Bangladesh has achieved remarkable economic progress over the past few decades. Its garment industry has become globally important, millions of people have entered the workforce, and private businesses have expanded across manufacturing, services, technology and trade. But economic growth alone does not create a healthy business environment. Businesses also need predictable laws, safe workplaces, fair competition, protection of property and contracts, and respect for the rights of workers, consumers and communities.

Shahiduzzaman

There has been progress, but significant gaps remain. The World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys have repeatedly identified corruption, infrastructure, access to finance and regulatory obstacles among the challenges faced by businesses in Bangladesh. These problems increase the cost and uncertainty of doing business, particularly for smaller enterprises. The World Bank has also emphasised that effective regulations and institutions governing business registration, licensing, inspections and property rights are essential for reducing business risks while protecting consumers, public health and safety.

Corruption is particularly damaging because it creates an uneven playing field. When businesses believe that personal connections or unofficial payments are necessary to obtain services, licences or approvals, honest businesses can be placed at a disadvantage. It also weakens confidence in government institutions and discourages investment.

The problem is not necessarily a lack of laws. Bangladesh has numerous laws and regulatory agencies. The deeper problem is often implementation and enforcement. Rules that are reasonable on paper have little value if they are applied selectively, slowly or inconsistently.

This gap is also visible in the rule of law. The World Justice Project’s 2025 Rule of Law Index ranked Bangladesh 125th among 143 countries, although Bangladesh’s overall score improved by 1.3 per cent from the previous year. The index examines areas including fundamental rights, regulatory enforcement, civil justice, criminal justice and order and security.

Human rights and workplace safety are another critical part of responsible business.

Bangladesh has made important progress since the Rana Plaza disaster, particularly in the garment sector. More recently, the country took a significant step by ratifying ILO Conventions 155 and 187 on occupational safety and health and Convention 190 on violence and harassment at work in November 2025. The ILO described these ratifications as an important commitment to safer workplaces and workers’ rights.

However, ratification is not the same as implementation. The ILO itself makes clear that ratification represents a commitment to progressively align national laws and practices with international standards; it does not mean that full compliance automatically exists on the day of ratification.

The real challenge is therefore to ensure that workplace safety rules are consistently enforced, labour inspectors have adequate resources and independence, and workers can report violations without fear of retaliation.

Public safety and institutional trust are equally important. A business environment cannot be stable when citizens lack confidence in the institutions responsible for law enforcement and justice. The Asia Foundation’s 2024 survey of 6,510 Bangladeshis found that only 20.5 per cent considered the police to have very high integrity. Trust in the judiciary was 38.2 per cent. The survey also showed that trust in both institutions had declined from 2022 levels.

Other countries demonstrate that stronger institutions and economic development can advance together. Singapore provides one example of the importance of consistent enforcement and institutional integrity. According to Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index, Singapore scored 84 out of 100 and ranked third among 182 countries. The index measures perceptions of public-sector corruption, based on expert assessments and business surveys.

Vietnam provides another useful comparison because, like Bangladesh, it has built a strong export-oriented manufacturing economy. The World Bank says Vietnam’s economic success over recent decades has been strongly supported by export-oriented foreign investment, but argues that further growth requires regulatory reform and higher productivity. Vietnam has introduced a programme to simplify or reduce business regulations and, by December 2023, had simplified or reduced 2,789 regulations. Its National Public Services Portal had also digitised more than 70 per cent of public administrative services.

So, what should Bangladesh do?

First, the government must close the gap between laws and enforcement. Regulations should be clear, simple and applied equally.

Second, government services such as licences, permits, taxation, customs and inspections should increasingly be digitised. Clear deadlines, published fees and traceable decisions can reduce opportunities for unofficial payments.

Third, regulatory agencies must be more accountable. Complaints against officials should be independently investigated, and disciplinary measures should follow transparent procedures.

Fourth, labour inspection must be strengthened. Workplace safety should not become a priority only after accidents occur. Employers who violate safety standards should face meaningful consequences, while compliant businesses should not be placed at a competitive disadvantage.

Fifth, police and justice institutions need to rebuild public confidence through professional training, independent complaint mechanisms, timely investigations and equal application of the law.

Finally, businesses, workers, civil society and consumers should have meaningful opportunities to participate in regulatory reform. Policies imposed without consultation often fail to address problems experienced on the ground.

Bangladesh does not have to choose between business growth and human rights. In fact, sustainable economic growth increasingly depends on both. Safe workers are more productive, predictable regulations encourage investment, fair competition rewards innovation, and trusted institutions reduce the risks and costs of doing business.

The ultimate test is simple: Can an entrepreneur compete without connections? Can a worker work without fear? Can a consumer obtain justice? Can a business receive government services without unofficial payments? And can every citizen expect the law to be applied fairly?

If Bangladesh can answer these questions through effective institutions rather than promises, it can build a business environment based not only on economic opportunity, but also on human rights, public safety, fairness and public trust.

Shahiduzzaman is the Editor and CEO of News Network. shahiduzzaman@newsnetwork-bd.org

This story was originally published by The Financial Express

8 November 1996
Graca Machel (left), former Minister of Education of Mozambique and the Secretary-General's appointed Expert on the Impact of Armed Conflict of Children, presents her report titled "The United Nations Report on the Impact of Armed Conflict of Children" to the Third Committee. Right is Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Mikiko Otani
TOKYO, Japan, Oct 23 2026 (IPS)

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind. The United Nations was established with this commitment.

Children, while constituting nearly a third of humanity, are disproportionately affected by war. Yet, children’s voices are rarely heard and children are largely absent from peace processes.

From Machel to Security Council Resolution 2427

Graça Machel, thirty years ago, in her groundbreaking report “Impact of Armed Conflict on Children” already told the United Nations: “clearly the most effective way to protect children is to prevent the outbreak of armed conflicts”; “All people need to feel that they have a fair share in decision-making,” emphasizing that young people should be seen as “active participants in creating solutions, not just as victims”.

The need for child participation was emphasized in the Paris Principles and Guidelines on Children Associated with Armed Forces or Armed Groups (2007). While the participation of children received less attention in the original Machel report, it was highlighted as an important issue in the 10-year strategic review (2009), having an entire chapter devoted to “Children as Peacemakers”. This recognition was followed by Security Council resolution 2427 (2018), which called on Member States and the UN system “to ensure that the views of children are taken into account … throughout the conflict cycle”, and to fully incorporate and prioritize “empowerment” of children in the post-conflict recovery, reconstruction and peacebuilding processes, taking into consideration the views of children.

Participation: a child’s right and a driver of peace

Participation is a right of the child under the most widely ratified Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). Children must be heard and have their views given due weight in all matters that affect them, including in the conflict context. Children’s participation is critical for conflict prevention, their protection in the conflict, recovery, reintegration and reparation. Children can also play an important role in bringing divided, torn communities together, as catalysts for social cohesion and building peace.

The momentum has been building for a further call for participation of children. The Security Council heard the views of a former child soldier from Colombia (2018), a 15-year-old girl from Mali (2020), and an 18-year-old peacebuilding activist from Cameroon (2023). All three speakers called for the participation of children.

In this year of special importance for children affected by conflict, 30th anniversary of the creation of the children and armed conflict mandate by the UN General Assembly, the Human Rights Council strengthened the scope of the call for child participation in its resolution 61/21 devoted to the rights of the child affected by armed conflict. It invites States to ensure the meaningful participation of children affected by armed conflict in the design, implementation, follow-up and evaluation of policies and programmes throughout the conflict cycle, including conflict prevention, peace and post-conflict processes, including protection, justice, accountability, reparation and recovery.

This resolution is particularly significant. Twenty-four children aged 12-17 from 10 countries in conflict situations shared their views in a consultation with the European Union, one of the penholders, and many of their recommendations helped shape the resolution (Child Rights Connect, meeting report and Child Friendly Guide, 2026).

The children and armed conflict agenda, deeply embedded in the Convention on the Rights of the Child as a basis for the Machel report, established by the General Assembly, strengthened by the Security Council, is now complemented by the Human Rights Council from the child rights perspective. This is very much in line with the call of the UN Secretary-General’s Guidance Note (2023) for mainstreaming child rights throughout the whole UN system including the peace and security pillar.

Three recommendations for the next steps

First, UN mechanisms, States and civil society should support and strengthen partnership with children and young people to make meaningful participation of children a reality. Second, children should be included in the Conference commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Paris Principles to be convened by France with UNICEF in February 2027, highlighting the transformative role that children associated with armed forces and armed groups can play as rights holders and agents of change. Third, children’s participation should be supported in the global peacebuilding architecture and space, starting from the annual peacebuilding week in June 2027, the beginning year of the International Decade of Strengthening of Peace for Future Generations (2027-2036) proclaimed by the General Assembly resolution 80/269 (2026).

Dr. Mikiko Otani, widely recognized as an international human rights lawyer, is currently the President of Child Rights Connect, a Geneva-based global NGO network promoting child rights. She was the Chair of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (2021-2023) during her eight-year membership for two terms.

IPS UN Bureau

Boats in Villa Marina, Falcón State. Credit:Jujovar2010, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Francisco R. Rodríguez
DENVER, Colorado, USA, Oct 23 2026 (IPS)

 
Money chase

So, if Venezuela claims to be importing from the rest of the world roughly as much as it was exporting during those years, and the rest of the world confirms Venezuela’s story, then where could those additional $11 billion that presumably ended up in the bank accounts of Maduro’s cronies be?

Technically, there are some ways in which a country could spend as much as it earns and still have large sums go missing. The first obvious one is if there were $11 billion lying around to steal. Except we know there weren’t, because the Venezuelan government was broke and had all its international accounts frozen. Even the Central Bank didn’t have access to most of its international reserves at the time. And remember, the Times is telling us that these $11 billion were coming out of unpaid receivables. In other words, the oil was being sold, it was being loaded into ships, and the owners of these ships were promising to pay Venezuela for that oil but, according to the Times, never did.

Another possibility is that Venezuela was accumulating assets because someone was lending it money. But that explanation doesn’t pass the smell test either. Nobody in their right mind would have lent $11 billion to Venezuela in 2021 and 2022. The country was sanctioned, barred from issuing any type of debt in the United States, and even non-US investment funds wouldn’t go near it with a 10-foot pole. The country didn’t even have access to bank accounts where a loan of that size could be wired.

And, quite frankly, if, say, China or Russia had lent Venezuela $11 billion and somehow gotten those dollars to Venezuela, don’t you think the New York Times, or Reuters, or the Wall Street Journal, would have written a story about that? And, by the way, where is that $11 billion creditor trying to get their money back? No other Venezuela creditors seem to know about them, which is quite odd for a country that has just announced that it’s about to start restructuring its debt.

In sum, nobody lent Venezuela $11 billion in 2021–22 because anyone deluded enough to do so wouldn’t have been lending the money; they would have been giving it away. The country already had a debt that was well in excess of its capacity to pay, and country risk premiums were through the roof. The expected return on any Venezuela debt issuance in those years would have been zero.

Digging in

Now here it is actually worth stopping for a minute and looking carefully at the numbers in the country’s current account, because what the balance of payments data allows us to do is not just look at how much the country receives and spends in foreign exchange, but also where that money comes from and where it goes. And here the story gets interesting because, oddly enough, what these numbers seem to tell us is that the Venezuelan government did borrow around $11 billion (or, more precisely, $10.4 billion) in those two years. They also tell us that it accumulated some $14 billion in accounts receivable, precisely the ones that the New York Times is telling us were not paid.

So, say you had just come down from Mars, knew nothing about Venezuela’s pariah status at the time, and looked at these numbers. You would say: well yes, Venezuela borrowed $10 billion in those years and at the same time accumulated $14 billion in accounts receivable (that is, promises to pay in the future) for its oil sales. And if then, on your short trip from Mars, you picked up a copy of the New York Times and read it, you would say: well, it looks like of those $14 billion, around $11 billion never got paid.

So why does the country’s current account data get us these numbers that are so strange? Herein lies what I think is the resolution of the issue.

Below is a slide from a presentation prepared by PDVSA in late 2022, where it reports all of the oil that was sold between 2020 and 2022.[1] Note that $13.3 billion in invoices were ceded to the Republic. That’s actually a bit higher than the Times’ $11 billion because it includes 2020. In other words, the government was paying for its imports through oil shipments because it could not use international bank accounts as a result of US sanctions. Normally, PDVSA would have sold the oil, received dollars in payment, and sold those dollars to the Central Bank. Then the government would have gone to the Central Bank and bought dollars from it to pay importers.

Exhibit 1: November 2022 PDVSA Presentation Shows Receivables Ceded to Republic

Source: Ministry of Popular Power for Oil.

Since that mechanism could not be used, the government resorted to paying in-kind. It went to the importers and said: look, if you bring this much in imports into the country, we’ll let you go and collect from the people who bought our oil and who owe us money.

In fact, if you look at the decomposition of the supposed borrowing that the government did, you’ll find $6.3 billion of portfolio investment securities being issued by the government. And that rhythm of roughly $500 million per quarter continues until the end of 2025. That’s not because the government is issuing bonds. Believe me, if the government had issued a single bond, we would know about it (and whoever had bought that bond would have become the laughingstock of the securities world). But if you look at the fine print of the IMF’s Balance of Payments Statistics Manual, you’ll find that what characterizes portfolio investment is the fact that securities have to be negotiable. And this is precisely what Venezuela was giving importers: negotiable IOUs that they could exchange for oil receivables entitling them to receive payment for oil that Venezuela had sold.

We find a very direct statement of this in another slide of the PDVSA 2022 presentation, where the board states, in discussing cases of cesión de facturas (assignment of invoices) corresponding to shipments requested by the National Executive, that these were used to compensate debts with providers of the Republic.

There it is: we’ve found our mystery lender: importers who were being issued debt so that they could exchange them for oil shipments. So, when you see the balance of payments accounts say that the government was accumulating receivables and issuing debt, what you are really seeing is the way in which balance of payments statistics handle a practice that is as old as humanity: barter.

Oil and prejudice

Reality is often much more prosaic than what we want it to be. Government cronies did not walk away with $11 billion in unpaid oil shipments. What really happened is something much simpler: Venezuela didn’t have a way to pay in cash for the imports it needed, so it ended up paying with oil. And because PDVSA, the state-owned oil company, is legally distinct from the Republic, it did not directly collect on the shipments but rather transferred them to the Republic in payment of its tax and royalty obligations.

American journalist Sydney Harris once wrote that “we believe what we want to believe, what we like to believe, what suits our prejudices and fuels our passions.” And yes, the idea that Maduro’s henchmen walked off with $11 billion in oil shipments feeds well into many stereotypes of Venezuela under Maduro. Even if it sits awkwardly with the fact that he doesn’t seem to have money to pay for his defense in a Brooklyn court, most of us are predisposed to believe it.

Yes, Maduro’s regime was highly corrupt. No one puts that in doubt. But there is a long distance between recognizing its corruption and claiming that regime insiders walked away with half of the country’s oil exports. That image may fit a lot of political stereotypes and be useful for many political narratives. It just doesn’t fit the facts.

Francisco R. Rodríguez is a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (cepr.net) in Washington, DC and a professor and fellow at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies.

[1] I obtained this presentation two years ago from reporters who wrote stories on it and who asked me to see it to discuss their interpretation of it.

IPS UN Bureau

Bangladesh has earned global recognition for reducing deaths from cyclones and floods. Early warning systems, cyclone shelters, embankments and community preparedness have transformed the country’s disaster response. Yet another climate crisis is receiving far less attention: the economic damage climate change is quietly inflicting on households, farmers, workers, businesses and public finances.

Shahiduzzaman

The uncomfortable reality is that Bangladesh still lacks a comprehensive annual system for calculating climate induced microeconomic damage. Losses are recorded separately through agricultural damage, disaster assessments, health costs, infrastructure destruction, lost working days, business interruption, declining household income and climate induced migration. As a result, much of the country’s real climate bill remains invisible.

Available evidence shows that the cost is already enormous. The World Bank estimates that tropical cyclones cost Bangladesh around US$1 billion annually. It has also warned that a severe flood could reduce national GDP by as much as 9 percent, while climate change could cause around one third of agricultural GDP to be lost by 2050. As many as 13.3 million people could become internal climate migrants by 2050 because of climate related pressures on agriculture, water and land. The economic burden is no longer limited to cyclones and floods. Extreme heat is emerging as a major source of economic loss. A 2025 World Bank assessment found that heat related physical and mental health conditions resulted in an estimated 250 million lost workdays in Bangladesh in 2024. The resulting economic loss was estimated at between US$1.33 billion and US$1.78 billion, equivalent to around 0.3 to 0.4 percent of GDP.

This should fundamentally change how Bangladesh understands climate damage. A disaster does not have to destroy a house, factory or bridge to cause economic loss. When extreme heat reduces the productivity of a construction worker, garment worker, farmer, transport worker or street vendor, the economy loses output.

The hidden climate bill therefore extends far beyond physical destruction.

Consider a farmer in coastal Bangladesh. Rising salinity may gradually reduce agricultural production. The immediate result is lower household income. But the consequences do not end there. A family may sell livestock, borrow money, reduce food consumption or withdraw children from school. Eventually, one or more family members may migrate to Dhaka or another city.

A climate shock that begins in a field can therefore become a problem for the labour market, housing, education, health services and urban infrastructure.

The same chain of losses occurs during floods. A small shopkeeper can lose inventory. A transport worker can lose several days of income. A factory may remain physically undamaged but stop production because roads are submerged or workers cannot reach their workplace. Households may spend their savings on repairs instead of education, healthcare or investment.

At the same time, the government must spend more on emergency relief, damaged roads, embankment repair, reconstruction and public health.

Climate change therefore creates a double burden: private income and productive assets are lost while public expenditure increases.

This is why Bangladesh urgently needs a national climate loss accounting system. It should systematically measure household and productive asset losses, agricultural and fisheries damage, lost income and working days, health and productivity costs, business interruption, supply chain disruption, displacement and loss of human capital.

Such a system would tell policymakers not simply how much a cyclone or flood costs in physical damage, but how much income ordinary citizens lose and how much economic activity Bangladesh sacrifices.

This is particularly important because a large share of Bangladesh’s workers remain in informal employment. Agricultural labourers, construction workers, transport workers, street vendors and small entrepreneurs often have limited access to paid leave, insurance or social protection. When a flood, cyclone or heatwave prevents them from working, their income can disappear immediately.

Climate change is therefore also an inequality crisis.

A wealthier household may be able to repair its home, relocate temporarily or pay medical expenses. A poor household may have to sell productive assets or take on debt. For families living close to the poverty line, one climate shock can erase years of economic progress.

Bangladesh has taken important steps toward adaptation. Its National Adaptation Plan for 2023 to 2050 identifies major adaptation priorities and recognises the enormous investment required to protect people, livelihoods and development. (UNDP) But the gap between ambition and implementation remains a serious concern.

The first major gap is data. Bangladesh cannot effectively manage climate related economic damage without knowing its full scale. The government should publish an annual National Climate Economic Loss Report covering households, agriculture, businesses, labour productivity, health and public infrastructure.

The second gap is institutional coordination. Climate adaptation cannot remain primarily the responsibility of environmental or disaster management agencies. Climate risks must be integrated into agriculture, finance, labour, health, housing, transport, industry, education and urban planning.

The third gap is prevention. Bangladesh has become relatively successful at responding after disasters, but prevention deserves much greater economic priority. A resilient drainage system that prevents repeated business disruption may be more valuable than repeatedly repairing flood damage. A climate resilient crop can protect rural income for years. A heat resilient workplace can preserve thousands of working days.

The fourth challenge is finance. Bangladesh cannot meet its enormous adaptation needs through public budgets alone. International climate finance, concessional financing, private investment, insurance and innovative financial mechanisms will all be necessary.

International experience offers useful lessons. The Netherlands demonstrates how flood protection can be integrated into long term spatial planning, infrastructure and water management. Its experience shows that flood resilience can be treated as an economic strategy rather than simply an emergency response.

Singapore offers another important lesson, particularly for Bangladesh’s cities. Its approach to rising temperatures combines urban greenery, heat modelling, climate sensitive planning and protection of vulnerable populations. Dhaka could similarly treat trees, shaded public spaces, cool buildings, drainage and water management as economic infrastructure rather than merely environmental amenities.

Bangladesh can also build on its own success. Its cyclone warning system and community preparedness programmes demonstrate that locally rooted approaches can deliver remarkable results. The same principle should now be applied to protecting livelihoods, small businesses, agriculture and workers.

Most importantly, adaptation should be judged by economic outcomes. Instead of simply reporting how much money is spent on a climate project, the government should measure how many jobs are protected, how much income is safeguarded, how many working days are preserved and how much future economic loss is avoided.

The real climate bill is not simply the cost of rebuilding a bridge after a flood. It is the farmer who produces less for years because of salinity. It is the worker who loses productive days because of extreme heat. It is the small entrepreneur whose capital disappears in a flood. It is the child whose education is interrupted because household income collapses. It is the family forced to migrate after losing its land.

When millions of such individual losses accumulate, they become a national economic crisis.

Bangladesh has demonstrated that it can protect its people from the deadliest consequences of climate disasters. The next challenge is to protect their livelihoods and economic future.

The country cannot manage what it does not measure. It is time to move from simply counting disasters to counting lost income, lost jobs, lost working days, damaged productive assets and the GDP that climate change prevents Bangladesh from generating.

The objective should not simply be to calculate how much climate change costs Bangladesh. It should be to determine how much Bangladesh can save by investing in resilience today.

Climate adaptation is no longer merely an environmental responsibility. For Bangladesh, it is an investment in GDP, employment, poverty reduction, human development and long term economic security. The climate bill is already being paid. The failure is that we still do not know its full size.

The author is the Editor and CSO of News Network.

IPS UN Bureau

Estado Zulia - Venezuela. Credit: Breddyjgalvis, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

By Francisco R. Rodríguez
DENVER, Colorado, USA, Oct 21 2026 (IPS)

If you’ve been around Venezuelans for long enough, you know that we tend to speak in superlatives. We have the best baseball players, the most beautiful beaches, the tastiest arepas, and the wickedest dictators. But even being used to the scale of our superlatives didn’t quite prepare me for what I read in the May 5 edition of The New York Times, in a story called “In Venezuela, Trump Vowed to Show Accountability. Oil Deals Linger.” The story tells us that a network of shell companies controlled by Carlos Malpica (who is widely believed to be Maduro’s bagman) embezzled $11 billion of the country’s oil wealth in 2021 and 2022. In the Times’ words: “for every two dollars that Venezuela earned selling oil earlier this decade, one dollar was stolen, internal documents and official statistics show.”

Francisco R. Rodríguez

However, it is one thing to document the practice of corruption and another to argue that half of the country’s oil revenues were stolen. That conclusion is inconsistent with what we know about flows of currency into and out of Venezuela. Put simply, $11 billion of oil revenues could not have been stolen because if they had, Venezuela would not have been able to buy the goods that we know it purchased from the rest of the world.

The claim that half of oil revenues in 2021–22 were lost to corruption rests on a specific assumption: that if Venezuela’s state-owned oil company did not receive direct payment for its exports, the money must have been stolen. That interpretation misses one important fact. During this period, Venezuela was highly sanctioned, could not access bank accounts, and was paying for many of its imports directly with oil. That PDVSA did not directly receive cash payment on billions of dollars in receivables is not evidence of corruption; it is evidence of barter.

The mother of all kleptocracies

The claim that $11 billion were stolen is staggering because it would represent by far the largest corruption scandal ever uncovered. To take one example: the largest ever kleptocracy investigation, that for Malaysia’s 1MDB scandal, has been alleged to have diverted $4.5 billion over a seven-year period in a country whose GDP was approximately $270 billion a year. That works out to about 0.2 percent of Malaysian GDP over that period. Were the New York Times’ $11 billion figure correct, it would represent roughly 8 percent of Venezuela’s GDP over the period — approximately 32 times the size of the Malaysian graft relative to its economy. And if you take into account that estimates suggest that every dollar of oil revenue generates about 4 dollars of non-oil activity, you would reach the conclusion that the costs of Maduro’s alleged corruption was around 40 percent of Venezuelan GDP — several orders of magnitude higher than the cost of corruption found in numerous quantitative cross-national studies (and that[s even without counting the money other people were stealing). This would make Venezuela by far the mother of all kleptocracies.

The Times’ $11 billion number, if true, has major implications for the debates about Venezuela. For a long time, proponents of maximum pressure sanctions have argued that we shouldn’t worry about their detrimental effect on the country’s economy because the real cause of Venezuela’s collapse is corruption. That argument has always been strongly flawed: there’s no reason why corruption, mismanagement, poor policies and sanctions can’t all have contributed to the collapse. That said, if it were true that half of Venezuela’s oil income was being brazenly stolen, then the idea that external constraints are at most a secondary cause of Venezuela’s economic malaise acquires a greater ring of truth.

Reality check

Yet the story that Maduro’s henchmen stole $11 billion has a deep problem. If that money had really vanished, then Venezuela would not have been able to pay for the goods that it imported in those years.

In 2021 and 2022, Venezuela sold $26 billion in oil shipments, or an average of $13 billion a year. In addition, it generated another $11 billion in non-oil exports, of which a large part is mining, and received around $7 billion in remittances. That means the country received total foreign currency inflows of $44 billion in those two years. Now here’s the rub. We also know that the country was paying around $44 billion in imports of goods, services, and income payments to the rest of the world over the same two years. In fact, for 2021 and 2022 combined, the country’s foreign currency revenues exceeded its spending by just $0.04 billion. This difference, also known as the current account balance, was essentially zero. It means the country was spending as much money as was coming in, which makes sense for a country that had no assets to run down and no one to lend it money.

In sum in 2021–22, Venezuela was living paycheck to paycheck. And when you’re doing that, it’s very hard for half of your paychecks to go missing without you and everyone around you noticing.

Table 1: Venezuela Current Account Statistics, 2021–2022

Source: Own construction using balance of payments data from Venezuelan Central Bank.

Now you might say: wait a minute, if the money was stolen, then maybe it didn’t come in at all, and instead of those $44 billion we would have had $55 billion in foreign currency earnings. Except that the New York Times story tells us that the oil was sold and invoiced, and that PDVSA never directly received payment for it. But if that’s true, then we know they must have been registered as exports. That’s how balance of payments statistics are built: you count an export when it is sold and invoiced, not when it is paid for.

But what if the Central Bank is lying? What if it’s just claiming that Venezuela sold $26 billion in oil to hide evidence of the corruption? Or what if it’s inflating import numbers with the same purpose?

Certainly, that would not be beyond them. And, in fact, we know there are circumstances under which over-invoicing of imports distorts balance of payments statistics. But that tends to happen in different conditions — for example, when there are exchange controls and people claim to be importing more than they really are.

To check this, I put together data reported by Venezuela’s 31 most important trading partners. Scaling up to the economy’s total trade, I estimate total goods imports of $23 billion for 2021–22, quite close to the Central Bank’s $24 billion.[1] I also looked at estimates of exports from physical oil shipments constructed by independent agencies.[2] Again, the numbers match up with what the Central Bank is telling us.

Francisco R. Rodríguez is a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (cepr.net) in Washington, DC and a professor and fellow at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies.

[1] The calculation assumes that the share of trade with these partners remained stable between 2012 and 2021.

[2] Average oil exports from Venezuela in 2021 and 2022 were 627,000 and 616,500 barrels per day, respectively, according to data from Reuters and Refinitiv Eikon. Using these export volumes, the BCV’s implied sales price for Venezuelan oil would be $47.0 and $68.1 per barrel in 2021 and 2022, respectively, implying a discount of 10 percent on average relative to OPEC’s Merey price for those years. This is consistent with evidence that Venezuela sold some of its oil at a lower price than that of the market reference reported to OPEC (see, e.g., this story based on internal PDVSA reports and this New York indictment in a corruption case with direct numbers reflecting discounts on PDVSA sales). For Venezuela to have had a sizable current account surplus, the BCV would have to be understating its oil exports — but this would imply either substantially higher export volumes than those calculated by Reuters/Refinitiv Eikon based on tanker loading data, or that Venezuela was selling its oil at a substantially higher price. Both appear highly implausible.

IPS UN Bureau

When you grow up on a small island, the ocean is not scenery. It is your neighbour, your livelihood, and the measure of time itself. For decades, as I walked the beaches of Seychelles, I watched the subtle shifts that scientists were warning the world about. The tide crept a little higher up the sand each year. After a warm season, vibrant coral gardens turned ghost-white. Storms that once belonged to rare memory began arriving with unsettling regularity.

James Alix Michel

No one can afford that illusion anymore.

What began on our island shores has arrived at the heart of every continent. The floods that submerge towns, the relentless heatwaves across Asia and the Americas, the droughts parching African farmlands, and the wildfires darkening the skies of the northern hemisphere all tell the exact same story. Small islands were never a separate case; we were simply the planet’s early warning system. Today, the alarm bell is ringing in every home. No nation, however vast its territory or deep its treasury, can build a wall high enough to shut out a warming world.

Next month, from 9 to 20 November, world leaders and negotiators will gather on the Mediterranean coast in Antalya, Türkiye, for the 31st United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP31). The summit carries an unusual and promising diplomatic architecture: Türkiye will host the gathering and hold the Presidency, while Australia leads the negotiations, fresh from partnering with Fiji and Tuvalu to host the Pre-COP meetings in the Pacific. Having Pacific island voices help shape the road to Antalya is a welcome sign.

Yet as the countdown begins, the overarching question hanging over COP31 is not whether the world can draft another eloquent communiqué. It is a much simpler, sharper question: will we finally keep our promises?

Türkiye’s Presidency has rightly framed Antalya as an “Implementation COP”. That label must mean something in practice, because the global climate process is facing a profound test of trust. Across the Global South, and especially among small islands and least developed countries, there is a deep and justified fatigue. Summit after summit produces historic pledges—on cutting emissions, on adaptation funds, on compensating for loss and damage—only for those commitments to stall in a maze of bureaucracy and broken timelines.

Trust in international diplomacy is not built by the grandeur of a pledge made before television cameras. It is built when resources actually reach the fishing village rebuilding its sea wall, or the farmer adapting to shifting rains. If Antalya is to restore faith in multilateralism, three imperatives must guide the leaders gathering there on 11 and 12 November.

First, climate finance must move from paper to people. For too many vulnerable countries, accessing climate funds feels like running an obstacle course designed for them to fail. Initiatives like the new Climate Implementation Bridge—developed by the Presidency and the UN Development Programme to connect national climate plans with real financing—are a step in the right direction. But we need speed, simplicity, and scale. Adaptation and loss and damage funding are not acts of charity from the rich to the poor; they are investments in global stability.

Second, we cannot talk honestly about climate resilience without confronting the crushing burden of sovereign debt. It is a cruel paradox of our time that the nations which contributed least to global emissions are forced to borrow heavily just to rebuild after climate disasters they did not cause. How can a government invest in a green transition or coastal defences when its revenues are swallowed by debt servicing?

We already know that innovative solutions exist when there is political courage. In Seychelles, we pioneered the world’s first sovereign debt-for-nature swap designed for ocean conservation, alongside the world’s first sovereign Blue Bond. We showed that you can relieve fiscal pressure while legally protecting vast stretches of marine territory. What small islands proved on a modest scale must now become a standard tool of the international financial system.

Third, the ocean must move from the margins of climate negotiations to the very centre. For too long, the ocean was treated as a silent victim of climate change rather than our greatest ally in stopping it. The sea covers more than 70 percent of our planet, absorbs the vast majority of excess heat, and locks away immense quantities of carbon in its mangroves, seagrass meadows, and marine ecosystems.

COP31 has dedicated a thematic day on 18 November to oceans, coastal resilience, and the blue economy. That is encouraging, but the ocean cannot be confined to a single day on the calendar. Protecting marine biodiversity, unlocking blue carbon finance, and connecting the UNFCCC process with the new High Seas Treaty (BBNJ) are essential if we want to keep the 1.5-degree goal alive.

During my years in public life, and in the years since, I have learned that leadership is ultimately tested when the gap between words and reality grows too wide to ignore. We are at that moment now.

In Antalya, small island states will once again raise their voices with clarity and determination. We will speak of our reefs, our coastlines, and our children’s heritage. But make no mistake: we are not pleading only for ourselves. The ocean that washes the shores of islands is the same ocean that regulates the climate of London, Istanbul, Sydney, and New York.

The tide is rising for all of us. COP31 is our chance to show that humanity can rise to meet it—not with another round of promises, but with the courage to deliver.

James Alix Michel is a former President of Seychelles, a Blue Economy pioneer and a champion of ocean protection.

IPS UN Bureau

Credit: UN Photo/Luke Powell

By FAO and WFP
KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct 20 2026 (IPS)

Nearly 40 percent of the population of Afghanistan is projected to face high levels of acute food insecurity this winter, and cases of acute malnutrition are expected to soar during 2027, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned.

This is according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis, which projects that approximately 19.2 million people (38% of the population) will face high levels of acute food insecurity during the November-April lean season, which lasts through the winter. This is an increase from 17.4 million projected for the same period a year earlier.

An estimated five million of those who are acutely food insecure will be facing emergency levels of hunger (IPC Phase 4) – double the number projected for April-September 2026 – meaning immediate food assistance and urgent emergency agriculture support are needed to prevent deaths and total livelihood collapse. The most severe classifications are projected in Badakhshan, Badghis, Daykundi, Ghor, Samangan, Sar-e-Pul and rural Ghazni.

Acute malnutrition is beginning to define the crisis in Afghanistan with mothers and children at the forefront. Malnutrition cases are expected to increase by nearly 10 percent compared to 2026 to four million. One-quarter of these are expected to be severe and life-threatening. Prevention and treatment services are lagging well behind despite cases increasing, leaving women and particularly children more exposed.

The crisis in Afghanistan is being driven by several shocks that are affecting Afghan families and the humanitarian response. More than 1.2 million Afghans have been forced to return home from Iran and Pakistan this year, adding pressure to already overstretched communities. Border closures and disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and other critical trade routes are also driving up prices for basic goods. At the same time, dramatic funding shortfalls are limiting humanitarian assistance just as needs are growing. All these issues are converging to drive hunger and malnutrition higher, particularly as winter approaches.

Improved harvests have not restored families’ access to nutritious food

Favorable rainfall supported crop production and pasture recovery in 2026, benefiting many farming households. The anticipated El Niño season could also bring above-average rainfall, helping replenish water sources, restore pasture and support winter and spring crops. Timely agricultural support could help farmers turn favorable conditions into food and income, but rainfall alone will not secure the next harvest. High fertilizer and agricultural input costs and low crop prices may force poorer farmers to plant less or use fewer inputs. Wetter conditions also increase the risk of localized flooding, erosion, crop damage and plant and animal disease.

However, improved harvests and greater food availability are not necessarily translating into improved food security. Persistent unemployment means many families who do not grow their own food cannot afford a nutritious diet, even when food is available. Winter will bring fewer opportunities for agricultural work, further reducing incomes and increasing the need for humanitarian assistance.

Scale up support before needs deepen further

FAO and WFP are calling for urgent funding to scale up food assistance, emergency agricultural support, and malnutrition prevention and treatment. Support must reach families before winter restricts access to vulnerable communities and farmers miss critical planting windows. Afghanistan cannot afford another year of worsening hunger and malnutrition.

Richard Trenchard, FAO Representative in Afghanistan:

“This year’s strong harvest shows what Afghan farmers can achieve. But for a parent with no steady income, nutritious food in the market can still be out of reach for their family. The drumbeat of shock and crisis is relentless, but we know progress is possible. Past experience shows that timely, targeted food and emergency agricultural assistance can bring acute food insecurity down. Helping families grow or afford nutritious food for their children can also help prevent malnutrition long before children need treatment. We need to scale up these practical solutions now, act ahead of foreseeable shocks and invest in processing and local agribusinesses that connect farmers to markets and create jobs. Families need support to get through this winter and opportunities to earn a dependable living that helps them withstand the next shock.”

John Aylieff, WFP Country Director in Afghanistan

“Hunger and malnutrition are tightening their grip on Afghanistan’s families, pushing more people towards the brink just as resources to respond are running short. This crisis is increasingly being defined by the gap between growing needs and shrinking funding. We still have a window to act, but it is closing fast. With urgent support, families can get through the winter with dignity. Without it, many will face impossible choices no parent should have to make.”

IPS UN Bureau

Excerpt:

Decisions about ending one’s life are often complex, reflecting a combination of medical, psychological, social, and personal considerations. Credit: Shutterstock

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Oct 20 2026 (IPS)

People who choose to end their lives through voluntary assisted dying typically face terminal, incurable, or debilitating conditions that cause severe physical or psychological suffering.

Research on requests for medical assistance in dying and euthanasia shows that most individuals seeking these options have advanced, irreversible illnesses or incurable, debilitating conditions that cause severe suffering or diminish their autonomy, dignity, or the ability to engage in meaningful activities.

Despite becoming legally permitted in an increasing number of countries, voluntary assisted dying remains controversial. The debate centers on a fundamental tension between respecting personal autonomy and relieving suffering, on the one hand, and protecting human life, on the other

Although physical pain is an important factor, psychological, existential, and quality-of-life concerns also play major roles in decisions to end life. These include losing independence and physical abilities, losing control over bodily functions, depending on others for basic care, and fearing future pain, suffering, and distress during the final stages of an illness.

Eligibility requirements for medical assistance in dying vary by jurisdiction. Where access is restricted to terminally ill patients, individuals generally must have a prognosis of six months or less to live.

Other jurisdictions permit access under different eligibility criteria. Applicants generally must demonstrate decision-making capacity and make a voluntary, informed request. Independent medical assessments are generally required, and many jurisdictions impose waiting periods or other safeguards.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), cancer, and other serious illnesses are frequently associated with requests for voluntary assisted dying. Other requests involve advanced cardiovascular and lung diseases, as well as neurodegenerative conditions, including Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.

Cancer, particularly when advanced and no longer responsive to treatment, can also involve severe pain, weakness, loss of function, and other debilitating symptoms. Other requests for voluntary assisted dying include terminal illnesses such as advanced cardiovascular and lung diseases and neurodegenerative conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.

Severe physical pain or psychological distress that cannot be adequately relieved through standard medical or palliative care may lead some people to consider ending their lives. However, the reasons for requesting voluntary assisted dying generally extend beyond physical pain alone.

Loss of autonomy, including the inability to engage in meaningful activities, care for oneself, or maintain personal dignity, may strongly influence these decisions. Some individuals also fear increasing dependence on family members or caregivers, losing control over basic aspects of daily life, or experiencing further deterioration in their quality of life.

Decisions about ending one’s life are often complex, reflecting a combination of medical, psychological, social, and personal considerations. For some individuals, the prospect of prolonged deterioration or increasing dependence may be as important as the symptoms of the underlying illness.

Consequently, requests for voluntary assisted dying generally require careful assessment of an individual’s medical condition, decision-making capacity, wishes, and available alternatives, including palliative and hospice care.

When people actively choose the timing and manner of their death, their choices generally fall into three primary categories, each governed by different legal frameworks, medical protocols, and procedures.

These categories differ principally in who administers the life-ending medication, whether the person must take the medication themselves, and whether the choice involves voluntarily forgoing food and fluids rather than receiving life-ending medication (Table 1).

Source: Compassion & Choices.

The first category is medical aid in dying (MAID), also known as physician-assisted dying or, in some jurisdictions, death with dignity. MAID allows a mentally capable, terminally ill adult who meets specific legal requirements to request and self-administer prescribed medication intended to end their life. In many U.S. jurisdictions where MAID is legal, eligibility generally requires a terminal illness with a prognosis of six months or less, although specific requirements vary by jurisdiction.

The emphasis on self-administration is an important distinction between MAID and voluntary euthanasia. Under MAID, the individual—not a physician or other health professional—takes the medication, retaining control over the timing of the final act. Depending on the jurisdiction, safeguards may include repeated requests, confirmation of the diagnosis and prognosis, assessment of decision-making capacity, and other measures to ensure the decision is voluntary and informed.

MAID is generally intended for people who meet specific legal eligibility requirements. It is not a general option for anyone experiencing suffering or wishing to die. Each jurisdiction determines who qualifies, what medical assessments are required, how requests must be documented, and what waiting periods and other safeguards apply.

The second category is voluntary euthanasia. Unlike MAID, which involves self-administration, voluntary euthanasia occurs when a healthcare professional administers medication intended to end the patient’s life at the individual’s explicit and competent request, typically to relieve otherwise intolerable suffering. It is legally permitted in several countries and jurisdictions, although eligibility requirements, procedures, and safeguards vary considerably.

The third category is voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED). For people who do not qualify for MAID or live where MAID or voluntary euthanasia is unavailable, VSED may be another end-of-life option. It involves a voluntary decision to stop consuming food and fluids, eventually resulting in death. Medical and palliative care may be provided to relieve discomfort during the process.

Voluntary assisted dying is legally permitted in a growing number of countries. In 2026, some form of the practice is legal in approximately 16 countries. Estimates indicate that more than 30,000 people die each year through voluntary assisted dying in jurisdictions where the practice is permitted.

Nearly 5% of the world’s population, or more than 400 million people, live in countries or areas where some form of voluntary assisted dying is legal. These jurisdictions include Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, and Uruguay.

In the United States, Illinois and New York recently joined 11 other states and the District of Columbia in permitting medical aid in dying (MAID) under specified conditions. Nearly one-third of the U.S. population lives in a state where the practice is permitted.

About 60% of U.S. adults consider MAID acceptable or do not view it as a moral issue. Opinions differ by political party, however. About 75% of Democrats compared with 50% of Republicans consider the practice morally acceptable.

Across many regions, including North America, Europe, and Australia, international opinion polls generally find majority support for voluntary assisted dying. A cross-sectional survey of physicians in 17 countries also found nuanced but generally supportive views of physician-assisted death when strict safeguards are in place.

Methods of administering medication also vary across jurisdictions. In Switzerland, individuals self-administer the medication, usually by swallowing a liquid. In Québec, Canada, physicians or nurse practitioners administer it, usually intravenously. In Australia, both self-administration and practitioner administration are permitted.

The laws governing voluntary assisted dying differ considerably across countries and jurisdictions. Nevertheless, the medical conditions and personal circumstances associated with requests for assisted dying tend to show similar patterns across regions and over time.

People with ALS, for example, have been found to have the highest rate of voluntary assisted dying, often several times those of cancer patients. Cancer patients, in turn, are more likely to access voluntary assisted dying than people with other illnesses, such as lung or heart disease. However, cancer remains the most common diagnosis among assisted dying cases, largely because it affects far more people than these other conditions.

Voluntary assisted dying accounts for a relatively small share of all deaths in countries where it is permitted, generally 1% or less in countries such as Germany, Spain, and Switzerland. In other countries, the proportions are considerably higher. Around 2023, assisted dying accounted for 5.4% of deaths in the Netherlands, 4.7% in Canada, and 3.6% in Belgium.

The number of voluntary assisted deaths has increased substantially in some countries. In the Netherlands, for example, the number has reportedly increased threefold since 2002. In Canada, the number initially increased rapidly before growth slowed; assisted dying now accounts for nearly 5% of all deaths.

Despite becoming legally permitted in an increasing number of countries, voluntary assisted dying remains controversial. The debate centers on a fundamental tension between respecting personal autonomy and relieving suffering, on the one hand, and protecting human life, on the other (Table 2).

Source: British Medical Association (BMA).

Arguments in favor of voluntary assisted dying emphasize patient autonomy, relief from suffering, dignity at the end of life, regulatory safeguards, and reduced burdens on families. Arguments against it stress the sanctity of life, risks to vulnerable people, the potential for a “slippery slope”, concerns about medical ethics, and the importance of palliative care.

In sum, voluntary assisted dying is legally permitted in a growing number of countries and jurisdictions, and its use has increased substantially in many of them. Nevertheless, voluntary assisted dying remains a sensitive, controversial, and deeply personal issue, even where it is legally permitted.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division, and author of numerous publications on population issues.

Top: Annual Meetings of the IMF and the World Bank inside the Queen Sirikit Convention Center in Bangkok Credit: (IMF photo/N.Karlin).
Bottom: Opening of the People’s Assembly.

By Isabel Ortiz
BANGKOK, Thailand, Oct 19 2026 (IPS)

Bangkok hosted two summits last week. Inside the Queen Sirikit Convention Center, more than 15,000 finance ministers, central bank governors and CEOs of the world’s largest banks and corporations attended the Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. They flew in business class and slept in five-star hotels to talk about growth, inflation and public spending, and thus to decide the destiny of billions of people they will never meet. Outside, hundreds of social movements and civil society organizations held the People’s Assembly, for the 99% whose voice would not be heard. They flew economy and often shared modest rooms. The first was the summit of money and power. The second, the summit of the rest of us.

Isabel Ortiz

The IMF report World Economic Outlook lifts global growth to 3.1% for 2026 on the back of investment in artificial intelligence (AI), a boom confined to only a handful of countries and a technology the IMF itself says will affect 40% of jobs worldwide, and that a third of jobs in high-income countries are at risk to be replaced by IA.

Both institutions presented private finance as the engine of development: the World Bank’s Development Committee agenda in Bangkok was centered on mobilizing private capital with public guarantees. In plain language, subsidizing large corporations with public money while prescribing cuts to the public services ordinary people depend on.

No communiqué was agreed in any ministerial committee. The corridor talk was how far both institutions have bent to the will of Washington: directors replaced (at the World Bank by private sector executives, most with no development experience); work on climate and gender shelved; and, above all, the chainsaw of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency applied worldwide, with the myth that tax cuts for the wealthy and austerity cuts that impoverish the working and middle classes are necessary.

Outside the convention center, the story was completely different. The People’s Assembly worked through the alternatives in over 50 sessions to formulate a new system accountable to people and planet, not to the 1%. Behind them stand nearly 400 million people: 200 million small farmers of La Via Campesina, 191 million workers of global unions, and tens of thousands of civil society organizations. There were protests in Bangkok, and in more than 150 cities across 38 countries, including Argentina, Congo, Germany, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Uganda and the United Kingdom, with people marching peacefully under banners such as “We are the 99%” or “Tax elites and corporations” reflecting the aims:

• Tax the 1% not ordinary people: Progressive taxes on wealth, large corporations and big tech, and an end to tax havens, with an equitable UN tax convention, instead of consumption taxes and other taxes squeezing the working and middle classes.
• End austerity cuts: Public services and social protection for all; fund the right to health, education, social security, housing, water, instead of privatization and public private partnerships that shift costs to people.
• Debt justice: No country should cut health or education to pay creditors as happens in 51 countries today; audit and cancel illegitimate debts, end IMF surcharges and loan conditions, and a UN framework convention on sovereign debt instead of restructurings run by creditors.
• Climate justice: Make polluters pay, phase out fossil fuels, and a just transition.
• Democratize global economic governance: The IMF and World Bank are not the solution but part of the problem, as a few rich countries (and their corporations) hold most of the voting power (and only the US has a veto); move decisions on debt, tax and finance to the UN, where every country has one vote.
• Gender justice: Women are half of the world population but just an afterthought for policy makers, gender-responsive policies and budgets, public services, redistribution of care work.
• Decent jobs: Employment respecting international labor standards and living wages, union rights and protection for migrant workers.
• Food sovereignty, fair crop prices for farmers, agroecology instead of agrobusiness, land rights for indigenous peoples and small farmers, and rights guaranteed by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants.
• Industrialization of developing countries, oriented to domestic and regional markets, instead of exporting raw materials and importing everything else.
• No more corporate impunity, promotion of private finance and privatization: public services can be funded by taxing the 1%, a binding UN treaty on business and human rights, and fair trade rules instead of investor-state arbitration that lets corporations sue governments.
• AI: Slow down and put AI under public control, binding public regulation of AI covering data harvesting, manipulation of public opinion, job destruction, civil liberties and environmental damage.
• Stop authoritarianism and the far-right: Defend civic space, Human Rights and democratic institutions against the authoritarian turn of governments.
• Peace and an end to the militarization that diverts budgets from social spending to rearmament, and an end to occupation and genocide in Palestine.

Another world is possible, and last week it was formulated a short distance from the IMF/World Bank convention center. Finance ministers must now choose whom they serve: the millions of citizens who elected them, or the 1%, by bending to pressure from the IMF and the World Bank that deepens inequality.

Isabel Ortiz, Director, Global Social Justice, was Director at the International Labor Organization (ILO) and UNICEF, and a senior official at the UN and the Asian Development Bank.

IPS UN Bureau

Woodlands in nearly every forested country face threats from climate-change-driven fires and deforestation pressures fueled by economic interests exploiting natural resources. Credit: Imran Schah/IPS

By Stephanie Dowlen
MALMO, Sweden, Oct 16 2026 (IPS)

On Monday, governments from across the world will gather in Armenia for COP17, the UN biodiversity summit, to assess progress on the global agreement to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. For anyone who cares about the livability of our planet for future generations, and the richness of life on earth, the stakes could hardly be higher. Policy makers will debate targets, implementation, and the lack of money to protect nature, in particular the failure of developed countries to fulfil their obligations. But there is a more basic question that should put at the center of those discussions: what happens when the financial system governments are counting on to fund nature protection is also financing its destruction?

A new analysis by the Forests & Finance coalition provides an alarming answer. Since 2020, banks have provided $595 billion to companies operating in high-risk agribusiness and metal and mineral mining sectors across tropical forest regions. Of that, $351 billion went to agro-commodities and $244 billion to mining. These are among the primary industries driving deforestation, land degradation, pollution and conflicts with communities across the tropical forest regions of South America, Southeast Asia and Central and West Africa.

The significance of that figure goes beyond the amount of money involved. It exposes a fundamental weakness in the way the biodiversity crisis is being addressed. Governments have committed under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework to aligning financial flows with biodiversity goals, yet financial institutions remain largely free to finance nature destruction as a risk to themselves rather than as harm they may in fact be helping to cause.

Nature-related risks are not like ordinary financial risks. A bank might assess how drought could affect a company’s revenues without adequately considering whether the company itself helped create that vulnerability by clearing forests, draining wetlands or degrading watersheds. By the time those consequences appear on a balance sheet, an ecosystem may already have crossed a threshold from which recovery is extremely difficult. The report finds that current financial risk frameworks and sustainability policies remain woefully ill-equipped to assess these real-world impacts.

The consequences are already visible in some of the world’s most important forest landscapes. In Brazil, banks have provided $83 billion to the soy sector since 2020, including $6.8 billion this year alone, despite the collapse in January of the Amazon Soy Moratorium, which had been credited with reducing soy-driven deforestation by 69 percent in monitored areas. The withdrawal of major exporters from the agreement removed a critical safeguard and traceability system keeping forests standing, yet banks have not publicly taken a position on its collapse.

Indonesia presents a similarly disturbing pattern. Banks have provided $67.1 billion to the country’s notoriously destructive pulp and palm oil sectors since 2020, including financing for companies associated with repeated breaches of their own commitments to avoid deforestation, peatland development and exploitation. Peat drainage and deforestation leave landscapes less able to retain water and resist fire, increasing the vulnerability of communities to climate extremes.

At the same time, the financial flows behind mining are growing rapidly. Governments and companies are scrambling to secure copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt and other minerals needed for energy technologies, while demand is also being driven by geopolitical competition and the expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure. Financing for mining in tropical forest-rich countries increased 55 percent between 2016 and 2025, with lithium financing increasing more than elevenfold and nickel financing by 183 percent.

There is a danger in treating every new mine as part of a clean transition simply because its minerals may eventually be used in low-carbon technologies. Mining in tropical forest regions is associated with ecosystem destruction, pollution, land conflicts, violence and violations of Indigenous Peoples’ rights. A transition that sacrifices some of the world’s most biodiverse landscapes and the people who depend on them is not sustainable, whatever the end product.

What makes this particularly troubling is how little protection many banks actually require before providing this financing. The average score in the report’s assessment of bank policies covering forest-risk agro-commodities is only 25 percent, while 39 percent of banks assessed scored below 20 percent. JPMorgan Chase, one of the world’s largest and most influential banks, scored just 18 percent.

Voluntary commitments have done little to close this gap. Governments now need to establish binding rules requiring financial institutions to conduct meaningful environmental and human rights due diligence across corporate groups and supply chains, disclose where their money is going and what impacts that financing is associated with, and face consequences when they finance severe and unresolved harms.

Financial regulators also need to recognize biodiversity loss as more than a distant environmental concern. Tropical forests underpin food systems, water supplies and economic activity, while their degradation can create cascading risks across economies. Yet there is still no equivalent to the regulatory framework used for financial institutions considered systemically important, even as the degradation of these natural systems threatens consequences that extend far beyond individual companies or projects.

But banks should not wait for governments to act. They can establish clear red lines against deforestation, ecosystem conversion and serious human rights abuses, make those requirements enforceable in financing agreements, independently verify compliance and suspend or terminate financing when clients fail to address serious violations. Those safeguards must respect Indigenous Peoples’ rights, including Free, Prior and Informed Consent, and provide affected communities with meaningful access to remedy.

The choice facing governments at COP17 is therefore not simply how much money to mobilize for biodiversity. It is whether they are prepared to stop the financial system from undermining those investments in the first place.

The evidence is increasingly difficult to dismiss. Hundreds of billions of dollars are flowing into industries that are rapidly degrading the natural systems on which economies, and the web of life, depend. Governments have already promised to align financial flows with biodiversity goals. Now they need to make that commitment real.

At COP17, following the money would be a good place to start.

IPS UN Bureau

Impunity for past crimes has fueled decades of violence and human rights abuses in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Credit: MONUSCO/Aubin Mukoni

By Ida Sawyer
WASHINGTON DC, Oct 15 2026 (IPS)

It has been 30 years since Rwanda-backed rebel forces attacked Lemera hospital in what was then eastern Zaire, killing 37 patients and medical staff. This was one of the first major atrocities during what became known as the First Congo War, helping to unleash decades of foreign-backed rebellions and grave abuses against civilians by all sides, including ethnic-based massacres, widespread rape and sexual violence, forced recruitment of children, abductions, torture, mutilation, and forced displacement.

The Congolese Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Dr. Denis Mukwege, began his career as a doctor at Lemera hospital, and he was there on October 6, 1996 when the place he thought was safe, protected by international humanitarian law, became the scene of carnage. Dr. Mukwege has since dedicated his life to supporting survivors of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo and to advocating justice for victims.

The attack on Lemera hospital was one of the 617 incidents in the United Nations Mapping Report, which documents alleged serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights law in Congo between 1993 and 2003.

What’s missing now is the political will to prioritize justice for the Congolese people. With millions killed during hostilities or dying from conflict-related causes, the war in Congo is widely regarded as the deadliest conflict for civilians since World War II
Yet the serious crimes went on. Despite the important work of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and Congolese military courts, the vast majority of alleged perpetrators remain unpunished, including high-level government and military officials from Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda.

Attacks as horrific as the one on Lemera hospital continue today, as an abusive Rwanda-backed armed group, known as the M23, controls large swathes of North and South Kivu provinces, while numerous other armed groups as well as Congolese army forces and their allies continue to target civilians.

Many of the commanders responsible for abuses that Human Rights Watch and others have documented in recent months are the same ones whose crimes we have documented for decades – often as they move from one armed group to another, integrate into the Congolese army, and then leave again when they have new grievances. Impunity for these past crimes has fueled the abuses we’re documenting today.

What’s missing now is the political will to prioritize justice for the Congolese people. With millions killed during hostilities or dying from conflict-related causes, the war in Congo is widely regarded as the deadliest conflict for civilians since World War II. Yet despite, or perhaps because of, its brutal and seemingly intractable nature, the conflict rarely dominates headlines or high-level diplomatic agendas.

When Congo does capture the world’s attention, it is more often for its natural resources than the plight of its citizens. Powerful foreign countries and companies – facilitated and enabled by self-serving national leaders – exploit and plunder the country’s wealth. Congo’s minerals help power the technological revolution driving so much of global economic growth, all while a litany of grave abuses go unpunished and undeterred.

To break this culture of violence and impunity, world leaders should put meaningful pressure on both the Congolese and Rwandan governments to end all support to abusive armed groups operating in Congo.

They should also press the Congolese government to implement a vetting program, with international support, to remove those implicated in serious human rights abuses from the Congolese security forces, intelligence services, and government positions.

And they should support a multi-tiered justice response to address the scale and gravity of Congo’s impunity gap. This should include support to the ICC and its ongoing investigation in Congo, the pursuit abroad of universal jurisdiction cases wherever possible, and continued support to improve Congo’s military justice system.

There also needs to be an internationalized justice mechanism to complement the work of the ICC and purely domestic courts, and a comprehensive reparations program for victims of serious international crimes.

I was honored to join Dr. Mukwege in Brussels and Strasbourg in recent days to initate a campaign, “30 Years of War, 30 Years of Impunity,” during events organized by the Panzi Foundation, the René Cassin Foundation, the city of Brussels, and the Eurometropolis of Strasbourg, to raise awareness about the conflict in Congo and to mobilize strong international action to end the cycles of violence, abuse, and impunity.

As Dr. Mukwege said in Strasbourg: “Thirty years of war is thirty years too many. Thirty years of impunity is thirty years too many. … . It is time to place the right of millions of victims to justice at the heart of efforts to establish peace and consolidate the rule of law.”

Ida Sawyer is crisis, conflict, and arms director at Human Rights Watch.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres opens the general debate of the General Assembly’s 81st session on 22 September 2026. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Oct 14 2026 (IPS)

At this year’s highest-profile UN event, Donald Trump publicly mused over his ‘big decision’ about whether to ‘annihilate’ Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as dozens of delegates walked out, branded those who condemn genocide in Gaza ‘moral cowards’.

The UN was established in the devastating aftermath of the Second World War with the explicit aim to ‘save succeeding generations from the scourge of war’. Its charter commits all UN members to settling disputes peacefully. Yet at the UN General Assembly’s annual high-level session, held in September, several national leaders used a podium meant for peace and international cooperation to justify and threaten violence.

The bellicose tone of many speeches signalled a broader crisis of multilateralism. Autocrats are throwing their weight around, determined to prove that might makes right, or, as Trump put it when boasting of US control of Venezuelan oil, ‘to the victor belong the spoils’. Such leaders care little for international laws, norms, institutions and processes.

Powerful states are withdrawing from institutions, defunding them, refusing to cooperate and forming rival, more selective and less formal groupings. Nakedly transactional deal-making is replacing collective action, fragmenting the multilateral system. As a rules-based order gives way to something more chaotic, civil society’s opportunities to engage are withering. All this is happening as huge transnational problems mount up, including the climate crisis, economic inequality, impunity for conflict atrocities and the repression of civic space.

The race to succeed Guterres

Against this backdrop, someone new will take the helm. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s second term expires at the end of the year, and states are now choosing his successor.

Civil society is calling for a feminist woman leader who puts human rights first. Yet human rights feature little in the debate. A former UN human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, has pulled out because straw polls among the 15 Security Council members, a key stage of the process, showed she lacked support.

In each poll, states can ‘encourage’ or ‘discourage’ a candidacy, or express ‘no opinion’. So far, five rounds have proved inconclusive. Former Costa Rican Vice President Rebeca Grynspan has emerged as frontrunner, but the latest poll saw her receive six ‘discourage’ votes compared to three in the round before. No candidate commands overwhelming backing and it’s possible other candidates will come forward.

Civil society is trying to engage, but ultimately states don’t have to publicly justify their decisions. Because the Security Council is central to the process, the final say rests with its five permanent members, China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA, any of which can veto a candidate they dislike. Opaque negotiations are therefore likely to produce a compromise candidate that China, Russia and the USA find sufficiently inoffensive.

As the race heats up, there are signs candidates are avoiding speaking about issues that may be seen as contentious for fear of losing support. States that back particular candidates may decide not to ask difficult questions that could cost them votes. As a result, important matters such as Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the rights of excluded groups are being sidelined. Anyone who sees themselves as a world leader should be taking these issues on, but candidates’ refusal to do so shows how firmly powerful states are calling the shots.

One candidate, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, has been the target of a Wall Street Journal hit piece over comments condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide, made in her role as Guyana’s ambassador to the UN. The intent is clearly to encourage the USA to block her.

Civil society expects a global voice of conscience, someone prepared to go further than serving states and willing to speak up on the issues candidates are now avoiding. History shows that, even in difficult times, the personality and leadership style of the secretary-general can make a difference. Whoever prevails will have to steer the UN through crisis and rebuild respect for the institution and the broader promise of multilateralism, and that means putting human rights first.

Access needed

When they next meet, national leaders will have the opportunity to shape the future of development. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the set of 17 interconnected goals agreed by every UN member state in 2015, expire in 2030. Next year’s SDG Summit will consider what should come next.

In these difficult times, civil society faces the challenge of asserting a progressive vision and pushing for goals that make a real difference. But civil society remains excluded. It was once again forced to the sidelines for this high-level session. The passes of organisations that have cleared accreditation hurdles and normally have access to UN headquarters are suspended at these annual meetings. This speaks of a broader exclusion. The UN has failed to advance even modest proposals to recognise civil society’s role, such as instituting a UN civil society day or appointing an envoy to coordinate civil society engagement.

Meanwhile, the UN’s funding crisis is further impacting on civil society’s participation. The USA is the chief culprit, owing around US$4.2 billion in contributions. The USA and other powerful states are defunding and sidelining the UN’s human rights functions, which civil society most engages with. The result is job cuts, curtailed mandates and fewer opportunities for civil society participation.

The arrival of a new secretary-general and the debate on new development goals bring not just challenges but also opportunities. To seize them, civil society will need to build stronger coalitions and collaborate more closely than ever. It must engage constructively with the next secretary-general while raising expectations, putting stronger access and partnerships on the table.

A state-centric UN will fail. A UN that hopes to make a difference on big problems, rebuild respect for human rights and win an increasingly contested argument for the value of multilateralism can’t keep excluding civil society. The next secretary-general must champion an open and accountable UN that recognises civil society as an essential partner.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org

Medicine is supposed to protect human life and dignity. Yet testimonies from Ukrainians released from Russian captivity reveal a disturbing reality: medical personnel in places of detention have not only denied prisoners necessary treatment but, in documented cases, participated in torture and ill-treatment.

Anna Trushova

The research draws on testimonies from 16 people released from Russian captivity, including former detainees and medical professionals. Their accounts describe the denial of medical assistance, the neglect of serious injuries and illnesses, degrading treatment, and the concealment of evidence of violence. Some testimonies describe medical personnel directly participating in acts of torture.

One of the most troubling findings is the consistency of these accounts. Previous reports have documented abuses by medical staff, but this research systematically examines testimonies alongside the legal and regulatory framework governing medical professionals in Russia. Its findings suggest that the violations cannot be dismissed as isolated misconduct.

Russian medical personnel are bound not only by international humanitarian law and professional medical ethics but also by domestic rules that require them to provide care and to refrain from causing harm. The documented abuses, therefore, raise questions about violations of both international obligations and Russia’s own legal standards.

The consequences extend far beyond the detention facilities. People returning from captivity often require prolonged medical treatment and rehabilitation. Their families, meanwhile, must cope with the lasting effects of imprisonment, serious illness, and loss.

Sofia Krokhmaliuk, whose father, Oleksandr Krokhmaliuk, headed the Azov brigade’s medical service and died in captivity, described the pain of receiving his body back in Ukraine. She said the condition of his remains indicated that he had not died of natural causes.

Another family has spoken about the consequences that can persist after release. Ukrainian serviceman Oleksandr Savov spent more than 1,000 days in Russian captivity and returned home on March 19, 2025. He died of heart failure on November 16 that year, aged 46. His daughter, Anastasiia Savova, has emphasized that release does not mean the end of a crime: its consequences can last for the rest of a person’s life.

These stories demonstrate why the right to medical care in captivity cannot be treated as a secondary humanitarian concern. For people held in conditions where they have little or no access to independent assistance, medical care may be essential to their survival. Its deliberate denial can itself become a form of cruel treatment.

The Center for Civil Liberties’ research adds another dimension by examining the role of medical personnel within this system. It also reinforces the need to document individual responsibility and preserve evidence for future investigations and prosecutions.

Accountability is possible, even when it takes years. Thorough documentation can help identify those responsible, establish patterns of abuse, and provide evidence for national and international legal proceedings. Impunity, by contrast, creates conditions in which violations can continue.

That is why more than 90 Ukrainian organizations and institutions have appealed to the World Health Organization (WHO), urging it to respond to the systematic denial of medical care and the documented involvement of medical personnel in torture and ill-treatment.

The appeal calls for stronger international monitoring of detention facilities, including through cooperation with the International Committee of the Red Cross, United Nations mechanisms, and independent medical organizations. It also urges support for documenting abuses, identifying those responsible, and securing medical evacuation for severely wounded and seriously ill prisoners of war and unlawfully detained civilians.

The WHO cannot replace international investigators or courts. But its professional authority and international reach can help bring these violations to the attention of the global medical community and strengthen calls for independent access, accountability, and protection.

The immediate priority must be to help those still held in captivity receive the medical care they need. At the same time, the international community must ensure that allegations of medical personnel participating in torture are investigated rather than ignored.

Medicine must never become an instrument of repression. When those entrusted with protecting life become involved in abuse, the response must extend beyond professional condemnation. It must include independent monitoring, effective pressure, evidence preservation, and accountability.

For Ukrainians who remain in Russian captivity, these measures are not abstract questions of ethics or international law. They may determine whether they receive treatment, whether their suffering is documented, and whether they live to return home.

Anna Trushova is human rights defender and communications manager at the Center for Civil Liberties

IPS UN Bureau

Satellite image of the Strait of Hormuz. Credit WikiMedia

By UN Women
GENEVA, Oct 13 2026 (IPS)

An additional 11.7 million women and girls could face food insecurity by the end of 2026, as the escalation in the Middle East and disruption to the Strait of Hormuz drive up food prices and strain livelihoods and household resources, according to a new UN Women analysis published today.

“Food security risks of the Middle East escalation for women and girls” finds that women and girls account for 53 per cent of the projected 22 million additional people who could face food insecurity by the end of the year across 28 countries analyzed. This is in addition to an estimated 208 million women and girls who were already food insecure or undernourished in these countries. These are scenario-based estimates, not forecasts.

“We know, as a matter of fact, that when food becomes scarce, women eat less and last. They often shift to less nutritious diets or skip meals altogether to prioritize the needs of others. Gender inequalities dictate who has access to food and the resources to obtain it. Therefore, investing in women and girls is a sure way of ensuring the well-being of families and communities,” said UN Women Deputy Executive Director Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda.

Disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz are driving up energy, fertilizer and transport costs, pushing up food prices. Combined with potential income and livelihood losses, these rising costs could make food harder to afford. For many women, existing inequalities in employment and access to financial services leave them with fewer resources to absorb these shocks.

More populous countries were found to have the largest numbers of women and girls who could face food insecurity. However, countries such as South Sudan, Sudan, Haiti, Yemen and Palestine face more concentrated risks, as multiple sources of vulnerability overlap.

In South Sudan, the additional number of women and girls who could face food insecurity represents around 14 per cent – or one in seven – of the South Sudanese female population – the highest proportion across the countries analyzed. In Lebanon, the additional number of women and girls who could face food insecurity represents nearly 4 per cent of the Lebanese female population, the second-highest proportion.

In many countries, women and girls make up a higher proportion of people who could face food insecurity. For example, in Afghanistan, women and girls are estimated to make up 60 per cent of people who could face food insecurity; in Yemen, more than 57 per cent; and in Sudan, nearly 56 per cent.

Employment also affects food security. In Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, Sudan and Syria, around 80 per cent of women are outside the labour force. In Afghanistan and Yemen, this rises to around 95 per cent, the report notes. Among employed women, more than 80 per cent are in vulnerable employment in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Haiti, Mali and South Sudan.

According to the analysis, access to financial services could provide a buffer, but many women lack access to these services. In Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan and Yemen, fewer than one in five women owns a bank or mobile money account. This can limit women’s ability to save, receive remittances or cash assistance, or borrow safely when prices rise or incomes fall, increasing reliance on informal lenders, relatives or other household members and potentially putting their safety and protection at risk.

UN Women calls for an integrated response that combines food and cash assistance with nutrition, protection, livelihoods and agricultural support, while ensuring women can access land, credit, services and other productive assets. It also urges resources to be targeted to places where women and girls face multiple, overlapping risks, and delivered at the right time – including ahead of agricultural seasons. Better data are needed to identify where food insecurity is worsening and who is eating less, losing livelihoods, taking on more unpaid care work, or facing heightened nutrition and protection risks within households.

UN Women joins the calls for de-escalation and respect for international law and echoes the Secretary-General’s call to all concerned parties to work towards diplomatic solutions that advance regional and international peace and security.

IPS UN Bureau

Excerpt:

The protracted demise of dollar-gold convertibility and associated fixed exchange rates did not end dollar hegemony. With crucial and timely help from political allies, confidence in the dollar system has persisted, albeit much diminished.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

But the BW payments arrangements and the US promise of dollar convertibility to gold were not sustainable. As Robert Triffin noted in 1960, the system was ‘failing by design’ from the outset, which US authorities denied and refused to address.

Vietnam War spending, rising inflation, and a run on US gold reserves forced this decision after allied Western central banks quietly gave up defending the gold-dollar peg in 1968.

Decades later, then-US Undersecretary for Monetary Affairs Paul Volcker revealed he had initiated a Treasury working group in 1969.

As the US balance of payments was already proving unsustainable, suspending gold-dollar convertibility was no longer considered an option to be avoided at all costs.

Portraying the gold peg’s failure as due to arithmetic, not politics, Volcker argued that suspending it involved implementing contingency planning that the group had long considered.

Two days before, Nixon summoned 15 advisors to a secret retreat at Camp David to draft his announcement. He also imposed a 90-day wage-price ‘freeze’ and a 10% tariff on imports.

Thus, Nixon presented the suspension of dollar convertibility to gold as part of a larger economic policy reform package, rather than as the long-overdue default on earlier US pledges.

With his 1972 re-election campaign approaching, Nixon and his Treasury Secretary, John Connally, claimed to be ‘freeing’ US economic policy by ending dollar-gold convertibility and associated fixed exchange rate obligations.

Clearly, Nixon’s mid-August 1971 announcement was not an improvised response to an emergency or even the sudden break he implied, although the Volcker group preferred a more ‘controlled demolition’.

US dollar, others’ problem
When allied finance ministers were negotiating a replacement arrangement in Rome in November 1971, Connally bluntly told them that the dollar was America’s currency but their problem, belatedly confessing to BW’s true nature.

Nonetheless, their December 1971 Smithsonian Agreement still sought to patch things up rather than explicitly abandon the 1944 arrangement and the later efforts to defend it.

The dollar was devalued against gold for the first time since 1934, with its price rising from $35 to $38 an ounce. Trading bands around other currencies were widened to give central banks more flexibility.

Nixon pronounced the 1971 Smithsonian Agreement the most significant monetary arrangement in world history before the dollar was devalued again 14 months later, in February 1973.

National authorities politically aligned with the US had defended it, but eventually stopped paying to maintain the charade. Thus, a year and a half after August 1971, BW was finally buried.

Within weeks, the major currencies abandoned fixed exchange rates altogether, allowing them to float against one another. Although the transition to floating rates was not smooth, it has survived, with modifications, ever since.

But the ‘settlement gap’ time lag under floating exchange rates is so problematic that international banking regulators have long sought to reform the way cross-border currency trades are cleared.

Charade over?
Although BW is now long gone, the dollar system has proven durable. The end of gold convertibility was not fatal to the dollar’s role at the centre of world finance.

Instead, the end of the BW dollar-gold convertibility obligation removed one constraint on it. After the final break with gold in 1973, the dollar was only backed by US government promises.

Gold’s formal demonetisation was confirmed with the 1976 Jamaica Accords when IMF member governments quietly amended its charter to strip the precious metal of any official role.

Freed from its earlier BW obligation to redeem dollars with gold, the US has financed its trade, current account, and fiscal deficits, as well as foreign and domestic government spending, with ever more dollar debt.

The world has increasingly financed the growth of US debt as the dollar remains the main currency in which most international trade, especially in commodities, is priced and settled.

The IMF had policed fixed exchange rates and gold-dollar convertibility for over two decades after the war. It has since changed roles to oversee floating exchange rates, selectively serve as ‘lender of last resort’ and manage sovereign debt crises.

International oil transactions were mainly settled in ‘petrodollars’, due to an arrangement with Saudi and other Gulf producers to use oil sales revenue to buy US Treasury securities.

The status quo is now based on others’ willingness to hold dollars. But growing concerns about US willingness to honour its commitments have caused governments to consider alternatives. But dollar hegemony has weathered such recent storms so far.

IPS UN Bureau

The awarding of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to distinguished South African jurist and international judge Navanethem “Navi” Pillay is about more than just the recognition of an exceptional individual in the global fight for justice.

Navi Pillay-Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

Pillay’s recognition affirms the conviction that international law, however imperfectly applied, remains indispensable to a peaceful world.

Making history

It is a proud moment for South Africa. She becomes the fifth South African to receive this honour, following resistance leader Chief Albert Luthuli in 1960, religious leader and activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1984, and former presidents Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk in 1993.

She is the first South African woman to receive the peace award. Her prize is a further break with its historical tendency to mostly honour “highly educated white men from Europe and the US”.

Similar to her South African predecessors, the struggle against apartheid and white minority rule features as a crucial element of her contribution. However, there is an important difference. While Mandela became a global symbol of reconciliation, Pillay took the lessons of South Africa’s struggle into the international arena. There she became leader and institution builder in her own right.

She had the daunting task of being one of the very first international judges responsible for forging into being international institutions intended to ensure that those responsible for the gravest human rights violations are held accountable.

She was on the first bench of judges of both the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, established by the United Nations (UN) following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) from 2003 to 2008.

Her personality and drive endowed these fledgling institutions with gravitas and legitimacy. Through her pioneering contributions, she has come to personify the global quest for accountability.

The Navi Pillay I know

As a scholar of international human rights law, I first met Pillay when she was president of the Rwanda tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania. She struck me then, and over time continued to impress me, as someone remarkably approachable. Humble, unassuming and generous with her time, she is also often described as courageous, principled, and unwavering.

I smiled when, in her characteristically down-to-earth reply to the Nobel committee praising her courage, she insisted she was merely applying her independent legal mind to the stark principles of justice.

When I first met her, I was with a group of human rights students from the University of Pretoria visiting Tanzania to observe proceedings. Judge Pillay’s demanding schedule prevented her from spending much time with us during the day. Yet she offered to meet us at her hotel that evening. To our surprise, she arrived driving herself, without a chauffeur or an entourage. She spent many hours answering questions and discussing the work of the tribunal.

Similar encounters continued over subsequent years. To me, these moments revealed her understanding of human rights institutions not as remote structures, but as belonging to people. This included young Africans who she hoped would one day help shape their future.

From apartheid to global justice

Pillay’s story is held together by a central belief, whether in response to apartheid in South Africa, genocide in Rwanda or the occupation of Palestinian territory: that law can restrain abusive power, protect victims and hold the powerful to account. She simply applied it on a bigger stage each time.

Born in 1941 in Durban, to a family of Indian Tamil origin, Pillay experienced racial and gender discrimination first-hand. Despite this, she built a legal career. In 1967 she became the first woman of colour to establish a legal practice in her province.

Like many lawyers opposed to apartheid, she sought to use the very legal system that sustained injustice to challenge its abuses. She represented political activists, exposed torture and challenged the treatment of political prisoners.

She was also involved in the Women’s National Coalition, which helped shape the equality provisions of South Africa’s democratic constitution. These prohibit discrimination on grounds including race, sex and sexual orientation. After apartheid ended, Mandela in 1995 appointed her as a High Court judge.

Rape as a crime against humanity

Later that year she took up office in Tanzania, where one of her most enduring global contributions came in the Rwanda tribunal’s landmark 1998 judgement.

During the trial of Jean-Paul Akayesu, accused of the slaughter of thousands, Pillay and another judge questioned witnesses about sexual violence. They helped bring these experiences into the open and contributed to the amendment of the indictment to include rape.

The result was a judgment that recognised rape as a crime against humanity. It established that rape and sexual violence could also constitute acts of genocide.

The decision constituted the first conviction for genocide by an international criminal tribunal and the first conviction of an individual for rape as a crime against humanity by such a tribunal. This opened the way for greater accountability for crimes committed disproportionately against women and girls.

As Pillay put it:

From time immemorial, rape has been regarded as spoils of war. Now it will be considered a war crime.

Human rights within the UN

From 2008 to 2014, Pillay served as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the first woman from the global south to hold this position.

It required a different form of leadership. Rather than deciding cases as a judge, she had to engage governments, confront violations and persuade states to honour their international obligations. During her tenure, she managed to steer the UN’s human rights work through turbulent times, including the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the Arab Spring, and civil war in Syria. Her voice was a steadfast pillar of clarity: human rights could not be sacrificed to economic expediency, national sovereignty or political convenience.

Her tenure coincided with significant advances within the UN. She was a consistent advocate for the rights of equality based on sexual orientation and gender identity, anti-discrimination laws, and proper recording of hate crimes.

In 2001, her home city, Durban, hosted the UN’s World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. The Durban Declaration set an international agenda against racism and xenophobia. It also acknowledged slavery as a crime against humanity.

Although she had no official role in the 2001 conference, as UN high commissioner she was closely involved in the subsequent review process. She defended the declaration against misrepresentation. She emphasised its condemnation of antisemitism, remembrance of the Holocaust and recognition of Israel’s right to security.

Despite boycotts by several western states, including the US, she helped steer the 2009 Durban Review Conference towards a consensus reaffirming the declaration, supported by 182 states. Her role exemplified her determination to overcome division and backlash without compromising fundamental human rights principles.

Pillay’s term was also characterised by a distinctive contribution to women’s rights by championing the recognition of preventable maternal deaths as a human rights issue, rather than merely a public health concern. Under her leadership, the UN Human Rights Office developed groundbreaking guidance in 2012 requiring governments to address discrimination, maternal healthcare and accountability for avoidable deaths.

Palestine and genocide

More recently, she took up her last official UN duty as chair of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel. The commission’s investigations and findings, including on the war in Gaza, have generated considerable controversy and strong criticism, particularly from Israel and the US.

Her dedication to this task illustrates an essential feature of her work: the application of legal principles becomes most difficult, and most necessary, when politically powerful actors reject scrutiny.

A time when hope is needed

The timing of this award is therefore particularly telling. It comes as, only days earlier, US president Donald Trump had called the ICC “evil” and urged all its members to resign. Responding to the prize, the US imposed sanctions on the ICC.

By honouring a former ICC judge, the Nobel committee chose to defend the very institutions that are now “under attack”, with their judges “sanctioned”.

The award also comes amid Israel’s growing international isolation. Pillay and her team concluded in 2025 that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

The commission’s findings do not constitute a binding judicial determination. But they do represent a significant contribution to documenting alleged atrocities and advancing the pursuit of accountability, despite intense political opposition.

Even as Pillay recently celebrated her 85th birthday, she may soon have another word on genocide. Since 2019, she has been sitting as an ad hoc judge at the International Court of Justice in the case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar concerning alleged genocide against the Rohingya. Following a public hearing in January 2026, a judgment in this case is expected later this year, or in early 2027.

Her Nobel Prize does not suggest that international justice has triumphed. But it reminds us that the structures built to advance it remain worth defending. Recognising Pillay is an affirmation of what has been achieved, but also about what must not be lost.

Frans Viljoen – Professor of International Human Rights Law, SARChI Chair in International Constitutional Law, University of Pretoria

This story was originally published by The Conversation.

IPS UN Bureau

Religious leaders, representatives of international organizations and Kazakh officials gather for the 24th Secretariat meeting of the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions at the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation in Astana on October 7, 2026. The gathering reflected Kazakhstan’s longstanding efforts to turn interfaith dialogue into practical international cooperation. Credit: The press service of the congress.

By Katsuhiro Asagiri
ASTANA, Kazakhstan, Oct 12 2026 (IPS)

In a world increasingly divided by war, political distrust and competing ideologies, Kazakhstan has spent more than two decades pursuing an unusual diplomatic undertaking: keeping representatives of different religions in conversation.

Erlan Karin, Vice President of Kazakhstan and Head of the Secretariat of the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, addresses the 24th Secretariat meeting at the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation in Astana on October 7, 2026. He emphasized the role of spiritual diplomacy in building trust and complementing conventional diplomatic efforts. Credit: Congress Press Service

“Spiritual diplomacy can play a special role,” he told participants. “It doesn’t replace political talks. But it complements them and keeps channels of communication open where diplomatic dialogue is difficult.”

The remarks came at the 24th meeting of the Secretariat of the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, held on Oct. 7 at the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation.

The official participant list named 38 representatives of religious communities, international organizations and Kazakh government institutions, reflecting the forum’s religious and geographical diversity.

Founded in 2003 at the initiative of Kazakhstan’s first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, the Congress initially brought 17 delegations from 13 countries to Astana.

It has since developed into an international forum that convenes major gatherings every three years while maintaining contact through its Secretariat.

Pope Francis participated in the seventh Congress in 2022, alongside the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed Al-Tayeb. The eighth Congress, held in September 2025, brought together religious and international representatives around the Astana Peace Declaration.

For Kazakhstan, situated between Russia and China and pursuing relations across competing centers of power, the Congress has become one expression of its wider diplomatic approach: providing a meeting place for governments, religions and civilizations that do not always share political interests.

Kazakhstan’s Legacy of Interfaith Dialogue. This illustration traces the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions from its founding in 2003 under President Nursultan Nazarbayev to the historic 2022 gathering attended by Pope Francis and Al-Azhar’s Grand Imam Ahmed Al-Tayeb, and the adoption of the Astana Peace Declaration in 2025 under President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Together, these milestones reflect Kazakhstan’s enduring efforts to promote interfaith dialogue, mutual understanding and global peace. Credit: AI-generated illustration/INPS Japan

But its participants are increasingly asking how such encounters can influence events outside the conference hall.

Father Laurent Basanese of the Holy See’s Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue. He emphasized the Vatican’s longstanding commitment to the initiative and the importance of translating interfaith declarations into sustained cooperation.

Father Laurent Basanese, representing the Holy See’s Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, reminded delegates that the Vatican had supported the initiative since its founding.

He recalled Pope Francis’ participation in 2022 and emphasized the continuing work required after declarations are adopted.

The credibility of such statements, he said, ultimately depends on the willingness of their signatories to keep working together.

That concern was echoed by Mohamed Abdelsalam, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Elders, who warned that principles left unimplemented risk becoming little more than words on paper.

“A declaration that is not implemented loses its functionality,” he said, according to the meeting transcript.

The appeal for continuity also came from the United Nations.

Nihal Saad, director of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, thanked Kazakhstan for its sustained efforts to promote cooperation across cultural and religious boundaries.

Mohamed Abdelsalam, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Elders. He emphasized the need to translate interfaith declarations into concrete action for peace and human fraternity. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri/INPS Japan

The challenge with AI, she said, was ensuring that ethics were “built into the design of AI systems rather than as an afterthought.”

Her remarks placed the Congress within a wider international debate over how technological progress can remain accountable to human values.

Turning Principles Into Projects

Kazakhstan’s latest effort to give the forum a practical role produced two documents adopted at the meeting.

One addresses the contribution of religions to combating climate change. The other establishes 11 ethical principles for using artificial intelligence in religious contexts.

Both emerged from proposals advanced by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev at the 2025 Congress.

Gulsana Kozhabay, who heads the International Center for Interfaith and Interreligious Dialogue, explained that the climate document had been developed with contributions from 26 religious representatives, diplomats and experts.

Nihal Saad, director of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations. Credit: The Astana Times

The AI code, refined through an interreligious commission of 24 participants, addresses human dignity, freedom of conscience, religious information and the dangers of algorithmic manipulation.

Contributors included representatives of religious traditions extending far beyond Central Asia, among them Japanese Shinto representatives and Chinese Taoist leaders.

The meeting also considered a different kind of cooperation.

Yerzhan Ashikbayev, Kazakhstan’s first deputy foreign minister, presented a joint initiative with the Holy See: a charter protecting the rights and dignity of children with incurable diseases.

Kazakhstan and the Holy See had agreed on the charter’s text during a separate colloquium in Astana on Oct. 2–3. The Secretariat subsequently supported efforts to advance it internationally.

“When medical science reaches its limits, our human responsibility does not end,” Ashikbayev said in his prepared remarks.

The charter emphasizes palliative care, relief of suffering, parental participation and support for children and their families.

Yerzhan Ashikbayev, Kazakhstan’s First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. He presented a joint Kazakhstan–Holy See initiative to protect the rights and dignity of children with incurable diseases. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri/INPS Japan

The Next Test for Spiritual Diplomacy

None of these initiatives removes the political difficulties surrounding international cooperation.

The two ethical documents are advisory and create no legal obligations. Their influence will depend on whether religious institutions, governments and technology companies act on their recommendations.

These efforts also reflect the security challenges facing Central Asia.

As developments in Afghanistan continue to affect regional stability, Kazakhstan has worked with the United Nations to combat terrorism and prevent violent extremism.

Against this backdrop, Kazakhstan’s ability to sustain an international platform for dialogue among religious leaders of different traditions for more than two decades has become a distinctive feature of its diplomacy, linking regional security concerns with a commitment to religious diversity and mutual understanding.

At the conclusion of the meeting, Karin called for work on a proposed Global Movement for Peace, intended to strengthen cooperation among religious leaders and give spiritual diplomacy a more practical international role.

The pyramid-shaped Palace of Peace and Reconciliation in Astana, Kazakhstan, hosted the 24th Secretariat meeting of the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions on October 7, 2026. The landmark symbolizes Kazakhstan’s longstanding commitment to promoting interfaith dialogue, mutual understanding and global peace. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri/INPS Japan

A draft concept and phased plan are to be prepared for consideration in 2027, ahead of the ninth Congress in 2028.

It remains a proposal, not an established peacebuilding mechanism.

But the assignment reflects an important shift in Kazakhstan’s approach: from demonstrating that religious leaders can meet despite their differences to asking what they are prepared to accomplish together.

After 23 years, the country has demonstrated an ability to keep the conversation going.

The next test is whether that conversation can help change the world beyond Astana.

This article is brought to you by INPS Japan in collaboration with Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with UN ECOSOC.

IPS UN Bureau

Excerpt:

Children in Gaza wait in the hope of receiving food. Credit: UN News

By UN Women
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 9 2026 (IPS)

Since October 2023, 50,000 women and girls in Gaza have been killed or seriously injured.

• UN Women estimates that nearly 50,000 women and girls in Gaza have been killed or severely injured since the onset of war in October 2023 [1], amounting to one in 21 Gazan women and girls losing their life or living with lifelong disabilities [2].


• More than 38,000 women and girls have been killed and 11,700 severely injured, the result of Israeli airstrikes and land military operations.

• While most of the casualties recorded took place during the first two years of the war, women and girls continue to be targeted despite a ceasefire agreement entering into effect in October 2025. Two hundred seventy-seven women and girls are among those who have been killed in Gaza over the past year.

Nearly every woman and girl in Gaza is displaced.

• More than 150 evacuation and movement orders have been issued across Gaza by the Israeli Defense Forces since October 2023, forcing nearly one million women and girls from their homes – nearly every woman and girl in Gaza.

• The majority of women and girls in Gaza live in tents or in the ruins, with no privacy. In conditions that are incompatible with survival and dignity, women and girls are caring for children, the sick, the injured, and for the elderly, cooking and cleaning without the basic means to carry out these responsibilities.

• Women are being forced to deliver babies in unsafe and unsanitary conditions, putting their lives at risk. At the same time, the number of miscarriages reached almost 4,000 in the first six months of 2026, triple the number recorded during the last six months of 2025.

The number of widows and those assuming the role of head of household in Gaza has doubled since October 2023.

• Nearly one in four households in Gaza – an estimated 86,290 households – is now reportedly headed by a woman, compared to the pre-October 2023 rate of one in nine.

• For women-headed households, the impact extends beyond the grief of losing a husband, father or other loved one. Many are now carrying sole responsibility for providing for, protecting, and holding their families together in increasingly devastating conditions.

Despite the ceasefire, women and girls in Gaza continue to face severely limited access to food, shelter, safe water, and hygiene supplies, alongside ongoing hostilities and insecurity.

• Intense and widespread bombing has leveled homes, businesses, hospitals, schools, and shops, making it extremely hard for women and girls to access essential services and basic goods.

• Restrictions on humanitarian access and bombardment continue to cause immense suffering. Between July and December 2026, an estimated 702,000 women and girls are projected to face high levels of acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3+, crisis or worse), with devastating effects on their health, including the risk of malnutrition [3].

The steepest recorded decline in aid is threatening a lifeline to women and girls in Gaza: women’s organizations.

• UN Women surveyed women’s organizations working on the frontlines of the response in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Thirteen of the 14 organizations surveyed reported that the level of need among women and girls has increased since 2025. All organizations surveyed had seen an increase in gender-based violence, poverty, and mental health distress since 2025. Thirteen of the 14 organizations had seen an increase in child marriage.

• At the same time, 13 of the 14 organizations surveyed by UN Women reported that they do not have the capacity to meet the growing needs of women and girls. To cope with the lack of funding, nearly two thirds of the organizations told UN Women they had been forced to put women and girls on waiting lists or turn them away.

UN Women is on the ground in Gaza. We work with women-led and women’s rights organizations to provide lifesaving and critical support to women and girls, including protection services and gender-based violence case management, legal aid, mental health and psychosocial support, and emergency cash and livelihoods assistance.

From fitting women and girls with prosthetics and offering counselling to survivors, to ensuring that the humanitarian response is shaped by the experiences and perspectives of women and girls, our support is helping them to stay afloat. But women and girls in Gaza need peace.

UN Women calls for the ceasefire in Gaza to be fully implemented. We call for international law to be upheld, accountability for violations, and the protection of women and girls and all civilians. Humanitarian assistance must reach those in need – at scale and without obstruction. Women and girls must be placed at the centre of response and recovery efforts.

[1] The proportion was calculated by combining women and girls killed or injured (38,000 and 11,700, respectively).

[3] UN Women estimate based on the IPC Gaza Strip Special Brief, published 13 August 2026. The estimated 702,000 women and girls facing acute food insecurity at crisis-level or worse (IPC Phase 3+) during July–December 2026 is calculated by applying PCBS’s 2025 female population share (49.7 per cent) to the IPC projected caseload of 1,412,421 people. The calculation assumes proportional representation of women and girls across IPC phases and is rounded to the nearest thousand.

IPS UN Bureau

By Madhu Rao and Tyson Miller
SINGAPORE, Oct 9 2026 (IPS)

When governments gather in Yerevan this month for the 17th UN Convention on Biological Diversity, they will weigh a promise nearly 200 countries adopted six years ago: to effectively conserve at least 30 percent of land, inland waters, and sea by 2030. Achieving the ambitious 30×30 target is essential to sustaining the systems humanity relies on for survival—including crop pollination, purification of water and air, and climate regulation—as well as the biodiversity that underpins food production, fisheries, and tourism.

Unfortunately, the world is not on track to achieve this target. Moreover, the emphasis on the quantitative dimension of the 30×30 target has often overshadowed its more critical objective: ensuring that areas of high biodiversity value are protected, conserved, and connected through effective and equitable management.

The struggle to deliver on international commitments reflects a fundamental challenge. The Global Biodiversity Framework requires countries to halt and reverse biodiversity loss while pursuing economic growth, and businesses are increasingly expected to mitigate nature-related impacts. The ongoing expansion in infrastructure, mining, and the energy transition places additional pressure on biodiversity-rich ecosystems, creating difficult trade-offs that must be carefully managed.

The fundamental question remains: how do we reconcile economic development with meeting biodiversity commitments?

A new analysis of tropical countries contains insights vital to answering that question. Most importantly, it found that oil and gas concessions overlap nearly 61 million hectares—roughly two and a half times the size of the United Kingdom—of protected and conserved areas. Mining concessions overlap another 43 million hectares. Such conditions can turn protected and conserved areas into ‘paper parks’: places protected in law but vulnerable to extractive industries in practice.

What the Maps Reveal

The analysis examined a wide range of some of the world’s most vital ecosystems and the industrial pressures closing in on them—oil and gas, mining, industrial logging, and large-scale agriculture—across the Amazon, Central America, the Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia, with further examples from the Global North. The report focused on the tropical forests and marine ecosystems that not only harbor irreplaceable biodiversity but also remain at the center of conflicts between extraction and conservation.

Senegal, for example, is close on paper to protecting 30 percent of its territory, yet oil and gas blocks cover 99 percent of both the country’s protected areas and identified Key Biodiversity Areas. The remaining undisturbed forest in Cambodia largely lies inside protected areas, yet a fifth of those areas face mining concessions and most contain land of interest to oil and gas companies. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, nearly three-quarters of the ambitious new Kivu-Kinshasa Green Corridor overlaps with oil and gas blocks included in a recent licensing round.

This contradiction between conservation in policy and extraction in practice can also be seen in high income countries. The United States has opened Bears Ears National Monument to mining and is threatening new oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the UK also allows fossil-fuel companies to drill in protected areas.

There is further tension. Some of the mining pushing into protected areas is for minerals fueling the energy transition. Securing a stable climate and securing nature are both essential, and one should not be pursued by quietly sacrificing the other.

We need to consider not only how much additional territory must be brought under protection by 2030, but whether areas already counted as protected and conserved are genuinely conserved, effectively managed, and delivering meaningful biodiversity outcomes.

The Path Forward

High-integrity implementation of 30×30 means prioritizing places that matter most for biodiversity and ensuring they remain ecologically intact, connected, effectively conserved, and equitably governed. It means upholding Indigenous Peoples’ and local community rights and protecting these places from incompatible extractive and large-scale industrial activities.

There are four critical components. The first is the mitigation hierarchy, which calls for avoiding harm whenever possible before considering other measures. Areas of highest biodiversity value, including strictly protected areas, should be no-go zones for extractive industry.

The second is policy coherence. A protected area sits with a ministry of environment while a mining concession sits with a ministry of mines or energy, and unless biodiversity is built into the decisions of every economic sector, the two will keep colliding.

The third is biodiversity-inclusive spatial planning, which enables governments to clearly recognize where nature is protected and where development can proceed. Protect here, develop there.

Finally, effective and equitable governance, including rights-based approaches, is essential. Indigenous peoples and local communities steward some of the world’s most intact and biodiverse lands, including many areas of global importance for biodiversity. Their rights, knowledge and leadership are central to effective conservation.

With only four years left, the commitment worth making in Yerevan is durable protection for the areas that matter most, so they remain intact, connected, and free of the industries that would undermine them. We must make sure that 30×30 is not a promise that only exists on a map, but is a pathway to true biodiversity protection for our collective survival.

Madhu Rao, Chair of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas and Tyson Miller, Executive Director of Earth Insight

IPS UN Bureau

Credit: Tosin Olowoleni

By Saheed Babajide Owonikoko
YOLA, Nigeria, Oct 7 2026 (IPS)

Following the mass abduction of 46 pupils and teachers in Oyo State, south-west Nigeria in 2026, the authorities attributed the attack to the Ansaru terrorist group. Key suspects were prosecuted and handed prison terms. But this was not the first time terrorist groups had engaged in mass abduction of school pupils in Nigeria. Peace and security researcher Saheed Babajide Owonikoko explains what factors could have motivated the Ansaru terror group to stage that attack and what lessons Nigeria should take away from the incident, which lasted 56 days.

What can Nigeria learn from the mass kidnap of school children in Oyo State?

The lessons can be deduced from the differences between the incident and others that have taken place in Nigeria.

The first striking difference is that northern Nigeria was previously the centre of kidnapping incidents in Nigeria. As of 1 June 2026, there had been 31 mass school kidnapping incidents involving over 2,530 people in Nigeria since the 2014 Chibok incidents.

Terrorists had struck before in south-western Nigeria. Also, criminal kidnappings on the highway had taken place, but not a mass school kidnapping. The Oyo State school kidnapping is the first in the southern parts of Nigeria. The lesson is that terrorism is expanding beyond the traditional areas known for activities of terrorist groups.

Another difference is that the victims included children as young as two years. Most previous Nigerian mass school abductions targeted older students.

The third is that it involved multiple schools. My contact in Ogbomosho said three schools were attacked.

This suggests the vulnerability of civilian populations and institutions in areas previously regarded as less exposed to terrorist kidnapping. The targeting of particular groups, especially schoolchildren and other populations whose abduction is likely to generate public pressure, also provides terrorists with a strategic advantage. Such attacks will be easy to execute by the group and can trigger public outrage, protests and demands for government action. They could put pressure on authorities to negotiate or make concessions.

Victims have now been “released” or “rescued”, most probably without concession to any of their demands, and some people linked to the incidents have been put on trial. But the ease with which the group carried out the attack exposes the vulnerability of the south-west and other non-traditional theatres of terrorist kidnapping to sudden attacks, particularly where security presence and response capacity remain limited.

Concentrating security in volatile areas may not be the solution, as terrorist groups will always take advantage of vulnerable areas.

What factors motivated this kidnap?

Criminal bandits and terrorists are responsible for most of the high-profile kidnapping incidents in Nigeria. However, while bandits kidnap mostly for money, terrorists mostly kidnap for more strategic reasons.

The 15 May 2026 armed attack against schools in Oriire Local Government of Oyo State, leading to the abduction of over 40 people, most of whom were pupils and teachers, was carried out by The Vanguard for the Protection of Muslims in Black Africa, popularly known as Ansaru. Since its breakaway from Boko Haram in 2013, Ansaru has acquired the trademark of being involved in high-profile kidnapping and hostage-taking, sometimes with the support of bandits.

Ansaru’s involvement in the Oyo State kidnapping was confirmed by the group’s demands. The group listed its demands as follows:

• • 1 billion naira to be paid to one account in the Benin Republic

• • the Oyo state government should release their members from prison

• • Toyota Hiluxes

• concession of some Oyo state laws in favour of the bandits (land and sharia law).

The second item is particularly informative. In August 2025, Nuhu Ribadu, Nigeria’s national security adviser, announced the arrest of two key Ansaru leaders – Mahmud Muhammad Usman, the amir (leader) and Mahmud al-Nigeri, the deputy and chief of staff.

They are currently standing trial on terrorism charges. For a long time, Ansaru remained silent due to the leadership vacuum left as a result. Their strategic importance made the group stage the Oyo kidnapping incidents.

In one of my previous articles, I warned that, given the importance of these two leaders, they might attempt to secure their release through a prison break or resort to a high-profile kidnapping or hostage-taking operation, either in retaliation for their detention or as leverage to demand their release.

What makes the south-west vulnerable to these kinds of attacks?

The choice of Oyo State and the kidnapping of pupils are also strategic. Oyo State is vulnerable because of its proximity to the North Central and North East through savannah woodlands, wildlife reserves and riparian vegetation.

Movement from North Central and North West to the south may also be caused by low security expectations and reduced military pressure there.

A reduction in expertise due to the arrest of Mahmud Muhammad Usman and Mahmud al-Nigeri also affected Ansaru’s operational effectiveness in high-intensity security terrain, making the south more attractive.

Ansaru usually targets high-value civilians, including expatriates, well-to-do individuals and humanitarian workers. They kidnapped schoolchildren because of their vulnerability and also because it can spark public outrage that may force the government to give concessions.

Does this incident have any implications for the ongoing debate on state policing in Nigeria?

According to the government account, the rescue of the schoolchildren and their teachers was achieved through a prolonged, intelligence-led, multi-agency operation. Although the outcome shows state security institutions can mount a coordinated response, it raises questions about whether such resource-intensive operations can be sustained and replicated in similar incidents.

More fundamentally, the operation illustrates the reactive character of the response. Security agencies mobilised resources after the abduction rather than preventing the attack or detecting the threat earlier. This is where the debate over the state police is very important. One of the major problems with Nigeria’s security landscape is the centralisation of the security apparatus, leaving the federating units at the mercy of the federal government to deploy security forces.

To reduce the vulnerability of civilians everywhere in Nigeria, the police institution should be federalised. This will ensure that a minimum level of protection exists for everyone, wherever they live in Nigeria.

Saheed Babajide Owonikoko is Researcher, Centre for Peace and Security Studies, Modibbo Adama University of Technology

This story was originally published by The Conversation.

IPS UN Bureau

As the number of people living with dementia continues to rise, healthcare systems face increasing demand for medical and support services. Credit: Shutterstock

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Oct 6 2026 (IPS)

Dementia is a rapidly growing global health challenge that affects many millions of people worldwide and places significant economic, healthcare, and social strains on societies, particularly as populations age.

Families, community organizations, and governments face growing difficulties in providing adequate care and support for older adults living with dementia.

A debilitating neurological condition, dementia is caused by various diseases or injuries that damage the brain and impair its functioning. Its increasing prevalence has made it a pressing global health concern.

Women are disproportionally affected by dementia, experiencing a greater burden of morbidity and disability than men. Women account for approximately two-thirds of deaths from Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia worldwide and provide about 70% of informal care hours delivered by family and friends

Dementia can affect memory, thinking, communication, mood, and behavior, as well as a person’s ability to perform everyday activities. Symptoms generally worsen over time, often placing substantial emotional, physical, and financial burdens on individuals, families, caregivers, and health systems.

The number of people living with dementia is rising rapidly as populations age and life expectancies increase.

Dementia, however, is not a normal part of aging. Although some changes in memory and functioning are common among older adults, dementia can significantly impair memory, thinking, judgment, and the ability to perform everyday activities.

Dementia is the seventh leading cause of death worldwide and a major cause of disability and dependency among older adults.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type of dementia, accounting for roughly 60–70% of all dementia cases. Other types include vascular dementia, dementia with Lewy bodies, which is associated with abnormal protein deposits in nerve cells, and frontotemporal dementia, which involves degeneration of the brain’s frontal and temporal lobes.

Dementia affects not only individuals but also families, healthcare systems, and society as a whole. Its growing prevalence is creating substantial economic, healthcare, and social pressures worldwide.

As the number of people living with dementia continues to rise, healthcare systems face increasing demand for medical and support services. Governments and communities must devote additional resources to meet these needs, while families often assume significant and demanding caregiving responsibilities.

Hospitals and long-term care facilities also face growing pressure because people with advanced dementia may require intensive, around-the-clock supervision and assistance with everyday activities.

Beyond direct healthcare and long-term care expenses, dementia generates substantial indirect costs. These include lost productivity when people with dementia can no longer work and reduced workforce participation among family members who leave or reduce employment to provide unpaid care. Together, these direct and indirect costs add substantially to the broader economic and social burden of dementia.

Women are disproportionally affected by dementia, experiencing a greater burden of morbidity and disability than men. Women account for approximately two-thirds of deaths from Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia worldwide and provide about 70% of informal care hours delivered by family and friends.

People who care for relatives with dementia face greater health risks than those caring for family members without dementia, and these risks can persist even after their relatives have died. Caring for people with dementia therefore places substantial burdens on families and society, while the growing global burden of dementia care remains largely underestimated.

In 2021, approximately 57 million people were living with dementia, according to the World Health Organization, and dementia caused about 2 million deaths. With nearly 10 million new cases of dementia occurring each year, largely reflecting population ageing and increasing longevity, the number of people living with dementia is projected to reach about 107 million by 2026 and more than 150 million by 2050 (Figure 1).

Source: World Health Organization.

Dementia can affect memory, thinking, communication, mood, and behavior. Early signs and symptoms of dementia are often observable and may involve difficulties with memory, attention, communication, reasoning, judgement, and processing visual information.

Possible early signs of dementia include forgetting recent events or familiar information, getting lost while walking or driving, becoming confused in familiar places, having difficulty following conversations, forgetting the names of close family members or friends, using unusual words to refer to familiar objects, and struggling to complete routine or familiar tasks independently (Table 1).

Source; U.S. Center for Disease Control.

Although there is currently no known cure for dementia, WHO guidelines report that up to 45% of dementia risk could potentially be prevented or delayed.

The WHO guidelines recommend several healthy behaviors and lifestyle interventions that may reduce dementia risk. These include cognitive training and stimulation, and participation in social activities for adults with normal cognition or mild cognitive impairment.

Other measures that may help reduce dementia risk and support quality of life and well-being include staying physically active, pursuing additional education, eating a healthy diet, drinking a couple of cups of coffee daily, quitting smoking, limiting alcohol consumption, reading regularly, engaging in mentally stimulating activities, and maintaining social connections. Keeping track of daily tasks, managing stress, and obtaining regular medical check-ups may also help people maintain independence and well-being (Table 2).

Source: World Health Organization and U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Some country studies report that each additional year of education is associated with a lower risk of dementia, with the protective association continuing beyond high school. In other words, additional years of education may provide cumulative protection against dementia. Recent research has also found that hearing aids can reduce the rate of cognitive decline in older adults at high risk of dementia by nearly 50%.

Much can also be done to support people living with dementia and those who care for them. Caring for a person with dementia, however, can be challenging and can affect caregivers’ own health and well-being.

Providing care requires patience, clear communication, and attention to the person’s emotional well-being.

Helpful caregiving tips include starting discussing care needs early, speaking calmly and clearly, avoiding arguments, providing reassurance, and avoiding questions such as “Don’t you remember?”. Other strategies include distracting an agitated person with a snack, photo album, humor, or soothing music; maintaining a consistent routine and familiar mealtime setting; encouraging independence and regular exercise; using written to-do lists and reminders; simplifying choices; and ensuring a safe environment.

Caregivers should also prioritize their own physical and emotional well-being. The demands of dementia caregiving can contribute to emotional stress, physical exhaustion, and burnout.

Helpful self-care strategies include taking regular breaks, seeking assistance from family members or others involved in caregiving, maintaining social connections, engaging in regular physical activity, and seeking mental health support when needed. These measures can help reduce stress and exhaustion and lower the risk of caregiver burnout.

Although age itself does not cause of dementia, it is the strongest known risk factor, with the likelihood of developing dementia generally increasing with age. Consequently, countries with older populations, such as Japan, Germany, Italy, and Greece, tend to report higher dementia rates (Figure 2).

Source: World Population Review.

In sum, dementia is a rapidly rising global health challenge, particularly as populations age. Countries face increasing difficulties in providing adequate care and support for older adults living with dementia.

Given the limited availability of effective treatments, there is an urgent need for comprehensive national strategies to prevent or delay dementia and address its broader social, economic, and health consequences. Such strategies should take a coordinated, long-term approach to strengthening prevention, improving care and support services, and reducing the burden on individuals, families, communities, and health systems.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division, and author of numerous publications on population issues.

By James Alix Michel
VICTORIA, Seychelles, Oct 6 2026 (IPS)

One night, many years ago now, on a remote beach in the outer islands of Seychelles, I sat in the darkness and watched a green turtle come ashore. She had waited for the heat of the day to leave the sand. Under a sky crowded with stars, she hauled herself slowly above the tideline, dug with a patience no human hand could match, and laid her eggs. Then, in the small hours, she turned back toward the water. She did not hurry. She paused once, as though listening, and then made her slow, unhesitating way down the sand, back to a home older than any I could imagine.

James Alix Michel

We, the human beings watching from the shore, are the ones who wonder.

This, I have come to believe, is the deepest source of the trouble we now find ourselves in. Not our tools, not our economies, not even our numbers, though all of these press hard upon the living world. The deepest source is an older mistake: the unexamined assumption that we stand outside nature, deciding its fate. That the Earth is a stage and we are its principal players, and that everything else, the reef, the forest, the migrating whale, the green turtle, is scenery, resource, or backdrop.

The truth is far more humbling. We are not the authors of nature. We are its late arrivals.

Consider the arithmetic of belonging. The Earth is some four and a half billion years old. Life appeared here almost four billion years ago. Coral reefs were already ancient when the dinosaurs walked. Forests had been breathing for hundreds of millions of years before the first upright ape rose on the savannah. The calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon that composes almost everything we are, was forged in stars that lived and died long before this planet existed. To imagine ourselves separate from nature is not merely a philosophical mistake. It is a physical impossibility.

We Seychellois have a particular reason to understand this, for we are late arrivals twice over. Our granite islands are among the oldest islands on Earth, the only oceanic islands made of granite: fragments of the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana, left behind in the middle of the ocean when India drifted away some sixty-five million years ago. For almost all of that immense time, no human foot touched them. The turtles came, and the seabirds, and the giant tortoises. We came only in 1770, when a small party of Europeans, Africans and Indians stepped ashore on Sainte Anne. Others followed, from Africa, from India, from China, from Europe, some by choice and many, let us never forget, in chains. From that meeting of peoples, in scarcely two and a half centuries, a nation was born.

And something remarkable happened. A people with no ancestral memory of these islands learned, within a few generations, to belong to them. Our grandparents learned to read the sea as others read books. They gave thanks to the ocean before setting out and again on returning, and spoke of it as one speaks of a mother. Their kinship was not inherited; it was learned. That, to me, is among the most hopeful facts I know: belonging can be learned.

There is a school of thought, gathering strength in our time, that invites the whole of humanity to learn it too. Some call it biocentrism, the recognition that life in all its forms carries moral weight. Others call it deep ecology, the insistence that the human being is one strand in a vast web, not the loom on which the web is woven. The American conservationist Aldo Leopold put it most simply, many decades ago: we must learn to think “like a mountain.” The names matter less than the instinct behind them: that the living world is not a possession, and that our first duty to it is not extraction but attention.

This is why the environmental struggle feels to me, at its deepest level, like a spiritual struggle as much as an economic one. The numbers we use to measure our crisis are necessary and true, but they cannot on their own move the human heart. What moves the heart is the recognition that we are kin to what we are losing. That the coral bleaching in a lagoon is not a distant statistic but family. That the night sky above the nesting beach is not decoration but a memory of our own origin.

I do not offer this as sentiment. I offer it as strategy. For decades we have tried to persuade humanity to protect the Earth by appealing to self-interest. The argument is true, but it has not been sufficient. Self-interest is a thin thread from which to hang the future of a planet. What is needed now is the older and stronger thread of kinship. And kinship, once acted upon, is answered. On Aldabra, where green turtles were once taken in great numbers, decades of patient protection have allowed the nesting population to multiply several times over. The sea, it seems, is ready to forgive us, if we are ready to belong.

James Alix Michel, is Former President of the Republic of Seychelles

IPS UN Bureau

Excerpt:

OECD PISA education performance: change in scores between 2009 to 2025, and 2025 scores.

By Isabel Ortiz and Antonia Wulff
BRUSSELS / GENEVA, Oct 5 2026 (IPS)

The results of the OECD PISA 2025 report point to the marked deterioration of results in countries whose education systems were once considered exemplary. PISA assesses how students aged 15 apply skills in reading, mathematics, and science to real-life situations, and the latest report contains the lowest averages ever measured in all three subjects across the OECD (as illustrated in the graph above). Public debate has rushed to blame the use of AI and social media, but the deterioration long predates them. In many countries, this decline has unfolded alongside years of austerity cuts and growing pressures on public education systems, including public spending, teacher pay and working conditions, staffing and the capacity of schools to provide quality education.

Isabel Ortiz

Austerity reforms in education include reduced public budgets, wage restraint for teachers and school staff, recruitment freezes, staff reductions, heavier workloads, and the privatization and commercialization of education. Fiscal consolidation led half of OECD countries to cut or freeze teachers’ salaries after 2010; between 2008 and 2012 teachers’ real wages fell in 16 of the 30 countries for which data is available, and by more than a quarter in Greece. Finland cut 1.5 billion euros from education during 2011 to 2018, and – among many other damaging cuts – closed and merged schools. In the United States, spending per pupil fell roughly 7% after the financial crisis, and rigorous research shows these cuts lowered test scores and college attendance.

Antonia Wulff

Privatization and commercialization compound the damage. More than 350 million primary and secondary students worldwide are enrolled in private institutions, and the enrolment share of government-funded private schools has risen since 2000 in many countries. UNESCO’s global review is blunt: the apparent superior performance of private schools is largely attributable to the socio-economic advantages of the student population.

These trends reflect political choices: what governments choose to fund and what they choose to cut. When education systems are asked to do more with less, the consequences are felt in classrooms. Fewer teachers, heavier workloads, weaker pay and conditions, and less capacity to provide every child with a quality public education. The question is not whether we can afford to reverse this decline but whether governments are prepared to prioritize the investment that public education requires.

The money was never missing, it is a question of priorities. Governments mobilized US$10 trillion to rescue banks in 2009, and in the four years since the invasion of Ukraine, the world has spent more than $10 trillion on the military, with NATO members each pledging to spend 5% of GDP on this by 2035, exceeding the share that most devote to education. Today, debt-service payments exceed education expenditure in Colombia, Costa Rica, Hungary, Mexico, Poland and Türkiye, among other countries, meaning again that governments are prioritizing paying off private creditors, banks and defense over children. New revenues are within reach: from progressive taxation, taxing windfall profits (e.g. from oil) to a 2% minimum tax on the wealth of billionaires which would raise $2.5 trillion over a decade. The G20 has, meanwhile, already committed to cooperating on taxing the super-rich.

Austerity was a policy choice and so are public services for people’s prosperity. Through sustained investment in public education, decent pay for qualified teachers, and equitable learning conditions, OECD countries could once again set the example and invest in educating their children to expand opportunity for the next generation.

Isabel Ortiz, Director, Global Social Justice, was Director at the International Labor Organization (ILO) and UNICEF, and a senior official at the UN and the Asian Development Bank.

Antonia Wulff, Director of Research, Policy, and Advocacy, Education International.

IPS UN Bureau

Excerpt:

Social Democratic Party leader Magdalena Andersson speaks at the Social Democrats’ election night party in Stockholm on 13 September 2026. Credit: Jonas Ekstromer/TT News Agency/AFP

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Oct 5 2026 (IPS)

Four years ago, Sweden’s far right became the power behind a right-wing government. This time, it expected further gains and cabinet seats. But voters turned against it. In the 13 September general election, support for the far-right Sweden Democrats fell for the for the first time in the party’s history. Four days later, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson resigned, leaving the way clear for the centre-left Social Democrats to negotiate a coalition. But the Sweden Democrats’ defeat will prove hollow if the next government maintains the hostility towards migrants that has come to characterise Sweden’s politics.

The Sweden Democrats originated in the country’s violent neo-Nazi movement. Established parties long refused to cooperate, but the centre-right Moderate Party broke the firewall in 2019, when it announced it was willing to work with it. In the 2022 election, the Sweden Democrats came second with 20.5 per cent of the vote. The Moderate Party came third but was able to form a minority government. The Sweden Democrats didn’t receive cabinet seats, but entered into a formal agreement with the governing parties, which relied on its votes.

Having brought the Sweden Democrats into the political mainstream, Kristersson went further in April, when he said his aim was to form a majority government with the Sweden Democrats and promised them cabinet posts, potentially giving them control of immigration policies. The announcement made clear how central to Swedish politics the Sweden Democrats had become.

Hostility written into law

The Sweden Democrats framed its hostility towards migrants as a defence of the country’s envied living standards, underpinned by its extensive social welfare system. This time it promised to ‘make Sweden Sweden again’, in a campaign marked by instances of blatant Islamophobia.

Sweden saw a sharp increase in the number of asylum seekers and migrants in 2010, particularly from war-torn Syria. Political parties and media have repeatedly blamed migrants for crime and economic and social problems.

As the Sweden Democrats picked up electoral support, established parties adopted increasingly anti-migrant policies to try to see off the political threat. The same thing has happened in other European countries, with the same effect. Mainstream parties legitimised the anti-migrant agenda and brought the far-right challenger into the political mainstream, while voters tended to prefer the original to the copy. In Sweden, conditions for migrants have worsened under successive governments.

Restrictive policies preceded the 2022 government, but intensified under it. Ahead of the election, the government passed a new set of anti-migrant laws. These removed any route to permanent residency for people with asylum status, offering only temporary residency permits. They introduced a broadly defined ‘good behaviour’ clause that allows authorities to refuse residency permits for non-criminal offences and revoke permits already granted.

On top of this, what’s commonly called the ‘snitch law’ obliges some categories of public employees to report people they suspect of being undocumented migrants. This may deter migrants from using essential public services, such as healthcare, for fear of being reported. Because the law is broad and vague, it will also encourage self-censorship, as migrants may feel less able to take part in protests or speak out online. This effectively creates a two-tier system for civic freedoms and risks introducing a default racial profiling system. Troublingly, other EU countries are reportedly watching how Sweden’s hostile new laws play out, with a view to copying them.

A fragmented result

Crime and migration were campaign issues, but didn’t dominate the debate, as voters also focused heavily on the economy, education and healthcare. After many years at the top of the agenda, migration may be receding as a political issue, revealing the Sweden Democrats as having little else to offer. The party’s four four years of sustaining a government also made it harder to run an anti-establishment campaign, while a scandal linking a party official to Russia may also have cost it.

Results point to a further political fragmentation. The Social Democrats also lost seats, recording its lowest vote share in over a century, while smaller parties gained support, with the Green and Left parties particularly attracting young voters.

The two major political blocs are holding coalition negotiations. Neither faces an easy task. A four-party coalition led by the Social Democrats would command 176 seats, just above the 175 needed for a majority, while a four-party coalition on the right would claim only 173. But significant policy differences mean agreement can’t be taken for granted. Determination to keep the Sweden Democrats out may galvanise the four into an agreement but may not be enough to sustain it in the long term.

Even if the Social Democrats prevail, a significant change of direction on migrants’ rights is unlikely. The party has expressed support for many recent anti-migrant policies. The political rhetoric may soften, but the situation could mirror that of neighbouring Denmark, where the Social Democrats, having long adopted anti-migrant policies, retained power in the March election despite having its worst result in over 120 years.

A chance to change course

Progressive voices urgently need to start making a more positive case that tells human stories and asserts the human rights of migrants, and that builds understanding of the causes of migration and appreciation of the benefits migrants can bring, from the public service jobs Sweden’s social welfare service relies on to the economic contributions migrants make.

Sweden’s civil society must be heard. Civil society organisations are providing practical help to migrants and going to the courts and European bodies to challenge the worst impacts of regressive laws. They know what’s needed to curb the hostility, make Swedish society fairer and restore the country’s hard-earned global reputation as a human rights champion.

The Sweden Democrats’ loss of support shows there’s nothing inevitable or unstoppable about the rise of the far right. If Sweden’s next government listens to civil society instead of continuing to imitate the far right, it has a chance to show Europe that it’s possible to roll back the far right’s agenda.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org

Mariam Daher preparing for her Tawjihi examinations in the temporary learning spaces in Gaza. Credit: Education Above All Foundation

By Hani Shehada
DOHA, Qatar, Oct 2 2026 (IPS)

In the 21st century, getting a pencil into Gaza became international news. In January, after more than two years of restrictions, UNICEF finally brought in learning kits with pencils and exercise books. Textbooks stayed out. By then, the UN had recorded damage to 97.5 per cent of Gaza’s schools.

If a pencil makes headlines, consider what a national examination demands: question papers printed for thousands of students, answer sheets scanned, halls furnished and staffed. In Gaza, education officials started by pulling damaged photocopiers from beneath the rubble, stripping their usable parts and rebuilding enough machines to keep the exam alive. It worked. More than 95,000 students have sat the Tawjihi, the national secondary school examination that decides who can compete for a university place.

This week, world leaders gathered at the UN General Assembly under the banner of “a United Nations that delivers for all“. The effort behind Gaza’s examination poses an uncomfortable question to that promise: when does celebrating a solution make it easier to tolerate the problem? Scholars writing from Gaza have warned that praising Palestinian resilience reassures outside observers and releases them from the duty to act.

At a school damaged by the war near Mashrou’ Amer in southwestern Gaza City, Education Above All Foundation and UNDP have established 10 temporary learning spaces. Credit: Education Above All Foundation

Israel classifies thousands of items as “dual-use“, spare parts among them, and bars or limits their entry. Technicians harvested parts from other machines. Repairing the printers and scanners took more than 90 days. The printers ran on old ink stocks, because new ink faced restrictions too. Until recently, paper itself could not enter Gaza.” and drop the fallback plan after it.

Exam halls also needed seats and desks. Little wood reaches Gaza. Carpenters build tables from scrap and shipping pallets, and families burn whatever they find to cook and keep warm. Staff repaired chairs and desks with timber from the pallets that carry aid. Every liter of fuel for an examination center required coordination. All of it happened under strikes that never fully stopped, which have killed more than 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza since the ceasefire took effect.

An examination also needs people. Every center needed invigilators while many education staff receive only a fraction of their salary. Before assigning anyone, the ministry first had to establish who was still alive. The war has killed more than 21,000 students and educational staff since October 2023.

A school teacher leads a lesson inside one of Gaza’s temporary learning spaces established by Education Above All Foundation and UNDP.
Credit: Education Above All Foundation

This year, Gaza’s candidates took the Tawjihi online, many on phones in tents and cafés, while the ministry worked to bring the exam back into halls. With support from the State of Qatar, Education Above All Foundation, UNDP and the ministry have set up 110 learning spaces, partly for that purpose. Planners intended these spaces, a mix of prefabricated units and tents, as a transition. Gaza’s students are using them for years, while sun, heat, humidity and cold wear them down.

Gaza’s people now crowd into less than 40 per cent of the Strip. Crews must clear rubble and check for unexploded ordnance before they can build. When they clear land for a learning space, displaced families can move onto it and stay. Others shelter in partly destroyed buildings. A school site now competes with the most basic need of all: somewhere to live.

Picture one of those 95,000 candidates. She has studied for this exam for years, first at a desk at home, then by phone light in a tent. The war has taken her father, perhaps her mother too, and most of the family who would have waited for her results. She may walk on crutches where a leg used to be. Strikes still fall at night, and she revises anyway. All she wants is the chance to sit the exam. Behind that chance stand a salvaged photocopier, a rebuilt desk and a negotiated liter of fuel, each one liable to fail. The UN reports that shortages once managed through reuse have become unmanageable, and critical systems are failing. Judged against a cancelled examination, against a school able to order a replacement part, it reveals an avoidable burden.

I am from Gaza, and I work for one of the foundations that funds this response. That makes the question personal: have we become so used to celebrating what Palestinians can salvage that we no longer ask why they must salvage it? An examination held amid continuing strikes is an achievement. It is also evidence of a world that has allowed the conditions for education to be dismantled.

As the speeches in New York wind down, leaders can measure their words against practical tests. Let paper, printer parts, school furniture and textbooks into Gaza without months of negotiation. Fund classrooms built to last years, not seasons. Pay the teachers who keep the system running. Gaza’s educators have shown what they will do to keep education alive. The question before the world is what it would take for Gaza’s schools to stop needing miracles.

Hani Shehada, Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, and is Regional Manager at Education Above All Foundation’s Al Fakhoora programme.

IPS UN Bureau

Excerpt:

Members of Smallholder Farmer Alliance in Haiti with first harvest of regenerative cotton. Credit: Thomas Norielle/SFA

By Hugh Locke
NEW YORK, Oct 2 2026 (IPS)

In November 1952, the United States detonated the world’s first thermonuclear device at Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The test, code-named Ivy Mike, erased the island of Elugelab and scattered a signature of plutonium across the planet that remains in lake beds, ice sheets and ocean sediments today.

This month, scientists writing in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment proposed this moment as the start of the Anthropocene, a geological epoch shaped by human activity. Co-author Victor Galaz of the Stockholm Resilience Centre called the date “a tragic reminder of the highly unjust impacts of planetary change.”

I take that proposal seriously, because it carries hope as well as warning, and it connects to the argument of my new book, Whole Earth Farming.

Hugh Locke

The idea of the Anthropocene was popularized in 2000 by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen. In 2020, a paper in Nature found that human-made materials now outweigh all living things on Earth. Yet in 2024, the International Union of Geological Sciences declined to formally recognize the Anthropocene. Officially, we are still in the Holocene.

The new paper, led by Jan Zalasiewicz, Colin Waters and Martin J. Head, draws on 12 stratigraphic records worldwide and identifies the 1952 rise in plutonium as the clearest marker of the new epoch. Whatever the geologists decide, the substance stands: human beings have become a force of planetary consequence.

Nobody set out to launch a new geological epoch. The Anthropocene is the unintended result of billions of decisions about energy, industry, consumption and land use. That is sobering. It is also, strangely, encouraging.

If humanity can alter the chemistry of the atmosphere without meaning to, then we are clearly capable of transformation at planetary scale. The only question is whether we can do it on purpose, in a direction that heals rather than harms.

Galaz’s point about injustice matters too. The Marshall Islanders had no say in what happened at Enewetak, yet bore its consequences. Those who contributed least to planetary change are often hit hardest, among them the world’s smallholder farmers. Any real transformation must put them at the center.

There are some 475 million smallholder farming families in the world, roughly one quarter of humanity, and yet they are largely absent from conversations about the future of food and climate.

Whole Earth Farming argues that these families could lead an agricultural revolution. It draws on 21 farmer stories from 18 countries and on decades of work, including in Haiti, where I co-founded the Smallholder Farmers Alliance. Its central argument is that if half the world’s smallholders adopted regenerative practices, they could produce all the additional food needed by 2050 while reducing agriculture’s net climate impact.

There is a fitting symmetry here. The Holocene began with a climate stable enough for humans to start farming. The Anthropocene could likewise coincide with a new global agricultural movement, one that restores the land rather than depleting it.

The changes of the 1950s spread without any global plan, as new tools and habits moved from place to place until they gathered their own momentum. A regenerative transformation can spread the same way: through practices that work, farmers who see them working on a neighbor’s land, and the support to adopt them.

The farmers in the book are already rebuilding soil, planting trees alongside crops and restoring water cycles. What they lack is not ingenuity but recognition, investment and connection to one another.

I once suggested that the historical epoch now taking shape will one day be named for the moment we began to reorganize ourselves around the principle of oneness. I still believe that.

The Anthropocene is, in one sense, the geological record of our failure to see ourselves as one people sharing one planet. A regenerative transformation led by smallholders would be the opposite: a practical expression of oneness, rooted in the recognition that the health of the land, the wellbeing of the farmer and the future of humanity are inseparable.

If a single morning in 1952 can mark a new chapter in the Earth’s geological history, then surely the choices of hundreds of millions of farming families can mark a new chapter in human history. We have already proven that we can change the planet. Now it is time to prove that we can do so with intention, with justice, and with the whole Earth in mind.

Hugh Locke is president and co-founder of the Smallholder Farmers Alliance, president of the Impact Farming Foundation and author of Whole Earth Farming: Smallholders and the Great Regenerative Transformation (George Ronald Publisher, 2026).

IPS UN Bureau

Excerpt:

When nurses are overworked, unheard or afraid to speak up, safety, dignity, learning and retention all suffer. Fernando Zhiminaicela / Pixabay

By External Source
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 1 2026 (IPS)

Nurses are often called the backbone of the health system. We praise their compassion, commitment and resilience. On Nurses’ Day we thank them. During emergencies and crises, we call them heroes. But there is a harder question Malaysia, like most countries around the world, needs to ask more seriously: what happens when the people who care for everyone else are not safe, supported or respected at work?

This question is not only about patient safety. It is first about nurses’ own rights, dignity and wellbeing. A safe and healthy working environment is recognised by the ILO as a fundamental principle and right at work.

Nurses deserve safe workplaces not only because patients depend on them, but because no worker should be expected to absorb abuse, bullying or harassment as part of the job.

The health and care sector is highly feminised, with women making up around 70% of the global workforce. This is even more pronounced in nursing, where women account for 85% of the workforce, according to WHO’s 2025 State of the World’s Nursing report. This means workplace violence against nurses is not only an occupational safety concern. It is also a gendered issue.

As a female-dominated profession, nursing is often positioned lower in hierarchical health systems, where authority is unevenly distributed. Gendered assumptions - such as women being “naturally caring,” patient or obedient - can normalise mistreatment, silence complaints and discourage reporting

As a female-dominated profession, nursing is often positioned lower in hierarchical health systems, where authority is unevenly distributed. Gendered assumptions – such as women being “naturally caring,” patient or obedient – can normalise mistreatment, silence complaints and discourage reporting.

Because nurses are also frontline caregivers, they are exposed to aggression from patients, families and colleagues. Gender therefore shapes both how violence is experienced and how seriously it is taken.

For many nurses and frontline health workers, workplace violence extends beyond physical assault. It involves verbal abuse, bullying, humiliation, intimidation, sexual harassment, disrespectful treatment, harsh hierarchy and psychological pressure.

These forms of violence may not always leave visible injuries. But they can leave deep marks on confidence, mental health, family life, professional motivation and the decision to stay in the nursing profession.

Studies from several Malaysian healthcare settings show that workplace violence is more common than we may think across hospitals, emergency departments and primary healthcare facilities.

A study conducted among 90 nurses in Kuala Lumpur found that more than 90% had experienced verbal abuse. Similarly, a survey of 838 primary healthcare workers in Selangor reported that 68.5% had experienced workplace violence, with verbal abuse the most common form and nurses the most affected professional group. In Melaka, research among 455 female registered nurses found that 51.2% had experienced sexual harassment, most commonly verbal, but also visual, psychological, non-verbal and physical. Nearly three-quarters of those affected reported psychological effects.

Behind each of these figures is a person trying to do their job while staying calm, professional and compassionate. A nurse explaining treatment to an anxious family. A frontline worker managing a crowded clinic. A junior staff member afraid to speak up. A mother finishing a night shift and going home to another set of care responsibilities. These numbers should not be read as statistics alone. Rather, they are warning signs of workplace systems and cultures and the need for stronger prevention, reporting and response mechanisms.

Malaysia already has important foundations in place. Existing occupational safety and health obligations, together with MOH guidance on workplace violence, provide a strong basis for prevention and response. The challenge now is to build on these measures and ensure they are visible, trusted and consistently implemented in hospitals, clinics and frontline services.

This concern was clearly articulated in a focus group discussion with nurses and frontline health workers in Sabah. Participants described workplace violence and bullying as part of a wider picture of pressure: too many patients, too few staff, missed breaks, unpaid or poorly compensated overtime, limited recognition, burnout and difficulty balancing shift work with family responsibilities.

One district clinic was described as seeing around 600 to 800 patients a day, with only a small number of frontline staff managing the flow. In hospital wards, nurses described caring for 10 to 20 patients and sometimes up to 25 patients alone. Staff often missed lunch breaks, stayed beyond official hours to complete patient care and documentation and sometimes worked while sick because no one else was available to replace them. Heavy documentation and uneven digital systems added another layer of pressure.

In the same Sabah discussion, one participant described bullying as something that particularly affects newcomers and junior staff. Another explained that many young workers feel they have little choice but to endure difficult treatment because they need the job. As one participant put it, many feel they must “just bear with it” because speaking up can feel risky.

The human cost also reaches beyond the workplace. One nurse described leaving for work while her children were still sleeping and returning home when they were already asleep again. This is not only a personal story. It is a policy issue. When nurses are overworked, unheard or afraid to speak up, safety, dignity, learning and retention all suffer.

This is why workplace violence must be discussed together with Malaysia’s nursing shortages, retention concerns and migration of nurses. Nurses do not leave only because of salary, although salary and fair compensation matter greatly. They also leave when they feel unsafe, unheard, unsupported and unable to grow.

When nurses feel unable to speak up, silence becomes part of the system. When junior staff are humiliated instead of mentored, learning suffers. When bullying becomes normalised, workers may begin to see leaving as the only realistic option. For a mostly female workforce, these pressures do not affect nurses alone. They also affect families, communities and how society values care work.

Training more nurses will not solve the problem if the working environment pushes nurses away. The real question is not only how we produce more nurses, but also how we ensure that nurses can stay, work safely and be treated with dignity. A serious response to workplace violence in healthcare should include several practical steps.

First, nurses should have a stronger voice in decisions that affect their work. Frontline nurses, nursing leaders, professional bodies and unions should be meaningfully involved in shaping policies on staffing, workplace safety, reporting systems, mental health support, digitalisation and service delivery. Collective representation matters because individual nurses should not have to carry the burden of speaking up alone.

Second, trusted systems for preventing, reporting and responding to workplace violence, bullying and harassment should continue to be strengthened. Nurses need to know they can safely report any kind of violence without fear of being ignored, blamed or punished. Too often, incidents go unreported because people do not believe anything will change. A safe workplace starts with systems that people trust.

Third, addressing staffing shortages and excessive workloads is also essential. When nurses are caring for too many patients, missing breaks and regularly staying late to finish their work, everyone pays the price. Safe staffing is not a luxury. It is essential for both patient care and health worker wellbeing.

Fourth, supporting nurses also means looking beyond individual resilience. Nurses need time to rest, supportive supervisors, access to mental health support and workplaces where people treat each other with respect. Supportive mentoring and teamwork can make a real difference – especially for junior staff and newcomers.

Finally, workplace safety needs to be considered alongside career development, fair compensation and better systems. Nurses need fair recognition for overtime and workload, opportunities for specialisation and higher education, and digital systems that reduce administrative burden rather than adding to it.

Ultimately, this is about recognising that nurses are not an endless resource. They are people, often women, who care for others every day while carrying their own pressures, responsibilities and challenges. Ensuring their safety, dignity and wellbeing is not only the right thing to do. It is a smart investment in a stronger and more resilient health system.

Malaysia has an opportunity to build on the measures already in place and further strengthen workplace safety, staffing, support and working conditions. Everywhere in the world, health systems depend on nurses at every stage of life – from birth to old age, from routine check-ups to medical emergencies. Malaysia is no exception.

Safe patients need safe nurses. And safe nurses need workplaces where respect, dignity and rights are non-negotiable.

By Sergo Chikhladze, Johanna Riha, Sapna Mishra (UNU Global health) and Nicholas Hulus (Sabah Medical Services Union (SMSU))

From a distance, an island nation can appear to possess everything: pristine waters, a thriving tourism industry and a strong cultural identity. Its income figures may suggest prosperity.

James Alix Michel

This is the paradox confronting small island states. We are judged by what we earn on paper, while our future is shaped by what we must endure in reality. President Dr Patrick Herminie of Seychelles brought this question to the United Nations this month, urging international finance to “measure reality correctly”. He called for affordable, accessible, long-term finance, meaningful debt relief and effective implementation of the Multidimensional Vulnerability Index (MVI).

His appeal continues a case Seychelles has made for many years.

In 2009, Seychelles warned at the United Nations that small economies were especially exposed to global economic instability and the impacts of climate change. In 2013, it called for financing mechanisms and concessional conditions tailored to small island developing states. In 2015, it argued that attaining a higher-income classification should not automatically exclude an island nation from concessional support. The message has remained consistent: development gains do not erase structural vulnerability.

For too long, eligibility for grants and affordable loans has depended heavily on GDP or gross national income per capita. Income matters, but it cannot tell the whole story. It reveals little about a country’s exposure to shocks or its capacity to recover. A small state must maintain ports, airports, hospitals, schools, power systems, water supplies and coastal defences with a limited population and tax base. It may depend on one or two sectors, such as tourism or fisheries. When global prices rise or supply chains fail, the consequences can be felt across the entire nation at once.

This is not an argument against sound national management. It is an argument for recognising realities that good management alone cannot remove. Countries may graduate from an income category; they do not graduate from geography, climate exposure or limited economic scale.

Nor is this a Seychelles concern alone. From the Caribbean to the Pacific and across the Indian Ocean, island countries have long pressed for international finance to reflect vulnerability rather than income alone. Barbados has advocated measures that better capture vulnerability and resilience, while the Alliance of Small Island States has argued that the financial system must recognise the distinctive circumstances of its members. There is a shared understanding here: a prosperous-looking average can hide a profoundly fragile foundation.

The MVI offers a way to make that foundation visible. It is intended to complement, not replace, income measures by assessing structural vulnerability and resilience across economic, environmental and social dimensions. It asks decision-makers to look beyond a single number towards the pressures an island country faces: remoteness, economic concentration, disaster risk, climate exposure and the limited room to absorb shocks.

In August 2024, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 78/322 on the MVI, an important recognition that national income alone is an inadequate guide. But adoption is only the beginning. An index will not protect a coastline, keep a hospital open or help a family recover after a storm unless it changes financing decisions. Will lenders and development partners use it to widen access to concessional finance? Will it help countries obtain adaptation funds before disaster strikes? Will it inform debt arrangements that leave governments room to protect essential services after a crisis?

That is the true test of the international community’s commitment. A fairer system would provide more grants and affordable long-term finance for resilience. It would include clauses that pause debt repayments after major disasters. It would treat coastal protection, water security, renewable energy and the restoration of reefs and mangroves as essential investments, not discretionary extras to be considered only when funds remain.
We know the price of waiting. When a storm destroys infrastructure, a country may have to borrow to rebuild what it could not afford to protect. Debt then limits future investment, leaving it more exposed to the next shock. Financing resilience in advance can break that cycle. It protects lives, public finances and development gains. This is not charity; it is sound economics.

The question also reaches beyond island states. Across the developing world, countries facing climate shocks, volatile markets and heavy debt are too often assessed through indicators that overlook their lived circumstances. When scarce public money goes towards expensive borrowing instead of health, education or adaptation, the poorest communities bear the greatest cost. A financial system that responds only after calamity is neither efficient nor just.

Seychelles has voiced this concern since 2009, and President Herminie’s appeal shows why it remains urgent. The MVI gives the world an opportunity to turn recognition into action. Those who govern international lending must now decide whether vulnerability will matter when resources are allocated, not merely when speeches are delivered.

An island is more than an income figure. It is a society, a culture, an ecosystem and a future, living close to risks often created far beyond its shores. To measure that reality correctly is the beginning of fairness. To finance it fairly must follow.

James Alix Michel, is Former President of the Republic of Seychelles

IPS UN Bureau

A stronger future for coffee starts by strengthening the places and communities where that journey begins. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Boubaker Ben Belhassen
ROME, Sep 30 2026 (IPS)

Imagine your morning coffee. You smell the aroma as steam rises from the cup. It wisps and swirls, thins, then disappears. You lift the cup to your mouth. The first pure joy of the day.

That coffee may have begun beneath shade trees in Ethiopia, on a Colombian hillside, in Viet Nam’s highlands or among the coffee farms of Brazil. Long before it reached your cup, someone planted and tended the trees from which it came. Then came the harvest. Ripe cherries were picked with care, and the coffee began a journey that would carry it far from the place where it was grown.

Building a stronger future for coffee therefore begins where coffee itself begins: with productive and resilient farms, open and transparent markets, and greater economic opportunity in producing countries

Few agricultural products connect people across such long distances. Coffee is among the world’s most widely traded commodities. Coffee supports the livelihoods of up to 25 million farmers worldwide, while millions more people participate in the economic activity created along the coffee value chain.

Coffee’s extraordinary global reach has created livelihoods and economic opportunities across continents. It has also connected millions of small producers to a market in which shocks can propagate quickly. Building a stronger future for coffee therefore begins where coffee itself begins: with productive and resilient farms, open and transparent markets, and greater economic opportunity in producing countries.

International Coffee Day is a moment to celebrate what coffee has made possible. It is also a moment to ask what its future will require.

Recent years have shown why. International coffee prices have experienced large fluctuations as weather has affected production in major producing countries and supplies have tightened. Droughts, frosts and excessive rainfall can disrupt harvests, while pests, diseases, rising costs, geopolitical tensions and shipping delays can add further pressure.

That exposure is amplified by the concentration of production in relatively few places. Brazil and Viet Nam together account for nearly half of global coffee production, while five countries supply around 70 percent of global coffee bean exports. With such concentration, a shock in one major producing region can quickly reverberate far beyond it.

Those shocks are transmitted unevenly through coffee value chains, with producers generally more directly exposed to fluctuations in international prices. The answer is not to prevent prices from moving. Markets respond to changes in supply and demand, and prices will inevitably rise and fall. Greater resilience therefore depends on strengthening the capacity of producers and producing countries to adapt and respond when conditions change.

The first priority is production itself. Coffee farming must remain productive and competitive while adapting to changing conditions. More resilient farming systems, innovation and technology, effective management of pests and diseases, and better tools for managing risk can help stabilize production and incomes and boost investment in the future of the crop.

Transparent markets and timely information are essential. Better and timely information on crop conditions, stocks, trade flows and prices reduce uncertainty and help producers, governments and businesses understand changing market conditions and adjust sooner. At a time when disruption in one major producing region can affect markets around the world, international cooperation and greater transparency become even more important.

Stronger production and better markets provide the foundation. But there is also an opportunity to create more economic value from the coffee that producing countries already grow.

The bean’s economic journey is far from finished when it is harvested. Coffee is processed and transported, then may be roasted, packaged, branded, distributed and eventually sold to consumers. Each stage requires investment, expertise and enterprise, while creating opportunities to generate additional economic value.

Much of the coffee produced in low- and middle-income countries is exported in raw form as green beans for processing and distribution elsewhere. Coffee therefore often enters international trade relatively early in its economic journey, leaving opportunities for producing countries to develop more economic activity around the later stages of the value chain.

Where commercially viable, improvements in quality can help producers reach different and potentially higher-value markets. Processing can create additional economic activity, while certification and branding can provide further scope for upgrading within coffee value chains. The opportunities will vary across countries, and investments should focus on areas in which producers and businesses can compete successfully.

Greater resilience in coffee production and greater economic opportunity around what happens after it is produced are complementary ambitions. Productivity, innovation and risk management can strengthen the productive foundation of the sector. Transparent markets can help participants respond to changing conditions. And commercially viable upgrading can broaden the economic opportunities created around the crop.

Realising these opportunities requires cooperation across the coffee value chain. Producers, traders, processors, roasters, retailers and governments perform different roles in moving coffee from the tree to the consumer. International cooperation, market transparency, innovation and investment can strengthen those connections and support a coffee sector that is more productive, competitive, resilient and sustainable.

Coffee already demonstrates what international trade can achieve. A crop grown by millions of farmers, predominantly in low- and middle-income countries, reaches consumers across the world and sustains economic activity throughout its journey. The next opportunity not to miss is to strengthen this connection while creating more economic possibilities in the places where coffee is grown.

Tomorrow morning, the journey begins again. Steam will rise from your cup. Somewhere far away, coffee trees will be tended and another harvest prepared.

The journey from crop to cup already connects millions of people around the globe. A stronger future for coffee starts by strengthening the places and communities where that journey begins.

Boubaker Ben-Belhassen is Director of the Markets and Trade Division at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Excerpt:

Media personnel watch a digital screen showing leaders of member states gather for a family photograph during the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on 13 September 2026. Credit: Arun Sankar/AFP

By Samuel King and Inés M. Pousadela
BRUSSELS, Belgium / MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Sep 30 2026 (IPS)

At the 18th BRICS Summit, held on 12 and 13 September in New Delhi, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi brought together presidents Xi Jinping of China, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran, along with Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince, Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed, representing the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Around the table sat longstanding rivals such as India and China and, in the case of Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, states on opposite sides of an ongoing war. That the summit produced a joint declaration every member could sign was a modest multilateralist success.

The summit took place against a fast-changing backdrop. With the USA under Donald Trump an unreliable partner and often a hostile power bent on bullying others into submission, numerous states are seeking new alliances as a counterweight. BRICS, whose 11 members account for 49 per cent of the world’s population and 28 per cent of the global economy, could become a more significant forum as a result. But what is on offer is a profoundly old-fashioned, state-centric form of multilateralism, in which the people in whose name states claim to act have little say.

A hollow declaration

At the summit, Xi called for international rules to be ‘written by all countries’, even though he leads a one-party state where increasingly only he writes the rules. Putin urges greater representation for Africa, Asia and Latin America at the UN Security Council, while routinely wielding his veto to stop the council acting on his war in Ukraine.

The New Delhi Declaration’s silences speak loudest. It is explicit on Palestine, calling on Israel to end its war on Gaza and backing a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders. But on the war in Iran, it only urges ‘maximum restraint’ without naming the warring parties, reflecting the fact that Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE sat around the same table. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not mentioned at all, a regression from past declarations and a troubling sign that Putin has no interest in ending the fighting. The text condemns ‘indiscriminate rising tariffs’ and ‘unilateral sanctions’ without naming the USA, sparing the blushes of members such as India, which is reportedly finalising a trade deal with Washington. The declaration preserves consensus at the expense of resolve.

Closed civic space, open defiance

Most BRICS governments have no fear of being held domestically accountable for the compromises they have made. Civic space is closed in seven of BRICS’ 11 states and obstructed or repressed in the rest. Russia jails and exiles opposition voices and has made protest almost impossible. China subjects its people to mass surveillance and crushes any expression that departs from ruling-party lines. Iran violently suppresses protest movements, including through the death penalty. Saudi Arabia and the UAE recognise no legitimate role for independent civil society. Host and self-styled mediator India has seen Modi’s government erode press freedom, restrict civil society funding and stoke hostility towards religious minorities.

Domestic repression translates directly into a closed international forum. After 18 summits, BRICS still has no treaty, no published membership criteria, no permanent secretariat, no budget and no mechanism for civil society to hold its members to account. This is no accident. It leaves powerful leaders free to pursue their interests, and it means civil society has less influence in BRICS than in comparable blocs such as the G20, and much less than in UN processes.

Civil society mobilised regardless. Three weeks before the summit, over 200 delegates from farmers’ organisations, people’s movements, trade unions, women’s organisations and other civil society groups gathered in New Delhi for the People’s BRICS Summit. Its resolution denounced BRICS states for reproducing extractivist, inequitable development models, and insisted that cooperation between global south states be judged by the dignity and rights it delivers to people and communities, not by the freedom it grants states and capital. It called for debt restructuring, a publicly accountable energy transition, food sovereignty, universal social security, women’s political representation and an end to the persecution of civil society activists, and for BRICS to take a clear stand against military intervention, occupation and genocide. BRICS governments chose not to listen.

Ambition without accountability

BRICS’ biggest ambition, on display in the New Delhi Declaration, is to reshape international finance. Development of payment systems independent of the US dollar would chip away at the USA’s unique ability to sustain its power by printing more dollars, despite mountainous debt, to meet unceasing demand. But it would also let repressive states such as Iran and Russia sell oil and gas more easily, funding their repression while blunting international sanctions.

This ambition comes with no commitment to accountability. The bloc has no channel through which the people most affected by its decisions can make their voices heard, and no human rights conditions are attached to its initiatives.

None of the emerging responses to the rapidly changing international order promises to be more democratic than the current system. So far, neither BRICS nor any of the other alternatives now taking shape has matched its growing ambition with greater accountability.

Samuel King is a researcher at CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, working on ENSURED: Shaping Cooperation for a World in Transition, a Horizon Europe-funded project. Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Head of Research and Analysis, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report. She is also Professor of Comparative Politics at Universidad ORT Uruguay.

For interviews or more information, please contact research@civicus.org

Member of Smallholder Farmer Alliance in Haiti with tree she is about to plant. Credit: A.F. Cortes/SFA

By Hugh Locke
NEW YORK, Sep 30 2026 (IPS)

Years ago, standing in a small farmer’s field in Haiti, I began to suspect that we had agriculture backward. The development world saw a man in need of rescue. I saw a farmer who might help rescue the rest of us.

That distinction matters. Over the next 25 years, humanity will need to grow much more food on a planet with degraded soils, shrinking biodiversity and a destabilizing climate. The usual instinct is to seek a technical fix. I want to suggest another source of help: a moral idea rooted in religion.

I am not a theologian. I am a development worker. In 2010, Haitian agronomist Timote Georges and I co-founded the Smallholder Farmers Alliance. We now work with about 10,000 farmers throughout Haiti who grow more food while rebuilding degraded land. Our “tree currency” rewards them for planting and caring for trees with credits they can exchange for seeds, tools and training.

Hugh Locke

Roughly 475 million smallholder farms, each under five acres, already produce about 30% of the world’s food despite limited access to finance, markets or technical support. In my new book, Whole Earth Farming, I argue that if even half of these families received support to adopt regenerative methods, they could produce the additional food humanity will need through 2050 on 12% of the world’s arable land, with a climate benefit comparable to offsetting the aviation industry’s annual emissions.

The Green Revolution averted famine, but its gains often came with degraded soils, diminished biodiversity and polluted water. Regenerative farming aims not merely to limit damage but to restore soil, rebuild biodiversity, improve farmers’ wellbeing and deliver a net climate benefit.

That is the language investors expect. Yet a case study more than a century old anticipated this approach, and its foundation was not market logic but morality.

From 1901 to 1921, ‘Abdu’l-Baha, one of the central figures of the Baha’i Faith, directed a farming settlement called ‘Adasiyyih in the Jordan Valley. Long before the term “regenerative agriculture” existed, the community used crop rotation, agroforestry, water conservation and integrated livestock management to make the land productive without exhausting it. Just as important was the framework behind those techniques: the belief that the earth is one country and humanity one interdependent family, expressed through consultation, equality and a rejection of extraction for its own sake. Farming at ‘Adasiyyih was not simply commodity production. It was a way to build community.

Regenerative agriculture does not require religious belief. Many successful regenerative farmers are secular, and the science stands on its own. But ‘Adasiyyih addressed, on a limited scale, a coordination problem that still hinders the movement: how can independent farmers, financiers, governments and companies be persuaded to treat soil health, water and biodiversity as a shared obligation?

‘Adasiyyih began with a moral premise rather than a technical formula. That premise is worth borrowing, whether one calls it stewardship or enlightened self-interest. Farmers, buyers and governments must act as though what happens to one plot of land is everyone’s concern, because increasingly it is. For generations we have asked how much the earth can give us. We should also ask what we owe in return.

Regenerative agriculture is at a fragile moment. By my estimate, some 15 million farms and ranches worldwide now use regenerative practices, and some 25 million acres, mostly in the United States, are certified under third-party standards, though almost none of that land is farmed by smallholders. The movement is growing faster than the systems meant to support it. Farmers can face lower yields and higher costs during the transition, there is no consensus on how to measure results, and financing, training and market rewards lag well behind farmers’ interest. A shared obligation is what can turn these isolated successes into lasting change.

This is not a case for religious agricultural policy, which would be unworkable in a pluralistic world. Smallholders are not waiting for a new theology. They need capital, training and markets. But the case for providing that support may rest more persuasively on the old idea of shared stewardship than on another spreadsheet of carbon calculations.

The next great agricultural transformation may begin not on the world’s largest farms but on hundreds of millions of its smallest. Given the means, smallholders may help determine whether the next 25 years of food production heal the planet or finish degrading it.

Hugh Locke is president of the Impact Farming Foundation and author of Whole Earth Farming: Smallholders and the Great Regenerative Transformation (George Ronald Publisher, 2026).

IPS UN Bureau

Credit: United Nations

By Shihana Mohamed
NEW YORK, Sep 29 2026 (IPS)

“Artificial intelligence (AI) must be shaped by humanity, with humanity, and for all humanity… Life-and-death decisions must never be surrendered to machines. Killer robots must have no place in our future.”

With those words, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres opened the high-level debate of the 81st session of the General Assembly (UNGA 81). He also warned: “Women and girls continue to face discrimination, violence, exclusion and abuse… Their rights are being rolled back. Their voices silenced. Their bodies turned into battlegrounds.”

Both technological transformation and the erosion of women’s rights were placed before the world, yet the political response to each was markedly different.

Opening speeches focused heavily on technology. French President Emmanuel Macron warned that a few powers could decide the planet’s future through AI and urged states to build independent, open-source models; UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham called for global cooperation on transparency and ethics; China’s Vice President Han Zheng stressed a people-centered approach to narrowing the digital divide; and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called for the UN to lead AI rule-setting through equal participation.

U.S. President Donald Trump focused on U.S. technological leadership. He declared that the United States was outcompeting the world and called for a change in terminology: “From this point forward, all U.S. documents—and hopefully the world—will use the more accurate term super rather than artificial. So, it’s super intelligence.”

Shihana Mohamed

The question is unavoidable: why has the international system shown such urgency in governing emerging technologies while allowing the erosion of women’s rights to remain a secondary concern?

Twin Transformations
The 81st session convened under the theme, “Restoring trust, managing transformation: a United Nations that delivers for all.” That theme highlights two defining transformations: the rapid expansion of generative AI and the growing political backlash against the rights of women and girls.

The United Nations treats both as critical to achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, yet world leaders are not giving them equal political weight. AI is being elevated as an urgent global governance challenge, while gender equality is increasingly treated as a goal that can wait.

That is a dangerous disconnect.

AI is already reshaping economies, labour markets and public life. It will influence who gets opportunities, whose work is automated, and whose voices are represented in the systems that increasingly influence daily life.

Declining Gender Momentum
AI has ascended to the top tier of global political concerns. Leaders are focused on governance, innovation, digital sovereignty, security, and technological competition.

Meanwhile, the momentum on gender equality is moving in the opposite direction. UN Women and UN DESA report that one in three institutional mechanisms for gender equality has lost institutional power over the past two years. Around one in four have seen their operating budgets cut, while nearly one in ten have lost control of their budgets altogether.

Globally, progress on women’s political and executive participation is reversing. At the current rate of progress, the report projects that global gender equality could be achieved only by 2197, far beyond the UN’s 2030 target.

There is a basic leadership question that Member States have yet to answer: Why has no woman ever been selected as Secretary-General of the United Nations?

The problem is not a shortage of promises but the widening gap between rhetoric and political action.

The Funding Disparity
The resource gap makes that contrast tangible.

Global venture-capital investment in AI firms reached $258.7 billion in 2025, accounting for 61% of total global VC investment, according to the OECD. Philanthropic investment is also growing, including the Gates Foundation’s September 2026 commitment to spend at least $1 billion over two years on equitable access to AI and AI-enabled solutions.

Funding for women’s rights is contracting.

Funding for gender equality fell 13% between 2023 and 2024, while funding for women’s rights organizations declined by 28% over the same period.

This is not merely a funding problem; it reflects what the international community considers urgent.

The world is mobilizing enormous capital to build the technologies that will define the future while reducing resources for the organizations working to ensure that women have an equal place in it.

Women Left Behind in the AI Economy
The gender gap is already visible inside the AI economy.

UN Women’s 2026 Gender Snapshot reports that women account for around 22% of AI professionals globally and fewer than 14% of senior leadership positions, based on an analysis of nearly 1.6 million AI professionals.

Women are around 20% less likely than men to use generative AI tools. The result is a persistent gap in both the development and adoption of AI—and a fundamental question about whose perspectives are shaping the future of work.

The International Labour Organization finds that female-dominated occupations are almost twice as likely to be exposed to generative AI as male-dominated occupations—29% compared with 16%. Women’s concentration in clerical, administrative, and business-support roles, where many tasks are routine and codifiable, contributes significantly to this disparity.

AI is intensifying digital violence against women in public life. UN Women reports increasing use of AI-generated deepfakes, manipulated images and coordinated online harassment against women in public-facing roles. Such abuse can intimidate women and undermine their participation in public life.

UN Women estimates that 90–95% of online deepfakes are non-consensual pornographic images, with around 90% depicting women.

This is where the two crises converge. The same technology being celebrated as transformative is also being used to threaten women’s economic security, public participation, and personal safety.

Immediate Mandates for AI and Gender Equality
More than three decades after the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action set a global framework for gender equality, the world remains far from its commitments.

The General Assembly must move beyond another cycle of declarations and voluntary targets and act where technology, funding and gender rights now intersect.

• Enforce Financial Reciprocity via a Global Tech Solidarity Fund: The General Assembly should establish a mechanism requiring a fixed share of global digital-transformation investment to support grassroots women’s organizations, and strengthen their technical capacity, infrastructure and advocacy.

• Establish an International Enforcement Mechanism with the Urgency Applied to AI: The UN should address the erosion of women’s rights with the same urgency applied to emerging technological threats. The General Assembly should establish a global monitoring mechanism empowered to impose diplomatic and financial consequences on states that roll back women’s legal protections.

• Criminalize Technology-Facilitated Abuse and Mandate Safety-by-Design: The General Assembly should advance a binding international treaty classifying AI-generated deepfakes weaponized against women in public life as violations of international human rights law. Technology companies should be required to address algorithmic bias and security failures that endanger women’s participation in public life.

If world leaders truly intend to “manage transformation” and “restore trust,” they cannot continue treating women’s empowerment as a secondary issue.

The willingness to govern the digital frontier must extend to protecting the women who live and work within it.

Otherwise, the “super intelligence” that leaders celebrate will not simply become an engine of economic growth. It could also become a powerful tool for reinforcing the structural exclusion of half the human race.

Shihana Mohamed is the President of Asia Global Forum (www.AsiaGlobalForum.org) and a US Public Voices Fellow on advancing the rights of women and girls. She is the founder of the UN Asia Network for Diversity & Inclusion (www.UN-ANDI.org) and a dedicated human rights activist and a strong advocate for gender equality and the advancement of women.

IPS UN Bureau

Smaller generations are entering the workforce as larger generations retire and begin receiving pension benefits. Credit: Shutterstock

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, Sep 28 2026 (IPS)

Dozens of government-funded pension programs providing benefits to hundreds of millions of men and women face growing fiscal strain and long-term sustainability challenges. These pressures are largely driven by rapid demographic transitions, including ageing populations, declining fertility, rising life expectancy, and shrinking workforces.

Many state pension systems rely on current workers to finance benefits for current retirees. In countries such as France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United States, these systems face increasing financial pressure as the number of workers supporting each retiree declines, while retirees live longer and collect benefits for more years.

Smaller generations are entering the workforce as larger generations retire and begin receiving pension benefits. This demographic shift is placing growing pressure on pension systems and raising concerns about their ability to meet future obligations.

As a result of these significant demographic changes, relatively fewer workers are paying into pension systems to support growing numbers of retirees who are living longer and collecting benefits for more years.

At the same time, extended families, local communities, and other traditional forms of support for retirees are weakening. Moreover, formal pension systems, including government-backed programs, have proven to be difficult to reform and, in some cases, financially unsustainable. In a growing number of countries, government pension programs are also facing insolvency.

Global life expectancy at age 65, for example, has reached 18 years, a 50% increase from 12 years in 1960. At the same time, the share of the world’s population aged 65 and older has more than doubled, from 5% in 1960 to 11% today. Global fertility has also fallen sharply, from 4.7 births per woman in 1960 to 2.2 today. Moreover, these demographic trends are expected to continue well into the 21st century (Table 1).

Source: United Nations.

Population ageing is particularly evident in some more developed countries. For example, a quarter or more of the populations of Germany, Italy, and Japan are aged 65 and older.

Moreover, the proportion of older persons is expected to increase significantly in many countries in the coming decades. By mid-century, for example, about a third or more of the populations of China, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Spain are projected to be aged 65 and older (Figure 1).

Source: United Nations.

As a result of significant demographic changes in age structure, longevity, fertility, and the workforce, the number of pension beneficiaries is growing relative to the number of workers whose payroll taxes often finance these programs.

By 2050, the ratios of workers to retirees are expected to decline significantly in many of the world’s largest economies. In 2020, these ratios ranged from about 2 workers per retiree in Japan to about 5 in China. By 2050, the ratios are projected to fall to between 1 to 2 workers per retiree in these countries.

Furthermore, despite population ageing, increased longevity among older persons, and fewer workers per retiree, official retirement ages for receiving government pension benefits have remained largely unchanged.

Countries are moving closer to the point when their pension programs may be unable to pay full scheduled benefits. Unless governments take action, pension revenues will become insufficient in many countries to cover scheduled benefits, with financial shortfalls expected to grow substantially over the coming years

Consequently, pension costs are projected to rise as more workers reach retirement age, while slower population and economic growth constrain the tax bases that support many of the pension programs.

As the ratio of workers to retirees worsens, government officials face difficult choices about raising retirement ages, adjusting benefits, and increasing taxes.

Countries are moving closer to the point when their pension programs may be unable to pay full scheduled benefits. Unless governments take action, pension revenues will become insufficient in many countries to cover scheduled benefits, with financial shortfalls expected to grow substantially over the coming years.

The longer governments delay necessary reforms, the larger the adjustments are likely to be to close these financing gaps. Such adjustments could involve changes to revenue, benefits, retirement ages, or other program provisions.

Despite repeated warnings from pension officials and approaching financial shortfalls, pension reform has received relatively little government attention. Policymakers have generally avoided proposing comprehensive legislation to ensure the long-term financial solvency of their pension programs.

The growing pension peril underscores the urgency of addressing these financial challenges well before programs reach their projected insolvency dates. Acting sooner would give policymakers more time to make gradual changes and restore long-term financial balance.

As some countries have done in the past, governments could establish national commissions to examine the long-term finances of their pension programs. These commissions could develop recommendations and present them to government officials well before projected insolvency dates, giving policymakers adequate time to consider and implement reforms.

Governments have several options for addressing expected pension shortfalls. Policymakers could eliminate or raise the ceiling on earnings subject to payroll taxes, increase payroll tax rates paid by employers and employees, reduce cost-of-living adjustments for high-income beneficiaries, and gradually raise the retirement age as life expectancy increases.

Many of these measures, however, are politically difficult and unpopular with much of the public. Some countries, for example, are considering raising their official retirement ages, but such proposals are opposed by large proportions of the public.

Opinion surveys also indicate a preference for lower retirement ages. For example, respondents in 18 mostly middle-income countries say, on average, that the best age to retire is around 58 (Figure 2).

Source: Pew Research Center.

In sum, many national pension systems are in peril. Significant demographic changes – especially population ageing, increased longevity, declining fertility, and shrinking workforces – are placing growing financial pressure on many government pension programs and threatening their long-term sustainability.

Despite these well-known challenges and the prospect of growing financial shortfalls, government leaders have shown limited willingness to make the difficult policy choices needed to address them. Unless policymakers act, many national pension programs could face serious funding gaps, potentially leading to significant reductions in scheduled benefits for retirees and other beneficiaries.

Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division, and author of many publications on population issues.

The 1944 Bretton Woods (BW) conference accepted the US demand to use the dollar to settle international financial transactions. This arrangement would require a US balance-of-payments deficit to issue enough dollars.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Bretton Woods
At BW in July 1944, 44 allied nations met to design the post-war world monetary system. John Maynard Keynes represented the UK, no longer financially dominant due to its heavy public debt fighting two world wars.

Harry Dexter White represented the US, which then held two-thirds of the world’s monetary gold, while other countries needed dollar loans for trade and reconstruction. The US promised foreign governments and central banks to convert dollars to gold.

With the US BW promise to redeem an ounce of gold for $35, the dollar became the world’s reserve asset. Every other currency’s exchange rate was fixed against the dollar, in principle, adjustable with IMF approval.

Instead, Keynes proposed a reserve currency, Bancor, managed by an international clearing union to avoid any national currency becoming dominant; a payments system using a national currency could eventually force others to accept its national policies and priorities.

Unsustainable by design
The BW agreement also created the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Each member nation was assigned a quota, partly paid in gold and its own currency.

A member nation’s quota determined both its voting weight and how much it could borrow if it needed to borrow when its own currency came under pressure.

The dollar-gold peg was vulnerable by design. For the arrangement to function, the world needed a growing supply of dollars for reserves and international transactions.

In principle, the US had to have enough gold to honour all claims against it. This requirement was met in 1944, when its gold reserves were vast, while other economies were ruined. However, these conditions were not met for long.

As currency devaluations were stigmatised, currency pegs were rarely adjusted. Governments defended unrealistic exchange rates, unjustified by their reserves.

Instead of adjusting gradually, fixed exchange rates would adjust abruptly, typically after crises, as with sterling in 1967 and the dollar in 1971.

Keynes had insisted on allowing governments to manage cross-border capital movements, expecting free-flowing speculative capital to undermine fixed exchange rates.

For a decade and a half, most European governments used the IMF’s sixth Article of Agreement to restrict how freely money could leave their countries and thus defend their currency pegs.

As strong post-war recoveries turned Europe’s dollar shortages into surpluses, capital controls were gradually loosened from the 1960s.

London Gold Pool
The US Congress ignored Triffin’s warning. Instead, in late 1961, the US organised seven European central banks into the London Gold Pool, coordinated by the Bank of England rather than by treaty.

It worked for a while. Whenever private demand pushed the gold price over $35/ounce, participating banks sold their bullion to bring the price down, to buy gold!

From 1962, currency swap lines involving the same central banks withdrew dollars from circulation abroad to reduce demand for gold. Both efforts used a formula based on each country’s original contributions.

Rising US government spending made things worse. The Johnson administration financed both the Vietnam War and Great Society programmes without raising taxes. More dollars flowed out of the US, expanding the supply of Eurodollars.

In March 1967, without any parliamentary mandate or transparent treaty, West Germany’s Bundesbank President privately promised the Fed it would not convert its large dollar reserves from its fast-growing trade surplus into gold.

But France’s president had never accepted Washington’s abuse of the post-war arrangement. In February 1965, De Gaulle complained of the dollar’s exorbitant privilege.

This referred to the US ability to settle its liabilities abroad by issuing more dollars, instead of earning foreign exchange like others. In June 1967, France refused to continue subsidising the dollar peg by withdrawing from the Gold Pool.

Britain devalued the pound in November 1967. As speculative pressure on gold rose, other Pool central banks had to sell even more gold until they gave up on 17 March.

Two tiers
In the subsequent two-tier system, the $35 gold price was only used for transactions between central banks and governments. Another floating free-market price traded well above it.

US gold reserves, almost $20 billion shortly after WW2, were halved by 1971 as foreign governments’ and central banks’ dollar claims rose over $50 billion!

When member governments safely created official liquidity by introducing a new reserve asset, the Special Drawing Right (SDR), in 1969, the problem was highlighted again.

SDRs were allocated directly to member countries rather than tied to either gold or the US trade or current account deficit. The SDR was supposed to supplement, not replace, gold and the dollar as reserve assets.

By mid-1971, when President Nixon unilaterally ended the dollar’s gold convertibility obligation, the debate was no longer about whether the gold window could hold, but over how to close it without triggering a currency-market panic after years of speculation.

IPS UN Bureau

A Rohingya refugee carries Myanmar's national flag during a Genocide Remembrance Day rally marking the anniversary of their mass exodus at a refugee camp in Bangladesh on 25 August 2026. Credit: Abdul Goni/AFP

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Sep 25 2026 (IPS)

On 15 September, Norwegian police and security services raided the headquarters of Telenor in Oslo. Authorities accuse the multinational telecoms company, majority owned by the Norwegian state, of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity in Myanmar and breaching sanctions.

Telenor sold its Myanmar subsidiary in March 2022, in the wake of the military coup that ousted the country’s democratically elected government in February 2021. An August 2025 Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation investigation reported that ahead of its exit, Telenor had complied with military requests to hand over customer data. It’s alleged that call log and location data may have helped the military track, capture and kill democracy activists, including campaigner Ko Jimmy, executed in July 2022.

Civil society warned of the dangers when Telenor prepared to sell its subsidiary to a joint venture between a Lebanese group and Thein Win Zaw, a Burmese entrepreneur accused of having close military ties. It has kept up the struggle for accountability. Justice for Myanmar, a covert activist group, worked with the International Commission of Jurists to collect documentary evidence on Telenor’s role and filed police complaints in December 2024 and October 2025.

Telenor is also subject to a lawsuit brought by a group of civil society organisations last October, alleging the company passed on data of over 1,200 people. In addition, the company has been found in breach of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct.

International complicity

The Telenor case focuses attention on the wider networks of companies and states that are propping up the regime and keeping Myanmar’s civil war going.

Following the coup, almost all states refused to recognise Myanmar’s military rulers and continued to regard the exiled National Unity Government as the country’s legitimate representative. But several authoritarian states have since swung behind the junta. Russia leads the pack, with Vladimir Putin hosting junta leader Min Aung Hlaing for repeat visits in Moscow. China, India, Singapore and Thailand have joined Russia in supplying weapons.

Many Chinese companies collaborate with the regime, among them Geedge Networks, a tech company with close links to the Chinese state that specialises in online surveillance. The company is helping the military install a version of China’s ‘great firewall’ so it can systematically restrict internet use, access users’ data and identify and track down dissenters.

The junta made a concerted effort to gain international legitimacy with a sham election in December 2025 and January 2026. It extensively prepared the ground by replacing the civilian electoral commission with a military-controlled body, banning pro-democracy parties and prohibiting political rallies, ensuring a military puppet party faced only token opposition. A new election law enabled it to criminalise over 300 people for criticising the election. Authorities jailed some merely for liking social media posts and handed 37-year sentences to eight activists for taking part in a protest calling for a boycott. There were also reports of threats to withhold aid from displacement camps unless people voted.

After the military’s party duly won, Min Aung Hlaing transitioned from general to civilian and became president in April. That same month, a group of civil society organisations filed a complaint against him in Indonesia over his role in the 2017 genocide of Rohingya people. Despite this legal action and the election’s evident lack of credibility, an array of non-democratic states including Belarus, China and Russia were happy to endorse the result.

While the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) didn’t recognise the election, its most authoritarian members, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, backed it anyway, and the bloc has consistently stuck with its failed Five Point Consensus, a plan agreed with the junta in April 2021 that the military has never respected.

The US government has also shifted its position. In 2025, the Trump administration cut funding to independent Burmese media, lifted sanctions against junta-controlled businesses and arms dealers supplying the regime and removed protections from Burmese refugees living in the USA, citing governance improvements. It treated the junta as a legitimate counterpart by sending it a letter about tariffs. In May, it was revealed the junta gives Roger Stone, a long-time Donald Trump ally, US$50,000 a month to rebuild relations with the USA. Mineral deposits are likely in the Trump administration’s sights.

Civil war continues

The Telenor raid has momentarily brought Myanmar back into the headlines. Its civil war has otherwise gone on for almost five and a half years with little global attention. Sparked by the army’s violent suppression of democracy protests, it pits the military against armed pro-democracy forces, both backed by a variety of ethnic militia. The army controls the main population centres and has recently regained some territory, but there’s no end in sight.

The army has committed numerous crimes against humanity and war crimes. A September 2025 UN report painted a harrowing picture of airstrikes on schools and the destruction of villages. This year, the conflict has escalated across the Magway Region, with the army and associated militia mounting armed assaults on villages, burning homes and using drones to kill civilians, including children.

Recent escalations of conflict have driven further displacement. At the same time, monsoon rains across several regions in July and August caused floods that left villages isolated and increased disease risks. As needs have grown, the healthcare system is collapsing due to military attacks on facilities and workers, while humanitarian aid and vital health supplies are further constrained by military checkpoints, road closures and movement restrictions.

The Telenor case has the potential to challenge impunity. It should refocus the minds of democratic states and companies headquartered in them, offering a warning that they can be exposed for complicity in the junta’s atrocities. It should give fresh impetus to civil society’s efforts to hold states and companies to account. By standing with civil society, in Myanmar and around the world, democratic states can put themselves on the side of human rights and justice.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

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