Why Cities Are the Starting Point for Tackling the Global Cancer Crisis

Anyone whose life has been touched by cancer knows that care is highly complex. From first symptoms through diagnosis and treatment, patients may need multiple diagnostic tests, combinations of surgery, systemic therapy and radiotherapy, and input from several specialists, alongside support services such as financial counselling, psychological support and palliative care.

UN Peacebuilding Week: Military Expenditure Soars as Funding for Civilian Protection and Prevention Collapses

From June 22 to 26, the United Nations (UN) commemorated its first annual Peacebuilding Week, marking the 20th anniversary of the UN Peacebuilding Commission’s inaugural session. Featuring discussions among world leaders, policymakers, civil society, and advocates, the event explored how collaboration among governments, international organizations, and the private sector can enhance the visibility and effectiveness of peacebuilding efforts worldwide.

Agency Cannot Be Decreed

India's new education policy asks a great deal of its teachers. The National Education Policy of 2020 and its NISHTHA (National Initiative for School Heads' and Teachers' Holistic Advancement) training scheme, want teachers to be more than deliverers of syllabus. They are to be empowered professionals, agents of change who shape the future of children and, the policy says, of the nation itself. It is a generous and welcome ambition.

Tunisia: Civil Society Criminalised

In May, Tunisian lawyer and journalist Sonia Dahmani was handed her second conviction of the year. Her latest sentence, a two-year jail term, came in reaction to her criticism of poor prison conditions. She previously received an 18-month sentence for calling out the government’s anti-migrant policies. Dahmani faces five more charges under a 2022 cybercrime law that criminalises the spreading of what it calls ‘false information’.

War, Heatwaves and Energy Shocks Fuel Push for Clean Energy

The 30 COP gatherings may not have done what three months of US-Israeli war against Iran did: expose the world's vulnerability to fossil fuels.

From Nets to Numbers: How Kenya’s Small-Scale Fishers Use Data to Save Their Ocean

As the afternoon sun casts a golden glow over Mukwiro village on Wasini Island on Kenya’s Indian Ocean South Coast, Mwanasiti Mwalola, 26 and Mzungu Mohammed Dhossa, 45, stand at the community fish landing site, carefully receiving baskets of freshly caught fish from returning fishers. A weighing scale hangs before them, with a pen and notebook in their hands; the two have one duty: to collect data on the stock being delivered by artisanal fishers.

From Rotten Tomatoes to AI: Ugandan Commonwealth Youth Award Winner Takes Aim at Hunger Across Africa

Before anyone called her an innovator, before artificial intelligence entered the conversation, before solar-powered cold rooms, before the language of sustainable development, Shifra Ainomugisha knew food loss in its painful form.

In West Africa’s Benin, Women Make Centuries-Old Salt Production Methods Sustainable

It is barely noon, and a group of women sit near the beach on the outskirts of Djégbadji village, in West Africa’s Benin, sifting through mounds of salt harvested from the Gulf of Guinea’s ocean.

New GEF Project Raises Hope for Change in India’s Indigenous Lake Community

At dawn, when the waters of Dumboor Lake lie still under a pale grey sky, Santo Chakma, 63, nudges his narrow wooden boat into a reservoir that swallowed his childhood.

Armed Conflict, Funding Cuts and Supply Chain Pressures Deepen Global Hunger Risks

Armed conflict, economic shocks, and climate pressures are driving worsening food insecurity across many of the world's most vulnerable regions, according to the latest Hunger Hotspots report outlook for June-November 2026, jointly released by the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Dwindling Humanitarian Aid Devastates the Rohingyas in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp

Nearly nine years after the violent persecution of the Rohingya minority population in Myanmar and the following mass exodus of refugees, over 1.2 million Rohingya currently reside in neighbouring Bangladesh, where they face immense challenges. With the United Nations (UN) recording significant shortfalls in global humanitarian funding, alongside Bangladesh’s diminishing ability to support these populations, experts warn of a deepening humanitarian crisis.

‘We Came for Action, Not Promises’: Developing Nations Voice Frustration as Bonn Talks Conclude

The United Nations June Climate Meetings (SB64) ended in Bonn with sharp disagreements between developed and developing countries over climate finance, adaptation support and emissions reductions, leaving negotiators with significant unresolved issues ahead of the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, Türkiye.

How AgricTech Cuts Labour for Zimbabwe’s Female Farmers

Long burdened by the labour-intensive nature of agriculture, Zimbabwe's female farmers are finding relief in new agritechnologies that significantly reduce the time they spend in the field.

In Sikkim, Snow Leopards and Communities Share the High Mountains

The tea arrives before the conversation starts. Jayanta Mukhia sets two cups on the wooden table and pulls up a chair across from the couple who arrived that afternoon with trekking poles and rucksacks. They have come to walk the Goechala trail into the heart of Khangchendzonga National Park in India. They will leave in two days. Before they go, she has something to tell them.

Africa Needs a Radical Plan to Tackle 15M Youth Job Crisis

Africa has no problem with ideas, but the struggle is in how to  implement them, leaders said at an inaugural forum convened to promote action on development.

Papua New Guinea Bets on Indigenous Communities to Protect 700,000 Hectares of Highlands

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) has approved USD 6.4 million for a new conservation initiative in Papua New Guinea that seeks to protect 700,000 hectares of critical highland ecosystems by placing Indigenous Peoples and local communities at the centre of conserving and managing their ancestral lands.

Fossil Fuel Wealth Fails to Deliver Development in Africa – Report

A new report examining the economic impact of oil and gas production in Africa has found that fossil fuels have failed to deliver sustained or inclusive economic development, observing that the resources have contributed to economic vulnerability and inequality and have constrained growth through prohibitive commodity prices, inflation, and weak local currencies.

Central Asia Bets on a New Water–Land Pact to Survive Environmental Degradation

As ministers, diplomats and development officials assembled in Samarkand Congress Centre for a ceremonial family photograph, the mood carried unusual symbolism. Behind the smiles and formalities stood a region confronting a harder reality: rivers are shrinking, soils are tiring, temperatures are rising, and the old ways of managing land and water are no longer working.

UN Urgently Calls for Increased Aid in Yemen Following IPC Warnings of Food Insecurity

In Yemen, increasing funding constraints on humanitarian operations have put millions of civilians in dire need of life-saving assistance amid overlapping crises. Acute food insecurity is a persistent issue, as recent reports from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) give a stark warning of conditions without urgent intervention.

Trump Administration Weaponises Sanctions Against Human Rights

For a few days in May, Francesca Albanese could live more easily. On 13 May, a US federal judge ruled that sanctions the Trump administration imposed on her violated her right to free expression. The government was forced to remove the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories from its sanctions list. But the reprieve lasted barely a week. On 27 May, after an appeals court suspended the ruling, the US Treasury restored sanctions.