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Sunday, July 26, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
Latin America & the Caribbean
Guatemala: A Narrow Opening in a Captured Justice System
José Rubén Zamora, founder of elPeriódico, Guatemala’s now-defunct leading investigative newspaper, spent 1,295 days in detention before a court granted him house arrest on 12 February. He endured long stretches of solitary confinement in a military jail, held in near-constant darkness and subjected to treatment that six UN experts warned could amount to torture. His offence was simply doing his job. For decades, he exposed the corrupt dealings of Guatemala’s economic and political elites. Prosecutors are still trying to send him back to prison.
Hunger in Latin America Keeps Falling – Now Healthy Diets Must Become Affordable
Hunger is falling across most of Latin America and the Caribbean. The region’s next challenge is harder: ensuring that everyone can afford a healthy diet, not merely enough calories to survive.
Don’t Cry for Milei, Argentina
Sunday’s World Cup final focused world attention on the stench of corruption, past and current, surrounding some of its main protagonists, including Argentina, and the presidents of FIFA, Argentina and the main host nation.
MEXICO: ‘Our Call for Justice for Our Missing Loved Ones Must Reach the World Just as World Cup Goals Do’
CIVICUS speaks about efforts to use the 2026 FIFA World Cup to highlight Mexico’s enforced disappearance crisis with Ana Enamorado, a Honduran national who continues to search for her missing son in Mexico, and founder of the Regional Network of Migrant Families.
Venezuela’s Humanitarian Crisis Deepens After Worst Earthquake in Decades
In recent weeks, Venezuela’s humanitarian situation has deteriorated sharply following the twin earthquakes on June 24. Marking the strongest seismic event since 1990, the earthquakes and subsequent aftershocks have resulted in a significant loss of life, widespread damage to critical infrastructure, and considerable disruption to livelihoods and humanitarian response efforts.
CARICOM Leaders Gather in Saint Lucia as Caribbean Confronts Mounting Global, Regional Challenges
Caribbean leaders are meeting in Saint Lucia for their annual summit, confronting a convergence of global and regional challenges ranging from rising living costs and climate change to crime, food security and geopolitical tensions.
Peru’s Gridlock a Licence for Autocracy?
Right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori has won Peru’s presidential runoff, narrowly defeating leftist Roberto Sánchez to become the country’s ninth president in a decade. She inherits a system so engineered for dysfunction that rather than making compromises, she may decide the concentration of power is her only means of survival. The constitution that created this trap was written by her father.
Why Cities Are the Starting Point for Tackling the Global Cancer Crisis
Anyone whose life has been touched by cancer knows that care is highly complex. From first symptoms through diagnosis and treatment, patients may need multiple diagnostic tests, combinations of surgery, systemic therapy and radiotherapy, and input from several specialists, alongside support services such as financial counselling, psychological support and palliative care.
MEXICO: ‘The World Cup Is an Opportunity to Raise Global Awareness of the Crisis of Enforced Disappearances’
CIVICUS discusses Mexico’s enforced disappearance crisis with Angélica Orozco, a member of Fuerzas Unidas por Nuestros Desaparecidos en Nuevo León (FUNDENL), a collective of relatives of disappeared people and people who support them. Since 2012, FUNDENL has been searching for the disappeared and documenting the human rights crisis.
Cuba’s Last Hand
Ever since the Berlin Wall fell 37 years ago and the communist Eastern Bloc collapsed, Cuba has been debating economic reforms to its socialist system. Essentially, the discussion always revolves around the same issues: less state planning, more personal responsibility. In other words, a strong dose of capitalism as an antidote to inefficient and corrupt state bureaucracy.
Colombia’s next President: A Reckoning for Peace, Climate and Human Rights
On 21 June Colombians made their choice. By the narrowest of margins, Abelardo de la Espriella, a far-right criminal lawyer who’s never held elected office, became president-elect. Climate activists, human rights defenders, Indigenous communities and peace advocates have the most to lose from the incoming government’s agenda.
World Cup Preparation Scores a Goal against the Environment
The construction of an elevated pedestrian bridge connecting central and southern Mexico City –one of roughly 2,000 urban works tied to the 2026 FIFA World Cup, began last October, and, with only days to go before the tournament's kickoff, remains unfinished.
As Global Demand for Gold Grows, UN Mercury Head Warns Toxic Fumes Put Women in a Motherhood Dilemma
Ask any woman miner in the Katoro goldfield in Tanzania’s northern Geita region, and she will tell you that she touches toxic mercury with her bare hands when extracting gold from crushed ore.
PERU: ‘For 20 Years, Voters Have Had to Choose the Lesser of Two Evils’
CIVICUS discusses the outlook ahead of Peru’s runoff presidential election with David Hidalgo, journalist and executive director of OjoPúblico, a Peruvian digital investigative journalism outlet.
Brazil’s Indigenous Communities Receive $9M in GEF Funding to Protect Lands, Traditions Under Threat
On Brazil’s northeastern coast, the Indigenous community, Tremembé da Barra do Mundaú, lives on a preserved stretch of land shaped by mangroves, dunes, and deserted beaches. The group of around 160 families is led by women and depends on the 3,500-hectare territory for fishing and subsistence farming.
UN General Assembly Votes for Resolution on ICJ Advisory Ruling on Climate Obligations
Member states this week (May 20) deliberated over a draft resolution on states’ obligations in respect of climate change following the advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The General Assembly agreed to take measures to uphold the ICJ’s advisory opinion for member states to meet their existing obligations to climate justice under international law and multilateral frameworks.
UN Weather Agency Warns of Escalating Climate Extremes Across Caribbean and Latin America
Faster-than-average sea level rise, intensifying hurricanes, extreme heat and worsening swings between drought and flooding are increasing pressure on Latin America and the Caribbean, according to a new report released Monday, May 18 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
The GEF Leads Global Drive to Tackle Shipping Threat to Oceans
Under the warm waters off Tanzania’s Mafia Island, marine scientist Asha Mgeni hovers above a coral reef she has studied for years. Small fish dart through the currents. To most divers, the reef appears pristine. But Mgeni notices something unusual.
VENEZUELA: ‘The Credit Goes to Detainees’ Families, Human Rights Organisations and the International Community’
CIVICUS discusses the status of political prisoners in Venezuela with Manuel Virgüez, director of Movimiento Vinotinto, a Venezuelan human rights organisation that works for citizen empowerment, democracy and justice.
How Santa Marta Finally Made Fossil Fuel Phase-Out Politically Discussable
The First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia, may eventually be remembered as a defining moment in global climate politics, not because it produced a treaty or a formal negotiation outcome, but because it changed the tone, structure, and ambition of the conversation itself.
Clean Energy, Digital Technologies Are Coming at a Human Cost, UN Report Warns
A newly released United Nations report has raised urgent concerns that the world’s push toward clean energy and digital technologies is driving a hidden crisis in some of the planet’s most vulnerable regions, where mining for critical minerals is depleting water supplies, damaging health, and deepening inequality.Next Page » *#*
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