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KATOWICE, Poland — World leaders wrapped up prolonged and difficult talks here late Saturday with agreement on guidelines aimed at implementing the 2015 Paris climate pact.

Why it matters: Failure to reach a deal on the so-called rulebook at these annual United Nations talks would have been a major setback for the 2015 pact that's already under strain by the planned U.S. withdrawal and other forces.

Where it stands: The negotiators agreed to a set of rules governing reporting their emissions and detailing climate policies, while delaying a decision affecting carbon markets.

The big picture: Multiple reports about the dire projected impacts of climate change shaped this conference’s narrative over the past two weeks, which the UN hosts in different cities each year. 

But these particular negotiations were always about working out wonky details of the 2015 deal. Countries largely accomplished this, without big interference by the Trump administration or other nations resistant to aggressive action cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Flashback: In the biggest snafu of the negotiations held in this old coal mining city, the U.S. joined Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait last weekend in refusing to "welcome" a recent landmark UN report on climate change, prompting outrage among other nations.

The final text of the negotiations "welcomes" the completion of the report, but not the  report itself, per Climate Home News. It's a subtle distinction that matters a lot in diplomacy like this. 

What’s next: The next big political moment will be in September, when the UN holds a summit in New York where nations will be expected to say what they have done or plan to do to ramp up their commitments to the 2015 deal, according to Alden Meyer, an expert on these issues with the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists.

Chile will host the 2019 UN global climate conference.   

Go deeper, highlights from the our coverage:

The climate battle: Fuels versus emissions

Al Gore: Tech capturing CO2 emissions "nonsense"

Dearth of U.S. leadership at climate conference

White House: U.S. not alone touting fossil fuels

Trump's missed opportunity on coal and climate change

Go deeper, with other news coverage: Washington Post and Climate Home News.

Dire projections overshadow climate deal

The confab's ending dragged out by about a day.

Patricia Espinosa, Antonio Guterres and Luis Alfonso de Alba during the COP24 UN Climate Change Conference 2018. Photo: Omar Marques/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Energy

Climate change

Science

Breaking climate science and policy coverage as extreme weather events reshape communities. Keep tabs on the race to a low carbon economy, which may be bumpy as governments, climate tech startups and major oil and gas companies race to find their niche amid the changing energy landscape.

Energy & Climate

While speaking to reporters at Arlington National Cemetery on Saturday, President Trump called the latest ruling on the Affordable Care Act by United States Judge Reed O'Connor in Texas, reversing the health care act, a "big, big victory," and said a new health care policy will be discussed with the Democrats if the Supreme Court upholds the ruling.  

"We'll be sitting down with the Democrats and we will get great health care for our people, that's a repeal and replace, handled a bit differently"

The big picture: The ruling reversing the Affordable Care Act in Texas puts former President Barack Obama's signature legislation in real jeopardy. 

This could end in the Affordable Care Act being completely wiped out, Axios' David Nather explains. "There’s no guarantee that a more conservative Supreme Court won’t just let the law die."

Details: The ruling broadly struck down everything related to the ACA, including the individual mandate, expansion of Medicaid, young adults remaining on their parents plants and pre-existing condition coverage. 

Trump previously promised pre-existing condition coverage, but that clashes with O'Connor's ruling. 

The bottom line: The ruling will be appealed and there is no injunction shutting the law down right now and there is no impact on coverage immediately or for 2019. But the Affordable Care Act is in real danger.

Trump calls Affordable Care Act ruling a "big victory"

The Affordable Care Act is in real danger.

President Trump at Arlington National Cemetery

President Trump at Arlington National Cemetary. Photo: Yuri Gripas-Pool/Getty Images

Politics

Donald Trump

Health Care

2024 will be an election year like no other, as President Biden seeks re-election amid economic uncertainty, two wars and questions about his age. His likely foe, former President Trump, faces felony charges and vows revenge on his political enemies. Meanwhile, Americans generally are dissatisfied with those choices and are divided over immigration, race, education and more.

Politics & Policy

Data: UNHCR; Note: Data does not include the 5.4 million Palestine refugees in 2017 under UNRWA’s mandate; Chart: Naema Ahmed/Axios

As of last year, more people have been forced by violence and conflict to flee their homes than live in the U.K. or France.

Why it matters: That's upwards of 60 million people — a global nation of refugees. If all of these asylum-seekers, internally displaced people and refugees were a country, they'd be the 21st most populous nation in the world, according to UNHCR estimates. More than half of refugees are under the age of 18.

The crisis is the worst its been since World War II, and it's not getting better:

This population will continue to grow as violent conflicts drag on and climate change wreaks havoc.

Host countries and refugee camps will increasingly become permanent homes to tens of millions of refugees while many wealthy nations turn their backs.

The top five places people are running from are:

Syria: Where millions of people have been forced from their homes amidst internal conflict and terrorism by the Islamic State, or ISIS.

Afghanistan: Ongoing violence has created one of the largest, longest-lasting refugee crises.

South Sudan: Millions of South Sudanese have fled to Uganda and other surrounding nations as a civil war rages.

Myanmar: The Rohingya minority has faced deadly, violent persecution and many have fled.

Somalia: A combination of natural disasters and 25 years of conflict have produced hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees.

Climate change is expected to create even more internally displaced people as natural disasters become more frequent and intense.

An anti-immigrant strain of populism has made it more difficult for international organizations and humanitarian groups to resettle and care for refugees, particularly in Europe and the U.S.

"That is the shift in the narrative," said Eskinder Negash, president and CEO of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants and former director of HHS's Office of Refugee Resettlement under Obama, told Axios.

The future: This crisis of displacement will have an impact on generations.

Many who have been displaced internally will continue to suffer from poverty and persecution inflicted by governments, extremists or natural disasters.

Many young refugees face a future of limited education and job opportunities, and some will grow up with mental trauma and little memory of their home countries.

Be smart: The word "refugee" is often used to describe many different types of displaced people, but it's important to understand the different terms and how they should be used.

Refugees have fled and found protection outside of their home nation. A multilateral UN treaty known as the 1951 Refugee Convention has established refugee rights including work, access to the courts, primary education and documentation.

Asylum-seekers have also fled to a new country, but their application for sanctuary there is still pending. They are not yet legally recognized as a refugee.

Internally displaced people have been forced to leave their homes or areas of the country, but have not crossed international borders. They are vulnerable: They are subject to the laws of their national government, even if those laws are oppressive.

Migrant is a general term that typically applies to anyone now residing in a nation that is not their own— regardless of legality, permanence or reason.

1 human being: A 20-year journey from Bhutan to Oregon 

How climate change is already deepening the refugee crisis 

Developing nations — not the U.S.— are carrying the refugee load 

How the Western world has closed the door on refugees and migrants 

Growing up, and parenting, as a refugee 

Expert Voices: A closer look at Colombia’s Venezuelan migrant crisis 

Wasted talent: Work and hope for refugees 

Deep Dive: A widening world without a home

If all the refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced people were a country, they'd be the 21st most populous nation in the world.

World

Deep Dive - Refugee Crisis

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This story first appeared in an Axios Deep Dive

Immigration

News that a 7-year-old girl died "of dehydration and shock" in Border Patrol custody last week has focused attention on the dangers migrants and asylum-seekers face while attempting to reach safety.

EG, a successful asylum-seeker from El Salvador, spoke to Axios via interpreter Antonia Basu and asked that her name be withheld for her safety. EG left El Salvador in early September 2015 along with her 8-year-old daughter and 15-year-old nephew. The nephew, under EGs care since her sister died, resisted recruitment efforts by a local gang. In retaliation, the gang demanded money, damaged their car and threatened to kill the family, EG told Axios.

EG refused to pay. She decided to flee to the U.S. — eventually becoming one of more than 18,000 Salvadorans who claimed asylum in the U.S. that year.

The U.S. has long had some of the highest numbers of pending asylum requests in the world, and last year it received more than any other nation largely due to an increase in Central American claims, according to UNHCR. 

Over the past few year, more than 70% of Honduran, Salvadoran and Guatemalan asylum-seekers have been denied defensive asylum in the U.S.

3,456 migrant deaths worldwide were recorded in 2018, according to the Missing Migrants Project. 

A majority of these migrant fatalities occur along the Mediterranean, followed by 509 deaths recorded in the Americas this year.

EG paid for a brutal 20-day bus trip with limited access to food. "It was a lot of suffering for the children," she said. 

The group reached the U.S. border on Sept. 24, where they were detained and EG was separated from her nephew. 

On Oct. 16, 2015, reunited with her nephew, EG was released. Two years after reaching the border, EG was officially granted asylum. 

Her nephew's case, however, is still pending. He's one of more than 600,000 asylum-seekers waiting for an asylum decision in the U.S., per UNHCR.

When we talked late on a Thursday afternoon, EG was about to leave for work. Her daughter was still at school. Truthfully, she said, she is happy she came to the U.S. despite the traumatic experience because of the opportunity her children now have. She wants people to know that asylum-seekers are not coming to take American jobs or steal or hurt people, they’re just hoping for a better life.

Go deeper: How the U.S. asylum process works

The dangerous journey to asylum

An illustration of a child with a wire fencing in the foreground. It is on a hot pink background.

Axios Science

The length of time people are living as refugees is now longer than ever. Day-to-day life for families in displacement — poverty, fear, insecurity and discrimination — can put the psychological and emotional development of the youngest refugees at risk.

The big picture: "There are structural problems in the system — policies around refugee residency, resettlement and employment — that directly affect the way parents can care for children and in turn their mental health," Amanda Sim of the Center for Evidence Based Interventions at the University of Oxford tells Axios.

Millions of refugees have been displaced for more than a decade, according to UNHCR data.

As of 2017 half the world’s refugee population was under the age of 18.

There are now second and third generations of refugees; children who have never known life outside of a camp or in their home nation.

"When you go to East Sudan you have refugees since 1968 in the refugee camp. When you go to Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, there've been refugees there since 1991. When you go to Morocco, you have the Sahrawi people that have been there since 1975."

 Eskinder Negash, President and CEO of USCRI and former Director of the HHS's Office of Refugee Resettlement

Help for the kids: UNICEF, the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies and other NGOs offer child services and art- or play-based activities in refugee camps to give kids coping skills to manage stress and to try to prevent mental health problems from arising. 

In Bangladesh, the NGO BRAC runs “play labs” where Rohingya refugee children from Myanmar play for a few hours each day, 

The programs — which last week received added support from the Lego Foundation to partner with Sesame Workshop — focus on learning and emotional development as well as building community for children in their host societies where they can face discrimination.

Help for the parents: Parents too are chronically stressed by the struggle of trying to provide the most basic of parenting responsibilities — safety, shelter and food. That can have a negative impact on how they interact with their children and, in turn, their emotional well-being.

“Investing in parents' mental health is key to supporting these children long-term,” says Alexandra Chen, a graduate student at Harvard who studies the impact of trauma and stress on refugees in Lebanon.

Psychologist Kenneth Miller of War Child Holland and his colleagues have run small caregiver support programs in Gaza and Lebanon that focus first on parents' well-being, then on skills for parenting. 

The research is in the early phases of testing but Miller says data from Syria suggests the program helped some parents "find greater calm and managing their stress freed them up to parent in ways they wanted to parent."

Growing up, and parenting, as a refugee

The psychological and emotional development of the youngest refugees are being put at risk.

Axios

Saturday's top stories

Dire projections overshadow climate deal

Trump calls Affordable Care Act ruling a "big victory"

Deep Dive: A widening world without a home

The dangerous journey to asylum

Growing up, and parenting, as a refugee

Affordable Care Act may be headed back to Supreme Court

Behind the scenes of Mick Mulvaney's move to chief of staff

Smoother, but same track expected at Interior following Zinke's departure

Ryan Zinke to step down as Interior Secretary

Technology has over-saturated us

YouTube's video takedown and other tech news this week

Federal judge says ACA must be thrown out