social reform and plans to hand over power to his wife, Rosario Murillo, in the 2021 elections. Hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans took to the streets across the country, aided by the organizational and mobilizational power of Facebook and Twitter in a context where coverage of events was censored from the air and journalists repressed. Harsh measures by security forces and progovernment paramilitaries caused nearly 500 deaths and several thousand injuries. According to the Organization of American States, these acts – including extra-judicial killings, torture, sexual violence and arbitrary arrests – constituted crimes against humanity. Killings and abductions of indigenous people by illegal settlers in the North Caribbean Coast Autonomous Region have also quietly continued. Peoples under Threat 2019 India has been embroiled in escalating violence in Kashmir since 2016, when soldiers killed a separatist commander with a major social media following among alienated locals. With stepped-up Indian army operations, 2018 saw the highest death toll in a decade as well as greater collaboration between several Islamist separatist groups. Indian security forces have enjoyed impunity for a range of human rights violations in Kashmir and elsewhere, such as the ‘Northeast’ states and in Naxalite-Maoist areas, fighting worsened in 2018. In the lead-up to the 2019 general elections, social media played a central role in advancing chauvinist Hindu nationalism in a climate of paranoia and intolerance towards minorities and perceived outsiders. While WhatsApp rumours had already led to deadly mob violence by extremist Hindu groups, members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), supporters and bots ratcheted up the production of inflammatory, anti-Muslim messaging on- and offline. The BJP President Amit Shah called Bangladeshi migrants ‘termites’ and the party’s Twitter account echoed his words: with the exception of Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs, ‘we will remove every single infiltrator from the country’. A new entrant, Burkina Faso, appears poised to continue its tragic rise in the Peoples under Threat table. Home-grown militants as well as al-Qaeda and ISIS operatives have exploited local grievances and a security vacuum left after the popular overthrow of dictator Blaise Compaoré in 2014. Since late 2018, violence has sharply escalated and spread from the northern Soum province to eastern and south-western parts of the country. Security forces have faced ongoing attacks from armed groups and civilians have suffered abuses, including summary executions, from various parties to the conflict. In the context of spiralling insecurity, ethnic ‘self-defence’ militias have ignited a string of mass reprisal killings between members of Mossi and Foulse communities who have faced the brunt of jihadist violence, and marginalized Peuhl who have been perceived as supporting extremists. Spring 2019 saw the emergence of an alarming new trend when gunmen murdered Catholic and Protestant churchgoers in two attacks in the north of the country. Burkina Faso’s unprecedented violence has displaced more than 1,000 people each day since the beginning of 2019. Derek Verbakel With additional support by Rowen Siemens. 9