In Japan, the youth group donated the proceeds from their recycling to single-mother families with hospitalized children through the NPO Keep Mama Smiling. Credit: Karuta Yamamoto.

By Karuta Yamamoto
TOKYO, Japan, Mar 6 2026 (IPS)

From the beginning, this project was a collaboration between student teams in Japan and Korea. Although we live in different countries, we shared one common question: How can young people reduce waste while supporting families facing food insecurities?
Our journey began with a problem we could see clearly in our communities.

In Japan, food insecurity often hides behind quiet dignity. According to a recent survey by Save the Children Japan, over 90 percent of low-income households with children reported struggling to afford enough food, with many families forced to cut back on even basic staples such as rice due to rising prices.

The Japan and Korean team of all 11 students presented ‘The Co-creation of Youth from Waste to Hope’ at the 9th Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD 9) Thematic Event. Credit: Ticad 9

The Japanese team leader, Karuta Yamamoto, and the Korean team presented ‘What we want in Africa for the future’ at the Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, during TICAD 9.

Japan and Korea Team Leader, Karuta Yamamoto and Emma Shin, in an interview with UNFPA Seoul. Credit: Karuta Yamamoto

The Korean team set up a shop at a bazaar at Arumjigi, Seoul, Korea. Credit: Karuta Yamamoto

Single-parent households—most led by mothers—face especially high levels of food hardship and are often compelled to make painful decisions about how limited budgets are spent. For some families, this means choosing between symbolic moments of celebration and everyday nutrition. A ¥3,000 Christmas cake may represent joy for one household, but for another, that same amount must stretch to five kilograms of rice—enough to feed a family for several days.

At the same time, vast amounts of edible food are wasted in Japan. Official statistics show that millions of tons of food are discarded annually in Japan, much of it still edible. Seasonal items such as Christmas cakes, which cannot be sold after December 25, are frequently thrown away. This contrast—waste on one side and hunger on the other—reflects the global challenge addressed by SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production.

As students in Japan and Korea, we asked ourselves, “What role can we play in closing this gap?”

We knew that awareness alone would not change habits. enough. Instead of telling people to feel guilty about food waste, we decided to take action together.

We began locally, but with shared purpose.

In Japan, students at Dalton Tokyo Senior High School noticed that mandarin oranges—one of the country’s most common fruits—often go uneaten, with peels and seeds discarded. In Korea, students identified a different issue: more than 150,000 tons of used coffee grounds are discarded each year, contributing to landfill emissions and greenhouse gas emissions.

Different materials.

One shared goal.

Rather than seeing waste as the end of a product’s life, we saw it as a beginning.

Research shows that citrus peels contain essential oils that can be used in soaps and cleaning products. Studies in Korea also demonstrate that spent coffee grounds can be processed into sustainable biomaterials suitable for eco-friendly design and 3D printing. Plantable seed paper—made from recycled paper embedded with seeds—is another example of how waste can be transformed into something regenerative.

Inspired by these ideas, our student teams turned theory into action.

Japanese students created handmade soaps using discarded citrus peels.

Handmade soaps using discarded citrus peels. Credit: Karuta Yamamoto

The soaps ready for sale. Credit: Karuta Yamamoto

Korean students developed 3D-printed clip-on vases incorporating recycled coffee grounds, encouraging people to reuse empty bottles and cups instead of discarding them.

The Korean students developed 3D-printed clip-on vases incorporating recycled coffee grounds. Credit: Karuta Yamamoto

They also produced plantable seed paper from recycled materials, allowing waste to literally grow into flowers and herbs.

Korean students produced plantable seed paper from recycled materials. Credit: Karuta Yamamoto.

These products were not sold as charity goods. Instead, they were shared as examples of responsible consumption—showing that waste can have a second life through our design. Through this work, we directly supported SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production, which calls for reducing waste through recycling and reuse, and SDG 13: Climate Action, by lowering emissions through upcycling.

At the same time, the funds raised had a clear purpose.

The profits were used to support families facing food insecurity. In Japan, we donated to single-mother families with hospitalized children through the NPO Keep Mama Smiling (see main photo for the opinion piece).

They also provided essential cooking ingredients to the Karuizawa Food Bank. By connecting environmental action with helping families in need, our project also supported SDG 2: Zero Hunger.

The group provided cooking ingredients to the Karuizawa Food Bank. Credit: Karuta Yamamoto

Through this experience, we learned that caring for the planet and caring for people are not separate goals. Waste reduction and hunger relief became connected in one youth-led effort—turning environmental responsibility into community solidarity.

But our collaboration did not stop in Japan and Korea.

Through a partnership with the OneSmile Foundation—an organization that transforms digital smiles into donations—we connected our local initiatives to a global challenge. During workshops, we learned that school meal donations in Lesotho had stopped the previous year. Without reliable meals, many students were struggling to focus in class.

Together, our Japanese and Korean teams raised over 300,000 Japanese yen.

The Japanese and Korean teams celebrate their fundraising efforts. Credit: Karuta Yamamoto

Working with local partners in Lesotho, we organized a community-based food support initiative at Rasetimela High School, which serves 863 students. School feeding programs play a critical role in Lesotho, and recent disruptions have left many students more vulnerable to hunger.

Students at Rasetimela High School in Lesotho receive donations of food. Courtesy: Rasetimela High School

Ninety-one of the most vulnerable students were selected through transparent criteria, including those supported by social welfare programs and those who had previously relied on international assistance. Each selected family received staple foods such as rice and corn flour to make a local staple called pap. Distribution was organized near the school to ensure safety and allow parents to collect the supplies securely.

This cross-border effort—connecting students, NGOs, local leaders, and communities—reflects the spirit of SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals.

Although we live in different countries, climates, and cultures, this experience reshaped how we understand global cooperation. The students in Lesotho were not distant beneficiaries. We became peers in a shared world.

They became peers in a shared world. Courtesy: Rasetimela High School

As young people, we often believe our impact is limited because we do not control large resources. This project challenged that belief. We learned that we can create change by designing solutions, raising awareness, and working together.

We even tried to measure what we called a “Happiness Index” by counting the smiles of students who received support. Those smiles reminded us that sustainability is not only environmental or economic—it is human.

Our experience shows that youth are not just future leaders. We are active contributors today. When creativity meets collaboration, waste can become opportunity, and local action can grow into global solidarity.

Turning waste into hope is not an abstract idea.
It is a choice—and young people are already making it.

Edited by Dr Hanna Yoon

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Cooking food to distribute free to children. The meals are made with food that is close to its expiry date. Workshop with Karuizawa Food Bank. Credit: Ippei Takemura

By Ippei Takemura
MIYAGI PREFECTURE, Japan, Mar 6 2026 (IPS)

I recently came across a statistic that stopped me in my tracks.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Japan has the highest suicide rate among the G7 countries. Even more alarming, suicide is the leading cause of death among people in their teens and twenties. Among elementary, junior high, and high school students, the most common factors linked to suicide are “school-related issues,” including academic pressure and difficulties with peer relationships.

At the same time, the number of children who do not attend school is rising every year. In 2023, Japan’s Ministry of Education reported that more than 340,000 elementary and junior high school students were chronically absent—a record high. These two realities are not separate problems. They are deeply connected.

Truancy is often misunderstood as a lack of motivation or discipline. In reality, it is rooted in complex emotional and psychological struggles that cannot be reduced to a single cause. Rather than treating truancy itself as the problem, society must ask a deeper question: Are we creating environments where young people feel safe, accepted, and understood?

I know this struggle firsthand. I began missing school just three days after entering junior high. My family had lived overseas for many years due to my parents’ work, and returning to Japan left me emotionally exhausted. I found comfort in playing online games with close friends I had made abroad, but while I was holding on to those connections, I missed the chance to build new ones at my new school. Before I realized it, I was caught in a cycle of frequent absences that lasted nearly three years.

What helped me break that cycle was not a dramatic intervention but a small and unexpected turning point. I joined a monthly, off-campus workshop focused on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To my surprise, students from my school were also participating. Because we shared a genuine interest in global issues, conversation came naturally as we worked together on projects. Eventually, we began spending time together outside the workshop. For the first time in a long while, I started looking forward to going to school again.

That experience taught me a powerful lesson: shared interests and common ground are the foundation of human connection.

Learn about the Internet of Things (IoT) using a toy. ‘Let’s upcycle’ workshop with the One Smile Foundation. Credit: Ippei Takemura

What’s the importance of gender in Japan? Workshop with Plan International, Japan. Credit: Ippei Takemura

Provide children with free meals made from food that is close to its expiry date. Workshop with Karuizawa Food Bank. Credit: Ippei Takemura

A place where someone feels safe and comfortable is different for everyone. Sociologist Ray Oldenburg describes this idea through the concept of a “Third Place”—a space that exists beyond home (the first place) and school or work (the second place). Third places allow people to relax, connect, and simply be themselves. Finding such a place was the catalyst that inspired me to want to create similar spaces for others.

Social connection is not optional for human beings. It is essential for mental and physical health, helping to reduce stress, strengthen cognitive function, and foster a sense of belonging. However, people connect at different speeds. Some are naturally outgoing, while others need time and distance before they feel ready to engage. A truly inclusive third place respects these differences.

Based on my experiences, I believe there are three key elements that make a third place successful. First, it must include both spaces for solitude and spaces for interaction, with a clear separation between the two. Some people need time to observe and feel comfortable before speaking. A quiet area allows them to exist without pressure and to join others when they are ready.

Second, there should be shared activities. When people gather around common interests—whether environmental issues, crafts, or sports—conversation becomes easier, and relationships develop more naturally.

Finally, many people struggle to take the first step socially. Having facilitators or mentors who can gently initiate activities or conversations can make a huge difference.

One place that embodies these principles is the Moriumius Summer Camp in Miyagi Prefecture, which I have attended since elementary school. In high school, I joined for the first time as a staff intern. The organizers intentionally build community by using shared work as a catalyst for connection.

Campers collaborate on everyday tasks such as cooking (photo ①), preparing fish, starting fires (photo ②), and cleaning. These shared responsibilities create trust and a sense of equality. Beyond that, participants can deepen relationships through activities aligned with their interests, including crafts (photo ③), marine sports, gardening, and farming. During one workshop, I befriended an elementary school student who was making a bamboo fishing rod and shaping slate into a knife. We connected naturally through our shared love of creating things. Because everyone at the camp already enjoys outdoor life, friendships form more easily—and shared hobbies strengthen them even further.

Campers help with cooking. Credit: Ippei Takemura

Campers can collaborate on starting fires and cleaning. Credit: Ippei Takemura

Participants can deepen relationships through activities aligned with their interests, including crafts. Credit: Ippei Takemura

A place can be more than just an escape. It can be the first step toward healing, renewed confidence, and hope. When young people find a space where they feel safe enough to be themselves, they often rediscover the courage to reconnect—with others, with learning, and with their own sense of possibility.

This is why I want to continue supporting the creation of spaces that can become “someone’s own place”—places where young people feel seen, valued, and free to grow at their own pace. Sometimes, finding the right space is all it takes for someone to realize that they belong.

Yet this need for belonging is not unique to one school or one country. Around the world, young people are facing increasing isolation, academic pressure, and mental health challenges. Rising youth suicide rates and growing school disengagement reflect a global crisis. When young people are left without spaces where they feel safe, heard, and supported, the consequences extend far beyond classrooms and households—they shape the future of entire societies.

Creating and protecting “third places,” therefore, is not merely a personal or local effort; it is a global responsibility. Governments, schools, communities, and international organizations must work together to invest in inclusive environments where young people can connect through shared interests, express themselves without fear, and rebuild a sense of belonging. Doing so directly supports the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being) and SDG 4 (Quality Education), by addressing mental health, social inclusion, and equitable access to supportive learning spaces.

Every young person deserves a place where they feel safe enough to take their first step forward. By listening to youth voices and turning commitment into action, we can move from awareness to impact—and from isolation to hope. The future depends not only on how we educate young people but also on whether we give them places where they truly belong.

Edited by Dr Hanna Yoon

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Discussion circles at the Dalton Junior High School, Japan. Credit: Miko Nakano

By Miko Nakano
TOKYO, Japan, Mar 6 2026 (IPS)

Around the world, conflicts often begin not with violence, but with assumptions. When people judge others before understanding them, labels replace dialogue—and division replaces trust. For young people growing up in an increasingly polarized world, learning to listen may be one of the most powerful tools for peace.

“We unilaterally assume that people we have never met are demons—and repeat the same mistakes.”

This line from the anime Attack on Titan made me stop and think. In the story, enemies who were taught to hate each other finally meet and realize they are human beings with fears, families, and dreams.

But this pattern is not fiction. Throughout history, societies have judged others before understanding them. During the Crusades, opposing sides saw each other only as threats. In modern times, media narratives and online discussions sometimes simplify complex issues into “good” versus “evil.” Once labels are applied, empathy becomes difficult.

Conversation time with children who live in the slum areas in Ghaziabad, India. Credit: Miko Nakano

Even justice systems are not immune to bias. The Hakamata case in Japan, widely reported by BBC News, raised serious concerns about how media pressure and unreliable evidence can influence judicial decisions. The case showed how justice can be compromised when assumptions take priority over careful examination of facts and individual voices. Around the world, wrongful convictions and discrimination continue to demonstrate how easily fairness can be undermined when judgment replaces understanding.

This is why SDG 16—peace, justice, and strong institutions—matters. Peace is not only about ending wars. It is about building societies where people are heard before they are judged.

Conversation about education with Yoshimasa Hayashi, Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan, at the National High School Future Conference, House of Councilors Members’ Office Building, Tokyo, Japan. Credit: Miko Nakano

My awareness of this issue began in elementary school. A classmate was widely labeled as “strange,” and many students avoided her. One day, she spoke openly about the pain of being ignored. Listening to her changed my perspective. I realized how easily we can judge someone without ever asking why.

Instead of keeping this reflection to myself, I decided to take action.

In junior high school, I helped organize small discussion circles during class activities where students could share experiences of being misunderstood or judged. We created simple rules: listen without interrupting, ask questions before assuming, and respect differences. At first, conversations were awkward. But over time, students began speaking more openly. Some admitted they had judged others too quickly. Others shared experiences of feeling excluded.

These small conversations changed the atmosphere in our classroom. They did not solve every problem, but they created space for listening.

I later learned that young people around the world are doing similar work. Programs like Seeds of Peace and Generation Global bring together youth from different backgrounds to engage in dialogue across conflict lines. Their work shows that listening is not passive—it is an active form of peacebuilding.

As young people, we may not control institutions or governments yet. But we shape the culture around us every day—in classrooms, online spaces, and communities. If we normalize quick labeling and division, conflict grows. If we normalize listening, trust grows.

Building peaceful societies begins long before political negotiations. It begins when we ask “why” instead of assuming. It begins when we recognize that every person has a story that deserves to be heard.

In a world facing rising polarization and mistrust, choosing to listen may seem small. But it is not weak. It is foundational.

Peace does not start in courtrooms or parliaments alone.
It starts in conversations.

And young people are ready to lead them.

Edited by Dr Hanna Yoon

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Image: Hiroshi-Mori-Stock / shutterstock.com and 内閣広報室 / Cabinet Public Affairs Office / Wiki Commons

By Ria Shibata
Mar 3 2026 (IPS)

 
Sanae Takaichi’s electoral victory in February marks a historic turning point in Japanese politics. As Japan’s first female prime minister and the leader of a commanding parliamentary majority, she represents change in both symbolic and strategic terms. Conventional wisdom long held that younger Japanese voters leaned progressive, were sceptical of assertive security policies, and disengaged from ideological nationalism. Yet a segment of digitally active youth rallied behind a politician associated with constitutional revision, expanded defence capabilities, and a more unapologetic articulation of national identity. This shift cannot be reduced to a simple conservative swing. Rather, Takaichi’s rise reflects a deeper transformation in how democratic politics is constructed in the digital age: the growing power of imagery, digital mobilisation, and algorithm-driven branding in shaping political choice—particularly among younger voters.

Takaichi’s approval ratings among voters aged 18–29 approached 90 per cent in some surveys, far surpassing those of her predecessors. Youth turnout also rose, suggesting that Japanese youth are not politically apathetic. On the contrary, they are paying attention—but the nature of that engagement has changed. Viral images, short video clips, hashtags, and aesthetic cues travelled faster and farther than policy briefings. For many younger voters, engagement began—and sometimes ended—with the visual and emotional appeal of the candidate. This pattern is not uniquely Japanese. However, the scale of its impact in this election suggests that political communication has entered a new phase in which digital imagery can shape electoral outcomes as much as—or more than—substantive debate.

A New Phase of Digital Politics in Japan

In the months leading up to the election, Takaichi’s image proliferated across social media platforms. Supporters circulated clips highlighting her confident demeanour and historic candidacy. A cultural trend sometimes described as ‘sanakatsu’ or ‘sanae-mania’ framed political support as a form of fandom participation. Hashtags multiplied. ‘Mic-drop’ moments went viral. Even personal accessories—her handbags and ballpoint pens—became symbolic conversation pieces.

Political enthusiasm has always contained emotional and symbolic elements. What is new is the speed and scale at which digital platforms amplify them. Algorithms reward content that provokes reaction—admiration, anger, excitement. A charismatic clip often outperforms a detailed explanation of fiscal reform. For younger voters raised in scroll-based media environments, political information increasingly arrives as curated snippets. Policy complexity competes with—and often loses to—aesthetic immediacy.

Post-election surveys and interviews suggested that many first-time voters struggled to articulate specific policy distinctions between parties. Instead, they cited impressions—strength, change, decisiveness, novelty—suggesting that digital engagement does not automatically translate into policy literacy. Political identity can form through repeated exposure to imagery and narrative rather than sustained examination of legislative proposals. When campaigns are optimized for shareability, they are incentivized to simplify. Nuance compresses poorly into short-form video.

The Politics of Strength in an Age of Uncertainty

Japan’s younger generation has grown up amid prolonged economic stagnation, regional insecurity, and global volatility. China’s rise, tensions over Taiwan, North Korean missile launches, and persistent wage stagnation form the backdrop of their political participation. For many, the future feels uncertain and structurally constrained.

In such an environment, Takaichi’s assertive rhetoric carried emotional resonance. Her emphasis on strengthening national defence, revisiting aspects of the postwar settlement, and making Japan “strong and rich” projected clarity rather than ambiguity. Where institutional politics can appear technocratic or slow, decisive messaging offered the voters psychological reassurance.

At the core of her appeal is a narrative of restoring a ‘strong’ Japan. Calls for constitutional revision and expanded defence capabilities are framed as steps toward recovering national self-confidence. For younger Japanese fatigued by protracted historical disputes and what some perceive as externally imposed guilt, language emphasising pride and sovereignty resonates more readily than complex historical debates. This may not signal a rejection of peace. Rather, it may reflect a generational reframing of peace itself—understood not solely as pacifism, but as deterrence, defence capability, and strategic autonomy. Messages stressing ‘sovereignty’, ‘strength’, and ‘normal country’ can circulate more effectively in shareable digital formats than nuanced and complex historical analysis.

A Global Pattern: Virtual Branding, a Democratic Crossroads

Japan’s experience mirrors a broader transformation in democratic politics: the rise of virtual branding as the central organizing principle of electoral strategy. In earlier eras, campaigns revolved around party platforms and televised debates. Today, strategy increasingly begins with platform optimization. Campaigns are designed not only to persuade, but to perform within algorithmic systems. The guiding question is no longer only “What policies do we stand for?” but “What content travels?”

The election of Donald Trump in the United States illustrated how virtual media strategy can reshape political competition. Memorable slogans and emotionally charged posts dominated attention cycles, often eclipsing policy detail. Scholars have described this as “attention economics in action”: the candidate who captures digital attention shapes political reality before formal debate even begins. More recently, figures such as Zohran Mamdani have demonstrated how youth-centered digital branding can mobilize support with remarkable speed. Campaigns became participatory; supporters did not merely consume messaging but actively distributed political identity.

Takaichi’s recent victory reflects the evolving mechanics of digital democracy. Her leadership will ultimately be judged not by imagery but by governance — by whether her policies deliver economic stability, regional security, and social cohesion. The broader question, however, transcends any single administration. It means political decisions have migrated into digital environments optimised for speed and visual communication. In an age where images travel faster than ideas, democratic choice risks being guided more by what is seen than by what is discussed. In such an environment, political campaigns will be forced to adapt, and produce content that performs well within these algorithmic constraints. Over time, this may reshape voter expectations and politics will begin to resemble influencer culture. Campaigns that fail to master digital branding risk will appear outdated. Those that succeed can mobilize youth at scale.

Democracy has always balanced emotion and reason. The challenge today is ensuring that emotion does not eclipse reason entirely. The future of informed citizenship may depend on restoring that balance. This does not suggest that previous eras were immune to personality politics. What has changed is the proportion. The digital environment magnifies symbolic cues and compresses policy discussion. If democracies wish to maintain robust deliberation, they must consciously rebalance image and substance. This requires civic education focused on media literacy, virtual platform incentives that elevate substantive debate and political leadership willing to engage in depth, not just virality. And the responsibility is collective—voters, educators, media institutions, and candidates alike. The question facing democracies is whether this transformation can coexist with substantive deliberation or whether branding will increasingly overtake it.

Related articles:
Japan Stumbles: The Taiwan Fiasco
The New Takaichi Administration: Confronting Harsh Realities on the International Stage
Middle Powers After Davos

Ria Shibata is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the New Zealand Centre for Global Studies, and the Toda Peace Institute in Japan. She also serves as a Visiting Scholar at the University of Auckland. Her research focuses on identity-driven conflicts, reconciliation, nationalism and the role of historical memory in shaping interstate relations and regional stability in Northeast Asia.

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

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Zunaira, a UNICEF Youth Advocate, speaks at an event in UNICEF House at the sideline of the 80th session of the UN General Assembly. Credit: Tadej Znidarcic/UNICEF

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 26 2025 (IPS)

The UN General Assembly High-Level Week (22-30 September) has been an opportunity for the world to convene on the most pressing issues of the day, from multilateralism, global financing, gender equality, non-communicable diseases, and AI governance.

Climate change is also a key issue this year as countries present their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) ahead of COP30 in November. At this year’s Climate Summit, held on September 24, over 114 countries spoke at the General Assembly to present their NDCs before the UN Secretary-General and leaders from Brazil, the hosts of COP30.

While these climate action plans are an indication of their commitment to climate change, countries must go further demonstrate their commitment through action.

For some young people, like 15 year-old Zunaira, there is a disconnect between the statements made by leaders and the actions they actually take. Even in climate forums like COP29, “there [were] only policies made… only declarations made, but there [was] no real action.”

“In every country it’s like this, you know; they only speak empty words, and empty promises are made with us as young people and children,” she told IPS.

UNICEF‘s Children’s Climate Risk Index (CCRI) measures the climate risk to children, focusing on both their exposure to climate and environmental hazards and their underlying vulnerability. The index evaluates 56 variables across 163 countries to determine which nations place children at the highest risk from climate impacts. It estimates that about 1 billion children currently reside in these high-risk countries. 

Zunaira believes that world governments and leaders need to include children’s voices and perspectives when planning effective climate policies. She observed that perhaps only three percent of the member states that attended COP29 actually included and listened to children’s voices in their policy discussions.

This is not a new demand either, as she remarked that other youth climate advocates have called for increased child engagement in previous conferences, but this was hardly reflected in negotiations.

Zunaira is in New York to participate in UNGA through UNICEF’s Youth Advocates Mobilization Lab, an initiative which recognizes the achievements of UNICEF’s youth advocates, providing child advocates the opportunity to network and share ideas and experiences.

UNICEF’S climate advocate, 15-year-old Zunaira, is with others during high-level discussions at UNGA80 in New York. Credit: UNICEF/Instagram

The 15 year-old climate advocate from the Balochistan province of Pakistan shared her research into the impacts of flooding on girls’ education, based on her experiences in 2022.

The 2022 Pakistan floods, which affected over 33 million people and killed 647 children, devastated communities that were not built to adapt to the extreme changes brought on by climate change. The link between extreme weather and climate change is apparent to Zunaira and other young people like her, even if some members in the community don’t recognize it right away and write it off as just a natural phenomenon.

Through a policy research programme hosted by UNICEF Pakistan, Zunaira investigated the impact of the floods on girls’ education when she was only 12 years old. She visited Sakran, one of the flood-prone areas in the state, where she interviewed people at a nearby village in the Hub district of Balochistan. Here she spoke to 15 secondary school-aged girls. She described how the devastation of the floods literally washed away the huts that used to be their schools.

According to UNICEF, her findings “highlighted that floods had exacerbated educational inequalities” and “[forced] girls into temporary shelters and disrupting their education.”

“The study also highlighted some promising interventions and called for better disaster preparedness in schools and flood-resistant infrastructure to safeguard girls’ education. The research underscored the urgent need for integrated strategies that combine climate resilience with gender equity.”

Zunaira remarked that with the devastation brought on by the floods, for many children there was no school to return to. She and many other students lost out on schooling because of the disruptions. In some cases, the next closest school would be up to 25 miles away from where some students lived, so there is seemingly little justification for sending them back to school.

There is also the need to invest in building up climate-resilient infrastructure that can withstand extreme weather conditions like flooding. Local communities need both the investments and resources to fulfill this, otherwise there may be little reason to build up a new school again only to see it get washed away again.The need for climate adaptation is something the international community must support, as seen with the Fund for for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD).

Zunaira’s message to world leaders is that they must encourage and include children and youth in climate discussions. They also should not reduce the lived experiences to statistics and should be conscientious of the lives forever changed or lost because of a climate disaster.

“You should think of this… it is not just a statistic. It’s something that life has lost, and thousands of homes and thousands of people, you know, have been displaced and lost their lives. So this is something that the world leaders must know: that they are not only statistics; they are real lives.”

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Participants at the AfDB pavilion at the Second Africa Climate Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Credit: Farai Shawn Matiashe/IPS

By Farai Shawn Matiashe
ADDIS ABABA, Sep 16 2025 (IPS)

As increasingly frequent droughts and devastating floods are affecting agricultural productivity, leaving millions of people food insecure in Africa amid a lack of climate finance, the African Development Bank (AfDB) has committed USD 11 billion to support various climate-resilient and infrastructure projects in rural areas.

Climate change-induced humanitarian emergencies are materializing in every corner of the world. Often, more frequently than predicted. Over the past few years, many countries have been experiencing extreme weather events almost every month. Poor countries like those in Africa emerged as the worst affected, bearing the brunt of climate change.

Africa warmed faster than the rest of the world, according to a report released last year by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The Horn of Africa, as well as Southern and Northwest Africa, suffered from exceptional multi-year droughts recently, while other African countries reported significant casualties due to extreme precipitation leading to floods in 2023.

Targeting Climate Action Projects

James Kinyangi, coordinator of the Climate and Development Special Fund and the Climate Action Window at AfDB, said they are providing funding for various climate adaptation and mitigation projects across Africa.

“AfDB has several ways in which they are tackling climate challenges and integrating finance for climate action in its portfolio. Last year, we had total approvals for projects in African countries for about USD 11 billion,” he told IPS in an interview at the AfDB Pavilion during the Second Africa Climate Summit (ACS2) held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 8 to 10 September. The summit took place in anticipation of the United Nations Climate Conference (COP30), in Belém, Brazil, scheduled for November 2025.

“Out of that, close to half was mainstream climate finance. Of the nearly USD 5 billion that went to climate finance, nearly 65 percent was adaptation finance. The remaining was mitigation.”

Kinyangi said they have a mainstream of climate finance for climate action in their main portfolio, making sure that all of the lending of the bank responds to climate action.

“We also screen our projects. Now, nearly 100 percent of all new approvals of the bank are mainstream with climate action. They are climate-informed designs of projects,” he said.

Kinyangi, an AfDB early warning expert, says they also have various special funds and trust funds that respond to climate change.

“One that is visible is through our major constitutional lending window, the African Development Fund. We have created the Climate Action Window, which has mobilized a total of USD 500 million as climate finance,” he said. “That has now been programmed for 37 low-income African countries that benefit from the resources of the African Development Fund. We have about 41 projects that are adaptation and we have another 18 projects that are mitigation.”

The cost of climate adaptation in sub-Saharan Africa would be between USD 30 and 50 billion annually over the next decade, according to the WMO. This is a huge blow to a continent where 118 million extremely poor people have a daily income of less than USD 1.90 per day. If adequate climate funding is not secured in time, farmers in the rural areas will be poorer by 2030 as national budgets continue to be diverted.

AfDB’s investments in Africa cut across energy, agriculture, water resources and sanitation, forestry, climate information systems, and green projects seeking finance to help transform mitigation pathways. Kinyangi said several of these projects are designed to support rural communities, including early warning systems, climate-smart agriculture and clean cooking solutions.

In the Sahel region, AfDB is supporting a project called Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR), a low-cost, sustainable approach where farmers protect and manage the natural growth of trees and shrubs on their agricultural lands, rather than planting new ones. The practice restores degraded soil and increases agricultural yields, improving food security.

As part of their climate-smart agricultural projects, AfDB is supporting 20 million farmers across Africa. Kinyangi said AfDB is supporting technologies like drought insurance for the management of risks associated with losses of livestock and crops due to drought. He said the result is a whole host of technologies they are financing in rural communities across Africa, supporting farmers with water harvesting and renewable energy.

In Zimbabwe, for instance, AfDB is working with the International Fund for Agricultural Development, a United Nations agency working to eliminate poverty and hunger in rural areas and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to support school feeding programs for children.

“This includes improving cooking equipment in schools and improving the delivery of vaccines and other medications through rural dispensaries by use of cold chains powered by solar, ” said Kinyangi. Across Africa, AfDB is revamping irrigation projects, changing from diesel-powered to solar-powered systems to reduce emissions.

Bridging the Financing Gap for Countries in Debt Distress

Several African countries that are exposed to extreme weather events like droughts and floods divert their national budgets to respond to these disasters. These are funds meant for the health and education sectors, which are diverted to support affected communities and rebuild destroyed infrastructure. To fill the financing gap, they turn to multinational lenders like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which leaves them in debt.

Efforts have been made in the past to restructure debt through the G20 Common Framework, which was created during the COVID-19 crisis in 2020 as a debt relief effort. But African leaders say it is slow and creditor-driven. Five years after it was established, only Ghana and Zambia have managed to restructure their debt under the G20 Common Framework.

Between 2010 and 2020, Africa’s external debt increased more than fivefold and accounted for almost 65% of Gross Domestic Product in 2023. Even though Africa’s average debt-to-GDP ratio is expected to decrease to 60% in 2025, the continent faces an escalating debt crisis, according to the African Union. Statistics from the IMF and World Bank’s Debt Sustainability Framework show that African countries in distress, or at high risk of debt distress, have risen from 9 in 2012 to 25 in 2024.

Kinyangi said the AfDB Climate Action Window was established to help countries in debt distress.

“For example, countries like Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe are exposed to tropical cyclones in the Indian Ocean. So, they divert national resources to combat the negative impacts of tropical cyclones. That leaves them in a budget hole. Sometimes they have to borrow to leave that budget hole.”

Kinyangi said AfDB’s aspirations are to ensure that it channels more climate finance to vulnerable countries to cushion those countries against having to divert important national budgets to combat the impacts of climate change. He said climate finance is supposed to go directly to building resilience against the negative impacts of extreme weather events while preserving the national budget that is meant to create education systems and promote health and infrastructure.

The AfDB was among the African banks that have committed to mobilizing USD 100 billion to fund green industrial projects at the ACS2. While a copy of the final declaration from the three-day Addis Ababa Summit is yet to be released, African leaders set a new goal to raise USD 50 billion annually for climate solutions. In 2023, about USD 26 billion was mobilized at the ACS1 in Nairobi, Kenya, but it is not clear how much funding has been disbursed. The continent needs USD 1.3 trillion per year to finance its climate adaptation plans, according to the AU.

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A scene from Rule Breakers, a dramatization of the story of the Afghan Girls Robotics Team.

By Joyce Chimbi and Naureen Hossain
Mar 7 2025 (IPS)

Like the Afghan robotics team, Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises in the United Nations, is breaking the ‘rules’ and continuing to educate young women in that country despite an edict from the Taliban denying girls a secondary school education.

ECW’s Yasmine Sherif, the Executive Director of Education Cannot Wait, tore up a piece of paper as a symbolic representation of the Taliban edict, which she said violated international law and meant that 1.5 million girls were excluded from education. She was speaking at an International Women’s Day press conference at the United Nations.

The film Rule Breakers, and the Afghan Robotics Team it is based on, shows that “you can do anything. So for whatever we hear right now around us and see around the world, ‘We don’t have money. We can’t do this.’ We are saying—watch Rule Breakers. Create a new path.”

Rule Breakers is a dramatic feature film that follows the story of young Afghan women who have broken tradition and stereotypes to pursue their dreams in science and technology. The film, which was released today, ahead of International Women’s Day, is based on the true story of an all-girl robotics team, born and raised in Afghanistan, and the woman who taught them to dream.

ECW, with their partners, was also breaking the ‘rules’ made by the Taliban and had invested USD 30 million in a multi-year, community-based program that is supported by international partners in the most underserved areas.

“Sixty-five percent of those who are receiving education are girls and adolescent girls, so we are breaking the ban. We are breaking the rules because you have to do so if you want to do what is right in this particular context. So we have reached over 100,000 children, and as I said, 65 percent are adolescent girls,” Sherif said.

She encouraged funders to join in the rule-breaking in a climate where funding was scarce.

Yasmine Sherif, the Executive Director of Education Cannot Wait, addresses a press conference at the United Nations.

“There are rule breakers everywhere that believe that you still have to help the world. And I’m saying, please help us. Help the Afghan girls to get their education, because I’m sure that everyone agrees that this is a fantastic way of doing something.”

The movie, a harrowing tale and a clarion call to return Afghanistan’s girls to the safety and hope of a quality education, releases today in the United States, Canada, South Africa and Sri Lanka, and Sherif says the world should use International Women’s Day to push for the ending of the ban on girls’ secondary education in Afghanistan.

“On International Women’s Day, we are joining nations around the world to call for the end of the cruel and destructive ban on girls’ secondary education. It is time to rebuild Afghanistan based on the vast potential of her most precious natural resource: the resilient and strong Afghan girls and boys. Keep alive their hope through education and let them develop and be productive for the country,” says Sherif.

Rule Breakers is a PG-rated, family-friendly film—directed by Oscar-winner Bill Guttentag—that highlights the unique transformative power of education and raises awareness about the crucial importance of the right to education for girls in Afghanistan, in other crises and emergency settings globally, and the importance of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education for all girls around the world.

Elaha Mahboob, co-producer and writer of Rule Breakers, addresses a press conference at the United Nations.

Elaha Mahboob, co-producer and writer of Rule Breakers, told the press conference that the film brought out nuances in Afghan women’s lives that are not often considered.

“Usually when we talk about Afghan girls and Afghan women, it is either around tragedy or we see an Afghan woman as merely a victim of conflict. Which is, you know, part of the story, but it is not the full picture or full story of what life has been like for women, or what life has been like in the past twenty years in Afghanistan,” Mahboob said.

Yasmine Sherif (left), Elaha Mahboob (center), and Roya Mahboob (right). Roya Mahboob is a tech entrepreneur who established the non-profit Digital Citizen Fund, which founded the Afghan girls’ robotics team, whom the movie is about. Credit: Naureen Hossain/IPS

“For me, it was really important we show a side of Afghanistan that we have never seen in the media or any movies. That there was progress; there were so many courageous women and men that were trying to build a future in Afghanistan. And even though you will see in the movie that there were so many [societal] challenges, like expectations and limitations for these girls, they didn’t sit back and they never gave up on their dreams. They were actually actively working toward their dreams.”

Set in Afghanistan, where learning for young women is often considered rebellion, Rule Breakers brings to life the incredible story of the Afghan Girls Robotics Team, showcasing the resilience of girls in STEM and, more so, that ambitious young girls and women in crises and emergency situations should neither be forgotten nor left behind in their pursuit of STEM. It is a story of courage, resilience, and the power of education that, importantly, seeks to inspire and keep the dream of an education alive for all children everywhere.

The Afghan Girls Robotics Team, also known as the “Afghan Dreamers,” was founded in 2017 by Roya Mahboob, a young woman from Herat, Afghanistan, who became a leading force in the country for STEM education for girls. These girls were told their dreams were impossible and that there was no place for women and girls in science, technology, and innovation.

The young women dared to dream and refused to be silenced. Overcoming staggering obstacles, Roya and her team trained in engineering and robotics and traveled the world to compete in international high school robotics competitions.

Rule Breakers is opening at cinemas in the United States, Canada, South Africa and Sri Lanka today.

As a sign of things to come, during the COVID-19 pandemic and under enormous difficulties, they successfully built a ventilator in three months. Somaya Faruqi, portrayed as Tara in the film, was the former captain of the team. Only 19 years old at the time of the Taliban takeover in 2021, Faruqi’s dream to become a mechanical engineer was already taking shape.

Now an engineering scholarship student in the United States, Faruqi is also an Education Cannot Wait (ECW) Global Champion, spearheading the launch of ECW’s global advocacy campaign—#AfghanGirlsVoices.

“Rule Breakers provides the world a glimpse at the reality facing millions of Afghan girls and women today who are living under Taliban rule. They are being denied their human rights to education, their freedom and their dignity. Our voices will not be silenced,” Faruqi said.

The #AfghanGirlsVoices campaign uses moving illustrations by a young Afghan female artist and determined testimonies from Afghan girls to amplify the voices of those left behind demanding their right to education. As the global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, ECW supports and protects holistic learning outcomes.

The film stars Ali Fazal and Nikohl Boosheri. The supporting cast includes Noorin Gulamgaus, Amber Afzalzi, Nina Hosseinzaheh, Sara Rowe and Miriam Siraj.

“The story of ‘Rule Breakers’ is more than just a film—it’s a testament to the power of education, technology and resilience. The Afghan Girls Robotics Team’s journey represents the courage of young women who refuse to accept limitations placed upon them, using science and innovation as their tools of resistance,” said Elaha Mahboob, Writer and Executive Producer of Rule Breakers.

“As someone who has worked to create opportunities for Afghan women in technology, I wanted to bring this story to life to inspire the next generation of changemakers and to show the world what is possible when young women are given access to education and opportunity.”

Education Cannot Wait’s #AfghanGirlsVoices campaign has reached 184 million online individuals, 4.1 billion potential audience members, and 4,100 mentions to date. Credit: ECW

The ECW works with global champions like Faruqi in its mission to ensure children affected by armed conflict, climate-induced disasters, and forced displacement can access the safety, hope, and opportunity that only a quality education can provide.

Sherif reminded funders to contribute.

“To all strategic public partners, donors, and private sectors—please, please, break the rules of your own minds and say, ‘There is money; we can do this! They are breaking the rules and bans in Afghanistan to make sure every girl gets an education irrespective of that ban.” And Education Cannot Wait is the vehicle, and we have great partners on the ground. It’s happening. It’s not what we will do—it’s happening right now.”

Around the world, a staggering 234 million children caught in crises are in dire need of support to access quality education, an estimated increase of 35 million over the past three years. Forcibly displaced children, girls and children with disabilities are among the most affected.

Three years after the de facto authorities took power, Afghanistan stands out as the only country in the world where girls and women are officially forbidden to access education beyond Grade 6. Nearly 1.4 million Afghan girls have been deliberately deprived of schooling. Access to primary education has also fallen sharply, with 1.1 million fewer girls and boys attending school.

Rule Breakers offers a powerful story for the global community to unite in support of Afghan girls and with all children affected by crises who have been left behind in the education system. It is a story of hope, resilience, strength and achievements. A story that can resonate for all these 234 million children not to be forgotten. A story that brings to life the promise of a quality education for all and the potential for every child to be pulled out of the depth of darkness and be set on a path of lifelong learning and earning opportunity.

#AfghanGirlsVoices has rallied support from 50+ global leaders and prominent voices, including bestselling authors, artists, Afghan grassroots organizations, UN and government officials, civil society organizations, human rights advocates, youth activists, and more.

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Leaders of the centrist Second Reform Era Party hold an anti-corruption rally in central Budapest, Hungary, following the announcement of United States government sanctions against Hungarian Minister Antal Rogan for his involvement in corruption, January 2025. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Catherine Wilson
BUDAPEST, Jan 27 2025 (IPS)

The Central European nation of Hungary is officially a democracy. But civil society, the media and democratic norms have increasingly come under threat as the Fidesz-KDNP coalition government, led by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has entrenched autocratic rule over the past 14 years. Now a new wave of energy and popularity is driving the younger opposition movement into the spotlight ahead of next year’s parliamentary election.

“I believe that no matter how much Fidesz has dismantled the important pillars of democracy and the rule of law and cemented its own reliable cadres in two-thirds of the votes, despite spending hundreds of billions annually on propaganda, it can still be defeated in elections,” 43-year-old Péter Magyar, leader of the Tisza (Respect and Freedom) Party in Hungary, said in a public statement. “Our country says enough is enough.”

Since winning the 2010 national election, the nationalist conservative Fidesz Party has introduced state and legislative measures that have eroded the independence of the judiciary and restricted and censored the media, while there has been greater surveillance and undermining of non-government organizations working on social issues and human rights in the country.

“Hungary is no longer a democracy, not just according to me, not just according to the opposition, but according to independent institutions. And, to be frank, according to most of the voters,” Ferenc Gelencsér, the 34-year-old member of the Hungarian Parliament for the centrist Momentum Movement Party, told IPS in Budapest.

Hungary transitioned to democracy after the end of Communist rule in 1991. Orbán, who was first elected Prime Minister from 1998 to 2002, was a vocal advocate for greater freedom, closer ties with western Europe and supported Hungary joining NATO in 1999. But, after re-election in 2010, his coalition government, which has a two-thirds majority in parliament, has moved toward a model of governance termed ‘illiberal democracy.’

Rising food prices and a struggling economy have contributed to cost of living pressures in Hungary. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

It routinely changes electoral laws and constituency boundaries to its advantage and ensures the country’s major courts, institutions and media are dominated by pro-government figures.

“The rules and regulations that govern the economy, that govern political processes—everything changes depending on what is the current interest of the government party. And there is constant adjustment in a way that constitutional rules don’t really exist anymore in reality, only on paper,” Professor Zsolt Enyedi at the Democracy Institute, Central European University, in Budapest, told IPS. “It is a very uneven playing field… distorted by the fact that the financial resources of the government and pro-government media outnumber the resources of the opposition in a ratio of about 10 to 1.”

They are major factors in Fidesz’s success in the last four consecutive elections. As well, Orbán “speaks the language of average Hungarians” and “alters his rhetoric to changes in the public mood,” Enyedi added. The ruling coalition secured 54.13 percent of votes in the 2022 election, but observers deemed it severely flawed due to media bias and misuse of state resources.

Its right-wing rhetoric has also targeted supporters of human rights and voices critical of its regime. In 2021, civil society organizations, including the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International, reported to the United Nations that those supporting refugees and vulnerable groups were being vilified by the government, there were frequent denials of freedom of information requests and human rights education programs were being removed from schools.

And while the constitution provides for freedom of expression, “ongoing efforts to sideline voices and perspectives that authorities find unfavourable, including many found at academic institutions, NGOs and media outlets, have discouraged open criticism of the government,” reports Freedom House, which rates Hungary as “partly free” with a score of 65 out of 100.

But Gelencsér says he speaks for the younger generation who want a different future. About 15 percent of Hungary’s population of 9.7 million people are aged 16-29 years and a study of youth published this year by the Foundation for European Progressive Studies reports that two-thirds want to live in a full democracy.

“The core voters of the Momentum [party] are under the age of 49 years and the main two things that matter to these people are democracy, rule of law and the fear of climate change. Most of our voters are looking for an alternative to the government and most of them are youngsters,” Gelencsér said. In another 2021 survey, 51 percent of young Hungarians believed their interests were not represented in national politics, a minority of one in five thought that elections were free and fair and only 19 percent trusted publicly available information.

There is also rising disillusion with the stagnant economy, corruption and poor public services. Hungary’s GDP growth declined from 7.1 percent in 2021 to -0.9 percent last year. And about three quarters of the population earn incomes below the level needed to meet the average cost of living, reports the Hungarian think tank, Equilibrium Institute.

“The atmosphere has changed. There is a general dissatisfaction with the government. In the last couple of years, especially after COVID, the economy is doing rather badly. And there is a general lack of trust in the government to manage these issues,” Enyedi said.

Ferenc Gelencser (Centre), Member of Parliament for the Momentum Movement Party, with MP Akos Hadhazy (Left) and MP Hajnal Miklos (Right), participate in a protest in Budapest in 2023, Hungary. Credit: Momentum Movement

Gelencsér added that “housing is a huge issue for the younger generation; everybody is renting, and our healthcare system and pension system are on the verge of collapse. It would be understandable if we didn’t pay any tax, but there are many different types of tax in this country, and I don’t know where it is going.”

Nepotism is prevalent in government circles and Hungary was ranked the most corrupt nation in the European Union (EU) last year by Transparency International with a score of 42 out of 100.

Increasingly, young people are voting with their feet and the number of citizens emigrating, mostly to western Europe, rose from 19,322 in 2020 to 35,736 in 2023.

But, in the last year, opposition voices have been emboldened by problems facing the government. A major scandal erupted in February 2024 when the government pardoned a man sentenced for obstructing justice in a child abuse case. In January this year, the EU cancelled 1 billion euros in funding to Hungary, which has rising state debt, due to its failure to address corruption and breach of democratic norms. And Antal Rogan, a government official, was subject to sanctions by the United States for his role in state corruption.

The Second Reform Era, a centrist party established in 2023, responded to the news. And on a late January afternoon, with the temperature close to zero, a crowd of several hundred supporters gathered on the bank of the Danube River in Budapest. Muffled in puffa jackets and woollen beanies, some holding flame-lit beacons, they came to hear party leaders call out the scourge of corruption and support for the sanctions.

But the resurgence of the Tisza Party since early last year under the new leadership of Magyar, an energetic and media-savvy lawyer and former member of the government, is galvanising a public shift. After last year’s pardon scandal, he stood to demand a new direction for the country based on transparent governance and rule of law while advocating for people’s grievances, including the neglected rural electorate. In an IDEA Institute public poll this month, Tisza led with public support of 33 percent, compared to 26 percent for the government.

‘We will give back to the country what has been taken away from it: decency, self-respect, justice and hope for a better life,’ Magyar said in a New Year’s message.

The ruling coalition will not miss any tactics to dominate the next parliamentary election in 2026. But, to date, the momentum of Tisza’s rise appears unstoppable.

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The Peace Palace housing the International Court of Justice. The court today will begin hearings into the responsibilities of UN member states with regard to climate change. Credit: ICJ

By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBURG, Dec 2 2024 (IPS)

The intersection of law, diplomacy, and science will come under the spotlight at the International Court of Justice hearings starting today (Monday, December 2, 2024) in The Hague as the court starts its deliberations into the obligations under international law of UN member states to protect people and ecosystems from climate change.

The case was started by the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) with the support of Ishmael Kalsakau, the then prime minister of the Pacific island of Vanuatu. Now Vanautu will be the first of 98 countries that will make presentations during the fortnight of hearings, after which the court will give an advisory opinion.

Grace Malie, Tuvalu youth and climate activist speaking at COP29 in Baku, says the advisory opinion will set a “baseline that cannot be ignored,” especially for the youth in climate change-affected countries.

Tuvalu, a small low-lying atoll nation, faces an uncertain future due to sea level rise and it is estimated that by 2050 half the land area of the capital will be flooded by tidal waters. While it has ambitious adaptation plans, it also has developed a Te Ataeao Nei project (Future Now) that outlines how it will manage statehood should it face the worst-case scenario and sink due to rising sea levels.

“What this means for Pacific youth is that climate talks can no longer dismiss our existential concerns as negotiable.” It will foster an environment that secures the islands as “thriving” and “resilient,” rather than as “distant” memories.

The ruling, she believes, will secure the Pacific’s youths’ rights, including to remain rooted in culture, land, and heritage as protected by international law.

The ICJ’s hearings and advisory opinion are unique in that they do not focus solely on a single aspect of international law. Instead, they include the UN Charter, the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Paris Agreement, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the duty of due diligence, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the principle of prevention of significant harm to the environment, and the duty to protect and preserve marine environments.

The court will give its opinion on the obligations of states under international law to ensure the protection of the climate system for present and future generations.

It will also consider the legal consequences of causing significant harm to the climate system and the environment and its impact on other states, including “small island developing states (SIDS), which are affected by climate change, and peoples and individuals, both present and future generations, affected by the adverse effects of climate change.”

Attorney General Graham Leung of Fiji says the court isn’t a substitute for negotiations, which are complex and painstakingly slow.

“The ICJ opinion will be precedent-setting. That is to say it will cover and discuss and analyze the legal issues and the scientific issues, and it will come to a very, very important or authoritative decision that will carry great moral weight.

While the court doesn’t have enforcement rights and while it won’t be legally binding, it will work through moral persuasion.

“It’s going to be a very brave country that will stand up against an advisory opinion on the International Court of Justice, because if you are in that minority that violates the opinion of the court, you can be regarded as a pariah or as an outlaw in the international community.”

The hearings come as the outcome of the COP29 negotiations was met with criticism, especially with regard to the financing of the impacts of climate change.

Ahead of the hearings, WWF Global Climate and Energy Lead and COP20 President Manuel Pulgar-Vidal said, “With most countries falling far short of their obligations to reduce emissions and protect and restore nature, this advisory opinion has the potential to send a powerful legal signal that states cannot ignore their legal duties to act.”

Other criticisms of the present status quo include a belief that the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are inadequate, and climate finance, intended as a polluter pays mechanism, has failed to reach those most affected, with, for example, the Pacific countries only receiving 0.2 percent of the USD 100 billion a year climate finance pledge.

Cristelle Pratt, Assistant Secretary General of the Organization of African, Caribbean, and Pacific States (OACPS), , agrees that the court’s decision will make it easier to negotiate on climate finance and loss and damage provisions by making that clearer.

It’s expected the ICJ to publish its final advisory opinion in 2025.

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Faiza Ally, a pupil at Mtoni Primary School in Mara Region, plants a tree. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS

By Kizito Makoye
MUSOMA, Tanzania, Oct 30 2024 (IPS)

At Gabimori primary school, located at Nyamagaro ward in Tanzania’s northern Rorya district, a 15-year-old  Florence Sadiki kneels among polyethylene bags, carefully examining the seedlings she and her classmates  have nurtured from tiny sprouts “We’ve planted many trees to make our school look better and to help fight climate change,” she says.

Sadiki is part of an inspiring grassroots movement in the east African country where students, teachers, and community members team up to fight environmental degradation through reforestation. In Rorya district, nestled on the shores of Lake Victoria, rampant deforestation driven by charcoal production has left the land barren. But the efforts of school environmental clubs, supported by the Lake Community Program (LACOP), are working to repair the damage.

The reality in Rorya is grim. Erratic rainfall and prolonged droughts have changed swathes of once-fertile land into dry savannas, a trend that has only accelerated since the initiative began in 2022. Spearheaded by the global charity World Neighbors and the Lake Community Development Foundation (LACODEFO), this initiative empowers students to plant trees and learn the entire process of growing them.

Daudi Lyamuru speaks during a village meeting to mobilize the community to plant trees and support the climate mitigation project. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS

Pupils at Mwenge primary school pose for a photo after tree planting exercise. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS

“We’re teaching students to set up their own nurseries,” says Idrisa Lema, the project officer. “It’s not enough to hand out seedlings. They need to learn the whole process—choosing drought-resistant species, improving soil with organic manure, and using techniques like mulching.” This holistic approach  promotes sustainability and equips students with transferable skills that can help them for the rest of their lives.

In the past two years, the students have successfully planted 2,800 trees across five villages, a remarkable achievement that has already begun to bear fruit. Some once-dry water springs are starting to flow again. Yet challenges remain, particularly in Nyamagaro and neighboring Kyangasaga villages, where erratic rainfall and drought continue to hinder progress.

“Watering the trees is tough,” admits Alex Lwitiko, an environmental teacher at Rorya Girls’ School. “We’ve had to be strict with the students—otherwise, the trees wouldn’t survive.”

To adapt, students have switched to innovative solutions like bottle irrigation and even drilled water wells to support their young trees. “We focus on drought-resistant species and organic farming methods to give the trees the best chance,” Lwitiko says, emphasizing the program’s commitment to teaching sustainability.

Sadiki herself has learned to adapt. “I know how to graft trees and grow them in tough conditions now,” she says. “These trees are our future. They fight climate change, provide shade, and even improve soil fertility.”

A government official, Aloycia Mdeme, plants a tree to signify the launch of the school environmental club. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS

Mtoni Primary School pupils plant trees; this project has become central to the region’s contribution to climate change mitigation. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS

In Tanzania, the impact of climate change is becoming increasingly severe. The country aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 to 35 percent by 2030, a goal outlined in its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Despite its low carbon footprint—just 0.22 tons per capita compared to the global average of 7.58—Tanzania is reeling from climate-related disasters. Droughts, floods, and erratic weather patterns disrupt agriculture, drying up water sources and threatening economic stability.

For the rural poor, especially those who rely on farming—the backbone of the economy, making up 28 percent of GDP—the stakes are higher. But in places like Nyagisya and Rorya Girls Secondary Schools, students have taken up the fight. Through tree planting, they have become unlikely climate crusaders, tackling environmental degradation while improving food security and boosting local livelihoods.

The act of planting trees offers more than shade and fruit. It symbolizes a deeper mission—restoring soil, preserving water, and, for these students, delivering a form of climate justice. The reforestation efforts are in step with Tanzania’s broader plans to fortify its agriculture and water systems against the advancing climate crisis.

As these student-led initiatives flourish, they mirror Tanzania’s urgent call for global support. With limited resources, the country is striving to fulfill its commitments yet it recognizes that the battle against climate change is a collective endeavor that requires unity on a global scale.

Despite the promising efforts in Tanzania, significant challenges remain. One of the main hurdles is the unpredictability of funding. Tree-planting initiatives and climate adaptation programs require sustained financial support, but resources are often limited, local analysts say.

Without consistent funding, scaling up projects and maintaining long-term impact becomes difficult.

Community members plant trees in Rorya district. Credit: Kizito Makoye/IPS

While students have embraced environmental stewardship, not all local households are on board. In some areas, livestock continues to graze on young saplings, undoing the hard work of reforestation. Additionally, cultural and economic pressures, such as the reliance on charcoal for income and firewood for cooking, contribute to ongoing deforestation, making conservation efforts harder.

Erratic rainfall and worsening drought conditions present another barrier. Water scarcity makes it harder to nurture newly planted trees, despite innovative solutions. These conditions also strain local agriculture, which many families depend on, increasing the urgency of balancing conservation with survival needs.

While Tanzania has ambitious climate goals, the gap between policy and practical implementation remains wide, particularly in rural areas where the effects of climate change are felt most acutely. 

At Gabimori Primary School, students have embraced their role as environmental stewards. “They’ve seen how conservation affects their daily lives,” says teacher Witinga Mattambo. “They now understand the link between the trees and the food they eat.”

The impact is vivid for students like Sadiki. “I never realized trees were this important,” she says. “They bring rain and improve our environment.”

For Lema, this is only the beginning. By fostering leadership skills and engaging the broader community, the program is building a new generation of Tanzanians dedicated to environmental protection. “We’ve even seen parents get involved,” Lwitiko says. “They’re starting to plant trees in their own yards.”

Still, the program faces hurdles. Some households allow their livestock to graze on young saplings, undoing the hard work of the students. “It’s frustrating,” admits Lwitiko, “but we’re making progress, step by step.”

Lema has ambitious plans to expand the initiative.

“We’re training students to pass on their knowledge,” he says. “As they move on, they’ll teach younger students, and we’ll spread this effort to other schools.” But scaling the program will require more funding.

“We’re working on securing more resources and partnering with local governments to enforce tree-planting bylaws,” Lema explains. There are also plans to set up household tree nurseries, allowing families to earn extra income while contributing to conservation.

For Sadiki, the program’s impact is lasting.

“We have the duty to plant trees and protect our environment. It’s something we’ll carry with us for the rest of our lives.”

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Dr. Tshilidzi Marwala, USG and Rector of the United Nations University, and Ms. Kaoru Nemeto, Director of the United Nations Information Centre during a discussion ‘Building the Future: Synergetic Collaboration on Nuclear and Climate Crises.’ Credit: Naureen Hossain/IPS

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 23 2024 (IPS)

Driving the Summit of the Future’s core messages of international solidarity and decisive action are young people who are determined to address the intersecting issues that the world contends with today.

During the Summit’s Action Days (20-21 September), it was young people who led the conversations of increasing and defining meaningful engagement, both on- and off-site from the United Nations Headquarters.

Not only are they driving the conversation, but in the Pact for the Future adopted by world leaders at the United Nations on Sunday (September 22), youth and future generations are at the forefront of global leaders’ concerns, and their role was clearly defined with the first ever Declaration on Future Generations, with concrete steps to take account of future generations in our decision-making, including a possible envoy for future generations.

This includes a commitment to more “meaningful opportunities for young people to participate in the decisions that shape their lives, especially at the global level.”

Building the Future: Synergetic Collaboration on Nuclear and Climate Crises, a side event whose co-organizers included Soka Gakkai International (SGI) and the Future Action Festival Organizing Committee, with the support of the United Nations University (UNU) and the United Nations Information Centre (UNIC), brought together young activists to discuss the intersection between two different crises and what will define meaningful youth engagement.

Kaoru Nemoto, the Director General of UNIC in Tokyo, observed that it was “ground-breaking” to see the agenda of the Summit’s Action Days largely led and organized by youth participants, as signified by the majority of seats in the General Assembly Hall being filled by young activists.

“There is an undercurrent, a common message, that the youth can make this world a better place to live,” said Nemoto. “No matter what agenda you are working on, be it climate change, nuclear disarmament, fighting inequality… youth issues are cross-cutting, very strong cross-cutting issues across the board.”

Nemoto further added that the United Nations needs to do much more to engage youth for meaningful participation. This would mean allowing youth to consult in decision-making and to be in positions of leadership. Youth presence cannot be reduced to tokenism.

The climate and nuclear crises are existential threats that are deeply connected, said Dr. Tshilidzi Marwala, the rector of the United Nations University. Climate instability fuels the factors that lead to conflict and displacement. Conflict, such as what is happening in Sudan, Israel, Palestine, and Ukraine, increases the risk of nuclear escalation. As leaders in the present day tackle the issues, Marwala called on the youth to continue raising their voices and to hold those powers accountable.

Marwala noted that the United Nations University would be committed to “realizing meaningful participation” in all parties. For young people, while they are motivated and demonstrate a care for deeper social issues, they face challenges in having their voices heard or in feeling galvanized to take action. Marwala noted that it was important to reach out to those young people who are either not involved or feel discouraged from getting involved in political work and activism.

Chief among the Summit of the Future’s agenda is increasing youth participation in decision-making processes. It has long been acknowledged that young activists and civil society actors drive greater societal change and are motivated to act towards complex issues. Yet they frequently face challenges in participating in policymaking that would shape their countries’ positions.

Among these challenges are representation in political spaces. Within the context of Japan, young people are underrepresented in local and national politics. As Luna Serigano, an advocate from the Japan Youth Council, shared during the event, there is a wider belief among young voters in Japan that their voices will go unheard by authorities.

This is indicated in voter turnout, which shows that only 37 percent of voters are in their 20s, and only 54 percent of voters believe that their votes matter. By contrast, 71 percent of people in their 70s voted in elections. People in their 30s or younger account for just 1 percent of professionals serving in government councils and forums. The Japan Youth Council is currently advocating for active youth participation in the country’s climate change policy by calling for young people to be directly involved as committee members to work on a new energy plan for the coming year.

Yuuki Tokuda, a co-founder of GeNuine, a Japan-based NGO that explores nuclear issues through a gender perspective, shared that young people are out of decision-making spaces. Although their voices may be heard, it is not enough. As she told IPS, the climate and nuclear crises are on the minds of young people in Japan. And while they have ideas on what could be done, they are not informed on how to act.

There is some hope for increasing participation. Tokuda shared within policymakers on nuclear issues, of which 30 percent include women, have begun to engage with young people in these discussions.

“It is time to reconstruct systems so that youth can meaningfully participate in these processes,” said Tokuda. “We need more intergenerational participation in order to work towards the ban of nuclear weapons and the climate crisis.”

During the event, what meaningful youth engagement should look like was discussed. It was acknowledged that efforts have gone towards giving a space to the perspectives of young people. Including young people in the discussions is a critical step. It was suggested that direction should shift towards ensuring that young people have the authority to take the action needed to resolve intersecting, complex issues. Otherwise, the inclusion is meaningless.

“The future-oriented youth is more needed than ever to tackle the challenges in building and maintaining peace,” said Mitsuo Nishikata of SGI.

“As a youth-driven initiative such as what the Future Action Festival demonstrates, youth solidarity can stand as a starting point for resolving and passing issues.”

Next year (2025) will mark 80 years since the end of World War II and the Hiroshima-Nagasaki atomic bombings. Nishikata pointed out that this will be a time for crucial opportunities to advance the discussions on nuclear disarmament and climate action, ahead of the Third Meeting of State Parties on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and the 30^th UN Climate Conference (COP30).

“We will continue to unite in our desire for peace, sharing the responsibility for future generations and expanding grassroots actions in Japan and globally.

Other commitments for the Pact for the Future included the first multilateral recommitment to nuclear disarmament in more than a decade, with a clear commitment to the goal of totally eliminating nuclear weapons.

It also pledged reform of the United Nations Security Council since the 1960s, with plans to improve the effectiveness and representativeness of the Council, including by redressing the historical underrepresentation of Africa as a priority.

The pact has at its core a commitment to “turbo-charge” implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including the reform of the international financial architecture so that it better represents and serves developing countries.

“We cannot build a future that is suitable for our grandchildren with a system that our grandparents created,” as the Secretary-General António Guterres stated.

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

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Following the resignation and departure of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, students celebrated with jubilation. They took to the streets, chanting slogans, waving flags, and holding up banners. Many gathered at key locations such as university campuses and central city squares, lighting fireworks and singing patriotic songs. The atmosphere was festive, with students expressing relief and victory after their demands for quota reform and governmental change were met. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

By Rafiqul Islam
DHAKA, Aug 14 2024 (IPS)

Justice for all those who died and suffered injuries during the recent student-led quota reform movement in Bangladesh and reforms to the systems to ensure that this justice takes place are not negotiable, an adviser to the Bangladesh interim government, Syeda Rizwana Hasan, told IPS in an exclusive interview

“The interim government has decided to ensure justice and it will be very transparent. Justice will be ensured not only for those who were killed and injured but it will accurately bring the perpetrators to justice so that innocent people are not affected.”

Hasan was sworn in as an advisor to Nobel laureate economist Muhammad Yunus’ interim government after the resignation of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on August 5, following weeks of deadly protests that, according to reports, left at least 300 people dead. She is an award-winning environmental lawyer known for her activism.

Adviser to the Bangladesh interim government, Syeda Rizwana Hasan, has promised justice and reform following the quota reform movement protests that brought down the Bangladesh government.

Reform of Security Sector

Hasan mentioned that the reforms needed in the security sector will be recommended through the trial process.

“Now we have to talk about the process of trial, which would be more transparent. One part of the trial has already started. The students detained during the movement will be released.”

News reports put the number of arrests at more than 10,000 since the protests began, including students and political opposition leaders.

“Whoever gave instruction to detain students, who directed to open fire (on students), leaving people so many dead and injured, and who commanded to put them (the six coordinators of the students’ movement) in the so-called custody of the DB (detective branch of police)—all will be probed so that the accused of directives cannot get relief.”

Hasan was referring to Nahid Islam, Abu Bakar Majumder, Asif Mahmud, Sarjis Alam, Hasnat Abdullah, and Nusrat Tabassum of the Students Against Discrimination Movement, who were arrested between July 26 and 28, 2024. The group was reportedly coerced to issue a statement of withdrawal from the protest movement while being detained for one week by the Dhaka Metropolitan Police’s (DMP) Detective Branch (DB). They were released on August 1.

Hasan said the trial would have the target of bringing about necessary reforms so that those accused of commanding these actions cannot make such directives in the future.

There was no reason for the government to open fire, she said, adding that the movement was non-partisan and was simply to address discrimination in the public service examination and appointment process.

She recalled that the first anti-quota movement was waged in 2018 and at that time, the Bangladesh government abolished the quota system in response to the student movement.

“But the then government, as clear as it was, wanted to again bring back the quota system so that it could use it, the reservation system, to get its own people into public service,” Hasan said.

She alleged that after the quota system was abolished, the government used the judicial system to bring it back.

In June 2024, the High Court ordered the reinstatement of the 30 percent quota for children of freedom fighters in a judgment that pronounced the 2018 abolition of quotas illegal.

The Chief Adviser of the interim government is Nobel laureate economist Dr. Muhammad Yunus. The unrest in Bangladesh reached a critical point, with accusations against PM Sheikh Hasina leading to her departure. In this volatile environment, an interim government has been established to restore stability and order. His appointment is seen as a move to bring credibility and expertise to the transitional leadership during these challenging times. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Students Fighting for Rights to Decent Work, End Discrimination

The students in Bangladesh were fighting for their rights—they have rights to get decent jobs and access to the job market without discrimination, she added.

“Why should a movement on a subject like this require any sort of firing by law enforcement agencies?” she asked, referring to the high death toll during the protests. “Why could not the government sit with the agitating students and solve the problem? I remind you again that the problem was once solved but they (the government) brought it back through a judicial verdict.”

She accused the previous administration of failing to act humanely and take into consideration the students’ concerns.

“They could have just consulted the students. But instead of inviting the students for discussion, what they did was blame the judiciary,” she said.

Hasan asserted that one judge reportedly made the comment that a judgment of the High Court could not change because of public agitation on the streets.

“Why did he need to make such a comment? When I am the chief justice, I only talk about an issue that comes before me. Why do I make such a provocative comment that triggers more tension?” she asked.

Student protesters throw shoes at a mural of Sheikh Hasina at Dhaka University, expressing their anger over political turmoil and government policies. The protesters are demonstrating their frustration with the government’s handling of recent events, including the controversial quota reforms and the violent clashes with police. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

Open Discussions, Rather Than Open Fire

The comment, she said, showed that the entire power structure enjoyed unfettered power.

“They took it (the students’ movement) as their political opposition and they took it as a challenge to the authority, which was not the case at all,” Hasan said.

“And it was not that police opened fire for one day but they kept on opening fire and that was when it turned into a public revolution,” Hasan said.

She described that initially it started as a students’ movement and then it turned into a revolution where all the parents and all those who were angry with the government joined it.

The government could have and should have handled the situation better. It claimed it was also against the quota. If it had opened discussions instead of opening fire, the situation would have been different for all.

“We are standing on the blood of many students—the dead bodies of at least 500 Bangladeshis. Bangladeshis will remember what their own forces have done to their own people.”

“One outcome of this has been the departure of the fascist regime. That, to some extent, has consoled people that we have finally gotten rid of the fascist regime. However, for us to get back to some degree of psychological normalcy, we really need to ensure justice. We really need to ensure the culprits get punished. We really need to do the reform in security forces so that never ever again in the history of Bangladesh excess force is applied,” the adviser said.

Students protest for the reformation of the quota system in the government job sector around the Secretariat area in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on July 14, 2024. The issue of quota reform in Bangladesh has been a contentious topic, sparking widespread debate and protests over the past few years. Initially aimed at addressing historical injustices and providing opportunities to underprivileged groups, the quota system in government jobs and educational institutions has faced significant opposition from various segments of society. Credit: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan

No Artificial Pretense of Democracy

Bangladesh has to go back to democracy and it must be such a democracy that it is an institutional process—it is not an artificial cosmetic namesake democracy but it has to be an actual one, she says.

Hasan, also an eminent environmental advocate, said Bangladesh needs reforms in law enforcement operations, the judiciary, administration and service delivery systems to establish an actual democracy.

“You have to ensure accountability and transparency. I believe the interim government will take these reform agendas very seriously. And once people see that their country has started functioning in a way that they have always wanted and that their country has started respecting ordinary citizens, I think only then will the situation calm down. There is no shortcut to this,” she added.

About the demands of the students, the adviser said the list of demands of the protesters was not very long but they were very profound.

“They are not asking for something that cannot be done. They are asking for justice. If you say it cannot be done, then you are not living in a civilized society. They are asking for the rule of law and they are asking for democracy,” she said.

She added that it is possible to meet their demands but there will be challenges because there are vested interests that have been created both in the last 15 years and prior to that.

“Anyone who gets the votes and comes to power becomes somewhat ‘fascist’. For the outgoing one, it was a long time (in power) so they became extra fascist and also not very respectful of people’s rights. So it is possible but there will be challenges.”

About the probe to be carried out into the killings during the quota reform movement, Hasan said justice has to be done and those involved in activities that are dangerous, unlawful and unauthorized would be punished.

The people in authority who commanded these atrocious acts will be brought to justice, she said.

“So it is the interest of all of us that a fair and free trial will be done. And those who are guilty, whichever they come from, are punished.”

Future Role of Student Leadership

Asked about whether students will be included in the government’s activities, the adviser said the interim government, in principle, has decided to include the students in the activities of every ministry and department.

“We managed to change the government but we did not manage to change the system. They (students) will be part of the government’s operations,” she promised, but the details were still to be worked out.

Referring to the role of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which was ousted as a corrupt government 20 years ago, Hasan said their role should be constructive.

BNP should also realize the fact that it fought hard but did not manage to get a proper election from the ousted Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government, she said.

“The ousted government played with every single part of the election mechanism. So, (the government’s ousting) is not to be taken as a victory that has been achieved by any one party. It is a victory for all of us, indeed.

“The BNP has to respond to the calls for reform because they also could not make it to power for almost 18 years because of their misdeeds,” she added.

Check-and-balance and accountability mechanisms must be put in place before holding a national election to ensure that whoever comes to power will not be able to go beyond the limits, the adviser said.

Learn the Lessons of Reconciliation

About reconciliation, she said Bangladesh can definitely learn from South Africa but Bangladesh should have learnt it 40 years ago. All involved agencies must reconcile, and reconciliation has become essential.

“It is a very divided society. We can be divided on political ideology but on national goals, we should not have these divisions,” she added.

Hasan said the Bangladesh Army can play a role in the reconciliation process by assisting in the trial process. But she thinks that the army and democracy are not essentially synonymous.

“I think the army should confine itself within their legal mandate and ensure any force or agency that creates any obstacle to democracy is strictly dealt with. The Army should not side with any given political force. It should maintain its impartiality,” she said.

About her personal goal, she said, “As a citizen, I see myself as someone who is respected, someone who is listened to and someone who is not intimidated or threatened.”

“I bear the identity card of Bangladesh so I deserve that respect. Professionally, I am happy to go back to my earlier job and become a very effective environmental justice advocate,” Hasan noted.

Note: The photos for this article are by renowned photographer and filmmaker Mohammad Rakibul Hasan from his picture essay entitled The Rebirth of Bangladesh.

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Soka Gakkai International representative and member of the organizing committee for the Future Action Festival, Tadashi Nagai, stressed the importance of coalition and movement building and youth engagement to escalate progress towards attainment of the SDGs. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, May 23 2024 (IPS)

The world has crossed the halfway point to the end of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) era amid multiple, unprecedented, and significantly destructive global shocks. Two of the most pressing global challenges are the climate crisis and the threat of nuclear armament. Of serious concern is a severe lack of youth engagement on issues of critical global importance.

Speaking to IPS during the 2024 UN Civil Society Conference, the outcome of which will inform high-level discussions when the UN hosts hundreds of world leaders, policymakers, experts, and advocates in September at the Summit of the Future in New York, Tadashi Nagai stressed the importance of coalition and movement building and youth engagement to escalate progress towards attainment of the SDGs.

“In March 2024, the Future Action Festival took place in Tokyo, attended by approximately 66,000 people and over half a million viewers via live streaming. The event was a collaborative effort by youth and citizen groups to foster a deeper understanding and proactive stance among young people on nuclear disarmament and climate change solutions as two issues of global concern,” said Nagai, a representative of the Soka Gakkai International organization and the organizing committee of the Future Action Festival at the Nairobi conference. 

The organizing committee comprised representatives from six organizations, including GeNuine, Greenpeace Japan, Japan Youth Council, Kakuwaka Hiroshima, Youth for TPNW, and Soka Gakkai International (SGI) Youth. Nagai said the high impact committee is reflective of a tangible, impactful coalition and movement building towards resolving issues of global, national, and local concern in the two major existential threats today—nuclear weapons and the climate crisis.

Nagai spoke of the inalienable link between youth engagement and the delivery of the promise of a peaceful world—a requisite for the attainment of the SDGs and other related global and national commitments. In the lead-up to the Future Action Festival, a youth awareness survey was conducted across Japan from November 2023 to February 2024, targeting individuals ranging from their 10s to their 40s. The survey focused on thematic areas such as society, climate change, nuclear weapons, youth and social systems, and the United Nations.

The survey results were illuminating, providing insights into how the youth perceive these issues and their possible role in resolving them. On the realization of a world free from nuclear weapons for instance, survey results showed that 82 percent of the respondents said nuclear weapons are not needed. Based on a sample size of 119,925 respondents, nuclear abolition is a widely shared vision among young people in Japan.

“We come with lessons from Japan on how civil society organizations represented at the Nairobi conference can build impactful, informative, and life-transforming coalitions and movements to address the most existential threats facing humanity today. This particular conference is unique, historic, and highly critical as it comes ahead of the UN Summit of the Future. The Future Action Festival was an opportunity to collect the voices of young people on issues of critical importance to the global community, in the same way that the outcome of the Nairobi conference will inform the UN Summit later on in September,” Nagai said.

Through the festival, the committee was determined to contribute to UN initiatives and endorse the newly-established UN Youth Office. Additionally, it aims to create momentum to strengthen international cooperation and solidarity toward a peaceful and sustainable future.

With this in mind, a joint declaration from the Future Action Festival was submitted to the UN to inform, influence, and shape high-level discussions at the Summit towards the production of three international frameworks: the Pact for the Future (available as a zero draft), the Global Digital Compact, and the Declaration on Future Generations. Nagai said that the Pact for the Future must be ambitious, inclusive, and innovative.

Under the theme, Summit of the Future: Multilateral Solutions for a Better Tomorrow, the summit aims to forge a new global consensus on what a collective future should look like and what can be done today to secure it. Enhancing cooperation on critical challenges and addressing gaps in global governance, reaffirming existing commitments, including to the SDGs, towards a reinvigorated multilateral system better placed to positively impact lives. The Summit of the Future will create conditions to help fast-track implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development be more readily attained.

Affirming the critical role of young people in sustainable development, the position of world leaders in the 2030 Agenda is that SDGs would only be attained if they were of the people, by the people, and for the people. The 2030 Agenda invites citizen engagement, especially from young people, to “channel their infinite capacities for activism into the creation of a better world,” Nagai said.

Hence the link between the civil society conference, the summit, and other events such as the Future Action Festival—all geared towards effectively addressing issues of global concern such as climate change, war, and worsening inequalities. Every proposal offered by the UN Secretary-General for consideration at the UN Summit of the Future will have demonstrable impacts on the achievement of the SDGs.

Ultimately, the Nairobi conference was a process of renewal of trust and solidarity at all levels—between peoples, countries, and generations. Making a case for a fundamental rethink of political, economic, and social systems so that they deliver more fairly and effectively for everyone.

At the closing of the conference, Mithika Mwenda, of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, emphasized the need for “boldness and honest conversations” to achieve the radical transformations needed to ensure sustainable development for all, poverty alleviation, and ultimately, an action-oriented Pact for the Future (one of the expected outcomes of the Summit).

Civil society groups and organizations also recommended a corresponding renewal of the multilateral system, with the Summit of the Future as a defining moment to agree on the most critical improvements necessary to deliver a future defined by equality, fairness, and shared prosperity.

Secretary-General António Guterres and Kenyan President William Ruto praised the efforts of civil society and underscored their “indispensable contributions.”

In his address, Guterres said time and again that he had witnessed the enormous impact of civil society in every corner of the world; easing suffering, pushing for peace and justice, standing for truth, and advancing gender equality and sustainable development, with many working at great personal risk.

Regarding current conflicts, including Gaza, Sudan, and ongoing crises in the Sahel, Great Lakes, and Horn of Africa regions, he said that the UN would not give up on the “push for peace, justice, and human rights.”

He recognized that civil society was crucial to addressing many issues in the world, including closing digital divides and revitalizing the collective approach to peace and security.

“We need to be informed by your frontline know-how. We need your can-do attitude to overcome obstacles and find innovative solutions,” said Guterres. “We need you to use your networks, knowledge, and contacts to implement solutions and to persuade governments to act.”

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

The United Nations Office at Nairobi is hosting the 2024 United Nations Civil Society Conference on May 9 and 10, under the theme Shaping a Future of Global and Sustainable Progress. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, May 9 2024 (IPS)

The world is neither on track to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) nor is it leveraging emerging opportunities to effectively address global concerns such as extreme hunger, poverty, conflict, and climate change. Global concerns have outpaced existing structures for international cooperation and coping.

To forge a global perspective, the United Nations Office in Nairobi is currently hosting the 2024 United Nations Civil Society Conference under the theme Shaping a Future of Global and Sustainable Progress. Bringing together more than 2,000 participants from civil society organizations, academic institutions, think tanks, member states, private sector companies, UN entities, change-makers, and other relevant stakeholders from across the globe.

“That civil society engagement remains a critical cog in the wheel of development is well established. Greater collaboration between civil society organizations, governments, and the private sector can therefore not be more urgent at this time as we gear up for the Summit of the Future,” says Carole Ageng’o, Global Initiatives Lead & Africa Regional Representative at HelpAge International.

“Indeed, civil society participation will contribute greatly towards meeting the aspiration of an international system that is better prepared to manage the challenges we face now and, in the future, for the sake of all humanity and for future generations.”

Since 1947, sixty-eight civil society conferences have resulted in successful outcomes due to previous interactions with civil society organizations. The ongoing conference is the premier event on the civil society calendar at the United Nations and the first of the UN’s civil society conferences to be held in Africa.

Born in Zimbabwe and currently working in South Africa as a human rights defender, Constance Mukarati told IPS that the role of civil society organizations and, more so, human rights defenders cannot be overstated towards ensuring that no one is left behind.

“For us, SDG 5 is really SDG 1. As a matter of urgency, women and girls everywhere must have equal rights and opportunities. We are still in an era where girl child education is not a priority and a gathering such as this is an opportunity for a revolution in how we think about issues of national and global concern, how we talk about these issues, who is in the room and how we execute and implement commitments towards sustainable development,” says Mukarati from the African Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders.

The ongoing gathering of civil society and other stakeholders is on track to provide preliminary discussions and data ahead of the world’s leaders’ Summit of the Future on September 22–23, 2024, at the UN Headquarters in New York. The Summit is part of a monumental effort to reset global cooperation towards accelerating efforts to meet our existing international commitments and take concrete steps to respond to emerging challenges and opportunities.

Ultimately, the Summit of the Future is about rethinking what multilateralism means in a world characterized by plummeting levels of trust in public institutions, glaring wealth inequalities, and a majority of the world’s population in underdeveloped and developing nations being left furthest behind, falling deeper into extreme hunger and poverty. To address global concerns, the Summit will produce three international frameworks: the Pact for the Future (available as a zero draft), the Global Digital Compact, and the Declaration on Future Generations.

“It is highly urgent that the UN systems relook and redesign how they engage its global citizenry so that the citizens can in turn engage the UN more effectively. This is what is needed to bring the SDGs back on track. What are people saying about the multiple challenges they face today? There is a feeling within the civil society movement that governments’ voices are prioritized within the UN system. This engagement is unique and highly relevant for our voices as activists and human rights defenders, which will inform and influence the direction that the Summit of the Future takes,” Eric Omondi, a Nairobi-based activist, told IPS.

This is a historic gathering aimed at galvanizing collaboration and reinforcing civil society organizations engagement in sustainable development. “We recognize that our generation stands at a critical junction where every action we take can significantly shape the future of our shared planet,” said Florence Syevuo, Executive Director, SDG Kenya Forum, and Co-Chair, Coalition for the UN We Need, Nairobi.

She stressed that the need to recognize the urgency of addressing global concerns such as climate change has never been more tangible as the effects of human interactions with nature become even more evident, underpinning why the outcome of the conference matters to all.

The Civil Society Conference and the Summit of the Future are critical platforms for deepening the engagement of citizens in international cooperation. As a prelude to the Summit of the Future, the Civil Society Conference features in-depth dialogues, a variety of workshops, and exhibits centered on three main objectives: inclusivity, impact, and innovation.

Inclusivity helps broaden the scope of discourse on global issues by enhancing the visibility and impact of diverse voices. On impact, participants are shaping global multi-stakeholder coalitions to advocate for and push the key issues that will be the outcome of the September Summit of the Future. On innovation, the two-day gathering is redefining the interaction between civil society and intergovernmental processes, showcasing a new model of collaboration that spans generations and sectors.

“The inclusion of youths and young voices in the SDG processes and other related commitments must become a priority. I recently completed my studies in law at Kampala International University and I intend to use my legal knowledge to amplify the most pressing problems facing young people in the global south and the communities in which they live,” Kiconco Shallom Esther, a youth participant from Uganda, told IPS.

As the curtain fell on the first day of the landmark civil society conference, there was consensus around the need to promote civil society’s insights and initiatives to bolster the Member State-led Summit of the Future process. Further emphasizing that a reinvigorated, organized civil society group can more effectively hold governments and powers accountable for progress towards a just, fair, and equitable shared future.

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Children who have fled with their families from Sudan eat food provided by World Food Programme (WFP) at a centre in South Sudan. December 2023. Credit: WFP/Eulalia Berlanga

By Martin Griffiths
NEW YORK, Jan 5 2024 (IPS)

Nearly nine months of war have tipped Sudan into a downward spiral that only grows more ruinous by the day. As the conflict spreads, human suffering is deepening, humanitarian access is shrinking, and hope is dwindling. This cannot continue.

2024 demands that the international community – particularly those with influence on the parties to the conflict in Sudan – take decisive and immediate action to stop the fighting and safeguard humanitarian operations meant to help millions of civilians.

Now that hostilities have reached the country’s breadbasket in Aj Jazirah State, there is even more at stake. More than 500,000 people have fled fighting in and around the state capital Wad Medani, long a place of refuge for those uprooted by clashes elsewhere.

Ongoing mass displacement could also fuel the rapid spread of a cholera outbreak in the state, with more than 1,800 suspected cases reported there so far.

The same horrific abuses that have defined this war in other hotspots – Khartoum, Darfur and Kordofan – are now being reported in Wad Medani. Accounts of widespread human rights violations, including sexual violence, remind us that the parties to this conflict are still failing to uphold their commitments to protect civilians.

There are also serious concerns about the parties’ compliance with international humanitarian law. Given Wad Medani’s significance as a hub for relief operations, the fighting there – and looting of humanitarian warehouses and supplies – is a body blow to our efforts to deliver food, water, health care and other critical aid.

Once again, I strongly condemn the looting of humanitarian supplies, which undermines our ability to save lives.

Across Sudan, nearly 25 million people will need humanitarian assistance in 2024. But the bleak reality is that intensifying hostilities are putting most of them beyond our reach. Deliveries across conflict lines have ground to a halt.

And though the cross-border aid operation from Chad continues to serve as a lifeline for people in Darfur, efforts to deliver elsewhere are increasingly under threat.

The escalating violence in Sudan is also imperiling regional stability. The war has unleashed the world’s largest displacement crisis, uprooting the lives of more than 7 million people, some 1.4 million of whom have crossed into neighbouring countries already hosting large refugee populations.

For Sudan’s people, 2023 was a year of suffering. In 2024, the parties to the conflict must do three things to end it: Protect civilians, facilitate humanitarian access, and stop the fighting – immediately.

A statement made by Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator

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An image illustrating the ‘No-senior zone’ in a Korean café. Credit: The Nation

By Hyunsung (Julie) Lee
SEOUL, Oct 13 2023 (IPS)

Growing up in a culture that values respect for elders, I was acutely aware of the importance of caring for our aging population. However, my journey to understanding the gravity of this issue truly began with a personal anecdote. I watched my grandmother, a pillar of strength throughout my childhood, gradually withdraw from the vibrant world in which she once thrived. The cheerful twinkle in her eyes began to dim, replaced by an eerie sense of isolation.

This experience opened my eyes to a stark reality: a disturbing surge in elderly suicide rates hidden beneath the facade of cultural reverence for seniors in Korea and Japan. In 2021, these rates reached 61.3 deaths per 100,000 people in Korea, primarily driven by profound social isolation.

Suicide deaths in Korea. Credit: Statista

Some may argue that these figures are insignificant, but the persistence of a high suicide rate cannot be dismissed. Moreover, they are poised to become even more critical as we approach a world where, according to WHO, the elderly population over the age of 60 is expected to double by 2050, and those 80 years or older are projected to triple.

So how severe are the elderly suicide rates due to isolation in Korea and Japan? Well, research highlights that this is due to the significant rise in the elderly population. Such an increase has been concurrent with the rising elderly suicide rates. The Global Burden of Disease study emphasizes that the global elderly suicide rate is almost triple the suicide rates across all other age groups. For example, in South Korea alone, there has been a 300% increase in elderly suicide rates.

If the world’s elderly population has increased overall, why is it that the elderly suicide rates within Korea and Japan have been especially severe? This was particularly confusing as I believed that due to cultural and social standards of filial piety and respecting your elders, such suicide rates would be low. However, I found the answer to my own question when I visited Korea in July this year.

When I arrived in the country, one of the first things I did was to visit a cafe to meet with a friend. However, as I was about to enter the cafe, I saw a group of elderly men and women leaving the cafe while comforting each other, saying, “It’s okay; it’s not the first time we’ve been rejected.” As I later found out, this was because the cafe was a ‘no-senior zone.’

Similar to how some places are designated as ‘no-kid zones,’ this cafe, and others, did not allow people over the age of 60 to enter.  According to Lee Min-ah at Chung-Ang University, “The continuous emergence of ‘no-something zones’ in our society means that exclusion among groups is increasing, while efforts to understand each other are disappearing.”

I also discovered that age discrimination is also present in other aspects of the elderly’s life, more specifically, in the workplace. According to a survey by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, in 2018, 59 percent of the Korean elderly found it difficult to be employed due to age restrictions, and a further 44 percent experienced ageism within their workplace. The increase in discrimination against the elderly has heightened their sense of isolation, eventually leading to cases of suicide in extreme circumstances.

Jung Sook Park, the Secretary General of World Smart Sustainable Cities Organization (WeGo) with the author Hyunsung (Julie) Lee.

Interview with Jung Sook Park, the Secretary General of WeGo at the Seoul Global Center

I wanted to learn more about the current action being taken to help the elderly feel more included in our society, as I believed this would be key to preventing isolation-related suicide cases. To gain further insight, I decided to interview Jung Sook Park, the Secretary General of the World Smart Sustainable Cities Organization (WeGo).

WeGo is an international association of local governments, smart tech solution providers, and institutions committed to transforming cities worldwide into smart and sustainable cities through partnerships. I believe that by interviewing the Secretary General of WeGo, I would be able to learn more about the specific solutions that governments and organizations are implementing collaboratively.

Through my interview, I gained an understanding that the South Korean government and social organizations are currently focusing on addressing age discrimination, recognizing it as a key factor in isolationism.

Park mentioned that one specific approach to resolving this issue involves the use of ‘meta spaces’ and technological wristbands. She emphasized that in today’s technology-driven world, enabling the elderly to adapt to such technology could bridge the generation gap between the younger and older generations. She further explained that meta spaces, allowing for anonymous communication, and technological wristbands, which could include features like a metro card and direct access to emergency services, would facilitate the elderly’s integration into modern society. Park concluded that enabling the elderly to adapt efficiently to the current social setting could break down the generational barrier between youth and the elderly, fostering a direct connection between these two disparate groups.

During my research, I coincidentally came across a website called Meet Social Value (MSV). MSV is a publishing company that specializes in writing and publishing insightful articles about contemporary social issues. Their most recent article, titled ‘Senior,’ delves into the social challenges faced by the elderly in Korean society and explores solutions involving inclusive designs and spaces.

MSV serves as a prime example of how contemporary social organizations are taking steps to address the issue of elderly discrimination. This is especially significant because, through youthful and trendy engagement on social media, it becomes easier to raise awareness of this issue among younger generations.

Meet Social Value’s most recent article, titled ‘Senior,’ delves into the social challenges faced by the elderly in Korean society and explores solutions involving inclusive designs and spaces.

As I continued my research, I started pondering what I, as an 18-year-old, could do to contribute to resolving this issue. Even though I’m still a student, I wanted to find ways to make a difference, especially after witnessing age discrimination and its consequences firsthand.

I found the answer to my question when I learned about the initiatives undertaken by the government of Murakami City and the Murakami City Social Welfare Council to bridge the gap between the youth and senior citizens. They introduced the Murakami City Happy Volunteer Point System, which aimed to encourage more people to assist seniors through various volunteering activities such as nursing facility support, hospital transportation services, and operating dementia cafes, among others. The system rewarded volunteers with points that could be exchanged for prepaid cards, creating an incentive for more individuals to get involved in helping their senior citizens.

Taking this into consideration, I believe that the younger generation, especially students, may contribute by creating such an incentivization system. For example, students may create senior volunteering clubs within their schools and take turns volunteering and connecting with elderly citizens every weekend. By doing so, clubs may incentivize their members through points which may later be traded for a snack or lunch at the school cafeteria. Through small incentives, this may naturally encourage more students to participate and thus naturally allow for the youth to create a relationship with the elderly, hence contributing to mitigating the issue of elderly isolation.

The webpage of the Murakami City Happy Volunteer Point System contains the system’s details.

In Korea’s battle against ageism, we find ourselves at a turning point. To navigate this societal shift successfully, we must recognize that age discrimination not only undermines the dignity of our elders but also hampers our collective progress. The solution requires a comprehensive approach. Policy reforms are crucial, emphasizing stringent anti-ageism measures in the public space and the workplace. Equally significant solutions are awareness campaigns to challenge stereotypes and foster inter-generational understanding.

However, true change starts with the youth. By confronting our biases and engaging in volunteering activities, we can break down barriers and celebrate the diverse experiences each age group brings. Through such efforts, we can create a society where age is not a determinant of worth but a source of strength and wisdom. It’s a journey demanding our collective commitment, but one that will lead us towards a more inclusive and harmonious future for all.

Edited by Hanna Yoon

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Excerpt:

Atashi Kitchen in Karuizawa operates a children's cafeteria (Kodomo-Shokudo), providing free or low-cost meals and distributing food to those in need.

By Karuta Yamamoto, Seiji Takano, Shun Shikii, Sota Yoshihara and Takeru Konno
TOKYO, Oct 10 2023 (IPS)

Have you ever seen a dried frog? We have, and it’s making us rethink our impact on the environment. Frogs are incredibly sensitive to dry conditions, and they are facing the threat of extinction due to global warming. Amphibians, like frogs, make up a significant portion of endangered species, with 41 percent vulnerable compared to only 25 percent for mammals like polar bears.

Frogs, as amphibians, require both land and water habitats, and their thin, specialized skin makes them highly susceptible to changes in humidity and temperature. Climate shifts can disrupt their breeding patterns, leading to population declines.

This sensitivity to heat and drought means that frogs can easily die on scorching days. What’s more, a decrease in the frog population can trigger a chain reaction in the ecosystem, affecting animals that rely on them for food, like owls, snakes, and raccoons.

Recognizing this, we’re reevaluating our lifestyles to reduce carbon emissions, a major contributor to global warming.

IUCN Red List

Frogs are sensitive, but with the right conditions, they can survive, as this X post shows.

These are pet frogs. One is colloquially known as a ‘crown horn frog,’ and the others ‘house mega frogs.’ Once, our crown horn frog faced a health issue. At first, we had it on a white electric mat, but we later discovered that an earthen floor was a better choice. Unfortunately, it turned out that the soil was contaminated and made the frog sick. This experience taught us that frogs are incredibly sensitive to changes in their environment.

Food Loss and Global Warming

Are you familiar with the term’ food loss?’ Discarding food that is still edible is not just about wasting food; it also contributes to the environmental issue of global warming. It is estimated that Japan discards approximately 5.22 million tons of food annually. To dispose of such a significant amount of food waste, incineration is necessary, which generates greenhouse gases and contributes to global warming. Another concern arises from the necessity of developing new final disposal sites for the ash produced from incineration, which often entails the destruction of sea and forest areas. This, in turn, exacerbates environmental issues.

Analyzing data from the World Resources Institute (WRI), an environmental non-profit, reveals that food loss contributes to about 8-10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately, only one out of three people recognize its link to food loss. Similarly, Japan, although concerned about climate change, rarely sees articles connecting it to food loss.

Volunteer students at the Atashi Kitchen in Karuizawa. The kitchen operates a children’s cafeteria offering free or low-cost meals to those in need.

Student volunteers at the Atashi Kitchen in Karuizawa. Food loss contributes to global warming.

Students help prepare meals at the Atashi Kitchen in Karuizawa.

Driven by this realization, we decided to combat global warming by efficiently using surplus food, essentially functioning as food banks. Our search led us to Atashi Kitchen in Karuizawa, Japan, which operates a food bank as part of a children’s cafeteria (Kodomo-Shokudo), providing free or low-cost meals and distributing food to those in need.

On July 22, 2023, our group of eight Grade 8 students from Dalton Tokyo Gakuen Junior School volunteered at the children’s cafeteria. Witnessing the diverse array of food, from fresh vegetables donated by local farmers to meat from contributions and observing strangers sharing joyful conversations while enjoying their meals, we realized this place was about more than food; it was about sharing happiness.

The Ministry of the Environment reported that in 2020, Japan generated about 5.22 million tons of food loss, with businesses contributing 2.75 million tons and households 2.47 million tons. This data prompted us to search for environmentally conscious companies in Japan.

Group photo at the Suntory Odaiba Office

Hikari Kujime (Corporate Sustainability Department), Yusuke Sasaki (PR Department), Tomoyuki Ichida, and Tamon Koshino (General Manager, Corporate Sustainability Department) at Suntory Holdings are with the students learning about sustainability in business.

Suntory actively harnesses artificial intelligence (AI) to accurately predict sales, a practice that significantly reduces food waste. Additionally, at Izutsu Maisen, their restaurant, Suntory, ingeniously repurposes leftover bread crusts as feed for pigs. What struck us most during our visit was Suntory’s wholehearted dedication to ecological sustainability, which aligned perfectly with our mission as teenage writers.

Beyond witnessing their sustainability practices, we seized the opportunity to engage in Mizuiku – Education Program for Nature and Water for elementary school students. These activities centered on the significance of water conservation, bird conservation, and the crucial role played by mountain forests in ensuring clean water sources. This hands-on experience kindled our fervor for safeguarding water resources and passing on this invaluable knowledge to the next generation. It further solidified our unwavering commitment to environmental education and conservation efforts.

Food Safety and the Environment

Japan’s strong emphasis on safety and security, while commendable, inadvertently results in food loss. This has not only environmental implications but also economic repercussions for manufacturers. To address this issue, let’s consider the “one-third rule.” It dictates that the delivery deadline extends until one-third of the best-before date remains, and the sell-by date covers two-thirds of the best-before date. This rule aims to accommodate consumers who tend to be overly cautious about expiration dates. To combat food waste effectively, it’s essential to ensure consumers understand these dates, promote awareness of waste reduction, and shift the mindset away from avoiding products nearing their expiration date.

Maybe we can put it more straightforwardly: In Japan, food is often deemed expired much earlier compared to the United States or Europe. Here’s a comparison of delivery deadlines in these developed regions: In Japan, it’s one-third of the best-before date, while in the United States, it extends to one-half. European countries, like Belgium, allow up to two-thirds, and in the United Kingdom, it’s three-quarters. This clearly reflects Japan’s inclination to exercise greater caution concerning expiration dates.

Food expiry dates lead to food losses, too.

So, what does food loss mean to teenagers like us? For us, it signifies a mission to heighten awareness about the intricate interplay between food loss, global warming, the safeguarding of frogs and various other creatures, our deepened appreciation for the environment, and the responsible utilization of food resources.

In conclusion, our journey has taught us that small actions can lead to significant change. As teenagers, we often hear that we are the future, but we believe that we can make an impact in the present as well. The frogs drying up symbolize a larger issue – the delicate balance of our planet’s ecosystems. It’s a call to action, a reminder that our actions matter.

We, as young individuals, have a crucial role to play. By raising awareness about the interconnectedness of issues like food loss, global warming, and the protection of our fellow creatures, we can inspire change in our communities. We can choose to reduce waste, conserve resources, and make sustainable choices. We can advocate for policies that protect our environment. By embracing knowledge and taking action, we can be the driving force behind a healthier planet.

So, let’s continue this journey together, with the frogs as our inspiration. Let’s be the generation that not only stops the drying of our amphibian friends but also works towards a world where nature thrives and all creatures, including us, live harmoniously.

Remember, it all starts with awareness, and it’s our responsibility to pass on this knowledge to others. Together, we can create a more sustainable and compassionate world for all.

IPS UN Bureau Report

Note: Karuta Yamamoto and Seiji Takano were the team leaders

Edited by Hanna Yoon

IPS UN Bureau Report

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IPS – UN Bureau, IPS UN Bureau Report, Youth Thought Leaders

Excerpt:

Hyolim Lee and Eunseol Cho with Sharon Park at the Songdo Grace Church, Incheon, South Korea. Park has established an association that aids lower-income women in South Korea called HER Period Dignity.

By Hyolim (Kelly) Lee and Eunseol (Rachel) Cho
BANGKOK & SEOUL, Oct 10 2023 (IPS)

Four acrylic panels stood like soldiers around the perimeter of my body, bolted upright by the men who installed them, light proudly bouncing off the inherent gloss on those walls as I sat on the toilet.

My backpack, rugged with zippers and the harshness of high school, chafed against the bare skin of my thighs–doughy in comparison. My hands were frantic – searching through every folder and handout and library book hoping for one thing. I could not spend any more time missing out on class. I could not lose the trust of my teacher, who had let me go to the bathroom.

Every second I spent rummaging through a compartment I had already looked at was another second I was wasting—but what other choice did I have? As my fingers foraged for a sanitary pad, the tactile familiarity of the delicate white plastic taped around it all, my breath got sharper and shorter. The enclosure of soldiers seemed to contract in accordance with my lungs, seemingly not wanting to release me until I found one, the walls cramming closer and closer…

Every month, humans, in the ridiculously bureaucratic world we live in, must do a myriad of things to continue living in normalcy.

As daughters living under the authority of adults, both of us (the writers of this editorial) have witnessed our parents get caught up in this whirlwind of paying their rent and going to the supermarket to buy groceries. But when we began the trials and tribulations of puberty, we realized that not only would our parents need to spend their cash on shelter and food every month, but also on menstrual products.

Hyolim Lee and Eunseol Cho interview Sharon Park at the Songdo Grace Church, Incheon, South Korea.

Hyolim Lee and Eunseol Cho participate in a campaign to ensure period dignity, seen here with The Pink Book, a Thai and English book written by a former member of HER Period Dignity ISB to educate girls on puberty and menstruation, and ensuring that free sanitary pads are placed in the ISB High School Bathroom, a result of the project Code Red.

From Scars to Stars, written by Sharon Park, and a pamphlet written by the Grace Academy on display.

And this isn’t a result of bureaucracy or self-indulgence – but rather the fated one of Mother Nature. The worst part is that periods are a biological cycle. So, unlike the other two tasks, purchasing menstrual products cannot be scheduled later. However, not only am I one of many who have experienced an absence of menstrual products, but we have also seen inconveniently high prices and inaccessibility.

“Period poverty results from limited access to menstrual products,” explain Ayaka Bijl, Sarisa (Monie) Sereeyothin, Julia Pugliese, and Kashvi Chauhan in an email interview with IPS about the organization they are officers for – HER Period Dignity. The writers of this piece are also involved in this organization.

The difference I have realized is that my experience is momentary – a product of forgetfulness, and theirs is enduring: a scarcity or a kind of “poverty” caused by financial and social barriers. Yet, in a world where we have found reliable information at our fingertips, and efforts to combat inequality and human rights violations are more shared than ever in our generation, the term and nuances of “period poverty” are still one that remains frustratingly shrouded in obscurity. 

One of the most significant contributors to the fog surrounding period poverty, clouding it just enough for it not to immediately cross the minds of the upper echelon of society, is period stigma. It is a term for the discrimination menstruating people face, in which misleading cultural norms and beliefs regarding menstruation are utilized. While menstruation is a natural bodily process, numerous religious beliefs prompt denigrating misconceptions about period stigma, often assuming it to be unclean and unholy.

These surrounding misinterpretations of periods continue to invigorate feelings of shame and, therefore, avoidance among both rural and urban communities, especially for the girls and women who might even need to talk about it. Even as someone attending a culturally progressive international school, I still had to rely on a desperate tone of voice and the euphemism of simply “really needing” to go to the bathroom to end up there in the first place.

“Generally, we don’t view it as intrinsically negative, but we acknowledge that society indirectly attaches stigma to menstruation, which can shape how our classmates perceive it … it’s not necessarily a common topic,” states the HER Period Dignity club officers at the International School of Bangkok. Women shouldn’t have to rely on the tentative inferences of others to maintain reproductive hygiene. We need to combat period poverty because doing so means fighting period stigma–which would decrease discrimination and vitriol against menstruating people.

The ramifications of period poverty in a young, school-aged girl’s life are glaringly obvious. As someone just starting high school, I cannot help but think about the things I would not have been able to do had I been forced to stay home due to period poverty. With exams just around the corner, I would have been forced to catch up through vague instructions sent to me on a Google Document. Sweating alongside my teammates under the unabashedly fierce Bangkok sun would not have been an option. Instead of being hot on the heels of my passions at school, I would have been forced to sit still. My entire present would have been on pause, and my future questioned. But this is only the experience of someone standing on a pedestal in society.

For those without the economic privilege that I hold, the result of period poverty would have been so aggravated that hope would either be luxury or delusion. The World Bank estimates that broader society and national economies can profit from better menstruation management: with every 1 percent increase in the proportion of women with secondary education, a country’s annual per capita income grows by 0.3 percent.

But for those who “were not able to go to school in the first place due to economic poverty, not period poverty,” according to Sharon Park, who volunteered in Cambodia for the Songdo Grace Church, their potential would never be fulfilled. The future of the local Thai girls living in the slums next to our school would not be a question; it would be an answer to the generational poverty in their family: inheritance.

Nonetheless, something is more immediately destructive to the young schoolgirls currently experiencing this. Though I was lucky to find a new pad at the bottom of my backpack, for others, health issues are bound to occur when dirty rags and leaves become the new pads and tampons without proper menstrual products. Urinary tract infections and thrush can escalate to life-threatening degrees when left untouched, and continued use of such substitutions could hinder reproductive ability—rendering a woman “useless.”

As someone who faces enough anxiety at school regarding the leakage of period blood, I cannot imagine what these girls are going through without the safety net of a pad or tampon. The issue impacts mental health, too, with a Kenyan school girl committing suicide after facing humiliation in the classroom due to the lack of a pad. These are not isolated cases, with even 68.1 percent of U.S. college students who underwent period poverty monthly reporting symptoms consistent with moderate or severe depression. Period poverty is suppressive and life-threatening in every aspect for young female students.

The 50th Ms Korea candidate, Park, has helped girls who are beginning menstruation.  She has established an association that aids lower-income women in South Korea by establishing the HER Period Dignity Club. The club is constantly finding ways to ameliorate the issue in Thailand through fundraisers, education, and collaboration with other NGOs.

Bijl explains why the club is crucial at her school. “Although our club’s primary focus is on period poverty, we also prioritize the normalization of period stigma.”

In a personal email exchange, the NGO-based club explains the process behind one of its most significant projects.

“We started by meeting the CFO of ISB and the Dean of Students and presented our idea through a formal proposal that detailed the way we would satisfy the needs of our community,” installing free pads in all the female high school and eventually middle school bathrooms. We chose the name ‘Code Red’ to evoke the sensation of surprise associated with experiencing your period unexpectedly,” say the leaders.

As an extension of this, they “went to speak in middle and elementary school classrooms about menstruation from a destigmatizing perspective.”

The club at the International School of Bangkok was first established after having “the opportunity to meet Pear (Manyasiri Chotbunwong), who leads the HER Period Dignity NGO,” at a service conference. Hearing about Pear’s
proactive efforts to address this issue motivated us to actively participate in her mission. Pear founded HER (Health. Equity. Respect.).

The NGO also provides “reusable pads [to] help individuals break free from the constant need to buy new ones, improving access to menstrual products,” says Bijl.

The ISB club can be found sharing awareness on Instagram (@herperioddignity.isb), and the HER Period Dignity NGO can be found as well (@herperioddignity).

From my mother to your daughter and her friends, from the waitress at a restaurant you are ordering at to the beautiful model posing in an advertisement at the bus stop, every menstruator deserves period products. We, the authors of this editorial, are members of a generation pushing for radical change in the overarching matters of our lives. This includes acting upon the philosophy above in this paragraph. The Code Red initiative has helped me breathe in the bathroom, knowing there was always a collection of pads in a basket next to the sink I could rely on.

“We hope that from here, it only continues to improve,” Bijl.

Everyone deserves that continued normalcy in the beautiful yet chaotic world that we live in—which includes life with minimal hindrance from periods. In the future, Eunseol and I aim to further clear the fog of obscurity around the issue at school.  As Park stated, “Change begins with the people, when we are aware.”

Note: Edited by Hanna Yoon

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Excerpt:

The students from Dalton Tokyo Junior assist with cooking and serving Watashi kitchen at Karuizawa. The students found that in Japan, many children and adults don’t get enough food to eat.

By Momoko Harada, Rei Sato and Shunki Sometaya
TOKYO, Oct 4 2023 (IPS)

Picture this: It’s the scorching days of summer, and kids are flocking to the nearby mall, eager to bask in the cool air and hang out with friends. But among the laughter and chatter, one girl stands alone in the food court.

It’s a scene we’ve heard of or, maybe, read about in an article, but it’s not until we meet R, a mother in her 30s from the northern Kanto region, that the stark reality hits. “At home, we don’t have air conditioning,” she explains. “So, when I head to work, my kids head out. They spend their days at the library or the local children’s center, keeping each other company until around 7 p.m. They play games, immerse themselves in comics, and for lunch, they share a 100 yen stick bread I bought from Daiso. Drinks? Well, they help themselves to the facility’s water cooler.”

Did you know that a staggering 20 million people in Japan struggle to put enough rice on their tables? Astonishingly, many are unaware of this stark reality, an issue often shrouded in the term hidden poverty, which has quietly become a significant problem in Japan. Furthermore, a troubling statistic reveals that 1 in 7 children in the country currently can’t enjoy three square meals of rice. When we hear “child poverty,” our minds might drift to images of undernourished youngsters in developing nations facing “absolute poverty” without homes or daily sustenance.

However, the poverty we discuss here is “relative poverty,” affecting children in households with less than half the median income. The implications of this kind of poverty often go unnoticed. While they might not go to bed hungry, these children frequently struggle to enjoy a balanced diet. Meat and vegetables become rare luxuries, and carbohydrate-heavy meals, like cheap instant noodles, become the norm. Some can’t even afford basics like school uniforms, bags, or gym clothes, making their lives considerably tougher.

Eight students from Dalton Tokyo Junior visited Foodbank Karuizawa and interviewed Yoko Komiyama at the Watashi Kitchen.

The students from Dalton Tokyo Junior prepare to assist with cooking and serving in the Watashi Kitchen at Karuizawa.

A Dalton Tokyo Junior student assisted with cooking at the Watashi Kitchen at Karuizawa.

A student from Dalton Tokyo Junior assists with serving at the Watashi Kitchen at Karuizawa.

Dalton Tokyo Junior School students interview Yuki Mitsuhara, the president of the NPO Keep Moms Smiling.

The students organized food bank donations.

Among these children, those from single-mother families face the harshest realities, with a surprising 50 percent of such households struggling in this way. The root cause can be traced to the wage gap between men and women, making it exceedingly difficult for single-mother families to make ends meet. Even when educational backgrounds match, a persistent gender pay gap persists, growing more pronounced with time. Shockingly, the annual income of female university graduates often parallels that of male high school graduates.”

Japan grapples with a substantial gender wage gap compared to other prominent OECD countries.

In 2021, the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare reported that 78.6% of men held regular employment, whereas only 46.8% of women enjoyed the same status. This stark disparity contributes to children in single-mother households often going without enough food. It’s natural to assume that Japan, as a prosperous nation, wouldn’t face such pressing issues with childhood hunger.

Yet, parallel to this, there’s been growing concern over food wastage, encompassing the squandering of edible items and supermarket discards due to approaching expiration dates. Reflecting on these issues, we pondered how to utilize surplus food effectively.

Why toss something when others can eat it? We decided to visit Watashi Kitchen at Karuizawa, a facility that uses food from food banks to provide free, delicious meals to children. In an interview with Yoko Komiyama, she shared, “Some Japanese children rely on school lunches, but during extended school holidays, some only eat two meals a day. We’re here to support them.”

Additionally, there’s Kodomo-Shokudo, which backs children’s cafeterias offering free or low-cost meals. These cafeterias are for everyone, not just underprivileged children, ensuring that no one feels embarrassed to use them. Thus, we envisioned a welcoming kitchen where anyone could gather, much like their own home kitchens. It’s become a vital community hub, bringing together low-income families, children, working adults, seniors, and solitary diners to share meals and conversations.

On July 22, 2023, we visited the Watashi Kitchen, which operates on the third Saturday of every month, to assist with cooking and serving. We even brought along a team-supplied collection of sweets for the children. The experience was incredibly rewarding. Witnessing people stand for three hours, cooking for 150 individuals, washing dishes, and relishing meals brought immense joy. With around 30 volunteers, all visibly enjoying their tasks, it dawned on me that lending a hand to others truly warms our hearts.

During the school year, children on welfare receive assistance for school lunches. However, when school’s out for holidays, a significant gap emerges, and it’s heartbreaking to hear stories of children returning to school after a break, visibly underfed and having lost weight. We couldn’t help but empathize with parents in these situations, the anguish they must feel as they struggle to provide nourishment for their children while longing to share in their happiness over a meal we often take for granted.

A survey conducted by the NPO Kidsdoor, focusing on disadvantaged households, reveals alarming findings. A staggering 49% of respondents reported cutting back on their own meals to ensure their children could eat. In fact, 17% of parents admitted to eating only one meal a day, while 47% managed just two. These statistics poignantly illustrate how parents prioritize their children’s well-being.

In light of this disparity, where some have the luxury of discarding food they could eat while others struggle daily to put enough on the table, we initiated a food collection drive. We reached out to schools, community members, and those with food items still within a month of their expiration date but likely to go unused. This food, once collected, is then directed to those who need it most.

As part of the Dalton team, in our quest to find a suitable food bank to contribute to, we encountered a non-profit organization called Keep Moms Smiling, doing exceptional work. Keep Moms Smiling is an organization that focuses on providing meals to parents with sick children who often find it impossible to sleep or eat while caring for their hospitalized little ones. Additionally, they collect surplus items from companies and restaurants, redirecting them to parents who find themselves in dire need.

According to Yuki Mitsuhara, the president of Keep Moms Smiling, “Parents don’t need to be at the hospital with their sick children, but due to the shortage of nursing staff, they often have to take on caregiving roles. While hospitals provide meals for patients, they don’t offer such provisions to caregivers, including beds or showers. Consequently, many parents fall ill themselves due to lack of rest and often lose their jobs as they stay long-term at the hospital.” Mitsuhara, drawing from personal experience, added, “I vividly recall the warmth of having a hot meal while my child was hospitalized for an extended period. I want to offer these parents a moment of joy through a good meal, one that renews their strength to continue caring for their children. With this mission, our restaurant chefs join hands to prepare and provide these much-needed, delicious meals to parents of sick children.”

In today’s world, it’s clear that the divide between abundance and scarcity is stark. We, as youth, aspire to be that bridge, connecting those who wish to prevent waste, extend a hand of hope, and share joy with organizations like ‘Keep Moms Smiling.’

We yearn for you to understand the potential that resides in each one of us. Together, we can spark a chain reaction of goodwill and empathy, proving that the youth can be formidable allies in tackling global issues. So, here’s our question: What will you do today to make tomorrow brighter for someone else?

Note: Shunki Sometaya was the team leader

Edited by Hanna Yoon

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Excerpt:

Education Cannot Wait's #AfghanGirlsVoices shines a light on young Afghan girls deprived of their basic right to education and learning. Credit: ECW

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Sep 18 2023 (IPS)

A Taliban edict is rolling back time in Afghanistan after access to education for all Afghan girls over the age of 12 was indefinitely suspended on September 18, 2021. Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls are forbidden from attending school beyond the primary level, leaving more than 1.1 million girls and young women without access to formal education.

With an estimated 80 percent of school-aged Afghan girls and young women now out of school – in the blink of an eye – Afghanistan has gone back 20 years. As gains made over the last two decades go up in smoke, Afghan girls are bravely breaking through the frightening dark cloud of misogyny and gender persecution to tell the world about the injustice of being denied an education and their burning desire to return to school.

“It is hard to think of anyone further left behind than the girls in Afghanistan who are being denied their most basic human rights, including their right to education, based solely on their gender,” said Education Cannot Wait (ECW) Executive Director Yasmine Sherif.

“We will continue to steadfastly advocate for the full resumption of their right to education in Afghanistan and to work with our partners to deliver crucial learning opportunities to Afghan children through the community-based education programmes we support.”

To mark the tragic anniversary of the de facto authorities’ unacceptable ban on secondary school girls’ education in Afghanistan, ECW – the UN global fund for education in emergencies – has updated its compelling #AfghanGirlsVoices Campaign with new multilingual content to include English, French, Spanish and Arabic.

To mark the anniversary of the Taliban authorities’ unacceptable ban on secondary school girls’ education in Afghanistan, ECW has updated its compelling #AfghanGirlsVoices Campaign with new multilingual content. Credit: ECW

The multilingual #AfghanGirlsVoices Campaign intends to break through language barriers so that more people in the global community can read inspiring, resilient, and heartbreaking testimonies conveyed through moving artwork by a young Afghan female artist.

The girls want the world to know that they are at risk of missing a lifetime of learning and earning opportunities – never acquiring the skills needed to prosper and contribute to building the stable and prosperous future that they, their families and the people of Afghanistan deserve.

An entire generation of girls and young women could be lost – as they are being pushed out of public life, not to be seen or heard. Prospects of a bleak future have compromised their mental health.

First launched on August 15, 2023 – two years after the de facto Taliban authorities took power in Afghanistan and subsequently banned girls’ access to secondary and tertiary education – the campaign was developed in collaboration with ECW Global Champion Somaya Faruqi, former Captain of the Afghan Girls’ Robotic Team.

The Taliban have implemented over 20 written and verbal decrees on girls’ education. With each new edict, restrictions on Afghan girls and young women’s right to education have gotten even more serious and severe. Today, girls over the age of 10 years are not allowed to go to school.

Prior to the indefinite suspension of university education for female students, they were not allowed to undertake certain majors in areas such as journalism, law, agriculture, veterinary science, and economics.

#AfghanGirlsVoices Campaign seeks to bring to the attention of the global community what is at stake and why urgent action is much needed to end a brutal clampdown on education. Between 2001 and 2018, the country saw a tenfold increase in enrolment at all education levels, from around 1 million students in 2001 to around 10 million in 2018.

#AfghanGirlsVoices Campaign seeks to bring to the attention of the global community what is at stake and why urgent action is needed to end a brutal clampdown on education. Credit: ECW

“The number of girls in primary school increased from almost zero in 2001 to 2.5 million in 2018.  By August 2021, 4 out of 10 students in primary education were girls. Women’s presence in Afghan higher education increased almost 20 times, from 5,000 female students in 2001 to over 100,000 in 2021. Literacy rates for women doubled during the period, from 17 percent of women being able to read and write in 2001 to 30 percent for all age groups combined,” according to a recent UN report.

The girls’ powerful words are conveyed together with striking illustrations depicting both the profound despair experienced by these Afghan girls and young women, along with their incredible resilience and strength in the face of this unacceptable ban on their education.

The timing of the campaign will lift the voices of Afghan girls on the global stage as world leaders convene at the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Summit on 18-19 September at the UN General Assembly in New York. The Summit aims to mark the beginning of a new phase of accelerated progress towards the SDGs with high-level political guidance on transformative and accelerated actions leading up to 2030 – progress that cannot be achieved with Afghan girls left behind.

ECW has been supporting education in Afghanistan since 2017, first through a mix of formal and non-formal education and now exclusively through programming outside the formal education system. The ECW-supported extended Multi-Year Resilience Programme (MYRP) in Afghanistan aims to support more than 250,000 children and adolescents across some of the most remote and underserved areas of the country.

The programme delivers community-based education, organised at the local level with support from local communities, and is critical to keep education going. Girls account for well over half of all the children and adolescents reached by the MYRP. To access ECW’s social media kit to support the #AfghanGirlsVoices campaign, click here.

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Youth rally at the UN for climate justice. Credit: Abigail Van Neely/IPS

By Abigail Van Neely
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 15 2023 (IPS)

“What do we want? Climate justice! When do we want it? Now!” youth chanted in an unusually lively conference at the United Nations Headquarters.

Earlier on Thursday morning (September 14), almost 500 young people had streamed into the room to a DJ’s upbeat soundtrack. Spirits were high despite the more somber rallying cry of this year’s International Day of Peace youth event: the planet is on fire. Many speakers focused on the idea that there cannot be peace without climate justice.

“We cannot begin to talk about peace without talking about the climate crisis,” environmental justice advocate Saad Amer said after leading the crowd in the kind of chants more likely heard at a protest. Fossil fuel disputes spark wars that disproportionately affect people of color, Amer explained. Youth must take charge to “re-write destiny.”

To 21-year-old Mexican climate justice activist Xiye Bastida, “Peace is the ability to drink clean air and clean water.” Bastida, a member of the Otomi-Toltec indigenous community, spoke of her community’s traditional commitment to living in harmony with the earth. Now, indigenous people are being displaced as regenerative practices are forgotten. Bastida called for a world free of extreme weather and exploitation. The climate crisis reflects a broken system, she said, but peace is the bravery to imagine a better world.

Young people are “creating a youth movement for climate action, seeking racial justice, and promoting gender equality,” the Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, Melissa Fleming, told the audience. In a recorded statement, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reiterated that youth action has power. Still, only four governments have concrete plans to include young people in policymaking, Youth Envoy Jayathma Wickramanyake noted.

As she lived through brutal conflicts in her home country of Sri Lanka, Wickramanayake said she wondered why people around her continued to fight. Today, she told other young activists that the root causes of conflict always run deep – from inequality to poverty. She stressed that peace cannot be differentiated from development.

The event occurs days before the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Summit, a critical opportunity for world leaders to address failures to implement the goals so far.

“Next week there will be an important breakthrough in creating the conditions to rescue the sustainable development goals. I’m very hopeful that the SDG summit will indeed represent a quantum leap in the response to the dramatic failures that we have witnessed,” Guterres said during a news conference.

Meanwhile, youth are left with memories of their chants: “The oceans are rising, and so are we!” “We are unstoppable – another world is possible!”

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By External Source
Aug 12 2023 (IPS-Partners)

Today, the world is embarking on a green transition.

A shift towards an environmentally sustainable and climate-friendly world is critical.

This transition depends on the development of green skills in the population.

Especially amongst today’s youth.

These skills include changing and moulding knowledge, values and attitudes.

And they will form abilities needed to develop and support a sustainable and resource-efficient society.

Green skills are relevant for people of all ages.

But they have heightened importance for younger people.

As those who will inherit our current progress, they will contribute to humanity for longer.

But their journey won’t be easy.

They will endure severe climate events for longer.

They will endure prolonged heatwaves, crop failures, droughts and flooding.

They will experience significant changes in economic opportunities due to climate change.

They will lose 40% of the jobs and trades reliant on a healthy planet.

They will also need to mitigate an accelerating technological divide.

67% of youth do not have digital skills due to a lack of basic resources.

This year’s International Youth Day is our opportunity to set a new course:

“Green Skills For Youth: Towards A Sustainable World”.

 

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By Alissa Yoon, Alexander John Ham, Alex Yoon, Hyunsang "Sean" Cho, Karuta Yamamoto, Souta Oshiro and Sungjoon Ham
Seoul, Tokyo, Boston, Oct 14 2022 (IPS-Partners)

A group of middle school students living in Asia filmed this video on their campaign to reduce food waste. They learned many lessons: Only take as much food as you can eat; don’t waste, eat ugly fruit and compost. In this production, they spoke to experts about how to ensure that everybody has something nutritious to eat.

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IPS youth thought leader trainees Minseung Kim (team leader), middle, Henry Cho, right, Dongjun Lee in the interview with Seong Hoon Kim, Senior Director, Platform Development Division of Korea Social Security Information Service.

By Dongjun Lee, Hyunjae 'Henry' Cho and Minseung Kim
Sep 28 2022 (IPS)

Have you watched Parasite? In 2021, everyone seemed to be watching it. But I wonder how many of them paid attention to the old man who found a little shelter in a hidden basement behind the kitchen of a mansion. However hidden it was, that’s where he could meet his basic needs. That was his little slum.

It may be a bit of a stretch, but I found that the movie Parasite exposed the core of South Korea’s unique slum culture. It’s hidden under the shadow of big skyscrapers and, more importantly, consists of seniors like the old man in the movie.

Korean slums are full of seniors. In 2020 alone, 388 seniors died home alone. There was a 29% increase in these deaths in 2021. Why? That’s what we will be talking about in this article.

First, South Korea is now an aging society. By 2025, over 20% of the Korean population will be seniors. Consequently, with the increase in the elderly population, the poverty rate among seniors has also increased.

Even though South Korea is famous for being the country that flourished rapidly after the Korean War in 1953, it has constantly encountered multiple financial crises. Many industries favor the younger generation to maximize the nation’s output, resulting in over 2 million elderly workers being unemployed and forcing an early retirement since the 1970s. With this trend, the elderly’s well-being diminished, and many experienced financial devastation – which threw them onto the streets and forced them to seek shelter. This explains the emergence of Korean slums made up of seniors.

There is another significant cause why older people fill Korean slums. The seniors in South Korea are a unique generation, sandwiched between the Korean war in their past and the YOLO (You Only Live Once) culture. They had to support their immediate and extended family (their elderly parents, brothers and sisters, and so on). On top of this, when they become seniors, their children, who live in YOLO culture (defined as the view that one should make the most of the present moment without worrying about the future), don’t support their parents. As a result, Korean families face a new crisis: abandoned seniors. Recently, there has been an increasing number of news reports about seniors abandoned by their children. Many of them die home alone without any family members. As of 2020, out of 1.8 million seniors living by themselves, 953 of them died home alone. Because of this social phenomenon, many proprietors refuse to rent their homes to seniors over 65.

To find a place to live, they go to the slums, which explains why Korean slums are uniquely full of seniors. Interestingly, these seniors have turned their slums into a silver town where they receive social welfare services and emotional support. Since they live together, charity organizations and social welfare services can easily locate and take care of them. Through these support systems obtained by living in slum areas, the seniors can feel a sense of belonging – they no longer feel alone.

IPS youth thought leader trainees with Executive Director of Concern Worldwide, Korea, Junmo Lee, and course founder Dr Hanna Yoon.

Concern Worldwide Executive Director Junmo Lee told IPS that they have to approach this issue with the importance of community in mind. Creating a community where these seniors are connected back to society is the key because the disconnection isolates them. Concern Worldwide is an international humanitarian organization that strives for a world free from poverty.

But how can this disconnection from their families and productive work be solved? We know that a single private organization can’t solve it. Then what is the solution?

Seong Hoon Kim, the Senior Director of the Platform Division at the Korea Social Security Information Service Team was able to give legislative views on the issue.

To create a community where seniors are reconnected to society, we need a communal contribution where all government, private humanitarian organizations, and family members work together as a team, Kim says.

There is a saying that it takes a whole village to raise a child.

Now, we want to say that it takes a whole village to care for seniors, especially those living in slums. We have to come as one family to support them.

However, our government needs to step up to bring the entire country together to form a community where these seniors are reconnected to their own families and society.

Henry Cho, Dongjun Lee, and Minseung Kim investigated why elderly people in Korea end up living in slums, and what can be done about it.

We are teenagers now. But we will grow old, too. We don’t want to live in slums because that’s the only option we may have. We hope to stay connected to our families and be productive until we die. To turn this hope into reality, we must start working on it now.

Living in slums after 65? It’s not just their story. It can be our and your story, too, if we don’t act now. We hope the Korean government will hear our voice and act upon it so we can live as happily as we can when we grow old. Is it not our right to pursue happiness even after 65?

Note: Minseung Kim was the team leader for this project.
Edited by Dr Hanna Yoon

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Soo Hyoun Lim (right) and friend campaign for safe working environments for cafeteria workers.

By Soo Hyoun Lim and Hyeonuk Hwang
Seoul, Sep 28 2022 (IPS)

During my summer break this year, I read a news article about five school cafeteria workers who had died of lung cancer. Due to these incidents, a union of cafeteria workers, wearing their aprons and holding their lunch trays, held a protest in front of the President’s office on a scorching summer day. And it made us think about the devastating working conditions for the school lunch employees. Isn’t it so disheartening that we eat our school lunch at the expense of their health?

Did you know that one cafeteria staffer has to provide 150 student servings in a substandard kitchen with poor ventilation systems? That’s why they get lung cancer. While cooking, they inhale gasses, known as cooking fumes or cooking smoke. This substance contains “carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and several toxic volatile hydrocarbons,” which has caused 3.8 million people to die prematurely from this “indoor air pollution”. So installing a proper ventilation system in a school cafeteria is crucial to protect the kitchen staff.

Soo Hyoun Lim holds a workshop on how youth could help the cafeteria staff in Seoul.

But why isn’t there a proper ventilation system in the first place?  Initially, South Korea did not have a school cafeteria. All school children brought their lunch boxes from home until 2011. Those who could not afford their lunch box received free lunch from school. But imagine it: Johnny is flashing out his fancy lunch box next to Jane, who is eating free lunch from school. What would Jane feel about this? Well, Korean politicians thought that no child should be left behind in terms of school lunches. So for the sake of equality, the Korean government launched a “Free School Lunch for All” program in 2011. The real problem was that they launched this free lunch program without installing a proper kitchen ventilation system to save on the budget. Basically, for the sake of political populism, they overlooked the serious problems a substandard kitchen environment would bring to the health of school cafeteria workers.

What about other countries that offer free school lunches? In Japan, for example, schools are built with a free school lunch program in mind from the beginning. So proper ventilation systems are built in. And they constantly renovate their school kitchens for the sake of the health of both cafeteria workers and students, which is a stark contrast to Korean schools.

Hyeonuk Hwang holds the poster in public to raise awareness of the dangers school cafeteria workers face.

Is there anything I can do as a student?

I strongly believe that spreading the news of the devastating working environment for school cafeteria ladies using social media is a good place to start. So I made a poster and posted it on my Instagram. The result was phenomenal. We got lots of ‘Likes’ and comments from people thanking us for raising awareness of this dire situation in Korean school cafeterias. And we will continue to design new posters and post them on social media. People may wonder what difference a small media post can make. Confucius said, “The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” Our post may be a small stone. But wait until we have a huge collection of posts about this issue. We may move a mountain. You never know.

What else can we do as students? Well, we are writing this opinion editorial to suggest creative solutions which may reach the ears of the policymakers in South Korea. That’s something! For the answer, we thought of using clean and renewable energy: cook with the sun! Have you ever used a solar oven before? Basically, a solar cooker consists of a system of reflectors and a cooking pot. The setup converts the solar energy into heat energy to bake, boil, or steam food. In a solar oven, you can cook anything that you can cook in a conventional electric or gas oven or stove without producing toxic cooking fumes. Well, browning is unlikely in a solar oven due to lower temperatures. On the bright side, this means that we don’t need to worry about our food getting dried out or burned.

Most importantly, no deadly cooking fumes! We may not get crisp French fries or caramelized steaks, but there are huge collections of recipes designed specifically for solar ovens. If we can eliminate the harmful cooking smoke for our cafeteria ladies’ health, we will be happily satisfied with the solar cooker food.

Soo Hyoun Lim and Hyeonuk Hwang took their campaign to Instagram.

But will it work for a large crowd of people? According to Mason Terry, director of the Oregon Renewable Energy Center, multiple solar ovens were functioning superbly years ago at a refugee camp in Nepal. You may not know this, but Nepal is home to over 40,000 refugees. If it worked for such a large number of hungry people in Nepal, I’m sure that South Korea could find ways to utilize this earth-friendly oven for their students at school. Since the budget was the issue for installing proper ventilation systems in Korean schools, they can save a lot of gas and power bills by using solar ovens. And with that money saved, they can install proper ventilation systems! Again, we ardently hope that this sustainable solution reaches the ears of South Korean policymakers.

Posters on social media and talking about solar ovens. We know. They are small steps. Perhaps too small to change the current Korean cafeterias. Perhaps too weak to save the lives of our cafeteria ladies. But however small and weak these steps may be, the important thing is that we are leaving our footprints on this issue. Wayne Gerad Trotman once said, “We are not helpless. We all can make this world a better place. We can start with small steps, one day at a time.” So take a small step with us today. Tomorrow we will be a step closer to bringing changes to Korean school cafeterias.

Note: Soo Hyoun Lim was the team leader for this project.
Edited by Dr Hanna Yoon

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Credit: United Nations

By Simone Galimberti
KATHMANDU, Nepal, Sep 5 2022 (IPS)

There are many ways the UN can have a sizeable role in promoting the engagement and participation of youth and helping them becoming a central pillar of a new way of doing policy-making.

After all, if we want to rethink the relationships between the state and citizens, the foundation of a new Social Contract as envisioned by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, youths must be enabled to have a voice and an agency powerful enough to directly influence decision making, locally and globally.

At the former level, the UN can set up UN Youth National Forums or Assemblies wherever it operates. Such entities would be more then tokenistic forums where meetings happen on “off basis” but instead would be structured as permanent mechanisms with a power of not only advising but also monitoring the work being carried out by the UN Country Teams.

Having in place such forums locally would pave the way for bolder action at the higher levels, on the international arena.

It is here where there is a great deal of scope for the UN to model a truly radical change in terms of youths’ participation globally, raising the bar in terms of what youths’ involvement means and what it can imply.

If we truly create pathways for youths to play a more central role and we generate a structure or mechanism for them to fulfill such responsibilities, international politics, while would not drastically change overnight, surely would be impacted.

This is the reason why Guterres should strive for something that, though discussed in the past, was never close enough to be fully considered nor implemented.

I am referring to the idea of creating a permanent UN Youth Assembly that would autonomously act alongside of the established General Assembly and would become a forum where youths from around the world can discuss and set the policy course.

This permanent mechanism could either be linked up with the assemblies or forums that the UN could establish at national level or could simply have a completely different, standing alone nature with its members being selected at national levels through transparent and competitive process.

While we cannot imagine at the moment that such body would yield any veto power, it could, for example, have a symbolic, though powerful role especially in making its voice heard by the major global powers.

For example, it would have access, on consistent basis, to the UN Security Council, the most consequential institution within the international community.

While the official positions of its members, results of government-to-government negotiations behind the curtain, won’t be altered, at least they could be openly challenged.

Imagine some representatives of the UN Youth Assembly addressing, after their own deliberations, the sessions of the Security Council: this would be a powerful reminder to the world leaders that youths can dare to think differently.

The working modality of this envisioned UN Youth Assembly could become a template for participation and transparency where inputs and feedbacks from youths around the world could make such assembly truly owned by all the youths from across the world.

Thanks to the progress of digital work, a permanent online platform could offer themes of discussions for the UN Youth Assemblies in a way that everyone, even those not formally part of the UN Youth Assembly, could participate.

Ensuring a strong connection between this assembly and the youths around the world is as vital as daunting.

The risk is that any bold attempt of creating a new world body for youths to be involved in the decision making could become an elitist platform where only the most connected youths would participate.

Instead of bringing in youths from disadvantaged groups, the “usual suspects”, youths from well off families with access to opportunities, would “capture” their new “toy”.

That’s why it is vital that UN agencies and programs around the world do a better job at promoting civic engagement and participation, enabling innovative pathways for also the less advantaged youths to participate and deliberate.

Setting up national mechanisms for the UN to engage youths at national level could offer a pipeline for a more diverse crop of youths to have a chance to be involved and participate.

Investing in capacity building of youths is more and more critical.

Thanks to innovative partnerships with civil society, trainings, courses, institutes or academies could offer a way for the UN to create a sort of “upward mobility” in terms of opportunities to participate for many youths now excluded.

In addition, the members UN Youth Assembly should be chosen on rotation basis and exercise their duties for short periods like six months or at the longest, one year as such short mandates would give chances to more youths to be in the Assembly.

Moreover, a way to ensure a deep link between this new body and the ground reality, each of its representatives would be supported by a deliberative group at national level, a further connection between local youths and the international arena.

Imagining such body comes with risks.

In relation to its duties and responsibilities, the UN Youth Assembly could be easily become object of derision.

It would be seen as another tokenistic tool that governments could use to promote some forms of reforms that in reality, instead, would continue to legitimize the current status quo in terms of decision making and power relations.

That’s why it is important that UN Youth Assembly is provided with the analytical and research tools that would make it an authoritative source of insights and proposals from a youths’ perspective.

Youths led deliberations should be based on a proper process of accessing to the best available information and through a very structured exercise of deliberative process that would, ultimately, end up with recommendations or proposals, also in forms of policy briefs.

Setting up a UN Youth Assembly won’t preclude other forms of youth’s activism and participation.

For example, we have seen with climate activism, how forceful youths’ actions have to be in order to become visible and noticed.

The Assembly would be just another way, now completely missing, for youths to properly channel their opinions and voices, overcoming the multitude of improvised consultation mechanisms that are often created for major global leaders ‘gatherings whose impacts are close to nil.

Moreover, like the UN Youth National Forums or Assemblies locally, the UN Youth Assembly could be given some limited binding powers in steering the course of the UN agencies and programs, having a clear voice and power in deciding their global strategies and priorities.

The future of youths’ participation aimed at setting the global agenda will be a mix of different and yet complementary actions from the ground and from the top alike.

Peaceful manifestations, including those of civil disobedience, have a place together with other forms of youths’ involvement.

Having a new global platform to express their voices should not be seen as a way to stifle bottom-up initiatives but, rather, as another way to help transform the way political power is exercised.

Simone Galimberti is the Co-Founder of ENGAGE, a not-for-profit NGO in Nepal. He writes on volunteerism, social inclusion, youth development and regional integration as an engine to improve people’s lives.

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Three inspiring #Youth4EiE Advocates – Nataly Rivas, Angela Abizera, and Jean-Paul Saif. Nataly, Angela, and Jean-Paul are three Global Youth for Education in Emergencies panel members. Credit: ECW

By External Source
Ecuador, Malawi, Lebanon, Aug 12 2022 (IPS)

On this International Youth Day, ECW interviewed three inspiring #Youth4EiE Advocates – Nataly Rivas, Angela Abizera, and Jean-Paul Saif. Nataly, Angela, and Jean-Paul are three Global Youth for Education in Emergencies panel members.

The (#Youth4EiE) panel brings together youth leaders from across eight countries to work together to put education in emergencies and protracted crises on top of the agenda for world leaders. The #Youth4EiE initiative is made possible through ECW’s partnership with Plan International UK and is supported by the People’s Postcode Lottery.

The #Youth4EiE panel is composed of 16 members representing Ecuador, Indonesia, Lebanon, Malawi, Mali, Zimbabwe, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Each member is a positive force for change in their own communities. They combine their skills, networks, and expertise to help raise awareness of the challenges which crisis-affected girls and boys face in accessing education in emergencies and protracted crises while advocating for increased funding from donors in support of ECW’s #222MillionDreams campaign.

Nataly Rivas. Credit: ECW

Nataly Rivas, 21, Ecuador

Nataly Rivas is a Sociology and International Relations student from Pichincha, Ecuador. She is an active leader and National Communications Coordinator in the “Por Ser Niña” movement, an Ecuador U-reporter, and a Global #Youth4EiE Panel Member – where she represents Ecuador. Since she was eleven, Nataly has participated in Plan International Ecuador projects, which have shown her the situations of inequality in her country and provoked in her a desire to fight to change that reality. She is passionate about girls’ rights and currently helps manage the “Por Ser Niña” movement’s social media – a civil society group of girls, boys, and young people in Ecuador whose objective is gender equality.

ECW: What does education mean to you? And how can we help realize #222MillionDreams for the 222 Million crisis-impacted children and adolescents who urgently need education support?

Nataly: I always say that education is a tool that can save lives, especially for girls and women. It can help prevent gender-based violence as it offers us better opportunities for the future. In a nutshell, education makes it possible to move closer to gender equality. However, in emergency situations, education is not prioritized – even financial resources are subtracted, causing millions of children to see their education and dreams interrupted or ended. We must urgently continue to fight for education so that educational institutions become safe environments with quality education available to everyone, especially in emergency situations. ECW works to meet the educational needs of 222 million children affected by crises and is rallying donor support through the #222MillionDreams campaign. This is why I call on all social sectors to mobilize more resources to support ECW, education inclusion and prevent more dreams from being left unfulfilled. Let us remember that, with education, we all win, and therefore, we must fight for it, make our demands and invest in it so that it is guaranteed for all.

ECW: In Ecuador, ECW, UN agencies, and civil society partners in coordination with the Ministry of Education have built an amazing campaign, La Educación es el Camino (Education is the Way), to make education a priority for everyone, especially children fleeing the crisis in Venezuela. How can we build a better world where refugee children are able to access safe and protective learning environments? And why is it important for the people of Ecuador?

Nataly: To build a better world for refugee children, essential rights such as the right to a dignified life, a nutritious diet, equality, and access to quality education must be guaranteed. Through education, other rights can be forged, so it is essential that education inclusion is guaranteed in schools where refugee children can feel safe and have better opportunities to develop. These spaces must be free of violence and xenophobia. And we can achieve this through fostering a culture of good treatment of others in the family, educational, and community environments. It is also important that assistance and aid programs are generated for families because one of the main barriers for girls and boys to have a quality life, and access to education is economic scarcity. The whole of society can and must contribute to the construction of a better world – not only for refugees but for everyone. Caring about and fighting collectively for sustainable solutions benefits us all and prevents further deepening levels of inequality in our country.

ECW: How can we activate science, technology, engineering, and math studies for girls and boys in crises to activate social entrepreneurship and provide a pathway out of poverty?

Nataly: Governments need to invest in scholarships for girls and boys to study and finance their projects and ideas. We need an education where students are the leaders of innovation and motivation. For these reasons, society should encourage children to study scientific careers, and adults must ensure more and better opportunities for the new generations and put aside adult centrism. Additionally, work must be done to eliminate the global digital divide and eradicate prejudices and stereotypes that disproportionately punish girls and women.

Angela Abizera. Credit: ECW

Angela Abizera, 23, Malawi

Angela Abizera is a girls’ rights and education activist from Malawi. She is a mentor in the Child Parliament, a poet, and a Global #Youth4EiE Panel Member – representing Malawi. Angela is originally from Rwanda but was raised in the Dzaleka Refugee Camp in Malawi. She has lived there for over 16 years and managed to complete her education at the camp. Since completing her schooling, she has been engaged in community work because she believes in giving back. Through these service efforts across different platforms, she has been able to advocate on various issues concerning the rights of children and young people, particularly girls.

ECW: According to new global estimates, 222 million crisis-affected children and adolescents are in need of education support, up from 75 million in 2016. How can we help these 222 million children realize their dreams of an education?

Angela: Education is a basic need and right of every child in the world. There is an urgent need to allocate more funds for education in emergencies and protracted crises (EiEPC). During crises, education is not prioritized – though it is often affected and disrupted. ECW’s #222MillionDreams campaign is a call to action: we must all do our part, including donors, to help these crisis-affected children and youth continue their education. As a young leader, I call on world leaders to urgently consider EiEPC and support ECW’s global campaign to help realize the dreams of millions of vulnerable girls and boys! We must work to establish coordination structures in education to immediately address challenges faced during and after emergencies, ensuring that learning does not stop. Additionally, we should ensure that safe, protective spaces are inclusive and provide support to all – especially those most vulnerable and affected, such as children living with disabilities, teen mothers who fail to go back to school due to stigma, and other minority groups. There is also a need to review laws that affect refugee children who, at times, face restrictions in their countries of asylum that can shatter their hopes of continuing their education. Such policies must be revised, and the needs of young refugees must be prioritized in EiEPC budgeting.

ECW: In Malawi and across Africa, the climate crisis has had severe impacts on education, public health, nutrition, protection and beyond. How can we connect education action with climate action to build a better world?

Angela: We cannot deny the fact that climate change is continuously affecting the world and disrupting education systems. Recently, Malawi was affected by Cyclone Ana which damaged a lot of infrastructure – causing people to flee their homes and shelter in classrooms, temporarily disrupting classes. Climate change should be integrated into the school syllabus because we need young people to be aware of the climate and environment around them. This would help sensitize and teach preparatory skills that they can use during emergencies. Learning about climate change and how to combat it empowers young people to make informed decisions and take action. Additionally, introducing disaster risk reduction clubs in schools can help build the capacity of innovative/creative youth, encouraging them to explore new skills to help spread this crucial information beyond the school to help foster more responsible communities. Lastly, governments should consider building resilient structures that can withstand any calamities.

ECW: You are a poet. Have you written anything about the power of an education? Could you share it with us?

LISTEN by Angela Abizera

(excerpts from her poem below)

Listen!

Don’t just listen but act!

As we speak we lose what we lose, but we spread the fact

Do what you intend to do but make sure you keep me intact,

with education

Listen,

With education

I am not just a girl child

I am a woman with a voice

A voice that speaks, a need that seeks

I am the world’s empowerment,

The world’s champion of change!

Listen,

I don’t want

These pauses in between

The disruptions over and over

I want my education not to cease

Transforming the world to goodness

We are the equality of highest quality

We are exclusively inclusive

We are Education!

Jean-Paul Saif. Credit: ECW

Jean-Paul Saif, 23, Lebanon

Jean-Paul Saif is an electronics student, entrepreneur, and Global #Youth4EiE Panel Member, representing Lebanon. Jean-Paul was born and currently lives in Zahle, Lebanon, where he has set up a plastic recycling factory. He is a leader in the Scouts movement, where he supports young people to share his love of hiking and camping. He is also a stand-up comedian and theater actor.

ECW: What does education mean to you? And how can we help realize #222MillionDreams for the millions of crisis-impacted children and adolescents who need educational support?

Jean-Paul: Education means everything to me because education is the start of everything. Your journey of learning begins at school, goes through university, and also continues outside of these places – at work, with family, and within your daily life. Education is important because it empowers you and it sets you up for success in life. Without a proper education, you cannot get a proper job or adequate salary. We can help achieve the aim of ECW’s #222MillionDreams campaign by raising awareness and lobbying on the importance of donor funding for education in emergencies and protracted crises with governments and global leaders. We must advocate for governments to prioritize education planning and funding in their aid programs. In crisis-affected countries, we should build schools in remote, hard-to-access areas where they’re currently unavailable. I also believe in continuing our push for peace and to end wars and attacks on schools that happen during conflict. Finally, in countries that are more prone to natural disasters such as earthquakes, we should support the creation of stronger infrastructure.

ECW: Lebanon has faced several shocks over the past decade, including the refugee influx from Syria, the 2020 Beirut port blast, the economic crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic. How can education help us build back better?

Jean-Paul: I believe the most impactful starting point is to adapt and include civic education and active citizenship courses in schools that are free from religious and political affiliation – and support students to learn about active citizenship and not blindly follow leaders from a young age. Additionally, orienting students to the right professions early on, including ones that will be needed in the future, to create a new wave of graduates equipped with the skills necessary for the next generation would help support building back better in Lebanon. Finally, opening and expanding educational opportunities, such as trainings in social media, would also support entrepreneurship and job creation in the country.

ECW: How can we activate science, technology, engineering, and math studies for girls and boys in crisis-impacted contexts like Lebanon, Syria, and beyond to activate social entrepreneurship and provide a pathway out of poverty?

Jean-Paul: Teaching kids about the newest technology can help them improve their knowledge about what the world is going through as almost everything is becoming digital. Children will have access to the largest field of opportunities to choose from and to learn by using the internet. For example, there are various websites that teach about coding and creating different kinds of artificial intelligence. Through these websites and online resources, children can start by learning things like building small devices and, in the long term, develop skills to help companies with larger projects.
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Today marks International Youth Day, a global celebration of the transformative power of young people. Introduced by the United Nations General Assembly in 1999, the event was inaugurated not only to observe the power of the youth voice, but to serve as a promise from those in power to activate the power of youth across the development sector.

Yasmine Sherif

In 2021, Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the United Nations global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, took a further, concrete step to democratically include youth in its governance structure and decision-making processes. Scores of youth-led NGOs applied to join a newly created youth constituency, and after only a few weeks, the sub-group had become one of the largest, most active, and most diverse constituencies within the fund.

On the Executive Committee and High-Level Steering Group of ECW, young people were represented for the first time alongside government ministers, heads of UN agencies and civil society organizations, and private sector leaders — a refreshing example of intergenerational collaboration at the highest levels of humanitarian aid.

Another significant step in the race for youth inclusion occurred when ECW partnered with Plan International to support a group of youth activists through the ‘Youth for Education in Emergencies Project,’ a campaign by youth panelists aiming to demonstrate the value of youth participation.

As ECW builds momentum towards its High-Level Financing Conference in February 2023 with the #222MillionDreams Campaign, we call on strategic partners to include the youth voice as we come together to mobilize funding resources for the 222 Million crisis-impacted children and adolescents worldwide that require urgent educational support.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of exceptional young people ready to lead the charge. The Global Student Forum, for example, has brought together more than one hundred national student unions, composed of millions of youth activists, and successfully lobbied governments around the world with its democratic force.

H.D. Wright

Aid organizations and professionals have changed the lives of countless young people around the world. By including them, aid organizations can tap into their extraordinary resilience and strength, and actually learn from them. Using their reach on social media, young people excel at spreading awareness and engagement around the world. Just as unknown singers become famous because of the young people who promote them, previously unknown issues have reached national prominence overnight and created substantive change.

With regard to fundraising, each young person is surrounded by a community, offering a network ready to lend a hand. In terms of policy, young people affected by crises can identify their needs with an ease unmatched by any humanitarian policy professional, for they are experts in their own lives, challenges and opportunities. Young people are intelligent and capable of shaping their own futures. They have an idealism and a courage that the world so desperately needs today. Their unflinching optimism, powerful energy, and uncompromising commitment to change will ensure that those futures are not only safe, but better than the present they inherited.

ECW can attest to the enlightening and inspiring vitality of young people. Since its creation, the youth constituency has worked energetically on behalf of this breakthrough global fund, providing valuable input and guidance on multi-year programs and first emergency responses in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Haiti, Iraq and Mali. When schools shut down due to the pandemic, the youth constituency persisted, working together to inform aid programmes dispersed across crisis-affected countries.

The youth constituency even responded in real time to developing crises, including the earthquake in Haiti, the deteriorating crisis in Afghanistan, and most recently, the war in Ukraine. Their contributions played a role in meaningful projects: since its inception in 2016, ECW’s programs have reached over 5 million children and adolescents, providing them with quality support, including educational materials, school meals, mental health programs, and other basic necessities.

On this day, it is important to observe the power of young people, and the impactful work that aid organizations have conducted across the sector. Yet celebration and transformation must go hand in hand, ensuring that next year, when International Youth Day returns, we are one step closer to fulfilling its original promise to unleash the power of the youth.

Yasmine Sherif is the Director of Education Cannot Wait. H.D. Wright is Youth Representative at Education Cannot Wait

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Elena Seungeun Lee, Cheongshim International Academy, Seoul, South Korea Founder of “We Learn to Share”, introducing my YouTube channel and several screenshots from my videos sharing knowledge about AP Statistics, AP world history, and philosophy. Credit: Elena Seungeun Lee/IPS

By Elena Seungeun Lee and Julie Hyunsung Lee
Seoul, Bangkok , Jun 28 2022 (IPS)

Parasite, a Korean black comedy film directed by Bong Joon-ho, shows the story of a poor family who infiltrated the household of an affluent family by getting employment by pretending to be highly qualified persons.

Their lifestyles, everything from household work to the children’s educational opportunities, are in sharp contrast. For example, a highly paid tutor educates the wealthy family’s children, Ki-Woo and Ki-Jung.

This movie shows the unspoken and uncomfortable truth: There IS a social class divided by the level of education and wealth.

Someone from a wealthy and upper-class family will continue to be more successful than those from poor family backgrounds. Inheritance of parents’ socioeconomic status by their children seems to be rising and persistent in today’s world.

Surprisingly, Parasite is much more than a mere film – it’s a reality.

It took a 17-year-old girl living in Daechi-dong in Gangnam-gu, an area notorious for ‘education fever’ in Seoul, South Korea, to recognize the rampant inequality in my society.

The housing prices near so-called ‘elite academies’ skyrocketed, and places in the most prestigious universities in Korea were taken by students from Daechi-dong. This area is the mecca for private educational academies or hagwon. Apart from highly reputable schools, the site also has the city’s best infrastructure, cultural amenities, and vibrant real estate.

This is what many Koreans encounter and experience every day. But they stay mute about this social phenomenon. Parents and students are busy fighting a war in which they are stepping all over their friends and ultimately dreaming of winning admission to a prestigious university.

This story is from South Korea, a relatively developed country. Indeed, people are lost in the labyrinth society has created in which so many people are pushed to be like Ki-Woo and Ki-Jung in the movie, Parasite.

Education today fails to fulfill its initial purpose: To educate all individuals on the basic knowledge necessary for life and to serve the role of a great equalizer.

In a society with equal opportunity, every student shall be at least given a chance to change their social status. Discriminating or restricting students’ right to education is like taking away their opportunity for empowerment and development. Something needs to be done.

This is why I made my YouTube channel “We Learn to Share”. My overarching goal was to bridge the inequalities in the education sector by providing students with educational videos without time, place, and border constraints.

Introducing myself as ‘Elena’, I shared my knowledge of Spanish and Korean languages and cultures, hoping to bridge the education gap.

I never thought that I could play a role in fighting educational inequality – which seemed like an undefeatable Goliath. But no matter how challenging it is, I continue to trust my gut and never lose courage.

Passion, courage, and perseverance. These are the credos I use to get motivated to connect myself to and sympathize with students on the other side. But I can’t do this alone.

From 2022, I’ve decided to recruit teenagers worldwide who are eager to dedicate their time and effort to solving rampant educational inequalities.

Julie Hyunsung Lee on “We Learn to Share”, a YouTube channel dedicated to providing students free access to educational content and lessons to attempt to decrease educational inequalities worldwide. Credit: Julie Hyunsung Lee/IPS

So, it changed from “Elena learns to share” to “We learn to share”. Recruiting students from four different countries and 13 different schools – including the co-author of this article Julie Hyunsung Lee, We Learn to Share is now making and sharing videos of a myriad of subjects.

Our subscribers are from more than ten countries, leave comments, and send us emails thanking us and appreciating our videos.

There is something you can do as well!

The fourth of the 17 sustainable development goals set by the UN is quality education, to “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”.

To achieve this goal, I would like to call upon the youth to join us to bridge the educational gap. In today’s society, the youth is crucial for deriving change because we have passion, courage, and perseverance.

Think about it! The youth educate the youth!

We share our knowledge with the youth around the world. And by doing so, we take this matter into our hands and bridge the educational gap ourselves. Through this effort, we may be able to bring a collective action from which we hope to influence government policies regarding equality in education.

I want all the youth to be aware of this social phenomenon and believe that they can make a difference.

On my YouTube channel, we love what we do and how we can contribute to resolving educational inequalities in our society. I believe in the power of youth to bridge the academic gap and provide equal opportunities to learn for all.

Would you like to join us and share your funds of knowledge with the world?

Please find the YouTube channel here https://www.youtube.com/c/WeLearntoShare and you can contact the authors here (welearntoshare1@gmail.com) or fill out the application form on our website (https://www.welearntoshare.com/en/contact-8)

Elena Seungeun Lee (team leader) and Julie Hyunsung Lee are high school learners living in Asia. They participated in a joint APDA, and IPS training on developing opinion content. Hanna Yoon led the course and edited the opinion content.

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Souta Oshiro, Seoul, Korea. “This is a meme that I created. It is about donating foods that you overbought to food banks. I tried to make it funny and effective.” Credit: Souta Oshiro

By Sungjoon Ham, Souta Oshiro and Alex Yoon
Seoul, Tokyo, Boston, Jun 13 2022 (IPS)

Johnny, living in the United States (US), goes to his school and gets free breakfast and lunch there. There may not be enough food for dinner at home. But he knows that he can get fed at school. Sadly, however, after the pandemic, schools were closed, which meant no breakfast and no lunch for him.

Living in the United Kingdom (UK), Peter faces the same problem. He is lucky because he has a caring teacher who painstakingly walks five kilometers every day to deliver his meals. But not everyone is as lucky as Peter.

Farmers produce about 4 billion tons of food globally, but 1.3 billion tons (about one-third) are wasted and lost. Can you imagine how much that is? 100 kg of food loss and waste for every person on the planet!

Are you surprised?

Did you think that the issue of hunger concerns children in developing nations only during COVID-19?

Hunger now extends to countries like the UK, South Korea, Japan, and the US.

In other words, especially during the pandemic, hunger is not their problem but OUR problem.

Therefore, the urgency in solving this issue has become more apparent to those living in developed countries. We hope to inspire a movement of change through our efforts and inspire others to fight hunger by stopping food loss and waste.

We have to ask a fundamental question: Why does Johnny have nothing to eat while Sam in the neighborhood has too much food to eat?

Extending this question to an international level, why are children in Somalia starving while children in the US have obesity problems for overeating? What causes such inequality? And what can we do about it? We know that it sounds like a daunting challenge. How can kids like us, young and inexperienced, make a difference in world hunger?

A contingent of adults thinks we have neither the experience nor the expertise to bring changes to the “real world”.

No one said stopping hunger would be easy, especially during this pandemic. But it’s necessary, and it’s worth it.

From our research, the solution to world hunger, especially during COVID-19, can be two-fold. Firstly, the redirection of excess foods towards those in need, and secondly, the ‘untact’ method.

Let us start with the redirection of excess foods. There is a saying: “Someone’s trash is someone else’s treasure.” In other words, the food that Sam wastes can feed Johnny’s entire family.

Let’s take it to a global level. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the food currently lost or wasted in America could feed 300 million people, and in Europe, 200 million people.

If food could be redistributed to people or nations in hunger before it is wasted or lost, we would end the hunger pandemic.

Indeed, many countries are running soup kitchens and making donations of food. But after the COVID-19, many countries closed their borders, banned social gatherings, and even eating-in facilities.

Furthermore, a survey from the Borgen Project revealed that half of the people surveyed had concerns about exposing themselves to the virus in these eating spaces.

So not only less economically developed countries (LEDC) but also more economically developed countries (MEDC) are facing a hunger pandemic due to COVID-19.

According to Feeding America, an estimated 42 million people, or one in eight Americans, faced food insecurity in 2021.

How can we solve this hunger crisis during the COVID pandemic? We are suggesting our second solution: using the ‘untact’ method.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, a new term, ‘untact’ (a combination of the prefix’ un’ and the word ‘contact’), has been floating around our society to indicate contactless movement in our daily affairs.

Can we somehow use the ‘untact’ method to redirect and redistribute foods before they are wasted or lost?

We find the answer in technology – in apps. For example, COPIA is an app created in the US to redistribute surplus food to feed the hungry.

This is how it works: Any restaurants, hotels, hospitals, cafeterias, and other businesses with food can use COPIA’s app to schedule pickups of their surplus food. Then a COPIA donation delivery driver picks up their excess food and delivers it safely to a local nonprofit recipient.

But COPIA’s job doesn’t stop there.

They track surplus trends for those donors so that they can reduce their food waste and loss.

Businesses can also get significant tax savings by using COPIA: For every $1 a company invests in food waste reduction, they can expect a $14 return on investment.

So, it is a win-win situation for all.

And this kind of ‘untact’ technology via an app is observed in other parts of the world: Wakeai app in Japan, Damogo in South Korea, Makan Rescue App in Singapore, Karma app in the EU and the UK, JustNow app in Africa, Flashfood app in Canada, Bring Me Home app in Australia and the list goes on.

We see this ‘untact’ technology as a possible solution that can reduce food loss and waste worldwide. We hope people try these apps and join our efforts to fight the hunger pandemic.

Besides the apps, there are practical solutions that we exercise in our daily lives as middle school students. We will share them here, hoping our actions can inspire others to do the same.

Alex Yoon inside the Stop and Shop, Massachusetts, USA. “I found these unwanted ugly fruits in this cart and decided to buy them to show that I am trying to reduce food waste instead of throwing them away. I blended them and made juice out of them.”

“When I go to a grocery store, I go for the unwanted ugly fruits because most people want to buy perfect-looking fruits only, and those ugly fruits end up in a trash can later because nobody wants them. I bring those ugly fruits home and make juice out of them. I find that they taste the same! So, I am holding up a sign in front of a fruit corner saying, ‘Aesthetics should not matter in produce selection!’, hoping to inspire people to buy all fruits regardless of their appearance,” says Alex Yoon.

Alex’s public campaign in the grocery store encourages many to follow suit by making mindful choices when choosing what to buy.

Souta Oshiro, Seoul (Raemian APT, Due Cose Hannam Branch, Shinsegae Department Store). “I am teaching food waste and loss to my friend. Some tips include buying food that has a shorter shelf time, eating everything on my plate, and planning for dinner to reduce food waste.”

Looking at Souta Oshiro’s efforts, we can see how beneficial food loss education can be on a personalized level.

“I run a private campaign with my friends. I go to their homes and educate them about food loss and waste issues in the world. In addition, when I go to a grocery store, I opt for foods that will expire soon and be wasted rather than freshly new products. When I come home with these foods, I feel so good because I saved them from going to a trash can,” Souta says.

“This feeling of satisfaction in preventing food from being wasted does not end here. As a household, when we purchase too much food during our weekly shopping, we choose to donate the extras to a food bank. This encourages us to not only be mindful during our shopping but also beyond the exit doors of the grocery store. The waste is not in landfills but in someone’s mouth. This simple redirection of excess foods means my family is relieved that our surplus will not end up in the trash.”

Sungjoon Ham, Seocho Middle School, Seoul, Korea: “I am holding up a large sign to passionately champion the increase of awareness on the severity of the hunger issue.”

Sungjoon Ham has chosen to participate in a public campaign in front of his school grounds so that his peers and teachers can be swayed to make mindful choices in their own lives. He aims to make students, who are hungry at lunchtime, think twice before piling up excess foods. These foods are not likely to be eaten because the students are too full. Furthermore, he hopes this can allow all those more fortunate to take a step back and reflect on being a part of the solution rather than the problem.

“During my campaign efforts, I hoped to increase awareness through my actions and artistic choices, which was why I decided to make my poster large with bold lettering. However, I did not want my efforts to end there. I hope that my actions can spread throughout social media with the help of my friends. Through inspiration from the Ice Bucket Challenge, I plan to upload this picture with the tag #NoFoodLoss. This process will allow many more people to join my campaign that will hopefully not end in Korea but spread worldwide,” says Sungjoon.

After looking at our efforts to end food loss and waste, we hope to encourage others to take part and spread awareness.

We agree that everyone should stop wasting food. However, this cannot be solved simply through a proclamation.

Therefore, we focused on compiling extensive research and explored the depths of this issue, which we found to be enjoyable.

Sadly, many people are not aware of hunger and food waste.

In conclusion, we hope that through reading this article, the depths of food waste and loss are understood and will encourage our audience to develop forward-thinking solutions for the betterment of our future.

Sungjoon Ham, Souta Oshiro, and Alex Yoon are middle school learners living in the USA and Asia. They participated in a joint APDA, and IPS training on developing opinion content. Hanna Yoon led the course and edited the opinion content. 

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Excerpt:

Delegates at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) summit debate the role of youth in narrowing the digital divide. Credit: ITU

By Juliet Morrison
Toronto, Jun 9 2022 (IPS)

“50 percent of the present, but 100 percent of the future,” was the refrain at the first-ever Generation Connect Global Youth Summit.

Held in Kigali, Rwanda, from June 2-4, the youth summit saw community activists, entrepreneurs, engineers, policymakers, and students from over 115 countries discuss the digital divide and youth engagement. Another 4,800 participants joined virtually from research centers, universities, and schools.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the UN agency on information and communication technologies, organized the summit. It served as a build-up to the ITU’s World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC), held two days after the conference, from June 6–16.

Participants at the summit emphasized the need for young people to be considered equal partners in decision-making, especially around problems concerning their future.

“We know that young people are going to be the most affected by problems like the climate crisis. That means that we must have a stake in what is decided and what is negotiated in these spaces,” climate activist Xiye Bastida said.

The discussion was also centered around bridging the digital divide. Like the later WTDC conference, the summit’s theme was “connecting the unconnected to achieve sustainable development.”

During the opening ceremony, Prime Minister of Rwanda Édouard Ngirente remarked upon the benefits of digital technologies being omnipresent in daily life. But the Prime Minister also noted that many were missing out on the advantages of technological innovation.

Globally more than 2.2 billion children and young people lack an internet connection at home. Of those, 350 million young people have never accessed the internet.

“The digital economy is growing rapidly, with almost every aspect of our lives moving online and massive economic opportunities being created. Opportunities ahead are indeed promising, but in order to fully tap into these opportunities, we must ensure that nobody is left behind,” he said.

Ngirente mentioned that the lack of uniform access to technology posed challenges for economic development and youth employment rates.

“The extent to which our economies can grow will depend on the ability to ensure equitable access to technology and upskilling and reskilling our populations, especially the young,” he said.

Currently, access to internet connectivity is inequitable. Accessibility depends on factors like income, demographic, and gender.

For example, only 15 percent of women and girls in the least developed countries use the internet, noted Heidi Schroderus-Fox, the UN Acting High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries, and Small Island Developing States.

“There’s a huge gap,” Schroderus-Fox said. “We need to make sure that the opportunities of the internet and the digital world are provided equally for everyone, women, girls, men, boys, everyone.”

Critical policy matters related to internet connectivity and technologies, such as cyber-safety, the future of work, and entrepreneurship, were also explored in summit sessions. The need for youth engagement to weigh in on these policy matters remained an essential thread throughout the event.

Twenty-six-year-old Emma Theofelus, the Namibian Deputy Minister of Information and Communication Technology, talked about how young people are best positioned to discuss regulations around online work and content creation due to their experience navigating online spaces.

“Policy should take center stage. But, beyond that, it is a policy that should be co-created by young people. We understand best the complexities and challenges of online platforms and the harms that can come with it,” she said.

The emphasis on youth engagement was central to the summit’s outcome document—the Generation Connect’s Call to Action. “Our Digital Future,” lists recommendations to foster better youth participation around decisions in governments, the UN, and the ITU for “a more inclusive, sustainable digital future.”

Situating the Call to Action, the Rwandan Minister of Youth Rosemary Mbabazi emphasized the document as a pivotal step for more digital inclusivity.

“The Call for Action embodies the call to the young minds, the global partners, the private sector, and the commitment to provide internet connectivity and make it accessible, available, and affordable through creating and enabling an environment as well as providing the prerequisite infrastructure for the young people to invent and innovate,” she said.

Although the Call to Action had been in the works since 2020 and had already undergone an extensive online consultation process, it was finalized during the summit. There, attendees reviewed the document and gave suggestions for improvement.

One suggestion was to refer to sexual minorities alongside gender minorities. Another was to swap the phrase “digital rights” for “human rights” to leverage the issue’s urgency for policymakers and use established language for international documents.

The Generation Connect Call to Action was to be presented to leaders at the WTDC.

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