IB Diploma Programme Global Politics HL (first assessment 2019; 2016 guide). This topic is the HL-ONLY EXTENSION — the GLOBAL POLITICAL CHALLENGES unit: two challenges studied in depth through a CONTEMPORARY CASE each, examined on Paper 3 (a stimulus-based paper) and in the HL extension of the engagement project. The brief lists the challenge fields: environment, poverty and inequality, health, identity, migration, law and criminality, power and borders, space, peace and war, trade and aid — schools choose two. This handout teaches the challenge-and-case craft and kits the fields most commonly chosen, each with a worked case framing.

Must-know for the HL extension:

A global political challenge 全球性政治挑战 is a problem that crosses borders, defies any single state's solution, and structures political conflict about who decides, who pays and who benefits. The Paper 3 discipline: define the challenge; set its LEVELS (how it manifests locally, nationally, globally — and how the levels interact); identify the ACTORS (states, institutions, firms, movements, the affected) and their INTERESTS; and analyse the GOVERNANCE — which institutions, what authority, what enforcement — before evaluating the responses. The stimulus paper gives documents and data; the answers apply this scaffold to them, always tying CONCEPT (power, sovereignty, legitimacy, interdependence) to the named actors. The case must be CONTEMPORARY — living, developing, post-2000 — because the extension's premise is that these challenges are open, not historical.

ENVIRONMENT: climate change 气候变化 is the paradigm challenge — a global commons problem where sovereignty meets a shared atmosphere. The governance arc: UNFCCC (1992) establishing negotiation, Kyoto (1997) binding the few, PARIS (2015) inverting the logic — nationally determined contributions with a name-and-shame transparency regime rather than enforced targets. The analysis kit: collective-action failure (each state's incentive to free-ride), the equity disputes (common but differentiated responsibilities; loss and damage), and the non-state actors (cities, firms, movements) governing where treaties cannot bind.

POVERTY AND INEQUALITY: the challenge is double-scaled — BETWEEN states (convergence for some, divergence for others) and WITHIN them (the domestic inequality most states now face). Kits: the measures (Gini, the Palma ratio; global poverty lines), the drivers (technology, trade, institutions, capture), the responses (the SDG framework, redistribution's politics) — with the concept link: inequality is a power relation, not just an outcome.

Migration 移民: mixed flows (refugees, the displaced, economic migrants) stressing the categories the 1951 Convention drew; sovereignty's border logic against rights' personhood logic; the governance gap (the IOM and UNHCR's mandates fragmenting what the challenge joins); remittance and demographic realities against the politics of identity. Health 健康: pandemics as the sovereignty-challenge made visible — the WHO's authority informational, not enforcement; border closures (the reflex states reach for) against the evidence; vaccine nationalism and the COVAX counter-design; health security as the frame redefining state responsibility. Identity 身份: nationalism 民族主义 and religion as mobilisers — identity politics shaping legitimacy claims, secession bids, and the populist wave; the kit distinguishes civic from ethnic nationalism and traces both into institutions. PEACE AND WAR: the “new wars” thesis (organized crime, identity, civilians as targets), drones and remote war shifting power to executives, great-power rivalry's return (hybrid tactics below the war threshold), and the R2P record from topic 02 carried into the extension.

Worked case framing. Environment, case: the Paris regime's transparency mechanism. Levels: global (the 1.5-degree goal), national (the NDC each state sets itself), local (the city and firm actions filling the enforcement gap). Actors and interests: small islands (existential), petrostates (rent), emerging economies (development space), movements (urgency). Governance: treaty without enforcement — legitimacy by universality, compliance by transparency and shame. Evaluation: the design's realism (what states could sign) is also its limit — the gap between aggregate pledges and the goal is the challenge's measure.

• The craft: challenge, levels, actors and interests, governance, concepts — applied to the stimulus (craft).
• Environment: UNFCCC 1992, Kyoto 1997, Paris 2015 with NDCs and transparency; collective action; equity; non-state governors (environment).
• Poverty and inequality: between- and within-state scales; the measures; the drivers; the SDG response; inequality as power (poverty).
• Migration: mixed flows; the 1951 categories stressed; sovereignty vs rights; the fragmented governance (migration).
• Health: WHO authority informational; borders vs evidence; vaccine nationalism and COVAX (health).
• Identity: civic vs ethnic nationalism; mobilisation into legitimacy, secession, populism (identity).
• Peace and war: new wars; remote war's executive shift; hybrid rivalry; the R2P record (peace).
• The worked Paris framing's levels, actors and evaluation (worked).

Boundary notes: Paper 3 is stimulus-based — the craft scaffold turns any document set into an analysis; the engagement-project extension connects the project to the studied challenges. All framings are original; the facts cited are the standard record.