‘As record heat sweeps the world, the climate crisis is no longer a warning for the future, but a reality of the present.’

James Alix Michel

Across the globe, records are not just being challenged; they are being shattered.

In the United Kingdom and Ireland, London has reached an unprecedented 35.1°C, breaking all-time May records. Wales has climbed to 32.9°C, while Ireland recorded a remarkable 28.6°C in County Clare. Continental Europe is faring no better. France has seen temperatures rise to 36°C in the southwest, Austria’s Alpine regions—once symbols of climatic stability—have surged to 32.7°C, and Milan is enduring 35.5°C, nearly 9°C above average. Spain now braces for a potentially dangerous 40°C weekend.

Beyond Europe, the pattern intensifies. Northern India has been locked in a prolonged heatwave exceeding 45°C, while Pakistan is experiencing temperatures up to 6°C above seasonal norms. In parts of the Middle East, forecasts warn of temperatures approaching 52°C.

These are not isolated events. Nor are they seasonal aberrations. They are interconnected manifestations of a destabilizing climate system.

For decades, scientists have warned of precisely this trajectory. Small Island Developing States (SIDS), in particular, have consistently sounded the alarm, emphasizing that climate change is not merely an environmental issue, but an existential one.

I do not write about this from a distance. During my time as President of Seychelles, I carried this message across continents—from Copenhagen to Abu Dhabi, from Samoa to Addis Ababa, and in engagements spanning the United Nations to Washington. Alongside many others, I urged the international community to recognize both the acute vulnerability of SIDS and the broader systemic dangers posed by global warming. Too often, these warnings were acknowledged, but not matched by action at the scale or urgency required.

What is changing now is not the science—but the scale and visibility of impact.

The climate crisis is no longer confined to distant geographies or vulnerable coastlines. It is disrupting major economies, straining infrastructure in developed nations, and reshaping the daily lives of populations once considered insulated. Heatwaves are affecting transport systems, reducing agricultural productivity, and increasing risks to public health, particularly among the most vulnerable.

From melting asphalt in London to strained power grids in Milan, from intensifying wildfires and prolonged droughts to sudden floods and violent storms, the signals are converging into a single, unmistakable message: climate change is no longer a future threat. It is a present and accelerating reality.

This moment demands a fundamental reframing.

Climate change is not only about sea-level rise. It is not only an “island issue.” It is a systemic global crisis affecting every nation, every economy, and every community. The notion that some regions may remain insulated has been decisively disproven.

And yet, despite the mounting evidence, global responses remain insufficient.

International commitments, while important, continue to fall short of the scale and urgency required. Current emissions trajectories are not aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement. Adaptation financing remains limited and unevenly distributed. Mechanisms addressing loss and damage, though increasingly recognized, are still evolving relative to the magnitude of need.

This gap between ambition and implementation is no longer sustainable.

To today’s global leaders, look out your windows – the message is clear: the evidence is no longer abstract, nor confined to scientific reports. It is unfolding in real time—in ecosystems under strain, in extreme heat, in disrupted food systems, and in growing human insecurity.

The climate crisis recognizes no borders. No country is insulated. No society is immune.

This shared exposure must now translate into shared responsibility and accelerated action.

Mitigation efforts must intensify through rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Adaptation must be elevated as a global priority, with investments in resilient infrastructure, early warning systems, and climate-smart development. Climate finance must be significantly scaled up and delivered equitably, reflecting both historical responsibility and present need. Above all, multilateral cooperation must be strengthened, as fragmented approaches will not meet a challenge of this magnitude.

We are no longer in an era of warning. We are in an era of consequence.

The decisions taken today will shape not only the trajectory of global warming, but also the resilience of our societies, the stability of our economies, and the future habitability of our planet.

Earth is our only home. The window for meaningful action is narrowing.

This must become the defining global call to action of our generation.

The time for hesitation is over.

James Alix Michel is the former President of Seychelles (2004–2016) and a global advocate for the blue economy, ocean conservation and climate resilience.

IPS UN Bureau

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As Gaza’s fragile ceasefire frays and humanitarian conditions deteriorate, a senior UN envoy warned the Security Council last week that delays in implementing the Council-backed transition plan for the enclave will only increase suffering and undermine recovery. Credit: UN News

By James E. Jennings
ATLANTA, USA, May 29 2026 (IPS)

If you have been paying attention to the ongoing wars in Ukraine, Iran, Lebanon, and many other places, perhaps you have noticed that battles today are far different from those of the last century. Now it’s not only tanks and planes but also scores of long-range missiles and massive flights of drones linked to cybernetic warfare.

The tragedy of military and civilian deaths continues, however, with the number of casualties among Russian soldiers in Ukraine reportedly reaching an astonishing 25,000 every month. As always in warfare, civilians are unfairly targeted and suffer the most, with senseless random missile and drone attacks killing innocent people on both sides with regularity.

Professed lovers of peace, like US President Trump and Israel’s Mr. Netanyahu, both of whom have agreed to brokered ceasefire agreements in Gaza and in Lebanon, continue to bomb the other side with impunity. For the most part they are getting away with it, without protests from anybody except a few ineffective agencies and lonely voices.

That is indeed a new, inventive way of war: the combatants agree to a ceasefire, and then one side keeps bombing but insists that the other stop because of the agreed ceasefire. Under such circumstances, all a ceasefire really means is “Your side must stop firing—but we’ll fire at will.”

Such nonsense is a game of meaningless words with no resolution in sight. The increasingly Nazified Likud Party in Israel continues to bomb cities, villages, and individual homes and apartment buildings in Lebanon as if it were licensed to do so, with little effective pushback from the world community.

That is perhaps to be expected since the world has largely stood by silently for almost four years during the certifiable genocide in Gaza. And by now more than 1.2 million people have been driven out of their homes in South Lebanon into a life of desperation and uncertainty.

The efficient US-backed Israeli killing machine in Lebanon has continued to smash residential buildings with impunity and pile up an obscene list of civilians murdered—innocent mothers, fathers, grandparents, and many children.

In Gaza, Palestinian sources have recorded more than 2,000 Israeli violations of the so-called “ceasefire” between October 2025 and March 2026, with a total of over 700 Palestinians killed.

Only a temporary hold from the United States has kept Israel from continuing to bomb Iran. Israel refuses to listen to any restrictions on bombing Lebanon even though there is supposedly a ceasefire in effect.

Deaths there since the short April 17 “ceasefire” continue to escalate day by day. In Iran, both Israel and the US have promised to keep obliterating what was long ago announced as already obliterated.

The number of Iranians killed and wounded in the first three months of the joint US-Israeli aggression has been announced by the Tehran government as in the tens of thousands, and the war is not over yet. Most memorable is the massacre of 120 schoolchildren, mainly girls, on the first day of US bombing at Minab, Iran. Casualties so far on the US side number 13 killed and several dozens wounded. That’s the definition of one-sided warfare.

Modern wars may puzzle observers, but the art of twisting words and phrases and their associated meanings is as old as time. Lying, obfuscation, and obscene claims are the essence of war’s primary weapon, deception. Words can kill and do. “Ceasefire” is the latest lie. For Israel and the US, it means “You cease—we fire.”

James E. Jennings is the Founder and President of the aid agency Conscience International www.conscienceinternational.org and a longtime Middle East Peace Advocate.

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Credit: United Nations
 
At a time of accelerating global crises and transformation, the question is no longer whether young people should be at the table, but how power is being shared with them. With more than 2.6 billion people aged 15–35 worldwide, this generation is not only the largest in history, but a decisive force in shaping a more sustainable and inclusive future, according to the United Nations
 
Youth participation must move beyond visibility toward real influence and shared responsibility-UN Secretary-General António Guterres
 
Dr. Felipe Paullier of Uruguay assumed his mandate as the first-ever Assistant Secretary-General for Youth Affairs in December 2023 at the age of 32. He is the youngest senior appointment in the history of the United Nations, and the youngest serving member of the Secretary-General’s senior management group.

By Bisma Qamar
UNITED NATIONS, May 28 2026 (IPS)

In this exclusive interview, Dr. Felipe Paullier, UN Assistant Secretary-General (ASG) and Head of the United Nations Youth Office shares his leadership approach, insights on youth engagement, and his vision for driving institutional change from the grassroot level — redefining what is possible and proving that age is just a number.

Bisma Qamar: As the youngest and first ASG of the United Nations Youth Office, what drives and shapes your leadership style?

Dr. Paullier: I focus on perspective. Young leaders naturally bring fresh ideas and question why processes exist, fostering creativity and improvement. My approach is human-centered. Issues like mental health and wellbeing indicate societal shifts and must be taken into consideration. Leadership should be accessible and empathetic while understanding one’s potential and well-being. Today’s teams value approachable, realistic leaders rather than authoritative leaders.

“Leadership must blend insight with empathy; people want leaders who understand and support individuals”

From Potential to Performance :

Qamar: As member states become informed and establish programs like the youth delegate program, which strategic aspects are key to truly empowering young voices and ensuring meaningful participation beyond symbolism?

Dr. Paullier: The main challenge is converting narratives into actionable participation. Institutions need inclusivity, structured funding, and support mechanisms. Multilateral collaboration is essential, and power must be genuinely shared with youth. Meaningful participation involves more than representation—it requires influence over decision-making.

UN Youth Forums: Advancing Inclusion and Participation

Qamar: How do forums such as ECOSOC and HLPF contribute to advancing inclusion and promoting equitable opportunities?

Dr. Paullier: ECOSOC and similar platforms provide a structured environment where youth voices can be heard and actively contribute to institutional change. They allow spaces to be created where meaningful dialogue across generations and individuals from diverse backgrounds are possible. These forums emphasize translating strategic narratives into tangible actions at both institutional and grassroots levels, encouraging participants to understand their potential impact as well as the limitations of the processes involved and the power of collaboration to create impact.

Insights from Youth Participation at ECOSOC 2026 :

Qamar: Reflecting on 2026, what are your insights on the impact and engagement such as the ECOSOC for instance?

Dr. Paullier: Geopolitical tensions made participation more difficult for some regions. Nonetheless, enthusiasm remained high. This demonstrates the resilience and determination of young participants who continue to assert their presence and contribute meaningfully, even amid complex global situations.

“Despite such challenges which may occur, youth engagement continues to be a powerful message of hope and influence.”

Conclusion

This conversation highlights the transformative power of human-centered leadership, grounded in trust, collaboration, and vision. Dr. Paullier embodies a model where young leaders not only challenge norms and drive innovation but also inspire inclusion and collective action. His message is clear and compelling: meaningful change is achievable because leaders who step forward, embrace responsibility, and demonstrate possibility.

Through platforms like the United Nations Youth Office, these principles translate into tangible impact, proving that when vision is coupled with courage and collaboration, nothing is impossible — change happens because leaders like him are present to make it so.

As he states “It’s possible, because I am here”

Bisma Qamar is Focal Person for UN and Global Youth Affairs, PMYP.

IPS UN Bureau

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Credit: Derek Hudson/Getty Images. Source: International Monetary Fund (IMF)

By Mario Mansour and Fayçal Sawadogo
WASHINGTON DC, May 26 2026 (IPS)

Developing countries face major difficulties as income from natural resource extraction industries decreases and wealthier nations reduce their aid.

Nontax revenue from natural resources extraction and foreign aid grants for general spending have fallen by a combined 3.8 percent of gross domestic product since 2000, according to the latest annual update of the IMF’s World Revenue Longitudinal Database.

Gains from tax collection since then amounted to just 2.6 percent, offsetting only two-thirds of the decline, our unique tally of detailed public revenue data shows.

The Chart of the Week shows that the decrease in proceeds from nontax extractive revenue was the biggest driver of the drop for both low-income developing countries and emerging market economies.

These revenues are generally what governments earn from industries like oil, gas, and mining—such as royalties, profit sharing, and dividends from state-owned enterprises. Declining foreign aid grants for general spending also contributed to lower revenues.

Closing the gap often requires collecting more tax revenue, and affected countries won’t be able to deliver on their economic development goals without doing so. To succeed, they need sustained investment in domestic tax policy and tax administration, supported by effective institutions to underpin them.

The IMF supports member countries through its capacity development efforts—customized technical assistance and training services, often delivered through collaboration with donor countries and other international organizations.

Capacity development helps developing countries build expertise and policy frameworks to improve tax systems and institutions. It also reduces dependence on volatile and declining revenues, such as from extractive industries and foreign support.

Helping developing countries with this work, known as domestic revenue mobilization, contributes to fiscal resilience, which ultimately benefits global economic growth.

Evaluating how governments raise more reliable, sustainable revenue from within the economy requires high-quality granular data. Our database tracks decades of tax and nontax revenue consistently across 195 economies using data provided by our members.

The database is also a unique resource for researchers, policymakers, and development practitioners seeking to analyze revenue trends, benchmark performance, and identify reform priorities.

Mario Mansour & Fayçal Sawadogo, International Monetary Fund

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The Federal Reserve Bank’s turn to ‘reserve management’ exposes the limited policy options still available as the US seeks to protect itself against international stagflation stemming from President Trump’s policies.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Reserve management
Successive US administrations have long refused to address the roots of the worsening fiscal and debt problems.

As the US Treasury borrows ever more to continue funding federal government spending with less tax revenue, the accumulated public debt of $39 trillion now costs over a trillion dollars a year to service, even more than 2025 defence spending!

Total Fed losses since 2022 exceed $245 billion! But how does a central bank, that literally creates its own money, lose money?

The losses are blamed on the Fed paying banks over 4% interest on reserves after 2008. However, most Treasury bonds the Fed bought to fund the COVID crisis response yield only 1–2%!

This massive ‘negative carry trade’ is booked as a ‘deferred asset’. Such creative accounting implies the US is technically insolvent. But this is not a problem as long as Wall Street shapes its own narrative.

Nurina Malek

After over a decade of ‘quantitative easing’ (QE), which created money on a large scale, the Fed claimed it was reducing its balance sheet from 2022 to 2025 to curb inflation.

Risk diversification
Finance ministries and central banks worldwide increasingly worry about their vulnerability.

The US decision to freeze about $300 billion of Russian assets held in Western financial institutions is supported by its Western allies. Such actions have triggered broader concerns.

Threatened by the prospect of a softening bond market, the Fed turn to reserve management, which implies it has exhausted other options, including printing money.

Increasingly weaponised in recent years, the dollar is no longer trusted as a neutral reserve asset. Hence, central banks have been diversifying their heavily dollar-denominated reserve assets to reduce vulnerability.

Physical gold has been quietly acquired to change reserve portfolios. Over the past three years, non-US central banks have bought over 1,000 tons of gold annually.

Horns of dilemma
New Fed Chair Kevin Warsh has announced that reducing interest rates and shrinking the Fed’s balance sheet are his policy priorities. Both seem responsible and sensible.

Lowering rates benefits borrowers. But a smaller balance sheet implies less market intervention, requiring greater fiscal discipline and monetary credibility, both of which are desired by markets.

But Warsh’s two goals cannot be realised together in today’s US economy. Over $10 trillion in bonds are maturing and need refinancing over the coming year, as the Treasury borrows ever more to finance its faster-growing fiscal deficit.

The Fed balance sheet cannot be reduced while keeping rates low. The new Fed Chair will also have to choose between printing money and letting the bond market collapse. All his predecessors have chosen to print money.

In 2012, Jerome Powell was sceptical of QE, arguing it would never be enough. But by 2020, Fed chair Powell printed more dollars than ever before.

The Fed has long been expected to buy up Treasury bonds that private interests did not purchase. Increasing the money supply has kept the banking system liquid and depreciated the dollar, as desired by Trump 2.0.

As private investors and foreign central banks lose interest in US Treasury bonds, demand is at its weakest in decades.

Who will buy new US debt if the Fed does not buy Treasury bonds while rates remain low? Outgoing Fed chair Powell came to the rescue.

As ‘reserve management’ requires less market demand, he has given the dollar system an unexpected new lease of life without lowering interest rates, as Trump demanded.

However, the policy change will do little to reverse contractionary and inflationary pressures on the world economy, worsened by Trump’s various policies.

Oil accelerant
The Hormuz oil shock could accelerate this otherwise gradual transition. The slow energy transition away from fossil fuels has increased vulnerability.

In the last half-century, oil price hikes have raised energy costs, exacerbating inflation worldwide. In 1973, the OPEC embargo quadrupled petroleum prices overnight.

Over the following year, the gold price almost doubled. The 1979 Iranian revolution more than doubled crude oil prices, which in turn pushed gold prices even higher.

The conventional central bank response of raising rates to fight inflation could worsen stagflation, as inflation rises while economic growth slows.

Raising interest rates may check some sources of inflation, while increasing borrowing costs, squeezing investment and consumption, and hiking the costs of Treasury debt.

Interest payments on accumulated federal debt will exceed a trillion in 2026. As old debt issued during QE is refinanced at higher rates, fiscal and debt problems will accelerate.

Therefore, the Fed’s turn to reserve management is not merely a minor technical change in balance-sheet bookkeeping. It is trying to address worsening public finances as policy options run out.

IPS UN Bureau

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Astana’s futuristic skyline and Japan’s urban landscape converge with symbols of clean energy, connectivity and peace, reflecting a partnership shaped by smart-city cooperation, energy security, and shared memories of nuclear suffering.　Credit: INPS Japan

By Katsuhiro Asagiri
TOKYO, Japan, May 25 2026 (IPS)

The relationship between Japan and Kazakhstan is often described in terms of diplomacy, investment and regional cooperation. But at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty, it deserves to be understood in broader terms: as a partnership linking cities, resources, technology and peace.

Kisho Kurokawa

For Japan, however, Astana is not simply a distant capital. Its master plan was shaped in part by the late Kisho Kurokawa, one of Japan’s leading architects, who sought to combine Kazakhstan’s nomadic heritage, harsh natural environment and state-building ambitions with forward-looking urban design. That historical connection is now taking on new meaning as Japan and Kazakhstan expand cooperation in smart cities, green technologies, energy security and nuclear disarmament.

On May 22, Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev met Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike in Astana to discuss cooperation in smart city development, digital technologies, finance, education, emergency response and sustainable urban management. Tokyo, one of the world’s most densely populated metropolitan areas, has developed advanced systems in public safety, disaster preparedness, transportation and administrative services. For rapidly growing Astana, Tokyo’s experience provides a valuable reference point.

Akorda

Yet the deepening Japan-Kazakhstan relationship cannot be explained by urban cooperation alone. Behind it lies a more urgent geopolitical reality: instability in the Middle East and the resulting anxiety over energy security.

Japan has long depended heavily on the Middle East for crude oil. Tensions around Iran and the Strait of Hormuz pose risks that directly affect Japan’s economy and daily life. For Tokyo, diversifying energy sources, critical mineral supplies and transport routes is no longer simply a matter of trade policy. It has become a central element of economic security.

Middle Corridor. Photo credit: TITR

For Japan, rare earths, lithium and other critical minerals are essential to batteries, electronics, renewable energy systems and next-generation industries. Diversifying both sources of supply and transport routes is therefore an energy policy, an industrial policy and a security policy at once. Astana is increasingly becoming an important platform for Japan’s engagement with Central Asia.

Semipalatinsk Former Nuclear Weapon Test site. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri

Urban development, environmental technologies, resource cooperation and logistics infrastructure are no longer separate policy fields. They are becoming part of a wider strategic framework in which Japan and Kazakhstan can complement each other: one with advanced technology and urban management experience, the other with resources, geography and a young capital still in the process of defining its future.

But there is a deeper layer to this relationship that should not be overlooked: the memory of nuclear suffering.

Japan is the only country to have suffered atomic bombings in war, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Kazakhstan endured severe radiation damage from repeated Soviet nuclear tests at the Semipalatinsk test site, where more than 450 nuclear tests were conducted between 1949 and 1989, leaving long-term consequences for local communities and public health.

In 1991, Kazakhstan closed the Semipalatinsk test site. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it gave up one of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals remaining on its territory and chose the path of a non-nuclear-weapon state. That decision has become a defining feature of Kazakhstan’s foreign policy.

Japan and Kazakhstan both know, not as an abstract matter of security theory but through historical experience, what nuclear weapons can inflict on human beings, communities, the environment and future generations. This shared memory gives the bilateral relationship a distinct ethical foundation.

That memory has also shaped sustained cooperation among governments, civil society and international organizations. INPS Japan has reported on nuclear disarmament-related conferences and events involving Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Center for International Security and Policy, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and Soka Gakkai International.

A Group photo of participants of the regional conference on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and nuclear-free-zone in Central Asia held on August 29, 2023. Photo Credit: Jibek Joly TV Channel

One notable example was the anti-nuclear exhibition “Everything You Treasure — For a World Free From Nuclear Weapons,” jointly organized in Astana by SGI, ICAN and Kazakhstan’s Center for International Security and Policy. Held in September 2022 at Keruen Mall in central Astana, the exhibition used photographs, illustrations and graphics to educate young people about the dangers of nuclear weapons, from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima to the continuing humanitarian consequences of nuclear arms.

A documentary produced by CISP, a Kazakh NGO, with support from SGI.

Such initiatives are important because nuclear disarmament cannot be left to diplomats alone. If the memory of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Semipalatinsk is to shape policy, it must also be passed to younger generations. Exhibitions, survivor testimony, documentaries and civil society campaigns help ensure that nuclear weapons are discussed not only as instruments of deterrence, but also as weapons with catastrophic human, environmental and intergenerational consequences.

In 2023, a regional conference in Astana addressed the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, the Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone, testimony from nuclear test victims, and victim assistance and environmental remediation under the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Unlike debates that frame nuclear weapons mainly in terms of deterrence or national prestige, such forums place affected people, their families, communities and environment at the center.

A documentary on Kazakhstan’s nuclear test victims, I Want to Live On: The Untold Stories of the Polygon, produced by Kazakhstan’s CISP with support from SGI, has also helped bring the testimonies of second- and third-generation victims in the Semey region to international audiences. Together with workshops involving the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs and discussions on cooperation among nuclear-weapon-free zones, these efforts keep the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons at the center of global disarmament debates.

Akorda.kz

That message should be taken seriously. Japan and Kazakhstan do not occupy identical security positions. Japan continues to rely on the United States’ nuclear deterrence as part of its security policy, while Kazakhstan, having renounced nuclear weapons, is a member of the Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone. Yet both countries share common ground in seeking to transform the memory of nuclear harm into action for international peace.

Japan and Kazakhstan Draw Closer as Iran Crisis Reshapes Energy and Security Priorities. Credit: INPS Japan

At a time when crises in the Middle East are shaking the global energy order and nuclear risks are again moving to the forefront of international politics, the Japan-Kazakhstan relationship is no longer merely a story of friendship. It reflects Japan’s own choices in an age of uncertainty: whether to approach Central Asia only as a source of resources, or as a region with which it can build a broader partnership linking cities, technology, energy security and peace.

Astana, the futuristic capital shaped in part by a Japanese architect, has become more than a symbol of Kazakhstan’s ambitions. It is also a reminder that the future of international cooperation will depend not only on markets and infrastructure, but on memory, responsibility and the courage to imagine security beyond fear.

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

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Deborah Nyokabi speaking at the 81st African Commission on Human & Peoples' Rights

By Deborah Nyokabi
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 25 2026 (IPS)

The theme of Africa Day 2026, “63 years of unity, integration and development,” offers a stark reminder of the gap that often exists between rhetoric and reality. While commendable regional legal frameworks have advanced legal protections for millions of women and girls, injustice remains written into the fabric of national family laws in many African countries, entrenching gender inequality in the home.

Such is the reality for the young woman in Kampala whose marriage was never legally registered and who, in the eyes of the State, does not exist as a wife.

For the woman in Lagos whose husband took their children after a divorce she did not want, and the law backed him.

For the Muslim widow in Nairobi who cannot inherit the home she shared with her husband for thirty years because property passes to his male relatives.

How the global anti-rights movement is targeting women’s rights in Africa

African countries have made laudable advances in legal rights for women and girls, but many laws governing marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance remain stubbornly unequal.

Deborah Nyokabi

Reform remains slow, uneven, and increasingly obstructed by a coordinated anti-rights movement that includes transnational ultra-conservative Christian organisations, populist political actors from the Global North, billionaire-funded conservative foundations, and right-wing think tanks and legal advocacy groups. They have found fertile ground in Africa, forging alliances with conservative organisations, religious leaders, and politicians who promote illiberal agendas.

Operating in plain sight and dressed in the language of culture, tradition, and sovereignty, these groups target parliaments, constitutional drafting processes, and regional human rights bodies. They draft model legislation, deploy strategic litigation, lobby policymakers, and cultivate relationships with heads of state and cabinet ministers.

They infiltrate international and regional human rights spaces to weaken protections, and run expensive communications campaigns while channeling cross-border funding to local organisations to portray coordinated efforts as grassroots.

Anti-rights groups seeking to reshape African policy

At the second Pan-African Conference on Family Values, held in Nairobi in May 2025, a declaration was adopted calling the family “not a flexible or negotiable construct” and committing to translate their discriminative doctrine into enforceable laws and regional partnerships. High-ranking Kenyan government officials delivered the opening and closing addresses.

The conference was co-sponsored by Family Watch International, C-Fam, and the Alliance Defending Freedom, all of whom served on the advisory committee of Project 2025, an initiative by the US-based Heritage Foundation seeking to roll back reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and diversity initiatives. These are not fringe actors. They are well-funded, politically connected, and pushing into the mainstream.

These groups have also drafted a proposed African Charter on Family, Sovereignty, and Values, which undermines gender equality by rejecting universal definitions of gender, sexuality, and sexual and reproductive health rights. Tabled at an inter-parliamentary conference in Entebbe in 2025, it calls for withdrawal from international human rights instruments and seeks to shield states from obligations under the Maputo Protocol, the African Union’s legally-binding women’s rights treaty.

Applications for observer status at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights from organisations such as the Alliance Defending Freedom signal an intent to infiltrate the very bodies designed to hold States accountable to their obligation to ensure equality, including in the family.

Harmful bills pass fast while equality bills stall

One of the most devastating patterns is the speed at which homophobic ‘family protection’ legislation moves, while paralysis grips laws to advance gender equality. In Uganda, the Anti-Homosexuality Act was passed in under three months. In Ghana, lawmakers are promoting the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill; in Kenya, political support for the Family Protection Bill is growing. Backed by far-right organisations in the US, these bills seek to criminalise sexual minorities and promote a rigid, exclusionary vision of the family centred on heterosexual marriage and conservative social structures.

Meanwhile, family law reform bills that would give women equal rights in marriage, divorce, and custody have stalled for decades in Uganda, Cameroon, and Ghana. The contrast is not coincidental. The same movement blocking equality for women and girls in family laws is the one pushing legislation against LGBTQI+ people. It uses the same language: family values, cultural integrity, sovereignty, national cohesion. But when you trace the money and the actors, the strategy becomes clear. The goal is not to protect the family. It is to protect the patriarchy within it.

How African civil society and coalitions are fighting back

None of this goes unanswered.

When the Pan-African Conference on Family Values convened in Nairobi, over twenty Kenyan human rights organisations petitioned for the venue to refuse to host it. Billboards celebrating diverse families lined the road from the airport. Activists disrupted the social media narrative and organised in the streets.

Strategic litigation has compelled the government to reinstate safe abortion guidelines in Kenya. International coalitions, including African women, have pushed back against anti-rights infiltration at the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women. Survivors, lawyers, activists, and advocates are refusing to cede ground.

Working in coalitions is one of the most powerful tools available to those defending gender equality. The anti-rights movement succeeds in part because it is coordinated across borders, sectors, and institutions. The response must be equally organised. Equality Now’s coalition work is grounded in this understanding. Through the Africa Family Law Network, we join with civil society organisations, legal networks, faith communities, survivor advocates, and parliamentarians to build and sustain a stronger common front.

What African governments must do to reform family laws

This year’s Africa Day should serve as a call to action to prioritise family law reform. We are at a perilous moment of global regression in women’s rights, where hard-won legal safeguards are being deliberately dismantled. Discriminatory family law sits at the heart of that regression. The ask is not complicated. The political will is what is missing. We stand ready to work with you to change that:

To the African Union: Advocate for the universal ratification and implementation of the Maputo Protocol, a floor, not a ceiling. Push for lifting of reservations on equality in marriage, family, and reproductive rights by member states. Resist attempts to water down its provisions through model reservations crafted by anti-rights legal networks.

To African parliaments and parliamentarians: Reform discriminatory laws on marriage registration, equal divorce rights, child custody, and inheritance that have been stalled for too long. Every year of inaction is a year of harm. Do not allow parliaments to be used as platforms for movements that entrench inequality in the family under the disguise of protecting it.

To African governments: Enforce the Maputo Protocol, and ratify if not already undertaken. Conduct awareness-raising campaigns on family law rights. Invest in legal aid that reaches women in rural communities and informal settlements. Allocate sufficient budgets to gender equality and family law reform. Recognise unpaid care work. National family protection policies must protect all family members, not only those who fit a narrow ideological template.

To civil society, lawyers, journalists, and advocates: Build and sustain coalitions across borders. Expose the funding and actors behind anti-rights campaigns. Tell the stories of the women these laws fail. Make the abstract concrete. Keep going.

“Until family laws are equal, there is no equality in African society.”

This Africa Day, let us be clear about what we are celebrating, and honest about what still needs to change.

Deborah Nyokabi is a Legal Advisor on Legal Equality at Equality Now, a global human rights organisation dedicated to ending discrimination against all women and girls. She is based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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Excerpt:

The headquarters of the United Nations with Trump World Tower looming in the foreground, in Manhattan, NY, on April 28, 2026. (SEBASTIAN CHRISTOPH GOLLNOW/PICTURE ALLIANCE VIA GETTY IMAGES) Source: Wahington Reports

By Ian Williams
NEW YORK, May 25 2026 (IPS)

AS THE WORLD HURTLES TO HELL (albeit in a SpaceX rather than a hand basket), it might seem of only academic interest which cipher vegetates on the 38th floor of the U.N. Headquarters. However, the choice is due by the end of the year, unless, as has happened in the past, the Security Council is veto-bound and asks António Guterres to stay on as interim Secretary General.

Guterres certainly has experience for a seat-warming position, since he has performed like an interim Secretary General ever since he was first appointed. At times when his voice could and should have made a difference, he has followed the guidance of the three wise monkeys (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil). The Secretary General’s ability to put items on the council agenda and raise them publicly are his few effective powers in the face of the permanent members’ traditional lackadaisical stance.

His studied withdrawal from influence has infected other levels of the Secretariat and allowed the Security Council to reach new lows of subservience to power. So, if and when the council picks his successor, it’s unlikely that crowds will gather on U.N. Plaza to watch the white smoke rising to announce the anointment.

That is not only because Trump World Tower looms over the plaza like an escaped prop from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” but also because its eponymous owner has done so much to devalue the U.N. One could almost suspect that it is only allowed to hang on in New York because property values would plummet in the neighborhood if all the insouciant and complaisant diplomats who work in the U.N. complex had to leave.

The U.N.’s geopolitical absence certainly diminishes potential public interest in the race and is compounded by the increasing ineffectuality of the Security Council in the face of the erasure of the U.N. Charter. The guiding principle of the Secretariat often seems to be plucked from Arthur Hugh Clough’s old poem, “Thou shalt not kill/ But needs’t not strive, officiously to keep alive.”

However, the general membership is almost as complicit. Faced with the latest U.S. demand to reshape the organization before Washington even considers paying a part of its legally obligated payments, their response is to dicker about the depth of evisceration, not to challenge the assumptions. Of course, the U.N. needs reform—but not necessarily in the way the U.S. has been demanding for half a century.

Western signatories of the Rome Convention for the International Criminal Court have left their nationals, like Francesca Albanese and Karim Khan, to swing in the wind in the face of an entirely illegal U.S.–Israeli war on International Criminal Court staff. Even their home states’ declaration that they will provide government backed credit to the victims of U.S. sanctions would send a signal and some succor to the judges. A robust denunciation by the outgoing Secretary General (a lame duck and hence beyond significant U.S. payback) would have helped, but it was not forthcoming.

As the only figure who could coordinate (and heaven help us, lead) the defense, the forlorn position of the Secretary General is still essential despite the lackluster field. So, the choice is important—as well as boring.

So far, there is a growing consensus that the next leader needs to be a woman, which China has been very firm on, and should be from the Latin American and Caribbean region. So far, it’s a very uninspiring and, dare one say, “mature” field. Maybe there should be as much pressure for “youth’s” turn as there is for a woman, not least since both declared female candidates are of a certain age. The “most difficult job in the world” is not one for the elderly.

The April candidate forums at the U.N. featured four announced aspirants, but as the Book of Proverbs says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” None of the candidates offered a vision: their presentations were more like an AI-generated resume for corporate human resources.

Even the candidates who showed some signs of integrity, like the “keeping the law” bit, seem to be missing the vision thing and, frankly, professed over-adherence to the law is a stretch for candidates who want to avoid a veto from the P5. Which is, of course, why there was conspicuous silence on the hustings about Israel and Iran. It also so far guaranteed candidates who will not rock the boat for Washington.

So in a field of lame horses, the three-legged one might limp home, and that could be former President of Senegal Macky Sall, who is not a woman, not Latin American and does not have the support of his own country or the African Union. His best qualification is the traditional U.N. promotion criterion: not being remembered for anything in particular. He could fall in the East River and not cause a ripple. But he is unlikely to be willing to undergo the gender transition necessary. China says it wants a woman and has historically been prepared to stand its ground with repeated vetoes.

Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has the required diplomatic and political credentials, and she has clearly been playing the long game. As U.N. Human Rights Commissioner she sat upon a report about the People’s Republic of China’s abuse of the Uighurs, which might fend off a Chinese veto but raises questions about her integrity and independence.

It does suggest that she had acute political antennae since at that time pandering to China could have cost her support with the U.S. and Europeans—but now, perhaps not so much. Under the MAGA Trump Republicans, human rights are a now and then thing. More important perhaps to Washington, Chile’s new right-wing government pulled its endorsement of her which could burnish her credentials with what’s left of the progressive world. And her gender and Latin American origins tick other boxes.

In contrast, right-wing Argentinian President Javier Milei backs Rafael Grossi’s candidacy, which detracts from Grossi’s globalist credentials to head the U.N. However, as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), his equivocation about Iranian nuclear activities might well be negotiable into active U.S. support. He has been a deft tightrope walker, trying not to give Iran a clean bill of health, but avoiding complicity in an over-explicit casus belli to Washington, which would upset Moscow and Beijing (and may yet). But he has defied best practice for candidates by staying active in his U.N. role, which suggests he knows his IAEA position gives him cards to play.

Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan is an uninspiring apparatchik who has presided over the effectual dismantlement of U.N. Conference on Trade and Development, the development agency that had been in the sights of Washington for decades. While one cannot hold family connections against her, many countries might also worry about the optics of a secretary general whose sister is an Israeli settler in the West Bank. However, she is backed by her government, unlike some other candidates, and is a Latina, so ticks two of the boxes, and is likely to get support from the U.S. (and Israel, which does not have a direct seat on the Security Council, but nevertheless is reputedly a presence).

Looking at the heavily handicapped slate so far, it’s good that there are nominations waiting in the wings. Barbadian PM Mia Amor Mottley would be an ideal candidate, ticking both the vision and law boxes. A woman from the Latin American and Caribbean region whose otherwise disqualifying integrity might pass the Trump test by speaking English and being previously accoladed by no less than the American Enterprise Institute! However, she has just won re-election in Barbados and would probably prefer to stay where she is now.

Another person who announced her candidacy is Ecuador’s María Fernanda Espinosa, former General Assembly President, who is also missing support from her own government, but she has shown both vision and integrity and has other backers. And she is not of pensionable age.

In the end, sadly, the odds are against anyone who meets the needs of the world and organization. Their very qualifications would be unlikely to survive the whims and prejudices of this U.S. administration, let alone survive scrutiny by Moscow or Beijing. Even if Russia and China pay lip service to the international order and sacrifice their immediate prejudices for the greater good, Washington is unlikely to be so forbearing.

Overall, the question is whether the U.N. is redeemable while some countries have veto power. At one time the U.S. realized the advantages of maintaining the U.N. as a thin blue fig leaf for its actual hegemony, but it no longer sees the need to cover its rampant MAGA-hood.

U.N. correspondent Ian Williams is president of the Foreign Press Association of the U.S. He is the author of U.N.told: The Real Story of the United Nations in Peace and War (available from Middle East Books and More).

Source: Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs
https://www.wrmea.org/north-america/the-search-is-on-for-the-next-u.n.-secretary-general-in-a-turbulent-world.html

IPS UN Bureau

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Budget shortfalls could force the organization to move closer to the communities that it's meant to serve.

By JB Bae
FORT COLLINS, Colorado USA, May 25 2026 (IPS)

The $1.2 billion renovation of the Palais des Nations was intended to reaffirm Geneva’s centrality to the multilateral system. Instead, the city’s international quarter is emptying.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has cut hundreds of positions. The U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is relocating core administrative roles to Rome and Budapest. Other agencies are scaling back or relocating operations. The United States, which funds roughly a quarter of the U.N.’s regular budget, now owes approximately $2.2 billion, about 95% of all unpaid contributions to the organization.

Many will read this as a harbinger of the decline, or perhaps even the demise, of the U.N. system. Yet the crisis in Geneva may be creating the conditions for a more resilient multilateralism.

Critics claim that American taxpayers subsidized a U.N. bureaucracy hostile to their interests, one lacking accountability and captured by priorities divorced from its founding purposes. There is some truth to this. However, these arguments have marginalized those who wish to refound the U.N. system, rather than dismantling multilateralism wholesale.

The erosion of U.S. funding may be doing what decades of reform efforts could not: forcing a realignment of the U.N.’s structure with its mission. Numerous proposals, secretary-general initiatives, and expert panels have failed to produce meaningful change.

The U.N.’s own 2021 Integration Review, drawing on input from over 200 staff members across the organization, found that institutional insulation undermined impact, calling for more decentralized decision-making and reforms responsive to field realities. Member states had pressed for the same for decades.

Meanwhile, Geneva came to embody the distance between those running the institution and the constituencies they were meant to serve. The compensation structure tells part of the story. Bureaucrats enjoyed tax-free salaries, exceptionally generous pension arrangements, housing allowances pegged to one of the world’s most expensive cities, business-class travel, and education grants that cover most of the cost of elite international-school tuition in Geneva, where annual fees often reach $45,000 per child per year.

One study of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) operations found spending of roughly $600 per refugee annually (around $800-850 in today’s dollars). U.N. reimbursements for a single child’s school fees in Geneva, in other words, could support dozens of refugees for a year. These arrangements are not reserved for senior leadership. They define the terms of employment for the typical international civil servant.

These terms apply to a substantial workforce. Switzerland hosts roughly forty international organizations that employ more than 25,000 people, most concentrated in the Lake Geneva region. The World Health Organization, the largest, employs roughly 2,400 people at its Geneva headquarters and operated on a biennial budget of $5.3 billion for 2026-27 before recent cuts. The International Labour Organization (ILO), UNHCR, the World Trade Organization (WTO), and others maintain significant presences in Geneva.

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When the U.N. Secretary-General’s office issued a memo in April 2025 directing Geneva and New York to identify posts for relocation to lower-cost duty stations, the Geneva staff union’s response was telling: its official statement declared the union “alarmed,” hundreds of staff demonstrated on International Workers’ Day to protect their Geneva postings, and unions defended housing subsidies, education grants, and tax exemptions as essential. These numbers and reactions reflect the insulation of much of Geneva from the realities the institution nominally exists to address.

Yet the crisis is strengthening the position of those within the system who have long called for change. The U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF)’s consolidation of regional functions to Bangkok, the expansion of U.N. agency operations in Nairobi, and shifting administrative functions to lower-cost duty stations all reflect a shift toward where the work actually is. Technology and the remote collaboration it enables make justifying the Geneva-centric model even more difficult. What once required flights to Geneva can now happen across multiple continents simultaneously.

Simply relocating institutions to less costly settings, however, risks reproducing Geneva’s pathologies — insulated professional communities, compensation structures detached from local conditions, and organizational cultures oriented more toward one another than toward the populations they serve. More than simply moving offices, structural reform requires confronting how these institutions are staffed, incentivized, and embedded in the political contexts in which they operate.

A more promising direction is aligning institutions with the political support and capacity of host nations. This goes beyond decentralization and proximity to need, toward placing authority where capacity and political will already exist. Former aid recipients that have become donors and regional powers in their own right — Poland, Chile, and South Korea among them — are natural candidates for anchoring this kind of multilateralism. Having navigated conflict, development, refugee flows, and political transition themselves, they bring the political legitimacy and operational credibility that Geneva-centered bureaucracies cannot replicate.

The substance of the changes also matters for the legitimacy of the international order. A multilateral system whose centers of decision-making remain in Geneva, New York, and a handful of donor capitals is vulnerable to the accusation that it represents a historical moment that has long passed. Institutions whose operational weight sits closer to the communities they serve, staffed by professionals embedded in supportive settings, are harder to displace. What survives will be better able to compete for relevance in a more contested world order.

Geneva will survive this crisis as a conference center for highest-stakes diplomacy and backroom dialogues that only physical proximity can enable. But what emerges beyond Geneva, in the field offices of agencies closer to the populations they serve and potentially in the hands of actors with the legitimacy and experience to carry multilateralism forward, may prove closer to what the system was always intended to be.

Many of the structural problems that have long plagued the U.N. will remain. The shifts now under way will not solve them. But they change where influence accumulates, and who shapes the decisions that matter. This new multilateralism may prove more resilient, more legitimate, and harder to hold captive to the politics of any single donor.

JB Bae is an assistant professor of political science at Colorado State University. His research addresses issues in international security and foreign policy, with a focus on East Asia. He received his PhD from UCLA.

The views expressed by authors on Responsible Statecraft do not necessarily reflect those of the Quincy Institute or its associates.

Source: Responsible Statecraft

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Credit: Rizwan Tabassum/AFP

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, May 22 2026 (IPS)

Narges Mohammadi, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her human rights activism in Iran, has been allowed to go home. After guards found her unconscious in her cell, the apparent victim of a heart attack, she was granted temporary release from prison and transferred to a hospital. However, she still faces the threat of being taken back to jail once her condition has improved.

Mohammadi has been repeatedly imprisoned for criticising the theocratic regime, demanding women’s rights, advocating for prison reform and campaigning against the death penalty. Over her lifetime she’s been sentenced to a total of 44 years. She’s already spent more than a decade behind bars, including 161 days in solitary confinement, and has also been sentenced to 154 lashes. In February she was handed a further seven-and-a-half-year sentence. From prison – where she experienced cardiac and blood pressure problems and severe weight loss – she has documented systematic rights violations against political prisoners, including sexual and physical abuse of women detainees, torture and extensive use of solitary confinement.

Mohammadi’s case is one among many. While her ordeal has rightly drawn international attention, others more distant from the spotlight are in danger. Three more women human rights activists – Pakhshan Azizi, Sharifeh Mohammadi and Varisheh Moradi – are on death row at imminent risk of execution. The dangers they and countless others face have grown sharply since the current war began.

Repression tightens

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear he wants regime change in Iran. On 1 March, an Israeli strike killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. But if the intention was to topple the regime, it didn’t happen. Iran’s ruling theocratic structures run deep, with multiple layers of planned succession. Khamenei’s son Mojtaba Khamenei, injured in the same attack, was quickly named his replacement, despite Iran’s official ideology formally rejecting hereditary succession.

While clerical leaders have been killed, Iran’s coercive apparatus has gained in its day-to-day power, hardening the theocracy into something closer to a military dictatorship, with the Basij, the paramilitary volunteer force long deployed to crush public dissent, now front and centre.

Israeli and US hopes that Iranians would rise up against the regime have been disappointed. Iran has seen successive mass protest waves, each crushed with large-scale lethal violence. They include the Green Movement that demanded democracy in 2009 and 2010 and the Woman, Life, Freedom protests that demanded women’s rights in 2022 and 2023. The latest uprising came in December 2025 and January 2026, triggered by economic collapse, forging a movement that united broad sections of society to demand an end to the theocratic regime. The state suppressed it with shocking brutality, killing thousands and detaining tens of thousands.

By February, the uprising had been crushed. The Israeli-US intervention was unlikely to reignite a meaningful mass protest movement. If anything, for some Iranians the war has stoked patriotism and more intense enmity towards Israel and the USA. The anticipated revolt simply hasn’t happened.

Much of Iran’s vast diaspora has rallied in support of the war as a means of toppling the regime. But while the diaspora is united in demanding change, its array of ethnic minority organisations, Islamist factions, leftists, monarchists and republicans is bitterly divided over what should come next. Reza Pahlavi, son of the last shah, enjoys some support but others are wary about monarchical nostalgia and his close ties to Israel and the USA. The most credible potential unifying figures inside Iran are imprisoned or otherwise silenced.

Instead of losing control, the regime has tightened its repression. Even as Iran’s leaders wage a social media propaganda war abroad, at home they’ve imposed a near-total internet shutdown, including a block on VPN services. The blackout has caused immense economic harm, disrupting businesses and financial transactions and hitting women the hardest. This comes on top of the economic effects of the current US blockade of Iranian ports, sending inflation and unemployment soaring.

Under the cover of war and the internet shutdown, the government has accelerated executions of political prisoners. While precise figures are hard to get, rights groups report close to 200 executions so far this year, most preceded by prolonged torture to extract false confessions. Secret hangings are reportedly being carried out on an almost daily basis. Among those killed are people detained during the January protests. On 4 May, it was reported that three people arrested at protests on 8 and 9 January – Ebrahim Dolatabadinejad, Mohammadreza Miri and Mehdi Rasouli – had been hanged. For families, the suffering doesn’t end there, as authorities reportedly refuse to return bodies and pressure relatives to stay silent.

Local priorities

Democracy and human rights in Iran depend on the regime’s departure. But the latest war isn’t about any of this. For Netanyahu, with an election impending and anger remaining at his corruption charges and Israel’s security failures around the 7 October Hamas attacks, permanent warfare is a political strategy. Donald Trump’s many social media announcements provide little clue of what motivates a president who promised not to mire the USA in foreign wars, but distraction from low popularity ratings and his many appearances in the Epstein files may be a factor.

This war isn’t the way to achieve change. The regime appears entrenched and capable of surviving a longer conflict. Any peace deal would leave it intact, which its rulers would treat as a victory.

Real change will come when protests can grow into a mass movement large enough to withstand the lethal repression the state will inevitably deploy. That can only happen with sustained support that respects the autonomy of local civil society leaders and strengthens their capacity. The immediate priorities must be to protect credible local sources of information amid the information blackout and ensure the safety and security of Iran’s democracy and human rights activists.

Above all, states must press the Iranian government to halt executions and release everyone detained for speaking out, protesting and demanding change, beginning with Narges Mohammadi. Temporary medical release is nowhere near enough. The Iranian regime must let her be free.

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

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A tea picker in the Bearwell tea estate of Sri Lanka. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Boubaker Ben Belhassen
ROME, May 20 2026 (IPS)

The tea in your cup this morning began its journey in someone else’s hands. Hands whose work most of us never think about. Almost certainly, those hands belonged to a smallholder farmer tending a small plot of land, plucking leaves by hand beneath long mornings of mist and rain.

Two leaves and a bud. Two leaves and a bud. Thousands of times. Smallholders account for about 60 percent of global tea supply. The industry built on their labor is worth US$19.5 billion a year and supports the economies of some of the world’s poorest countries. Yet the conditions that sustain that work – ecological, economic and climatic – are under growing pressure.

Smallholders account for about 60 percent of global tea supply. The industry built on their labor is worth US$19.5 billion a year and supports the economies of some of the world's poorest countries. Yet the conditions that sustain that work – ecological, economic and climatic – are under growing pressure

Tea is the most popular drink on earth after water. Global production reached 7.3 million tonnes last year, and per capita consumption continues to rise steadily. From the outside, the sector appears healthy.

Yet the millions of smallholder farming families driving that growth in China, India, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Malawi, Rwanda and beyond need stronger support if the sector’s momentum is to endure.

The geography of tea production is also a geography of economic necessity, linked to patterns of economic dependence and rural livelihoods. Kenya is the world’s largest tea exporter.

Sri Lanka, Uganda, Malawi and Rwanda rank among the global top ten. In these economies, revenues from tea exports help finance food imports and sustain rural livelihoods across entire regions. The sector remains a major source of employment and income for millions of poor families worldwide.

That income is more fragile than the industry’s headline numbers suggest. International tea prices, adjusted for inflation, have been declining for four decades.

The sector’s nominal value has expanded, while the real purchasing power of many producers has stagnated. FAO has documented what this means at the household level: when farmgate prices fall, smallholder families reduce spending on food, education and health care.

Smallholder producers also face limited market access, inadequate extension services, weak access to credit and technology, and persistent asymmetries in how value is distributed across the supply chain.

As production costs rise and price increases transmit unevenly through markets, many farming families struggle to generate sufficient returns to reinvest in farm renewal, climate adaptation or productivity improvements. These pressures heighten income volatility and make long-term planning increasingly difficult.

Tea production and processing are major sources of employment and income for women across East Africa and South Asia. When smallholder tea farming families prosper, women’s economic participation will determine whether that prosperity and stability hold.

Programmes that support women directly through training, market access and financial resources consistently produce stronger outcomes for both households and communities. In many tea-growing regions, women sustain not only household economies, but also the continuity of the knowledge and labor on which the crop depends.

Tea cultivation relies on highly specific agro-ecological conditions: altitude, rainfall patterns and temperatures shaped gradually over centuries in the regions where production became concentrated.

These conditions are becoming harder to predict and increasingly difficult to sustain. More erratic rainfall, fluctuating temperatures, and extreme weather events are already impacting both yields and quality.

For a smallholder farmer without savings or insurance, a lost harvest is not a temporary setback. It immediately affects household spending on food, medicine and schooling.

The unevenness of that burden is a central challenge. Larger operations often possess greater capacity to adapt through irrigation, diversification, upgrading and financial reserves.

Smaller producers, by contrast, frequently get trapped between increasing climate risks and limited investment capacity. Investment needs to be calibrated to the realities of smallholder tea farming rather than assumptions drawn from larger commercial operations.

What is at stake extends beyond a commodity market. Several tea-growing landscapes have been formally recognized by FAO as Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems. These landscapes were shaped over generations through accumulated farming knowledge and long relationships between land, crop and community.

Tea cultivation depends on delicate balances of shade, slope, rainfall, soil health, and inherited knowledge built gradually over generations. Climate-related stress threatens these landscapes alongside the livelihoods and agricultural continuity they sustain.

More efficient, inclusive and sustainable value chains, including greater local value addition and stronger producer participation in markets, are essential if the benefits of the growing tea economy are to reach both the people and the environments that sustain it. Per capita tea consumption in many producing countries remains relatively low, meaning the sector’s growth potential is still substantial.

Ensuring the sector’s viability, however, requires more than rising consumption levels. Smallholder producers need better access to finance, markets, technology, and climate adaptation support calibrated to their realities.

More transparent and balanced value chains, targeted investment that reaches women directly, and stronger incentives for reinvestment at farm level will determine whether the industry’s future growth will remain economically and socially sustainable.

The farmer who grew your tea will get up again tomorrow morning before sunrise. The future of the sector depends on ensuring this remains a viable livelihood option.

You want to see a bright tea future? Join us in celebrating International Tea Day on 21 May!

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

U.S. Coast Guard cutter USCGC Aquidneck (WPB-1309) in the Strait of Hormuz, with a large container ship visible in the background as it transits the critical global trade route (Dec. 2, 2020). Credit: MC2 Indra Beaufort

By Lulseged Desta and Jonathan Mockshell
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, May 20 2026 (IPS)

Sharp surges in energy, fertilizer, and food prices triggered by the ongoing conflict in the Persian Gulf strikingly illustrate the deep interconnections between geopolitical conflict, food insecurity, and the fragility of fossil fuel–dependent food systems.

Besides carrying roughly 20 million barrels of oil per day (about 27 percent of global oil exports), the Strait of Hormuz also handles 20–30 percent of internationally traded inorganic fertilizers, which uses natural gas as a key ingredient in its production. Its closure has immediately disrupted the flow of these essential commodities, triggering sharp price spikes in fuel and key agricultural inputs.

This situation demonstrates how geopolitical instability can rapidly disrupt essential agricultural functions under current input-dependent, industrial production systems that rely heavily on external energy and supply chains. This crisis highlights, more clearly than ever, a critical reality: food systems tied to fossil fuels are inherently unsustainable, continually undermine food sovereignty, and disproportionately affect farmers, particularly smallholders in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). World Food Programme estimates warn that, if the conflict continues, the soaring oil, shipping and food costs will push an additional 45 million people into acute hunger, driving the global total beyond its record 319 million¹.

Reducing food systems’ reliance on fossil fuels and external inputs is essential to strengthen our collective resilience to future shocks. The truth is that fossil fuels courses through every stage of the food system – from fertilizers and pesticides to processing, preservation, transportation, packaging, food waste disposal, and even food preparation. Moreover, entrenched economic and political structures lock in this fossil-fuel dependence through massive subsidies and price protections – estimated at over $1 trillion in recent years².

Food systems account for at least 15 percent of total fossil fuel use – mostly through synthetic fertilizers ⁴ – but also to power machinery and vehicles, and generate electricity and heat for key processes like irrigation, grain drying, livestock housing, and food storage.

Agroecological approaches to food production offer an alternative to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels while still meeting the needs of a growing global population. This supports a transition from energy-sink systems to regenerative ones, radically enhancing food systems’ resilience in the face of escalating geopolitical instability and environmental vulnerability.

Agroecology is based on natural processes and local resources for sustainable soil fertility. Crucially, many of these practices draw directly from indigenous knowledge systems, where local communities have long maintained soil health through time. Practical steps include the use of organic fertilization (often blended with minimal synthetic inputs), efficient soil microorganisms, nitrogen-fixing plants, and soil health practices like crop rotation, cover cropping, intercropping, reduced tillage, and crop-livestock integration.

Research consistently shows that agroecological approaches – such as farm diversification and tree integrated systems – outperform conventional systems in climate resilience, nutrient cycling, and soil health^5,6, often while boosting yields^7-9. Agroforestry also provides a source of wood fuel, making it a valuable alternative during fossil fuel shortages and price spikes.

Examples can be found worldwide. Peruvian cocoa farmers are using bokashi and bio-oil amendments to restore soil organic matter, regenerate microbial activity, and enhance nutrient cycling¹⁰. In Vietnam, rice-fish coculture systems optimize nutrient cycling, curb pests, and diversify outputs – lowering costs while stabilizing farmer incomes¹¹. Ethiopian farmers practicing wheat-fava bean rotations are cutting fertilizer needs while improving soil structure and building long-term fertility11. India’s agroecology programme, ‘Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF)’, delivers biodiversity benefits while more than doubling farmers’ economic profits and maintaining comparable crop yields, than chemical-based farming ^12,13.

Other farm-level steps to curb fossil fuel dependence include integrating renewable energy sources for on-site generation and operations – like solar panels, biogas digesters, and wind turbines; solar water pumps, adopting fuel-efficient engines and draft animals; and embracing practices such as minimum tillage, precision irrigation, integrated pest management, and low-input crop-livestock systems.

More fundamentally, shifting from global, industrial commodity chains toward territorial, agroecological food networks can relocalize production, processing, and consumption – shortening supply chains and reducing energy-intensive operations. Shorter, localized supply chains reduce reliance on long-distance transport, lower packaging demand, and promote reusable packaging systems, thereby decreasing fossil fuel consumption.

These efforts can be reinforced by complementary practices that strengthen food sovereignty, such as home gardens and urban agriculture. Crucially, agroecology also aligns with reduced production of ultra-processed foods – among the most energy-intensive products – helping to curb fossil fuel use while potentially improving public health.

In the short term, it is crucial that the allocation of emergency funds are earmarked to procure or purchase organic alternatives to synthetic fertilizers, particularly in the most affected regions. Longer-term, it is necessary to reduce structural barriers to farmers’ adoption of these agroecological approaches including reforms to agricultural subsidies and strengthening support for technical assistance and local governance.

References
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2. IPES-Food. Fuel to Fork: What Will It Take to Get Fossil Fuels out of Our Food Systems? https://ipes-food.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/FuelToFork.pdf (2025).

3. FAO, UNDP, and UNEP. A Multi-Billion-Dollar Opportunity – Repurposing Agricultural Support to Transform Food Systems. (FAO, UNDP, and UNEP, 2021). doi:10.4060/cb6562en.

4. Global Alliance for the Future of Food. Power Shift: Why We Need to Wean Industrial Food Systems off Fossil Fuels. https://futureoffood.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/ga_food-energy-nexus_report.pdf (2023).

5. Niether, W., Jacobi, J., Blaser, W. J., Andres, C. & Armengot, L. Cocoa agroforestry systems versus monocultures: a multi-dimensional meta-analysis. Environ. Res. Lett. 15, 104085 (2020).

6. Beillouin, D., Ben‐Ari, T., Malézieux, E., Seufert, V. & Makowski, D. Positive but variable effects of crop diversification on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Glob. Change Biol. 27, 4697–4710 (2021).

7. Dittmer, K. M. et al. Agroecology Can Promote Climate Change Adaptation Outcomes Without Compromising Yield In Smallholder Systems. Environ. Manage. 72, 333–342 (2023).

8. Rodenburg, J., Mollee, E., Coe, R. & Sinclair, F. Global analysis of yield benefits and risks from integrating trees with rice and implications for agroforestry research in Africa. Field Crops Res. 281, 108504 (2022).

9. Jones, S. K. et al. Achieving win-win outcomes for biodiversity and yield through diversified farming. Basic Appl. Ecol. 67, 14–31 (2023).

10. Altieri, M. A. & Nicholls, C. I. Agroecology and the reconstruction of a post-COVID-19 agriculture. J. Peasant Stud. 47, 881–898 (2020).

11. FAO. The State of Food and Agriculture 2022. (FAO, 2022). doi:10.4060/cb9479en.

12. Berger, I. et al. India’s agroecology programme, ‘Zero Budget Natural Farming’, delivers biodiversity and economic benefits without lowering yields. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 9, 2057–2068 (2025).

13. O’Garra, T. Agroecology benefits people and planet. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 9, 1973–1974 (2025).

14. IPES-Food. Food from Somewhere: Building Food Security and Resilience through Territorial Markets. https://ipes-food.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/FoodFromSomewhere.pdf (2024).

15. Einarsson, R. Nitrogen in the Food System. https://tabledebates.org/building-blocks/nitrogen-food-system (2024) doi:10.56661/2fa45626.

Lulseged Desta, CGIAR Multifunctional Landscapes Science Program; Jonathan Mockshell, Alliance Biodiversity International – CIAT

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Credit: Bibbi Abruzzini/Forus - Rabat, Morocco

By Silla Ristimäki, Miguel Santibañez, Emeline Siale Ilolahia and Aoi Horiuchi
HELSINKI, Finland / SANTIAGO, Chile / SUVA, Fiji / TOKYO, Japan, May 20 2026 (IPS)

Just four years of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development remain. What comes after 2030 is already a political battleground.

The next global development framework is being shaped now: through quiet agenda-setting, shifting alliances, financing choices, contested norms, and decisions about who gets to participate and who is pushed to the margins. That matters because the world that will shape what comes next is not the world that adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015.

The context is harsher, more fractured and less generous. Geopolitical fragmentation is deepening. Armed conflicts are distorting priorities. Climate impacts are accelerating. Development finance is under growing strain. Civic space is shrinking. Public trust in multilateralism is weaker. And too often, the rights, equality and accountability commitments that gave the SDGs their normative force are treated as negotiable.

“We step into the next decade against the background of climate chaos, growing inequality and increasing poverty. The scaffolding for positive change shall be to infuse democratic values in the blood stream of all our governments from the Right to the Left,” says Dr. Moses Isooba, executive director of the Uganda National NGO Forum and Vice-Chair of Forus.

The post-2030 debate must confront the political and structural weaknesses that limited implementation the first time around.

As a civil society network, we have been here from the very beginning. We have secured the adoption of the SDGs with the Beyond 2015 campaign, pushed for innovation and ambition, challenged power, brought forward the voices of communities, and held systems accountable. That role evolves and as we now look “beyond 2030”, we remain present, engaged, and determined to influence what comes next.

One message comes through clearly: the next agenda will only be credible if we are clear about three things — what must be defended, what must be demanded, and what must be declined.

What must be defended

Some foundations of the current framework remain essential and must not be traded away for the sake of political convenience.

The first is universality. One of the most important achievements of the SDGs was to establish that sustainable development is not only a concern for lower income countries, but a universal responsibility. Policies, consumption patterns and economic models that drive inequality, exclusion and ecological harm must be addressed in all regions. High-income countries must not only finance development but also reform their own adverse policies. If the next framework weakens the recognition that sustainable development must integrate social justice, equality, environmental sustainability, peace and human rights, it will not move us forward. It will mark a retreat.

The second is civic space. Civil society participation is one of the conditions that makes accountability, inclusion and implementation possible yet it is increasingly constrained by financial pressures, exclusion from global decision-making processes and erosion of fundamental rights. A future agenda which prioritises resources and protection for civil society supports the building of stable, sustainable societies.

The third is local leadership. Communities and local civil society actors remain closest to the realities that global frameworks claim to address, yet they are still structurally under-resourced and under-represented. Localisation beyond the “buzzword” can bring essential resources for problem diagnosis and planning, increasing effectiveness and legitimacy for sustainable development and peacebuilding.

And finally, what must be defended is multilateralism itself, not as an abstract ideal, but as the shared political space where common commitments can still be built.

“Safeguarding the structures created to advance peace, cooperation and rights sustains global hope and possibilities to address common global challenges. This is in the interests of us all, future generations and the planet.” Silla Ristimäki, Adviser at Fingo. “This is why ambitious reform of the UN cannot be separated from the post-Agenda 2030 discussion.”

What must be demanded

Defending core principles is not enough. Negotiations about the future must also correct what the Agenda 2030 left unresolved.

At the centre of this is financing. A credible post-2030 framework cannot rest on the same unequal financial architecture that has constrained implementation for years. Debt burdens, unequal fiscal space, volatile aid flows and weak commitments have all narrowed the room for governments and communities to act. Financing reforms must include debt restructuring and relief, fairer lending terms, increased concessional finance, stronger domestic resource mobilisation, tax justice, policy coherence and predictable support for civil society.

“Many countries are spending more on debt than education or health. We need to reform the current unjust international financial architecture,” says Aoi Horiuchi, Senior Advocacy Officer at JANIC, the civil society network for international cooperation in Japan.

Accountability must also be stronger. Voluntary reporting and soft review mechanisms have not been enough. A future agenda must be backed by mandatory, transparent and regular review, with independent oversight and a formal role for civil society and local actors in tracking progress and exposing implementation gaps.

And participation must mean more than consultation after decisions are already taking shape. Civil society needs a formalised, meaningful and safe role in both negotiating and implementing the future framework, especially for local actors and groups continuing to face structural or political exclusion.

“Meaningful change comes from meaningful participation. That’s why we need to defend civic space,” says Horiuchi.

What must be declined

Some directions already visible in early discussions must be rejected outright.

A thinner agenda that lowers ambition in the name of consensus must be declined. So must any attempt to weaken universality, rights, gender equality, civic freedoms or climate ambition for political expediency.

The continuation of a financial status quo that deepens inequality while speaking the language of partnership must also be declined. So must accountability arrangements that remain symbolic, selective or performative.

And tokenistic participation must be named for what it is. A process that brings civil society into the room for appearance’s sake while excluding it from agenda-setting, decision-making and follow-through is managed exclusion.

Finally, as development governance evolves, the expanding role of private and philanthropic actors must not come without public-interest safeguards, democratic oversight and accountability. Public goals cannot be left to unaccountable power.

We must get out of silos, create spaces of dialogue, of co-responsibility and raise the question of whether the post-2030 framework will be more honest about power, more serious about accountability, more capable of confronting structural inequality, and more open to those whose lives and rights are most at stake.

Our answer is here:
Defend what must not be lost.
Demand what must be corrected.
Decline what would weaken the future.

IPS UN Bureau

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Credit: Amnesty International
 
Vanuatu has spearheaded a UN General Assembly resolution, expected to be tabled on May 20, 2026, to endorse and operationalize the 2025 International Court of Justice (ICJ) Advisory Opinion, which confirmed that nations have binding legal duties to prevent and repair climate-related harm. The resolution, supported by a core group including Singapore and the Netherlands, calls for implementing these legal standards to protect vulnerable states from climate disasters, despite resistance from major polluters.

By Shristi Gautam and Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, May 20 2026 (IPS)

Normally, resolutions voted at the United Nations General Assembly do not make the headlines.

As nonbinding and mostly symbolic, rich in principles yet empty and lacking the power to carry consequences, these statements are shrugged off and ignored.

But there are exceptions, and today’s (May 20) UNGA vote is one of them. The reason is that a positive vote would constitute a significant development in the evolution of international environmental law. To understand what we are referring to, let us allow a small flashback.

Far from South Asia, a trailblazing effort to hold a private corporation accountable for climate-damaging harm played out in a German court in recent years. For the first time, a Peruvian farmer filed a case against a major German energy company, accusing it of gravely damaging his livelihood due to its contributions to climate warming.

Even though this case, known as Lliuya v. RWE, was ultimately rejected in May 2025, it opened a new era in one of the most promising fields for achieving climate justice: climate litigation.

In the words of experts from the Grantham Research Institute, Lliuya v. RWE “established a powerful legal precedent that can be replicated in courts worldwide and will shape the trajectory for future climate litigation: corporate greenhouse gas emitters can, in principle, be held liable for their contribution to climate change impacts.”

Climate litigation, as an approach to pursue justice, is relatively new but is on the rise worldwide. There are more and more legal cases being filed in courts of law to uphold the principles of climate equity and climate justice and to pursue the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, a precondition to the enjoyment of other rights, such as the right to life, health, and an adequate standard of living.

After years of litigation, the Dutch Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that the state has an obligation to reduce emissions because adaptive efforts alone are insufficient. More groundbreaking cases followed. In the Los Cedros case, the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court established another pioneering precedent, affirming the primacy of the Right of Nature over mining concessions.

These rulings created momentum for bolder climate action, both in courts and in the streets, where millions of people across the Global South and North protested vigorously against climate injustice.

Within the international climate regime established by the Paris Agreement in 2015, the voices of developing nations, especially small island developing states, grew louder in opposition to unchecked greenhouse gas pollution, mostly from the Global North.

Unfortunately, there have been only very partial advancements within the UNFCCC framework. Last year, Climate COP 30, chaired by Brazil in Belém and supposed to be the COP of action and implementation, ended in another major disappointment. It is difficult to find optimism that the upcoming COP 31 in Türkiye will bear the transformative results humanity so desperately needs.

But an extraordinary legal effort, initially launched by law students from the Pacific in 2021 and later embraced by the Government of Vanuatu, paid off. On 23 July last year, the International Court of Justice issued the landmark Advisory Opinion on the Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change. It was a truly game-changing moment for the fight for climate justice, even if the AO is non-binding.

Among its several remarkable aspects, the Paris Agreement’s obligations are not only procedural but also substantive, and states have stringent due diligence obligations. The ICJ also rejected the concept of “Lex Specialis,” clarifying that states’ obligations extend beyond the Paris Agreement, which, as a treaty, does not take precedence over other sources of law.

In plain terms, governments cannot hide behind the negotiations within the various climate COPs. They must do more. The ruling explicitly demands that states do whatever they can, within their means, to meet their commitments to reduce climate change.

It is not enough for a state to submit a Nationally Determined Contribution, its national plan to mitigate greenhouse emissions. A state may also be considered responsible for failing to take regulatory and legislative measures to limit not only its own emissions but also greenhouse gases produced by the private sector within its own borders.

The AO could not be clearer: “A breach by a State of any of the obligations identified by the Court in relation to climate change constitutes an internationally wrongful act entailing the responsibility of that State.”

Today, the Pacific island of Vanuatu, a true trailblazer showing that small developing nations can punch above their weight with moral leadership, is once again attempting to make history by bringing a UNGA Resolution on the AO.

Even without enforceable power, this resolution wants to reaffirm the principles enshrined in the Advisory Opinion, marking another step toward states’ accountability under international law.

According to the Climate Litigation Database, hosted by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, more than 3,000 lawsuits have been filed against governments and private-sector carbon emitters, including banks and asset management companies.

Today’s UNGA Resolution was supported by a diverse coalition including the Netherlands, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Barbados, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Jamaica, the Philippines, and Burkina Faso.

Despite Nepal’s limited international engagement in recent months due to its own political transitions and elections, the new government led by Prime Minister Balendra Shah must join this group of nations.

Nepal must devise a strategy to revamp its climate efforts at the international level and, critically, do so beyond the Paris Agreement negotiations. There must be recognition that future negotiations within the UNFCCC will not be less fraught or complicated.

A series of policy papers published by the British think tank ODI exposed the hypocrisy of many governments that, in theory, are sympathetic and supportive of the climate fight of small island developing states, yet in their own submissions before the ICJ, resisted and opposed further legal obligations beyond the Paris Agreement.

This duplicity is embraced not only by developed nations but also by India and China, two of the most vocal defenders of the rights of developing nations within the Paris Agreement framework.

The incredibly complex politics of climate negotiations mean only one thing: courts of law may end up offering the only realistic venue for climate-vulnerable nations to pursue redress. As explained by The Guardian, Vanuatu was even forced to compromise some of the most progressive and climate-justice-centered aspects of this resolution in order to build the widest possible coalition of supporting nations.

Meanwhile, the ongoing tensions in the Gulf are offering a silver lining: more and more nations are realizing that phasing out carbon emissions is becoming irreversible. A few weeks ago, a pioneering gathering was held in Santa Marta, Colombia, the first-ever conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels. Although Nepal was invited, there was no news of the government’s participation.

While climate negotiations within the UNFCCC should not be dismissed, it is time to embrace another approach to seeking climate justice. The pursuit of climate justice through local and international courts may offer the most effective remedy to ensure the primary goal of the Paris Agreement, limiting climate warming to 1.5°C, is realistically pursued.

Nepal’s government will surely cast the right vote at the UNGA today. At the same time, we hope the new federal government will do whatever it takes to reiterate and expand its commitment to international law to stop climate change in the highest courts and global forums. We also hope it will create a conducive environment for climate litigation to thrive and become a tool for climate accountability that reaches everyone.

Shristi Gautam is the Past Co-Lead of World’s Youth for Climate Justice, Nepal, and Founder of Nyaya Vatika; Simone Galimberti is the pro bono co-founder of The Good Leadership.

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Credit: Osugi / shutterstock.com

By Jordan Ryan
May 19 2026 (IPS)

 
Where does real power reside in the UN development system? A new policy brief from Cepei, a Colombian development policy institute, and the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), presented earlier in May, poses this deceptively simple question. The answer matters because institutions that cannot govern fairly or transparently struggle to sustain legitimacy, and legitimacy is essential for peace.

The Cepei-IDOS diagnosis identifies a “triple disconnect” that structures contemporary development governance. Formal oversight bodies (the Executive Boards, ECOSOC, the General Assembly) set policy directions but control only a fraction of financing. Real resources flow through bilateral arrangements between major donors and agency leadership, operating largely beyond collective scrutiny. The ten largest donors shape system priorities through informal channels of influence. Meanwhile, the programme countries that host the vast majority of UN development operations report significantly weaker upstream influence than traditional donor states. This misalignment between authority, resources and voice is no longer incidental. It has become embedded in the way the system operates.

What transforms this observation from an efficiency problem into a peace imperative is the reality that ungovernable systems cannot respond to prevention and peacebuilding needs. A development architecture shaped disproportionately by donor priorities and limited programme-country voice lacks the legitimacy, flexibility and democratic accountability required to address the structural drivers of conflict. When host countries experience UN operations as imposed rather than negotiated, and when funding priorities reflect donor interests rather than local prevention priorities, the development system becomes an actor in grievance production, not prevention.

The governance–legitimacy nexus works in both directions. Ungovernable institutions erode the multilateral system’s credibility in the Global South. Successive rounds of ineffective UN reform, driven by incremental adjustments within existing power structures, signal to programme countries that the system is designed to resist their inclusion. This perception is strengthened when donors can navigate around formal governance bodies through bilateral arrangements. Over time, institutional opacity breeds delegitimation. The UN is then weakened as a platform for both development cooperation and conflict prevention, because confidence in its democratic character has fractured.

The Cepei-IDOS brief positions the first 1000 days of the next Secretary-General’s term as a narrow window for visible structural change. The argument is neither revolutionary nor naive. It does not propose wholesale redesign of the UN system. Rather, it suggests that an incoming Secretary-General with political capital and an informed strategic agenda can make power visible, realign financial flows with governance decisions, strengthen coordination across fragmented programme delivery, and treat programme country inclusion not as charitable consultation but as an operational requirement. Small shifts in how decisions are made, where resources are allocated and whose voice is heard can accumulate into meaningful redistributions of power.

For those committed to multilateral peace and development, the brief is important precisely because it refuses the false choice between institutional realism and structural ambition. It recognises that the current system is durable and resistant to change. It also demonstrates that durability does not mean immutability. The Secretary-General occupies a unique position to convene, name problems and propose sequenced shifts in practice. Whether that role is exercised for incremental adjustment or for visible realignment of power depends on the strategic choices made in the first 1000 days, when institutional attention is high and political mandates are fresh.

The launch event captured something essential about the moment. Participants acknowledged that the system is ungovernable as presently designed while recognising that accepting that reality is not the same as accepting its inevitability. The brief itself can serve as an anchor for what peace advocates and policymakers need to argue in the months ahead: that the next Secretary-General should treat governance reform not as a technical fix but as a peace imperative. When multilateral institutions are trusted by the countries they purport to serve, they become more effective instruments of prevention and cooperation. When they are experienced as vehicles for donor capture, they become part of the problem they claim to address.

If the next Secretary-General treats governance reform as a peace imperative rather than a technical exercise, the UN development system can begin to rebuild the legitimacy it is steadily losing among the countries and communities it exists to serve.

Related articles from this author:
The Secretary-General This Moment Demands
From Reform to Reinvention: Reimagining the United Nations for the 21st Century
The UN’s Withering Vine: A US Retreat from Global Governance

Jordan Ryan is a member of the Toda International Research Advisory Council (TIRAC) at the Toda Peace Institute, a Senior Consultant at the Folke Bernadotte Academy and former UN Assistant Secretary-General with extensive experience in international peacebuilding, human rights, and development policy. His work focuses on strengthening democratic institutions and international cooperation for peace and security. Ryan has led numerous initiatives to support civil society organisations and promote sustainable development across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. He regularly advises international organisations and governments on crisis prevention and democratic governance.

This article was issued by the Toda Peace Institute and is being republished from the original with their permission.

IPS UN Bureau

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Sustainable beekeeping is increasingly recognized as a key asset for not only farming communities but for sustainable agrifood systems, the environment and the global community as a whole. Credit: Farai Shawn Matiashe/IPS

By Thanawat Tiensin
ROME, May 19 2026 (IPS)

For thousands of years, humans have kept bees. Beekeeping is a key agricultural activity, yet its full potential remains largely unrealized. Beekeeping produces far more than honey and generates far more income than many have chosen to acknowledge.

The contribution of bees to global agrifood systems runs to hundreds of billions of dollars annually, a figure that should anchor national policy and investment decisions, not appear as a footnote in environmental reports.

The case for investing more substantially in sustainable beekeeping and pollinator conservation can be and has been made at the farm level. When farming practices actively support pollinator health through crop diversification, reduced agrochemical use, and biodiversity-friendly habitat management, the results are measurable and can be significant.

As an example, in cashew cultivation in South India, agroecological farming practices increased the abundance of insect pollinators visiting flowers by nearly 400 percent, with yields trending substantially higher as a result.

Beekeeping generally requires relatively low capital investment, generates income across multiple product streams, and is well-suited to the resource constraints of small-scale producers

Cashew, like many high-value crops, suffers acute yield losses in the absence of pollinators, losses that better conservation of bees and other pollinators can directly address.

Beekeeping generally requires relatively low capital investment, generates income across multiple product streams, and is well-suited to the resource constraints of small-scale producers. In increasingly fragile and climate-stressed environments where other agricultural activities face growing uncertainty, beekeeping has shown unusual resilience.

Of the roughly 25,000 bee species on Earth, only 8 to 11 are honeybees. Around those species, humanity has built very advanced management systems, refined over millennia and now increasingly integrated with modern science. Many countries across the world have made beekeeping a pillar of rural livelihoods, and in 2017 World Bee Day officially entered the United Nations calendar.

Celebrated each year on 20 May, it marks the birthday of Slovenian Anton Janša, a founding figure of modern apiculture. We have made great strides in raising awareness of the importance of bees and other pollinators and the role they play in our lives and now we need to step up our efforts.

One important action that can promote sustainable beekeeping and realize its true economic and food security potential is to recognize bees as a valuable natural asset. When governments include beekeeping in national agriculture investments and support its potential to generate income, they can promote fair and just development of domestic value chains for a range of hive products.

This enables beekeepers to earn higher prices in international markets by producing honey that is sustainable and traceable. FAO’s “Good Beekeeping Practices for Sustainable Apiculture” provide guidelines for sustainable colony management, integrated pest and disease control, habitat stewardship, and the value chain development that allows beekeepers to generate returns beyond raw honey.

These practices, which have been tested across developing country contexts can raise both hive productivity and beekeeper income.

Another key action is to promote sustainable beekeeping through improving extension services, input subsidies, and training programs; these should be designed to help small-scale producers to integrate beekeeping into their production systems, capturing both the pollination benefits and the income from hive products that conventional farm support systems often overlook.

A further and equally important action is to ensure that benefits from beekeeping are accessible and reach those who need them most. Women and young people represent a growing segment of the global beekeeping community and have a lot to gain from having diversified income sources. When they can access training, equipment, and markets on equal terms, productivity and hive health have shown to improve.

The partnership between humans and bees has lasted for thousands of years and continues to evolve.

From the forests of Ethiopia to the pine slopes of Turkey, from the clover fields of Argentina to the manuka hillsides of New Zealand; farmers and beekeepers have long understood what agricultural policy is only beginning to recognize: that sustainable beekeeping and pollinator conservation can be a key asset for not only farming communities but for sustainable agrifood systems, the environment and the global community as a whole.

Thanawat Tiensin is the Assistant Director-General, Director, Animal Production and Health Division, FAO

Non-communicable diseases such as heart disease and cancer account for nearly three-quarters of all deaths worldwide. Credit: Shutterstock

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, May 19 2026 (IPS)

With death being an inevitable outcome, a fundamental question that crosses the minds of practically everyone is: “How am I going to die?”

A simple response is that you will likely die from one of the top causes of mortality. A more precise answer is that “it depends” to a large extent on your personal circumstances.

For example, if you are under the age of 45, the most likely cause of death statistically in many countries is unintentional injuries or accidents. If you are a young adult aged 18 to 29, in addition to motor vehicle accidents, other major causes of death include suicide and homicide. If you are an older adult over the age of 65, you are most likely going to die from the major causes of death for that age group, which are heart disease and cancer.

Various important personal circumstances contribute to your eventual demise, including age, sex, genetics, country of residence, medical condition, family status, occupation, income, healthcare access, and lifestyle choices. These lifestyle choices may involve smoking, alcohol consumption, drug use, diet, and exercise.

Before delving into personal circumstances and the leading causes of death globally and in various countries that ultimately end human lives, it is important to recognize the positive news regarding survival rates and the increase in human life expectancy.

In recent years, the average length of human lives has significantly increased. More people across the globe are surviving to older ages than ever before.

Marked increases in human survival rates have occurred at virtually every age, resulting in more people living longer lives. Additionally, a wide range of diseases, ailments, and conditions have either been eliminated or significantly reduced.

Life expectancies at various ages have shown significant increases worldwide. For example, the global life expectancy at birth has risen from 46 years in 1950 to 74 years today and at age 65, life expectancy has increased from 11 years in 1950 to 18 years today (Table 1).

Source: United Nations.

Additionally, infant and childhood death rates have significantly decreased with more children surviving to adulthood. For instance, the world’s infant mortality rate has dropped from 138 deaths per 1,000 births in 1950 to today’s 26 deaths per 1,000 births.

Moreover, remarkable medical advancements have been made in extending the lives of older men and women since 1950. For example, the number of centenarians worldwide has increased from nearly 15,000 in 1950 to about 672,000 in 2026.

Returning to the question posed at the beginning, “How am I going to die?”, the major causes of death for the world’s population of 8 billion provide some general background.

Globally, the main causes of death are non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which are illnesses that are not contagious. These NCDs account for about three-quarters of all deaths worldwide.

However, infectious diseases, such as pneumonia, influenza, diarrheal diseases, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, COVID, and malaria, still exist and are responsible for approximately 14% of all deaths.

According to recent trends by the World Health Organization (WHO) the leading cause of death globally is ischemic heart disease. It is followed by stroke, cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), lower respiratory, and neonatal conditions (Table 2).

Source: World Health Organization (WHO).

In 2021, COVID-19 was a leading cause of death, ranking after ischemic heart disease and preceding stroke. By 2025, COVID-19 had dropped significantly in ranking, yet it still remains a significant contributor to respiratory mortality.

Analyzing the major causes of death among various age groups in different countries provides additional valuable insights. These data offer a glimpse into potential answers to the question of how I am going to die, based on specific age groups within different countries.

For individuals aged 15 to 34, the primary causes of death in many countries, especially more developed ones, are suicide, accidents, and cancer.

A particularly troubling global trend development in mortality is the fact that suicide ranks as the third leading cause of death among individuals aged 15 to 29. More than 720,000 people die by suicide every year

In Japan, for example, suicide is the leading cause of death for individuals aged 15 to 34, followed by accidents and cancer. Among older adults, cancer and heart disease are the main causes of death. Recent data also show that mortality from senility (or “old age”) has rapidly increased to become the third leading cause of death among elderly adults.

Similarly in the United States, the causes of death vary significantly by age. For young adults (ages 15 to 24), the main causes of death are unintentional injuries such as motor vehicle crashes and drug overdoses, followed by suicide and homicide. Among the elderly, the primary causes of death are heart disease, cancer, stroke, and chronic lower respiratory diseases.

In many more developed countries, such as Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and South Korea, the leading causes of death for those aged 15 to 34 are suicide, road accidents, and cancer. Among adults aged 65 and older, like in the United States, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and chronic lower respiratory diseases are the main causes of death.

Turning to less developed countries, the leading cause of death in China is cardiovascular disease, accounting for over 44% of deaths in 2024. Among children and adolescents, the leading causes of death are suicide, road traffic accidents, and drowning while among older persons aged 60 and above, cancer and cardiovascular diseases are major factors. Unintentional falls are also a significant and growing cause of injury related deaths in this older age group.

Similarly, ischemic heart disease is the leading cause of death in India, accounting for nearly one-third of all deaths. Among those aged 15 to 24, suicide is the leading cause of death, followed by road traffic injuries. For children, infectious diseases such as diarrheal diseases and intestinal infections are major factors contributing to death.

In contrast to China and India, the leading causes of death in Africa are dominated by communicable diseases. The major causes of death, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, include lower respiratory infections, malaria, diarrheal diseases, and HIV/AIDS. Neonatal conditions and maternal mortality also significantly contribute to premature death.

In Nigeria, for example, the leading causes of death are dominated by malaria, lower respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, and tuberculosis. Heart disease, stroke, and HIV/AIDS are also among the important causes of death. However similar to China, India, and many other countries worldwide, road traffic accidents are among the top causes of death among young adults.

Among the countries of South America, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death, followed by cancer and respiratory diseases. Together these three account for over two-thirds of deaths in this major region.

Suicide is the leading cause of death among young people in several South American countries, including Chile, Ecuador, Guyana, and Suriname. Additionally, in many countries in South America, such as Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, homicide and road traffic accidents are the major causes of death among individuals aged 15 to 24.

A particularly troubling global trend development in mortality is the fact that suicide ranks as the third leading cause of death among individuals aged 15 to 29. More than 720,000 people die by suicide every year. This number, coupled with the alarming increasing trend, has elevated suicide to a major public health concern in many countries.

In conclusion, while virtually everyone acknowledges the inevitability of death, many occasionally wonder “How am I going to die?” Providing a precise answer to this question is challenging and depends on various personal circumstances, including age, sex, genetics, income, medical conditions, country of residence, and lifestyle choices.

Some of these circumstances, such as age and genetics, are unchangeable. However, lifestyle choices that impact the cause of death, such as smoking, alcohol and drug consumption, diet, and exercise, can be modified or improved. Making positive changes in these areas can often lead to a longer and healthier life.

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

The World Bank Group is consulting publicly on whether to merge its three independent complaint mechanisms. This note explains what is being proposed and how civil society organizations can participate in the consultation.

By Danny Bradlow and David Hunter
PRETORIA, South Africa / WASHINGTON DC, USA , May 19 2026 (IPS)

The World Bank made history in 1994 by creating the Inspection Panel, the first independent accountability mechanism, at any international organisation. Its function is to investigate complaints from communities who allege they were harmed because the bank failed to comply with its own policies and procedures.

By establishing the three-member Inspection Panel, the World Bank showed support for a democrati Soth Arica/c vision of international governance based on the rule of law and the rights of individuals to take part in development decisions that affect their lives.

To date, the panel has received 186 complaints. Fifty-two have been from Africa. They involved projects in 56 countries, including 26 African countries. The complaints have raised issues such as the World Bank’s failure to comply with its own policies regarding public consultations, environmental and social impact assessments and involuntary resettlement in the projects that it funds.

The board has expanded the bank’s accountability process to include both compliance reviews and dispute resolution processes. Today, the World Bank Group has three independent accountability mechanisms:

• the Inspection Panel, which focuses on compliance reviews in public sector projects
• a separate dispute resolution mechanism for public sector projects
• the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, which offers both compliance reviews and dispute resolution services for private sector projects, primarily funded by the International Finance Corporation.

These accountability mechanisms have operated with mixed success. There have been some wins, for example in a case in Uganda involving risks for women and children associated with the building of a road. And some failures. An example is the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman finding against the International Finance Corporation for noncompliance in a coal fired power plant in India that was ignored.

We were involved, as legal academics and working with civil society organisations, in the establishment of the Inspection Panel. We have been following the activities of these independent accountability mechanisms for over 30 years. We are concerned about their future.

The World Bank Group is seeking to become a “bigger and better” bank. This involves promoting more collaboration between the five entities that make up the group. It is doing so under the banner of “One WBG”. This is an important development because the World Bank is the only global multilateral development bank. It offers developing countries both financial and advisory services. For example, it is the biggest funder of development projects in Africa.

The increasing collaboration between the different institutions in the bank raises concerns about which of their policies are applicable to a particular project. It also raises the issue of whether the bank should integrate the group’s independent accountability mechanisms so that there is no question about which mechanism is applicable to the project.

We believe that resolving this issue offers the bank’s board an opportunity to improve the structure of its independent accountability mechanisms and their contribution to the bank’s operations.

The dangers

The board appointed a two-person task force in September 2025 to advise it on the feasibility of integrating the three organisations in a way that does not reduce their independence, accessibility and effectiveness. The task force prepared a thorough and well-reasoned draft report.

The report was finalised after public consultations and is being considered by the board. It shows that integration of the mechanisms is a feasible, but complex exercise. The existing mechanisms have different operating cultures, policies and practices and human resource needs. The report describes various models for integrating the existing mechanisms.

The report also demonstrates that if mishandled, the exercise could result in a less independent and less effective accountability mechanism. To avoid this risk, we propose that the board adopt a model consisting of two separate independent accountability mechanisms. One to cover compliance reviews across the entire group. The other to cover dispute resolution across the group. This will enable both functions to operate independently and efficiently.

Our proposal raises four issues.

First, it is important that each mechanism is independent of the bank’s management. Each mechanism must have sufficient resources to undertake effective compliance reviews or dispute resolutions. Their processes must also be robust enough to result in meaningful outcomes for the complainants.

Second, the new compliance mechanism must retain a three-member panel appointed by and reporting to the bank’s board. The panel should have a permanent chair serving a six-year term. The chair must have the authority to decide which cases need the panel’s attention. The other two panel members should also serve staggered six-year terms.

A three-person panel allows for some geographic, technical and experiential diversity. Gaining a consensus among the panel members improves the quality and increases the credibility of the panel reports. A three-member panel is better able to withstand pressure from the bank’s management and other stakeholders than is a mechanism headed by one person.

Third, the dispute resolution mechanism should be headed by an experienced dispute resolution professional at the vice-president level. This official should report to the president of the bank. Our view is that this arrangement could encourage the institution to play a more proactive role in resolving disputes.

To ensure that the unit has some independence it should also have regularly scheduled meetings with the board. The head of the unit should also be able to request a meeting with the board whenever they deem it necessary and without requiring the prior approval of the bank’s president.

Fourth, the process of consolidating accountability mechanisms will be complex. Consequently, the board should first decide on the basic structure: a compliance review unit headed by a three-member panel and a separate dispute resolution unit headed by a senior professional.

It should delay any decisions on the policies, principles and practices of the mechanisms until it receives advice from a multi-stakeholder working group that includes external stakeholders and management and is co-chaired by one person from each of the units being merged.

An opportunity to fix things

The bank has the opportunity to strengthen its development mission. The changes it makes should be designed to:

• help make the bank a better institution that supports higher quality projects
• make the bank a learning institution that openly accepts criticism and looks to implement solutions
• ensure it becomes an institution that recognises that people affected by bank-funded projects are stakeholders in its operations who may be forced to risk their well-being for the greater good.

Source: The Conversation Africa May 17, 2026

Daniel Bradlow is Professor/Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria; David Hunter is Professor Emeritus, The American University Washington College of Law, American University.

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Credit: Emmanuel Herman/Reuters via Gallo Images

By Hannah Wheatley, Joanna Makhlouf and Taís Siqueira
BAGAMOYO, Tanzania / BEIRUT, Lebanon / WASHINGTON D.C., May 18 2026 (IPS)

In an era when civil society funding is in decline, it’s time to rebel against a broken system.

Today, too much is being asked from the people already doing the most. In a time of multiple and connected global crises – of climate, conflict, democracy, disinformation, global governance, human rights and inclusion – and in a context of intensifying civic space restrictions and collapsing funding, funders and the intermediary organisations that distribute resources somehow expect frontline organisations to transform systemic injustices that have built up over centuries. At the same time, these groups are expected to keep meeting inflexible targets, writing flawless reports and keeping their teams emotionally and physically afloat.

As governments, international organisations, investors, philanthropists, civil society and business leaders meet at the Global Partnerships Conference on the future of international development, it’s time to do things differently.

Let’s stop asking local leaders to transform their communities before they’ve had space to heal. Let’s stop training grassroots organisations to become international clones. Let’s stop intermediaries replicating burnout culture.

No single organisation can undo the long legacy of colonialism or the systemic problems of global capitalism. And they shouldn’t have to. The role of the civil society ecosystem must be to build and protect space, redistribute power and resources and, most of all, stop transferring institutional pressure downwards. If we truly trust local civil society, we must also trust its limits. That means intermediaries must stand their ground with funders, set realistic expectations and champion the right to do less when circumstances demand it.

At CIVICUS’s Local Leadership Labs – an initiative to tackle the barriers that get in the way of local leadership of development – partners often report feeling compelled to deliver ambitious workplans that involve them reaching every district, leading multiple initiatives and facilitating extensive community engagements, even as civic space is closing around them. Driven by passion and the need to prove their worth in a competitive ecosystem, many have overextended without realising the toll on their wellbeing and sustainability.

Burnout is not just about long hours. It stems from impossible expectations in unsafe, high-pressure contexts. Civil society is striving to stretch every grant dollar, prove its worth at every reporting cycle and ensure the survival of communities. In restrictive civic space conditions, these pressures are compounded by harassment, intimidation, surveillance and violence.

The result is a constant feeling of not doing enough, even when the demands are structurally impossible. Over time, this erodes morale, health and leadership sustainability.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, funders proved that another way was possible. They provided unrestricted funding and offered flexibility and simplified reporting. Trust was extended. Partnerships were strengthened. But that willingness to experiment has not lasted.

What must change

It must be recognised that in these conditions, scaling back is not failure. It is how movements endure.

We have seen that investing in healing and reflection is not a luxury. It is what sustains movements. At Local Leadership Labs, partners working with survivors of state violence realised they could not move forward without first addressing exhaustion and trauma. Their care-centred approach showed that the process itself can be the outcome. Taking time for healing and thoughtful collaboration produces more sustainable, transformational results.

This is what the civil society ecosystem should support: not chasing impossible targets, but creating conditions for dignity, reflection and resilience.

Addressing burnout requires more than acknowledgement. It calls for rethinking about how support is structured and how expectations are set. Funders and intermediaries can help break the cycle by:

1. Budgeting time and priority for healing
Leaders are often asked to deliver systemic change while carrying unaddressed trauma. Without space for healing, burnout is inevitable. Intermediaries can normalise pacing, integrate healing into workplans and advocate with funders for timelines that reflect reality.

2. Showing funders the way
Funders need guidance on becoming more adaptable to intensifying civic space conditions and contexts of high volatility. Intermediaries can convene learning spaces where funders reflect on how flexibility and responsiveness protect communities and sustain movements. They can also challenge extractive, funder-driven processes and advocate for spaces where local civil society can lead and influence on its own terms.

3. Bridging, connecting and humanising
Behind funders, intermediaries and frontline civil society are people, all under institutional pressure. Intermediaries can help in both directions, by shielding local partners from unrealistic demands while working with funders to develop an understanding of what’s achievable. By cultivating empathy, they can replace transactional directives with reciprocal accountability, unlocking collaborations that go beyond the extractive.

In many contexts, civil society is holding the line in the face of authoritarianism, even worse attacks on human rights and still stronger repression. The enemies of democracy and human rights thrive when those defending freedoms and demanding social justice burn out. When forced to compete for scarce resources, organisations try to over-deliver to prove their worth, further deepening stress and accelerating exhaustion.

In this context, supporting the wellbeing of local civil society is not optional. It is central to protecting the energy that drives activism. Funders and intermediaries must pause, reflect and reset expectations. If we create space for healing, rest and resilience, movements will survive the current storm, and emerge equipped to resist, transform and win.

Taís Siqueira is Local Leadership Labs Coordinator at CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation. Hannah Wheatley is CIVICUS’s former Data Analyst and Joanna Makhlouf is a former member of the Local Leadership Labs implementation team.

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Credit: Africa Center for Strategic Studies

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, May 18 2026 (IPS)

Under the auspices of the Faculty of Journalism of Lomonosov Moscow State University, the Russian-African Club, in late April, held its IV International Forum of Journalists from Russia and Africa, which marked another historical milestone. According to an established annual tradition, discussions were focused on aspects of the media, its structure, current performance, information contents, and challenges as well as future perspectives.

The shared common purpose was also to critically review whether the media, both in Africa and in the Russian Federation, have played its role in strengthening bilateral relations, and promoted the important goals set out during the first and second Russia-Africa summits. Why Media?

As largely expected, there were in-depth discussions. There were also controversies over the dynamics of media performance, with prominent participating experts raising narratives and criticisms, in the context of the forum’s theme: “Mass Media of Russia and Africa: The Role in Strengthening Friendship and Solidarity among the Peoples of the World.”

Elena Vartanova, dean of the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University, pointed to the fact that the media has to build diverse partnerships between Russia and Africa, further emphasized the importance of intercultural dialogue in creating a unified information space amid the complex global transformations of the modern world.

Yaroslav Skvortsov, dean of the Faculty of International Journalism at MGIMO, spoke about his recent unique trip to South Africa, noting that South Africa and the continent as a whole remain a “media blind spot” for Russian media, just as Russia receives very little coverage for African audiences.

The expert emphasized the need for serious, thoughtful, and in-depth reporting work in this area. The necessity to explore more opportunities in building strong ties, deepening the understanding of geopolitical developments, while fostering dialogue among the continent’s public.

Underlining Reasons

The media performance gap between Russia and Africa stems from overwhelming dominance of Western media outlets, a little of direct African reporting in Russia (including a lack of accredited African journalists), and limited institutional investment. These are some of the reasons highlighted during the discussions by an African studies journalist and columnist for the ITAR-TASS Analytical Center, Oleg Osipov, Timur Shafir, Secretary of the Union of Journalists of Russia and Head of the International Department of the Union of Journalists of Russia, and Louis Gowend, chairman of the Commission for Relations with African Diaspora and the Media of the Russian-African Club of Moscow State University, and president of the African Business Club.

Oleg Osipov, unreservedly, expressed concern about information deficit in Russian and African journalism, emphasized the urgent need to expand the network of Russian correspondent offices across the African continent, as well as getting a few experienced African media practitioners to Russia. This is especially important in today’s reality, as geopolitics heightens in the world.

Assessing current global trends, Russia needs to expand its presence in all spheres, and the media space is a crucial component of this process, the Russian expert believes. But for Timur Shafir, the thoughts were on the fact that it was especially important now to find common grounds in the mutual perceptions of the peoples and cultures of Russia and Africa through media communication.

In addition, he further emphasized that the media landscape is currently undergoing significant transformations, with technologies, audiences, and means of communication changing. Therefore, journalism is currently an area of particular responsibility and professional integrity, and direct dialogue between journalists in Russia and Africa has become crucial now.

Search for New Approach

The IV International Forum of Journalists from Russia and Africa, was considered as the new dawn, turning a new chapter with suggestion and paving the path for improving media performance in both regions. The participants offered a deafening applause to this position. The speakers expressed confidence that the Forum will serve as a starting point for many new joint initiatives.

According to Louis Gowend, the RusAfroMedia media platform—an information resource, which was created by the Moscow State University RA Club in 2022, for instance has to undergo serious facelifting, by strengthening cooperation and to improve the image of Russia-Africa cooperation.

This platform provides all the conditions for a free and frank exchange of opinions, relevant useful information, and the promotion of initiatives in all areas of cooperation between Russia and Africa. The speaker expressed concern over the fact that Russian journalists are much less active on the RusAfroMedia platform than their African counterparts and urged those present to make greater use of this resource.

In his contribution, Alexander Berdnikov, executive secretary of the Russian-African Club, distinctively noted that, at a time when new development trends are unfolding in the world, journalism and the entire media sphere are literally becoming a battlefield for information wars and special operations.

The speaker reminded that the Forum, being held ahead of the Third Russia-Africa Summit scheduled for October 2026, indicates how crucial for participants to develop solutions and initiatives for cooperation in journalism between Russia and Africa, and which will form the basis for practical recommendations in preparation for the forthcoming African leaders’ Summit.

Preserving Traditional Practice

Lyubov Sakhno, head of the Protocol and African Section of the TASS International Relations Department, represented Russia’s oldest news agency and spoke about ITAR-TASS’s consistent efforts to provide African media with foreign-language news feeds. But then, Russian media expansion faces limited budget constraints.

According to her, over 400 media outlets in Africa use these resources. She also discussed the organization’s media forum, which traditionally takes place on the sidelines of the Russia-Africa Summit.

Sergey Grachev, deputy director of the Media Research and Analysis Directorate at Rossiya Segodnya International News Agency, agreed with his colleagues that today we are facing unprecedented pressure from Western media. African media, most often, depends on Western sources, which Russian officials argue creates a “vacuum” filled by biased or hostile information.

Despite this, Russian media projects in Africa continue to develop, presenting analytical models of Sputnik’s presence on social media, where it broadcasts in 33 foreign languages.

Editor-in-chief of the African Initiative news agency, Buinta Bembeeva, noted in her discussions that Africa has become noticeably, and more prominent in Russian news in recent years. The speaker discussed the African Initiative’s experience in Africa. The agency is noticeably represented in many African countries through cooperation agreements with local media outlets.

The agency also collaborates with bloggers and organizes a journalism school for young African journalists. This close, on-the-ground, direct collaboration with African media outlets is key to achieving full-scale journalistic activity.

Contributions from Nigerian Academics

Professor Babatunde Joseph, Kaduna State University, spoke about using strengthened strategic communications to strengthen partnerships and unite the cultures of African countries. He agreed with his Russian colleagues on the need to expand the presence of Russian news agencies in Africa and African media in Russia. The expert cited the example of a well-known British radio station that broadcasts in five languages in Nigeria alone: Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Pidgin English (called “Najin” there), and plain English. “This is a successful strategy,” the professor was forced to note.

Professor Mohammad Bashir Ali, Kaduna State University (Nigeria), leading the Nigerian delegation to the Forum, discussed at length, the traditional role of media in promoting economic and entrepreneurial cooperation between Russia and Africa. Despite the multiple challenges posed by the complex international environment in both Africa and Russia, there is enormous potential for opportunity in this area. He concluded that greater consolidation in the media sphere is essential.

Professors Yushau Ibrahim Ango and Ayodele Babatunde, both from Kaduna State University, presented a working paper entitled “African Creative Industries and Media Systems in the Context of Digitalization,” analyzing the impact of digital media on entrepreneurship in the Nigerian economy.

The paper, however, concluded that reliance on digital platforms introduces new vulnerabilities, including algorithmic unpredictability, into the economy. This paper contributed to entrepreneurship and media research by theorizing digital platforms as entrepreneurial infrastructure, which has implications for policy, platform governance, and understanding how media shapes economic life in the African context.

Concluding Remarks

Hafiz Basi, chairman of the Youth Projects Commission of the Russian-African Club, seriously echoed the opinion in closing remarks, stating that it is time to change outdated stereotypes that portray Russia and Africa through Soviet political clichés. “We need journalism that brings people together, not further distances,” Hafiz Basi emphasized. He also noted that the lack of accredited African journalists in Russia remains a pressing issue.

Meanwhile, African media outlets write about Russia primarily in political terms, failing to reveal the true depth of Russian culture and the soul of the Russian people. In his opinion, the Russia-Africa Journalists Forum, once more, demonstrated its importance, which discusses the most pressing issues, prospects, and strategies for strengthening media cooperation between Russia and Africa.

This is in reality, important during the time of rapid geopolitical changes, in response to the aggressive rhetoric of Western countries and their satellites, public diplomacy, soft power, and peacekeeping journalism which are becoming increasingly relevant careful analysis and take effective measures in building a solid foundation for Russian-African dialogue.

Kester Kenn Klomegah focuses on current geopolitical changes, foreign relations and economic development-related questions in Africa with external countries. Most of his well-resourced articles are reprinted in several reputable foreign media.

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Credit: The African Development Bank Group
 
Excerpts from remarks by Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund (IMF), at the Africa Forward Summit, Nairobi, May 11-12.

By Kristalina Georgieva
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 18 2026 (IPS)

It is very appropriate that this Africa Forward Summit is being held in Kenya. Two weeks ago, a Kenyan marathon runner, Sabastian Sawe, did what had been considered impossible: by running a marathon in under two hours! What we have set ourselves here is also a marathon—and we must show the same resilience and perseverance that Mr. Sawe did.

Because Africa is not just another region. It is the future; it is where the world will acquire its next growth engine.

And it must do so in a more complex and uncertain global environment, when imbalances are growing yet again. Export-led economies reduce the space for Africa to integrate into global supply chains. At the other end, countries with large deficits absorb a disproportionately large share of financial resources, limiting the availability of capital for the rest of the world.

But the most dramatic imbalance is in demographics—between aging and youthful societies, with capital mostly in the first group and growth potential in the second.

What should the countries of Africa do to build resilience against a world of more frequent shocks and secure the bright future that this continent so richly deserves?

Kristalina Georgieva

This requires action at home and stepped-up support from Africa’s partners.

At home, building economic and social resilience must be grounded in strong institutions and sound policies, creating the conditions for private sector-led growth. From credible macroeconomic policy to decisive steps against corruption and reforms to slash red tape, countries need to work to win investors’ trust.

Africa also has to speed up trade and economic integration. Just eliminating tariff and non-tariff barriers in line with the continental free trade area can increase income per capita by more than 10 percent—with more purchasing power the continent becomes more competitive.

And Africa must deal decisively with the burden of debt. Restructure or reprofile when debt is unsustainable; avoid non-productive borrowing; and shift the balance from debt to equity as much and as quickly as possible. For this, it is paramount to develop deeper, more diversified capital markets.

Under France’s G7 presidency we have made the issue of global imbalances a priority for our work. Africa benefits when the Fund advocates for fair treatment. To reflect our firm belief in Africa’s growth potential, we have also pursued multiple reforms to expand our support for the continent.

First, we put our money where our mouth is. We have vastly expanded our concessional lending for Africa, from $8 billion pre-COVID to $36 billion today. Thanks to the SDR channeling of $109 billion, which President Macron and leaders from Africa championed, we can deploy substantially more concessional lending. To put it simply, thanks to the SDR channeling we can do more as ODA does less.

And we make sure our financing unlocks support from our development partners and helps attract private funding.

Second, we reformed how we do our programs—as a genuine partnership with our members. We don’t just talk the talk on country ownership; we walk the walk—we listen, we adapt, we show flexibility when warranted.

There are many good examples across Africa of homegrown reform programs that we support, of countries maturing in their policy choices—Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Morocco, Rwanda, Zambia, to name a few.

And yes, good policies pay off. Closing half the gap vis-à-vis emerging market economies in areas like regulation and governance can raise sub-Saharan Africa’s output by up to 20 percent within a decade.

Third, we pursue reforms of the international debt architecture, with our efforts extending to the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable, our new debt playbook for country authorities, the London Alliance, and proactive use of our good offices to help forge consensus.

Lastly, at the IMF we are delivering more voice and representation for Africa in our governance and resource allocation. We have established a third African chair at our Board and a strong focus on the continent in our work.

Our members are committed to addressing underrepresentation in the 17th quota review. And we work with regional institutions—the African Union, the African Development Bank, the Economic Commission for Africa—to ensure their deep local knowledge helps us better serve our members.

In this world of rapid transformations and repetitive exogenous shocks, there is much that individual countries cannot control. But you can, as they say here in Kenya, keep your own house “spick and span.”

You control your policies, you define your future, and your value proposition—which we will help amplify to the relevant audiences, the rating agencies included.

With the people of Africa in the front seat and we, as partners, firmly with them, I am confident that this continent will achieve its golden destiny.

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Farmers in Bangladesh. Credit: Heifer International
 
As conflict in the Middle East disrupts critical fuel and fertilizer supply routes, smallholder farmers across Asia are once again caught in the crossfire of global shocks. This piece argues that repeated crises are exposing a deeper structural flaw in agri-food systems—Overdependence on External Inputs. It presents a compelling case for regenerative agriculture as a pathway to resilient food systems in Asia.

By Neena Joshi
UTTAR PRADESH, India, May 15 2026 (IPS)

The latest shock to global food systems, triggered by conflict in the Middle East and disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz, has once again exposed a fragile truth: the world’s food systems remain highly vulnerable to external shocks.

For Asia, especially South Asia, where agriculture underpins millions of livelihoods, the consequences are immediate and severe. Rising fuel prices, supply chain disruptions, and limited access to fertilizers are pushing already fragile systems to the brink.

The Strait of Hormuz is not just a geopolitical chokepoint; it is a lifeline for fuel and agricultural inputs across Asia. A significant share of fertilizers and their raw materials, including natural gas, transit through or originate from this route.

For countries such as India, Bangladesh, and Nepal, where agriculture employs between 38 and over 60 percent of the workforce, this dependency creates systemic risk. When supply chains falter, the effects cascade quickly: input costs rise, planting cycles are disrupted, and farmer incomes shrink.

Solar panels installed in a farm in Bangladesh. Credit: Heifer International

Even if shipping routes reopen, recovery will be slow

Damage to energy infrastructure and continued geopolitical uncertainty mean price volatility and supply constraints can persist for months. For smallholder farmers, this creates a dual crisis. Exporting produce becomes difficult due to logistical bottlenecks, while fuel shortages hamper domestic distribution. At the same time, the next cropping cycle looms, with essential fertilizers either unavailable or unaffordable.

This is not an isolated disruption. From the COVID-19 pandemic to the war in Ukraine, global shocks are becoming more frequent and interconnected. Each crisis compounds the last, pushing smallholder farmers, the backbone of global food production, into deeper uncertainty. The question is no longer whether disruptions will occur, but how prepared our systems are to withstand them.

At the heart of the problem is overdependence on external, input-intensive systems, chemical fertilizers, fossil fuels, and long, fragile supply chains. Reducing this dependence is central to building resilience.

Regenerative Agriculture and Renewable Energy Offer a Compelling Pathway Forward.

At its core, regenerative agriculture restores soil health, enhances biodiversity, improves water retention, and reduces reliance on synthetic inputs. Practices such as crop diversification, organic soil enrichment, reduced tillage, and integrated pest management shift farming from an extractive to a restorative model.

By rebuilding natural soil fertility, these approaches reduce dependence on external inputs. Instead of relying heavily on urea in rice cultivation, regenerative systems promote nutrient cycling and biological nitrogen fixation through legumes, alongside the use of compost and manure to strengthen soil organic matter and ensure a steady, natural nutrient supply.

Integrating renewable energy further strengthens resilience. Solar-powered irrigation replaces fuel-based inputs with clean, reliable energy, lowering operational costs and improving water-use efficiency—especially critical during periods of disruption.

The evidence base for these approaches is both growing and compelling. In Bangladesh, multiple studies show that solar irrigation consistently outperforms diesel systems, delivering higher returns, improving food security, and reducing irrigation costs by 20–50 percent, while significantly boosting profitability (Rana, 2021; Buisson, 2024; Sunny, 2023; Sarker, 2025).

Research also shows that bio-based inputs like compost, biochar, and green manure can partially replace synthetic fertilizers, often without yield loss, while improving soil health (Naher, 2021; Ferdous, 2023; Behera, 2025).

Regenerative Agriculture is Not Just an Environmental Solution—It is an Economic One

By reducing dependence on volatile external inputs such as chemical fertilizers and fossil fuels, regenerative agriculture shields farmers from global price shocks while improving long-term productivity and profits.

Emerging evidence from Nepal and India reinforces this trend: while yields generally remain stable, reduced input costs significantly increase farm profitability (Magar, 2022; Dhakal, 2022; Berger, 2025).

A broader analysis by the Observer Research Foundation (2025) finds that although yields may dip slightly during transition, most cases report higher yields over time, alongside improved income stability driven by lower input dependence.

Similar trends are being observed globally, reinforcing that regenerative approaches can deliver both resilience and profitability across diverse farming systems (link).

Importantly, these outcomes are already visible on the ground in South Asia. Through programs led by Heifer International, smallholder farmers are adopting regenerative and climate-smart practices that reduce costs, improve yields, and strengthen resilience.

In Bangladesh’s Jashore district, for instance, women farmers organized into cooperatives have reduced irrigation costs, improved productivity, and strengthened market access through solar irrigation, organic soil management, and collective action.

As one farmer, Shirin Akter, shares: “Adopting climate-smart practices and pooling resources through my cooperative allowed me to grow diverse crops. When drought hit, I still had harvests to sell, and my cooperative helped me recover quickly.”

For farmers like Shirin, these shifts are transformative, turning vulnerability into resilience through diversified systems, lower input dependence, and stronger collective support. Similar models in Nepal show how regenerative, community-based approaches can reduce resource pressure while improving incomes.

Scaling this Transition Requires Action Beyond the Farm

To transition to a resilient and sustainable food system, a multi-stakeholder approach is essential. Policymakers should realign incentives to support sustainable practices and reduce dependence on imported inputs. Financial institutions and insurers should recognize the lower risk profiles of regenerative systems.

Businesses must embed sustainability into core decisions, prioritizing sourcing from farmers adopting regenerative practices and building longer-term, stable supply relationships. At the same time, marketing teams can shape consumer demand by communicating the value of sustainably produced food. Together, these shifts can align supply chains and markets in support of more resilient food systems.

The stakes are high. The World Food Programme warns that roughly 45 million more people could be pushed into hunger if current disruptions persist, adding to the 318 million people already food insecure.

We cannot continue rebuilding fragile food systems after every shock. We must redesign them. Regenerative agriculture offers a pathway to reduce dependence on volatile external inputs, restore ecological balance, and build resilience where it matters most—at the farm level.

To replenish what has been used up is not just an environmental necessity—it is the foundation of more secure, equitable, and resilient food systems across Asia.

Neena Joshi is the Senior Vice President for Asia Programs at Heifer International. With over 20 years of experience, she leads initiatives to build inclusive, sustainable agrifood systems and empower smallholder farmers, especially women and youth, across Asia.

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Opening plenary session, INC 5.2 of the global plastics negotiations, Palais des Nations, Geneva, 5 August 2025. Credit: Craig Boljkovac

By Craig Boljkovac
GENEVA, May 14 2026 (IPS)

Norway’s reported decision to review and place on hold aspects of its funding to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) should be understood as more than a budgetary matter. It is a political signal. It is also a warning that the global plastics treaty negotiations may now be approaching the point at which governments must decide whether the present UNEP process can still deliver the treaty they promised, or whether a different pathway is required.

There should be no misunderstanding. Norway has been one of the strongest supporters of an ambitious global plastics treaty. It co-leads, with Rwanda, the High Ambition Coalition. It has also been the largest listed contributor to the INC process, with UNEP’s donor table showing more than USD 7.2 million in contributions received from Norway as of 25 March 2026.

Its apparent decision to pause or review funding therefore cannot be dismissed as marginal. It comes from a country that has invested politically and financially in the process and that has consistently positioned itself on the side of ambition.

That is precisely why the signal matters.

If Norway is now forcing a moment of reflection, it may be doing the negotiations a service. A process that cannot conclude, cannot decide, and cannot distinguish between genuine compromise and procedural obstruction needs more than another round of careful facilitation. It needs political clarity.

The original mandate was not ambiguous. In March 2022, the United Nations Environment Assembly agreed to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment, addressing the full lifecycle of plastics, with the aim of completing the work by the end of 2024. That deadline has passed.

The fifth session in Busan did not produce a treaty. The resumed fifth session in Geneva did not produce a treaty. INC-5.3 in February 2026 was essentially an organizational session, including the election of a new Chair. We are now looking toward INC-5.4, possibly at the end of 2026 or in early 2027.

At some point, the numbering itself approaches the point of absurdity. INC-5.4 is not a normal negotiating milestone. It is the fourth attempt to complete the fifth session of a process that was supposed to conclude in 2024. This is not multilateral patience. It is clearly a form of procedural dysfunction.

None of this is intended as disrespect toward Ambassador Julio Cordano of Chile, the newly elected Chair of the INC. On the contrary, he has taken on one of the most difficult environmental negotiations in recent memory.

He inherited a fractured process, an absurdly complicated text, deeply polarized delegations, and an increasingly visible divide between countries seeking a full-lifecycle treaty and those seeking a narrower waste-management instrument. This is despite his stated and admirable determination to get the treaty “over the line.”

The difficulty, however, is that all indications suggest that the Chair is pursuing a highly neutral, process-oriented path. That is understandable. A Chair in this setting is expected to maintain confidence across the room, including among delegations whose positions are far apart. But neutrality is not the same as progress.

At a certain point, a too-neutral process can become a shield for those who prefer no outcome, or only the weakest possible outcome. And his treatment of observers, despite recent indications that he will take their views more fully into consideration, still leaves much to be desired in a UN system that contends to be as broadly inclusive as possible.

The gap between the Like-Minded countries and the High Ambition Coalition is not a drafting problem. It is a political problem. One group of countries wants an agreement that addresses the full lifecycle of plastics, including production, design, hazardous chemicals, products, trade, waste, finance and implementation.

Another group seeks to confine the treaty largely to downstream waste management, recycling and national discretion. These are not merely different textual preferences. They are different theories of the treaty. The mandate for the negotiations clearly states that the former, not the latter, is what should be pursued.

If the process continues to treat these positions as equally bridgeable, it will continue to reward delay. Consensus can be a tool for legitimacy. But in this process, it is increasingly at risk of becoming a veto mechanism for the least ambitious actors.

The result is predictable: more informal consultations, more revised texts, more late-night sessions, more statements of disappointment, and still no treaty.

This is why Norway’s move deserves, at minimum, a measure of credit. It has introduced a hard political question into a process that has become too comfortable with postponement. If countries are serious about concluding a meaningful treaty within UNEP, they should do so now. Not after another “informal” round. Not after another partial session. Not after INC-5.5 or INC-5.6. Now.

But if they are not prepared to do so, then high-ambition countries should begin preparing an alternative. The obvious precedent is the Ottawa Process on anti-personnel landmines. When the established disarmament machinery could not deliver a comprehensive ban, a coalition of like-minded governments, supported by civil society and international organizations, moved outside the blocked forum and negotiated a treaty among those prepared to act.

The Mine Ban Treaty was opened for signature in Ottawa in December 1997 and was later (after agreement was reached) brought back into the broader UN treaty system.

That example is important because it shows that moving outside a blocked UN process is not necessarily anti-UN. It can be pro-multilateralism. The Ottawa Process did not reject international law; it created it. It did not wait for the least ambitious actors to become ready. It allowed the most ambitious actors to move first and then invited others to join.

A plastics “Ottawa Process” would not need to start from zero. The UNEP negotiations have already generated years of technical work, draft text, legal options, coalition positions, scientific input and stakeholder engagement. A like-minded process could take the strongest elements from that work and use them as the basis for an agreed treaty text.

Participation could be open to all states, but on the basis of a minimum level of ambition: full lifecycle coverage; legally binding obligations; controls on problematic products and chemicals of concern; a necessary focus on supply chains; credible implementation financing; and reporting and review mechanisms.

The next stage should therefore be framed as a final test. INC-5.4 should be treated as the last credible opportunity for the UNEP process to produce a treaty that reflects the mandate adopted in 2022.

If that session produces only another procedural continuation, or a weak agreement stripped of lifecycle measures, production-related provisions, and meaningful controls on chemicals and products, then high-ambition countries should move immediately toward an Ottawa-style diplomatic track.

The plastics crisis is not waiting for the INC process to resolve its internal contradictions. Plastic production continues to grow, in accordance with targets set by like-minded countries. Waste continues to leak into rivers, oceans, soils and food systems. Communities continue to bear the health and environmental costs. The purpose of the negotiations was to respond to that reality, not to create an indefinite process for describing it.

Norway’s funding decision may therefore prove useful if it forces governments to confront the obvious. Either the UNEP negotiations now become serious, political and outcome-oriented, or the countries that are serious about ending plastic pollution should create a pathway of their own.

That would not be a failure of multilateralism. It may be the only way left to save it.

Craig Boljkovac is a Geneva-based Senior Advisor with a Regional Centre for the Basel and Stockholm Conventions, and an independent international environmental consultant with over 35 years of experience in relevant fields. His opinions are his own. He has participated in several INCs and related meetings for the global plastics agreement.

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A residential building in Beirut, Lebanon, lies in ruins. Credit: UNICEF/Fouad Choufany

By Alon Ben-Meir
NEW YORK, May 13 2026 (IPS)

Violence has metastasized into humanity’s baseline condition. Yet international institutions remain paralyzed by vetoes and rivalry, offering hollow declarations while dehumanization becomes normalized. Coordinated action, not gestures, is desperately needed.

Global violence today is metastasizing, not contained; over 180,000 violent events reported globally by the International Institute for Strategic Studies signal a world in which conflict has become a baseline condition rather than an exception. More than 130 armed conflicts now rage—over twice the number of 15 years ago—shattering infrastructure, tearing apart social fabric, and normalizing dehumanization as a political weapon.

Women and children bear the brunt: hundreds of millions live within range of armed clashes, with millions of preventable deaths and lifelong trauma caused not only by bullets and bombs but by hunger, disease, and gender-based violence unleashed by war’s chaos.

Yet the UN system and the world’s democracies appear increasingly paralyzed—trapped in vetoes, geopolitical rivalries, and hollow declarations—offering gestures of concern rather than the coordinated, enforced accountability this modern plague of violence so desperately demands.

The global escalation of violence is a structural crisis rather than an aberration—one that reveals the failure of international institutions, exposing the normalization of suffering across political, economic, and societal dimensions.

The proliferation of violence signals not just an increase in armed confrontations but a breakdown in the very mechanisms meant to constrain conflict, rendering dehumanization a routine tool of power, as demonstrated in the following.

The Philosophical Angle

Violence represents the collapse of legitimate political authority and the rise of impotence masquerading as force. Hannah Arendt’s foundational insight remains essential: “Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course, it ends in power’s disappearance” (On Violence, 1970).

This speaks directly to today’s proliferation of conflicts, which indicate not state strength but institutional failure, where violence substitutes for the consent and legitimacy governments can no longer command. The resort to violence signals the exhaustion of political dialogue and the absence of legitimate power structures capable of resolving disputes.

Economic Disenfranchisement

Economic drivers are critical accelerants of contemporary violence through resource competition, commodity exploitation, and systemic inequality. Slavoj Žižek’s concept of systemic violence captures the pervasive economic roots: “Therein resides the fundamental systemic violence of capitalism, much more uncanny than the direct pre-capitalist socio-ideological violence: this violence is no longer attributable to concrete individuals and their ‘evil’ intentions, but is purely ‘objective,’ systemic, anonymous.”

The greed-driven exploitation of natural resources—from diamonds in Sierra Leone to oil in Venezuela and cobalt and other conflict minerals in the Democratic Republic of Congo—finances rebellions and turns conflict into a profitable enterprise. Economic deprivation, geoeconomic confrontation through weaponized tariffs and sanctions, and commodity price shocks directly shape military capacity and conflict outcomes.

The Political Compulsion of Violence

Political violence emerges not merely from divergent interests but from the deliberate choice to pursue objectives through coercion rather than negotiation. The paralysis of the UNSC and democratic institutions reflects what Arendt identified as bureaucratic tyranny: “In a fully developed bureaucracy, there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can present grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. … everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act… where we are all equally powerless, we have a tyranny without a tyrant.”

This captures the international community’s inability to enforce accountability—vetoes and geopolitical rivalries create a structural void where violence thrives unchecked. Political fragility and weakening institutions, seen in Syria and Myanmar, make societies vulnerable to breakdown, radicalization, and violent dissent.

Societal Fragmentation

Societal conditions create climates where violence becomes normalized through inequality and the erosion of social cohesion. Thomas Hobbes’s bleak assessment of unconstrained human nature remains relevant: in the state of nature, “the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” While Hobbes described a pre-political condition, his insight applies to societies where governance collapses and fear dominates, conditions now afflicting millions living within range of armed clashes.

Social norms that accept violence as conflict resolution, combined with economic inequalities and a lack of community participation, create environments where aggression flourishes. This normalizes dehumanization, where, as in Nigeria, Israel and South Africa, gendered violence, ethnic tensions, and historical grievances fuel recurring cycles of brutality.

Nationalism, Repression and State Complicity

State-level factors amplifying violence include the failure to address ethnic marginalization, resource competition, and the absence of functional governance. Walter Benjamin warned of violence’s relationship to law and state power: “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism” (On the Concept of History, 1940).

This observation underscores how national institutions perpetuate violence through their foundational structures and exclusionary practices. Nations repeatedly falling victim to civil and international wars demonstrate governments’ inability to recognize and address destabilizing issues like political, religious, or ethnic marginalization. The weaponization of state apparatus through totalitarian mobilization of violence destroys the very space where political thinking and resistance might occur, as demonstrated in China and Eritrea.

Religious Instrumentalization

Religion, when co-opted by political actors or stripped of its ethical core, becomes a potent catalyst for violence, sanctifying exclusion and legitimizing brutality. Sectarian divides—whether in the Middle East, South Asia, or parts of Africa—transform identity into a battlefield where compromise is heresy and annihilation becomes duty. René Girard’s insight is instructive: “Religion shelters us from violence just as violence seeks shelter in religion.” When faith is manipulated to justify power or grievance, such as in India, Israel or Iraq, it ceases to restrain violence and instead consecrates it, deepening cycles of retribution and rendering conflicts existential rather than negotiable.

The convergence of these dimensions explains why violence has become a baseline condition rather than an exception. Several measures must be considered to de-escalate global violence. Although effecting change is extremely difficult, every effort must still be made, provided the public leads the charge through sustained protest, continuous advocacy, and relentless pressure on policymakers to enact change.

Reform UN Security Council Veto Power

Governments must constrain veto authority by restricting its use in cases involving genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Permanent members should abstain when directly involved, transforming the veto from obstruction into accountability and addressing institutional paralysis that enables unchecked violence.

Establish Functional Early Warning Systems

International bodies should implement systems linking detection to preventive action, closing the warning-response gap. These must integrate predictive analytics, local expertise, and cross-border coordination to anticipate violence months before eruption, enabling timely diplomatic and humanitarian intervention.

Address Economic Inequality and Insecurity

Governments should implement policies that reduce income inequality—including wage increases, tax reform, and financial assistance—aimed at addressing violence triggers. Targeted lending, job creation, and redistributive policies alleviate financial strain that fuels conflict and crime, making structural prevention more effective than reactive measures.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is President of the Institute for Humanitarian Conflict Resolution.

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The Republic of Korea (Korea), Vietnam and Bangladesh are on three different rungs of the development ladder. While Korea is a member of the rich nations’ club, i.e., the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Bangladesh is still a least developed country (LDC); and Vietnam is in the middle.

Anis Chowdhury

But relative policy independence vis-à-vis donors, among other factors, played a crucial role in separating their development trajectory. Development succeeded in countries that maintained policy independence despite their heavy aid dependence.

Aid dependence and policy independence

Being among the world’s poorest countries, all three had to depend heavily on foreign aid. For example, foreign aid financed around 74% of Korea’s imports on average during 1953-1960, and proceeds from the sales of aid goods (e.g., food aid under the PL480 programme of the US, packaged as “Food for Peace”) constituted on average 38.4% of government revenue.

US aid to Korea was “huge”, contributing about 80% of foreign aid during 1945-1975. Korea received nearly as much economic aid from the US as ALL of Africa during 1946-1978. Excluding military aid, the US economic at its peak was 21% of Korea’s GDP, and financed about 50% of government expenditure.

Source: The World Bank

Yet, the Korean government maintained considerable policy independence regarding the use of aid funds. While the US aid agency insisted on providing non-project assistance for macroeconomic stabilisation rather than growth, the Korean government used non-project aid to rebuild the manufacturing sector for accelerating growth, and demanded more project assistance. The policy conflict was negotiated and coordinated by the Combined Economic Board (CEB, established in 1952). Although CEB was jointly chaired by the representatives of the US aid mission in Korea and the Korean government, Korea prevailed.

The Korean government also maintained its policy independence from the World Bank (WB). For example, when in 1967 the WB rejected Korea’s funding request for the Seoul-Busan expressway, connecting the nation’s capital to its main sea-port, Korea completed the 428km expressway with domestic finance and resources in 1970 as other multilateral and bilateral donors also refused to finance it following the WB’s rejection.

The WB and donors believed the expressway was an excessively grandiose project for a country so poor. Proving them wrong, the expressway not only spurred economic activities along the corridor of two major population centres, its construction was a critical learning opportunity for the Koreans. With the gained capacity, Korean construction companies were able to win major infrastructure projects in the Middle-East, which was a critical source of foreign exchange. Korea is now regarded as a leader in infrastructure construction.

The WB also was very critical of Korea’s Heavy and Chemical Industry (HCI) drive (1973-1979). Ignoring the WB, Korea pushed ahead, and proved the WB and other critics wrong. By the early 1980s, HCI became the nation’s leading export industries. The HCI drive was greatly successful in boosting investment, leading to the rapid growth of the manufacturing sector and its structure change. The manufacturing sector grew 16.2% per annum from 1971 to 1980, much higher than the GDP growth of 9.1% during the same period, while the share of HCIs in manufacturing value added rose to 58.3% in 1980.

No wonder, Korea broke away from the poverty trap in the early 1970s, leaving its “poor cousins” – Bangladesh and Vietnam – behind to become a full member of the OECD in little over two decades in 1996.

Vietnam’s story is not so different from that of Korea. Since initiating reforms in 1986, Vietnam quickly became WB’s one of the top loan recipient countries. But the WB’s influence over Vietnam’s development path has been limited, as the government has always refused to adopt policies imposed by foreign organisations. With strong enough institutions Vietnam achieved “ownership” of public policies.

Here is an interesting story of Vietnam’s determination to pursue its own development strategies. When in 1997, the WB approached Vietnam with an offer of US$300 million in credit in exchange for structural adjustment, à la the Washington Consensus model, including faster privatisation and financial liberalisation, the Vietnamese government declined. The WB returned with a higher offer in 1998, and Vietnam declined again. When the WB came again in 1999 with an even higher offer, the government issued a stern rebuke. The minister of planning and investment, Tran Xua Gia, told WB representatives, “You cannot buy reforms with money . . . no one is going to bombard Vietnam into acting.”

By then the Vietnamese government knew from the experience of Indonesia the risks of yielding too much sovereignty to international markets and institutions. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) had to wind up its last programme in 2004 as Vietnam refused the IMF’s demand for an independent audit of its central bank and disagreed over privatisations of state-owned enterprises.

Vietnam charted its own path of reforms – Đổi Mới, learning from successes and failures of neighbouring East Asian countries, including China as well as its former patron and role model, former Soviet Union.

Vietnam posted remarkable macroeconomic performances following the launch of Đổi Mới, with GDP growing at close to 8% per annum. Since the beginning of the 2000s, it also recorded Asia’s highest rate of growth in exports, half of which were made up of manufactured products, prompting The Economist to hail Vietnam as “Asia’s other miracle”.

Starting in 1975 with a per capita GDP of about US$85 after successfully defeating the US that waged a devastating war on Vietnam for more than two decades, Vietnam became a lower middle-income country in 2009. “Desperately seeking model countries”, unsurprisingly the first country Robert Zoellick visited after becoming President of the WB in 2009 was Vietnam, a country governed by its Communist Party, constructing a ‘socialist-oriented market economy’. One could almost say, “Vietnam is more important for the WB than the WB is for Vietnam”!

Poor Bangladesh lacks self confidence

Bangladesh, in search of development, joined the club of LDCs in 1975 when its GDP per capita was US$230, and still remains a LDC after more than five decades maximising LDC related facilities. Bangladesh is scheduled to graduate out of the LDC category in November this year; but it is asking for a deferment, lacking self-confidence.

On the other hand, self-confident Vietnam with its per capita GDP of only US$82 in 1975 decided not to join the LDC club, despite having to face the challenges of reconstruction and reunification in the most difficult global economic situation – stagflation. It received aid (mostly from the former Soviet Union); but did not blindly follow either its former patron USSR’s reform package or that of the WB/IMF. Its former enemy, the US, which pressured the WB to halt all funding, made a U-turn in the early 1990s, and signed the US-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement in 2000.

Korea could have also joined the LDC club in 1971 when the UN created the LDC category for the world’s poorest countries; but it did not. Heavily dependent on US foreign aid for food, fuel and other raw materials, Korea was not seen as a promising place for major investments until the late 1960s. So, the State took the lead to break the vicious circle of low income and low investment.

Of course, Bangladesh is no longer a “basket case”; it is now a lower middle-income country. It also showed some courage to stand on its own feet when the WB declined to finance the Padma Bridge project, citing corruption.

However, Bangladesh could have done better had it not surrendered its policy independence to the donors, as the experiences of RoK and Vietnam demonstrate. Like successful marriages, there are many factors for successful development. Failure in any one of those essential elements can be damning according to Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina principle, even if it has all the other ingredients of success.

Anis Chowdhury, Emeritus Professor, Western Sydney University (Australia). He held senior UN positions in Bangkok and New York and served as Special Assistant to the Chief Advisor for Finance (with the status and rank of State Minister) in the Professor Yunus-led Interim Government. Anis has written extensively on East and Southeast Asian economies, including The Newly Industrialising Economies of East Asia (Routledge) and The Political Economy of East Asia (Oxford University Press). E-mail: anis.z.chowdhury@gmail.com

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By Mohamed Omar
MOGADISHU, Somalia , May 12 2026 (IPS)

When war erupted in the Middle East in late February, the most visible consequences were playing out in the Persian Gulf, with smoke rising from Dubai’s Jebel Ali port and shipping traffic across one of the world’s most critical maritime routes grinding to a near halt.

What was harder to see was a mother in Somalia, traveling 200 kilometers with a child too sick to sit upright, arriving at a stabilization center that was running low on the one product that could save her child’s life.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most consequential maritime chokepoints, has sent shockwaves through global supply chains that reach far beyond the Gulf. Before the war began, roughly 3,000 vessels transited the strait each month.

In March, that number fell to just 154. The UN has warned that the resulting disruption is triggering a widening humanitarian and economic shock far beyond the Middle East, with rising oil prices and reduced maritime traffic driving up transport and food costs across import-dependent economies. We are certainly feeling that shock in Somalia.

Dr. Mohamed Omar is head of Health and Nutrition at Action Against Hunger in Somalia.

These children are treated with two products: Ready to Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) and therapeutic milk, specifically the formulas F-75 and F-100, which are produced exclusively by Nutriset in France. Before the Strait of Hormuz closure, those products arrived in Mogadishu in 30 to 35 days via the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Aden.

Ships now divert around the entire African continent, extending delivery times to 55 to 65 days. That is nearly double the original transit time, and it comes with far less certainty about when shipments will actually arrive.

The cost increases compound the delay. A carton of therapeutic milk that cost $139 in 2024 rose to $186 in 2025 after USAID funding cuts, and has since climbed to $200 in 2026 following the Strait of Hormuz closure, a 44 percent increase in two years.

Fuel costs inside Somalia have surged by 150 percent, raising both the price of food for households and the cost of transporting supplies from Mogadishu to remote program sites like Hudur in the Bakool region. They represent the difference between whether a child receives treatment and whether a facility can afford to stay open.

Action Against Hunger, which operates 10 of the 52 remaining stabilization centers in the country, currently has only 69 cartons of therapeutic milk on hand. That figure covers roughly two weeks to one month of supply under current demand, and demand is rising sharply. Admissions at our facilities increased 35 percent between the first quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026. At the same time, the number of stabilization centers across Somalia has already fallen from 71 to 52, after USAID’s termination order prompted facility closures earlier this year.

In areas such as Wajid, Somalia, Action Against Hunger replaced diesel-powered engines with solar-powered systems to supply water, reducing costs and providing a sustainable, long-term solution. Credit: Action Against Hunger

The funding gap to sustain nutrition interventions through 2026 stands at $2.9 million. That figure covers product procurement and in-country transportation costs. To put that in context: treating a child for severe acute malnutrition costs between $140 and $213. Preventing it costs $35. The math on early intervention is not complicated.

The Council on Foreign Relations has documented how shipping containers at Dubai’s International Humanitarian City now carry a $3,000 emergency surcharge, while the World Food Program has warned that supply chain pressures are driving up the costs of life-saving operations globally. These are systemic failures that compound each other.

There is a specific and urgent timeline here. UNICEF’s in-country stock of therapeutic milk is projected to run out by August 2026. Because of the extended shipping times caused by the Africa diversion route, funding must be committed by May or June for the product to arrive before that deadline.

Iran has agreed, in principle, to facilitate humanitarian aid shipments through the strait, and diplomatic efforts to reopen the waterway to commercial traffic are ongoing. But the ceasefire remains fragile, and even a partial reopening offers no guarantee that the specialized supply chains supporting therapeutic nutrition programs will recover in time.

The supply chain disruptions caused by the Iran war are a new layer on top of pre-existing funding deficits and a withdrawal of US foreign aid that was already forcing closures and rationing across the country.

The children arriving at stabilization centers and outpatient nutrition sites in Somalia did not cause any of these disruptions. They are the downstream consequence of a global logistics network absorbing simultaneous shocks it was never designed to handle. A $2.9 million funding gap is solvable. The question is whether the international community will respond in time.

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Transnational agribusinesses increasingly shape food policies worldwide. Claiming to best address recent food security concerns, they seek to profit more from innovations in food production, processing, and distribution.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

The early post-WWII and post-colonial eras saw new emphases on food security, especially following severe food shortages before, during, and after the war.

Many starved as millions experienced acute malnutrition. The wartime Bengal famine in India claimed over three million lives as Churchill prioritised British imperial interests and military priorities.

After WWII, colonial powers weaponised food supplies for counterinsurgency and population control purposes, especially to overcome popular anti-imperialist resistance.

Many who died were not military casualties but victims of deliberate counter-insurgency food deprivation. Unsurprisingly, food security efforts became a popular policy priority after WWII.

Western-controlled research organisations, including the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), became highly influential, shaping and even developing post-colonial food security policies.

Felice Noelle Rodriguez

The Green Revolution initially focused on increasing yields of wheat, maize, and rice. These efforts increased cereal production unevenly during the 1960s and 1970s.

Malthusian logic held that rising life expectancies meant population growth outstripped the increase in food supply, constrained by limited agricultural land.

As government funding from wealthy nations declined, powerful corporate interests and philanthropies became even more influential. They often promoted their own interests at the expense of farmers, consumers, and the environment.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) was established in the 1970s, channelling a small share of windfall petroleum incomes into food and agricultural development.

Soon after, the US transformed its Public Law (PL) 480 program into the World Food Programme (WFP). Thus, some FAO functions were ceded to donor-controlled UN funds and programmes also set up in Rome.

Embarrassingly, an FAO report found WFP food supplies were withheld from Somalia to avoid being taken by the ‘Islamist’ As-Shabaab militia. Chatham House also estimated two to three hundred thousand deaths as a consequence.

Neoliberalism
The counter-revolution against national development efforts in the 1980s undermined government fiscal capacities, import-substituting industrialisation, and food security efforts.

Neoliberal structural adjustment policies involving economic liberalisation were imposed on heavily indebted developing countries, mainly in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Global North promoted trade liberalisation, undermining earlier protection of and support for food and industrial production.

Powerful food conglomerates sponsored and promoted import-friendly food security indicators, undermining FAO and other civil society research and advocacy efforts.

Countries hardly producing any food were highly ranked, as civil society organisations tried to counter with their own indicators, mainly focused on food sovereignty.

Trump 2.0
A new phase has begun with Donald Trump’s re-election as US president.

Trump 2.0’s weaponisation of economic policies and agreements, including food supplies, has ominous implications for countries trying to assert some independence.

Economic and military threats have been used for diverse ends, including economic, political, and other ‘strategic’ goals. Tariffs and sanctions are now part of a diverse arsenal of such weapons deployed for various purposes.

Governments have even been threatened with tariffs and sanctions for personal reasons. Trump has demanded Brazilian ex-President Jair Bolsonaro’s freedom following his failed coup after losing the last presidential election.

Deploying such economic weapons has worsened the deepening worldwide economic stagflation, as various Trump economic and military policy threats exacerbate contractionary and inflationary pressures.

The US-controlled WFP was long used to provide food aid selectively. But there is little sympathy left in Washington for other nations’ food security concerns.

To cut federal government spending, Trump has ended official development and humanitarian assistance, including food aid, while the US remains the world’s leading food exporter.

Nevertheless, Trump may take unexpected new steps to boost farmers’ earnings to recover electoral support before the November mid-term election.

Weaponisation of food aid took an ominous turn during the Israeli siege of Gaza, by calibrating food access to enable selective ethnic cleansing.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation attracted hungry residents to its food centres, causing hungry families desperately seeking food to be shot while seeking food.

Poverty is primarily defined by inadequate access to food, while the FAO considers income the main determinant of food insecurity.

Although World Bank poverty measures have generally continued to decline, FAO indicators suggest a reversal of earlier progress in food security over the last decade.

These contradictory trends not only reflect problems in estimating and understanding poverty and food security but also suggest that resulting policies are poorly informed, if not worse.

Professor Felice Noelle Rodriguez is Director of the Centre for Local History and Culture, Universidad de Zamboanga, Philippines.

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Despite the newfound discovery of sexual harassment and the taxpayer-funded settlements, the United States Congress has failed to implement any lasting policy reforms to protect staff from sexual misconduct. Credit: Shutterstock

By Joseph Chamie
PORTLAND, USA, May 11 2026 (IPS)

After more than two centuries of independence, it appears that the United States Congress, or at least certain parts of it, has finally discovered the existence of sexual harassment within the institution.

This discovery by Congress is noteworthy in a country where sexual harassment is widespread. Nationally, 81% of women have reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment and/or assault in their lifetime. Moreover, as of early 2026, reports indicate that 25% of individuals have witnessed or experienced sexual harassment in the workplace within the past 12 months.

Sexual harassment in Congress is believed to be driven by a combination of interrelated factors. These include extreme power disparities within a hierarchical framework, a decentralized workplace structure, the abuse of position to coerce or manipulate, burdensome reporting processes, the use of taxpayer funds for settlements, fear of retaliation, staff members’ career dependency, gender imbalance, lack of oversight, and a perceived culture of tolerance with a historical lack of accountability.

Despite Congress passing reforms to require sexual harassment training and streamline reporting, the underlying factors and cultural issues continue to pose challenges for ensuring a safe workplace free of sexual misconduct.

Throughout much of its recent history, there have been reported claims and personal accounts of sexual harassment and misconduct in Congress. For example, in the 2010s, there were 16 instances of sexual harassment reported (Figure 1).

Source: GovTrack.US.

In addition to the alleged claims and personal accounts, Congress has conducted investigations and awarded settlements for sexual misconduct within the institution. For example, since 2017, the U.S. House Ethics Committee has undertaken 20 investigations into allegations of sexual misconduct by members of the House.

However, approximately 80% of the individuals who have reported sexual misconduct to their respective offices about sexual misconduct choose not to report it to the Office of Compliance due to fears of retaliation and negative consequences on their employment and careers.

Many of the settlements involve non-disclosure agreements, which have been criticized for protecting the identities of the perpetrators. Between 1996 and 2018, 349 settlements and awards were made involving 80 House and Senate offices (Table 1).

Source: GovTrack.US.

Despite numerous alleged claims, personal accounts, settlements, and awards, Congress has been hesitant to openly acknowledge the prevalence of sexual harassment within its branch of government.

However, with the recent surge in allegations, high-profile resignations, and investigations into taxpayer-funded settlements, leaders of both parties in the House and Senate are under increasing pressure to address and prevent sexual misconduct. As a result, the U.S. Congress seems to have finally discovered the existence of sexual harassment within its ranks.

With the recent surge in allegations, high-profile resignations, and investigations into taxpayer-funded settlements, leaders of both parties in the House and Senate are under increasing pressure to address and prevent sexual misconduct

Additionally, three Republican women in Congress have recently launched a campaign against sexual harassment. Their main goal is to uncover and hold accountable predators in Congress from all parties. Besides advocating for transparency, they are demanding that members of Congress face consequences for their sexual misconduct.

Furthermore, these women are urging Congressional lawmakers to acknowledge the pervasive culture of sexual harassment and misconduct on Capitol Hill. They are also calling for lawmakers to take action to change the environment where such behavior has been accepted as an unfortunate but unchangeable reality.

One of these Republican lawmakers has claimed that the sexual misconduct in Congress goes much deeper than the public realizes.

Additionally, these Congressional lawmakers are committed to dismantling the unwritten rules of political expediency and tribal loyalty that have historically kept sexual harassment concealed.

One of the lawmakers introduced a resolution (H.Res.1100) directing the committee to preserve and publicly release records and reports on all investigations into Congressional members for sexual harassment. Additionally. these Republican lawmakers are demanding the release of documents detailing any settlements related to sexual harassment involving members of Congress.

However, the party’s male leaders, including the president and top Republican congressional leaders, have chosen to support the accused men whose votes are necessary to maintain their majority in the House of Representatives.

Furthermore, numerous women in the United States have publicly accused the country’s current president of various acts of sexual misconduct, including rape.

In 2023, a New York jury found the U.S. president civilly liable for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages. Currently, no other person serving in the U.S. federal government has as many credible accusations and a jury conviction for sexual misconduct as the president.

Additionally, in a rare statement, the Congressional House Ethics Committee defended its handling of sexual harassment charges following the resignations of two lawmakers facing sexual misconduct. The committee operates in secrecy and typically takes years to complete its inquiries.

While acknowledging flaws in the reporting process, the committee cited the challenges it faces and urged employees with sexual harassment claims to come forward. However, Congressional staffers are understandably reluctant and afraid to make accusations of sexual harassment against lawmakers to a panel controlled by their peers.

Congressional lawmakers are predominantly men. In 2026, men make up 71% of the House of Representatives and 74% of the Senate (Figure 2).

Source. U.S. Congress. Gov.

In addition to the women in Congress who are objecting to the sexual harassment taking place within Congress, advocacy groups across the country are demanding more transparency and easier reporting processes. They maintain that sexual harassment typically goes undisclosed because of the power dynamics within Congress, with many incidents going unreported because of fear of retaliation.

For example, the National Women’s Defense League reported that there have been fifty-three allegations of workplace sexual harassment made against at least 30 lawmakers in the House and Senate over the past two decades. Nearly all of these documented cases involve men harassing women, with 77% of the allegations involving members of the legislative staff.

Furthermore, the issue of sexual harassment in Congress is bipartisan. Of all the allegations, 60% are made against Republicans and 40% against Democrats. The recent cases of sexual harassment in 2026 have prompted calls for accountability, stricter ethics investigations, and public disclosure of misconduct records.

In April and May 2026, prominent lawmakers, including Rep. Eric Swalwell and Rep. Tony Gonzales, resigned due to allegations of sexual misconduct and ethics violations. In addition, the Ethics Committee is currently investigating Rep. Chuck Edwards for reportedly having an improper relationship with a subordinate and sexually harassing staff.

Moreover, documents released since 2004 reveal that over $338,000 in taxpayer funds have been used to settle confidential sexual harassment claims involving 13 claims against members of Congress. The process of filing complaints in Congress has been criticized for being opaque and largely unknown.

The recent resignations of lawmakers along with the use of taxpayer funds to settle harassment claims have contributed to Congress’s discovery of sexual harassment committed by its members.

It appears that Congress is now beginning to address some of the immediate issues of sexual misconduct taking place within the institution. However, despite the newfound discovery of sexual harassment and the taxpayer-funded settlements, the United States Congress has failed to implement any lasting policy reforms to protect staff from sexual misconduct.

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

Residents in Phú Yên, Vietnam, relied on a small wooden boat during a flood. Climate change and El Niño disrupted the livelihood of millions of people in Asia and the Pacific. Credit: Pexels/Long Bà Mùi Source: ESCAP

By Kareff Rafisura
BANGKOK, Thailand, May 11 2026 (IPS)

Climate models are converging: El Niño is likely to return by mid-2026 and could be strong. According to the World Meteorological Organization, it could emerge as early as May–July 2026, with several national hydrometeorological agencies in Asia and the Pacific already issuing alerts.

El Niño makes headlines not because it is rare, but because it amplifies climate risks. Past events have triggered major humanitarian crises, driving drought, food insecurity and public health emergencies across Asia and the Pacific. While each Niño event differs, their impacts tend to follow recognizable regional patterns.

In countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Timor Leste, strong El Niño events have repeatedly brought drought, forest fires, agricultural losses and water stress, with patterns reinforced even during the weaker 2018–2019 El Niño. These impacts provide clear signals of risks concentrated across food, water, health and livelihood systems.

In practical terms, an El Niño event is only fully established when the atmosphere reinforces the warming of oceans. As not all warmings reach that stage, this is where uncertainty lies, including how strong the event will become. While forecasts will improve in the coming months, historical impacts already indicate where risks are likely to concentrate.

To understand the risks, it helps to look at how past events have unfolded in the region. Strong events in 1971–73, 1982–83 and 1997–98 triggered widespread droughts, forest fires and vector-borne diseases, such as dengue, across South and South-East Asia and the Pacific.

While impacts vary by location, the pattern is consistent: risk intensity is highest where exposure overlaps with underlying vulnerabilities caused by poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition, as well as heavy dependence on subsistence farming.

The 2015–2016 El Niño is the strongest of this century and can serve as a useful reference should current conditions develop into a comparable event, given similar early warming patterns. The joint ESCAP and ASEAN report, Ready for the Dry Years, states that during this event, more than 70% of South-East Asia’s land area experienced drought, exposing over 200 million people to severe drought at its peak.

While El Niño affects large areas, its impacts are most severe where climatic exposure overlaps with structural vulnerability. This year, these risks are unfolding in a more complex climate and socioeconomic context, with tighter fiscal space, higher debt levels and persistent global economic uncertainty, as highlighted in the ESCAP Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2026.

At the same time, remittances, an important source of income for countries such as Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines and Sri Lanka are being affected, weakening a key buffer that has historically helped households cope with shocks.

Together, these pressures leave governments and households less able to absorb climate shocks than during previous El Niño cycles.

Climate change is amplifying baseline risks. Higher temperatures increase evapotranspiration (process of heat making water evaporate faster), reduce soil moisture and intensify drought conditions. The Ready for the Dry Years report shows that droughts increasingly occur under warmer conditions, magnifying their impacts.

Climate variability is now interacting with long-term warming trends, increasing systemic risks.

The implication is clear: waiting for certainty can increase exposure to avoidable losses. Historical evidence and current signals already provide a sufficient basis for early, no-regret action.

Because the impacts of El Niño align with extremes expected to intensify under climate change, there is a strong case for investing in resilience across scenarios. Three priority areas stand out.

First, turn climate forecasts into actionable decisions on the ground. Seasonal forecasts provide valuable signals, but decisions require localized insight: where water stress will emerge, where crops are likely to fail and which communities are most at risk. Advances in satellite data and analytics now allow near-real-time monitoring of soil moisture, vegetation health and water availability, and should be used to guide targeted preparedness.

Second, early financing is a no-regret investment in resilience. The impacts of El Niño are cumulative and can outlast the event itself. Acting early through social protection, support to farmers and better water management reduces long-term costs and protects hard-won development gains. In a context of constrained fiscal space, anticipatory action limits downstream losses.

Third, strengthen coordination across sectors. El Niño affects multiple sectors simultaneously, including agriculture, water, energy and public health. Coordinated responses enable faster and more efficient actions with benefits that extend beyond a single event.

Even as uncertainty remains around the strength of the evolving event, historical experience makes a clear case for early action to strengthen long-term resilience.

Kareff Rafisura is Economic Affairs Officer, ESCAP

IPS UN Bureau

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Credit: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, May 8 2026 (IPS)

When Péter Magyar took the stage in Budapest on the night of 12 April, he told the crowd they had ‘liberated Hungary’. The hyperbole seemed justified. His party, Tisza, had won a parliamentary supermajority on the highest turnout since Hungary’s first free election in 1990, ending 16 years of increasingly autocratic rule.

An autocracy built in plain sight

Ousted Prime Minister Viktor Orbán boasted of turning Hungary into a model of what he called ‘illiberal democracy’. When he returned to power in 2010, he set about dismantling every institution capable of constraining him. His party, Fidesz, rewrote the constitution, restructured the Constitutional Court and gerrymandered electoral districts so thoroughly that in 2014 and 2018, it won two-thirds of parliamentary seats on under half of the vote.

Public broadcasting became a party mouthpiece, and Orbán-connected oligarchs took over private media. Fidesz captured universities and arts bodies. The government used Pegasus spyware against opponents, demonised migrants and LGBTQI+ people as threats to the nation and passed a law criminalising attendance at Budapest Pride. Civil society organisations faced escalating restrictions on their funding, and the government created a Sovereignty Protection Office to investigate and harass them further. The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) index eventually downgraded Hungary to ‘electoral autocracy’ status — the first European Union (EU) member state to receive that designation.

The EU’s blind spot

The EU’s response was inadequate. In 2018, the European Parliament triggered Article 7(1) of the Treaty on European Union, the first step in a procedure that could, in theory, suspend a state’s voting rights. In practice, Article 7 was never fully applied, because doing so requires unanimous agreement among all other member states, and there are always states unwilling to go that far. The Rule of Law Conditionality Regulation, in force since 2022, allowed the EU to freeze up to US$32 billion in funds for Hungary, but this mechanism too was compromised by political calculation. In December 2023, the Commission released around US$12 billion in cohesion funds seemingly in exchange for Hungary lifting its veto on Ukraine aid, effectively trading rule-of-law conditionality for foreign policy compliance.

Ultimately, the EU did not solve its Orbán problem; Hungarian voters did. This suggests structural reforms are still needed to prevent another autocrat from playing the same blocking game Hungary did.

After Orbán

Previous opposition coalitions in Hungary failed partly because Orbán’s machine had a reliable weapon against them: the accusation that they served Brussels, Hungary-born funder George Soros and a cosmopolitan elite detached from Hungarian values. Magyar, a former Fidesz insider who broke with the party in February 2024 following a scandal over a presidential pardon granted to a man convicted of covering up child sexual abuse, was immune to that weapon. His campaign was deliberately post-ideological, focused on corruption, crumbling public services and economic stagnation, while Orbán ran a fear-based campaign centred on the EU and the war in Ukraine. Voters chose economic reality over a manufactured threat. In the end, the electoral architecture Orbán had built to reward the first-placed party converted Tisza’s win into a supermajority of 141 of 199 parliamentary seats.

But Magyar’s victory will not necessarily bring a progressive transformation. He is a conservative politician leading a centre-right party whose platform made no explicit commitment on LGBTQI+ rights. During the campaign, he criticised the Budapest Pride ban as a distraction rather than a rights violation, committing only to protecting freedom of assembly more broadly. His victory speech promised a Hungary where ‘no one is stigmatised for loving someone differently from the majority’, but this was a shift in tone rather than a policy commitment. LGBTQI+ rights are unlikely to regress further under Magyar, but recovery will depend on sustained pressure from civil society.

Orbán may be out of government, but Fidesz appointees remain embedded throughout the state apparatus. Magyar has pledged to invite the European Public Prosecutor’s Office to examine alleged misuses of EU funds, dismantle the Sovereignty Protection Office and drop proposed legislation that would have further extended powers to restrict civil society. Delivering on those pledges and unravelling 16 years of institutional capture will require sustained political will.

Hungarian civil society faces its first genuine opening in 16 years. To make the most of it, it will need to push hard and consistently for the restoration of civic space, the rule of law and LGBTQI+ rights, and not mistake a change of government for a change of direction.

For the EU, Magyar’s victory opens a window to change a decision-making structure that allows a single member state to hold the bloc’s foreign policy hostage. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s call for qualified majority voting for foreign policy decisions may now gain traction. But the broader question of how the EU enforces its democratic standards against a member state determined to flout them remains open. The EU should resolve it before the next challenge arises.

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 a Professor of Comparative Politics at Universidad ORT Uruguay.

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

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Credit: UKBET (UK Bangladesh Education Trust)

By Mohammed A. Sayem
SYLHET, Bangladesh, May 8 2026 (IPS)

When catastrophic floods swept through the Haor wetlands of Sunamganj in 2022, they destroyed far more than homes and crops. They shattered childhoods.

Jannat was only nine years old when floodwater swallowed her family’s house, farmland, and livestock. Like thousands of displaced families in northeastern Bangladesh, they took shelter in a school building converted into an emergency flood centre. But when the water receded, there was nothing left to return to.

The family migrated to a slum in Sylhet city to survive. Her father, once a farmer in the fertile haor lands, began pulling a rented rickshaw. Her mother started working as a domestic worker. Jannat’s school life ended almost overnight. Instead of carrying books, she began washing dishes and cleaning clothes in another family’s home for food and a small income.

Her story reflects a growing reality across climate-vulnerable Bangladesh. The 2022 floods in Sylhet, Kanaighat, Companygonj and Sunamganj were among the worst in more than a century. United Nations agencies estimated that nearly 7.2 million people across northeastern Bangladesh were affected, including around 3.5 million children. Entire villages disappeared under water, electricity collapsed across districts, schools were turned into emergency shelters, and thousands of hectares of cropland were destroyed. UNICEF reported that 1.6 million children were stranded by the floods, while hundreds of educational institutions and community clinics were damaged or submerged.

Credit: UKBET (UK Bangladesh Education Trust)

The crisis did not end in 2022. In 2024, another devastating wave of flooding inundated nearly 75 per cent of Sylhet district, affecting more than two million people across northeastern Bangladesh and displacing thousands of families yet again. More than 800 schools were flooded and large areas of farmland went underwater, deepening poverty and food insecurity. This year again, heavy rainfall and upstream water flows submerged more than 46,000 hectares of standing Boro rice fields in the haor region during harvesting season, threatening livelihoods and increasing the risk of climate migration and child labour. Experts warn that repeated climate shocks are trapping vulnerable families in a cycle of disaster, displacement, and poverty.

Yet hope can still rise from disaster.

The Doorstep Learning Programme (DLP) of UKBET, a UK-based international NGO working in Bangladesh, was created to support children trapped in domestic labour and other vulnerable situations in urban slums. Rather than waiting for children to return to school on their own, the programme brings education, counselling, and rehabilitation support directly to their communities. Through flexible learning support and family livelihood assistance, it helps children return to education while reducing families’ dependence on child labour for survival.

Credit: UKBET (UK Bangladesh Education Trust)

DLP identified Jannat and supported her return to school alongside her younger brother. The programme also helped her father secure his own rickshaw, giving the family a more stable livelihood and a chance to rebuild their future.

As global leaders gather at the Eighth Assembly of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) in Samarkand, Uzbekistan in May–June 2026 to discuss climate financing and resilience, stories like Jannat’s must remain at the centre of international attention. (Global Environment Facility) Climate change is no longer only about rising temperatures or environmental loss. It is about children losing education, dignity, and hope.

Credit: UKBET (UK Bangladesh Education Trust)

Local community-led initiatives that protect vulnerable children and strengthen climate resilience deserve far greater global investment and support through mechanisms such as the GEF Trust Fund and international adaptation financing.

Because children like Jannat are not victims to be pitied. They are futures worth protecting.

Mohammed A Sayem is Executive Director, UKBET
Sylhet, Bangladesh
msayem@ukbet-bd.org

IPS UN Bureau

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LDC Future Forum Banner. Credit: OHRLLS

By Rabab Fatima
UNITED NATIONS, May 8 2026 (IPS)

The future of the world’s least developed countries (LDCs) will be shaped by a critical choice they make today- strategic investment in their youth. Rich in human potential, the young people in LDCs embody ingenuity, resilience and ambition. With the right opportunities, they can transform challenges into opportunities and put their countries strongly on track to sustainable development.

In the 44 LDCs, more than 60 per cent of the population is under 25. That is more than 315 million young people – innovators, entrepreneurs and problem-solvers – in a world being reshaped by technology, climate pressures and shifting economic realities. Their energy, creativity and ambition represent an extraordinary opportunity not only for national development, but for global prosperity and stability.

The question is simple: will we act with the urgency this moment demands? In May 2026, governments, development partners, private sector leaders, researchers and young changemakers will convene in Helsinki for the Fourth LDC Future Forum, under the theme “Transforming LDCs by Empowering the Youth Population through Education, Innovation, and Inclusive Growth.”

Rabab Fatima, USG and High Representative, OHRLLS. Credit: OHRLLS

Opportunity is expanding—but unevenly

The global economy is evolving at speed. Artificial intelligence, digital platforms, green technologies and geopolitical shifts are reshaping how we live and work. By 2030, an estimated 170 million new jobs will be created worldwide, even as 40 per cent of core workplace skills are transformed.

Youth in LDCs are ready to be part of this future. Already, they demonstrate remarkable entrepreneurial initiative: nearly 70 per cent are engaged in self employment, compared to about 50 per cent in other developing countries.

Yet opportunity remains deeply uneven. Tertiary enrolment in LDCs stands at just 11 per cent. Fewer than a quarter of graduates specialize in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Millions of young people—especially girls and rural youth—remain excluded from quality education, digital connectivity and formal employment. Without urgent and targeted investment, demographic strength risks becoming a demographic strain.

The DPOA: Investing in youth as a development imperative

The Doha Programme of Action (DPoA) is unequivocal: investing in people – especially youth – is central to sustainable development and smooth graduation from the LDC category.

It places strong emphasis on education, skills and science, technology and innovation (STI) as engines of structural transformation. Critically, it advances concrete deliverables, including the establishment of an Online University for LDCs, designed to expand access to quality, affordable higher education – particularly in STEM fields. It also promotes digital learning, innovation ecosystems, and stronger linkages between education systems and labour market needs.

The Fourth LDC Future Forum will focus squarely on these priorities. It will advance practical solutions to close skills gaps, expand digital learning, strengthen innovation hubs and promote inclusive growth models that leave no young person behind.

Inclusion must be intentional

True transformation cannot happen if opportunity is accessible only to a few.

Gender gaps in education, skills acquisition and labour force participation continue to hold back progress. The digital divide—between countries, communities and genders—threatens to widen existing inequalities unless deliberately addressed. Inclusive growth requires inclusive design: policies and investments that actively reach girls, marginalized youth and those in rural and underserved areas.

By placing equity at the centre of youth empowerment, LDCs can ensure that growth is not only faster, but fairer—and therefore more sustainable.

A shared responsibility

No country can undertake this transformation alone. Governments must lead by prioritizing youth in national development strategies and aligning education with future economic needs. Development partners must scale up predictable, high quality financing for education, skills and digital infrastructure. Academia must help generate evidence based solutions. And the private sector must play a central role—by investing, mentoring, innovating and creating decent jobs.

The LDC Future Forum exists to forge these partnerships. Through rigorous research, policy dialogue and multi stakeholder collaboration, it aims to deliver actionable recommendations that will inform both national action and the 2027 Midterm Review of the Doha Programme of Action.

The choice before us

History will judge this generation not by the challenges we faced, but by the choices we made. We can allow structural barriers and underinvestment to hold back millions of young people—or we can unlock the dynamism that resides within them.

Empowering youth is not a long term aspiration. It is the fastest, most reliable path to sustainable growth, resilience and global stability.

The message from Helsinki must be clear: invest in young people now – and they will transform their countries, and our shared future.

IPS UN Bureau

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In Guinea-Bissau, malaria continues to place a heavy burden on families and health systems, underscoring the need for prevention, early treatment and stronger development-led responses. Credit: UNDP Guinea-Bissau

By Michael Adekunle Charles and Aissata De
NEW YORK, May 7 2026 (IPS)

If you woke up with severe fever, would you stay home from work? What if the choice meant losing a week’s wages, or deciding if you could afford the trip to a doctor at all?

For families facing financial hardship, these are not theoretical choices. Malaria is not only a health crisis—it is a poverty trap. With 282 million cases in 2024 alone, the consequences are far-reaching, persistent and deeply unequal.

As Africans, we know this story well. Despite significant progress, Africa remains the epicentre of the malaria epidemic. Malaria causes up to half a billion lost workdays each year and slows GDP growth by up to 1.3 percent.

It accounts for half of preventable school absences, undermining learning and opportunity. Health systems already under strain are forced to divert scarce resources, weakening care for all.

We know malaria hinders development. But the reverse is also true: the lack of development fuels malaria.

Recent analysis in Uganda found that districts with low development indicators are five times more likely to experience a high number of malaria cases. Poverty, weak infrastructure, limited services, and environmental risk do not just coexist with malaria; they actively sustain it.

Understanding where and how this vicious cycle bites hardest can help us design smarter malaria responses and accelerate development at the same time.

In Kapelebyong district in Uganda, malaria treatment can cost households a significant 120,000 shillings a year, often requiring long journeys to clinics facing staff and medicine shortages. Even livelihoods are implicated: crops that feed families can also harbour malaria-transmitting mosquitoes, exposing farmers to infection.

“The little money gained from harvests mostly goes to managing disease,” said Paul Omaido Ojilong, a local official supporting environmental health.

Sick workers are less productive—or absent altogether—weakening the very economic activity that builds resilience and prosperity. Families and local leaders are forced into impossible trade-offs, prioritizing immediate survival over long-term prevention.

And so, the cycle continues.

For two decades, countries have delivered life-saving medical innovations that dramatically reduced malaria cases and deaths. Those gains matter—but rising cases in Africa show that health services are no longer enough.

At a time when global aid disruptions are renewing calls for stronger African health sovereignty, this is a moment to rethink how malaria is tackled.

First, integrate malaria action into broader development strategies by embedding it into key sectors such as livelihoods, education, environment, infrastructure and governance. Community leaders, health workers, farmers, educators, executives and policymakers must play a role—working together, not in silos.

Second, promote local leadership as a central pillar of malaria elimination, by empowering district councils and local stakeholders to jointly set health and development priorities, coordinate action, and hold one another accountable.

Through the Pathfinder Endeavour, this approach centres countries in malaria interventions and champions joint global and national efforts, in line with the RBM Partnership to End Malaria’s support for the Big Push.

It promises stronger coordination and national accountability, more efficient resource utilization based on reliable data, and the more effective introduction and acceptance of new malaria solutions.

In Uganda, estimates suggest that the Pathfinder Endeavour’s coordinated multisectoral action could deliver transformative results. With modest investment, about US $60,000 over three years per district, economic and social gains of 11-12 percent are possible.

Malaria incidence could fall by 14 percent, extracting far greater value from existing health spending. Accountability efforts alone account for nearly half the projected gains.

In short, local leadership and multisectoral action can rewrite the malaria story.

But the window is closing. Even with more financing, conflict, climate change and rising drug and insecticide resistance threaten hard-won progress. Promising tools like vaccines will fall short if they are not embedded in development systems that protect health over time.

The prize is enormous. Ending malaria by 2030 could add US $231 billion to African economies and boost global trade by US $80.7 billion, moving millions from vulnerability to opportunity and prosperity.

Achieving the Africa we want by 2063—inclusive, sustainable, peaceful and prosperous—means meeting this moment with new ambition and ways of working. Together, UNDP, the RBM Partnership to End Malaria, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and partners across sectors can support African leaders to write a new story—one where development and malaria elimination advance hand in hand.

Dr Michael Adekunle Charles is the CEO of the RBM Partnership to End Malaria, and
Aissata De is the Deputy Regional Director for Africa at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

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Students at GH Rusheshe School in Kucikiro District, Rwanda, identified through the monitoring system through the ZERO Out of School initiative.

By Noor Muhammad Ansari
DOHA, Qatar, May 7 2026 (IPS)

In 2024, 273 million children, adolescents, and youth were out of school globally as per the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. While that is a staggering number, the figure is incomplete. The 2026 Global Education Monitoring report warns that the global out of school population may be undercounted by at least 13 million once humanitarian sources are used to correct data gaps in conflict-affected contexts.

When education data fails, the children most likely to be excluded are not just the ones out of school. There are also those who are completely missing from the systems meant to find them.

This is why data gaps are not simply a technical issue, they are a structural driver of exclusion. If a child is not in the dataset, they are less likely to appear in school planning processes, teacher-allocation formula, textbook procurements systems, transport route, or targeted social protection programmes that could have kept them enrolled.

The 2026 GEM Report highlights the depth of the challenge. In primary and secondary education, one in three countries does not report disparities by urban–rural location and one in two does not report disparities by wealth. When such information is missing, education policies that rely on national averages mask the children who are furthest behind.

Why Children Disappear from Education Data

An Education Above All Foundation Occasional Paper on counting out-of-school children explains how administrative enrolment figures can diverge from reality in predictable ways. Systems may undercount children who attend but are not registered; undercount late registrants when data are captured only once at the start of the year; or overstate participation by counting registered children who never attend.

And, these are not minor measurement errors. They are precisely how children slip through institutional cracks, especially those affected by poverty, displacement, disability, language barriers, and gender discrimination.

Finding the Children who are Missing

Consider what happens when programmes treat identification as seriously as instruction.

In our joint project with Educate Girls in rural Rajasthan in India we found that official child-tracking data often missed children in remote hamlets. To address this, community volunteers conducted door-to-door surveys at scale, across more than three million households in over 9,000 villages to identify out of school girls.

The effort enabled the programme to identify, enrol, and retain tens of thousands of girls who had previously been absent from official records. The lesson from this exercise was straightforward: it is hard to serve children you cannot see. But when systems invest deliberately in identification and verification, those learners can be found.

The same challenge applies to children with disabilities, who are too often hidden by stigma and undercounted by systems that do not measure disability consistently. In our ten-country inclusive education programme implemented with Humanity & Inclusion across Africa, we sought to “bring children out of the shadows”, through community outreach, disability-sensitive identification tools, and sustained tracking of participation, the programme successfully enrolled more than 32,000 out of school children with disabilities and supported strong retention outcomes.

These experiences show that exclusion is not only about access to education. It is also about whether systems can identify and track children who face multiple barriers to participation.

What Stronger Education Data Systems Can Do

Across many countries, governments and partners are beginning to recognise that stronger education data systems are essential to identifying and supporting the most excluded learners. For instance, in Rwanda, the Zero Out of School Children initiative uses the Waliku application, a digital monitoring tool developed with partners including Save the Children and the Ministry of Education.

Teachers use the mobile platform to register out of school children, record attendance, and track patterns of absence. When repeated absences occur, the system generates follow-up alerts so schools or community workers can contact families and support re-enrolment.

In partnership with UNICEF and Government of The Gambia, efforts are underway to integrate education data with health and civil registration systems through DHIS2 for Education, helping authorities identify children who are missing from school records and coordinate responses across sectors.

Other partnerships illustrate how digital tools can strengthen identification and monitoring in different contexts.

In Nigeria, a partnership project with UNICEF developed the Tracking Re-entry of Children to Education (TRACE) system that combines community mapping and school records to track children from identification through enrolment and progression.

In Kenya, under EAA Foundation-UNICEF partnership, a Digital Attendance Application enables near real-time monitoring of school attendance, allowing schools to detect patterns of absenteeism and intervene early.

Digital systems are also proving valuable in fragile contexts. In Syria, the EAA Foundation-UNICEF partnership project developed a Self-Learning Programme Child Monitoring System to track children participating in alternative learning pathways when formal schooling has been disrupted.

In Zanzibar, the EAA Foundation-UNICEF partnership project developed a mobile-based monitoring tool that supports community-level identification and follow-up of out-of-school children, while the EAA Foundation-World Bank partnership project in Djibouti developed digital tools that help track participation in alternative education programmes and support transitions into formal schooling.

In Zanzibar, a mobile-based monitoring tool that supports community-level identification and follow-up of out-of-school children.

Taken together, these initiatives illustrate an important shift: Education systems are moving from periodic aggregate reporting toward child-level identification, real-time monitoring, and early-warning systems.

As these systems evolve, particularly with advances in analytics and artificial intelligence, they offer the potential to predict dropout risks and guide targeted interventions, helping ensure that every child remains visible within the education system.

Rwanda’s school attendance register and tracking system, Waliku Application. Teachers use the mobile platform to register out of school children, record attendance, and track patterns of absence.

So, what should change?

Governments must treat education data as an inclusion tool, not only a reporting obligation. This means investing in learner-level education information systems that can uniquely identify learners, track attendance and progression, and safely link education data with civil registration, health, and social protection systems where appropriate.

Governments should also routinely combine and integrate data from various sources to correct blind spots in national statistics.

Secondly, development partners should fund data systems as core public infrastructure. It is untenable to finance classrooms, teachers, and learning materials while leaving ministries without the capacity to know which children are missing, where they are, and what barriers they face.

Results-based financing should also reward governments and implementers for verified inclusion outcomes, not only aggregate enrolment.

Education agencies and partners should standardise how the world counts ‘excluded.’ Globally tested tools already exist. For example, the UNICEF–Washington Group Child Functioning Module, provides a standardised approach for identifying children with disabilities in surveys and administrative systems.

For displaced learners, stronger coordination between education and humanitarian data systems is essential. According to UNHCR, there are 12.4 million refugee children of school age worldwide, and nearly 46% of them out of school.

The takeaway is straightforward: The most excluded children are often the least counted.

Closing the education gap requires closing the education data gap, so that every child is visible, reachable, and supported well before exclusion becomes permanent.

IPS UN Bureau

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Healthy soils teeming microbes are the foundations of resilient, sustainable and global food production ecosystems. Credit: Fabiola Ortiz/IPS

By Esther Ngumbi
URBANA, Illinois, US, May 6 2026 (IPS)

A newly published review in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment has revealed disturbing statistics on the growing environmental threats posed by global food production. The global food system, designed to feed and nourish humanity, is now a major contributor to climate change via greenhouse gas emissions, and the largest driver of freshwater depletion, biodiversity loss, and nutrient pollution.

Alarmingly, this new review brings attention to a concerning cruel twist and a deeper problem manifested through feedback loops between environmental change pressures including climate change and global food production.

In this vicious hard to break feedback loop, farmers are forced to use more inputs including fertilizers and toxic pesticides to sustain high yields, which in turn ruins and further compromises the environment while making food production harder in the long term.

In this vicious hard to break feedback loop, farmers are forced to use more inputs including fertilizers and toxic pesticides to sustain high yields, which in turn ruins and further compromises the environment while making food production harder in the long term

The central question then becomes: How do we break these vicious feedback loops that threaten to undermine our global food system in the longer term? What specific foundational strategies stand a chance of reducing environmental pressures and improving global food systems and agricultural production resillience?

First and foremost, the foundations for breaking this cruel cycle begin in the soil, by investing in revitalizing and improving the health of soils and agricultural lands that power global food production. Healthy soils teeming microbes are the foundations of resilient, sustainable and global food production ecosystems.

Healthy soils store and filter water and cycle nutrients, support the growth of nutritious food while simultaneously helping agricultural crop plants to cope with water stress, combat diseases and pests, and use nutrients more effectively, reducing the need for additional inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides.

Convincingly, smart investments channeled towards improving soil health and soil microbiome can help farmers and food producers to produce more and healthy crops with less, limit environmental damage and simultaneously break the emerging feedback loops between global food production and environmental damage.

The good news is that improving and building soil health and soil microbiomes is a top priority for many stakeholders involved in food production in the United States and around the world including farmers, researchers, governments, philanthropists, non-governmental  and non-profit organizations, research funding agencies, the African Union and the United Nations.

Excitingly, adoption of several sustainable regenerative  practices including cover cropping, crop rotation, conservation tillage, planting diverse crops, integrating livestock and agroforestry, alongside with inoculation of soils with microbes including arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi can improve soil health and quality, improving biodiversity, mitigate climate change, and extend soil longevity beyond 10,000 years. Moreover,  research is confirming that these strategies do indeed work.

Second, another intervention that can reduce environmental decline while improving global food production is investing in innovative  climate-smart agriculture and precision agriculture practices. Scientific evidence has shown that adopting these practices can sustain global food production while limiting environmental harm.

Complementing and accompanying these foundational strategies is the urgent need to prioritize breeding and developing  multi-stress and stress-resilient crops and integrating stress resilient traits from wild relatives of domesticated crops.

Additionally,  multi-stress and climate-resilient crops can be grown alongside other annual and perennial crop species while being integrated into broader sustainable and regenerative farming practices including agroforestry. Collectively, these practices can sustain food production while minimizing environmental harm, thereby breaking feedback loops.

Finally, these strategies must be paired with policies and incentives to ensure maximum adoption. Farmers who adopt regenerative and sustainable soil building, climate-smart, precision agriculture practices while planting stress resilient crops should be supported and rewarded.

Alongside policies and incentives, there is a need to ensure that farmers, who are central in global food production embrace and adopt these sustainable feedback loops breaking practices. Embracing these practices can improve agricultural productivity, resilience and efficiency.

Of course, it is critical to understand and be aware of the constraints that still hinder stakeholders in global food production including farmers from adopting these global food production and environmental pressures feedback loop breaking practices.

Feeding our growing world sustainably requires everyone to confront the vicious cycle of food production and environmental decline. Researchers, policymakers, governments, private businesses, civil society, and philanthropists must act with urgency.

We should view mitigation and adaptation as interconnected strategies to address the dual challenge of producing food while protecting the environmental systems that enable it. The most effective and sustainable solutions will strengthen agriculture and reduce environmental harm. Time is of the essence.

Esther Ngumbi, PhD is Assistant Professor, Department of Entomology, African American Studies Department, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign