Even now, alive and safe, Linode Lafleur cries at memories of the jungle. The Haitian woman and her family were lost for days struggling to get to the United States.

No food, no rest. Fording chest-high rivers that swept many others away. Bodies by the path. Treacherous cliffs, so steep, so hard. Only the pleas of her 4-year-old son kept her going. “I wanted to throw myself off the cliffs. I wanted to die,” she says.

Haiti to Chile to Bolivia to Peru to Ecuador to Colombia. Through the jungle into Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico. Much of it on foot.

All to suffer again, this time from men instead of chasms. Tricked, kidnapped, robbed at gunpoint in Mexico. Stripped of what little they had. Their son held up by his legs as thieves stole his clothing. Ms. Lafleur’s husband, gun to his ear, desperately crying, “Why are you doing this? We are just looking for a life!”      

All to get to a new land. All to find shelter and safety in a small town in a northern corner of America, a town that has opened its doors, welcomed the strangers, but is struggling under the burden. A town that says it cannot take any more.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

People walk through Monument Square in Portland, Maine, where more than 1,200 asylum-seekers, most from Haiti and Africa, have recently arrived.

Portland, Maine, population 68,000, is 84% white and tucked snugly away from any border problems – the Canadian border five hours away catches the occasional migrant walking north into Canada.

Yet the city that has been one of the most benevolent in America toward outsiders now finds itself with 1,200 newcomers, most from Africa and the Caribbean. They have come to Portland because they heard it had received fellow travelers humanely. Most speak no English; they have no money, no relatives or friends to house them; and they are not allowed to work for a living as their appeals for asylum slowly crawl through the system.

Its shelter filled, the city has put them up in motels while COVID-19 and winter created vacancies. But now the innkeepers want their rooms back for tourists, and Portland has no place to put them.

And still they keep coming.

Portland’s city health director took the extraordinary step in May of emailing agencies working on the southern U.S. border, telling them that immigrants “are no longer guaranteed shelter upon their arrival” in the city. The adjoining municipality of South Portland sent a similar message, and 79 local aid organizations followed with letters to the state of Maine and the federal government saying they were stretched too thin.

“We are at capacity, just unable to manage anymore,” says Danielle West, the interim city manager of Portland.

The announcements have brought cries that an urban area known for its welcoming culture now wants to shut its doors.

What does a city do when its ethos of compassion collides with the reality of no vacancy? How many refugees are too many?

Many places harbor a sense of benevolence toward outsiders. In remote parts of Alaska, people leave their cabin doors unlocked to offer safety to desperate travelers. Middle Easterners still observe the obligation of hospitality to strangers.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Immigrants walk down the street toward the Moriah Store, a market in Portland stocked with African foods.

Sometimes the welcome comes on a grand scale: More than half of Jordanians are Palestinians. Poland has accepted 3 million refugees from Ukraine.

Sometimes the generosity is quietly personal: Hundreds of Berliners have opened their homes to Syrians fleeing a brutal civil war. They call it Willkommenskultur – welcome culture. 

But does the calculation change when newcomers crowd the house? The question is growing in urgency: The United Nations estimates the number of people who have been forced from their homes by wars, violence, hunger, and climate change has now reached 100 million – the highest on record. 

Like many places in this country, Portland was forged by immigrants. The first here were native Algonquian-speaking people from Asia who moved in as the glaciers melted 14,000 years ago. Much later came European explorers; French trappers from Canada; settlers from England, Ireland, and France; and some enslaved people brought from Africa. Textile mills and fishing brought Italians, and granite quarries brought Finns. 

“Immigration into Maine has been the lifeblood of our state,” says Ethan Strimling, a former mayor of Portland. “Every generation that has built our city has been an immigrant generation. And if we didn’t have the immigration into the state, our population will just be declining dramatically.”

Doug Struck

“The pictures from Maine looked fantastic. Except they were all taken in the summer. There should have been a disclosure that said, ‘Please don’t expect this for 11 months of the year.’” – Reza Jalali, who fled Iran 37 years ago, joking about the weather in his adopted home, where he heads the Greater Portland Immigrant Welcome Center

For years, newcomers here made it on their own. Reza Jalali landed in Portland 37 years ago when what he calls his “bad poetry” angered the government of his native Iran. The U.S. offered him refuge. The State Department gave him a book of black-and-white photos to pick a new home.

“The pictures from Maine looked fantastic,” Mr. Jalali recalls. “Except they were all taken in the summer. There should have been a disclosure that said, ‘Please don’t expect this for 11 months of the year,’” he adds, laughing. 

But he has stayed, raised a family, earned advanced degrees, taught college, and written books. He is now head of the Greater Portland Immigrant Welcome Center.  

Recent arrivals to Maine have made headlines before. Somalis surged to the sagging industrial town of Lewiston in the early 2000s. Their presence brought controversy and pushback – the mayor publicly told others not to come. But the immigrants restored vacant houses, started businesses, and filled the schools with new voices. 

In Portland, three years ago, a sudden influx of 450 Africans arrived when Mr. Strimling was mayor. The city scrambled to put cots in the city’s sports arena for two months, private citizens donated nearly $1 million to help, and people opened up spare rooms to house the strangers. 

That success, with some irony, helped bring the current wave from Africa. In the cellphone age, immigrants and refugees plumb the internet and contact earlier migrants through WhatsApp. If they make it across the U.S. border, many ask to go to Portland because they’ve heard other Africans are there. It is natural: Travelers “will take the safety of an established community,” says Mr. Jalali. Border agents and aid groups comply. The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan sent 100 more refugees to Maine.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Dorothy Barker teaches English to new immigrants, including Prudence Giramata from Rwanda (left) and Chrislene Profenal from Haiti, in Portland, Maine.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

A student follows along in her textbook in the English class for new immigrants.

Portland helped migrants in ways many other jurisdictions did not. It placed new arrivals in the city’s family shelter until that was filled, and then in motels. The city now has 1,200 immigrants housed in 12 motels across seven jurisdictions, according to local officials. 

Other cities and towns often give immigrants vouchers for housing, but require the new arrivals to find dwellings on their own – a daunting task without the language skills, ability to get around, or basic knowledge of a community. Portland also offers vouchers for food – and aid organizations also cook communal African meals. Most of the 350 families who arrived recently have young children; the schools are a chorus of languages. A legion of nonprofit organizations has taken root in Portland that provides legal, transportation, and other assistance to the newcomers.

On the ground floor of a Jewish synagogue in South Portland, teachers Dorothy Barker and Joyce Walworth coax seven mothers from Haiti, Angola, and Congo – all of whom undertook unimaginable risks to get here with their families – to brave a new challenge: English.

Today’s lesson is prepositions. Ms. Barker, a community college teacher, is in the classroom sponsored by the nonprofit Immigrant Welcome Center, and she is working hard. She stands on a chair. “Dora is on the chair,” she leads the class. She flops to the floor. “Dora is under the desk,” she chants. She puts a book in a box and calls on Estrella Garcia, from Angola, to make a sentence with in. The woman haltingly succeeds, with some coaching from her classmates, and dissolves into delighted giggles. 

“We use singing and dancing and games and a lot of laughing, a lot of me running around with big articulations, and a lot of encouragement,” Ms. Barker says. “They joke, they laugh, they tease each other. And they became friends, I hope.”  

“The asylum-seekers have already been through more than I can imagine,” she adds. “Language is the first step to building confidence and ability to access resources.”     

Leonora Nganga is in the class after literally jumping out a window to flee Angola. She learned that a man she was living with was violent, she says through a Portuguese interpreter, and fled when he attacked her. She escaped to the capital, Luanda, then to South Africa and later to Mozambique. At each stop, she was pursued by people linked to her former companion, she says. Finally she bought a plane ticket to Panama and started walking north, with her 6-year-old son, Juliano.     

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

New immigrant Leonora Nganga, from Angola, with her son Juliano, recounts her harrowing journey to the United States after fleeing from a violent partner.

It took them eight months to get to the U.S.-Mexico border. A companion on the trip heard about Portland, and when they finally crossed into the U.S., Ms. Nganga asked to go there. Her trip mate journeyed on to Canada.

“Here in Portland I am getting help,” she says, as Juliano squirms beside her. “I can feel good. I can feel safe.”

But this spring, the return of a post-pandemic tourist season brought a crunch in motel rooms, and the continued flow of asylum-seekers overwhelmed Portland’s efforts.

“The number of people that we’re seeing arriving is not something anybody had anticipated,” says Ms. West, the interim city manager. “They just keep coming, coming to Portland.” 

In the letter it sent out, the city contacted about 30 aid groups and government agencies working on the U.S. border, urging them to direct asylum-seekers elsewhere. Portland would continue to issue legally required vouchers, but newcomers would have to find housing on their own. The letters brought headlines: Portland says “No vacancy” for asylum-seekers.

The move has not stanched the flow. In her office above a car-rental lot, Mufalo Chitam juggles her phone with a sigh, as she tries to find shelter for the latest unannounced arrivals. She is head of the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, a nonprofit suddenly thrust into the job of arranging housing when the city stopped doing it May 5.

“That was Motel 6, with four rooms. Two rooms here, five rooms there. My phone is ringing night and day,” she says wearily. “That’s what keeps me busy.”

Doug Struck

“I have to put my family first. I have to learn English. I have to have a spot to live. If God allows me to continue here, I will stay here.” – Nelson Tinti, a banker who fled Angola after his involvement in anti-government protests threatened the safety of his family

The other night, she says, a person at the city shelter told her the facility was filled and there were still 28 people outside. “So unless you know somewhere, they’re going to sleep outside with their children,” the shelter official told her. Ms. Chitam started calling around. She found a conference room, located 28 mats, and put the new arrivals up for the night. The next day a church opened up space for people to sleep. 

“No one asks for a crisis,” says Ms. Chitam, a native of Zambia. “But it’s on our clock, on our watch.”

Activists and officials also are frustrated because the newcomers could help solve the state’s most looming problem – a labor shortage. Maine’s aging population is the oldest in the country, and the flight of younger people out of the state exacerbates job vacancies. But federal regulations do not allow asylum-seekers to work until their applications are heard, which often takes more than a year. 

“This disconnection really drives us crazy,” says Mr. Jalali. “We are suffering from not having enough people to work. You have hundreds of able-bodied, motivated young people who are literally dying to work. ... And then we don’t let them.”

Nelson Tinti is one. He stays after one of Ms. Barker’s English classes, struggling to tell his story through the translator app on his phone. Worked 15 years in a bank in Angola ... married with two children ... joined protests against the government ... was beaten, ran, arrested, escaped.

Mr. Tinti scrolls through the timeline of photos on his cellphone, and points. There he is amid the smoke and violence of street protests. There is a dead protester sprawled on a sidewalk. There is the wailing mother of a slain child. He points to pictures of his friends. At image after image, he draws a finger across his throat to pantomime their fate. Each dead.

With his wife and two children, Mr. Tinti fled to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and then to Houston, and then to Portland. For five months they have lived in one room in a motel.  

“I have to put my family first. I have to learn English,” says Mr. Tinti. “I have to have a spot to live. If God allows me to continue here, I will stay here.” 

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

African immigrants shop at the Moriah Store, a grocery in Portland started by Lucie Narukundo from Congo. She speaks 14 languages, which helps her communicate with customers from all over Africa.

Maine is the whitest state in the nation, with 94% of its population identifying as white. There is some racial frothing at the African arrivals on social media. But most pushback is framed in terms of the cost of services to newcomers at a time of inflation and rising expenses, says Ms. West, the city manager. “When you increase taxes, that’s really difficult for a lot of people in Portland to handle,” she says.    

Just a block off the main street in downtown Portland, Lucie Narukundo presides over a tiny cramped grocery store into which she packs the bounty of Africa. “Here,” she says, plucking a bag of dried fish from a shelf. “Sardines from Tanzania and Burundi.” She hefts a bag of cassava flour from Congo. There is a tin of peanut powder and passion fruit from Rwanda. From Kenya she has spices, and prunes from Cameroon.

Women in bright floral dresses crowd into the store, and men linger to banter with the owner, who keeps order in 14 languages (“We moved around a lot,” she explains, understating a life spent fleeing wars throughout southern Africa.) Her daughter Nicole Iriza, who just graduated from Wheaton College with a degree in sociology, stops by. She may work for her mother, she says, adding with a sly laugh, “if she pays me enough.”

In one aisle, Paolina Mabiala, recently arrived from Angola, erupts in delight at finding an African snack called mabele – an edible clay. She rips open the bag and savors a piece. “I love this stuff!” she says in Portuguese.

Ms. Narukundo, a native of Congo, arrived as a refugee in 2010. She opened the Moriah Store in 2014 and is planning to expand.  

The newcomers “have nothing,” Ms. Narukundo says. “But after a while they will get work permits and pay taxes. I am very happy to pay taxes. It is my contribution.”

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

“[The newcomers] have nothing. But after a while they will get work permits and pay taxes. I am very happy to pay taxes. It is my contribution.” – Lucie Narukundo, a former refugee from Africa, who is holding sardines from Tanzania in her grocery store in Portland that stocks many ethnic foods

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

Lucie Narukundo, who owns a grocery store in Portland, also runs this shop next door filled with hair supplies and African clothing. Ms. Narukundo’s daughter, Nicole Iriza (right), sorts through fabric with Roda Bahati. Ms. Iriza just graduated from college and may run the store.

The state wants the new arrivals, says Greg Payne, senior housing adviser to the governor. But the big problem is a long-festering shortage of affordable housing. 

“I think we need to figure out, how do we moderate the pace of arrivals in a way that prevents it from becoming a humanitarian crisis when they arrive?” he says.

Mr. Payne notes that the state is reserving 100 rooms in a Comfort Inn in Saco, 16 miles south of Portland, to help ease the burden, and is moving to lease more affordable housing for two years. The state has also added $22 million for emergency housing in the budget. 

City officials stridently resist the argument that their letters to groups along the southern U.S. border, saying there was “no more room,” is an attempt to close the doors of Portland.

“I don’t think that was the message,” says Belinda Ray, who works with the Greater Portland Council of Governments. “We’re spending ridiculous amounts of money to keep people in hotels,” not including food and the array of other services, she says. “It’s not sustainable.” The council is working with surrounding communities to find a more sustainable way to shelter asylum seekers.*

City officials want the state to take over the logistics crisis, knitting the disparate and overlapping local and nonprofit efforts into one coordinated approach, and to provide more housing. They also want the federal government to speed up the asylum process and allow arrivals to work.

But Mr. Strimling, the former mayor, says that’s not what the message from the city sounds like. “One of the things that I think has been great about Portland is that we’ve always said, ‘Our doors are open.’ And that was why so many were so disappointed by the letter from the city,” says Mr. Strimling.

Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff

People walk down a main commercial street in the heart of Portland.

“We have been a city of hope for new young families,” he adds. “And I think that’s vital to our future.”

Ms. Lafleur has hope. She left Haiti after the United Nations agency she worked for closed, and gangs in Haiti threatened her family. “Haiti is not a safe country,” she says through a Creole interpreter. 

She flew to Chile, then took buses and boats before walking through Bolivia, Peru, and Panama. At one point, she had to traverse the fearsome Darién Gap jungle in Colombia and Panama. Crossing a fierce river, 12 of the 20 in her group were swept away, she says. 

“The water was up to my chest. My husband carried my child on his neck, and he had to hold my hand. If he had not held me, I would have been sucked away.”

She squeezes her eyes shut as she recalls the pleas of her son to keep walking as they stumbled up and down treacherous mountains. “We can’t leave you behind,” the boy cried. Finally in Mexico, a taxi driver promised to take them to a crossing point, only to spirit them to an isolated place where they were robbed at gunpoint. They spent days in hiding. A police officer eventually offered to help, but he, too, wanted payment. 

They finally contacted a cousin in the U.S., who scraped together enough money to put them on a bus to the border. Authorities let them cross into Texas, and “my husband heard of Catholic Charities in Portland,” she says. The family asked to be sent there. 

Given her searing experiences, was it worth it all, to get to Portland? Ms. Lafleur’s somber face suddenly breaks into a dazzling smile.

“They take care of me here. They gave me food. They gave me a place, a motel room. Oh my God, I love it here. I will never leave.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify the goals of the the Greater Portland Council of Governments.

Olga Rostovska sits at a tiny kitchen table and shows a picture on her phone of where she wants to be: a partially burned apartment building 400 miles away.

“I cried when I knew Russians damaged my house,” she says, sitting next to her sister, Lyudmila Skidan, whose family she and her children live with in Kyiv. “That’s why I want to move back home so much. I hope that I can fix all this and live there.”

Ms. Rostovska is from Kramatorsk, a city in eastern Ukraine now less than 50 miles from the front lines. As in cities across the Donbas region, Kramatorsk’s citizens have a group chat – where they post news of shelling and prayers for normalcy – on the messaging app Telegram.

Each day, she hopes to read that her city is safe again. She and her two young children evacuated in April, first to Ukraine’s west, then to Lithuania for two months, and then back to Kyiv. Now they want to go home – even if Russian shelling means there isn’t much home left.

Russia’s invasion this February began an exodus of refugees to western Ukraine and the surrounding countries. Some 7 million Ukrainians are now displaced within their own country, and another 5 million crossed the border and became refugees around Europe.

But many of them want to come home. Between Feb. 28 and June 21, according to the United Nations, there have been nearly 3.6 million “cross-border” movements back into Ukraine. The number of refugees included in that total isn’t recorded, but cities like Kyiv are gradually recovering their prewar populations. It seems as though many Ukrainian refugees are now returning, at least temporarily.

Especially during war, refugees move according to a number of different push-and-pull factors. On one end, fleeing to a new nation – with a different language and culture – can be taxing. On the other, despite brutal missile strikes, most areas of Ukraine are now safer than they were at the beginning of the war, when Russia was attacking on many fronts. Some Ukrainians may be judging that life abroad is too difficult and life back home is safe enough. For many, like Ms. Rostovska, home is worth the risk. “We never wanted to leave,” she says.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Sophia Skidan prepares to leave Lviv for Kyiv with her family, June 17, 2022.

Relocation after relocation

To Ms. Rostovska, home is Kramatorsk’s parks and town squares. It’s her kids’ schools and her job at a maternity ward. It’s the short walk to see her sister, niece, and nephew.

And since 2014, home has also been war.

Kramatorsk was one of the cities threatened when Russia-sponsored separatists began their uprising in the Donbas eight years ago. “We got used to this kind of war situation,” says Ms. Rostovska. “So we took a long time to decide to leave.”

The number of civilian buildings being hit by artillery eventually convinced her to go. On April 7, Ms. Rostovska went to the Kramatorsk train station with luggage and her two young children. It was packed, and she considered leaving to try again the next day. But a woman on the platform noticed her indecision and convinced her to keep at it, and helped carry her family’s bags until they got a train out of the city. The next day, the station’s platform was bombed.

Ms. Rostovska and her children settled temporarily in Kyiv and on Facebook found someone helping evacuate refugees to Lithuania. She contacted her sister, Ms. Skidan, who had already fled to western Ukraine and couldn’t find work. They met in Lviv with both their families and left the country by bus.

In Lithuania, the two sisters and their four children lived in a rural convent sheltering dozens of Ukrainian refugees. After going to a job fair, they found work at a bottle factory more than an hour and a half away. Locally, their kids continued school and kindergarten.

But the convent only allowed visitors to stay for two months, and rent in Lithuania was expensive. The sisters struggled with the commute and the cold and the area’s many mosquitoes. Ms. Skidan missed her husband of 17 years, who found a job in Kyiv after they evacuated in April. The two had never been apart so long.

“It wasn’t a home,” says Ms. Skidan. “It’s really hard when you don’t understand the language and another culture.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Ukrainian families wait in line to cross the Polish border back to Ukraine in Medyka, Poland, June 16, 2022.

“Better than nothing”

The two sisters’ situation is in some ways typical, says Aliona Karavai, co-founder of Insha Osvita, a nongovernmental organization in Ukraine that serves refugees. Transitioning to a new country is hard in the best of times, and a war is nearly the worst. Many people struggle with work, child care, language skills, and community. Those factors can make it hard to stay.

“You’re physically safe, but you are socially unsafe,”  says Ms. Karavai, whose organization is starting a program to support returning Ukrainians.

There aren’t clear statistics on the number of refugees now returning. But anecdotal evidence suggests it’s high. On the Polish border, there’s a miles-long queue of cars waiting to reenter Ukraine.

In mid-June, Ms. Rostovksa and Ms. Skidan again filled their bags – some of them weighing more than 75 pounds – and crossed that border on a bus. They settled in Kyiv, where Ms. Skidan’s husband had already signed on a short-term apartment near an outdoor auto shop. For the seven of them, there are only two bedrooms.

“Better than nothing,” says Ms. Rostovska.

Hoping to stay in Kyiv only a month, both sisters wait and watch for good news from home. On the group chat, Kramatorsk’s teachers recently said they wished students could come back in the fall.

Meanwhile, Russia’s military recently took Lysychansk, less than 100 miles away. Kramatorsk may be one of the next cities targeted. Ms. Skidan’s husband tells her, “There will be no life in Kramatorsk in the closest years.”

The families are now officially registered as internally displaced. None of them are willing to put their children – who step into their apartment kitchen to hug their mothers or grab a slice of apple pie – at risk. Kyiv is expensive, they say, but one month may have to become two, or longer.

Ms. Skidan sits next to her sister and 14-year-old son. Magnets hang on their refrigerator, and cinnamon cookies lie untouched on the kitchen table. Her pink shirt says “positive thinking” in cursive.

“Home is your walls,” says Ms. Skidan. In Lithuania, while she and her family adjusted to sleeping in beds after months spending nights in the hallways of their home in Kramatorsk, she imagined coming back to her husband. This is the first year of her life, of her children’s lives, that they didn’t celebrate Easter with family together. It’s the first year they didn’t visit the cemetery where their grandmother is buried.

Now she, her husband, and her family are all together again. But they’re not home, she says, starting to cry. Her son reaches back and puts his hand on hers. Often Ms. Skidan dreams they have returned to their apartment and things are safe again. But for now, she still waits.

Oleksandr Naselenko in Lviv and Olya Bystritskaya in Kyiv supported reporting for this story.

Crowds set off firecrackers and danced along Galle Face Green after news spread that Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had officially submitted his resignation letter from Singapore on Thursday.

The latest and largest in a series of political oustings, Mr. Rajapaksa’s departure has further energized a growing civilian protest movement – and created a power vacuum in the island nation. The next president will be tasked not only with managing ongoing civil unrest and severe economic crisis, but with restoring some sense of trust in the institutions that were responsible.

Sri Lankans aren’t picking their new president, at least not directly. Mr. Rajapaksa fled the country after protestors stormed his official residence and office over the weekend, and the deeply unpopular Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is serving as acting President until Parliament chooses a successor on July 20. Nominations will be announced the day before. 

Sri Lankans have strong ideas about how the country should move forward – including dissolving executive powers of the presidency, restarting negotiations with the International Monetary Fund, and addressing ethno-religious prejudice – but many say their confidence is low, given the government’s track record of corruption and incompetence. However, their faith in fellow Sri Lankans seems to be growing. 

Amjad Moulana, a political activist based in Colombo, says that scheduling direct elections as soon as possible will be critical to phasing out the old guard and restoring trust in government. “What we have witnessed through this struggle is the Sri Lankan spirit is still strong,” he says, “and that if younger and more capable leaders who embody this spirit emerge in the near future, therein lies hope.”

Rafiq Maqbool/AP

Protesters cheer as they leave Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's office building in Colombo, Sri Lanka, July 14, 2022. Sri Lankan protesters began to retreat from government buildings they seized, and military troops reinforced security at the Parliament, establishing a tenuous calm in a country in both economic meltdown and political limbo.

On Thursday, protestors announced they had decided to vacate the government buildings they had occupied since the weekend, in what appeared to be a move to preserve calm and trust in the movement.

Loss of trust

Mr. Rajapaksa hails from a political dynasty and swept to power in November 2019 with the help of the Sinhalese Buddhist voters. But his popularity tumbled this year amid a spiraling cost of living and severe shortages of essentials such as fuel, cooking gas, and medicine. Sri Lankans have been demanding his resignation since April. 

But faith in the country’s economic growth and governing institutions more broadly have plummeted since 2020, according to Gallup polls. In recent months, political mismanagement and crackdowns on protests have only added to people’s grievances, and as much as Mr. Rajapaksa’s exit has inspired celebration, it also halted critical talks with the IMF on a possible bailout package.

For Shehara Muthuwady, a human resource professional, Sri Lanka’s harrowing economic collapse has made daily life a battle.

“Personally, I don’t like the idea of an interim government, but it looks like the only short-term solution at the moment,” she says, adding that she’d want interim leaders to “look closely at more feasible solutions for the benefit of the public, rather than fueling up more corruption.”

Sharine Gunasekera, a mother of two from Colombo, has little faith in those in power. When asked about the president fleeing the country, she said she’d be happier if there was a way to hold Mr. Rajapaksa and his administration accountable for jeopardizing Sri Lankans’ futures.

“Call me delusional, but there is a small glimmer of hope that we might come out of this, with the right people at least, and with international help. ... Without that, I don’t think we or our children will have any chance or use living here,” she says. 

Eranga Jayawardena/AP

A vendor waits for customers at a vegetable marketplace in Colombo, Sri Lanka, June 10, 2022. Some 1.6 billion people in 94 countries face at least one dimension of the crisis in food, energy, and financial systems, according to a report last month by the Global Crisis Response Group of the United Nations Secretary-General.

Economic support

Sri Lanka’s future leader will also need to restore trust internationally. Political instability has halted negotiations with the IMF, with spokesman Gerry Rice saying on Twitter that they are “deeply concerned” about the ongoing crisis. “We hope for a resolution of the current situation that will allow for resumption of our dialogue on an IMF-supported program,” he said.

W.A. Wijewardena, former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, expects the current political impasse to delay negotiations further.

“Sri Lanka now must prove that it has a stable government to the satisfaction of [the] IMF,” he says. “This will be a difficult task.”

Mr. Moulana, the political activist, says that years of dubious leadership in Parliament means “Sri Lanka has not progressed socioeconomically compared to the growth trajectory of other nations, even those in the South Asian neighborhood.” He says interim leaders should focus on “resuming and expediting negotiations with the IMF,” as well as “restoring confidence” in international markets. 

Rebalancing power

Ambika Satkunanathan, former commissioner of Sri Lanka’s Human Rights Commission, says via email that minority groups will be slow to trust any government until leaders address Sinhala Buddhist supremacy, “which has been the driver of discrimination and violence against Tamils and Muslims, and an obstacle to finding a solution to the ethnic conflict.” 

Eranga Jayawardena/AP

An auto rickshaw driver waits in a queue hoping to get fuel near a fuel station in Colombo, Sri Lanka, June 24, 2022. Sri Lankans have endured months of shortages of food, fuel, and other necessities due to the country’s dwindling foreign exchange reserves and mounting debt, worsened by the pandemic and other longer-term troubles.

The Rajapaksas returned to power in 2019 in part by stoking anti-Tamil fears left over from the country’s civil war period, and by fueling anti-Muslim sentiments after the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks. The family then concentrated power through the 20th Amendment to the constitution, a controversial measure that dramatically expanded presidential executive power and limited that of the Parliament. Ms. Satkunanathan says this is how “the Rajapaksas were able to act in authoritarian and unaccountable ways and bring Sri Lanka to its knees.” 

Shortly after being sworn in on Friday, the acting president vowed to reverse the 20th Amendment.

For Ashwin Sandanakrishnan, an aircraft design engineer from Colombo, the new government should move quickly to abolish the executive presidency and return power to Parliament, so that one person cannot decide the future of the country. But he also considers the majority of current parliamentarians unqualified or downright immoral. 

“The people were led to electing them over false promises and lies,” he says. “The people seem to have realized this in the past few months and they should be given an opportunity to elect better representatives.”

Ms. Satkunanathan, Mr. Moulana, and Mr. Sandanakrishnan all agree that direct elections are the way forward, though Sri Lankans may not get the chance to choose their president until 2024, when the next election is scheduled. Parliamentary elections are scheduled for 2025, but could happen earlier if the president chooses.

“Since the people are showing an interest in exercising their civic duty by holding people in public office accountable, one hopes they will elect people with integrity and a commitment to serve the public at the next election. For this, extensive political education and awareness raising by political parties and civil society is required,” says the former human rights commissioner. 

Editor's note: This article has been edited to clarify Ambika Satkunanathan's position at the Human Rights Commission.

AP

An investor checks the market indexes at the Pakistan Stock Exchange in Karachi.

Pakistan, the world’s fifth most populous country, and the International Monetary Fund reached a important deal this week to revive a suspended loan. The agreement pulls back the South Asian nation from the brink of an economic and political crisis like the one unfolding in Sri Lanka. But it came with a caveat: a condition to tackle corruption.

That requirement, which was not part of the original loan, reflects a recognition that accountability and economic equality are essential to breaking a pattern of chronic mismanagement by successive Pakistani governments. Since 1950, Pakistan has sought bailouts from the IMF 22 times. It currently ranks a low 140 out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s global index for perceptions of corruption.

“Corruption erodes trust, weakens democracy, hampers economic development, and further exacerbates inequality, poverty, social division, and the environmental crisis,” Transparency noted in its 2021 report.

The current IMF loan to Pakistan, worth $6 billion, was brokered in 2019. Less than half was dispersed before it was suspended when the previous government, ousted in April, failed to meet its terms. By the time the new government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif started negotiations to have the loan reinstated, the country was reeling from the economic shocks of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Pakistan relies on wheat and fuel imports from the two countries. Inflation jumped to 21.3% in June, nearly double from the rate a month before. Its foreign exchange reserves were below the amount needed to cover two months of imports. The country owns $41 billion to cover imports and debt repayments over the next 12 months.

Economists estimate that graft accounts for billions of dollars in lost trade, growth, and revenue annually. That last benchmark is particularly important. In preparation for talks with the IMF to revive the loan, the government set new targets in tax revenue.

The suspended loan, which the IMF has provisionally agreed to boost by another billion dollars, initially sought to increase social spending to improve living standards for Pakistan’s most vulnerable citizens. The revised terms set this week require new tariffs on fuel and electricity. Just as critical, they require the government to establish an anti-corruption task force to review all existing laws aimed at eliminating official graft.

The government balked at tying new anti-corruption measures to the loan. But IMF studies have shown a direct link between addressing corruption, increased annual revenue collection, and a higher shared standard of living. “Curbing corruption is a challenge that requires persevering on many fronts, but one that pays huge dividends,” a 2019 IMF study concluded. “It starts with political will, continuously strengthening institutions to promote integrity and accountability, and global cooperation.”

The IMF deal has forestalled the threat of default and given Pakistan’s government some much-needed financial relief to begin establishing a stabler economic course. More importantly, by building in new conditions of accountability, it may help the country’s leaders embrace two ideals in Pakistan’s Constitution – sadiq and ameen, honesty and righteousness – that provide a cornerstone for a more just and stable society.