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

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Oct 5 2026 (IPS)

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

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

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

Hostility written into law

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

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

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

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

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

A fragmented result

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

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

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

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

A chance to change course

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

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

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

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

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

At the Africa Food Systems Forum in Kigali, Rwanda, experts explored how renewable energy can ease the burden on farmers. Here Shifra Ainomugisha poses beside a solar-powered irrigation system in Uganda. She was named the 2026 Commonwealth Young Person of the Year for the development of AI and solar-powered agricultural technologies. Credit: Solar Farm Uganda

By Farai Shawn Matiashe
KIGALI, Oct 2 2026 (IPS)

Post-harvest losses, particularly in rural areas, threaten the gains Africa is making in agricultural production and export capacity.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, up to 40% of farm produce is lost because of a lack of cold storage, according to industry players.

Highly perishable farm produce, like fruits and vegetables, can go as high as 70%.

With agriculture accounting for one-third of the Gross Domestic Product and employing over 60%, such a loss threatens jobs and the livelihoods of millions of people.

Farmers in Africa grapple with a lack of reliable refrigeration, an underdeveloped cold chain and unreliable power storage, leaving harvests to heat and spoilage.

Poor road networks and limited refrigerated transport options also worsen the situation. Farmers transport fruits long distances to processing centres under non-ideal conditions, resulting in losses.

Renewable Energy Offers an Opportunity

At the Africa Food Systems Forum in Kigali, Rwanda, experts are exploring how renewable energy can ease the burden on farmers who often turn to diesel generators to cool their farms’ fresh produce.

Olamide Niyi-Afuye, Chief Executive Officer at Africa Minigrid Developers Association (AMDA), an industry association working to improve the operating environment for mini-grids, said the biggest gap is not awareness but aggregation and intentional market design.

“We already see individual examples of mini-grids powering agro-processing, cold storage and other productive activities,” he said.

“The challenge is that these are still too often treated as individual projects rather than part of a scalable commercial model.”

Mugwe Manga, a Climate Finance Lead at Financial Sector Deepening Kenya (FSD Kenya), an independent trust supporting micro and small enterprises, said energy presents a tremendous opportunity for smallholder farmers to capture more value from what they produce.

“Solar, increasingly combined with battery energy storage, is particularly important because it is modular, increasingly affordable and can be deployed relatively quickly in rural areas,” he said.

“Solar-powered irrigation, cold storage, drying, milling, cooling and agro-processing can reduce post-harvest losses, increase productivity, improve product quality and allow farmers to sell into higher-value markets.”

Manga said energy can become an important enabler of both climate resilience and higher farmer incomes.

“The productive use of energy for cold storage, solar-pumped irrigation, and agro-processing is critical to value capture, climate resilience, and adaptation that will strengthen smallholder farmers,” he said.

Nigeria, one of Africa’s largest economies, lost between $2.3bn and $3.3bn to post-harvest inefficiencies in 2025, according to industry players.

The food wasted due to poor storage and transport networks amounted to up to 40 million metric tonnes.

South Africa loses an estimated 10.3 million tonnes of food annually, about 19% of its fresh produce, according to a 2021 report titled Waste Research Development and Innovation Roadmap Research.

Funding Cooperatives Is a Better Funding Model

Renewable energy offers reliable and accessible solutions to cold storage and processing problems in Africa, but funding remains a major challenge.

Though prices of solar panels and batteries shipped from China have been declining in recent years, current prices remain high for many farmers, particularly smallholders in rural areas.

With low capital amid limited access to grants and loans, many cannot afford solar-powered agro-processing and cold storage facilities.

Experts said that clean energy is the cheapest technology to deploy when farmers work together.

“Due to the capital expenditure of some of these, it is important for farmers to organise themselves and come together as a collective in order to take advantage of economies of scale and the power of aggregation that can use energy for all, as opposed to rolling out these solutions to individual smallholders that may not be cost-effective,” said Manga.

Niyi-Afuye said there is a need to bring energy developers and agribusinesses together much earlier, aggregate demand across agricultural value chains, and structure projects around credible productive loads from the outset.

“The opportunity is to stop treating energy and food systems as two separate investment cases and start building bankable opportunities at the intersection of both,” he said.

Manga said one of the key lessons from distributed energy is that the economics are often stronger when players move away from financing individual assets for individual farmers and instead aggregate demand.

“Farmers can organise through cooperatives, producer organisations, aggregators or rural enterprises and invest in shared infrastructure that serves many producers,” he said.

“This creates economies of scale, improves asset utilisation and creates a stronger and more predictable revenue base.”

Manga said aggregation also makes these projects more attractive to financiers by reducing transaction costs and perceived risk.

“Rather than lending against hundreds of individual smallholders, investors can finance a productive asset with an identifiable operator, clear cash flows and an aggregated customer base,” he said.

Niyi-Afuye said the better model is to aggregate projects into investable portfolios, combine commercial capital with appropriate credit enhancement and risk-sharing mechanisms, and increase access to patient, local-currency financing.

“Financing infrastructure in dollars while the underlying customers earn in Nigerian Naira or Kenyan shillings creates a structural mismatch,” he said.

Pratik Patel, Bureau Chief for East and Southern Africa at AfriCatalyist, a global development advisory firm headquartered in Senegal, said a public-private-producer partnership is the model that can make renewables affordable.

“Instead of a cold storage facility or cold chain operator trying to stand alone as a single commercial enterprise, it’s embedded in a collective plan that covers the full journey from farm to table, production, aggregation through farmer cooperatives, storage, processing, and market access, with clear roles and coordination at each stage,” he said.

He said the approach matters for financing because it gives investors what a standalone facility cannot, such as a defined use case, identified long-term clients, and a credible route to market.

“When responsibility for each link in the chain is assigned to the actor best suited to manage it, the plan becomes legible and de-risked, which is what ultimately builds investor confidence,” he said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 
CIVICUS discusses life as a refugee with an exiled Sudanese civil society activist who has asked to remain anonymous for security reasons.

Over three years into Sudan’s war, millions of people have been displaced, both within the country and beyond its borders, and the numbers keep rising. Fighting continues to force civilians from their homes, while those who reach neighbouring countries struggle to find safety and stability. Civil society warns that, despite the scale of the suffering, Sudan’s crisis isn’t receiving the international attention it deserves. Exiles document violations and advocate for democracy and peace.

What drew you to human rights activism, and how has exile changed it?

The gender-based injustice women face in our societies drew me to human rights work. From childhood, I objected to the unequal treatment of girls and boys and the stereotypes that painted women as less capable. I rebelled against this system, seeking out books, stories and real-life experiences that showed women’s capabilities and potential.

Activism in exile, particularly during wartime, brings unending and unexpected risks and challenges. At times, it feels like you are fighting to survive. You carry the trauma of war and the guilt of being safe while your family and community remain in danger. Many human rights defenders lack the basic resources to survive.

In exile, I have moved from a radical stance to one focused on reform, having learned that dogmatism, hostility and refusal to listen can lead to violence and grave human rights violations. I have become more deliberate in my judgements, with a stronger desire to understand the other side.

How has Sudanese civil society adapted since the war began?

Sudanese civil society has shown remarkable resilience. People mobilised to confront the war and the collapse of state institutions. Within hours, young people and volunteers were helping the wounded, homes became field clinics and communities shared their resources.

As the war continued, many civil society organisations relocated abroad. One of the most remarkable aspects of the Sudanese experience has been the emergence of numerous additional human rights, humanitarian, women’s and youth organisations in host countries. They have maintained links with activists inside Sudan, monitored human rights and documented violations, provided humanitarian assistance, advocated for peace, promoted dialogue and countered hate speech.

Civil society’s work, inside Sudan and abroad, is one of the few sources of hope for peace in the country.

What barriers do Sudanese civil society activists and organisations face in exile?

Refugees face insecurity and a rising wave of xenophobia in host countries, and many feel unwelcome, or even blamed for seeking safety in a country where they are made to feel they don’t belong. Many also face movement restrictions, difficulties renewing residency documents and the constant risk of deportation.

On top of this, activists carry the added burden of propaganda that portrays them as fugitives or foreign agents. We must confront the abuses we document while also countering division, hatred, intolerance and racism.

Civil society organisations abroad also face economic, legal and security restrictions. Many struggle to register legally, open bank accounts, access funding or obtain permits.

Compounding all this are the limited international support and the sense that global decision-makers, and even international human rights organisations, don’t prioritise our concerns. This can leave you feeling that you simply don’t matter.

What needs to change to stop displacement silencing activists and refugees in general?

The global system often seems designed to protect the strong while weakening the vulnerable. In Africa and across the global south, we seek to change this, yet we remain constrained by the structures and assumptions of the system. We need to see difference as a source of diversity rather than division, share responsibility for resources and security, and protect everyone’s rights to life, development, dignity and freedom.

As a Sudanese refugee and human rights defender, I strongly support the Borderless Africa campaign, led by the pan-African civil society movement Africans Rising, which calls for visa-free travel and a single continental passport across Africa. It reflects the need to move beyond borders and put humanity and fundamental rights first.

It’s shocking to be forced into silence about crimes you have witnessed simply because you are a refugee. Governments, civil society and activists must dismantle the legal and logistical barriers that leave refugees unable to access basic rights.

CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.

SEE ALSO
Sudan: ‘Crossing a border doesn’t automatically mean you’re safe’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Rawia Saad 09.Sep.2026
Sudan: blood on the hands of foreign powers CIVICUS Lens 04.Sep.2026
Sudan in crisis: mass killings continue while the world looks away CIVICUS Lens 23.Dec.2025

Nurunnahar, 45, is always afraid of the tide. Early warning of the tide helps her prepare. Photographed at Jhapali village in Shyamnagar upazila (sub-district) of Satkhira district, Bangladesh. Credit: Rafiqul Islam Montu/IPS

By Rafiqul Islam Montu
SHYAMNAGAR (Satkhira), Bangladesh, Oct 1 2026 (IPS)

Villagers rush to the vulnerable spot of the embankment—early warning of the rising tide has alerted them. Together, they save the village from tidal flooding by repairing the vulnerable embankment, which is at risk from the impact of low pressure in July this year. The message is clear: early warnings of the rising tide save lives and property.

This wasn’t always the case. Cyclone Amphan in 2020 and Cyclone Yaas in 2021 destroyed the embankment in question, which is located in Datinakhali village, Burigoalini Union, Shyamnagar sub-district, Satkhira district, southwestern Bangladesh. But there was no early warning of the rising tide at that time, and the cyclone caused extensive damage.

Every year during the monsoon, the pressure of tidal water in various parts of the Bangladeshi coast breaks or overflows the embankment. This causes extensive damage to homes, resources, and crops. Many displaced families have been forced to move elsewhere after facing severe losses.

“Real-time area-based tidal surge warnings are helping us in disaster preparedness, saving resources and lives. We can take necessary measures to protect ourselves before the tidal surge. But we have faced losses again and again because we did not have this opportunity before,” explained Meherun Nesa, 45, a resident of Kalbari village in the Shyamnagar sub-district of Satkhira district. Rokeya Begum, 40, Sakina Begum, 39, and many others shared the same opinion.

The United Nations has set the goal of Early Warning for All by 2027 to save people from disasters. On the other hand, a new UN report published on August 31, 2026, says that more than 14 million people in the South Asian delta region are at risk of losing their shelter due to rising sea levels.

Their homes will be permanently submerged. Bangladesh is one of the countries at risk. It is crucial that updated disaster warnings reach people like Meherun Nesha, who live in disaster-prone areas of the country.

This house in Anuliya village in Asashuni upazila (sub-district) of the Satkhira district, Bangladesh, was swept away by tidal water pressure in April 2025, before there was a cyclone warning system. Credit: Rafiqul Islam Montu/IPS

Early Warnings Protect Against Tides

Early warnings were given in 25 places during low sea levels in July, August, and September this year about the risk of breaking embankments or overflowing embankments. After receiving the warnings, villagers repaired the embankments in the two most vulnerable places.

In other places, villagers have also carried out additional preparatory work. Now, people living on the coast can know in advance whether the tide will rise or whether the embankments will collapse under the pressure of the tide. By getting warnings, they are able to prepare themselves and save resources.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based scientific early warnings are also protecting the coastal people of Bangladesh from major disasters like tidal waves and embankment collapses. This technology is capable of providing accurate forecasts three days in advance of the cyclone.

The technology provides advance information about the location of potential tidal waves, water height, flooded areas, and vulnerable embankments. Through these capabilities, meteorologists and disaster management professionals can make quick decisions. Disaster management professionals hope that the technology will further enhance Bangladesh’s capacity to deal with disasters and will play an effective role in reducing losses.

The country currently provides cyclone forecasts, but being port-based or large area-based, these forecasts do not cover specific areas. These forecasts can’t accurately identify the specific location of tidal waves, potential water height, or flooded areas. To overcome this limitation, a scientific model has been developed with international cooperation, which is known as ‘Surf IT.’

The international organization Action Against Hunger and North South University are working jointly under the leadership of Bangladeshi non-governmental organization Uttaran to combat the disaster. Technical assistance is provided by the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD), Flood Forecasting and Warning Center (FFWC), Water Development Board (BWDB), and Department of Disaster Management (DDM). The International Development Research Center (IDRC) provides financial support for the project.

How Does ‘Surf IT’ Work?

The model works by combining tides, temperature, and wind speed. It is combined with local knowledge. It involves marginalized communities in the project area. The model has been developed following the experience of weather forecasting systems in the European Union and the United States.

It not only measures the height of the tidal wave but also analyzes the condition of coastal embankments, their load-bearing capacity, and where the embankments are at risk of failure, and creates a map of flooded areas. Water sensors are constantly monitoring the river system and quickly detect any changes in water levels. Dams have been mapped to identify vulnerable areas and potential breach sites.

A digital dashboard has been created to convert complex data into simple and effective warnings. These help in providing forecasts. The information is sent to marginalized communities in local languages. It is sometimes sent via voice calls and sometimes via text messages. It is sent in such a simple language that anybody can access the message from any mobile phone.

According to the researchers, the latest test has shown that the model’s predictions are about 98 percent accurate. Work is underway to make it 100 percent accurate. Therefore, the model was tested at the field level in June, July, August, and September this year.

The project plans to transfer the technology to the government for use in the national disaster forecasting system. Currently, the project covers about 500,000 people in 20 unions across 3 sub-districts in 2 districts in southwest Bangladesh. The sub-districts are Shyamnagar, Asashuni in Satkhira district, and Koyra in Khulna district.

Will Reduce Loss and Damage

Md Jakariya, head of the ‘Surf IT’ technical team and professor in the Department of Environmental Science & Management at North South University, said, “One of the goals of the project is to reduce damage not only from major cyclones but also from regular very high tides and small tidal waves. Usually, even in the absence of major government assistance, people in coastal villages suffer a lot. The project has been initiated to reduce that damage.”

Discussions with the government are ongoing.

“This modern model is now final. Regular policy-making meetings are being held with high-level government officials to increase its effectiveness. The model is capable of predicting disasters three days in advance,” Zahid Amin Shaswat, Head of Program at the NGO Uttaran, which implements ‘Surf IT,’ said.

The advantage of this technology is that it goes beyond forecasting.

“Cyclone forecasting alone is not enough in coastal risk management; accurate information about the location, height, and potential flood areas is the most important thing in protecting human lives and property. Therefore, if such a technology based on scientific information can be effectively implemented, early evacuation of people to safe places, dam protection, and decision-making by local administration will be more realistic,” Environmentalist Sharif Jamil said.

Bangladesh in the Face of Disasters

Disasters like cyclones, floods, and heat waves are increasing in Bangladesh. Recently, coastal marginalized communities are facing loss and damage due to the impact of high tides.

In the latest long-term Global Climate Risk Index (CRI) published by Germanwatch, Bangladesh ranks 13th among the most vulnerable countries in the world. The World Bank has expressed concern that 216 million people will be internally displaced in six regions of the world by 2050 if necessary measures are not taken to prevent climate change. Of these, 40 million people will be displaced in South Asia. In South Asia alone, 19.9 million people are expected to be displaced in Bangladesh.

A recent joint study by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) and the Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit (RMMRU) says that more than 21 million people were displaced due to cyclones, floods, and tidal waves in Bangladesh between 2008 and 2025.

Meanwhile, in July this year, Disaster Management and Relief Minister Asadul Habib Dulu informed the National Parliament that floods and cyclones have caused Tk 41,200 crore (about US$ 3.3 million) in damage in the country over the five years from 2021 to 2025.

“In addition to major disasters, disasters like sudden high tides cause extensive damage to rural villages. Here, technology is being combined with the long-standing experience and folk knowledge of local people. Through this approach, it is possible to predict more accurately which dams are weak, where the risk of collapse is high, and where water can overflow,” added Md Jakariya.

Experts involved in the project hope that accurate early warning will ensure the safety of coastal people and reduce the risk of cyclones and tidal waves due to climate change. At the same time, the project will further strengthen Bangladesh’s capacity in disaster management.

On the ground people from marginalized communities, like Meherun Nesa, find hope in this message from experts.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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

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

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

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

A hollow declaration

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

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

Closed civic space, open defiance

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

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

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

Ambition without accountability

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

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

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

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

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

 
CIVICUS discusses the role of art in climate and rights struggles in the Brazilian Amazon with Tom Wheeler, executive director and co-founder of Treesistance. Treesistance is a platform operated by the Netherlands-based Sinchi Foundation that partners with Indigenous communities across four Brazilian states on cultural preservation and forest protection.

Tom Wheeler

How did art become the centre of a forest protection initiative?

Sinchi, the foundation behind Treesistance, was set up in 2016 as a cultural organisation. I believed we needed a societal or spiritual shift, so in our first years we ran festivals, film screenings, galleries, music events and debates, and built art and documentary projects with Indigenous communities across six continents.

At some point I went through a bit of a crisis, questioning what real impact this work was having. Then I met Vandria Borari, a brilliant Indigenous lawyer and celebrated ceramic artist from western Pará, a state in the Brazilian Amazon. She introduced me to the Tapajós and Arapiuns Indigenous Council, an association that represents 14 Indigenous groups in the Lower Tapajós region. In 2021, our focus shifted to the Amazon, and in 2023, together with our Indigenous partners, we co-created Treesistance as a platform built around four pillars: access to justice, communications, renewable energy and sustainable economic development.

The access to justice work is what we’re best known for. We support Forest Guardians, community-led groups that patrol and defend Indigenous territories against illegal logging and other threats, and we help build strong relationships between the territories and Brazil’s Public Prosecutor’s Office, which has a constitutional mandate to defend Indigenous rights.

That shift toward tangible, on-the-ground impact didn’t push art aside. If anything, it made clear how essential it was. Art isn’t a side product or a tool for us. It’s central to the community aspect of this work, to participation and authenticity, and to what the wider decolonial tradition is trying to achieve, of giving voice to communities and centring them in their own stories. Everything we do is co-created, but it’s led by our Indigenous partners. This carries multiple meanings for them, not least the pride of building something of their own from the ground up.

What’s the Tales of Resistance project?

Tales of Resistance is led on the ground by Vivi Borari, a talented young Indigenous woman. The idea was to build an archive, first and foremost for Indigenous communities’ use and records, telling the stories of the Majés and Pajés – plant healers, shamans and spiritual guides within these territories – from the inside out.

The project is about telling their origin stories, how they work within the community, what their roles and responsibilities are and the messages they carry from the spirits to the world. Once those stories exist on the communities’ terms, and with their consent, they can also travel further, which is why we’re now developing them into an exhibition. That kind of storytelling matters because one of the biggest challenges impact organisations face is talking only to people who already agree with them and failing to reach beyond that circle. Art and storytelling are how you break through.

We also took a deliberately different approach to how these stories are gathered. Turning up with a camera and asking people to explain their culture on the spot is a very western way of working. Just imagine how strange it would feel if someone did that to you. So we don’t do that. For us, everything starts as an audio recording while we are sitting together, having tea, walking in the forest, just talking about people’s experiences. Many of these stories would simply never be told in front of a camera. Only afterwards do we do a photo shoot, and that’s when we layer the audio and images together.

What films have you made, and what impact have they had?

Two years ago, we made a short film, Curupira, sharing the story of one of the forest’s spirits as told by one of the communities we work with. It was nominated for awards at film festivals around the world. It’s a tangible example of what storytelling can do for us. It brought in new interest, funders, partners and collaborators, people who wouldn’t otherwise have found their way to this work.

In 2026, we released another short film, Surara – Spirit of Resistance, directed by Lea Hejn, which won the Guardians in Action category at the Santiago Wild Film Festival in Chile. It includes footage from patrols led by Chief Dadá Borari, head of our Forest Guardian programme.

What changes when communities see themselves represented, and why do you call this resistance rather than activism?

The cultural scene, in the global south as much as the global north, is still working through questions of representation, making sure people see the diversity of their context reflected on screen. As Vivi has said, our biggest impact comes when Indigenous people see themselves and their reality reflected. This changes their self-perception. They no longer see themselves as victims but as people with agency, as fighters. That’s a qualitative impact that’s genuinely hard to put into a single sentence or measure in the way we measure hectares protected. But it’s real, and it’s the storytelling and narration that make it happen.

That’s also why we don’t use the word ‘activism’ much. It’s a strange word, a badge of honour to some people, something to avoid for others, and I think it’s fundamentally a western construct. There shouldn’t be anything activist about wanting to protect the health of the planet or stand up for human rights. That should be a key component of being a good person.

For our Indigenous partners, the stakes are different, though. For them, this work is intrinsic to survival, both literally, given the violence they face from illegal and aggressive forces, and culturally, in the sense of keeping traditions such as their graphic art and oral storytelling alive.

‘Resistência’ is the word I hear most often within Indigenous communities, whether people are talking about protecting their culture or land. It’s not a one-off response to a single government or form of exploitation, but something long-term and intergenerational, and like any form of resistance, the energy behind it runs low if it isn’t renewed. Art is one of the ways that energy gets renewed, generation after generation. That’s why we called the storytelling project Tales of Resistance and the wider platform Treesistance.

What other art initiatives do you run?

Storytelling extends into our product collaborations with local Indigenous artists, who create things such as clothing and notebooks. One example is Guardian of Nature, a T-shirt based on the Guardians’ uniform design. Buying one pays for a uniform for a Forest Guardian on the ground.

We’ve also launched a drink called Purpose, now going into restaurants in the Netherlands. A portion of the proceeds from every bottle sold supports our Forest Guardian projects. The brand itself is built around storytelling. It’s about people identifying their own sense of purpose in the world. So it’s art, but commercially driven, aimed at creating impact on the ground.

We held an open art and design competition for Indigenous artists from the 14 ethnic groups or nations of the Tapajós, focused on expressing their culture and relationship with nature. It brought the artists local and regional recognition through an event where the Indigenous Council, artists and other partners came together to celebrate the work.

How do you avoid the exploitative imagery typical of development fundraising?

Traditional development fundraising tends to rely on a particular kind of emotional imagery – a poor person, a hungry child, an old man in need – because that’s what drives donations from the kind of donor it targets. We deliberately avoid that.

There’s a well-known quote, often attributed to the Aboriginal Australian academic Lilla Watson, although she credits it to a collective of Aboriginal activists, that says, ‘If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together’.

None of the communities we work with are looking for charity. The role they play in protecting the Earth and their culture has real value in itself and, in my opinion, we need their wisdom more than they need us. We never describe ourselves as the communities’ funder. We’re a partner. When we help raise money, we’re clear that it was never ours to begin with. If it comes with requirements attached, the conversation is always about how we meet them together rather than about us imposing them. That’s the same principle whether we’re talking about a grant, a story or art. It has to build something the community owns, not something we extract.

CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.

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

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Sep 25 2026 (IPS)

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

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

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

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

International complicity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Civil war continues

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

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

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

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

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

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

Participants at the fourth UN High-Level Meeting on the Prevention of Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health (NCDs), held in September 2025. Credit: UN Photo/Eric Kanalstein

By Shreya Komar
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 25 2026 (IPS)

On September 21, just prior to the opening of the United Nations General Assembly Debate (UNGA81), the NCD Alliance held its fifth Multi-stakeholder Gathering, “Strategies for a Sustainable NCD and Mental Health Response,” during the UN High-level Week.

“This meeting may be on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, but the issues discussed here are central to the global health agenda,” emphasized Mary-Ann Etiebet, President and CEO of Vital Strategies and moderator of the event. She opened by highlighting the continuing global burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and the gap in funding and resources dedicated to addressing it.

The discussion centered on how countries can sovereignly lead, scale, sustain and strengthen their responses, with a particular emphasis on country ownership and “putting the country in the driver’s seat”.

The gathering focused on how countries can move from policy commitments to implementation and build sustainable responses to NCDs and mental health through governance, financing, and cross-sector partnerships.

Fleming Kondradsen, a panelist and Chief Scientific Officer at Novo Nordisk Foundation, emphasized the importance of supporting more horizontal approaches to health. Rather than creating parallel systems and new structures, he argued for strengthening and integrating NCD prevention and care into existing health systems wherever possible.

For Paula Johns, another panelist from Brazil and Executive Director of ACT Health Promotion Brazil, meaningful participation begins with a fundamental question: How do we include the public in public health? Maintaining strong relationships with communities, she argued, is essential to ensuring that health policies and interventions reflect the realities of the people they are intended to serve.

Johns also raised concerns about the growing pressures affecting young people in Brazil, describing a “mental health global pandemic”. Among the issues she highlighted were social media and sports betting, calling for greater attention and regulation of environments that can affect young people’s health and wellbeing.

The discussion reinforced the importance of looking beyond the health sector itself. Addressing NCDs and mental health requires collaboration across government, civil society, communities and other sectors that shape the environments in which people live.

For Prisca Githuka, founder of the Pink Hearts Cancer Support Foundation from Nairobi, Kenya, one of the most important questions when it comes to addressing NCDs and mental health is meaningfully engaging people with lived experience. Consulting people who have experienced a disease, she said, is only the beginning. Meaningful engagement means involving people with lived experience in co-creating solutions and participating directly in decision-making structures. This distinction, she noted, separates genuine participation from tokenism.

People with lived experience should not simply be invited to share their stories. They should have a meaningful role in shaping decisions that impact their health, and their contributions should be fairly compensated. Githuka also stressed the importance of measuring whether people’s input actually influences outcomes. Engagement should not end when feedback is collected. Instead, stakeholders should ask: What changed as a result of that feedback? And did the final implementation actually benefit the people with lived experience?

Her own advocacy work has included petitions and efforts to secure funding and support for cancer patients, including advocacy around oncology packages and the National Health Insurance Fund.

The emphasis on advocating for lived experience at the forefront of decision-making also highlighted the impact of smaller organizations and community-based groups. For many of these organizations, their most important contribution is their proximity to the communities affected by NCDs and mental health conditions. Their stories can provide insight into gaps that may not be visible in national strategies or global commitments.

For people with lived experience with NCDs and mental health conditions, being in the room is only the first step. The measure of meaningful engagement is whether they have a voice in decisions, whether that voice influences what happens next, and whether the resulting policies and services improve their lives.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Moderator Arif Ullah of Anthropocene Alliance joins LaTricea Adams of Young, Gifted, and Green; Dionne Delli-Gatti of Continuum Strategies; and Dr. Katlyn Turner of CU Boulder Information Science and KTLN Consulting to discuss AI’s environmental justice impacts and how frontline communities can maintain agency as data center development expands. Credit: Pillar Projects / Grayson Wise

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 25 2026 (IPS)

On September 21, Frontline Resource Institute (FRI) hosted its Climate Justice Hub at Fordham University at Lincoln Center in New York City under the theme “Building a Stronger Climate Coalition.”

As part of Climate Week, and coinciding with the 81st session of the UN General Assembly, the event united advocates, researchers, policymakers, and frontline leaders to address the intensifying threat of climate change to global public health, while highlighting the need for stricter guardrails on artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, particularly in their impacts on frontline communities.

Arif Ullah, Executive Director of Anthropocene Alliance (A2) and a moderator at the event, referenced Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI by journalist Karen Hao, noting her warning that AI functions as a “new form of colonialism.” Ullah emphasized that AI’s impacts on frontline communities and their environments is multifaceted and far-reaching, requiring far more robust physical infrastructure to be sustainable.

“In July, nearly 1,400 tech company employees signed an open letter urging the [U.S.] government to regulate AI. Recently, an Anthropic researcher quit his job warning that the people building AI believe it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” said Ullah. “When you consider the many ways in which [resources are] extracted, it’s hard to disagree. Hyperscale data centers are among the ways it’s most extracted, not to mention destructive. We are seeing them proliferate, unchecked and unregulated across the country.”

Numerous speakers at the event underscored that natural resources are routinely extracted from frontline communities with little regard for public health or the stability of local ecosystems. To meet the rapidly growing demands for continuous power, data centers around the world have increasingly implemented methane gas turbines. These measures have led to a surge in toxic chemical emissions—such as formaldehyde and benzene—driving widespread air and water pollution while consuming vast amounts of water.

Sarah Vogel, Senior Vice President of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and another moderator of the event, warned that extreme weather patterns—including intense heatwaves, prolonged flooding, destructive wildfires, degraded air and water quality, and the spread of infectious diseases—are among the most alarming and common consequences of AI-exacerbated climate change.

She emphasized that these impacts present heightened risks of lung cancer, heart disease, and strokes, particularly for frontline communities. Young people are uniquely vulnerable, as their developing bodies face continuous strain from pollutants without the opportunity to grow up in healthy environments. Those with pre-existing conditions also face a heightened risk of exacerbated health outcomes.

“For communities in this country and around the world who have experienced the legacy and ongoing impacts of environmental injustices, climate change and the related pollution is a threat magnifier,” said Vogel. “We know that when our health is impaired, it’s like a domino effect. Everything is impacted. Our ability to work, our ability to take care of children, the costs associated with it. The ability to just enjoy our lives. That is what we mean when we say that the climate crisis is a health crisis”

It is these frontline communities, oftentimes primarily composed of people of color, that are entrenched in severe environmental degradation and pushed further into poverty while others reap the financial benefits. Bearing the brunt of extreme pollution, these communities often lack the healthcare infrastructure required to withstand such environmental shocks.

LaTricea Adams, Founder, CEO, and President of Young, Gifted, and Green, noted that frontline communities are often left ill-equipped to adapt to AI-driven climate shocks, describing it as a “point of reckoning.” She emphasized that many residents are often unaware that they are on the frontlines of environmental degradation, going a “significant amount of time” without understanding the full extent of how these developments directly impact their lives.

“We as a collective are still not taking public health seriously. That also has an economic implication,” said Adams. “While you may bring in millions of dollars, if people are consistently sick, does that not have an impact on healthcare, which we know is lacking in our country and in our society?”

“What you’re not gonna do is come into our community and give us nothing but pollution while we remain in poverty. But at the same time, we do have to make sure that we protect the people that have been neglected for centuries in disinvestment.”

Several panelists underscored the importance of centering frontline communities in AI reform, with cooperation between governments, community leaders, corporations, and the health sector imperative in preventing harm and establishing sustainable practices that can uplift these communities. Vogel noted that in order to build healthy and resilient communities, approaches in AI regulation must prioritize health and equity to effectively minimize risks.

Panelist Ali Abazeed, Chief Public Health Officer and Director for the city of Detroit warned that the international community must not become “sophisticated witnesses” to preventable harm, noting that progress hinges on empowering communities and providing them with the data that affects their lives.

“Public health doesn’t happen inside an office. Comfort is comfortable. The ivory tower—the research generated there is hugely important but it has to roll out to the communities,” said Abazeed, emphasizing that action is critically important amidst widespread cuts to funding for research and potential hostile takeovers of national institutes for health.

“Speaking as a government official, we need to recognize that the work that we do and the powers that we have can help uplift and elevate communities. The charge is to be outside, to be in the clinic lobby for public health, in the church basement, for us to be meeting the fence-line communities.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Credit: IAEA
 
IAEA’s 70th General Conference highlights growing strains on safeguards and nuclear security as attention shifts to the first review of the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty.

By Katsuhiro Asagiri
VIENNA, Sep 24 2026 (IPS)

The international nuclear order is facing another test as governments move from an inconclusive review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in New York to renewed disputes over safeguards and nuclear security in Vienna—and toward the first Review Conference of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) later this year.

The 70th General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), held in Vienna from September 14 to 18, came less than four months after the 11th NPT Review Conference ended without consensus on a substantive outcome.

It was the third consecutive NPT Review Conference, following those in 2015 and 2022, to conclude without agreement on substantive conclusions and recommendations—underscoring the growing difficulty of reaching consensus amid heightened nuclear risks and geopolitical tensions.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres expressed disappointment at the outcome while reaffirming the NPT as a cornerstone of the global nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime.

The IAEA does not negotiate nuclear disarmament. Its responsibilities include promoting the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and applying safeguards to verify that nuclear material is not diverted to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.

Yet the issues confronting the Agency—from Iran and North Korea to Ukraine and naval nuclear propulsion—show how safeguards, nuclear security and armed conflict are increasingly intertwined with wider questions about the future of the international nuclear order.

Map of Iran

Iran remains one of the most difficult issues facing the Agency.

For the IAEA, the central question is not simply the political dispute surrounding Iran’s nuclear programme, but whether it can maintain the continuity and credibility of independent verification.

Restrictions on access and uncertainty surrounding nuclear material, including highly enriched uranium, have intensified concerns about the effectiveness of safeguards.

The issue has taken on an additional dimension following attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities. Beyond competing political and military claims lies a wider question for the international community: how can nuclear facilities—and the verification system surrounding them—be protected during armed conflict?

Ukraine Tests Nuclear Safety in Wartime

Ukraine presents another challenge.

The war has placed major nuclear facilities in or near areas of military operations, with the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant remaining at the centre of international concern.

The IAEA has maintained experts at the site as part of efforts to reduce risks to nuclear safety and security.

Russia and Ukraine have repeatedly accused each other of actions threatening nuclear installations. While those claims remain contested, the underlying issue extends beyond this war: international nuclear governance mechanisms must now operate in circumstances where a major nuclear facility can be exposed to prolonged armed conflict.

Water is used to cool processes at the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. Credit: IAEA/Fredrik Dahl

North Korea and the Limits of Verification

Credit: journal-neo.org

The IAEA continues to monitor developments in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea from outside the country and maintains its readiness to resume verification activities should political circumstances permit.

The case illustrates a fundamental limitation of international verification: even sophisticated monitoring institutions ultimately depend on access and cooperation.

More broadly, the Vienna conference reflected the growing difficulty of achieving consensus. Political divisions are increasingly affecting debates even within an institution whose work is largely technical, encompassing safeguards, nuclear safety and security, and peaceful nuclear applications.

At the same time, progress in other safeguards cases shows that multilateral verification can produce results when governments provide access, transparency and sustained cooperation.

Civil Society Bridges the NPT and TPNW

Hideto Matsuura, head of Nihon Hidankyo, addresses an event hosted at the sidelines of the 2026 NPT Review Conference. Credit Naureen Hossain/IPS

At the 2026 NPT Review Conference, Soka Gakkai International (SGI) was among civil society organizations advocating nuclear disarmament education, nuclear risk reduction and greater attention to the humanitarian and environmental consequences of nuclear weapons.

On April 30, SGI and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation co-organized a side event examining extended nuclear deterrence through the lens of the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons.

Hideto Matsuura, an atomic bomb survivor representing Nihon Hidankyo, described how radiation-related illnesses continue to affect Hibakusha more than eight decades after the atomic bombings.

The discussion raised a question that lies at the heart of the continuing debate over nuclear deterrence: whether security should be viewed primarily from the standpoint of states or also through the lens of human security.

Such civil society engagement provides a link between the NPT process and the humanitarian approach that contributed to the emergence of the TPNW.

From Vienna to New York

The next major stage of the 2026 nuclear diplomacy cycle now moves back to New York.

From November 30 to December 4, states parties to the TPNW will hold the treaty’s first Review Conference at United Nations Headquarters.

United Nations Headquarters. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri

The TPNW does not replace either the NPT or the IAEA.

The NPT combines three pillars—nuclear non-proliferation, nuclear disarmament and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy—while the IAEA provides much of the safeguards and verification machinery supporting the non-proliferation regime.

Credit: IAEA

The three frameworks therefore address distinct but interconnected dimensions of the nuclear order.

The 2026 NPT Review Conference demonstrated the difficulty of reaching political agreement on disarmament and non-proliferation. Vienna, meanwhile, highlighted the practical challenges confronting verification and nuclear security amid armed conflict, regional proliferation disputes and geopolitical divisions.

The first TPNW Review Conference will now examine what the prohibition treaty can contribute under these conditions.

Nuclear-armed states remain outside the TPNW, placing clear limits on what the treaty can achieve on its own. At the same time, its states parties and supporting civil society organizations have placed the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons and their elimination at the centre of international debate.

When delegates gather in New York on November 30, the discussion will therefore extend beyond the implementation of a single treaty.

After another NPT Review Conference ended without substantive consensus, a broader question remains: how can established and newer multilateral frameworks work alongside one another to reduce nuclear risks, strengthen verification and advance nuclear disarmament?

From Vienna to New York, that question is set to remain at the centre of nuclear diplomacy in 2026.

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

IPS UN Bureau

Credit: Matt Palmer / Unsplash
 
This guest post is authored by V. Ram Ramanathan, Durwood Zaelke, and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco and is informed by a presentation that Ramanathan is set to give at the Vatican on September 26.

By V. Ram Ramanathan, Durwood Zaelke and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco
NEW YORK, Sep 24 2026 (IPS)

Among the three of us, we have 15 decades of high-level experience in climate science, policies and actions, and we have never been more alarmed than we are at this moment. The United Nations has just officially declared that the world has failed in limiting global warming to a safe level. During the last decade, heat-trapping pollutants nearly doubled the rate that heat is being added to the planet—a rate that will push temperatures across the 1.5°Celsius threshold in five years or less and breach the first barrier of the Paris Agreement. This will further destabilize natural climate systems and amplify weather extremes, which are already costing the world economy more than $ 2 trillion annually. At the current rate of warming, the global temperature is likely to cross 2° Celsius in about 15 years, the outer limit of the Paris Agreement, taking us into a climate not witnessed by homo sapiens, ever.

High altitudes in the Tibetan-Himalayan region and the Alps are already warming at two to three times the global average (which may be implicated in the recent Nepal / Tibet floods that left 1400 confirmed dead and 5,000 missing). Other disastrous impacts of reaching 2°Celsius include the the transition of the Amazon from a forest into a savanna. The health impacts could be the worst of all. At 2°Celsius, heat deaths in 2050 could reach a staggering two billion in a worst-case analysis by actuarial experts at Exeter University.

If that weren’t bad enough, a new scientific study raises the possibility that the current rate of warming, if continued, could eventually shut down the ocean current called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation—AMOC. The Gulf Stream is a major part of this vital ocean current, which plays a dominant role in winter weather over north America and Europe. Worryingly, AMOC is already slowing down.

At today’s rate of warming AMOC could begin to collapse at warming as low as 2° Celsius, which could be crossed by the time today’s infants are in college. Impacts would be punishing, stranding heat in the already too hot tropics, while robbing northern countries of heat now transported north to keep temperatures temperate, leading to bitter winters. If AMOC collapses, currently a low-probability event, it could trigger massive forced internal and international displacements, ushering in the world’s largest crisis of forced migration ever.

Crossing 2°Celsius will trigger other irreversible impacts too, further amplifying warming through the loss of sea ice and glaciers. The depletion of ice and snow will make the planet darker, resulting in more absorption of incoming solar radiation, amplifying warming by 25% or more.

The good news is that we can avoid this fate if we cut the rate of warming quickly—by 50% within 15 years, which is feasible in two parts.

First, we need to cut the super-pollutants of climate. These include hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), methane, lower-atmosphere ozone, and black carbon soot from diesel and cooking smoke. These short-lived climate pollutants are called super pollutants because they are tens to thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide in heating the planet and are currently contributing more than half of the warming the planet has witnessed. However, and this is crucial–they dissipate from the atmosphere within two decades, whereas carbon dioxide, the best-known climate pollutant, takes multiple decades to a century to significantly decline.

Technologies exist to quickly and affordably reduce the super pollutants. In many cases we have the policies and laws as well. HFCs are being cut through the 2016 Kigali amendment to the successful Montreal Protocol—the treaty that has slowed warming by several decades while restoring the protective stratospheric ozone layer.

Methane pollution is getting more attention recently, including from Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados, who is recommending a binding international agreement —inspired by the Montreal Protocol—to prevent the oil and gas industry from wasting natural gas, which is 90% methane. Other local solutions can reduce or even eliminate methane from landfills, starting by reducing food waste. There are many other such practical, off-the-shelf solutions.

The immediate task at hand is to thin the invisible heat trapping blanket. If we implement super pollutant solutions before 2030 and scale to full potential in less than10 years, the rate of warming can be reduced by 30% by 2040s. But we need to cut the rate of warming by half, i.e. 50%. The super pollutants should be our first target, because the technologies and policies are there and once we put them into action, the blanket-thinning will start immediately.

Second, as the recent IPCC report affirms, we need to focus on removing CO2. The human-made CO2 blanket up there weighs about 1,200 billion tons and we have to thin it by 5%, or 60 billion tons. Nature-based solutions are currently removing about 2 billion tons per year. Chemical/biological/technological solutions are actively pursued. Scaling to 4 billion tons per year would remove the needed tons in 15 years.

Together, these two measures would halve the rate of warming from today’s nearly 0.4° Celsius per decade to less than 0.2° Celsius per decade. We know of no other measures of thinning the heat-trapping blanket to provide the rapid cooling needed to allow us to survive and thrive. Even with rapid actions, climate disruption will continue for decades. We must make people and ecosystems resilient. Since we are all interconnected, we require global cooperation to make people and ecosystem climate resilient. Towards this global cooperation, we propose creating: One Million Climate Advocates to empower the public to support local and national actions; and One Million Climate Champions to connect civil society, governments, and industries to turn climate mitigation policies into actions at the local to the global level.

It’s time to move forward, always forward. Adelante, Siempre Adelante. Those were among the last words Pope Francis offered one of us (Suárez-Orozco). Not forward when the politics are perfect or opposition relents. Forward now, with the urgency of a species that has finally seen the iceberg but still has time to turn the tiller toward safety.

V. Ram Ramanathan is a distinguished research professor at the University of California at San Diego and the winner of the 2026 Crafoord Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy.

Marcelo Suárez-Orozco is chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Boston & the UCLA Wasserman Dean Emeritus.

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

IPS UN Bureau

Excerpt:

 
CIVICUS discusses public art, gender-based violence and censorship in Iraqi Kurdistan with Tara Abdullah, a multidisciplinary visual artist from Sulaymaniyah who is currently based in Oslo, Norway as part of the Safemuse – Safe Havens for Artists residency.

Tara Abdullah

How did you become an artivist?

I’m from Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and I’ve been using art to express myself since I was a child. I fought hard to get into art school. After ninth grade, I joined the Institute of Art and studied there for five years, then studied for four more years at the College of Fine Arts at the University of Sulaymaniyah and graduated in 2020. All in all, I spent almost a decade studying art and learning new materials and methods I could bring into my work.

Since I graduated in 2020, I’ve used art in many different forms, and over the past six years I’ve tried to bring art and activism together, mainly around environmental conservation and women’s rights.

Doing art as a woman here isn’t easy. Dogmas around culture, religion and tradition mean most forms of art are considered haram, or forbidden. Even inside the art community, I’ve found a kind of disgust towards certain forms of art, with people saying some things are too provocative or politically wrong. But reading monthly data on femicide and violence against women has pushed me further to try to use elements of the culture and society I grew up in to try to break the red lines set for women.

What was the Feminine Project?

It was a project I started in 2020, in which I collected clothes from women who had faced violence. I went door to door across thousands of homes in the city and surrounding towns to interview the women and collect a piece of clothing along with their story. I stitched the pieces together and hung them along a five-kilometre stretch of the city’s main street, leading from the main court to the public park.

This was my idea of a peaceful protest. Women here can’t speak openly about the violence they face. If they did, they’d face immediate backlash. Their clothes themselves carry shame. When women hang their washing out, they cover their underwear so it isn’t seen by anyone. I wanted to show that not even women’s clothes have the freedom to be touched by the sun, let alone the women themselves.

I put up a public installation rather than a gallery, because I wanted the public exposed to it, not just the small art community that already agrees with these ideas. By the end of the first day, people started tearing the piece down and burning parts of it, and it triggered a huge backlash online and offline.

What project did you work on then?

After the Feminine Project, I had thousands of stories from the women I’d interviewed. So in late 2022 I started my Voice Project. I turned the stories into a two-minute speech carrying the weight of all of it: honour killing, suicide, violence. Women here are expected to keep a low voice and never give their opinion. Decisions are made for them by men. So I created a voice for them.

I played the message through 66 synchronised speakers across four cities and three surrounding towns in Sulaymaniyah province, all at the same time. I used megaphones deliberately. They’re symbolically loaded because they are used in mosques by mullahs for the call to prayer. In most countries, anyone can speak, but here it’s always a man’s voice, whether it’s calling people to prayer or selling groceries. I wanted to show women also had a voice.

This caused an even bigger backlash than the first project. People started shutting down the speakers, and the mullahs pushed to bring me to court, accusing me of an immoral act against our culture, religion and tradition. They accused me of promoting homosexuality, which genuinely surprised me, because the piece was straightforwardly about violence against women. When the judge called me in for a statement, he asked whether I was promoting ‘queer ideology’. I replied that my work promotes individual freedom. The case was eventually dismissed, but I had to get out of the country and stay away for a few weeks until things settled down.

I think the backlash comes from the visibility. The art community is tiny, and art typically stays inside galleries where very few people see it. But when you bring it out into the public space, it exposes feelings the public didn’t know were there.

How do you manage the risks that this work brings?

For the Feminine Project, building trust with the women was very difficult. I had to reassure them I wasn’t taking photos or recording their voices, and let them check this was true. Even then, some rejected the idea outright, saying things like, ‘So what are you going to do, are you superwoman? Things won’t change’, or accusing me of trying to destroy their families.

None of the clothes in the final installation were tied to a name, so the women’s safety was protected. That meant all the pressure landed on me. I come from a very traditional, religious family who never approved of me going into art. When I was preparing the Feminine Project, I told them I was doing charity work. When the truth came out, there was a huge conflict at home, including violence. But this didn’t make me back down. Instead, it made me more determined.

I know that by undertaking these projects I risk being taken to court, being denied permission to work or receiving online smears and threats. But if I don’t do this, who will? I’m proud of what I’ve done and I’ll keep doing it.

What support have you received?

There are always going to be people for and against, but honestly, most public reaction leans against this kind of work. But I’ve also received some encouragement. Following the Feminine and Voice projects, many women contacted me anonymously to tell me how much relief the work gave them, as someone was finally saying what they’d wanted to say themselves.

However, most of the support I receive comes from outside Iraq. After the Voice Project, I was blacklisted and I couldn’t get any funding or permission for public installations, so I started applying for international prizes instead.

In 2023 I was shortlisted for the Future Generation Art Prize in Ukraine, out of 12,000 applications, for an installation building a bridge between Kurdish women’s experience of violence and war and Ukrainian women living through the current conflict, and I won the special prize in 2024. I also received the Alpine Fellowship Visual Art Prize in 2023 and the Prince Claus Seed Award in 2025. Researchers have written papers about my work, and in 2025, I showed a rough-cut documentary about the Voice Project in Warsaw and an indoor installation about Kurdish women’s experience in Kraków, Poland. That international attention keeps me going, and I use the exposure and funding to keep building pressure back home.

How do you collaborate with others?

I work as an individual artist. I bring in craftspeople and freelancers to help make each piece, but most of them ask me not to use their names. They want the money, not the association. I always explain the risk honestly to people, and many back out.

When I can, I bring in local women to do the work and pay them. For the Feminine Project I had dozens of women doing the sewing. For my environmental work, I try to involve as many women and young people as possible. For a water festival in 2025, I made giant puppets out of reed and recycled biodegradable material alongside 20 people, running workshops over 10 days so they could learn to use art to deliver their own messages.

Collaboration carries risk. When I ran a seminar on art and peace, security forces raided it on the second day and took me in for questioning. But my message to anyone facing suppression or violence is not to be afraid. Talk about it; bring it out into the open. You don’t have to be accepted by a corrupted environment around you to accept yourself.

For me, art is a whole universe you can fit everything into: your ideas, your beautiful things and the problems around you. You can use art to try to fix things. It’s the only weapon that doesn’t hurt or kill.

CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.

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Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and Afro-descendant Peoples protest exclusion and lack of recognition at the UNCCD COP17 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Credit: Lucas Wasson for Rights and Resources Initiative

By Bayarsaikhan Namsrai, Gregoria Jimenez Amaya, Isabel Davila Pereira and Stephen Basele
ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia, Sep 23 2026 (IPS)

Rightsholders came to Ulaanbaatar from across the world, carrying declarations, demands and years of experience defending the lands on which their communities depend. Indigenous Peoples, local communities, Afro-descendant Peoples, women and youth were equally clear about what they needed from COP17. But being in the room is not the same as having power in the room.

In a year when the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists and the three Rio Conventions were supposed to create momentum for rights, recognition and implementation, the negotiations showed how quickly those gains can be diluted when the people concerned are not able to shape the language that governs their lands.

What happened in Ulaanbaatar should concern anyone advancing land restoration, climate resilience and biodiversity conservation. These cannot succeed while the rights of the people who govern these landscapes remain negotiable.

Ahead of COP17, the demands were clear: 2026 could not be a symbolic year. It had to be a year when secure and customary tenure for Indigenous Peoples, local communities, pastoralists, Afro-descendant Peoples, women and youth was translated into real protections and implementation across the Rio Conventions.

Pastoralists, Mobile Peoples, Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples and local communities are proven leaders in land stewardship, biodiversity conservation and climate resilience. Achieving global restoration goals requires recognizing their rights, knowledge and leadership.

Secure and flexible tenure and mobility rights were an urgent ask in the context of the IYRP. RRI’s legal analysis of seven countries found that only Nepal and Niger recognize pastoralists as distinct rightsholders and only Niger considers mobility as a fundamental right. Even where rights exist on paper, they routinely fail against agricultural encroachment, mining, conservation expansion and green energy projects. Tenure should not be secondary to these initiatives, but a pre-condition before any projects are attempted in community lands.

Communities requested land and customary governance rights as a formal and permanent agenda item following past land tenure decisions, with customary institutions recognized as implementing bodies rather than consulted stakeholders and Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) as a precondition for any Land Degradation Neutrality action.

Finance is not a technical question. It is a question of power. At a COP supposedly focused on implementation, it should have been a central matter that communities cannot implement priorities they did not define, using resources they do not control. Yet too much climate, biodiversity and land finance still travels through institutions far removed from the communities whose territories generate environmental benefits.

For communities, direct and flexible finance is about more than getting money to the last mile. It is about trusting organizations and customary institutions to decide what resilience, restoration and development mean in their own territories.

Rightsholders were ready to advance their distinct rights during COP17. The presence of pastoralists at COP17 was significant, but presence alone does not translate into influence. Pastoralists arrived organized, with a global declaration and clear demands, yet the experience of the negotiations showed that meaningful participation requires more than being present in the conference halls. It requires the knowledge, resources, relationships and sustained capacity to follow negotiating texts, understand procedures, build alliances and influence language as decisions are being shaped.

On Land and People Day, the Indigenous Peoples Caucus delivered the Sacred Lands Declaration directly to the UNCCD Executive Secretary, demanding recognition grounded in self-determination, a permanent seat on the Committee on Science and Technology, and a dedicated fund for Indigenous-led restoration.

The local communities caucus asked for institutional status equal to the Indigenous Peoples’, Gender and Youth Caucuses rather than as a facilitative mechanism sidelined when convenient, plus a self-determined representation model and sustained funding for its operation.

Afro-descendant Peoples asked for what the other two Rio Conventions have already conceded: to be named. Afro-descendant Peoples across Latin America and the Caribbean steward territories degraded or acutely at risk — drylands, deforested frontiers, dry forests, riverine and coastal lands. They asked the UNCCD to open an Afro-descendant desertification agenda for the first time.

Women’s demands cut across all of this. Parties have built agreed gender language across three COPs. The ask was that it hold and be implemented.

For youth, being called “the future” has become another way of postponing their participation in the present. Young rightsholders are already living the consequences of drought, shrinking mobility, changing economies and pressures on their territories. They are not waiting to inherit these challenges. What they need is more than a voice now, it is representation, resources and authority in the institutions making decisions about their future. Their minimum requests included recognition as drivers of present-day adaptation, a permanent space within UNCCD processes, culturally appropriate education, and direct financing for youth-led organizations.

How the Negotiations Went

Based on prior COP decisions, COP17 should have been the continuation of a road towards implementation. Instead, the days in Ulaanbaatar became much more focused on protecting past progress rather than operationalizing it.

The institutional failures began on day one. At the opening plenary on 17 August, only two State Parties objected to agenda items, yet no vote was held and instead the presidency provisionally adopted the agenda. Future Strategic Framework, synergies with other conventions, gender, and participation of civil society were all deferred pending consultation. The COP closed with no decision at all on civil society participation, the Riyadh mandate to bring the Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus and the Local Communities’ Caucus to full Terms of Reference under Decision 5/COP.16 was pushed to COP18, and Rio synergies were removed from all decisions. Gender never reached the negotiation floor; instead, a quiet Gender Caucus convened in Plenary as the agenda block was sustained.

Still, IYRP advocacy proved successful to some extent. Parties agreed to recognize the critical role of pastoralists as stewards of rangeland ecosystems, including the importance of transboundary mobility. However, compromise language was adopted, replacing “traditional knowledge” with “knowledge accumulated by pastoralists” in order to remove wording related to Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

This distinction matters. Pastoralist knowledge is not simply a body of information accumulated over time; it is embedded in living institutions, relationships, territories and systems of customary governance. When knowledge is separated from the peoples and institutions that hold and transmit it, it becomes a technical resource while the rights and authority of its holders remain unrecognized. Draft decisions on land tenure and sand and dust storms also advanced, but only by leaving the naming of rightsholders behind. The lack of language on Indigenous Peoples and local communities was one of the biggest gaps. Many negotiators backed Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ rights in plenary, but behind closed doors, agreed to language so general it protects no one in particular. Language proposed replacing references to Indigenous Peoples with “common places” or “common people.” In the land tenure text, “affected areas” was pushed toward “common areas,” a phrase with no grounding in any multilateral mechanism and no obligations attached.

This dilution of language is particularly consequential as pressure on rangelands grows from competing global agendas. Rangelands are increasingly being presented as spaces for carbon sequestration, renewable energy, conservation and large-scale restoration, often without adequately recognizing the pastoralists who already govern and steward these landscapes.

And this is where the politics of rangelands becomes unavoidable.

Rangelands are increasingly being seen as spaces for carbon, renewable energy, conservation and large-scale restoration. The danger is that landscapes already governed and stewarded by pastoralists begin to be treated as empty spaces available for solving someone else’s global environmental problem.

A green transition cannot become a new form of land dispossession.

If pastoralists are displaced in the name of renewable energy, excluded in the name of conservation, or turned into carbon credits in the name of climate action, then changing the colour of development does not change its underlying politics.

Climate, biodiversity and land restoration objectives must not be pursued by treating pastoralist territories as empty spaces or global environmental infrastructure while sidelining the people whose livelihoods, cultures and institutions are rooted in them.

The same principle applies to emerging carbon and other environmental markets. Pastoralist rangelands cannot be reduced to carbon sinks whose value is defined externally while the cumulative ecological, economic and cultural value of pastoralism remains invisible. Any financing or market mechanism operating in these territories must begin with secure tenure, meaningful participation, Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), and fair recognition of the rights and contributions of pastoralist communities.

Right through the final day, negotiators discussed whether to reference synergies among the Rio Conventions, and whether to include gender at all. These questions were either resolved by adopting ambiguous and broad language that betrays the protection from past COP decisions or by simply delaying any decisions to COP18.

Across every draft negotiating text currently available, rangelands, drought, sand and dust storms, land tenure, Afro-descendant Peoples do not appear at all. Not contested and diluted; simply absent. On the year of the three Rio Conventions, this demonstrates how UNCCD is lagging. CBD Decision 16/6 made the Convention on Biological Diversity the first Rio Convention to name them explicitly and at UNFCCC COP30 they appeared in core negotiating text. The bridge that could have carried that recognition into the UNCCD was the synergies item blocked on day one. These synergies are urgent to deal with the intersections across climate, land degradation and biodiversity conservation.

When it came to drought, the COP also fell short. Decision ICCD/COP(17)/L.15 runs to four operative paragraphs: continue discussions at COP18 with a view to adopting a decision on proactive drought management; make drought a stand-alone agenda item; ask the secretariat and Global Mechanism to keep supporting Parties; and report back. After deferring at COP16 and again here, the working group toward a binding instrument did not materialize; the next window is 2028. In the current text, Indigenous Peoples and local communities appear as people affected by drought and consulted, rather than as rightsholders.

COP17 presented an unprecedented situation in which a small number of Parties blocked key issues from meaningful consideration. There is no Land Degradation Neutrality without human rights, no resilience without gender equality, no sustainable land governance without Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples and local communities.

COP17 also taught us something uncomfortable about participation. It is possible to be visible everywhere at a COP and still have very little influence over what finally enters the negotiating text.

Influence requires preparation. It requires people who understand the Convention, know the procedures, follow the text, build relationships with negotiators, organize across constituencies and remain engaged long after the cameras leave. Pastoralist movements have strong knowledge of their lands and livelihoods. What they need now is equal investment in the political and technical capacity required to defend that knowledge and those rights in global decision-making spaces.

If pastoralists want to shape the next COP, they cannot only prepare declarations. They must prepare negotiators.

What Happens Next

The answer cannot be another declaration.

The remaining COPs of 2026 must turn recognition into implementation. That means three things: name the peoples whose rights are at stake; put resources directly into the hands of their organizations and institutions; and give them meaningful authority over the decisions affecting their territories.

At CBD COP17 and UNFCCC COP31, Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples and local communities must be recognized as rights-holders and implementing partners, not folded into generic “vulnerable groups” language. At UNCCD COP18, the gains made on pastoralists, tenure and customary governance must not be allowed to disappear into vague language.

But the responsibility does not rest with the conventions alone. Pastoralist movements must also build the capacity to influence these processes. The period between COPs must be used to coordinate positions, prepare negotiators, track decisions and negotiating texts, build alliances across the Rio Conventions and engage governments between sessions. Pastoralist organizations need investment not only to attend COPs, but to understand and shape what happens inside them.

COP18 must deliver the adoption of Terms of Reference for the Indigenous Peoples’ and Local Communities’ Caucuses, restore gender and synergies to the agenda, open an Afro-descendant desertification agenda, advance a drought decision with the communities who live its consequences first, and restore the full recognition of traditional knowledge.

Vague language does not merely fail to establish obligations. It blurs the content of rights and leaves earned recognition in a regression limbo.

Naming peoples is the beginning of recognition, not the end of it. Recognition must lead to rights, rights must be backed by institutions and finance, and those institutions must have the authority to shape the decisions that affect their territories.

The peoples who shepherd the vast majority of the world’s lands do not need another symbolic year. They need their names written into the decisions, and their voices, institutions and authority protected long after the COP is over.

Bayarsaikhan Namsrai (Steps Without Borders), Gregoria Jimenez Amaya (CITAFRO/ODECO), Isabel Davila Pereira (Rights and Resources Initiative), Stephen Basele (Pastoralist Goals Foundation)

IPS UN Bureau

A public streetside sign advocates against gender-based violence in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
SYDNEY, Australia, Sep 22 2026 (IPS)

In the remote Highlands region of Papua New Guinea (PNG), humanitarians are life-saving beacons to women and girls facing myriad forms of violence. Despite years of awareness programmes and advocacy, the incidence of domestic and sexual violence is not declining. But Janet Kilea is one survivor who has rejected the fear and stigma of her experience and now dedicates her energy to transforming other women’s lives.

“I feel for other women who are going through the challenges I went through,” Kilea, who works in communities with the international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in the mountainous Jiwaka Province, told IPS. “I need to use my experience to advocate for and empower women. Women should come out and not be silent about gender-based violence.”

Globally, about 31.6 percent of women have been subjected to physical or sexual violence, reports the World Health Organization (WHO), compared to an estimated 64 percent, more than double, in PNG, which has a population of about 10 million. Yet abuse of women, whether physical, psychological or economic, is of worldwide concern. It affects women and girls in both developed and developing countries, with the WHO claiming that SDG 5.2, which aims to eliminate it, is severely off-track and will not, on current trends, be achieved by 2030.

MSF’s Community Engagement Supervisor, Janet Kilea (L), with Community Health Worker, Judith (C), and Village Health Volunteer, Cathy (R), in Mondumil Village, Jiwaka Province, PNG. Credit: Sophie McNamara/MSF

And, in the PNG highlands, there are numerous barriers to changing the behaviours that endanger women’s lives and getting medical and support services to those who desperately need them. Most people live in isolated communities scattered across a vast rugged terrain of impenetrable forests, arduous high-altitude areas and deep valleys. Many do not have access to roads, while state services, including law enforcement, rarely reach far beyond major towns.

Across the Pacific, rural women and girls are particularly vulnerable, given they are twice as likely to live in poverty as those in urban centres, reports the UN Women, and face entrenched customary beliefs and practices that reinforce notions of gender inequality. Polygamous marriage, for instance, increases the risk of intimate partner violence by 24 percent, according to the World Bank. In the Pacific, “men still see women and girls as their property and believe that they are entitled to control them. And so far there are no efforts led by men to change the situation,” Colin Tukuitonga, Professor of Public Health at New Zealand’s University of Auckland, told IPS.

“In Jiwaka Province, it is estimated that 60 percent of women and girls are experiencing some form of violence,” Frédérique Butez, co-ordinator of MSF’s project in Jiwaka Province, told IPS. And “right now there is only one operational facility in Minj town, one facility providing family support centre services, which are integrated services within the public health facility with medical consultations and direct first aid and support. And then appropriate referrals to protection or legal services, according to the needs of the survivor,” she elaborated.

The suffering of survivors can be immense. Their ordeals may have involved weapons, such as knives or machetes, and resulted in chronic pain, sexually transmitted diseases, reproductive health issues, severe trauma or depression. The provision of external support services is crucial, too, as women frequently contend with stigma and pressure within families and communities to not report their abuse to authorities.

But that has not diminished Kilea’s resolve to make a difference. Gender-based violence (GBV) “is a very sensitive issue in our culture, which is taboo. So, when we go into the community, we talk with the women about their daily lives. We then talk about the root causes of GBV and start a conversation with the women. We create a space to share experiences,” Kilea explained.

MSF also trains village-health volunteers, critical first responders who are trusted within communities. “They are the heart of the project, because they are the focal point inside each community to give the first crucial aid care. They are the ones giving women access to the support and care that they need,” said Butez.

Jiwaka is a relatively new province established on the PNG mainland in 2012, and the provincial government, which provides for a rural-based population of about 343,987 people, is still developing its service outreach. “In terms of the scale of the needs and services, it is quite huge,” Butez said. But MSF, in partnership with Jiwaka Province, is using its expertise and resources to boost the skills of local healthcare workers and the capacity of medical and psychosocial services and support the government’s policy planning.

The scale of the public health needs is also recognised at the national level. Legislation, including the Criminal Code and 2013 Family Protection Act, outlaw domestic violence and violence against women and children. PNG’s gender-based violence response strategy promotes zero tolerance and outlines objectives, such as the development of effective response and service delivery to those affected and the scaling up of public message programs aimed at prevention.

Some political leaders have also spoken out. In March, Prime Minister James Marape told the PNG parliament that ‘domestic violence is a no amidst us. You cannot chest-beat as a leader if you are abusing your wife at home. Simple. Period,’ he declared, claiming that the country ‘will not progress if the fundamental fabric of our society is weakened.’

Nevertheless, women are still struggling to access timely support, and impunity continues for the vast majority of perpetrators. A progress review by the National Gender-Based Violence Secretariat last year reported a fall in the proportion of respondents witnessing domestic violence in their homes from 70 percent in 2016 to 51 percent in 2025. But, in contrast, it found a 210 percent increase in reported cases of violence against women since 1986 and a major shortfall in objectives being implemented. ‘Governance structures remain fragmented and under-resourced, with only 5 of 22 provinces having functional GBV secretariats and just 12 receiving annual funding,’ claims the report, while ‘the justice system is failing survivors with conviction rates for GBV cases as low as 0.5 percent in some regions.’

“Implementation is a challenge across the [Pacific Islands] region,” Tukuitonga emphasised. One hurdle is that strategic plans often exceed the budgetary capacity of governments, and “the second issue is that there are often not the skills locally to implement the plans effectively.”

Kilea, in coming to the aid of women and girls facing life-threatening situations every day, is part of efforts to address the latter. “I remember a woman I supported, who had three sons and one daughter. Her husband beat her regularly and took the money,’ Kilea recounted. She had no income and wasn’t working. She was also illiterate and uneducated and found it very difficult to know what to do. But Kilea was able to guide her on how to be patient and focus on her children while searching for opportunities to gain financial independence. “Soon she heard about an opportunity to do voluntary work, which has now led to daily paid work,” enabling her to leave the abusive relationship she was in and move to safer accommodation with her children.

Butez is buoyed to see the project leading to successes and being welcomed in the province. “The communities really accept us. And, as an organisation, it is very important that the trust with the communities is there, because without it we couldn’t work,” said Butez. “It is something that we are really proud of.”

The work of humanitarians will be critical now and in the future, to addressing the hardships and suffering that gender-based violence causes, with PNG’s GBV secretariat predicting that it could affect up to 8 million women in the country by 2046.

IPS UN Bureau Report

A group of armed defectors from the RSF arrives in the west of Omdurman on 19 August 2026. Credit: Ebrahim Hamid/AFP

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Sep 21 2026 (IPS)

Sudan’s civil war grinds on. It’s close to three and a half years since the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia began their battle for supremacy, and the two forces and their allies continue to slaughter civilians with impunity. As a recent UN report makes clear, the killing is enabled by numerous foreign powers that continue to supply weapons, personnel and logistical support. They have made a civil conflict their proxy war, and their self-interest is sustaining the killing.

Drone warfare

Things are relatively quiet in the capital, Khartoum, where the curfew was recently lifted following its recapture by the SAF last year, but the RSF still controls significant areas, with fighting concentrated in the Darfur and Kordofan regions to the west and Blue Nile state in the southeast.

Both sides now extensively use drones to kill civilians. In February, a suspected RSF drone strike on an aid convoy in South Kordofan killed three humanitarian workers and wounded four more. In May, a suspected SAF drone strike on a crowded market in Ghubaysh, an RSF-controlled town in West Kordofan, killed 28 people as they shopped for food. In August, another likely SAF strike on a court session in an RSF-controlled village killed 35 people.

The RSF are attacking El Obeid, a city of around half a million people in North Kordofan. RSF drones have hit hospitals and schools. People fear a repeat of what happened when the RSF took the city of El Fasher last October. The UN’s Fact-Finding Mission concluded that the ensuing massacre, in which the RSF killed at least 60,000 people, bore the ‘hallmarks of genocide’, with ethnically targeted killings and widespread sexual violence.

Humanitarian and civic space emergency

The war has caused the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. Over 11 million people have been forcibly displaced within Sudan or to surrounding countries, and around 20 million are experiencing acute food insecurity.

There’s a great need for the help civil society offers, but it’s hard for humanitarian organisations to provide aid because of security dangers and access and movement restrictions. The Sudanese government is also attacking the ability of civil society organisations to operate. In February, authorities revoked the licences of four organisations with missions to provide aid, help victims and promote peace.

Journalists, particularly women journalists, are under attack, making it harder to tell the truth about what’s happening on the ground. In January, the Sudanese Journalists Syndicate recorded that 14 journalists and other media workers had been killed in 2025. In December 2025, it was reported that 40 per cent of women journalists had experienced sexual assault, physical violence, harassment or threats.

Foreign powers behind the war

Sudan’s people can expect little help from the deadlocked UN Security Council. In August, the US government proposed a resolution to expand an arms embargo that currently applies to Darfur to the whole country, explicitly including drones. The Sudanese government condemned the proposal and Russia rejected it, which, given its veto power as a permanent member, means the resolution won’t advance further unless significantly watered down.

Russia initially sold weapons to both the RSF and SAF but more recently has swung behind the SAF, becoming a major arms supplier in return for gold and a potential Red Sea naval base. It’s joined by several other states with a direct stake in the conflict. The UN’s Fact-Finding Mission has set out how the SAF are using foreign-supplied drones while transnational networks are keeping the RSF supplied.

Alongside Russia, states that supply arms or other military support to the SAF, or have done so at some point since the war began, include Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Turkey and Ukraine. Those that have backed the RSF in various ways include the Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan, Uganda and, most notoriously, the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Weapons originating from countries including Canada, China, Israel and the UK have also been used. In most cases, states deny involvement.

There’s ample evidence that the UAE extensively supplies the RSF with mercenaries and weapons via African transit routes, in return for gold and in the hope of securing a regional foothold. The UAE funded Colombian mercenaries who played an active role alongside the RSF in the slaughter in El Fasher. It was recently revealed that individuals and entities linked to the RSF’s leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, have acquired properties worth over US$24 million in Dubai, likely paid for with smuggled gold.

The UAE’s reliance on states that border Sudan to allow its convoys to cross brings the risk of conflict spillovers, as seen in alleged SAF airstrikes on a military convoy in Chad in August.

Push for accountability

A new initiative to hold foreign figures accountable offers some hope for justice. In June, the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights and a group of civil society organisations made a legal submission to the International Criminal Court (ICC), asking it to investigate several foreign officials for aiding and abetting crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes in Sudan. The submission provided evidence of the involvement of the governments of Egypt, Iran, Turkey and the UAE.

The ICC has an ongoing investigation into the situation in Darfur, scene of a 2003-2005 genocide. It has confirmed that human rights crimes committed during the current war fall under its jurisdiction as part of this investigation, and in June it announced it had ‘concrete evidence’ linking RSF leaders to atrocities in El Fasher.

It’s vital that leaders responsible for human rights crimes face justice, and this must include the leaders of the countries waging a proxy war. If there is to be peace and justice, the impunity of the foreign powers that are sustaining the war must be challenged.

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

 
CIVICUS discusses renewed conflict and a growing crackdown on independent media in Ethiopia with Yonas Kedir, Editor-in-Chief of the independent news outlet Addis Standard, who was recently abducted and detained by government forces.

Yonas Kedir

What’s the current situation in Ethiopia?

Ethiopia is facing overlapping humanitarian, political and security crises. Armed conflict continues in Amhara and Oromia states, while Tigray remains scarred by the devastating 2020-2022 war. Displacement continues, territorial disputes remain unresolved and the peace agreement has only been partly implemented.

Armed conflict and insecurity have also spread to Benishangul-Gumuz, Gambela and other parts of Ethiopia. Tensions between the federal government and Tigrayan authorities have intensified. The government alleges that Eritrea is backing the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and other armed groups. Relations with Eritrea are strained, particularly by disputes over Red Sea access and regional security, and Ethiopia is under growing scrutiny over its alleged role in Sudan’s civil war.

The government says Ethiopia faces an anti-federal military movement involving Eritrea, Sudan, the Oromo Liberation Army, Tigray forces and Fano, an Amhara nationalist militia, accusing them of working as an alliance to unseat the federal government. These are highly contested claims, but they shape the government’s framing of the security environment.

Why are journalists being targeted, and why is the pressure escalating?

Journalists are targeted because independent reporting can challenge official narratives and expose abuses, civilian harm and government conduct. When journalists investigate alleged abuses by government forces, authorities present their work as damaging Ethiopia’s national security or serving foreign interests.

There’s a growing tendency to treat independent journalism as a national security threat. Government officials often call on the media to prioritise the national interest and national unity, while treating critical reporting on sensitive issues as inherently harmful to the country.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented a deteriorating environment for independent media, including detention, intimidation, restrictions and the use of broad national security and national interest arguments against critical reporting. In this context, legitimate public-interest reporting can be interpreted by authorities or politicians as taking sides.

The pressure has intensified because several politically sensitive issues are converging at the same time, including the political environment, the security situation, the unresolved consequences of the Tigray war, tensions involving Eritrea and Sudan and debates over Ethiopia’s constitutional and political future.

The most recent election was held in a highly contested political environment, with several major opposition parties boycotting the process. This has raised questions about the inclusiveness and broader political legitimacy of the electoral process, particularly in a context where political space for opposition political figures and independent voices remains constrained.

These issues make independent reporting particularly important, but also make journalism on governance and political issues increasingly sensitive.

Why were you detained, and what happened while you were held?

I don’t know for sure who ordered my detention, and nor can I establish the full motive. But the questions I was asked and the circumstances around them strongly suggest my journalistic work was central to what happened.

On 1 August, security personnel took me, assaulted me, blindfolded me and held me for around 24 hours. They questioned me about my work and about Addis Standard’s reporting. While I was detained, security forces raided Addis Standard’s office and seized cameras and other newsroom equipment. They also searched my home and confiscated company and personal equipment. I was released the next day.

For me, this was bigger than myself. The fact that I was questioned about my work and that newsroom equipment was seized raises concerns about the safety of all journalists and the ability of independent media to operate freely.

What conditions do journalists face in Ethiopia, and what are the consequences of the loss of independent reporting?

Journalists in Ethiopia operate in an environment of fear and uncertainty, facing administrative restrictions, arrest, detention, harassment, online intimidation, physical attacks and surveillance. This is particularly true for those in conflict areas, where access can be restricted, sources are often afraid to speak and journalists face pressure from multiple sides, not only federal authorities but also armed and political groups.

This encourages self-censorship. Journalists avoid particular subjects, soften their language or decide not to publish information that could put themselves, colleagues or sources in danger. This leaves people with very limited access to reliable information about decisions that affect their lives.

Independent journalism provides a mechanism for documenting alleged abuses, civilian casualties, displacement and humanitarian needs. A healthy information environment is essential for meaningful public participation, national dialogue and peacebuilding. When independent reporting is weakened, victims and communities lose a public platform to raise concerns. It also becomes harder for people to distinguish verified information from disinformation, propaganda and politically motivated narratives.

What support do Ethiopian journalists and civil society need?

The international community should help build stronger protection and rapid-response mechanisms for when journalists are attacked, detained and threatened, and should press for meaningful accountability for abuses against journalists and media organisations.

International partners should provide legal and institutional support to help media organisations challenge arbitrary licence revocations, unlawful restrictions and other forms of administrative pressure. They should support efforts to strengthen the independence of Ethiopia’s judiciary, so it can protect fundamental rights and provide meaningful remedies when state institutions act unlawfully.

International partners should also give very serious attention to protecting people’s right to organise around their aspirations, grievances and interests, which is essential to peaceful political participation. Expanding civic space can strengthen peace processes and peacebuilding, while suppressing these rights can contribute to the expansion of conflict.

Finally, international partners should continue to monitor Ethiopia’s civic space, engage authorities and support independent investigations. Reporting on abuses shouldn’t be treated as a threat to national interest. It’s part of the public’s right to know. International engagement should also look beyond whether constitutional initiatives, elections and national dialogue processes take place on paper, and assess whether these processes are genuinely inclusive, participatory and protective of fundamental rights.

CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.

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Indigenous Kakataibo patrol in the Yamino community forest. A new report titled Collective Power documents the deaths of people who stood against environmental destruction, land grabs, illegal logging, mining projects and other threats to their communities. Credit: Global Witness

By Umar Manzoor Shah
LONDON & SRINAGAR, India, Sep 16 2026 (IPS)

At least 124 land and environmental defenders were killed around the world in 2025 while protecting forests, rivers, farmland and Indigenous territories, according to a new report by Global Witness that warns violence against activists remains widespread even as recorded killings have declined from previous years.

The report, titled Collective Power, documents the deaths of people who stood against environmental destruction, land grabs, illegal logging, mining projects and other threats to their communities. It says the 124 killings recorded in 2025 bring the total number of land and environmental defenders killed or disappeared since Global Witness began tracking such cases in 2012 to 2,375.

While the number of killings fell from 142 deaths and four disappearances documented in 2024, Global Witness cautioned that the decline should not be viewed as evidence that defenders are becoming safer, and onimously, the killing and intimidation have serious consequences for the environment.

“Defenders are the world’s eyes and ears on the ground. It’s thanks to them that we know when ecosystems are being destroyed, where forests are being cleared or rivers polluted,” Toby Hill, land and environmental defenders investigator and lead author, said. “The violence that defenders face, including killings in the most extreme cases, reflects a much broader struggle over the world’s land and resources. But beyond these tragic stories, we can’t forget the thousands of defenders around the world who are working every day to protect their territories and cultures under increasing pressure.”

The report said, “Every one of these deaths represents an attempt, in the most brutal fashion, to impose a chilling effect on movements that resist environmental and human rights abuses. We remember the families, friends and communities who have been left devastated by each attack.”

Researchers argue that the real number of killings is likely much higher because many attacks occur in remote areas, conflict zones and countries where civil society groups face intimidation for reporting abuses. According to the report, difficulties in documenting cases are particularly severe in parts of Africa and Asia, as well as increasingly in Latin America.

The findings reveal a global struggle over land, natural resources and environmental protection, with Indigenous peoples and small-scale farmers bearing the heaviest burden.

Indigenous women walk along a river in the Amazon rainforest. According to Global Witness, Indigenous peoples and small-scale farmers accounted for nearly three-quarters of the land, and environmental defenders killed globally in 2025. The report highlights the growing risks faced by communities defending their lands, livelihoods and ecosystems from environmental destruction and resource exploitation. Credit: Global Witness

Nearly three-quarters of those killed in 2025 were Indigenous people or small-scale farmers defending their land rights and livelihoods. The report found that 47 victims were small-scale farmers and 44 were Indigenous people. Three victims were Afro-descendant defenders.

Among the dead were seven members of Indigenous guard systems, community-based groups that patrol and protect ancestral territories from illegal activities and outside encroachment. In five of those cases, researchers identified links to organised crime, highlighting what the report describes as a growing overlap between environmental conflicts and criminal networks.

Despite this, Indigenous people continue to defend their environments.

“Defending our territory is important to us as a community and as a people, and we’re proud to support the climate that we all depend on. In our culture, the work of defending our resources and territory is taught from an early age. But for this next generation coming up, the work is more dangerous than ever,” Segundo Ispón, commander of Peru’s Kakataibo Indigenous Guard, said.

Global Witness said the killings represent only the most visible form of repression. Beneath them lies what human rights groups call a “hidden iceberg” of threats that include criminal charges, surveillance, harassment, smear campaigns and online abuse.

“Increasingly, social media is weaponised to discredit and harass defenders, eroding public trust and isolating them from their communities,” the report noted.

The organisation suggested that some governments and powerful interests may be relying more on non-lethal forms of repression, which can silence opposition without attracting the international attention that often follows a murder.

The report also highlights a broader deterioration in civic freedoms. Of the 15 countries where killings were documented, 10 were categorised as “repressed” by the CIVICUS Monitor, a global tracker of civic freedoms. Nicaragua was listed in the most restrictive category, described as “closed”.

Asia emerged as one of the regions where environmental defenders face increasing pressure through legal and political means.

A major section of the report focuses on Indonesia, where Dayak Indigenous communities in West Kalimantan have resisted industrial expansion, land grabs and deforestation. According to Global Witness, community leaders and Indigenous defenders have faced criminalisation while attempting to protect forests and customary lands.

The report argues that such cases reflect a wider regional trend in which defenders are increasingly targeted through courts, police investigations and administrative actions rather than direct violence alone. It cites concerns raised by human rights organisations regarding the criminalisation of environmental activism across parts of Asia.

In the Philippines, environmental defenders Jhed Tamano and Jonila Castro are highlighted as examples of activists who continued their advocacy despite legal and political pressure. Their experiences are presented as part of a larger pattern in which defenders face reputational attacks and criminal allegations linked to their activism.

The report also examines Peru, where members of the Kakataibo Indigenous people have developed Indigenous guard systems to protect their territory from growing threats associated with organised crime and environmental exploitation. The movement is presented as an example of collective protection developed by communities that feel abandoned by state institutions.

Across Latin America, which has historically recorded some of the highest numbers of killings of environmental defenders, the report documents continuing violence, disappearances and intimidation.

It revisits the disappearance of Mexican defenders Ricardo Lagunes and Antonio Díaz, whose case has become emblematic of the dangers faced by people challenging powerful economic interests. Three years after their disappearance, United Nations experts were still calling for truth and justice.

The report also highlights the unresolved disappearance of Chilean Indigenous defender Julia Chuñil. According to Global Witness, her family and legal representatives have faced mounting pressure while continuing to seek answers.

“Despite this pressure, Julia’s family continues to fight for truth and justice,” the report said. “They are still searching for their mother, organising protests, pursuing legal challenges and bringing international attention to the case.”

In Nigeria, defenders protecting the Ekuri Forest in Cross River State continued to face intimidation, arrest and detention after speaking out against illegal logging. The report said community leaders were targeted following complaints linked to logging interests but were later released after intervention from environmental organisations and lawyers.

“The arrests were widely viewed as an attempt to silence efforts to defend tropical forests and community forest rights,” the report stated.

The gender dimension of environmental activism also features prominently in the findings. Of the 124 defenders whose deaths were verified in 2025, 109 were men, 14 were women and one was identified as non-binary. However, researchers stressed that women defenders often experience different forms of violence that are less visible but equally damaging.

The report cites data from the Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders showing more than 30,000 non-lethal attacks against women defenders in Mexico and Central America between 2012 and 2023. These included harassment, threats, surveillance, psychological abuse and smear campaigns.

The report also expresses concern about the unprecedented fall in foreign aid seen in 2025 – driven by budget cuts by the governments of the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and other traditional donors – impacting thousands of human rights organisations, drastically reducing the global pool of support to communities acting in the depths of rainforests and other secluded ecosystems.

“The effects of these budget cuts are not abstract. In Colombia, projects working to promote and protect human rights and support defenders have been hit by the sudden drop in foreign aid, particularly from the U.S. When foreign aid retreats, Indigenous Peoples and small-scale farmers can be left with fewer resources and less support as they defend the forests, rivers and other ecosystems that sustain their communities and help keep the global climate stable,” Juliana Vélez Echeverri, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, said.

Global Witness says the solution requires more than investigations into individual killings. The organisation is calling for stronger legal protections for Indigenous peoples, recognition of land rights, accountability for corporations and criminal networks, and greater support for community-led protection systems.

The report argues that environmental defenders are not only protecting local communities but also safeguarding forests, biodiversity and ecosystems that are critical in the fight against climate change. Their work, researchers say, often benefits society far beyond the places where they live.

The publication opens with a dedication to those who continue that work despite the risks.

“This report is dedicated to all those individuals, communities and organisations bravely speaking out or taking action to defend their rights to land and a clean, healthy and sustainable environment,” it says. “Last year, 124 people were murdered for doing this work.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

Sidi Haidara leads a community dialogue in Mopti, Mali, where families, young people and local leaders discuss girls' rights and ways to end female genital mutilation. Credit: UN Women/Dieneba Deme

By UNFPA
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 16 2026 (IPS)

In Mali, an estimated nine out of ten women and girls have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM). And for years, Sidi Haidara, a father and recognized leader in his community, believed the practice was simply part of life.

Like many people in his community in central Mali, he saw it as a tradition passed down through generations – one that should be preserved.

Today, he walks from village to village with a very different message: No tradition should come at the expense of a girl’s health, rights, or future.

His story goes beyond one man’s personal transformation. Across parts of West and Central Africa, FGM remains deeply rooted – with Mali having one of the highest rates in the region and no laws that specifically criminalize the practice. Even recently, some men in Mali have launched an all-male pro-FGM campaign on the grounds of protecting tradition.

In places where social norms are deeply entrenched, change often begins with trusted voices from within the community – voices like Haidara’s.

After spending years defending female genital mutilation, Sidi Haidara now leads community dialogues in Mopti, Mali, encouraging families to protect girls’ rights and abandon the practice. Credit: UN Women/Dieneba Deme

How UN Women and partners are shifting mindsets and empowering new anti-FGM advocates in Mali

“I used to believe that this practice was part of our traditions and needed to be preserved”, says Haidara.

Nothing suggested that he would one day become one of the people advocating for its abandonment.

His perspective began to change after taking part in training sessions, workshops, and community dialogues organized through the Men and Boys as Agents of Change project, implemented by UN Women with financial support from the Government of Germany.

As he listened to different experiences and learned about the consequences of FGM, he began questioning his beliefs – beliefs he had never challenged before. He also came to understand that lasting change cannot simply be imposed – it grows through dialogue, trust, and community ownership.

“UN Women’s trainings – with the support of Germany – transformed my understanding of female genital mutilation. I learned about the physical, psychological, and social consequences that this practice imposes on girls.”

How to end FGM in Mali: Begin with listening, questioning, and conversing

“Today, I regularly organize awareness-raising sessions with families, religious leaders, young people, and women”, he explains.

Rather than telling people what to think, he encourages conversations about what it means to protect girls and challenges long-held beliefs through dialogue.

Little by little, those conversations are making a difference. “I can see change: more parents are asking questions, several families are abandoning female genital mutilation, and discussions about protecting girls have become more open.”

“I am convinced that protecting girls today means investing in the future of our entire community.”

People can change – and so can social norms

Haidara’s journey is part of a broader movement taking place across the regions of Mopti and Gao in Mali.

With support from the Government of Germany, UN Women works alongside religious and traditional leaders, women, young people, and men like Haidara who are committed to community-driven initiatives that prevent violence against women and girls and challenge harmful social norms.

To date, 50 community initiatives have been implemented across the two regions, while eight community-dialogue platforms provide spaces for people to discuss girls’ rights, their protection, and ways to prevent gender-based violence.

For Haidara, abandoning a harmful practice is about more than leaving a tradition behind. It is about giving girls the opportunity to grow up safely, stay in school, and shape their own futures.

His journey shows that some of the most meaningful changes happen when those who once upheld harmful social norms become the people helping to transform them.

Haidara knows traditions do not change overnight. But every conversation creates an opportunity for reflection. Every family that chooses to protect its daughters helps write a different future from the one that generations before them inherited.

In Mopti and Gao, these conversations are showing that lasting change does not necessarily begin with a new law or policy. More often, it begins when communities themselves decide to imagine a different future for their girls.

Source: UNFPA

IPS UN Bureau

Excerpt:

Members of the Uyghur delegation pose with the director of their host organisation, CADAL, during their visit to Buenos Aires, Argentina, 23 August 2026. The sky flag is strictly banned by the Chinese government under anti-separatism laws. Credit: CADAL.

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Sep 15 2026 (IPS)

On 24 August, I took part in a human rights conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Days before it opened, the city legislature cancelled the intended venue after the Chinese ambassador complained to the Argentine government about the participation of prominent Uyghur human rights defenders, including Dolkun Isa, an activist exiled in Germany. Beijing has waged a campaign of mass detention and forced assimilation against the mostly Muslim Uyghur population for years.

The organisers found another venue at the last minute, and the conference went ahead, but the episode was revealing. This was a small gathering, of no great consequence to anyone beyond those in the room, in a global south city over 19,000 kilometres from Beijing, yet China still went out of its way to stop it. The episode showed how China aims to deny its critics any platform, however modest, anywhere. A phone call to a compliant government is the least of what it does in pursuit of this objective.

China’s global campaign

China is the world’s leading perpetrator of transnational repression, the practice of reaching beyond borders to intimidate, punish and silence critics in exile. Its new ‘Ethnic Unity Law‘, in force since July, lets the government target dissidents abroad when they are deemed to be ‘undermining ethnic unity’ or ‘creating ethnic division’. Freedom House has documented at least 319 instances of China’s physical transnational repression targeting Hong Kong democracy activists, Tibetans and Uyghurs, in addition to Taiwanese civil society and political figures, whom it treats as if they were Chinese nationals.

China’s transnational repression spans the spectrum of severity. At the far end, dissidents disappear. Chinese dissident Yi Haihua reportedly vanished in Dubai in April, having fled China via Hong Kong the previous November. China also uses prosecution and imprisonment to punish dissent abroad. Those targeted include a student who was handed a six-year sentence when he returned to China after participating in a pro-democracy protest in Australia.

Less extreme but far more widespread are surveillance, intimidation and repression by proxy, through which China monitors and threatens dissidents abroad and pressures family members back home. China also applies economic leverage against states, as seen in April when the government of Zambia, a state heavily indebted to China, called off the RightsCon digital rights conference, over the participation of Taiwanese activists, days before it was due to open in Lusaka.

Beyond China

China is not alone. Vietnam and Russia are the second and third worst offenders, and at least 54 states have engaged in transnational repression, with six — Afghanistan, Benin, Georgia, Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe — identified as using these tactics for the first time in 2025.

Latin America, once largely spared, is now home to transnational repression. In June 2025, former Nicaraguan army major Roberto Samcam, an outspoken critic of dictator Daniel Ortega, was shot dead at his home near San José, Costa Rica, the third such killing of a Nicaraguan exile there in recent years. Nicaragua has also taken the lead in stripping dissenters of nationality. Since 2023, the government has removed citizenship from over 300 former journalists, opponents and political prisoners and confiscated their assets, leaving them stateless and unprotected.

Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro pursued its opponents with similar determination. In February 2024, men in fake police uniforms abducted exiled former army lieutenant Ronald Ojeda from his apartment in Santiago de Chile. His dismembered body was found buried under concrete nine days later. Chilean prosecutors concluded the killing was ordered by the Venezuelan government and carried out through a Venezuelan gang, part of a growing practice of outsourcing violence that offers plausible deniability. In October 2025, gunmen in Bogotá opened fire on exiled activists Yendri Velásquez and Luis Peche. Fortunately, they survived their multiple gunshot wounds.

Weak response

In March 2025, a New York jury convicted two members of an Eastern European crime ring hired by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard over a 2022 plot to kill exiled journalist Masih Alinejad at her Brooklyn home. This June, a UK court convicted two men of spying on UK-based Hong Kong democracy activists, and in July, it convicted those responsible for a knife attack on exiled Iranian television presenter Pouria Zeraati. The USA has imposed visa bans on Thai officials responsible for forcibly returning Uyghurs to China.

Yet these are exceptions in a pattern of host states quietly enabling the repression they claim to oppose. On top of failing to do enough to prevent transnational repression on their soil, many are facilitating it through their border and immigration systems, with geopolitical calculations and political pressure to curb immigration numbers trumping human rights protections.

In June, Germany deported Tajik opposition activist Asadullo Boboev and his son despite a documented risk of arrest. Tajik authorities detained Boboev on arrival. The USA has repeatedly returned Russians to the authoritarian government they fled, and has let officials from Iran’s consulate into US detention facilities to help process Iranian asylum seekers for deportation, including Christian converts and women’s rights protesters. In 2025, the UK reopened the door to extraditions to Hong Kong, five years after suspending cooperation over the territory’s draconian national security law. The Trump administration’s 2025 dismantling of USAID and freeze on democracy funding have cut off support that once helped threatened activists relocate and rebuild their lives.

The European Parliament, the G7 and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights have all formally acknowledged transnational repression as an assault on human rights and state sovereignty, but recognition hasn’t brought stronger responses. Democratic states must resist pressure, impose consequences on foreign officials who order transnational repression and refrain from returning exiles to face danger. Democracies must not prioritise calculations of trade and diplomacy over the protection of the people seeking safety.

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

A report Rebuild Trust: Rigged Economies, Fractured Societies and the Case for Change found that people everywhere believed the system was rigged. Credit: Earth4All

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, India, Sep 14 2026 (IPS)

An international survey released by Earth4All has found a growing crisis of trust in governments, widespread anger over inequality, and strong public support for major economic reforms, suggesting that many people across the world believe current political and economic systems are failing to serve ordinary citizens.

The report, Rebuild Trust: Rigged Economies, Fractured Societies and the Case for Change, surveyed people in 17 countries representing 58 percent of global GDP, 38 percent of the world’s population, and 37 percent of global carbon emissions. Its findings paint a picture of societies that feel increasingly divided, economically insecure, and disconnected from political institutions.

As per the report, nearly two-thirds of respondents said they believe their country’s economic system is “rigged” to benefit the rich and powerful. Seven in ten said there is too much economic inequality in their country, while 69 percent called for major changes to economic systems to improve life for most people.

“The survey results show a mismatch between public support for economic change and what mainstream political parties are willing to offer,” the report’s authors, Owen Gaffney and Kate Pickett, write. They argue that the findings reveal an opportunity for governments to build new social contracts based on fairness, economic security, and long-term wellbeing.

The survey comes at a time when many countries are grappling with rising living costs, political polarisation, climate pressures, and growing public frustration with institutions.

One of the report’s most striking conclusions is that many people feel their societies are becoming more fractured.

Across the 17 countries surveyed, 67 percent said their country is more divided today than it was a decade ago. More than seven in ten respondents reported serious tensions between supporters of different political parties. Nearly two-thirds saw conflict between rich and poor, while similar numbers perceived tensions between immigrant and native-born populations.

The authors argue that these divisions are linked not only to economic conditions but also to a broader erosion of trust.

“Societies feel themselves coming apart. There is a trust deficit at the heart of societies,” reads the report.

Only 31 percent of respondents said they trust their governments to make decisions that will benefit the majority of people 20 or 30 years into the future. This was one of the lowest-rated measures in the survey.

The report also highlights a less visible issue. Many people feel they are not treated with respect and dignity.

Across all surveyed countries, only 41 percent agreed that people like them are treated with respect and dignity. The authors note that feelings of disrespect and humiliation can fuel political alienation and social resentment.

“A society in which one in four people feel they do not receive respect contains significant combustible material,” the report states. “Many people feel unseen, believe the system is rigged and do not experience their society as a collective enterprise.”

Asian countries included in the survey showed significant differences in public attitudes.

Indonesia emerged as one of the strongest supporters of economic reform. Nearly three-quarters of Indonesians said there is too much inequality in their country, while 74 percent believed the system benefits the wealthy. A remarkable 78 percent supported major economic changes, the highest level among all countries surveyed.

Indonesians also showed strong backing for climate action. Sixty-eight per cent said governments should take strong action against climate change even if it results in higher prices.

Yet Indonesia appeared less polarised than many Western countries. Only 53 percent believed the country is more divided than it was ten years ago, significantly below the global average.

Japan presented a different picture.

Trust in government was among the lowest recorded in the survey. Only 19 percent of Japanese respondents said they trusted their government to make long-term decisions benefiting the majority of citizens. Just one fifth felt they were treated with respect and dignity.

The findings also revealed unexpectedly strong support for authoritarian leadership in Japan. Nearly half of respondents agreed that the country would be better off with a strong leader unconstrained by parliament and elections. Meanwhile, only half said democracy was the best system of government.

India also featured prominently in the survey. According to comparative data in the report, 66 percent of Indian respondents agreed that there is too much economic inequality in the country, close to the international average. India ranked among countries where a majority still felt they were treated with respect and dignity, recording one of the highest scores in the survey on that measure.

Despite widespread frustration with governments and economic systems, the survey found continued support for democracy.

Overall, 68 percent of respondents said democracy remains the best way to govern their country. However, support was not universal. Forty percent also agreed that their country would be better off with a strong leader who does not have to worry about parliament or elections.

The authors describe this as a warning sign rather than a rejection of democracy itself.

In countries such as Brazil and Japan, support for strong leaders reached especially high levels. In Brazil, 51 percent backed the idea of a leader unconstrained by elections, while 63 percent still supported democracy. In Japan, support for strong leadership stood at 46 percent.

The United States presented a contrasting picture. Only 26 percent favoured a strong leader outside democratic constraints, while 68 percent supported democracy as the preferred form of government.

The report warns that declining trust in institutions can create openings for anti-democratic movements if governments fail to address public concerns about fairness and economic opportunity.

Climate Action Retains Public Backing

Despite growing economic anxieties, the survey found continued support for climate action.

More than half of respondents said governments should take strong action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions even if it leads to higher prices. Support was strongest in middle-income countries and weaker among lower-income households and politically conservative respondents.

The authors argue that climate policies are more likely to succeed when paired with measures that address economic inequality and social insecurity.

Public resistance to climate action often grows when people believe they are being asked to bear unfair costs while wealthier groups benefit from the existing system, the report suggests.

Kate Pickett, one of the report’s authors and a well-known researcher on inequality and social wellbeing, has long argued that unequal societies tend to experience weaker social cohesion and lower levels of trust. The findings of the new survey appear to reinforce that argument.

Economic Anxiety Remains Widespread

Beyond questions of trust and politics, the survey highlights persistent worries about basic economic security.

Across the countries surveyed, 41 percent of respondents said they were concerned about having enough money to cover their basic needs during the coming year. Economic anxiety was particularly high in countries facing inflation and financial instability.

Argentina recorded the highest levels of economic insecurity. More than two-thirds of respondents worried about covering basic needs, and 78 percent supported major economic reforms.

Even in wealthier countries, concerns about inequality remained widespread.

In the United States, 62 percent said there was too much inequality. In Sweden, often regarded as one of the world’s more equal societies, 71 percent shared the same view. Australia recorded 64 percent.

The authors argue that economic growth alone is no longer enough to reassure citizens.

Instead, people increasingly judge systems based on fairness, opportunity, and whether prosperity is shared.

The Earth4All initiative was launched by organisations including the Club of Rome, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and the Norwegian Business School. It seeks to identify pathways toward sustainable prosperity and social wellbeing.

The report’s authors say the findings should serve as a wake-up call for political leaders.

Rather than viewing public frustration as a temporary reaction to economic shocks, they argue that governments should recognize it as evidence of deeper structural problems.

The survey reveals what the authors call a “near-universal diagnosis”. Across different political systems, cultures, and income levels, large majorities share the belief that current economic arrangements favour elites while leaving ordinary citizens behind.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 
CIVICUS discusses the implications of the Philippines’ proposed anti-disinformation bill with Josalee Deinla, Secretary-General of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers, a civil society organisation that defends civil liberties in the Philippines.

Josalee Deinla

What’s the Digital Media Anti-False Information Act about, and why is it contested?

The proposed Digital Media Anti-False Information Act combines two regulatory approaches. The first targets the infrastructure of disinformation, including political advertising, recommender systems and the commercial systems that amplify and monetise content. Regulation of this infrastructure makes sense. Platforms decide what gets ranked and amplified, and their revenue depends on the engagement that attention-generating content produces.

The second approach is punitive, targeting individual speakers and operators. The law would make it unlawful to knowingly and wilfully publish, disseminate, finance, direct or materially assist in spreading false information with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard for the truth and with intent to cause verifiable public harm or a serious threat to national security. The penalty is set at six to 12 years in prison and a fine of up to PHP 2 million (approx. US$32,500).

The main problem is that the bill places its harshest burden at the end of the disinformation chain and its lightest at the point where disinformation is amplified and made profitable. Platforms face only administrative penalties and written warnings, while individual speakers face imprisonment and heavy fines.

If platform regulation, disclosure, correction, labelling and de-amplification can protect the public interest, the state must explain why individual speakers should face up to 12 years in prison. The law’s criminal provisions are hard to justify as necessary. Criminal law should be the last resort against expression, not the first.

The bill also relies on broad, overlapping definitions. ‘Disinformation’ requires knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth, plus intent to cause serious public harm. ‘False information’ is broader still, encompassing any demonstrably false statement presented as fact, regardless of materiality or context. Because prohibited acts draw on both definitions, the accused is left guessing which applies to which charge.

The consequences could be worse still. Three other Senate bills are pending before the Committee on Public Information and Mass Media, including one that would authorise the Department of Justice’s Office of Cybercrime to issue access-blocking, rectification, takedown and preventive takedown orders. It targets content causing harm to individuals, public order or national interests, a far broader test than the requirement that harm be material and concrete.

Why is the bill being pushed now?

There’s a genuine disinformation problem in the Philippines. Elections now depend heavily on digital campaigning, particularly on social media, and coordinated influence operations, historical revisionism, paid influencers and troll networks have all become part of routine political competition. Concerns over foreign interference have added a national-security dimension to the debate.

But the political context is inseparable from the legislation. The bill’s authorship is revealing. It was promoted by Representative Ferdinand Alexander ‘Sandro’ Marcos III, a son of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Ironically, the same political dynasty now demanding tighter legal controls on disinformation used social media’s commercial architecture to return to power in 2022.

The state is not a neutral outsider arriving to repair a corrupted information environment. Political elites participate in that environment, using the same advertising systems, amplification mechanisms, consultants, influencers and platforms they now propose to regulate. A government that actively competes in the information marketplace should not also acquire broad and insufficiently constrained authority to referee the truth of that marketplace.

The imbalance is visible even within the bill. Section 16 requires government agencies to maintain open-data portals and correct erroneous or misleading public statements within a reasonable timeframe after discovery, but it creates no enforcement mechanism and no penalty for non-compliance. Section 9, by contrast, exposes individual speakers who violate the law to six to 12 years’ imprisonment. The bill treats disinformation by the state as a matter of administrative housekeeping, while disinformation by individual speakers can become a serious felony.

The timing therefore reflects two developments: a real deterioration of the information environment and a political effort to acquire greater control over the consequences of that deterioration.

What risks do its provisions pose for civil society?

Alongside prosecution and what comes with it – arrest, detention, legal costs, disrupted work and stigma – the law, if enacted, will change behaviour long before any court decides guilt. For civil society organisations, human rights defenders, journalists and researchers, the cost lies in the interval between accusation and acquittal. No conviction is needed for the law to produce silence.

The bill’s safeguards don’t answer the central problem. Most operate only as defences or rules of construction after investigation has already begun. They may ultimately prevail, but the chilling effect operates in the process that precedes that determination.

Section 4(d) also raises a serious problem. It applies to a person who acts ‘on behalf of, in coordination with, or under the substantial direction or control of’ a foreign state, foreign intelligence service, foreign military force or foreign-funded covert influence operation. This is dangerously broad. Philippine civil society groups, human rights defenders, independent media, lawyers and universities routinely communicate with foreign embassies, foreign universities, international donors, international organisations and United Nations (UN) treaty bodies and special procedures mandate holders. All these relationships are part of everyday international advocacy.

The problem becomes more acute if this bill is read alongside separate foreign interference and malign foreign influence legislation now pending in Congress, which would create a Counter Foreign Interference Council and penalise foreign interference. The impacts could be cumulative. An organisation may first be accused of disseminating false information, then characterised as coordinating with foreign interests, then subjected to scrutiny of its funding and institutional relationships. Together, these measures could allow the state to scrutinise what civil society says, who it works with, who supports it and how its information reaches the public.

This is why any law allowing the government to determine whether political information is false, harmful to public order, malicious or threatening to national security demands exceptional caution. Responding to disinformation can’t mean giving the government a mandate to police truth.

How is civil society responding, and what support does it need?

Civil society opposition has been substantial, but it must be sustained. On 25 July, around 50 academics, civil society representatives, journalists and technologists gathered at the University of the Philippines College of Media and Communication, while at least a dozen organisations issued a joint call urging Congress to reject the bill. Opposition to the bill can easily be caricatured as opposition to regulating disinformation, but this is a false choice.

Civil society acknowledges the harm of disinformation but contests where the law places responsibility for it. Disinformation in the Philippines rarely stems from individual users making bad choices online. Much of it is organised, financed and professionally produced. Political operatives retain consultants who assemble networks of paid influencers and account operators. Coordinated pages manufacture the appearance of organic public sentiment, while platforms supply the distribution systems through which these narratives gain scale. The individual user is often the last link in a much longer chain, and the law should follow that chain upward.

Civil society proposes that allocation of responsibility should begin with the political principal who commissions the operation, the financier who pays for it, the strategist who designs it, the network that carries it out and the platform that amplifies and profits from it. Users should not become the preferred target of enforcement simply because they are the easiest to find.

Civil society needs support at several levels. It needs lawyers who can intervene while the Senate text is still being shaped and, if necessary, mount constitutional challenges later. It also needs technical expertise capable of interrogating platform claims about advertising tools, algorithms, content moderation and recommendation systems, and resources to protect human rights defenders, journalists and researchers, who may face complaints, digital attacks, investigations, surveillance and red-tagging – being vilified as a communist – once the law is in force.

International support matters too. Philippine organisations that receive foreign grants, work with international media and research institutions or engage UN mechanisms should not have to defend those relationships as though they were inherently suspect. Cross-border cooperation and funding are routine features of academic research, election monitoring, human rights work and journalism, and should not be collapsed into the language of foreign interference.

CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.

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UN staff members at the SDG Action Zone outside UN Headquarters in New York, 2019. Credit: UN Photo/Laura Jarriel

By Samuel King and Inés M. Pousadela
BRUSSELS, Belgium / MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Sep 9 2026 (IPS)

When the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) ended in New York in July, it took two recorded votes for states to pass a ministerial declaration that, until recently, would have been adopted without controversy. Uruguay, speaking for the Group of 77 developing countries plus China, pushed through the deletion of a reference to the agreement reached at the COP28 climate summit. Israel forced a vote on a paragraph about self-determination for people under occupation. Russia dissociated itself from the passage on peace and security. The wrangling revealed the extent to which the consensus that in 2015 saw all 193 UN states agree the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – a common blueprint to end poverty, tackle climate change and build accountable institutions by 2030 – has been eroded.

The problem goes beyond this latest session. Progress is tracked through Voluntary National Reviews, the self-assessments states present at the Forum. Thirty-six countries did so this year. But the process asks nothing of states beyond showing up. There’s no independent verification of data, and governments aren’t required to consult civil society. States that restrict civic space at home face no consequences. Seventeen of the 36 states that presented reviews this year are rated by the CIVICUS Monitor as having repressed or closed civic space.

A forum built to hold states accountable has become a stage on which the least accountable governments may perform compliance, while the civil society groups meant to keep them honest are locked out of the room.

In the room but not at the table

Where civil society can act, it supports delivery of the SDGs. Sustained advocacy delivered Colombia’s ban on child marriage in 2025 and continues to drive the campaign against female genital mutilation in The Gambia. In Nepal, local organisations have made monitoring the goals more inclusive by supplying data on excluded communities that official statistics miss.

Yet the HLPF gives civil society little formal standing. Civil society was in the building all week — CIVICUS co-organised sessions on civic space and the SDGs, supported a global forum on the future of multilateralism and ran a workshop on the post-2030 agenda — but it didn’t get a seat at the table where decisions are made.

Showing up can also be dangerous. In 2025, most civil society representatives from El Salvador withdrew over fears of reprisals. Activists elsewhere describe reprisals for exposing gaps between official reporting and reality on the ground, often with little practical support from the UN despite guidelines that are supposed to protect them.

SDG 16 on peace, justice and strong institutions is meant to be the foundation for the other 16 goals, and its Target 16.10 commits states to protecting fundamental freedoms. But it’s routinely ignored. The CIVICUS Monitor has tracked year-on-year regression in civic space conditions since the SDGs came into effect. Where civil society can’t operate freely, it’s no surprise if the goals it should help implement and monitor aren’t being met.

Falling short

The UN Secretary-General’s 2026 report on the SDGs made clear how delivery is falling short. It found that out of 139 targets with reliable trend data, only 15 per cent are on track, while a further 15 per cent have regressed below their 2015 baselines.

But rather than take responsibility for their failures, powerful states are using the lack of progress as a pretext to demand less ambition. The USA has dismissed the SDGs as an infringement on national sovereignty. Speaking at an event during the Forum, Russia’s representative said that the goals’ ambitions had proven ‘quite far away from reality’, blaming the design of the goals rather than states’ failure to deliver. For many states, an ambitious rights-based agenda is no longer a promise to keep, but a commitment to be backed away from.

Yet evidence suggests that when political will exists, change can come. The UN’s Asia-Pacific review presented at the HLPF showed that the number of children in child labour fell from 49 to 28 million between 2020 and 2025. What holds back achievement of the SDGs is not flawed design, but political choices.

As negotiations begin on what comes after the goals’ 2030 deadline, some states and UN officials favour extending the current goals, on the reasonable logic that reopening them in today’s political climate risks producing something weaker. But the framework agreed in 2015 wasn’t built for a world of growing authoritarianism, accelerating climate breakdown, coordinated backlash against gender equality, increasing militarisation, collapsing multilateral cooperation and rapid technological development. A post-2030 agenda will have to take account of all this, along with the financial strain on the multilateral system.

Forus, a network of national civil society platforms, has mapped three scenarios for the post-2030 process – continuity, reset or fragmentation – and insists that whichever prevails, accountability, civic space and financing reform must sit at the centre. Several upcoming moments will reveal the direction of travel. Next year’s Commission on the Status of Women and Economic and Social Council’s Youth Forum, along with the SDG Summit and the 2028 Pact for the Future review, all offer opportunities that must be seized to bring civil society into the process, identify where implementation is failing and match ambition with achievement.

Samuel King is a researcher with the Horizon Europe-funded research project ENSURED: Shaping Cooperation for a World in Transition at CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation.

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

The Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4), Sevilla, 2025. Credit: Forus

By Justina Kaluinaitė
NEW YORK, Sep 7 2026 (IPS)

The 81st session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA81) opens tomorrow at a particularly important moment for multilateralism. The UN80 reform initiative has entered what the Secretary-General describes as a decisive phase. Member States are selecting the next Secretary-General. The 2030 Agenda is entering its final four years, while conversations about what should follow it are beginning.

These discussions are often treated separately, but they are connected: will the next phase of multilateralism ensure the UN listens to communities and improve accountability? Will it reduce inequality, bring decisions and resources closer to communities and strengthen human rights?

We believe it must. Hence, trust, transformation and delivery are at the heart of the choices ahead. Defending multilateralism, however, does not mean resisting reform. It means strengthening its capacity to fulfil the purpose for which it exists: to advance peace, sustainable development and human rights.

“As we seek reform, we are acutely aware that the system has been built over decades and that many of us may unintentionally continue to reproduce it. We therefore propose to use a simple three-world framing: the world we have, the world we dream of, and the world we can change. In doing so, our message is: shifting the power is not an optional, technical adjustment; it is an absolute political and institutional necessity,” says Dr. Moses Isooba, Executive Director of the Uganda National NGO Forum (UNNGOF) and Forus Co-Chair.

Reform can bring the UN closer to people

UN80 represents a genuine opportunity: not to reduce the ambition of the United Nations, but to strengthen its ability to deliver. There are encouraging foundations to build on. Member States have agreed that mandate reform should focus on impact, preserve the balance between peace and security, human rights and development, strengthen accountability and evidence-based decision-making, and ensure that mandates are timely, coherent and adequately resourced.

Particularly important will be what reform means at the country and regional levels. For many civil society organisations, particularly in places where civic freedoms are under pressure, the United Nations is far from abstract. International norms can provide protection and legitimacy. UN mechanisms can create avenues for accountability. Multilateral spaces can enable local and national concerns to reach decision-makers when other channels are closed.

Current proposals envisage more coherent, responsive and contextualised UN country presences and stronger coordination through the Resident Coordinator system. This could enhance access to expertise across development, human rights, humanitarian action, peace and prevention from across the UN. The ambition is to make support more responsive to national priorities and needs rather than allowing institutional structures alone to determine how the system operates.

But country-centred should not mean government-only.

Understanding national priorities also requires listening to the people who experience policies and programmes in practice. Communities, civil society organisations, local authorities and social movements often see emerging challenges before institutions do. They also hold knowledge about what works, what does not and where international commitments are failing to reach people.

National NGO platforms and regional coalitions can play a particularly useful and strategic role. By bringing diverse civil society organisations together, they help connect community experience with national policy debates and link national and regional perspectives with global institutions — an approach which should be encouraged in the reform.

The same applies to accountability. Stronger mandate review and better use of evidence can help create a clearer line between what Member States agree, what institutions implement, what resources are used and what changes as a result. That is welcome. But measuring impact should also draw on the experience of those whom policies and programmes are intended to serve.

Ahead of the last UN General Assembly, Forus proposed three simple questions for assessing UN reform:

1. Does it reduce inequalities in who benefits and who is protected?
2. Does it bring decisions, resources and accountability closer to communities?
3. And does it strengthen rights, including human rights, gender equality and protection?

“UN reform will only be meaningful if it closes the distance between global institutions and the people they are meant to serve. For communities across Asia, this means stronger civic space, genuine participation in decision-making, and a multilateral system that is accountable not only to governments, but also to people whose rights, livelihoods and futures are shaped by its decisions. As we approach the final years of Agenda 2030, civil society must be recognised as an equal partner in shaping both delivery today and the global development framework that comes next,” says Zia ur Rehman, Secretary General, Asia Development Alliance (ADA).

Agenda 2030 and beyond

The same people-centred approach is needed as the international community enters the final years of Agenda 2030.

The Sustainable Development Goals have driven important progress, helped establish a shared global language for sustainable development and created a framework through which governments, civil society and other actors can hold ambition in common.

But implementation remains far from the level required. Of the 139 targets for which sufficient trend data are available, only 15 per cent are currently on track, according to the UN SDG Report 2026.

The response should not be to conclude that the SDGs themselves have failed. It should be to ask, with greater honesty and urgency, how can we accelerate what remains unfinished, and use what we have learned to shape what comes next.

Financing gaps, conflict, growing debt burdens, widening inequalities, weakened international cooperation and shrinking civic space all affect the ability of countries and communities to deliver sustainable development.

Earlier this year, Forus launched its Post-2030 Vision, built around reversing this trend: protecting the universal and rights-based promise of the SDGs while addressing the weaknesses that have constrained their implementation; particularly around financing, accountability, localisation and meaningful civil society participation.

The challenge is to understand what must be defended, what needs to be demanded, and what must be declined as international cooperation evolves.

That means matching ambition with the conditions required to translate commitments into reality: adequate and predictable financing, stronger accountability, inclusive decision-making and closer connections between global commitments and national and community-level implementation.

It also means recognising civic space and local leadership as part of the enabling environment for sustainable development. Communities and local actors need the resources, recognition and opportunity to contribute to the decisions that shape implementation, while civil society must be able to organise, participate and hold institutions accountable safely.

That requires renewed effort now while discussions about what comes after 2030 are beginning to emerge. This period offers an important opportunity to learn from implementation experience before positions become fixed and to involve civil society, communities and national and regional actors from the outset. As always, the process matters as much as the eventual framework. Decisions about participation, accountability and financing should not be settled first and opened to civil society afterwards.

Leadership for an evolving United Nations

The selection of the next United Nations Secretary-General is another important part of this moment. The next Secretary-General will inherit an institution under intense political and financial pressure. They will oversee the next phase of UN80, the final years of Agenda 2030 and a period in which the future development architecture will increasingly be contested. The next Secretary-General must have the independence, integrity and political courage to defend the UN’s purpose when powerful actors would prefer it not to.

Member States should therefore ask a more consequential question: Who is prepared to lead the UN according to its Charter when doing so is politically difficult?

That means leadership capable of defending international law consistently, without double standards. Leadership prepared to use the UN’s political and preventive tools rather than simply responding after crises escalate. Leadership that understands that peace and security, human rights and sustainable development cannot be traded against one another.

It also means a Secretary-General prepared to defend civic space and engage civil society not as an audience, but as an independent source of evidence, accountability and political legitimacy.

The selection process itself must reflect those principles. Forus has called for greater transparency and inclusion and for Member States to strongly consider qualified women candidates. Eight decades without a woman Secretary-General should itself provoke questions about representation within an institution committed to gender equality.

From global commitments to change where people live

As UNGA81 approaches, meaningful participation requires early access to information, inclusive and multilingual channels, and opportunities to engage beyond the ability to travel or navigate complex processes. It must also be safe, particularly as civil society actors face growing restrictions, intimidation and reprisals in many countries. And participation must have purpose: institutions should show how civil society’s evidence, experience and proposals have shaped their decisions.

The UN Charter begins with three enduring words: “We, the peoples.” As the United Nations reforms, chooses its next leadership and looks towards the future of sustainable development, we should go back to those words.

Does international cooperation reach people where they live? Does the UN listen and empower those closest to the challenges it seeks to address? Does it protect their rights and dignity? Can communities and civil society meaningfully contribute to the decisions that affect them? And do global commitments translate into tangible improvements in people’s lives?

UNGA81 offers an opportunity to bring the United Nations closer to that promise: closer to communities, more connected to civil society, and better equipped to deliver for the people it was created to serve.

Justina Kaluinaitė is Forus Chair

IPS UN Bureau

 
CIVICUS discusses struggles for abortion rights in Liechtenstein with Gabriella Alvarez-Hummel, a journalist and reproductive rights activist who works with Fristenlösung für Liechtenstein, an organisation that campaigns for the introduction of a legal time-limit abortion model.

Gabriella Alvarez-Hummel

What’s the current state of abortion rights in Liechtenstein?

Liechtenstein has one of the strictest abortion bans in Europe. Abortion is only allowed in cases of rape or life-threatening circumstances. As a result, women travel abroad for abortions, usually to Austria or Switzerland. Since 2015, doing so is no longer a criminal offence under Liechtenstein law. But those seeking abortion care are entirely on their own. An information ban – the last of its kind in Europe – keeps them from learning what their options are and where to go. Many don’t realise that since the law changed in 2015, only doctors face criminal liability, not patients. But the fear of legal consequences persists regardless. The ban is also inherently stigmatising, and many internalise that stigma.

Women who travel abroad to get an abortion must pay for the procedure in advance, all while racing against the clock, as neighbouring countries only allow medication abortions up to eight or nine weeks of pregnancy and surgical abortions up to 12 weeks.

Once abroad, the obstacles continue, because despite more liberal laws, access isn’t seamless in neighbouring countries. In the Austrian province of Vorarlberg, only a single clinic performs abortions. On the Swiss side, the regional hospital in Grabs, just across the border, doesn’t perform them. Most women travel to Chur or St Gallen, a 45-minute drive if you have a car. Simply getting this information often takes call after call.

What are women’s rights groups doing to change the law?

A popular initiative is under way that calls for the decriminalisation of abortion up to 12 weeks, repeal of the national information ban and health insurance coverage for the procedure.

We have collected almost 5,000 signatures, five times the number required, equivalent to a quarter of all eligible voters.

A parliamentary vote on the legalisation bill is scheduled for 2 September, to be followed by a popular vote. Prince-Regent Alois must then sign the bill into law, but he has already said he won’t and will use his veto instead.

How have activists responded to the veto threat?

The veto threat came as no surprise, given that the Prince-Regent took the same stance on the same issue 15 years ago. It should be noted, however, that he has traditionally shown restraint. He’s only ever announced he’d use his veto power once before. That time, it sparked a year-long discussion about the Prince-Regent’s veto rights before over 75 per cent endorsed him in a public vote.

While his veto power does have democratic legitimacy, the timing is troubling. He made his announcement before a single signature had been collected, representing a problematic interference in the democratic process and public debate.

Ultimately, this pre-emptive strike backfired. Instead of deterring people, it energised them, motivating a surge of volunteers whose dedication helped us secure a historic number of signatures.

For now, we’re focused on the upcoming vote. A resounding, high-turnout victory would send an undeniable message about what people want, hopefully putting pressure on the Prince-Regent to reconsider. He would be using his veto for the first time, against women’s rights of all things.

What other obstacles stand in the way of reform?

On top of the veto threat, the prime minister, who happens to be the first woman to hold the office, has publicly called the initiative unnecessary, arguing that women can simply cross the border for an abortion. That shows how little she understands what those affected go through.

With the country’s two most powerful people opposed, the odds look stacked against reform. Yet a recent poll found that over 70 per cent support legalisation. The public seems to be on the side of not criminalising anyone for having an abortion.

CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.

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Malta: ‘Young people see the value in protecting women’s health over enforcing religious doctrine’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Natalia Psaila Stabile 29.May.2026
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Oemwa Johnston, a fourth-generation nuclear survivor from Kiribati Island. Credit: Naureen Hossain/IPS

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 7 2026 (IPS)

More and more, global disarmament discussions are encompassing the humanitarian and environmental impacts of the testing and use of nuclear weapons, as it becomes clear that the legacy of nuclear weapons leaves its mark on multiple generations.

This was the purpose of the international meeting on ‘Victims Assistance and Environmental Remediation’ for countries affected by nuclear weapons. The meeting, held on September 1 in UN Headquarters, convened member states, academia, and civil society organizations, along with representatives from communities directly affected by nuclear weapons use and testing.

The meeting was convened at the direction of the General Assembly under resolutions 79/60 and 80/56, which called for a meeting to be held by 2026 on the lived experiences of communities affected by nuclear weapons and the measures that member states and the international community at large can take to address their concerns. The meeting was chaired by Kazakhstan and Kiribati, two countries that were once sites for nuclear tests in the 20th century. Since then, they are among the former testing states avidly advocating for nuclear disarmament.

This meeting examined the humanitarian and environmental impacts of nuclear weapons use and testing. Many speakers present remarked on the long-lasting effects of exposure to nuclear radiation. The physical, social, economic, and psychological consequences of nuclear use are felt across multiple generations. Persistent health issues are an all-too-common reality among affected communities. People exposed to radiation are more susceptible to noncommunicable diseases like cancer or leukemia or to living with lifelong health conditions.

“The consequences of nuclear weapons do not end when an explosion is over. As the enduring suffering of the Hibakusha—the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and the legacy of more than 2000 nuclear tests around the world make clear, the effects of nuclear weapons persist for decades and across generations,” said Izumi Nakamitsu, UN Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the Office of Disarmament Affairs (UN-ODA).

Nakamitsu said that the efforts to provide remediation should be sustainable; responses to the issues should not depend on “individual projects or temporary initiatives,” but rather on sustained cooperation across national and multilateral systems that have the capacity to preserve knowledge and technical expertise over long periods of time. “Communities need confidence that support will not disappear when a particular project or funding cycle comes to an end.”

Environmental remediation also constitutes, as the representative from Guatemala put it, “an indispensable responsibility” for the international community. The damage inflicted on the environment has rendered farmlands untenable, water systems altered, and impacted areas inhabitable due to radiation.

The first UN international meeting on victims’ assistance and environmental remediation for countries affected by nuclear weapons use and testing. Credit: Manuel Elias/UN Photo

Algeria’s representative remarked on the visible impact left by nuclear testing as evident in the Algerian Sahara, where testing was conducted near the towns of Reggane and In-Ekkar. One such result was radioactive lava flowing out from a mountain in the region, which cooled and hardened over time. The state carried out monitoring and environmental assessments of the affected, but as Algeria remarked, this effort cannot be done alone.

The impact also did not occur in a vacuum, as communities in those sites, including pastoralists, were forced to relocate or otherwise live with the outcomes. “Communities near these sites carry the burden that physics imposes: illness, land they cannot cultivate, and the harm of uncertainty,” he said.

States are encouraged to share knowledge and expertise on the methods taken to resolve their issues, such as environmental records for testing sites.

For Pacific Island states, remediation is paramount, for the environment is deeply linked to their cultural heritage. It is made more tragic as they risk losing their connection due to the consequences of nuclear testing.

Oemwa Johnston, a fourth-generation nuclear survivor from Kiribati, spoke on how she and other young people continue to carry this impact. “As a young woman and descendant of nuclear survivors, I belong to a generation that did not create nuclear weapons or conduct the nuclear tests of the past. Yet, we have inherited their legacy,” she said.

There was an unanimous call for affected individuals and communities to be at the center of disarmament talks and assistance efforts. Their lived experiences should shape the policies that are meant to support their needs.

“Affected communities cannot be seen only as recipients of assistance or subjects of research. They are knowledge holders,” said Mohamed Ambrosini, Soka Gakkai International’s (SGI) UN Representative for Disarmament.

Interactive dialogue and intergenerational exchanges between hibakusha, affected communities, and younger generations can create the spaces for people to reflect on the impacts of nuclear weapons. Preserving these testimonies and learning from them becomes more urgent as the hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are aging, Ambrosini warned.

Ambrosini and other civil society members also emphasized that in centering their experiences and recognizing their dignity, this sets the path for them to receive nuclear justice and repatriation for their suffering. These efforts should also respect their dignity and provide them with meaningful spaces to be part of decision-making processes.

There were calls for States to take the responsibility to support affected communities. This should come in two forms: compensation from states through national and federal support programs and official recognition, even apologies, from nuclear powers for their testing.

In the context of Japan, hibakusha and other affected communities receive relief from the government, but not state compensation. While hibakusha are eligible for certain benefits like free health care, the terms for who qualifies for these benefits may be too narrow. Emilie McGlone from Peace Boat, a Japan-based civil society group, argued that the current systems for victim assistance do not include non-Japanese or overseas hibakusha, or people who lived outside the specific geographic boundaries from the hypocenter of the bombings.

“The starting point for all victim assistance is defining who is recognized. Japan’s experience shows that while official definitions may be narrow, victims themselves as well as civil society in affected areas advocate for broader rights. Civil society and diverse impacted voices must therefore be involved in the design of victim assistance policies,” said McGlone.

The meeting recognized the current international frameworks that limit or prohibit nuclear weapons use and testing, such as the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). It also held up the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which carries provisions for victim assistance and environmental remediation, as outlined in Articles VI and VII of the treaty.

As Bangladesh’s delegate noted, the TPNW recognizes that “addressing the use of nuclear weapons must go hand in hand with preventing their future use.” As of now, 100 countries have either signed or ratified the treaty, which calls for complete nuclear disarmament, though this does not include the current nuclear-armed states.

Note: This article is brought to you by IPS Noram in collaboration with INPS Japan and Soka Gakkai International in consultative status with ECOSOC.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Pakhshan Azizi and a child. Photo credit: Women's Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (WNCRI)

By Clare Quirk
JOHANNESBURG, Sep 1 2026 (IPS)

In 2024, Kurdish social worker Pakhshan Azizi was sentenced to death. She remains incarcerated in Evin Prison, Tehran, Iran. This is her story …

Please read her letter from prison here.

For more on Civicus’s Stand as My Witness Campaign.

Additional reporting and research: Cecilia Russell
Picture credits: Kurdistan Human Rights, BBC Persian, Clare Quirk, Wikipedia, CY Boechat (VOA)/Wikimedia Commons, UNICEF, Civicus, Amnesty International, ANF News, Vida Rabbani, Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (WNCRI)

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Partial presidential election results are displayed on a screen at the Zambian Elections results center in Lusaka on 17 August 2026. Credit: Gianluigi Guercia/AFP

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Aug 31 2026 (IPS)

On 24 August, police sealed off access to Zambia’s courts, closed the day before the deadline for petitions to challenge the results of the 13 August presidential election. The judiciary’s top official cited security reasons, but the timing left little doubt that authorities meant to block the defeated candidate’s legal challenge.

Official results gave the incumbent, Hakainde Hichilema, 60.49 per cent of the vote, comfortably ahead of challenger Brian Mundubile’s 37.87 per cent. Some results from the concurrent National Assembly vote remain pending, but Hichilema’s United Party for National Development (UPND) has also won a commanding majority over Mundubile’s National Reconciliation Party for Unity and Prosperity, part of the opposition’s Tonse Alliance.

Mundubile rejected the presidential election result and vowed to contest it in court, but an election night police raid forced him into hiding. Officers killed former minister Mutotwe Kafwaya and arrested 11 other opposition figures, blaming an exchange of gunfire and accusing Mundubile’s party of possessing weapons and planning an insurgency.

Hichilema came to power in 2021 by comfortably defeating President Edgar Lungu, whose crackdown on civic freedoms led to a polarised and violent campaign. Hichilema promised democratic renewal, pledging to strengthen human rights and the rule of law. However, after some initial positive changes, he’s overseen a slide back to the kind of practices he once campaigned against.

Pre-election crackdown

Hichilema’s margin of victory suggests he’d likely have won anyway, but the ruling party stacked the odds further in its favour while penalising the opposition. European Union observers described an ‘uneven playing field’, with misuse of state resources in favour of the UPND, voter inducements including cash handouts, heavy pro-government bias in state media, self-censorship driven by restrictive laws and police restrictions on campaign events. They also flagged a heavy and intimidating military presence at counting locations, weak security in vote tabulation and counting and a six-hour suspension of counting on election night, after which local officials appeared to be taking instructions from Electoral Commission headquarters before announcing results.

Civil society had already raised concerns about the make-up of the Electoral Commission, believing some of its members were UPND supporters, and judicial independence, after Hichilema appointed numerous new judges from UPND stronghold regions.

In December, parliament approved a law changing the electoral system. It expanded the number of constituencies and introduced a more proportional system with reserved seats for women, young people and people with disabilities. Civil society’s objections centred on the lack of consultation and the speed of these major constitutional changes, which raised suspicions they were intended to benefit the UPND.

As the vote got closer, authorities blatantly targeted opposition politicians, including by using the draconian Public Order Act. Last October, police arrested 12 people, including an opposition member of parliament, when they took part in a meeting Mundubile was expected to attend at a private home, charging them with conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace and participation in an unlawful assembly. In February, police arrested 16 Tonse Alliance members on the same unlawful assembly charge.

Opposition politicians also faced arrest for what would once have counted as the normal cut and thrust of political debate. One of the weapons authorities used was the 2025 Cyber Security Act, which expanded their power to criminalise online commentary and criticism.

In January, police arrested opposition member of parliament Miles Sampa after he alleged by-election fraud. In February, they arrested National Democratic Congress leader Mambwe Zimba over a Facebook post depicting Hichilema in a coffin. In March, they arrested Socialist Party leader Fred M’membe over radio comments about Hichilema and the political controversy over funeral plans for Lungu, who died in 2025. All three spent time in detention before being released on bail.

The crackdown even reached an event that should have showcased Zambia for the right reasons. In April, just days before RightsCon, the world’s largest gathering on digital rights, was due to open in the capital, Lusaka, the government effectively cancelled it. They postponed it at too short notice for rescheduling. Over 2,600 people had planned to attend and some were already on their way. Authorities cited unspecified concerns about some speakers’ clearances and demanded more information on discussion topics. The government evidently didn’t want debate about issues it deemed controversial, including its human rights record. Zambian officials were also reportedly pressured by China, a key investor, over the planned participation of Taiwanese civil society representatives.

Time to restore freedoms

Zambians remain proud of their democracy, which has seen three peaceful handovers since multiparty elections returned in 1991. Hichilema should get democracy back on track by restoring all the freedoms that have been compromised. That starts with reversing regressive laws typically rushed through parliament with little consultation, including the Cyber Crimes Act and others that restrict online speech. The government must also commit to respecting media freedoms and letting the political opposition play its proper democratic role.

The government should replace the colonial-era Public Order Act. Hichilema vetoed its proposed replacement, the Public Gatherings Bill, passed by parliament in May. Civil society had raised concerns about the bill’s broad granting of discretionary powers to law enforcement officers and imposition of criminal sanctions. Zambia needs a law that allows peaceful protests and doesn’t criminalise organisers and participants. Civil society has also raised concerns about an NGO Bill that would grant the government extensive powers to regulate, suspend and dissolve civil society organisations. This bill must advance no further.

Three decades of peaceful transitions made Zambia a regional democratic beacon. Keeping it one requires a government that respects dissent, and a civil society free enough to make sure it does.

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

Kazakhstan marks the 35th anniversary of the closure of the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site, recalling the Nevada–Semipalatinsk anti-nuclear movement and highlighting continued cooperation between government and civil society for nuclear disarmament. Credit: INPS Japan

By Katsuhiro Asagiri
TOKYO / ASTANA, Aug 31 2026 (IPS)

Across the vast steppe of northeastern Kazakhstan, the scars of the Cold War remain visible. At the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site, the Soviet Union conducted 456 nuclear tests between 1949 and 1989, exposing nearby communities to radiation and leaving health and environmental consequences that have endured across generations.

Semipalatinsk Former Nuclear Weapon Test site. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri

At a time when nuclear weapons are being reasserted rather than marginalized, Kazakhstan’s choice raises a basic question: Must national security ultimately depend on possessing them?

A Nuclear Test Site Closed by Public Pressure

In 1989, the Kazakh poet Olzhas Suleimenov helped launch the Nevada-Semipalatinsk anti-nuclear movement, linking the Soviet site with Nevada and highlighting the human costs of nuclear testing on both sides of the Cold War. Hundreds of thousands joined protests demanding an end to the tests.

Against that backdrop, then-President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed the decree closing Semipalatinsk on Aug. 29, 1991.

Kazakh civil movement activists gathered to demand a nuclear test ban at the Semipalatinsk test site in August 1989. Credit: armscontrol.org

Official portrait of Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Credit: President of the Republic of Kazakhstan

From Nuclear Victim to Disarmament Advocate

Kazakhstan then sought to turn the experience of Semipalatinsk into a broader disarmament agenda.

It ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and helped establish the Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone with Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. In 2009, at Kazakhstan’s initiative, the U.N. General Assembly designated Aug. 29 as the International Day against Nuclear Tests.

Kazakhstan also hosts facilities in the global system for detecting nuclear explosions, while the International Atomic Energy Agency operates a Low Enriched Uranium Bank in Oskemen to reduce incentives for countries to develop their own enrichment capabilities.

Looking Beyond Warhead Numbers

LEU Bank Storage Facility. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri

Around Semipalatinsk, concerns about health and environmental damage persist decades after testing ended. That experience has shaped Kazakhstan’s role in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, or TPNW, where it has stressed victim assistance and environmental remediation as well as prohibition.

Together with Kiribati, another country deeply affected by nuclear testing, Kazakhstan has supported efforts to create an international funding mechanism for those purposes.

The principle goes beyond preventing future use: the international community also bears responsibilities for harm already inflicted. Semipalatinsk, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Marshall Islands and Kiribati are separated by geography and history but connected by the human cost of the nuclear age.

Kazakhstan and the Role of Civil Society

Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri, Multimedia Director of INPS Japan

Since independence, Kazakhstan has worked with civil society organizations, humanitarian institutions, researchers, survivors, medical experts, young people and faith-based groups to keep the human consequences of nuclear weapons in international debate.

Among them is Soka Gakkai International (SGI), which has long advocated nuclear abolition as a question of human survival and dignity.

At the first Meeting of States Parties to the TPNW in Vienna in 2022, Kazakhstan and Kiribati joined the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and SGI in organizing a side event on victim assistance and environmental remediation.

In 2023, Kazakhstan’s diplomatic mission, SGI and the Center for International Security and Policy (CISP) organized another Vienna event on the consequences of nuclear testing at Semipalatinsk, including testimony from younger generations living with its legacy. Later that year in Astana, Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry and CISP brought together SGI, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), the International Committee of the Red Cross and others for a conference marking the International Day against Nuclear Tests.

Mr. Hirotsugu Terasaki, Chief Executive Director of SGI Peace Center. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri, Multimedia Director of INPS Japan

“Many people in Kazakhstan share the same strong desire for nuclear disarmament because they know firsthand the reality of nuclear suffering,” Terasaki told INPS Japan, drawing a parallel with the aspirations of people in Japan shaped by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

His observation points to a broader dimension of Kazakhstan’s engagement with civil society: cooperation built not only around diplomatic objectives, but also around shared historical experience, humanitarian concerns and a determination to prevent future generations from enduring similar suffering.

These initiatives reflect a broader pattern: states negotiate treaties and security arrangements, while civil society brings survivors’ testimony, medical evidence, environmental damage and intergenerational responsibility into the discussion. For Kazakhstan, whose closure of Semipalatinsk was shaped by a popular anti-nuclear movement, such cooperation is part of the foundation of its disarmament diplomacy.

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. Credit: Jibek Joly TV Channel

A Nuclear Connection With Japan

Kazakhstan’s relationship with Japan is also shaped by a shared history of nuclear suffering.

Kazakhstan-Japan

Japan also co-sponsored the U.N. resolution establishing Aug. 29 as the International Day against Nuclear Tests and has worked with Kazakhstan to promote the entry into force of the CTBT.

A World Moving in the Opposite Direction

The international environment surrounding the 35th anniversary is bleak.

More than 10,000 nuclear warheads remain worldwide, and major nuclear powers continue to modernize their arsenals. With New START gone, the United States and Russia no longer operate under a comprehensive, legally binding framework limiting their strategic nuclear forces.

The NPT Review Conference ended in May without a final document, the third consecutive review cycle to end without substantive consensus. The CTBT, opened for signature three decades ago and supported by nearly the entire international community, has still not entered into force.

Memory Is Not Enough

Writing in The Astana Times ahead of the anniversary, Dr. Dauren Aben of the Kazakhstan Institute for Strategic Studies described the lesson of Semipalatinsk in simple terms: not merely to remember, but to “remember and act.”

Dauren Abenuly Aben. Credit: KazISS

In 1991, Kazakhstan could preserve the nuclear arsenal it inherited as a symbol of national power, or give it up. It chose the second.

That decision did not eliminate nuclear weapons or guarantee irreversible disarmament. Today, the world may instead be entering a new era of nuclear competition.

But one fact remains: a state that had the opportunity to become a nuclear power chose not to do so.

Over the next 35 years, Kazakhstan connected that choice to nuclear-weapon-free zones, the global test ban, the TPNW, victim assistance and environmental remediation. Its cooperation with SGI and a broad range of civil society organizations forms part of that history.

A view of the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York as seen from the north of the UN site. Credit: UN Photo/Yutaka Nagata

Even so, the question posed by the treaty increasingly resembles the question posed by Kazakhstan’s experience:

Does possessing nuclear weapons make nations safer?

Or does genuine security ultimately require a world in which nuclear weapons no longer exist?

Across the former Semipalatinsk testing grounds, traces of the explosions remain — reminders of what humanity has already done with nuclear weapons.

But 35 years ago, Kazakhstan gave the site another meaning: evidence that a country could move from building and testing nuclear weapons toward a deliberate decision to reject them.

The question now is whether the rest of the world still has the political will to make the same choice.

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

IPS UN Bureau

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CIVICUS discusses Sweden’s new migration laws with John Stauffer, legal director and deputy executive director of Civil Rights Defenders, a Swedish civil society organisation that acts as a civil rights watchdog at home and supports human rights defenders in repressive contexts worldwide.

John Stauffer

What are the main changes to Sweden’s immigration laws?

The biggest change is that permanent residence will no longer be available for people with asylum status. Under the new rules, they will only be granted temporary residence permits.

This is being paired with a new law on ‘good behaviour’ for some categories of migrants, which lets the authorities refuse or revoke a permit over conduct that is not necessarily criminal, such as unpaid debts or undeclared work. And it does not only apply to new applications. Permits already granted can be reviewed too.

Citizenship has been tightened along the same lines. Habitual residence requirements have risen from five to eight years and applicants now have to provide proof of income and pass a knowledge test, including a language test. In relation to citizenship, the requirements on ‘good behaviour’ have become stricter.

Then there is the law on information sharing between government authorities, known as the snitch law. It obliges officials who handle benefits, debt enforcement, pensions, prisons and probation, taxes and unemployment services to report undocumented migrants to the police.

All this arrives at the same time as the European Union (EU) Migration Pact, which Sweden has implemented through national legislation. It came into force on 12 June and has tightened the conditions further. It is a package of 10 laws that harmonises how asylum claims are handled across the EU, with faster procedures for people considered unlikely to qualify for protection. In implementing the pact, Sweden has gone further than necessary to limit the rights of asylum seekers, for example on access to legal representation in proceedings. An expressed goal of the government is to have the most restrictive asylum laws possible under EU law.

Who is most affected by these laws?

Asylum seekers, people without citizenship and undocumented migrants are those most hit by these laws, but their reach is wider than it looks.

Under the snitch law, healthcare staff and teachers are not obliged to report undocumented migrants, but they may end up doing so indirectly. If you give birth in a hospital, the hospital must notify the tax authority that a child has been born, and the tax authority is then obliged to pass that on to the police. We already see that undocumented migrants avoid contact with healthcare providers, which severely impacts their right to health.

Then there are young people who have lived in Sweden their whole lives, with parents who came, for example, as asylum seekers. They will be assessed under the new regime once they turn 18 and, if they are seen not to have grounds for a residence permit of their own, they may be sent to a country where they have never lived.

Ultimately, the broader effect of these laws is to erode trust. Asylum seekers and, more broadly, people with a migrant background lose confidence in government authorities. That confidence has always been a cornerstone of our democracy, and one we have been proud of. Once that trust goes, it is not just the government that loses out. It is Swedish society as a whole.

What does this mean for freedoms of assembly and expression?

The good behaviour law means we are no longer all equal before the law. Something a Swedish citizen can say or do without any legal consequence can cost a residence permit holder their right to stay.

What makes this worse is that nobody knows exactly where the line falls. Legal scholars have described these laws as very broad, vague and difficult to apply in practice, so people have no way of telling in advance what might be used against them.

That uncertainty produces a chilling effect on people’s willingness to use their rights. Permit holders who are not citizens are withdrawing from public debate. They stop voicing their views and stay away from protests, because they fear that joining a pro-Palestine march or a climate protest, for example, might cost them their permit. We are, in fact, creating a two-tier system where the lives of non-citizens will be characterised by uncertainty and limited access to rights, while citizens enjoy full rights.

What’s driving these changes?

Sweden used to have comparatively liberal migration laws, but since large numbers of asylum seekers arrived in Europe in 2015, immigration laws have become more and more restrictive. This has intensified particularly since the current centre-right government came to power four years ago with the support of a far-right party, and with the stated goal of reducing the number of asylum seekers and making more migrants leave Sweden, voluntarily or by force. Agreements with repressive regimes to receive their citizens, repatriation grants and measures that will make the lives of migrants in Sweden more uncertain are means to achieve these goals.

The government has been building a narrative that connects migration to rising rates of violent crime. Using that as a justification, it has tried to build strong support for stricter migration policies and at the same time has pushed more repressive policies to combat crime, including greater possibilities to revoke residence permits for migrants who have committed crimes, including less serious crimes.

As we approach the September election, it remains to be seen whether people truly support this model. The largest opposition party, the Social Democrats, have, however, supported many of the new immigration policies. What a left-wing government would mean for asylum seekers is still to be seen. Other countries, particularly France and Germany, are also watching to see how it plays out, and some may adopt similar measures if they see results they regard as positive.

What can civil society do?

Civil Rights Defenders works to influence national legislation and the public debate, to shift how migration is understood and give a more nuanced picture of it. We currently do not have the capacity to generally support asylum seekers and migrants through legal advice, but other organisations do. However, we engage in strategic litigation, taking cases to oversight bodies, courts and the European Court of Human Rights to shape how these laws are implemented.

But our resources are limited, and they are about to be stretched much further. One consequence of the way Sweden is implementing the EU Migration Pact is that the legal support asylum seekers are entitled to through the public scheme has been cut back drastically. The people who lose that support will turn to us and other organisations for support, and Swedish civil society doesn’t currently have the capacity to meet their needs.

CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.

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Lake Chungará and Parinacota volcano in northern Chile
Credit: Gerd Breitenbach, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

By Céline Delacroix
OTTAWA, Canada, Aug 28 2026 (IPS)

This week is World Water Week, the annual conference of governments, business, and civil society on building a water-secure future as global population, climate disruptions, and water demand increase. In Washington, it’s also Water Resources Development Act season, when every two years the US Congress reauthorizes the legilslation that funds US drinking water, wastewater systems, and flood risk management projects.

Water security ought to be something everyone can agree on, and there are long traditions of bipartisanship in past WRDA reauthorizations, and of diversity and inclusiveness in World Water Week conferences. But these days, water is increasingly a trigger for division, from the public outcry over data center water usage to anti-abortion activists introducing legislation to designate the abortion medication mifepristone as a water pollutant and get the US Environmental Protection Agency to regulate it, which is another way to restrict access to it.

For the record, mifepristone is no threat to waterways. Research overwhelmingly confirms its safety and efficacy, and a Food and Drug Administration assessment found its environmental accumulation in water was less than one part per billion. The lone study alleging mifepristone is a water pollutant is junk science. It used a debunked testing method and was published in a journal run by anti-abortion activists, and then cited by other anti-abortion activists.

While the mifepristone water scare is clearly disinformation, it’s so pointedly backwards that it points up an important truth: it isn’t abortion medication that threatens water security; on the contrary, it’s attacks on it and on family planning in general that pose a real threat.

There are several reasons for this. If family planning access is curtailed or cut off and birthrates rise, so will water demand and water stress. It will be worse in places with faster population growth, and worse globally for women and girls, who are the ones who have to collect the water in 80% of households experiencing shortages. Over 2 billion people lack safely managed drinking water. Women and girls suffer disproportionately from water shortages, yet they are generally excluded from decision making bodies or leadership positions that would give them a say in managing water.

In general, research shows that where gender disparities are high, women have more babies, population grows faster, and water scarcity gets worse. But the reverse is also true: where there is investment in and access to comprehensive family planning, and where women and girls are more empowered and included in decision making about managing water resources, over time birth rates decline, water stress eases, and water resiliency grows.

It ought to be obvious that population trends, changing demographics, and urbanization influence demand for water, food, energy, and land. Yet they are strangely absent from discourse on managing environment resources, including water governance. Ditto for gender inequality, which has a strong bearing on population growth.

The UN warns of “living beyond our hydrological means” amid water crisis and reaching “global water bankruptcy,” where water degradation has largely become irreversible. Population and gender issues are not controlling factors in this per se, as their impacts depend on patterns of production and consumption, technology, inequality and governanceThe same number of people can have radically different environmental footprints depending on where and how they live.

But population trends and gender equity are still important variables in how we use water and other resources that planners should not ignore. As human numbers and consumption levels rise, our ecological footprint, including water consumption, has become overwhelming and unsustainable.

This year, the Earth as a whole reached “overshoot day” – the day past which we’re consuming more in a given year than the Earth’s resources can regenerate — on July 30. The U.S. reached it March 14.

Climate change is intensifying drought, altering precipitation and snowpack, putting pressure on groundwater and surface water. For xample, fast regional population growth and development have stressed the Colorado River, which supplies roughly 40 million people and now faces severe and persistent shortages. In other water-stressed regions of the US, agriculture is the biggest consumer of shrinking water resources. The Ogallala Aquifer, for example, is getting depleted faster than it can naturally recharge.

Population dynamics are part of this complex picture. Water resources are embedded in an intricate web of human and ecological interaction. Water governance needs to take a broad, holistic view to understand the nexus of biodiversity, food production, and human needs and health as part of the same interconnected system of planetary health. Within that, managing water requires considering how population trends, human behavior, gender equity, technology, and human-caused climate change influence water systems.

The last thing policymakers should be doing is demonizing family planning as some kind of threat to the water supply. Reproductive health services are an intrinsic matter of human right, but they have critical environmental co-benefits, too, including easing population pressures on overtaxed water resources.

Managing water is not just about pipes and pumps; it’s about complex interactions between humans and ecosystems, managing them so they respect ecological limits as well as human rights and equity, which ultimately are all part of the same complex web. Water connects everything. Policymaking should too.

Céline Delacroix is adjunct professor at the University of Ottawa’s School of Health Sciences, a Senior Fellow with the Population Institute, and Director of the FP/Earth Project.

IPS UN Bureau

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Photo highlighting the activities and successes of the 'Promoting Nature-based Solutions for Land Restoration while Strengthening National Monitoring Technical Working Group in Kenya: Phase 2' project funded by UK PACT. Credit: Anthony Ochieng/CIFOR-ICRAF

By Lulseged Tamene Desta and Cargele Masso
NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 26 2026 (IPS)

Several coalitions exist today to defend the territories in which people live and work. Global leaders have long understood the importance of shared responsibility for collective security and have invested significant time in establishing networks, partnerships and alliances. In 2025, global spending on defense reached a record $2.9 trillion.

But the global community is increasingly recognizing that today’s gravest existential risks arise from a war being waged against nature itself – and our defenses are woefully fragmented and underfunded. The world is investing only about $220 billion a year for nature-based solutions, compared to $7.3 trillion for nature-negative activities.

This is not just a discrete, isolated environmental concern. The triple planetary crises of land degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change are worsening food insecurity, water scarcity and ecosystem collapse, threatening millions of lives.

Collectively, the impact of the ongoing assault on nature is amplifying conflict, worsening migration, driving inflation higher, and fomenting geopolitical instability. Unless restoration and sustainable management of resources is in place, the world is expected to lose more than US$23 trillion by 2050, while halting this trend would cost around $4.6 trillion.

Many solutions to these interconnected crises exist but have been ineffective to date. Limited coordination and collaboration between countries, sectors and disciplines, as well as insufficient resources and short-term approaches to long-term challenges, mean we are far behind the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Despite compelling evidence of the costs of degradation, investment remains far below what is needed because opportunities are rarely presented as credible, investable propositions.

To change this, two things must happen. First, governments, international agencies, academia and civil society must unite through a grand coalition to bring together those currently working in isolation to achieve greater impact than the sum of their parts – a kind of mutual pact to protect nature.

Photo highlighting the activities and successes of the ‘Promoting Nature-based Solutions for Land Restoration while Strengthening National Monitoring Technical Working Group in Kenya: Phase 2’ project funded by UK PACT. Credit: Anthony Ochieng/CIFOR-ICRAF

And second, this grand coalition must also engineer a funding paradigm shift from focusing on environmental challenges to investing in the many opportunities of conservation and restoration.

The ongoing UN COP17 desertification talks in Mongolia, where the theme is “Restoring Land, Restoring Hope”, is the perfect opportunity to progress this.

Evidence shows that integrated approaches to address landscape degradation solve multiple interconnected challenges.

For example, investment in soil and water conservation in the Adarsha watershed in southern India has been found to improve water availability, agricultural productivity, and rural livelihoods. Analysis showed that yields of maize intercropped with pigeonpea increased by 148% while households in the watershed were less affected by droughts compared to those in the non-watershed area.

In Kenya and Tanzania, the adoption of Participatory Rangeland Management improved rangeland condition and resilience to climate shocks for more than 90% of participating communities.

Despite evidence from these successes, these interventions are not being invested in and applied at the scale needed to transform the world’s food, land and water systems in ways that can build long-term, far-reaching resilience.

Countries, donors, financing institutions and civil society must come together in a grand coalition to direct the coordination, governance and investment necessary to tackle these crises where they all interconnect: at the landscape level.

A grand coalition would offer a dedicated focal point to integrate and advance the UN’s goals for climate, biodiversity and land degradation, allowing for stronger coordination and shaping the global agenda for informed decision-making. Critically, the coalition would lead the redirection away from ineffective, siloed solutions and the self-defeating environmental trade-offs they create.

A grand coalition would also create a platform for establishing the rigorous systems of governance essential to achieving global goals for nature, including fair and inclusive land tenure and governance over water systems. Understanding the true cost of landscape governance and inaction is instrumental for adequate investments.

Lastly, a grand coalition would gather the evidence to help shift the emphasis of finance for nature towards investments that benefit everyone. By identifying a menu of options for turning grand challenges into grand opportunities, the coalition would unlock the financing from banks, donors, philanthropies and other development funders needed to scale interventions globally.

The UNCCD COP17 talks in Mongolia is not just an opportunity to address the challenges facing land. It’s a moment to foster unity around a shared threat to all of our territories. CGIAR and its partners will play its part by developing an investment plan to anchor greater coordination in collaboration with the grand coalition of action for shared human and planetary outcomes.

Landscapes are where our greatest environmental and human challenges today are playing out, from declining biodiversity to the deforestation driving climate change, to increasing levels of food insecurity.

Investing in multifunctional landscapes through a unified global coalition, therefore, is not simply an environmental imperative for the world, but also a strategic one. Galvanizing support for landscape-centered solutions can simultaneously reduce future risks and strengthen economies and communities.

A global coalition for restoring and protecting landscapes would recognize a defining reality of the 21st century: protecting nature is fundamental for protecting us all.

Dr. Lulseged Tamene Desta, is Director of the CGIAR Multifunctional Landscapes Science Program
Cargele Masso, is Director of the CGIAR’s Environmental Health and Biodiversity Impact Area Platform

IPS UN Bureau

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Results of the vote on the approval of the appointment of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN General Assembly, 24 July 2026. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Samuel King
BRUSSELS, Belgium, Aug 26 2026 (IPS)

On 24 July, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly reappointed Volker Türk as High Commissioner for Human Rights for a further four years. Only 10 states – among them Israel, Russia and the USA – opposed the decision.

Türk is an Austrian lawyer who’s spent almost his entire career in the UN system, from field postings in Kosovo to the UN refugee agency to his present role in Geneva. Because of this, when he became High Commissioner in October 2022, there were concerns he might be more cautious than his predecessors, but he has spoken out about violations committed by the powerful. He criticised Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, demanded investigations into deaths in US immigration detention and condemned Israel’s atrocities in Gaza. He has, however, faced criticism for not calling out Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide and not speaking out enough on China, particularly concerning the situation of Uyghur people in Xinjiang.

The vote will make Türk the first person set to serve two full terms since the post was created in 1993. One early High Commissioner, Mary Robinson, wanted to stay on, but strong US resistance to her positions on its post-9/11 military interventionism and the 2001 Durban Conference — the UN’s World Conference against Racism, where Israel and the USA walked out due to its focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — left her with only a one-year extension.

As a funding crisis continues to engulf the UN human rights system, continuity matters. US withdrawal from funding UN agencies, part of its broader assault on the international system in general and human rights bodies in particular, has placed the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) under serious financial strain, forcing staff cuts and reducing capacity to work in countries where human rights violations are taking place. A vacancy or a contested process would have added further disruption at a difficult time.

A rushed and contested process

The vote came unexpectedly and moved fast. UN Secretary-General António Guterres informed states of his intention to reappoint Türk without a public process, open competition or much time for deliberation. With Guterres’ second term ending this year, the move was likely intended to keep the decision off his successor’s desk and prevent opposition from building.

Most states accepted this, but the USA didn’t. It immediately moved to delay the vote, citing insufficient consultation. Ireland, speaking for the European Union, opposed the US motion, which was defeated by 63 votes to 27. The USA’s representative called the process ‘classic UN cronyism’, accused Guterres of cutting a backroom deal and warned there would be ‘consequences’. Russia tried a different tactic, proposing to extend Türk’s mandate by just 81 days, to the end of 2026, leaving the decision to the next Secretary-General. That too was rejected, by 71 votes to 19.

Argentina, Burkina Faso, Israel, Mali, Nicaragua, Niger, North Korea, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago and the USA voted against Türk’s reappointment. The list contains tight US allies, such as Argentina and Israel, and states that align with Russia, such as North Korea and the three military-run states of the Sahel, which are increasingly working as a bloc. Under the Trump administration, it’s no longer a surprise to see the USA voting the same way as Russia. Most of the states, including Nicaragua, systematically violate human rights. Russia and North Korea both resist any accountability for human rights violations, while the USA particularly objected to Türk’s criticism of its war on Iran and migration detention deaths. Israel accused the OHCHR of having ‘erased the atrocities of October 7 and betrayed UN neutrality’.

Some states that might have been expected to vote against Türk, however, supported him. Among the 144 who backed his reappointment were the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and Syria, all states subject to active UN scrutiny. This suggested that hostility to a specific human rights mandate doesn’t necessarily extend to the whole system, and even heavily scrutinised states may see value in a working relationship with the OHCHR.

A vulnerable human rights system

The 13 abstentions and 26 no-shows also deserve attention. Some were procedural, with Ecuador and Paraguay saying afterwards that they wanted more time. Peru cited concerns about limiting the incoming Secretary-General’s flexibility, though its abstention may also reflect Türk’s recent criticism of Peru’s human rights record, including laws granting amnesty to security forces accused of serious violations during armed conflict between 1980 and 2000.

Iraq, New Zealand, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Uganda all abstained. New Zealand described its position as ‘procedural rather than policy’, but the decision drew sharp domestic criticism, not least given its recent failure to recognise Palestinian statehood.

Among the smaller states that ducked a decision, some likely faced economic or political pressure from the most powerful states to stay quiet, while others may have judged themselves insufficiently protected from the consequences of taking a visible position. This means the vote may reflect vulnerability as much as it measures support for the High Commissioner. As the most powerful states increasingly throw their weight around in the international system, smaller states may have to make calculations about when they can afford to take a position and when they need to stay quiet.

Continuity as the outcome

Institutional continuity is the immediate outcome, and Türk has signalled what he intends to do with it. In a June speech, he described an ‘unprecedented, shameless onslaught against international law’ that’s causing appalling human suffering, insisted the international community must stay focused on fundamentals and declared the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the core treaties ‘ever more important’. His message to the G7, meeting nearby, was blunt: put human rights at the centre of discussions as a force for stability, not an afterthought.

Legitimacy and moral authority, however, won’t pay the OHCHR’s bills. Over the next four years, Türk must resist China, Russia and the USA as they work to undermine the UN bodies that protect human rights. The 144 states that backed Türk now carry the responsibility of turning their votes into action. They should ensure the OHCHR is adequately funded and work to bring on board states that abstained, particularly if they did so out of fear. They must show that collective commitment to human rights still counts for something.

Samuel King is a researcher with the Horizon Europe-funded research project ENSURED: Shaping Cooperation for a World in Transition at CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation.

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CIVICUS discusses the rapid erosion of civic space in Ecuador with Gabriela Panchana, an activist, communicator and founder of the En Voz Alta and Rumbo Plural digital platforms.

Gabriela Panchana

How did the legal proceedings against you start, and what stage are they at?

The current proceedings began with a thread I posted on Twitter/X on 9 June, in which I asked the US Embassy in Quito to help shed light on the murder of Monika Silva Koniuszek, a Polish human rights defender based in Ecuador who had handed over documentation on alleged drug-trafficking networks to the embassy and the US Drug Enforcement Administration. Someone accused me of speaking ‘solely out of financial self-interest’. I replied, and as a result I was charged with a fourth-class offence, which is the least serious category of criminal offences.

The proceedings were riddled with irregularities. They were exceptionally swift and involved several different judges, while observers were barred from attending. On 27 July, I was sentenced to 30 days’ imprisonment and ordered to issue a public apology. I applied to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) for interim measures. On 14 August, I received notification of the written judgment. We lodged appeals before the three-working-day deadline expired. Meanwhile, not a single person has been arrested in connection with the murder of Monika Silva.

The harassment did not begin with this trial. Since December, four successive criminal cases have been brought against me. This has been accompanied by a coordinated campaign of online harassment and stigmatisation.

Added to this is digital surveillance. On 13 August, I received an official alert from Apple confirming that my phone had been the target of a mercenary spyware attack. The evidence is currently undergoing forensic analysis by international organisations. Given that this incident forms part of a pattern of judicial harassment and persecution against me, I have demanded the state investigate who authorised the spying and shed light on the public procurement of intelligence tools.

It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that Monika Silva handed over documentation to foreign authorities regarding networks operating in Ecuador, and now she’s dead. I have been convicted for calling for an investigation into her death. Any analysis that focuses solely on freedom of expression falls short. We must also ask what relationship exists between criminal structures and parts of the judicial system.

How else are people being criminalised for speaking out?

My case is not an anomaly. It’s the predictable application of a law designed for that purpose. Section 396.1 of the Criminal Code punishes expressions that ‘discredit or dishonour’, concepts subject to judicial discretion, with imprisonment. The fundamental problem is that it turns expression into a criminal matter.

Other cases confirm this pattern. In May, four habeas data applications – a legal remedy to demand the rectification or removal of information – resulted in rulings ordering various media outlets to remove content of public interest and issue public apologies, the same penalty that was imposed on me. In June, an investigative journalist announced he would stop covering one of the country’s biggest corruption cases after his wife was dismissed from a public job and his son lost his medical residency at a state hospital.

The wider picture is even more worrying. The IACHR’s Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression documented at least six murders of journalists and media professionals in 2025, as well as the use of administrative, legal and tax measures as reprisals.

Criminalisation is not limited to the press. Human rights defenders and social leaders face investigations and criminal proceedings because of their work.

What are the consequences of criminalisation?

The punishment is not just the sentence. It is the process itself. Even if I win on appeal, I have already lost months, resources and peace of mind, and I have been exposed to a campaign of digital lynching. There’s no need to convict many. It’s enough to convict one person quickly and in full view of everyone. Added to this is the nature of the punishment. Forced public apologies don’t provide redress for anyone. They force a person to say out loud the opposite of what they think. They serve as a deterrent. They seek to discipline others.

The impact of judicial persecution is uneven. I have been able to mount a professional defence and appeal to international bodies, but most of those who speak out don’t have these resources, and a fourth-class offence spells the end of their public participation. The categories of people covered by international mechanisms also leave many people unprotected. Those of us who carry out citizen oversight from our own platforms are neither civil society organisations nor the press, yet we face many of the same risks and have less support.

The most worrying thing is that the public debate has shifted from asking who killed Monika Silva to asking what Gabriela Panchana wrote. The judicial system took action in a matter of weeks against an opinion, while the murder investigation has been at a standstill for months. This asymmetry reveals the system’s priorities.

How has civil society responded, and what are its demands?

The response has been quicker and more coordinated than I expected. Fundamedios, an organisation that monitors attacks on freedom of expression, has issued three successive alerts about my case, and other organisations have supported this with statements, monitoring and advice. There’s a network that documents, challenges in court, publicises these attacks and understands how administrative restrictions, coordinated online harassment, legal proceedings, physical threats and stigmatisation combine to silence those of us who speak out.

The authorities must repeal paragraph 1 of article 396 of the Criminal Code and guarantee an independent judiciary, with transparent proceedings and hearings open to domestic and international observers. They must also establish a national protection mechanism for human rights defenders and journalists, and diligently investigate the murder of Monika Silva and threats against those who expose corruption and organised crime.

Official stigmatisation must cease. When those in power portray journalists and human rights defenders as enemies, it opens the door to all other forms of violence.

What international support is needed?

The first and most tangible step is the monitoring of ongoing cases. The presence of international observers at hearings, requests for information from the state and public monitoring of case files can change the behaviour of courts.

We also need existing international mechanisms, such as the IACHR and United Nations human rights experts, to be activated and maintained. But this requires constant monitoring.

Support must also be practical. Human rights defenders need resources for digital security, legal defence and psychosocial support. Criminal proceedings require lawyers, expert reports and time, all of which come at a cost.

It is also important to raise the profile of these cases. When a case receives public attention, those behind the reprisals pay a political price. A case nobody knows about carries no cost.

Finally, countries and organisations working with Ecuador on justice and security issues can exert pressure to ensure judicial independence is respected and expression is not criminalised. International solidarity must translate into advocacy, monitoring, resources and follow-up.

CIVICUS interviews a wide range of civil society activists, experts and leaders to gather diverse perspectives on civil society action and current issues for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and do not necessarily reflect those of CIVICUS. Publication does not imply endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they represent.

Ecuador has been placed on the CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist, which identifies countries where a severe deterioration in the quality of civic space is taking place.

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SEE ALSO
Ecuador remains on the CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist CIVICUS Monitor 29.Jul.2026
Ecuador: ‘Defending rights should not be a high-risk activity’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Mauricio Alarcón 04.Jul.2026
Ecuador: ‘We fear the Transparency Law will be used to persecute organisations that challenge those in power’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Vivian Idrovo 12.Sep.2025

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Supporters of the Cockroach Janta party rally against the Minister of Education in Kolkata, India, 24 July 2026. Credit: Debarchan Chatterjee/NurPhoto via AFP

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Aug 21 2026 (IPS)

India’s strongman leader, Narendra Modi, has just been forced to do the thing he likes least: making concessions in response to protests.

It all started on 15 May, when the country’s Chief Justice, Surya Kant, told a courtroom that unemployed young people who protest and speak out on social media are like cockroaches. The remark, revealing the establishment’s contempt for the country’s young people, spectacularly backfired. Within days it had spawned a nationwide movement, the Cockroach Janta Party. Its central protest demand was the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. Pradhan quit on 25 July. But that may not be enough to satisfy the demand for change the movement has unleashed.

Birth of a movement

India has more Gen Z people than any other country. Around 407 million Indians, some 30 per cent of the population, are aged 14 to 29. They face extraordinary competition to access education and struggle to find jobs.

Kant’s remark sparked a fire. Communications strategist Abhijeet Dipke asked on social media: what if all the cockroaches came together? That question kickstarted a viral movement under a name, the Cockroach Janta Party, that playfully echoes that of the ruling Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). What began as a satirical website quickly became a movement. Within two weeks, it had 22 million Instagram followers.

The cockroach movement fits into a broader global pattern. Recent years have seen Gen Z mobilise in numbers in many countries where governments are demonstrably out of touch and economies and political systems fail young people. Movements are characterised by collective leadership, mass protests and strategic use of social media. India’s time to join the wave had come.

The movement soon found its galvanising cause. India’s education system relies on make-or-break entrance exams, with results deciding the career prospects of millions. In the medical college exam, some 2.2 million students compete for 130,000 places. Families make sacrifices and students spend years preparing. But corruption means questions are often leaked in return for bribes. Two weeks before Kant’s outburst, the national medical college entrance exam paper was leaked and the exam was cancelled. Students despaired. Then they got angry.

Protest prevails

Protesters camped out for weeks in central Delhi, demanding Pradhan’s resignation. Volunteers supplied food, water, medicines and camping equipment. The movement broadened well beyond Gen Z, with people of all ages joining. Sonam Wangchuk, an environmental and education reform activist previously jailed for protesting, further raised the protest’s profile with a weeks-long hunger strike.

For seven weeks the government tried ignoring the protesters, and when that failed, it turned to violence. After authorities forcibly hospitalised Wangchuk, thousands of protesters marched from the protest site to parliament. Security forces responded with pellet guns and teargas, beat protesters and bystanders with batons and wooden sticks and detained many. The violence, widely documented on social media, was shocking for a country that prides itself on being the world’s biggest democracy. It was impossible to ignore, sparking protests in other towns and cities. The government was finally forced to hold talks.

Looking ahead

The government has promised fast-track courts for exam leakers and a review of the exam and education systems. In return, the movement called off the protests, having also secured a promise that no protester would face repercussions. But that’s not the way of a government that has long repressed dissent. Modi’s administration has a track record of detaining activists, using force against protests, censoring critical voices and passing restrictive laws. India has recently been added to the CIVICUS Monitor Watchlist because of its deteriorating civic space. Since the cockroach protests ended, police have detained and harassed hundreds of students and reportedly targeted their families.

Pradhan’s resignation was a remarkable event. The government had never before responded to pressure by sacking an unpopular minister. But the BJP doesn’t appear to have learned much. During a recent by-election campaign, its national president, Nitin Nabin, described protesters as ‘a virus and a cockroach gang devoted to breaking the country’.

Modi may have bought breathing space, but the underlying problems remain. The causes are both economic, with high youth unemployment and evident inequality, and political, with a high-handed government that doesn’t listen to young people or respect their right to dissent. Further protests look likely. One, sparked by similar corruption complaints over a civil service entry exam, has mobilised in Jharkhand state.

This isn’t the first time Modi’s government has bent to pressure. In 2021, sustained farmers’ protests forced it to drop farming law changes. Modi’s support fell in the 2024 general election, forcing him to rely on coalition partners. More recently, his party looked to be on the up again, winning power in West Bengal state for the first time in April following controversial changes to the electoral roll that removed over nine million names, disproportionately Muslim voters and others less likely to support the BJP. But it has just lost the by-election where Nitin Nabin repeated the cockroach slur.

The cockroach movement may present Modi’s biggest challenge to date, because it cuts across class, party and religious divides, making it much harder to dismiss. The BJP built its base among Hindus by vilifying Muslims, yet at the Delhi protest, people from both religions prayed side by side. The movement’s social media cut-through is also significant. It bypassed a conventional media largely co-opted by the BJP that typically parrots its lines and downplays other viewpoints.

The government should read the room, but there’s every chance it will learn the wrong lesson and go after protest leaders. That will be a recipe for further protests and a repeated cycle of state violence and criminalisation. If India is to live up to its promise as the world’s biggest democracy, it must deepen democratic freedoms, recognise the value of dissent and acknowledge that the young people it branded cockroaches have much to contribute to their country’s future.

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

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