UN Secretary-General António Guterres visiting a shelter hosting displaced people from areas affected by the ongoing conflict in the Dekwaneh area of Beirut during his visit to Lebanon in March 2026. Credit: UN Photo/Haider Fahs

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 9 2026 (IPS)

On April 8, Israeli military forces launched the deadliest series of airstrikes on Lebanon since hostilities escalated in early March, resulting in the deaths of at least 254 civilians. This latest incident threatens to further complicate humanitarian efforts in Lebanon that are already under immense pressure.

This latest escalation occurred just as a two-week ceasefire deal between the United States and Iran was announced the night prior on April 7, more than a month after the United States, Iran and Israel began engaging in military strikes against each other, which also led to Arab States in the Gulf getting caught in the crossfire. The parties targeted military bases and civilian infrastructure in Iran and Gulf states allied with the United States. Israeli and Lebanese armed forces exchanged fire across borders, which has resulted in a new wave of civilian casualties and mass displacement in a continuation of the conflict between the Israeli military and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Israeli strikes on Lebanon have resulted in nearly 1,530 deaths since March 2, including more than 100 women and 130 children.

While the temporary ceasefire was welcomed, including by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, questions were raised about where it extended, even among major players in the negotiation process. Iran and Pakistan, a mediator in the peace negotiations, have stated that the deal includes Lebanon. Meanwhile, Israeli leadership initially claimed that the ceasefire did not include Lebanon and that the airstrikes specifically targeted Hezbollah-owned strongholds. Wednesday’s airstrikes targeted residential and commercial neighborhoods in Beirut, the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon.

Humanitarian actors expressed concern and alarm over the airstrikes and urged the parties involved to consider the safety and dignity of civilians in Lebanon.  The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was “outraged” by the “devastating death and destruction” in Lebanon.

Displaced families at a makeshift shelter in a parking lot in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. Credit: WFP Arete/Ali Yunes

Oxfam International Executive Director Amitabh Behar welcomed the news of a ceasefire but said in a statement that until there was an end to the hostilities across the entire region, “no one will feel truly safe.”

“This pause must become a stepping stone for wider peace,” Behar said.

The war in Iran and the Middle East has put greater strain on humanitarian aid workers on the ground, including UN agencies.

Imran Riza, the UN resident and humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon, explained that even before the latest escalation, the UN and its partners were aiming to support 1.5 million vulnerable people and that they have been forced to scale up their response with fewer resources than in previous years.

Less than a third of the emergency flash appeal for USD 308 million has been funded as of now. Yet despite these challenges, the UN and its partners have been able to provide more than four million meals and distribute more than 130,000 blankets and 105,000 mattresses to shelters. Multi-purpose cash assistance has also been provided to households as well.

Briefing reporters virtually from Beirut mere hours after the airstrikes, Riza commented on how civilians reacted to the news of a ceasefire.

“This morning, many people across Lebanon were cautiously optimistic about returning home—some even began to move. The events of the past hours, however, are likely to have triggered further displacement,” said Riza.

Also briefing from Lebanon was UNFPA Arab Regional Director Laila Baker, who described how the city of Beirut slowed to a standstill in the wake of the airstrikes. Cars are lining the streets while tents spread across the city as families seek shelter, she noted. She warned that the initial sense of unity that the Lebanese government and its partners had been working towards was now under threat due to the month-long “devastating aggression” from military forces.

“The risk is not only humanitarian collapse but also renewed fragmentation at a time when unity is most needed,” said Baker.

Displacement is already at an “unprecedented scale”, Riza said, as more than 1.1 million people—or one in five people in Lebanon—are internally displaced. More than 138,000 civilians, of which a third are children, are sheltering in 678 collective sites. The majority are dispersed across informal settings and host communities, which Riza noted leaves them with limited access to basic services. Overcrowding in shelters and limited sanitation services will likely lead to increased health risks.

The health system has also been overwhelmed and “under severe pressure.” Many facilities have been forced to close or have been damaged. Riza reported at least 106 attacks on healthcare, which have resulted in more than 50 deaths and 158 injuries among health workers.

Women and children are particularly vulnerable in this situation. Baker estimates that at least 620,000 women and girls have experienced displacement. Among them are at least 13,500 pregnant women who have been cut from essential maternal health services. At least 200 pregnant women will be delivering babies without essential support from midwives or nurses or with access to maternal and neonatal healthcare.

More than 52 primary healthcare facilities are no longer facilities and are forced to close. Among the six hospitals forced to close, five of them had maternity wards.

“These are not just statistics. They are grave violations of international humanitarian law – direct assaults on life, health, and dignity,” said Baker. “This is not only a humanitarian crisis – it is a crisis of humanity. It is a crisis of trust in the international system and in the principles meant to protect civilians.”

The UN and other humanitarian agencies urge for a permanent end to the fighting and call for international law to be upheld by all parties. Under the ceasefire agreement, all parties are urged to pursue diplomatic dialogue and work toward a long-term solution to the war.

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Artisanal miners work at a mercury-free processing site in Bushiangala, Ikolomani, Kakamega County, Kenya. Credit: Chemtai Kirui/IPS

By Chemtai Kirui
KAKAMEGA, Kenya, Apr 1 2026 (IPS)

They call this land Bushiangala. Gold has been mined here for nearly a century. In 1931, colonial prospectors arrived after traces were found in the nearby Yala River, setting off a rush that changed this quiet corner of western Kenya.

Colonial authorities quickly took control of the boom, introducing mining laws that restricted access, while companies like Rosterman Gold Mines dominated production, employing local labour even as profits flowed out of the region. When industrial operations collapsed in the 1950s, they left behind something more enduring: an informal mining economy that never disappeared.

For more than 70 years, artisanal miners, known locally as ‘wachimba migodi’, have worked these deposits by hand, digging, crushing and washing ore using techniques passed down through generations. Mercury came much later.

Josephine Liabule Mkhobi grew up around the pits. She remembers watching older miners process gold with water and pans.

“Our parents never used mercury,” Mkhobi says. “This method started around 2008.”

Introduced as a faster alternative, mercury quickly took hold, speeding up gold extraction – but leaving behind contamination that has not disappeared.

Over time, water sources across the Lake Victoria region became increasingly unsafe, with mercury in some wells reaching up to ten times the World Health Organization’s guidelines.

The contamination now stretches across a gold-rich belt that includes Kakamega — home to Bushiangala — as well as Vihiga, Siaya, Busia, and Kisumu, reaching toward Migori near the Tanzanian border.

A 2026 study published in Environmental Health found that the water and slurry used in these mining pits contain concentrations of arsenic, chromium, and mercury up to 100 times higher than local surface waters. The researchers warned that miners – and children living nearby – are in direct, frequent contact with these toxic mixtures, which eventually drain into the broader Lake Victoria ecosystem.

Mercury’s Slow Poison

Gladys Akitsa, an artisanal gold miner, mixes mercury with gold-bearing concentrate at the Bushiangala mining site in Ikolomani, Kakamega County, Kenya. Credit: Chemtai Kirui/IPS

For the miners on the ground, these toxins are no longer a matter of abstract data.

Timothy Mukoshi, a miner, remembers a colleague who slowly began to lose his memory. The man would withdraw money from the bank and later forget where he had put it.

Like many miners here, he often burnt mercury-gold amalgam to separate the metal – a process that releases toxic vapours. After he died, Mukoshi says the cause was clear: a post-mortem found traces of mercury in his brain.

“Mercury is what you call a slow poison,” Mukoshi says.

For years, the risks associated with using mercury in mining went largely unrecognised. Now, Bushiangala is trying something different.

In the same processing sites where women crush ore and wash gold by hand, miners are forming cooperatives and introducing methods that can recover gold without the toxic metal.

Miners say the shift gathered momentum after training initiatives reached the area through the planetGOLD programme — a global initiative backed by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with country-level implementation in Kenya by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to reduce mercury use in artisanal and small-scale gold mining.

“The planetGOLD programme stands as our leading initiative to tackle mercury use in artisanal and small-scale gold mining. By helping countries identify, test, and scale up mining and processing techniques, we not only support improved gold recovery but also empower miners to transition away from mercury use,” says Anil Bruce Sookdeo, Chemicals and Waste Coordinator and Senior Environmental Specialist at the GEF.

“Our approach is comprehensive – we facilitate sector formalisation, broaden access to financing for technology upgrades, and connect miners to formal and more reliable gold supply chains. When cleaner technologies are economically viable, financing is accessible, and there’s a dependable market for their gold, miners are much more likely to adopt mercury-free methods,” Sookdeo added.

Bringing Artisanal Miners Out of the Shadows

Women miners gather at a gold processing site in Bushiangala, Ikolomani, Kakamega County, Kenya. Credit: Chemtai Kirui/IPS

The planetGOLD Kenya project, locally known as IMKA, is partnering with the Ministry of Mining and the Ministry of Environment to tackle the root cause of the mercury crisis: informality. By bringing miners out of the shadows and into legal cooperatives, the project aims to replace toxic shortcuts with formal, mercury-free systems.

“At first, many miners were afraid of joining cooperatives,” says Mkhobi, the chairlady of the Bushiangala Women’s Mining Cooperative. “They thought it meant losing their money or being forced into something they didn’t understand. But after they understood the benefits, more people started joining.”

Kakamega currently has 24 registered mining cooperatives spread across several gold-producing sub-counties. Small welfare groups were brought together into registered cooperatives, creating a structure through which miners could access training, equipment, and formal recognition under the Mining Act of 2016.

A Capful of Mercury Replaced by Mechanical Processing

Miners stand at the entrance of a shaft at the Bushiangala mining site in Ikolomani, Kakamega County, Kenya. Credit: Chemtai Kirui/IPS

An artisanal miner uses a sluice box to separate gold from crushed ore at the Bushiangala mining site in Ikolomani, Kakamega County, Kenya. Credit: Chemtai Kirui/IPS

Women process crushed gold ore at the Bushiangala mining site in Ikolomani, Kakamega county, Kenya. Credit: Chemtai Kirui/IPS

Mechanical processing systems are replacing mercury inside the cooperatives. Miners who once relied on a capful of mercury are now learning to master gravity concentrators and shaking tables – mechanical systems that use physical force, rather than toxic chemicals, to pull gold from the dust.

At Bushiangala, a mercury-free demonstration plant now serves as a training ground for miners to practise using the new system under supervision. Technical manuals that once existed only as engineering documents are being translated into practical steps that can be applied directly in the pits.

Training sessions are conducted by technical staff from the planetGOLD programme alongside regional mining officers and cooperative leaders, combining engineering guidance with the practical knowledge miners already bring from the pits.

Oversight of the site is handled through a Joint Implementation Committee that brings together national regulators, county governments and representatives from mining communities.

By providing land and routine supervision, county governments are gradually assuming greater responsibility for the sector — an arrangement designed to ensure the effort continues even after international partners step back.

Convine Omondi, the project’s chief technical adviser, said in a 2025 planetGOLD report that involving local authorities directly helps turn what began as a donor-supported initiative into something managed and sustained at the local level.

The training materials and tools being tested here are part of a wider effort under the planetGOLD programme to share lessons between countries. Experiences from Kenya are being documented and adapted for use in other artisanal mining regions, rather than copied wholesale.

As of early 2026, Kenya had identified six demonstration sites across Kakamega, Vihiga, Migori and Narok. Fencing and sheds have already been completed, and the sites are now entering the commissioning phase. Delivery of heavy equipment and full operation are expected later this year.

Even so, progress is gradual. A site is only considered fully operational once the machinery is installed, utilities such as water and electricity are reliable, and certified cooperatives are actively using the facilities.

“First we were sensitised about how hazardous mercury is,” says Mukoshi, who has worked the Kakamega gold fields since the late 1990s and now chairs the Kakamega Miners Cooperative Union. “People realised it is dangerous. Now many sites keep registers, and miners are also learning that when you mine, you must rehabilitate the land.”

Healing the Land, Working Together

This focus on healing the land has spread beyond Kakamega. In neighbouring Vihiga County, the shift toward environmental restoration is being led by women who see the forest’s health as inseparable from their own.

“The training also introduced environmental rehabilitation, encouraging miners to restore excavated land once extraction ends,” says Shebby Kendi, chair of the Elwunza Women Cooperative Society.

But for Mkhobi, the change is not only about soil or chemicals. It is also about bargaining power. By moving from scattered pits to organised cooperatives, miners are beginning to act collectively in a trade where individuals have little influence.

“Now through the training we are learning how to organise ourselves, keep records and work as cooperatives,” Mkhobi says. “When we come together, we have more strength in the market.”

In a region where gold prices are often dictated by middlemen, that collective strength is beginning to shift how miners negotiate.

Giving Women Voice

A woman at the Bushiangala artisanal gold mine in western Kenya, where mercury is commonly used in gold processing, raises health concerns among workers. March 23, 2026. Photograph: Chemtai Kirui/IPS

“When you are one woman with a gram of gold, you have no voice,” she says. “When there are a hundred of you with a kilo, the buyers have to listen.”

For Anthony Munanga, Kakamega’s county director for environment, natural resources and climate change, that “kilo” also represents something else: control. At a recent media engagement, he said that without organised cooperatives, the gold economy remains largely invisible to regulators.

“Without organisation, there is no way to ensure compliance,” Munanga says. His department is now mapping mining areas across the county, an effort aimed at moving miners out of scattered pits and into designated zones where licensing and environmental oversight become possible.

“This process allows miners to operate safely and legally,” he says.

Changing Face of Financial Support

But legal recognition requires more than a map. It requires financing — and the local banking system is still reluctant to lend to a sector long defined by risk.

Changing how gold is produced also means rethinking how the trade is financed. In Bushiangala, this is where the constraints begin to show.

The planetGOLD programme in Kenya was launched with relatively modest public funding, despite ambitions that stretch far beyond its initial budget. At its core is a USD 4.24 million grant from the Global Environment Facility, much of which has already been allocated.

The grant has largely supported technical assistance — including miner training, policy development and institutional systems designed to formalise the sector — rather than directly financing mining equipment.

Project documents estimate the programme could mobilise up to USD 26 million in additional financing from commercial lenders and private investors to support new processing plants and upgraded mining infrastructure.

In practice, that funding has been slow to materialise.

Although the project was backed by USD 16.6 million in co-financing from government and local partners, a 2023 mid-term review found that much of this support existed on paper as in-kind contributions rather than cash available for day-to-day operations. It also pointed to delays within government financial systems and the lack of a risk-sharing mechanism to draw in private lenders, factors that have slowed implementation on the ground.

A final evaluation due in 2026 is expected to assess how far the programme has managed to address these gaps and whether it can sustain its operations over the long term.

Several structural constraints help explain the shortfall.

A government moratorium on new mining licences between 2019 and 2023 froze formalisation during a critical phase of the project. Without licences, miners could not meet standard lending requirements, and commercial banks have been reluctant to lend to what remains a largely informal sector.

Even where discussions with lenders progress, approval processes within banks can take more than a year, often outlasting key phases of the programme.

The absence of a dedicated risk-sharing mechanism has also limited participation. Without a first-loss guarantee to absorb potential defaults, lenders had little incentive to finance investments in artisanal mining.

The COVID-19 pandemic slowed procurement and field operations, but programme assessments suggest that the deeper barriers were structural — particularly the shortage of licensed miners eligible for credit and the lack of financial instruments tailored to the sector.

As a result, the programme has made measurable progress in training miners and organising them into cooperatives, but access to capital remains constrained.

Harry Kimtai, principal secretary at Kenya’s Ministry of Mining, describes the sequencing as deliberate, arguing that formalisation must come first before significant private investment can enter the sector.

Lag Between Training and Implementation

Sharon Ambale, an artisanal gold miner, holds a gold-mercury amalgam at the Bushiangala mining site in Ikolomani, Kakamega county, Kenya. Credit: Chemtai Kirui/IPS

For those on the front lines, that “deliberate sequencing” feels like a race against their own health. Merab Khamonya, a 28-year-old mother who joined the Bushiangala cooperative in 2024, is one of those caught in the lag between training and implementation.

Though she has attended planetGOLD sessions and understands the neurotoxicity of the metal she handles, her reality remains unchanged. To support her family, she still submerges her bare hands in basins of ore and mercury—a necessity for survival.

“I feel things moving inside my eyes,” she says, describing a persistent, painful irritation. “I know it harms me. I even see traces of it on my clothes when I go home to cook for my children.”

For Khamonya, the promise of a mercury-free mechanical system is a lifeline that has yet to arrive. “We are ready for the shift,” she says, “but for now, we have no other way to clean the gold. We are just waiting for the machines.”

Benefits of Mercury-Free Mechanical Systems

The economics behind the shift are straightforward. Kenya’s 2022 National Action Plan on artisanal and small-scale gold mining estimates that traditional manual methods recover only about 20 per cent of the gold in the ore. By comparison, data from planetGOLD Kenya shows that mercury-free mechanical systems can recover up to 90 per cent—potentially increasing the amount of gold recovered from each load of ore.

Miners involved in the programme say they are cautiously optimistic. They understand the problems and the solutions needed and feel best placed to judge what works on the ground.

“We have seen the difference and learned about mercury-free alternatives,” Mukoshi says. “We are ready to make the shift.”

But the obstacles, he adds, are basic.

“For these sites to work, you need water and electricity. Many of them don’t have either.”

For Mukoshi, Mkhobi, Kendi, Khamonya and their colleagues, the work has shifted to practicalities – securing water and electricity, preparing sites, and waiting on machines. The early experiments are over; what remains is making the system function.

On most days, that means clearing land, assembling equipment and negotiating with miners who are still uncertain about abandoning the mercury methods they have relied on for years.

The change taking shape in Bushiangala is small for now — one processing site, one cooperative, a handful of machines. But the model is already drawing attention beyond Kakamega.

planetGOLD’s Global Reach

In various places in Africa, governments and development agencies are searching for ways to formalise artisanal gold mining without destroying the environments where it takes place. In the Congo Basin’s Cuvette Centrale, UNEP and the planetGOLD programme are supporting a USD 10.5 million initiative aimed at protecting one of the world’s largest tropical peatland systems from mining damage.

The region spans about 167,600 square kilometres of peatlands and stores an estimated 29 billion tonnes of carbon — roughly three years of global emissions. GEF project data suggests the effort is designed to keep gold production from driving damage in a peat swamp that is crucial to climate stability.

In Zimbabwe, a parallel programme has begun introducing mercury-free processing technologies across dozens of mining sites. The effort here is more centralised, tied to the state-run Fidelity Gold Refinery and legislative reforms under the Mines and Minerals Bill.

Kenya’s system, by contrast, relies on cooperative structures at mine sites with county-level oversight through Joint Implementation Committees (JICs) and national regulation under the Mining Act — a model the African Development Bank is using as a reference point, particularly its JIC structure, for scaling mercury-free artisanal mining across the continent.

Kenya’s Experience Now a Guideline For Africa, World Expansion

According to Ludovic Bernaudat, head of the chemicals and green chemistry unit at UNEP, Kenya’s experience is now being used to guide the next phase of the programme as it expands across Africa.

He describes the country as one of the original eight members now completing its first implementation cycle – a milestone for the global initiative.

“New countries in Africa have recently joined the programme, and through the global project, UNEP will make sure that connection is made with Kenya,” Bernaudat said.

He added that the Kenyan model will be featured at the 2026 planetGOLD Global Forum in Panama, where nations share technical expertise and compare approaches to ending mercury use.

Since its launch, planetGOLD has expanded from nine to 27 countries across Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

“This growth demonstrates both the scale of the challenge and the value of a programme that integrates environmental action with support for livelihoods, inclusion, and market transformation,” says Anil Bruce Sookdeo, from the GEF.

But the final proof will depend less on policy design than on whether miners themselves decide it works.

Chasing Thin Seams of Gold Safely

Back in Bushiangala, that test is only beginning.

Miners still arrive at the pits each morning as they always have, chasing thin seams of gold buried in the red earth. What is changing — slowly — is what happens after the ore reaches the surface.

If the new system holds, the mercury that once flowed through these streams may eventually disappear. And the miners here, in this corner of western Kenya, will find a way to keep working the land without the risks that have defined it for years.

Note: This feature is published with the support of the GEF. IPS is solely responsible for the editorial content, and it does not necessarily reflect the views of the GEF.

Inter Press Service (IPS) UN Bureau Report

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Máximo Torero, Chief Economist of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), briefs the Security Council meeting on Conflict-related food insecurity: Framing the global dialogue: addressing food insecurity as a driver of conflict and ensuring food security for sustainable peace. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 27 2026 (IPS)

The current conflict in Iran and the Middle East region threatens to disrupt the global energy and agri-food sectors, as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz affects oil and fertilizer exports for farmers during critical harvest seasons.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warns that if the war does not come to an immediate end, global markets could collapse from the high demands for oil and crops.

Within the next two weeks, global markets may be able to absorb the shocks brought on by the war thus far and could therefore minimize the risks of food insecurity, said FAO’s chief economist Máximo Torero.

“If this crisis continues for the next three to six months, then yes, it will have an impact not only on the food security sector; of course, energy will impact all other sectors and all other inputs that have been affected,” Torero said.

The Strait of Hormuz carries up to 30 percent of international trade fertilizers and up to 35 percent of global crude oil and natural gas. Premiums on the costs of these resources are increasing as the war continues in the region. Torero told reporters on Thursday that farmers face the “double choke” of higher prices on fertilizers and rising fuel prices, the latter of which is used by the value chain to produce the food available in markets. With limited supplies, farmers may be forced to adapt their crop cycle by reducing the amount of fertilizer or switch to crops that require less nitrogen fertilizer.

Credit: UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

Torero remarked that the immediate impact will be on the next season of crops, which will likely have fewer yields than before the war started. If the fighting concludes within a month, countries with higher reserves of fertilizers and fuels may mitigate shocks to the global markets. If the fighting lasts three months and the Strait of Hormuz stays closed, the shocks will be global and harder to manage. The consequences could include fewer yields from crops and more pressure on global exporters such as the United States, Brazil and Australia. As oil prices increase, this may encourage farmers to switch to biofuels to help meet the demands for crops. Yet such actions may also cause higher consumer prices.

When it comes to the war’s impact in the region, Torero reported that Iran was already dealing with high food prices before the fighting began, which it has only exacerbated. Meanwhile, for Gulf states such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, they are largely reliant on food imports and will face more challenges as there are no ships carrying imports through the channel.

Beyond the Middle East, FAO identified certain countries that will be impacted by fertilizer and fuel shortages, such as Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, which are currently in their respective rice harvest seasons, and sub-Saharan countries like Kenya and Somalia, which rely on 22 to 31 percent of fertilizer imports.

One area that will also be affected by the conflict is remittances. Migrant workers from South Asia and East Africa live and work in the Gulf states, including at airports and places of business that have been targeted by military strikes. Torero explained that if these workers cannot send money back to their households in their home countries, the resulting decline in remittance inflow will affect many countries where remittances make up a “significant share” of their GDP.

“There’s a significant amount of labor employment that comes from this region,” Torero said. “Now, if the airplanes are not flying… If the operations that used to flow through the airports are not happening, that will impact of course their economies, and that will impact all these temporary laborers that are working in those locations.”

The rich economies that attract migrant labor could be impacted, Torero said, and the workers whose families rely on remittances would also be severely affected.

While the war in the Persian Gulf continues to threaten the global energy, fertilizer and food markets, the international community is encouraged to take short- and long-term measures to mitigate the shock and protect vulnerable populations.

Torero and FAO recommended developing alternative trade routes to reduce dependence on the Strait of Hormuz. Vulnerable import-dependent countries, including low-income states, need support through emergency food aid, balance-of-payment support and targeted subsidies. Farmers should also be financed to maintain agricultural production and to prevent liquidity constraints.

Torero also recommended that states should diversify their import sources and promote regional coordination. He added that states need to build resilience in the future, which means investing in sustainable domestic agriculture and alternatives to fertilizers and preparing for structural market shifts that may result from prolonged instability.

“We need to treat food systems with the same strategic importance as energy and transport sectors and invest […] accordingly to minimize those shocks.”

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Kaveh Madani, Director of the UN University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health and lead author of the report entitled “Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era” briefs reporters at UN Headquarters. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Umar Manzoor Shah
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 25 2026 (IPS)

Professor Kaveh Madani of Iran has been named the 2026 Stockholm Water Prize laureate. The award will be formally presented by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden in August during World Water Week in Stockholm.

The Stockholm Water Prize is widely regarded as the highest global honour in water science and policy. Often called the Nobel Prize for water, it recognises individuals and institutions for exceptional contributions to the sustainable use and protection of water resources. This year’s selection stands out for both scientific impact and the extraordinary personal journey of the laureate.

At 44, Madani is the first Muslim and the youngest recipient in the prize’s 35 year history. He is also the first United Nations official and the first former politician to receive the award.

Madani currently serves as Director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health. Once a senior official in Iran’s government, he later faced arrest, interrogation, and a sustained smear campaign that forced him to leave his country.

Born in Tehran in 1981, Madani grew up in a family deeply connected to Iran’s water sector. His early exposure to the country’s mounting water challenges shaped his academic direction. He studied civil engineering at the University of Tabriz before moving to Sweden to pursue a master’s degree in water resources at Lund University. He later earned a PhD from the University of California, Davis, followed by postdoctoral research at the University of California, Riverside.

By his early 30s, Madani had established himself as a leading systems analyst. He joined Imperial College, London, where his work focused on the mathematical modelling of complex human water systems. His research combined hydrology, economics, and decision sciences to improve policymaking in water management.

In 2017, he made a decisive move. Leaving a prestigious academic career in London, he returned to Iran to serve as Deputy Vice President and Deputy Head of the Department of Environment. Many viewed his appointment as a signal of reform and a bridge between Iran and its scientific diaspora.

During his tenure, Madani pushed for transparency and structural reforms in water governance. He used innovative public campaigns to raise awareness about environmental degradation. However, his efforts challenged entrenched interests.

State-aligned media accused him of espionage and labelled him a “water terrorist” and “bioterrorist”. Conspiracy theories circulated, linking him to foreign intelligence agencies and even to alleged weather manipulation schemes. His advocacy for international environmental agreements further intensified opposition.

In early 2018, a broader crackdown on environmental experts began. Madani was detained and interrogated multiple times. Several of his colleagues were arrested. One of them, Kavous Seyed Emami, died in custody under contested circumstances.

Facing mounting pressure, Madani left Iran and entered a period of exile. He joined Yale University, where he continued his research and advocacy. He began to focus more on bridging science and policy at the global level.

Madani’s academic contributions have been widely recognised. He is known for integrating game theory into water resource management. His work challenged traditional models that assumed cooperation among stakeholders. He demonstrated that individual incentives often lead to uncooperative behaviour, which makes many engineering solutions ineffective in practice.

This approach provided new tools to understand conflicts over shared water resources. It has been applied to transboundary water disputes and to policy design in regions with limited trust among stakeholders.

One of his most influential contributions is “water bankruptcy.” He introduced the term to describe a condition where water systems can no longer recover to their historical levels. Unlike a crisis, which implies a temporary disruption, water bankruptcy signals a long-term structural failure.

In a recent United Nations report, Madani argued that the world entered an era of global water bankruptcy in January 2026. The report highlighted that many river basins and aquifers have lost their capacity to regenerate. This framing has sparked debate among policymakers and researchers.

Madani uses simple financial language to explain complex ecological realities. He argues that humanity is no longer living off renewable water flows but is depleting long-term reserves. This framing has made the concept widely accessible and influential.

Beyond academia, Madani has built a strong public presence. With a large following on social media, he has used digital platforms to communicate scientific findings in accessible ways. His work includes documentaries and public campaigns aimed at increasing awareness and accountability.

He has also played key roles in international diplomacy. As Iran’s lead environmental diplomat, he participated in global negotiations and served as Vice President of the UN Environment Assembly Bureau in 2017. At the COP23 climate conference in Bonn, he called for greater attention to water in global climate agreements.

Today, as head of the United Nations water think tank, he continues to advocate for integrating water into climate and development policies. He has particularly focused on the Global South, where water stress closely links with food insecurity, migration, and conflict.

The Stockholm Water Prize Committee cited his “unique combination of groundbreaking research, policy engagement, diplomacy, and global outreach, often under personal risk” in awarding him the 2026 prize.

In an exclusive interview with Inter Press Service, Madani recalled the intense pressure and fear that defined his final days in Iran. He described repeated interrogations, surveillance, and a growing sense that his work had placed him in direct confrontation with powerful institutions.

Here are edited excerpts from the interview: 

IPS: You introduced the idea of “water bankruptcy.” How does this change how governments must act today?

Madani: Water bankruptcy is defined as a post-crisis state of failure in which the system is suffering from insolvency, meaning that water use has been more than the available water for an extended period, and also irreversibility, meaning that there are some damages to the ecosystem and the machinery of water production that are irreversible and cannot be fixed.

What that means is that some of the things that used to be just anomalies and abnormal conditions are now the new normal, and we’re no longer experiencing only a temporary deviation from what we are used to, but we have a situation that we have to get used to. Crisis management is about mitigation.

Bankruptcy management is about mitigating what can still be mitigated and adapting to new realities with more restrictions. Bankruptcy management calls for an honest confession, the admission of a confession that a mistake has been made, and the current business model is not working, so it calls for honestly admitting to the mistakes made and transforming the business model, that calls for a fresh new start and a change of course.

It is bitter. Bankruptcy is not a pleasant condition but admitting to it helps us prevent further irreversible damages and enables a future that is less catastrophic.

IPS: You faced arrest, exile, and serious accusations in Iran. What kept you going during that period?

Professor Madani: Hope. Hope is what kept me going because I had gone back there to help and at least at the start, I was trying to take what was happening to me as part of the job and as part of the adventure because I was there to make a positive impact, and if I had given up too quickly, then that would not have matched my essential motivation to help.

I knew that it would not be a very smooth path, but it turned out to be much more bumpy than what I had anticipated, and I think many also, you know, those who made that situation bumpy for me, also regret that today, but by the time they realised mistakes were made, it was too late to do anything about it.

Can you recall your arrest and interrogation? What do you remember most from that experience, and how did it affect you personally?

I think arrests and interrogations are very frustrating, especially when you haven’t done anything wrong.

What kills you is constantly worrying about what others think of you and coming up with different scenarios and conspiracy theories. Dealing with conspiracy theories and proving them wrong is not easy. Those were very hard times for me, but as you know, my background is in behaviour analysis. I was trying to put myself in the shoes of those who were suspicious of me, understand their concerns, and address them so I could help my homeland.

IPS: Many countries still treat water stress as a temporary crisis. What are the biggest policy mistakes they continue to make?

Madani: Yes, crisis management is all about mitigation. Those who deny the crisis and enter the bankruptcy state continue to borrow more from nature, build more infrastructure, dig deeper wells, add additional reservoirs and storage capacity, implement more water transfer projects and build more, and construct more desalination plants. Continuing to add to their supply, on the other hand, they think things would be temporary, and through some sort of rationing, things would be solved, but the continuation of that behaviour and the denial of that reality makes the problem worse.

They get drained into a deepening problem, and again, like the financial world, if your business model is not working and you’re in denial, you continue taking more loans and your expenses and your debt become higher and higher. By the time that people realise that there is no way out of that chaos and that failure, the cost is much, much higher. Remaining in denial would result in major significant irreversible damages that generations would have to pay for.

IPS: You combined science with diplomacy and public outreach. Which of these has had the most real impact on decision-making?

Professor Madani: It’s very hard to really say which one has the most impact, because they’re very complementary. The science is very good, but it’s not enough for decision-making. You still have to understand what the real world looks like and how incentives shape behaviour and actions and how interests promote conflicts and cooperation to be able to act.

Science, of course, opens doors and puts more solutions on the table, but still, without understanding the politics or navigating through politics, it would not work. Diplomacy is another one when it comes to the international scale; even when it comes to negotiating with stakeholders, that’s a skill that would be extremely helpful. So, in a way, these are the things that you need.

And on top of these, public outreach educates you about perceptions, how people and societies understand problems, how they judge different situations, and how their emotions and their perceptions shape their beliefs, and that tells you what you need to do when it comes to communicating your science better, changing their opinion, impacting their opinion, and even negotiating with them or convincing them that things might be different or a different pathway is required. I think they all help you create a recipe for something that might work.

IPS: Your work focuses on human behaviour in water management. Why do technical solutions alone often fail?

Madani: A lot of times, technical solutions developed by our computer models or in our labs don’t take into account the full elements of reality. When humans are involved, we deal with different motives, incentives, emotions, and psychologies, and that makes – that creates – some essentially unexpected realities that might tweak things. Simply put, a lot of times when it comes to developing a solution for a water problem or an environmental solution or a sustainability solution, we think that everyone agrees to making short-term sacrifices for the sake of long-term resilience, but that is not the case in reality because different stakeholders, different groups, farmers, urban users, and industrial users also have short-term goals.

They maximise profit, make sure that the quality of life is not impacted, and so on, which makes them non-cooperative to an extent. And if you miss this reality, then you think that the solution, the optimal solution, is very practical and everyone would cooperate, but then you get very disappointed.

Yet, you can take that into account to the extent possible, try to understand the behavioural element and incorporate those into your assessment and projections to be able to align those incentives and motives with the long-term interest to offer a solution that is more attractive and win-win.

IPS: You now advise governments globally. What is the one urgent action every water-stressed country must take in the next five years?

Madani: I think that by now, countries must understand the importance of water as an essential resource for establishing peace, national security, justice, prosperity, and development. I mean, it supports human development, health, and long-term resilience in society. So, countries must not take it for granted and understand that technological solutions would not be sufficient to address shortages.

They must revisit their practices. They must do a proper accounting to understand what, what’s, and how water is currently being spent and if it’s strategic – strategically speaking, that is the right way of doing things when it comes to matters of national security and long-term resilience. Bankruptcy management starts with accounting and transparency.

That’s something that is missing in many water-stressed and non-water-stressed countries, and I think that’s something that we can focus on, put the lens of science on, and not be afraid of accounting and measuring and monitoring what is happening in the system because that knowledge is required if you want to make improvements.

IPS: Thank you very much for taking the time and speaking to IPS  and congratulations again for the well-deserved award.

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On 5 March, thousands of people, including many children, fled their homes in the south and the southern suburbs of Beirut, with many gathering in the streets or attempting to reach safer areas. Children are among the most affected as families face displacement, uncertainty and limited access to essential services. Credit: UNICEF Lebanon

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 13 2026 (IPS)

During a solidarity visit to Lebanon, the UN chief announced a flash appeal of USD 308.3 million to support humanitarian operations there in the wake of escalated fighting.

The humanitarian appeal is intended to reach the more than 816,000 people within Lebanon that have been displaced due to the most recent fighting in the Middle East region. Nearly two weeks since the United States, Israel and Iran engaged in a military offensive, this has brought about a new wave of displacement and civilian casualties impacting the entire region.

The appeal comes at a time of increased fighting between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that at least 634 people have been killed and more than 1500 have been injured since the start of the fighting on March 2. The number of displaced people is expected to rise as Israeli evacuation orders force people, including up to 300,000 children, to flee to safety. The fighting reached further escalation on Thursday, Israeli forces launched missiles parts of the southern suburbs and the Bashoura neighborhood in Beirut.

On Friday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres began a solidarity visit to Lebanon, coming straight from Ankara, Türkiye. He met with Lebanese leadership, including Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and President Joseph Aoun, to discuss the current situation. He has called for all parties to end the hostilities and for negotiations that would respect Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Guterres commended the work of UN agencies and humanitarian partners in delivering essential needs and to local communities supporting those impacted.

“These efforts are saving lives. But they need a big boost of support,” Guterres said on Friday. “The Flash Appeal we launch today will sustain and expand life‑saving assistance over the next three months – including food, clean water, health care, education, protection, and other vital services. Its success depends on swift, flexible funding – and on ensuring that humanitarian workers can safely reach those most in need.”

According to UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric, since March 12 the UN and its humanitarian partners have distributed 632,000 hot meals and 18,000 ready-to-eat meals, and have provided more than 2000 liters of bottled water and over 1700 cubic meters of clean water.

Additional funding from the UN system has also been mobilized to support Lebanon. Earlier this week, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher announced that USD 15 million would be mobilized from the Central Emergency Relief Fund (CERF), along with a reserve allocation from the Lebanon Humanitarian Fund.

Fletcher warned the UN Security Council that humanitarian workers’ ability to reach people was “tightening by the day”, as they must navigate within active conflict zones and key transport routes are blocked due to debris, making it more difficult to reach affected communities.

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On 3 March 2026, at a public school in Mount Lebanon, UNICEF team is on the ground providing emergency supplies including mattresses, blankets, water, hygiene, baby and dignity kits UNICEF and other UN humanitarian agencies have begun mobilizing aid and emergency supplies to families in Lebanon and across the Middle East region. Credit: UNICEF/Fouad Choufany

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 6 2026 (IPS)

As military fighting breaks out across the Middle East with increasing frequency and intensity, the United Nations promises to ramp up its humanitarian response on the ground.

Armed attacks have been ongoing since February 28 when the United States and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran, who retaliated with their own airstrikes on Israel and Arab Gulf states, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait. Since then, military strikes have continued between these states, and the fighting has only exacerbated tensions in neighboring states. In Lebanon, military skirmishes have broken out between the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and Hezbollah, which has led to a spike in internal displacements.

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), more than 330,000 people have been forcibly displaced in the last few days, mostly within their own countries. In Lebanon, nearly 84,000 people are seeking shelter in 400 collective sites. Within Iran, more than 1.6 million refugees, most from Afghanistan, have been forcibly displaced. Fighting along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan has led to the displacement of nearly 118,000 people in both countries.

These overlapping crises within one region marks what UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs called a “moment of great peril”, and an example of “increased linkages” between these humanitarian crises. Fletcher called for a de-escalation and an immediate end to the fighting, and for diplomatic dialogue and peaceful negotiation to resume, including between the parties involved.

Fletcher briefed reporters on Friday on the situation in the Middle East, announcing that the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is “fully mobilized” across the region, preparing humanitarian teams and supplies into the affected areas. They have begun distributing food, aid and shelter to thousands of affected civilians across the region.

UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher briefs reporters in New York on the situation in the Middle East. Credit: UN Web TV

Fletcher warned that as this war within the Middle East continued, there would be far-reaching consequences. “War doesn’t stay neatly within borders or on desktop military plans,” he said., referring to the impact on the global market and supply chains as the war disrupts access to commercial goods and energy sources. Of note, the Strait of Hormuz, a maritime corridor that borders Iran and a strategic route for oil and natural gas exports, has seen a near-total halt of traffic due to strikes in and around the channel, causing the global prices of gas and oil to surge. Fletcher warned that this will put greater strain on public services, food prices and even constrain humanitarian operations.

As humanitarian resources and global attention is drawn to the Middle East, Fletcher also raised concerns that this will divert attention away from other humanitarian crises in areas like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, South Sudan and Ukraine, among others.

Humanitarian actors are scaling their response to the countries affected by the conflicts, notably in Iran. Since February 28, there have been over 1000 reported instances of damage to civilian infrastructure, and close to 1600 people have been injured or killed in the airstrikes.

The military strikes already have reported children among the casualties thus far. In Iran, about 180 children have been killed in airstrikes while they were in school, according to UNICEF. In a statement issued on March 5, they warned that such casualties stand as a “stark reminder of the brutality of war and violence” on children that affects families and generations thereafter. In Lebanon, since the escalation of hostilities seven children have been killed and 38 have been injured.

The conflict has also complicated humanitarian operations and essential supply routes. Ongoing missile airstrikes in the region have disrupted airspace. As other sources have reported, this has forced many commercial flights to be postponed or canceled as some countries in the region have closed their airspace. For humanitarian operations, airspace closure and security restrictions have affected the movement of supplies and personnel. On this, Fletcher noted that OCHA has already pre-positioned supplies and identified alternate routes to send supplies through.

“Humanitarian action is always harder in times of war, but this is of course when it is most needed,” said Fletcher. “…The humanitarian movement will, once again, meet this moment. We’ll continue to serve those who need us.”

This most recent conflict already risks moving beyond the borders of the Middle East. Reports have emerged from Türkiye of an Iranian missile heading into Turkish airspace that was then destroyed by NATO forces, and Azerbaijan has accused Iranian drones of attacking an airport building in the exclave of Nakhchivan.

“It is critical that this conflict does not extend even further into new areas and into bringing new countries into this conflict,” UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said on Friday.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres posted on X (formerly Twitter) to warn the attacks in the Middle East are causing “tremendous suffering and harm to civilians throughout the region”, and that the situation “could spiral beyond anyone’s control”. “It is time to stop the fighting and get to serious diplomatic negotiations. The stakes could not be higher.”

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Luther Bois Anukur, Regional Director of IUCN ESARO, interviewed at the IUCN Regional Headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IP

By Isaiah Esipisu
NAIROBI, Mar 3 2026 (IPS)

As the global community marks 2026 World Wildlife Day today (March 3), this year’s focus is on Medicinal and Aromatic Plants: Conserving Health, Heritage and Livelihoods. However, beneath these celebrations, a difficult question emerges: who will bear the cost of conservation when traditional donor funding becomes uncertain and in the face of climate change?

With geopolitical shifts causing traditional funders to tighten their budgets, conservation across Africa has reached a critical juncture.

In an exclusive interview with Luther Bois Anukur, the Regional Director for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Eastern and Southern Africa, we explore how governments must now go further by creating space for community-led biodiversity conservation initiatives to evolve into sustainable enterprises. We discuss why protecting biodiversity matters as much as maintaining roads or power grids and why national budgets should consider it a priority.

IPS: With conservation donors tightening their budget, how serious is this funding shift for Africa, and what risks does it create for biodiversity protection?

Anukur: Overall, there has been a shrinking of financing for biodiversity conservation, especially with the closing of USAID, which was a big financier for biodiversity work in Africa. This came as a shock and certainly slowed down the work of biodiversity conservation in Africa because some organisations have gone under, and some projects have closed altogether.

However, having said that, there is a huge opportunity for Africa to relook at biodiversity financing models. Indeed, relying on donor funding is not the right way to finance biodiversity conservation. Biodiversity is not a charitable cause. It is actually part of the sovereign natural assets, and so we need to look at ways in which countries can link their economies to biodiversity conservation.

For example, you’ll find that what underpins our economies in Africa is fresh water, agriculture, tourism, and energy, and all these form the backbone of biodiversity conservation.

IPS: African communities often live with wildlife and bear the costs of conservation. How possibly can this be turned into community-led initiatives that can evolve into sustainable enterprises?

Anukur: First and foremost, people in Africa have lived alongside wildlife for many years. However, the cost of living with wildlife has been very high, because you find there’s crop loss, there’s loss of livestock, and even loss of lives. Yet, we have not seen benefits go to communities in a proportional manner.

To change this, there is certainly a need to rethink and redesign our conservation efforts so that communities can be right at the centre. We need to see benefits going to communities in an equitable manner that is commensurate to the services and the sacrifices they provide by living alongside wildlife.

We need to stop seeing communities as beneficiaries but as leaders of conservation efforts. And when we do that, then we will go a long way in conserving wildlife.

IPS: Why should finance ministries in Africa treat conservation as a core national investment rather than an environmental afterthought

Anukur: In many cases, ministers of finance look at risks, they look at assets, and they look at returns. That is what they usually understand. But very clearly, nature is Africa’s largest asset. And so investing in our environment basically means that we are supporting our water systems, our agriculture, our fisheries, and our ecosystems. That basically means that we are strengthening our economies.

The reverse is true. If we do not support that, we will face disasters. We are going to have a higher impact from climate change, and we are going to get into food imports. When you balance the books, investing in conservation makes sense, as it will ultimately affect national economies. So investing in natural assets will greatly support the GDPs of our countries and the livelihoods of our people.

IPS: Can you share examples of models that governments should be using to support protection of biodiversity as well as community-led conservation initiatives?

Anukur: There have been good examples in Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Kenya, among other countries, which have been able to demonstrate that community-led conservation can generate not only ecological recoveries but also economic returns.

But the key thing with these models is that you need to secure the land rights, make sure that there is accountable governance, and that revenue flows directly to communities. There is also a need to have partnerships with multi-stakeholders, especially the ethical private sector.

IPS: Tools like the IUCN Red List and Green List provide data on species and protected areas. How can governments better use these frameworks to move beyond reactive conservation decisions toward long-term, evidence-based policies?

Anukur: IUCN has got quite a number of tools; we have the red list of species, which basically looks at extinction risk, but we also have the green list, which looks at how effectively we manage our ecosystems. Governments have extensively used these tools as reference documents.

However, we would want to see these tools being used to build evidence for planning. This is because when you plan well, then you are able to avert risks. For instance, you need these tools to plan roads, infrastructure, agriculture, and mining.

IPS: Many African governments face pressure to expand infrastructure, agriculture, and extractive industries. What strategies can realistically balance economic development with ecosystem protection, especially for communities living closest to nature?

Anukur: There has been a big debate for a very long time about whether Africa should prioritise development or whether it should be conservation. But that debate is now very old. What we are focusing on is moving from extractive growth to generative growth. We also need to balance everything. For example, you can do agriculture but ensure that you have healthy soils. You can do energy transition in a manner that is not degrading to the environment. Or even create infrastructure that avoids critical ecosystems.

The most important thing is that there should be cross-sectoral collaboration. We have seen environmental and conservation issues treated as an afterthought. We would want the environment to be right at the centre of budget projections, as well; communities should also be brought to the centre for people to benefit from natural assets.

IPS: As we celebrate World Wildlife Day, what message would you give to African governments regarding the conservation of biodiversity?

Anukur: This time is an opportune moment when the world is changing. At the moment we have a lot of geopolitical change. We also do have a lot of geo-economic change. If Africa is to look at itself, the biggest asset is already what we have. The continent is viewed as poor, but the truth is that Africa is not poor. All we need is to connect with our natural assets and use them for development.

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UN Secretary-General António Guterres addresses the 426th meeting of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP). Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 11 2026 (IPS)

Since the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas in October of last year, humanitarian conditions in Gaza have notably improved — but aid agencies warn that progress is extremely fragile. Acute shortages of lifesaving medical care and psychosocial support persist, hunger remains widespread, with conditional cash assistance as the primary barrier preventing full-scale food insecurity, while Israeli attacks continue to undermine stability and humanitarian efforts.

Addressing the 2026 Opening Session of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres warned of the urgency of the current situation in Gaza.

“We enter 2026 with the clock ticking louder than ever. Will the year ahead bend towards peace–or slip into the abyss of despair?” Guterres said.

Guterres urged all parties to fully implement the ceasefire agreement, exercise maximum restraint, and comply with international law and UN resolutions, while calling for the rapid and unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid, particularly through the Rafah crossing, where aid personnel face the most severe restrictions. He also condemned the suspension of international NGOs, explaining that it “defies humanitarian principles, undermines fragile progress, and worsens the suffering of civilians,” adding that shelter, food, education materials, and other basic necessities must reach those in need.

In recent months, food security conditions in Gaza have shown notable, though uneven, improvement. Since the ceasefire went into effect, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have brought over 10,000 trucks of aid into Gaza, representing roughly 80 percent of all humanitarian cargo. With this, the enclave was able to narrowly avoid the onset of famine.

WFP’s deputy executive director Carl Skau noted that most families he met were “eating at least once a day”, with some even managing two meals. Commercial goods such as vegetables, fruit, chicken, and eggs have gradually returned to local markets, while the distribution of recreational kits has helped children cope with the psychological toll of over two years of conflict.

However, progress remains fragile. The latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) assessment estimates that approximately 77 percent of Gaza’s population continues to face crisis-level food insecurity (IPC Phase 3), with around 100,000 people facing catastrophic conditions (IPC Phase 5). Moreover, most nutritious foods available in markets remain financially out of reach for civilians, leaving the vast majority of households heavily dependent on humanitarian food assistance.

For Gaza’s most vulnerable families, conditional cash assistance remains essential to accessing food. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), more than 3,200 agricultural households are currently supported through FAO cash programs, which also enable over 1,200 farmers to continue crop production and help more than 2,000 herders protect their livestock.

As markets gradually stabilize, humanitarian actors are seeking to shift their approach in favor of one that prioritizes building self-sufficiency. WFP has indicated its goal to transition to cash assistance as market conditions improve, shifting emergency relief efforts to restoring local food production and economic systems to allow for vulnerable families to be able to afford food. However, these efforts would require a significant upscale in funding, coordinated efforts between the international community, and the free flow of aid.

Meanwhile, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reports that Palestinians continue to face widespread insecurity, driven by routine attacks on civilians and critical infrastructures. On February 5, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) released a humanitarian situation report documenting a sharp increase in airstrikes, shelling, gunfire, and fatalities between January 30 and February 5 compared to previous weeks. According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, at least 82 Palestinians were killed and 162 injured during that period, including children and a health worker, alongside extensive damage to civilian infrastructure.

Further underscoring the risks faced by aid workers, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies reported on February 4 that a paramedic was killed while providing assistance in the Mawasi area. That same day, OCHA reiterated that civilians and humanitarian personnel “must never be targeted or used to shield military activities,” stressing that children and aid workers are afforded special protections under international humanitarian law.

The UN has also stressed that living conditions remain especially dire for displaced communities across Gaza. On February 3, heavy insecurity in the Al Mahatta and Sanafour areas of Gaza City forced approximately 40 families to flee their homes, with only 10 families able to return by the following morning. UN figures indicate that “capacity and funding constraints” have limited humanitarian support to only roughly 40 percent of the remaining functional 970 displacement sites across Gaza.

Healthcare needs are similarly overwhelming, as a steady influx of injuries and disease is compounded by the near-total collapse of Gaza’s health system. According to Jonathan Fowler, Senior Communications Manager of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the agency previously operated 22 clinics operating across the Gaza strip before the war, which has now fallen to just six.

“That makes it incredibly difficult to do our work and so many of our locations have been heavily damaged or indeed completely destroyed,” Fowler said. “On top of that, we remain banned by the Israeli authorities from bringing in any of our own supplies.” Despite numerous access and security constraints, UNRWA aims to assist approximately 15,000 patients each day, underscoring the scale of unmet medical needs across the most vulnerable areas.

Furthermore, OHCHR has documented a sharp rise in cases of mistreatment and abuse against displaced Palestinians by Israeli military forces, particularly along the newly reopened Rafah border crossing. As of February 5, Palestinians returning through the crossing for three consecutive days have reported consistent patterns of “ill-treatment, abuse, and humiliation”.

According to testimonies collected by the agency, returnees were escorted from the crossing to military checkpoints, where some were handcuffed, blindfolded, threatened, and intimidated. Others reported being subjected to invasive body searches, having personal belongings and money confiscated, and facing physical violence and degrading interrogations. Several individuals were also denied access to medical care and bathroom facilities, with some forced to urinate in public.

OHCHR also documented allegations that returnees were offered money to return to Egypt permanently or pressured to act as informants for the Israeli military.

“The international community has a responsibility to ensure that all measures affecting Gaza strictly comply with international law and fully respect Palestinians’ human rights,” said Ajith Sunghay, head of the UN Human Rights Office in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. “After two years of utter devastation, being able to return to their families and what remains of their homes in safety and dignity is the bare minimum.”

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Women make up more than half of IFAD’s project participants, while over 60 percent of its active project portfolio is youth-sensitive, reaching more than 12 million young people globally. Photo: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Feb 11 2026 (IPS)

The global aid system is crumbling amidst chronic underinvestment in rural areas, posing a systemic threat to food systems everywhere.

With 1.3 billion young people in the world today – the largest generation in history, and nearly half of them living in rural areas – investing in their entrepreneurial potential is key.

Speaking during a press briefing on February 10, 2026, at the International Fund for Agricultural Development‘s (IFAD) 49th Governing Council, the president, Alvaro Lario, said investing in young entrepreneurs and women farmers unlocks new pathways for employment and ensures that rural areas become thriving engines of stability, prosperity and sustainable growth.

The overarching theme of the ongoing session of the Governing Council is “From Farm to Market: Investing with Young Entrepreneurs” and is being held at a pivotal moment when the global aid system is in urgent need of reinvention.

“We are at a very complex time of geopolitical fragmentation and constrained budgets for many countries. Food systems are going through various regular shocks that include climate shocks. So, rural transformation means economic growth, creating jobs and building stability,” Lario stated.

Lario advocated for public-private partnerships that connect farmers with private companies, which invest directly in Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) through blended finance, guarantees, and various forms of debt or equity, ultimately increasing access to rural finance. Public finance alone cannot deliver the transformation of food systems, raise rural incomes, or create decent jobs.

IFAD’s president, Alvaro Lario, with Tony Elumelu, chairman of UBA, and Heirs Holdings and founder of the Tony Elumelu Foundation. Credit: IFAD/Hannah Kathryn Valles

SME-driven value chains are critical to rural development. IFAD’s assessments show that SME-focused value chain projects are more likely to deliver transformational impacts – in other words, where incomes increase by more than 50 per cent because of the project. The Project for Rural Income through Exports in Rwanda (PRICE) increased returns to farmers through the development of export-driven value chains for coffee, tea, silk farming and horticulture.

In brief, he said the private sector accounts for more than 90 per cent of global food systems’ activity and that it complements public sector financing in a critical way by providing technology, market access, and logistics. Emphasising that these are the elements that allow small farms, pastoralists, fishers, rural entrepreneurs and other agri-food enterprises to grow and prosper.

Overall, at the Governing Council, Lario underscored the immense strategic and business value of investing in rural economies, presented new impact data and priorities for 2028-2030 and outlined the most effective models for scaling up productive investments. He was joined by Tony Elumelu, Chair of United Bank for Africa and Heirs Holdings, and founder of the Tony Elumelu Foundation, in outlining a new deal for rural economies.

They spoke at length about how to accelerate the shift to channel more private investments to rural economies. On young African entrepreneurs and facilitating their access to financing, he said as currently constituted, a bank cannot lend without collateral and consideration of social repayment.

“Since the regulatory environment does not permit banks to lend without taking these issues into consideration, countries create development financing institutions that can take some of the risks. And, also, having development financing institutions and global financing that help to de-risk transactions so that banks can come in and provide the capital,” Elumelu said.

“One of the reasons my wife and I established the Tony Elumelu Foundation is to support young African entrepreneurs. Access to capital is critical for entrepreneurship development. But oftentimes, people lack what it takes to access it. The Foundation has provided USD100 million. And every year, we identify young African entrepreneurs who have business ideas and train them on how to actualise these ideas.”

Further emphasising that access to capital, “while important, is not the only condition that will make you succeed. Business education is important. So we train them, appoint mentors for them, create a networking platform for them, and then provide them with the knowledge they need to receive capital. To date, in Africa, we have funded over 24,000 young African entrepreneurs. And the good news is that about half of these people are females.”

Elumelu said youth-centred interventions significantly boost agro-entrepreneurship as a key driver for economic growth, job creation, and stability while addressing the youth opportunity deficit.

“Nearly 21 percent of those who are funded in Africa are in agriculture and agribusinesses.  And out of these 21 percent, which is about 5,600 beneficiaries, 55 percent of them are females. So in a way, we are trying to help bridge that capital gap, finance gap. But that is not enough. It’s just a tiny drop of water in the ocean. So we need even more partnerships.”

Elumelu further drew on his Africapitalism philosophy, which is a call to action for businesses to move beyond short-term profit-seeking and instead make investments that generate socio-economic benefits for the communities in which they operate. And his foundation’s decade-long experience building Africa’s largest entrepreneurship ecosystem speaks to how entrepreneurship, private capital, and market-driven solutions can transform rural economies, expand food systems, and close the youth opportunity gap.

IFAD is an international financial institution and a United Nations-specific agency that invests in rural communities, empowering them to reduce poverty, increase food security, improve nutrition, and strengthen resilience. It has thus far provided more than USD 25 billion in grants and low-interest loans to fund projects in developing countries.

The Governing Council is IFAD’s highest decision-making body that, among other things, provides a forum for Governors to share their insights on priority areas for strategic action to lift the livelihoods of rural people.

This session also takes place at the beginning of the International Year of the Woman Farmer, declared in recognition of the key role that women farmers around the world play in agrifood systems and their contributions to food security, nutrition and poverty eradication.

Empowering youth and women entrepreneurs to initiate and expand agribusinesses serves as a vital catalyst for economic development and creates lasting positive impacts. Women make up more than half of IFAD’s project participants, while over 60 per cent of the active project portfolio is youth-sensitive, reaching more than 12 million young people globally.

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Credit: Port Vila Market, Vanuatu – Kevin Hellon / shutterstock.com

By Tobias Ide
Feb 9 2026 (IPS)

 
The Pacific Island countries are at the frontline of climate change. Their territories mostly consist of small, low-lying islands, with long coastlines and vast ocean spaces between them. Many livelihoods are based on agriculture or fishing, and importing water or food is often infeasible or expensive. This makes those large ocean nations highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, such as storms, droughts, and rising sea levels. Analysts have expressed concerns that this can result in various forms of socio-political conflict.

However, the Pacific Island countries have received scarce attention in research on climate change and conflict. This is surprising given the Pacific Island countries’ high climate vulnerability and increasing geopolitical relevance. A few years back, a Nature article did not find a single peer-reviewed study on the climate-conflict nexus in the Pacific. And while recent work added important insights on potential pathways between climate and conflict in the Pacific Island countries, the region remains understudied.

A new study tackles this knowledge gap by systematically collecting data on conflict events (such as protests, riots, and communal violence) in Fiji, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu. It then determines statistical associations between the occurrence of such conflicts—protests, riots, communal violence etc.—and climate extremes like storms, heatwaves, and floods. The results are surprising.

Climate extremes do not drive conflict risks

The researchers found that climate disasters are not a significant predictor of conflict events. This is true for both cities and rural areas. In cities, high values of (and competition for) land, immigration after disasters, and opportunities for political mobilisation have long been considered to make climate-related conflicts more likely, yet no such statistical signal was detected. Even when looking only at conflicts around natural resources like water or forests, climate extremes are not a good predictor.

These findings could nuance common wisdom about climate change and conflict. Experts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have concluded that climate change increases conflict risks, even though other conflict drivers are more important. Such a linkage is particularly likely in climate vulnerable regions with a history of political instability, and it is also more applicable to low-intensity conflicts like protests (as compared to large-scale violence like civil wars). Yet, the study focuses on such smaller-scale conflict. Fiji, Solomon Island, and Vanuatu are also highly vulnerable to climate change and suffered through political instability (coups, civil war, and unrest) in the past.

How to make sense of the absence of conflict

As a starting point, it is important to clarify three things. First, the absence of conflict does not necessarily imply peace, particularly if those least responsible for climate change suffer most from its consequences. Second, the study focuses on visible and collective forms of conflict. Disasters, but also competition for disaster-related support schemes, might well result in lower-level, less visible forms of conflict, such as household and intimate partner violence or lower social cohesion within communities. Studying these forms of conflict is certainly a key task for future work. Third, evidence is not perfect. The new study, for instance, covers only the period 2012 to 2020, studies just three Pacific Island countries, and could not include rainfall anomalies due to a lack of data.

That said, the absence of a correlation between climate extremes and socio-political conflict events is still noteworthy. It indicates the Pacific Islands have significant levels of agency and resilience. This is not to romanticise local communities and national governments—as everywhere in the world, they have their share of tensions and shortcomings. But the Pacific Island countries possess well-established traditional institutions and, at least in some areas, strong community and civil society networks. Given their remote location, tropical climate, and oceanic geography, they have plenty of knowledge and experience in dealing with climate extremes like droughts, floods, and storms as well. These are important assets for coping peacefully with the impacts of climate change.

Consider the example of Vanuatu after cyclone Pam in 2015. Despite being one of the most intense storms to ever hit the South Pacific, the death toll was relatively low, and the country recovered rather quickly from its impacts. This was the case because local community structures and NGO-led Community Climate Change Committees coordinated well, and they thus played a key role in preparing for the storm and in delivering disaster relief and recovery. These activities did not just utilise but also strengthened traditional social networks. Furthermore, state institutions effectively utilised the inflow of international aid to deal with the cyclone’s impacts, thereby increasing trust in the government. Consequentially, no major conflicts erupted in the aftermath of Pam.

Avoid doomsday thinking – and provide tailored support

Which insights can decision makers draw from these findings?

It is important to avoid doomsday scenarios when thinking about climate change in the Pacific. For sure, the respective countries are highly exposed to and quite vulnerable to climate change. But if policy makers and media portray the Pacific Island countries as helpless victims of climate change and prone to conflict, the consequences are problematic: a lack of economic investment, external support mostly focussed on relocation, and an ignorance of local capacities.

By contrast, emphasising how Pacific communities successfully deal with and maintain peace in the context of climate change provides different perspectives. It highlights how local communities and state institutions (despite not being perfect) have significant capacities for climate change adaptation and bottom-up peacebuilding. National governments and international donors should utilise those capacities by providing tailored support, responding to the needs and priorities of those on the frontline of climate change. Rather than preliminary resignation or relocation, this can support the building of climate-resilient peace.

Related articles:
There Is No Security Without Development, Anything Else Is a Distraction
Do We Need a Pacific Peace Index?
The Trump Presidency and Climate Security in the Indo-Pacific Region

Tobias Ide is Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations at Murdoch University Perth. Until recently, he was also Adjunct Associate Professor of International Relations at the Brunswick University of Technology. He has published widely on the intersections of the environment, climate change, peace, conflict and security, including in Global Environmental Change, International Affairs, Journal of Peace Research, Nature Climate Change, and World Development. He is also a director of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association.

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

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A woman in a remote hamlet in Kashmir, India, migrates to a safer location with her child as floodwater inundates her hometown. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR & NEW DELHI, Feb 9 2026 (IPS)

When the rain begins in Kashmir’s capital Srinagar, Ghulam Nabi Bhat does not watch the clouds with relief anymore. He watches them with calculation. How much can the gutters take? How fast will the river rise? Which corner of the house will leak first? Where should the children sleep if the floor turns damp?

“Earlier, rain meant comfort,” said Bhat, a resident of a low-lying neighbourhood close to the city’s waterways. “Now it feels like a warning.”

On many days, the rain does not need to become a flood to change life. Streets fill up within hours. Shops shut early. The school van turns back. A phone call spreads across families, asking the same question, “How is your area?”

For millions across India and the wider region of emerging Asia (a group of rapidly developing countries in the region, including China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam), this is the new normal. Disasters no longer arrive as rare, once-in-a-generation ruptures. They come as repeated shocks, each one leaving behind repair bills, lost wages, and a deeper sense that recovery has become a permanent routine.

A recent analysis from the OECD Development Centre shows that emerging Asia has been facing an average of around 100 disasters a year over the past decade, affecting roughly 80 million people annually. The rising trend is powered by floods, storms, and droughts. The report estimates that natural disasters have cost India an average of 0.4 percent of GDP every year between 1990 and 2024.

Behind the national figure lies a quieter, more poignant story. It is the story of how repeated climate and weather shocks get absorbed by households and not just spreadsheets. By the savings a family built for a daughter’s education. By a shopkeeper’s stock bought on credit. By a farmer’s seed money saved from the last season.

In the north Indian state of Bihar’s flood-prone belt, Sunita Devi, a mother of three, says she has stopped storing anything valuable on the floor. Clothes sit on higher shelves. The grain container has moved to a safer corner. The family’s documents stay wrapped in plastic.

Local residents in Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar, stack sandbags to safeguard their homes from floods in 2025. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS

“When water comes, you run with children,” she said. “The rest is left to fate. You can rebuild a wall. You cannot bring back the days you lost.”

Her village has lived with floods for decades, but she says what has changed is frequency, uncertainty, and cost. It is not only about big river floods that make headlines. It is also about sudden waterlogging, damaged roads, broken embankments, and illnesses that rise after the water recedes.

“Earlier we could predict. Now we cannot. Sometimes the water comes fast. Sometimes it stays. Sometimes it leaves and then comes again,” Devi told IPS.

Professor Kaveh Madani, director of the United Nations University’s Institute for Water, Environment, and Health, told IPS that water bankruptcy in Asia should be treated as a national security issue, not a sector issue.

“The priority is shifting from crisis response to bankruptcy management: honest accounting, enforceable limits, protection of natural capital, and a just transition that protects farmers and vulnerable communities,” said Madani.

Across emerging Asia, floods have emerged as one of the strongest rising trends since the early 2000s, the OECD Development Centre report notes. The reasons vary from place to place, but the result looks familiar: disrupted lives, damaged homes, and a cycle of repair that drains communities.

In Kashmir’s capital Srinagar, small shop owner Bashir Ahmad keeps an old wooden rack near the entrance. It is not for display. It is for emergencies. When rain intensifies, he quickly moves cartons of goods off the floor.

“My shop is small; my margin is smaller. One day of water is enough to destroy many things. Customers do not come. Deliveries stop. You just wait and watch,” Ahmad said.

He says the biggest loss is not always the damaged stock. It is the days without work. For families that live week to week, even a short shutdown becomes a long crisis. Rent does not pause. School fees do not pause. Loans do not pause.

The OECD analysis, while regional in scope, points to a hard truth that communities already know. It claims that disasters have economic aftershocks that last long after television cameras leave. When repeated losses occur every year, they reduce growth and reshape choices. Families postpone building stronger houses. They avoid investing in small businesses. They spend more time recovering than progressing.

“Disasters are no longer exceptional events. They have become recurring economic shocks. The problem is not only the immediate damage. It is the repetition. Repetition breaks household resilience,” Dr Ritu Sharma, a climate risk researcher based in Delhi, said.

Sharma says India’s disaster losses should not be viewed as a headline percentage alone.

They should be viewed as accumulated pressure on ordinary life.

“A flood does not only damage a bridge. It delays healthcare visits. It interrupts immunisation drives. It breaks supply chains for food and medicines. It can push vulnerable families into debt traps. What looks like a climate event becomes a social event. It becomes a health event. It becomes an education event.”

In the report’s regional comparisons, the burden is uneven. Some countries face higher average annual losses as a share of GDP, especially those exposed to cyclones and floods. India’s size allows it to absorb shocks on paper, but that size also means more people remain exposed. From Himalayan slopes vulnerable to landslides to coastal districts bracing for cyclones to plains dealing with floods and heat, risk is spread across geography and across livelihoods.

Prof. Nasar Ali, an economist who studies climate impacts, says the real damage is often hidden in the informal economy.

“A formal sector company can claim insurance, borrow on better terms, and restart faster. A vegetable vendor cannot. A small grocery shop cannot. A family with a single daily wage earner cannot. Their loss is immediate and personal. They also take the longest to recover,” Ali said.

He believes disaster impacts also deepen inequality because the poorest households lose what they cannot replace.

“A damaged roof for a rich family is a renovation problem. A damaged roof for a poor family can mean sleeping in damp rooms for weeks, infections, missed work and children dropping out temporarily.”

The report also turns attention toward a policy question that has become urgent across Asia: how should governments pay for disasters in a way that does not repeatedly divert development funds?

The analysis highlights disaster risk finance, tools that help governments prepare money in advance rather than relying mainly on post-disaster relief. This includes dedicated disaster funds, insurance mechanisms, and rapid financing that can be triggered quickly after a shock.

For communities, the debate may sound distant. But the outcomes are visible in the speed of recovery and the dignity of response.

“When a disaster happens, help should come fast,” said Meena Devi, who runs a small grocery shop in Jammu’s RS Pura area and has seen repeated waterlogging during intense rains. “We close our shop. Milk spoils. People cannot buy things. Then we borrow money to restart. If support is slow, we fall behind.”

She said her biggest fear is not a single disaster but the feeling that another one is always near.

“If it happens once, you survive. If it happens again and again, you get tired from inside,” she said.

For Sharma, preparedness must be more than emergency drills. It must include planning that reduces exposure in the first place.

“Some risks are unavoidable, but many are amplified by where and how we build,” she said. “If cities expand without drainage capacity, or if construction spreads into floodplains, then disasters become predictable. That is not nature alone. That is policy.”

In Srinagar, Bhat says residents often feel they fight the same battle every year. Cleaning drains. Stacking sandbags. Moving belongings. Calling relatives. Watching the river level updates. The work looks small, but it is exhausting because it never ends.

He pointed to marks on a wall that show where water once reached.

“We always think, maybe this year it will be better,” he said. “Then rain comes, and your heart starts beating faster.”

Asked what would make him feel safe, he did not talk about big promises. He spoke about basics. A drain that works. A road that does not collapse. A warning that comes early. Help that comes on time.

For Sunita Devi in Bihar, the dream is even simpler: a season where the family can plan without fear.

“We want to live like normal people. We want to save money, not spend it on repairing what the water broke,” she said.

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The 158th session of the Executive Board took place on 2-7 February 2026 at WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Pictured is Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. Credit: WHO / Christopher Black

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 6 2026 (IPS)

On February 3, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched its 2026 global appeal to help millions of people living in protracted conflicts and humanitarian crises access lifesaving healthcare. Following a trend of sharply declining international funding, the agency warns that it is becoming increasingly difficult to respond to emerging health threats, including pandemics and drug-resistant infections.

According to figures from the United Nations (UN), roughly a quarter of a billion people are currently living through humanitarian crises that threaten their access to healthcare and shelter, even as global defense spending has surpassed USD 2.5 trillion annually. Meanwhile, WHO estimates that approximately 4.6 billion people lack access to essential health services and 2.1 billion face significant financial strain from rising health costs.

These disparities are expected to worsen in the coming years, as the world is projected to face a shortage of 11 million healthcare workers by 2030—more than half of whom are nurses. Seeking nearly USD 1 billion to support civilians across 36 emergency settings—14 of which are classified as extremely severe—WHO aims to protect and support millions of people living in the world’s most fragile crisis settings.

“This appeal is a call to stand with people living through conflict, displacement and disaster – to give them not just services, but the confidence that the world has not turned its back on them,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “It is not charity. It is a strategic investment in health and security. In fact, access to health care restores dignity, stabilizes communities and offers a pathway toward recovery.”

Since its founding in 1948, WHO has served as a critical lifeline for crisis-affected populations—promoting universal health coverage, coordinating international responses to health emergencies, and tracking emerging health threats and progress worldwide. In 2025 alone, WHO and its partners provided emergency health services to approximately 30 million people, delivering vaccinations to 5.3 million children, facilitating 53 million health consultations, supporting more than 8,000 health facilities, and deploying 1,370 mobile clinics.

“In today’s most complex emergencies, WHO remains indispensable – protecting health, upholding international humanitarian law, and ensuring life-saving care reaches people in places where few others can operate,” said Marita Sørheim-Rensvik, Deputy Permanent Representative of Norway to the UN Office at Geneva. “From safeguarding access to sexual and reproductive health and rights to supporting frontline health workers under immense strain, WHO’s role is vital.”

The 2026 appeal follows a year in which humanitarian financing fell below 2016 levels, forcing WHO and its partners to reach only one-third of the 81 million people originally targeted for health assistance. Additionally, this comes after the United States exit from WHO on January 22, which is estimated to reduce the agency’s budget for 2026 and 2027 from USD 5.3 billion to USD 4.2 billion.

Ghebreyesus addressed WHO’s Executive Board in Geneva on February 2, warning of the far-reaching consequences expected after last year’s steep funding cuts, describing 2025 as one of the organization’s “most difficult years” in its history. “Sudden and severe cuts to bilateral aid have also caused huge disruptions to health systems and services in many countries,” he said.

Ghebreyesus also noted that the agency narrowly avoided a far more severe financial collapse due to a host of member states agreeing to raise mandatory assessed contributions. This would reduce WHO’s dependence on voluntary designated funding. These reforms have enabled WHO to mobilize roughly 85 percent of its core budget for 2026-2027, though Ghebreyesus warned that the remaining gap will be “hard to mobilize” in today’s strained financial environment. He cautioned that “pockets of poverty” remain across critically underfunded areas, including emergency preparedness, antimicrobial resistance, and climate resilience.

Ghebreyesus also warned noted that the funding crisis has exposed deeper challenges for global health governance, especially among low and middle-income countries that struggle to maintain access to essential services. He stressed that the crisis presents a crucial opportunity for transformation, noting that a “leaner” WHO can become more focused on its core mission and mandate within the broader UN80 reform initiative. “This means sharpening our focus on our core mandate and comparative advantage, doing what we do best – supporting countries through our normative and technical work – and leaving to others what they do best,” he added.

As a result of shrinking global funding, WHO says that it and its partners have been “forced to make difficult choices” about which operations to sustain going forward. The agency stated its intentions to concentrate solely on the most critical, high-impact interventions–such as keeping essential health facilities running, delivering emergency medical supplies and trauma care, restoring immunization efforts, ensuring access to reproductive, maternal, and child health services, and preventing and responding to disease outbreaks.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is working with health authorities in South Sudan and partners to scale up cholera prevention efforts, including a vaccination campaign. Credit:WHO/South Sudan

“In 2026, WHO is adapting its emergency response again. We are applying the discipline of emergency medicine: focusing first on actions that save lives,” said Ghebreyesus. “We are placing greater emphasis on country leadership and local partnerships. We are concentrating on areas where WHO adds the greatest value and reducing duplication so that every dollar has maximum impact.”

In 2026, WHO will prioritize its emergency health response in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Afghanistan, Haiti, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, South Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Ukraine, and Myanmar, while also addressing ongoing outbreaks of cholera and mpox. As the lead agency for health coordination in humanitarian crises, WHO works with more than 1,500 partners across 24 emergency settings worldwide to ensure that national authorities and local organizations remain at the center of emergency response efforts.

Additionally, WHO’s strategy going forward places strong emphasis on helping countries reduce reliance on external aid and build long-term financial self-sufficiency. A key element of this approach is domestic resource mobilization, including the introduction of higher health taxes on harmful products such as tobacco, sugary beverages, and alcohol.

In recent months, WHO has made important progress in strengthening global responses to emerging health threats, even as antimicrobial resistance continues to escalate—with one in six bacterial infections worldwide now resistant to antibiotics. The agency has also expanded its disease surveillance capabilities, relying on AI-powered epidemic intelligence tools to help countries detect and contain hundreds of outbreaks before they evolve into major crises. WHO’s work has also been reinforced by last year’s adoption of the Pandemic Agreement and amended International Health Regulations (IHR), which aim to bolster global preparedness in the post-COVID-19 era.

“The pandemic taught all of us many lessons – especially that global threats demand a global response,” said Ghebreyesus. “Solidarity is the best immunity.” He emphasized that the future effectiveness of WHO hinges on predictable, sustained funding:“This is your WHO. Its strength is your unity. Its future is your choice.”

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The United Nations Security Council meets on the situation in Yemen. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 4 2026 (IPS)

In recent weeks, Yemen’s humanitarian crisis has sharply worsened, as escalating food insecurity and brutal clashes between armed actors have prompted United Nations (UN) officials to warn that the country is approaching a critical breaking point. Intensified violence has increasingly obstructed lifesaving humanitarian operations, while deepening economic and political instability continues to erode access to essential services. As a result, millions of Yemenis now face the growing risk of being left without the support they need to survive, with children being the hardest-hit.

Late December and early January proved to be a particularly volatile period for Yemen, with political turmoil acting as a key driver of instability, particularly in the nation’s south. Recently, the United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) launched major offensives across the south, seizing key provinces such as Hadramawt and al-Mahrah, prompting Saudi-backed government forces to launch a series of airstrikes to reclaim key infrastructure in cities such as Mukalla and Aden.

While a military de-escalation was achieved in the following days, humanitarian experts warn that the overall security situation remains extremely fragile without a durable political and economic solution—both of which continue to threaten national stability. According to UN experts, years of political turmoil have severely weakened the economy, driving inflation, pushing food and fuel prices further out of reach, and leaving large numbers of public sector workers with unpaid salaries.

On January 14, UN Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg briefed ambassadors on the urgent need to establish a credible, transparent, and inclusive political process. He explained that the “developments in southern Yemen highlight how quickly that fragile balance can be disrupted,” and how critical it is “to re-anchor the process in a credible political pathway”.

“Absent a comprehensive approach that addresses Yemen’s many challenges in an integrated manner, rather than in isolation, the risk of recurrent and destabilizing cycles will remain a persistent feature in the country’s trajectory,” said Grundberg.

Grundberg also underscored the importance of protecting Yemen’s economic institutions—particularly the Central Bank—from political and security conflicts, warning that even short-lived instability can trigger currency depreciation, expand fiscal deficits, and hinder urgently needed economic reforms.

According to Yemeni officials, clashes between the STC, the Houthi movement, and the Saudi-backed government have driven large-scale displacement and disrupted access to essential services for thousands of civilians. On January 19, Julien Harneis, Assistant Secretary-General and the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen, told reporters that humanitarian conditions are expected to deteriorate further in 2026, with an estimated 21 million people projected to require humanitarian assistance—an increase from the 19.5 million recorded last year.

This includes more than 18 million Yemenis—roughly half the population—who are projected to face acute food insecurity in February. Additionally, it is estimated that tens of thousands could fall into “catastrophic” levels of hunger and face famine-like conditions without intervention.

Yemen’s hunger crisis is projected to hit children the hardest, with roughly half of all children under five years old facing acute malnutrition. As a result of persistent funding gaps last year, only a quarter of the 8 million children targeted for nutritional support received lifesaving care. Furthermore, over 2,500 supplementary feeding programmes and outpatient therapeutic programmes were forced to close.

“The simple narrative is, children are dying and it’s going to get worse. My fear is that we won’t hear about it until the mortality and the morbidity significantly increases in this next year,” said Harneis.

Additionally, Yemeni officials underscored that recent hostilities have forced key civilian infrastructures—including schools and hospitals—to shut down or operate at limited capacity. Ramesh Rajasingham, Director of the Humanitarian Sector for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) noted that over 450 health facilities have closed in recent months, with thousands of others at risk of losing funding. Additionally, vaccination campaigns have been hindered, facing significant challenges in accessing children in the north, leaving them highly vulnerable to preventable diseases such as measles, diphtheria, cholera, and polio.

Rajasingham also warned of tightening restrictions on aid as a result of violence. According to figures from the UN, 73 UN staff have been arbitrarily detained by Houthi de facto authorities since 2021, restricting aid operations across 70 percent of humanitarian needs across Yemen. “We know that when humanitarian organizations can operate safely, effectively and in a principled manner, and when resources are available, humanitarian assistance works. It reduces hunger, it prevents disease, and it saves lives. But when access is obstructed and funding falls away, those gains are quickly reversed,” said Rajasingham.

On January 29, the World Food Programme (WFP) announced that it is shutting down operations in northern Yemen following severe aid restrictions, harassment, and arbitrary detainment of staff from Houthi personnel. UN officials informed reporters that approximately 365 of the remaining WFP staff members in northern Yemen will lose their jobs by the end of March, as a result of insecurity and funding challenges.

In 2025, Yemen’s UN Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan was only funded at 25 percent, forcing humanitarian actors to scale back critical services, deprioritize certain populations or sectors, and halt lifesaving operations, leaving millions without aid and exposed to heightened risks.

“The unavoidable reality is that the United Nations must continue to reevaluate and reorganize our humanitarian operations on the ground in DFA-held areas of Yemen – home to around 70 per cent of humanitarian needs countrywide,” said Rajasingham, also urging the Security Council to exert pressure on the international community to bring about the release of the 73 UN staff and scale up funding as needs continue to rise.

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On 26 September 2025, children stand outside a tent being used for medical services at Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir al Balah in the Gaza Strip. Credit: UNICEF/James Elder

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Jan 29 2026 (IPS)

“I’d never encountered anything like it before. I had no idea that there could be a place that needed humanitarian aid and that a government entity wouldn’t allow physicians or health workers into [that place],” says Jane.*

Jane, a nurse from a Western country, was part of a volunteer medical team that went into Gaza in early 2025 during a ceasefire that ran from January 19 to March 18 last year.

Gaza’s healthcare system had been devastated over the course of the Israeli offensive which had followed Hamas’s brutal attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023. According to UNICEF, 94 percent of hospitals have been damaged or destroyed.

Jane tells IPS her team had hoped that during the stop in fighting they would be able to help deliver vital treatment and services which were desperately needed by so many people in the country.

But she says that instead she and her colleagues, who set out for Gaza within weeks of the ceasefire coming into place, ran into seemingly arbitrary obstacles before they even set foot in the country.

Within hours of landing in Jordan, they found out that three physicians and one nurse in the team had been denied entry into Gaza. The following day there were more problems.

“We were at the border with many other NGOs and all of us had been approved to go in [to Gaza]. But then towards the end of the day, they decided that they were going to close the border and not allow anybody through that day. So we had to make our way back to Jordan,” Jane tells IPS.

She says her team lost a week of time when they could have been helping people before they managed to get in. And when they did, she was shocked at what she found.

“It was when we drove into Gaza that it really hit me. You see these kinds of dystopian places in movies or read about them in novels… a van came to pick us up and drove us to our hospital and on this drive I could see nothing but demolished buildings, rubble everywhere. I had to look away a few times because there were skeletons of animals. I’m not sure if there were skeletons of people because I had to look away once I saw the skeletons of animals,” she says.

Things did not improve when she got to the hospital.

“We got to the hospital and at first, although it was different from what I’m used to, it seemed like a functioning hospital… until I started work the next day.”

She describes the hospital, which is one of the largest in Gaza, as lacking even the most basic resources. “They didn’t have paper, they didn’t have gloves, they didn’t have hand sanitiser,” Jane says.

Life-saving equipment such as ventilators for patients struggling to breathe was unavailable, forcing physicians to perform emergency intubations in some cases.

Worst of all though, even when help could have been easily administered to relieve suffering, seemingly arbitrary decisions meant it was not.

“I had a patient – a little girl who had an infection that caused three out of four of her limbs to become gangrenous. All she needed to treat it was a simple medication. But, of course, we weren’t allowed to bring medications in – if [the authorities] found [those medicines on us], they could have either thrown them away or just completely denied us access in.

“This little girl had been in this hospital for at least more than a month – she’d been waiting for a medical evacuation to Jordan, but Israel continued to deny her medical evacuation. At the time I was there, she was supposed to be evacuated, but they denied it – twice while I was there. The first time they did not give a reason and then the second time they said it was because they wouldn’t allow her mother to go with her,” says Jane.

“This little girl was maybe two or three years old and for me, a paediatric and neonatal ICU nurse, this was unfathomable. To expect this toddler to go to another country, likely get her limbs amputated and then have rehabilitation in another country without her mother was ludicrous,” she adds.

Eventually, approval was given for the mother to go with her daughter. But, says Jane, the girl eventually had to have all three limbs amputated.

“It’s a tragedy in and of itself because this could have been remediated with a simple medication or an earlier evacuation. Her limbs became necrotic – they didn’t start out being necrotic. Her limbs being amputated was not something that needed to happen.”

Jane says that of all the patients she treated and all the suffering she saw in the hospital, the case of that girl stands out among her memories today.

Testimony from other doctors and healthcare workers shows that Jane’s experience was not unusual.

Two recent reports which detailed the almost complete destruction of maternal and reproductive healthcare in Gaza as a result of Israeli attacks were based on, or included, testimonies from physicians and healthcare workers, as well as affected women, which highlighted the appalling conditions in healthcare facilities.

Critics of Israel’s offensive in Gaza have variously described Israeli forces’ actions, including attacks on healthcare and other civilian infrastructure, as breaches of international humanitarian law, war crimes, crimes against humanity and even genocide.

Israel has repeatedly denied such charges and claimed that Hamas’s extensive use of the civilian environment for military purposes meant that large parts of urban Gaza had become legitimate military targets and accused the militant group of building a huge tunnel network under Gaza’s hospitals, schools, and other civilian buildings, housing its command centres and weapons stores.

But critics have also pointed to how the suffering caused by such attacks has been compounded by restrictions on aid coming into Gaza.

Jane, who is now back in her home country, says that these restrictions are continuing, despite a ceasefire having been in place since October.

Israeli authorities have banned certain items from being brought into Gaza over concerns they could be used by militants. But humanitarian and rights groups are critical of both the breadth and scope of ‘dual use’ restrictions imposed by Israel, a lack of clarity over what exactly constitutes a ‘dual use’ item, and seemingly ad hoc limitations on what can be brought in.

Jane said she knew of colleagues who were being refused entry to Gaza for carrying the most basic medical equipment.

“One doctor recently got denied entry because he was trying to bring his stethoscope in and when he said he needed it, the authorities said no, and they took his stethoscope from him and denied him entry,” she says.

Some rights groups say that continued restrictions appear to be irrational and could give rise to questions about their intent.

“Israeli officials, like Hamas officials, are being investigated for international crimes. Israel is being questioned as a state about its compliance with the Genocide Convention. There are provisional orders from the International Court of Justice about complying with the Genocide Convention, which demand that aid restrictions be lifted and that aid be provided, in particular medical aid. The refusal to follow those orders is legally significant,” Sam Zarifi, Executive Director of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), told IPS.

“In analysis of criminal intent, reckless or intentional disregard of foreseeable harm is, and can be, viewed as evidence of intent. The Israeli government has some of the best lawyers in the world, and I hope those lawyers are advising their clients that some of these policies raise very, very important questions about the intent behind them, because they do not seem to be otherwise rational,” he added.

Regardless of any intent, humanitarian groups say restrictions on aid are driving ongoing massive, widescale misery and suffering in Gaza.

This is despite the fact that vital aid is available and ready to be delivered quickly if allowed.

“We have hundreds of truckloads of lifesaving assistance ready outside Gaza. The supplies exist. What we need is more access,” Ricardo Pires, Communication Manager, Division of Global Communications and Advocacy at UNICEF, told IPS.

“We are still hearing about significant restrictions on medical supplies under the notion of being dual use. But we’re [also] looking at things like antibiotics, painkillers, specialised baby food. And these are all available. I mean, what’s very frustrating is that we know from the UN that there are trucks and warehouses full of the necessary supplies, and they can be, and they need to be, and they must be moved in as soon as possible. It is absolutely heartbreaking and mind-blowing and tragic that people in Gaza are still suffering from completely avoidable misery and harm,” added Zarifi.

It remains unclear when, or if, such restrictions will be eased, while a recent announcement by Israel of plans to ban 37 NGOs from operating in Gaza has also been criticised by rights groups who say it will further hinder the delivery of humanitarian aid in the country.

Jane, who would like to return to Gaza for further humanitarian work soon, says she is not hopeful of any improvement for the people there in the near future.

“This has gone on for almost two and a half years and we still don’t have [political] leaders who will stop sending arms to Israel, who will call for a ceasefire when a ceasefire was needed, and then who would actually make sure that the terms of the ceasefire are being are being honoured, because as we’ve seen recently, [Isreal is] continuing to drop bombs. But more than that, you can’t just create a ceasefire, then still not allow aid in. So, it’s hard to have hope for the future for Gaza,” she says.

*Jane’s name and country of origin have been excluded from this feature for her safety.

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Carlos Ruiz Massieu, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Haiti and Head of the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti, briefs reporters at UN Headquarters. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 28 2026 (IPS)

As Haiti’s Transitional President Council (TPC) approaches its February 7 expiration date and the country remains without a newly elected president, humanitarian experts warn the nation risks further sliding into insecurity, raising fears of broader collapse.

The United Nations (UN) notes that escalating violence by entrenched armed coalitions, persisting impunity for human rights abuses, political instability, and mass civilian displacement are straining aid operations to their breaking point, leaving millions with dwindling access to essential services and pushing hopes for stability and national self-sufficiency further out of reach.

“Violence has intensified and expanded geographically, exacerbating food insecurity and instability, as transitional governance arrangements near expiry and overdue elections remain urgent,” said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in his latest report on the UN Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH). “Gang violence affects communities nationwide, with particularly devastating consequences for women, children and youth, undermining the country’s social fabric over the long term.”

Currently, it is estimated that armed gangs now exert near-total control over approximately 90 percent of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, as well as large parts of the surrounding provinces, severely undermining government authority and humanitarian operations. Presidential elections have not been held in a decade, and ongoing political instability, coupled with the continual adaptive reshaping of gang networks, has made establishing security increasingly difficult.

Gangs continue to launch coordinated attacks, seize control of critical economic corridors and agricultural areas, and drive mass displacement—exhausting both law enforcement and humanitarian systems. In 2025, Haiti’s murder rate rose by roughly 20 percent compared with the previous year, with Guterres informing reporters that more than 8,100 killings were recorded across Haiti between January and November 2025.

Child trafficking and recruitment have surged, with children and youth now making up roughly 50 percent of all gang members. They are being forced into a range of roles and to participate in violent attacks. Sexual violence – particularly against women and girls- has also escalated sharply, leaving deep and lasting trauma for survivors with limited access to psychosocial support, while perpetrators face widespread impunity.

Approximately 6.4 million people—more than half of Haiti’s population—are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. The World Food Programme (WFP) warns that a record 5.7 million people are currently facing acute hunger, which is expected to rise to 5.9 million by March without prompt intervention. This hunger crisis is largely driven by rampant insecurity across key transport routes and agricultural regions, which has severely disrupted crop production and movement to markets. Food prices remain extremely high and increasingly beyond reach for many households.

Civilians continue to live in overcrowded, unsanitary shelters marked by widespread malnutrition, disease outbreaks, limited access to clean water, and escalating insecurity, with women and children being disproportionately impacted. Additionally, internal displacement has reached record highs, with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimating that roughly 1.4 million Haitians are internally displaced, including over 741,000 children.

At Jean Marie César School, now serving as a displacement site in the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince, UNICEF continues to provide psychosocial activities to help children cope with trauma. Credit: UNICEF/Herold Joseph

Humanitarian experts remain deeply concerned about the continued adaptive reorganizing and restructuring of gangs to bypass national security measures and expand their influence. John Brandolino, Acting Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), has said that gangs have transformed into more structured criminal networks with defined leadership, territorial ambitions, and diversified streams of revenue.

The Viv Ansanm coalition has carried out large-scale attacks on police forces, prisons, and critical economic infrastructure, enabling gangs to tighten their grip over the capital and key corridors into Artibonite and Plateau Central. Extortion, as well as the trafficking of drugs, weapons, and ammunition, have become major sources of revenue, further entrenching gang control and undermining state authority.

Despite this, notable progress has been made in recent months through police operations supported by the UN Security Council-authorized Gang Suppression Force, which was deployed in October 2025. These efforts have yielded significant early results, including the reopening of key roads in parts of Port-au-Prince and the Artibonite Department, as well as the restoration of government presence around the capital’s Champ de Mars. These gains demonstrate that sustained, coordinated pressure on armed groups can weaken gang control and yield meaningful improvements in security.

However, Carlos Ruiz-Massieu, UN Special Representative and Head of BINUH, warned that these gains remain extremely fragile and it is imperative to address the root cause of insecurity—political instability. Haiti currently stands at a precarious crossroads as it nears the end of its TPC, with a newly issued electoral decree and calendar calling for the inauguration of an elected president by early 2027. Despite this, humanitarian experts and civilians have raised concerns on whether such elections are realistically feasible amid the country’s entrenched insecurity.

“Haiti has entered a critical juncture in its process of restoring democratic institutions,” Ruiz Massieu told the Security Council on January 21. “Let us be clear: the country has no time to lose to prolonged internal conflict,” he warned, emphasizing that it is imperative for national stakeholders to set aside differences and uphold their political responsibilities, and maintain momentum on security efforts.

The following day during a press briefing, Ruiz-Massieu emphasized to reporters in New York that improving security conditions is essential for Haitians to have freedom of movement and the ability to participate in society, which paves the way for eventual, credible elections. He stressed that Haiti’s recovery will depend on close cooperation between national authorities and the international community.

“What we need is an authority that can work with the international community and manage the public forces in a way that can really increase security in different areas,” said Ruiz-Massieu. “How you measure success is by improving security in certain areas of Port-au-Prince that can enable Haitians to walk freely, to work freely, and the country to be able to organize elections in a meaningful way. We expect authorities to continue after February 7 and work with the international community to improve security.”

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Yamide Dagnet, Senior Vice President, International at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Credit: COP30

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Jan 15 2026 (IPS)

President Donald Trump has escalated efforts to further distance the United States from international organizations and entities focused on climate, the environment, and energy. This strategy is in step with his administration’s established approach to undermine and redirect funds and international cooperation away from climate and clean energy programs.

But where some see a catastrophic escalation, other global experts, such as Yamide Dagnet, Senior Vice President, International at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), see first and foremost a continuing formalization of damaging positions already taken by the current administration.

In January 2025, President Trump initiated a second withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change to limit global warming. Simultaneously, the U.S. administration began to significantly reduce funding for climate programs, withdrawing from international climate funds such as the Green Climate Fund, cancelling billions in domestic clean energy grants, halting climate research and, overall, prioritizing fossil fuels over climate initiatives.

While conceding that the moment at hand is indeed overwhelming, especially coming on the back of COP30, Dagnet told IPS that “the rest of the world must turn this challenge into an opportunity to break new ground in climate action, financing and international cooperation.”

“I have a stubborn yet grounded optimism. The path ahead will be challenging but achieving the set-out climate goals is far from impossible. This is far from a catastrophe. Only one country has withdrawn from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC); the rest of the world is still firmly on board.”

Regarding the exit from UNFCCC, Dagnet’s colleague Jake Schmidt from NRDC, pointed out in his blog that  the legal ramifications are such that it is unsettled constitutional law whether a president can unilaterally withdraw from international agreements that the Senate gave its advice and consent to join. The Constitution specifies the entry provisions, but it is silent on the exit provisions.

Dagnet also noted that while the withdrawal from the UNFCCC is unprecedented, making the United States the only nation outside the bedrock UN Climate Treaty, “the exit is not cast in stone; a future administration could bring the country back to the fold.”

Nevertheless, the United States will be back in the headlines come January 27, 2026, when the country will technically become a non-signatory to the Paris agreement and will not be part of international climate negotiations unless the withdrawal is reversed.

“The optimism I feel is also grounded in pragmatism. To borrow the words of author James Baldwin, ‘Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.’ The U.S. administration was not represented at COP30 and still the world pushed forward a comprehensive climate action agenda to move beyond pledges through accelerated collaboration between governments, businesses, civil society, and investors.”

In his 2025 inauguration speech, Trump called oil ‘liquid gold’ and vowed to ‘unleash’ America’s fossil fuels in the form of oil and gas. Dagnet says the die was already cast on the path forward for the United States and that the world should continue to rethink, re-strategize and reorganize, for those who are for climate action are more than those against.

Trump finds an assortment of 66 UN and non-UN entities, including those focused on climate and clean energy, that are not aligned with the United States’ national interests. They include the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is the world’s most authoritative scientific body on climate change, UN water, UN Oceans and UN Energy.

Others are the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which is the global authority on technical and policy advice on conservation, and the UN Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing countries.

Non-UN organizations include the International Renewable Energy Agency, Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century, 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy Compact, Commission for Environmental Cooperation, Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, and Sustainable Development, and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

Concerns are rife that communities such as those in the informal settlements will be dangerously exposed to the vagaries of climate change in the face of looming budget cuts to support climate efforts. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

There are widespread concerns that the withdrawal will have far-reaching negative consequences on financing and technical support for climate and clean energy. But Dagnet reminds us that  the United States did not pay its dues to the UN in 2025. The UN Chief has expressed regret over the country’s exit from UN entities and urged the Trump administration to settle what is owed to the international body, as the payments are mandatory. The United States owes the largest share, amounting to about 22 percent of the regular budget.

Similarly, before this withdrawal, the United States was already failing to fulfill many of its climate finance commitments.  While this new development, alongside past insufficient funding pledges, signals a major retreat from international climate action and support for developing nations, that challenge is  not insurmountable.

Climate financing trackers found that even during President Joe Biden’s administration, the United States’ international climate finance contributions were insufficient and fell far short of goals. Dagnet notes that while the country’s actions on multilateralism represent a setback, multilateralism is also evolving and will hopefully be capable of navigating uncharted territories.

She hails the broad recognition that climate change urgently and sustainably requires global cooperation and collaboration. She further stressed that international cooperation would expand the climate finance basket, as financial support for climate action can come not only from governments but also from a diverse array of non-state and public-private actors.

“This withdrawal is not the end of the road.”

Dagnet is one of nine members of the GHG (Greenhouse Gas) Protocol Steering Committee, which is the primary governing body providing direction and oversight to the GHG Protocol. The Protocol provides accounting standards and tools to help the corporate sector, countries and cities track progress towards climate goals.

The development of such standards is facilitated through a transparent multi-stakeholder governance process, drawing on expertise from business, finance, governments, academia, auditors and civil society in a milestone move and landmark partnership, she says.

The GHG Protocol is leading the global harmonization of greenhouse gas accounting with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), as part of the COP30 Action Agenda, to enable comprehensive decarbonization action. This collaborative effort will strengthen the enabling conditions (in terms of policy, benchmarking, and governance) that are paramount to achieving sectoral breakthrough and will shape the journey towards the next global stocktake, or inventory taking, on progress towards climate goals in line with the Paris Agreement.

Subnational efforts also keep Dagnet pragmatically optimistic and solutions-focused. Indeed, she felt energized after attending the Resilient Cities Forum 2025 in London, a remarkable highlight as a major international platform where global leaders and experts converged to tackle urban resilience, emphasizing collaboration, best practices and practical innovation for sustainable, equitable cities.  She was inspired by the various and clear visions for a healthier planet.

“The resolve was stronger than ever,” says Dagnet.

“Importantly, we have locally designed tools, international frameworks and corporate standards to turn our vision towards a more prosperous, healthier and greener future into our lived reality. The worst we can do is to give up our imagination and ability to innovate.”

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Cardiologist Dr. Marwan Sultan, then Director of the Indonesian Hospital in north Gaza, in February 2025 showing damage to hospital equipment following an Israeli attack on the facility a few months prior. In July 2025, Dr. Sultan was killed in an Israeli strike on the apartment where he was sheltering with his family. Credit: PHR/GHRC

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Jan 14 2026 (IPS)

Israel must lift all restrictions on medicine, food and aid coming into Gaza, rights groups have demanded, as two reports released today (Jan 14) document how maternal and reproductive healthcare have been all but destroyed in the country.

In two separate reports released jointly, Physicians for Human Rights (with the Global Human Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School) and Physicians for Human Rights–Israel (PHR-I) show how the war in Gaza has led to rising maternal and neonatal mortality, births under dangerous conditions, and the systematic destruction of health services for women in Gaza.

The reports from the two groups, which are independent organizations, provide both detailed clinical analysis of the collapse of Gaza’s health system and its medical consequences as well as firsthand testimonies from clinicians and pregnant and breastfeeding women in Gaza forced to live and care for their newborns in extreme conditions.

And the organizations say that with conditions improving only marginally for many women despite the current ceasefire, Israel must roll back restrictions placed on aid and immediately help ensure people in Gaza get access to the healthcare they need.

“Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s health infrastructure, combined with untreated malnutrition resulting from restrictions on food and medical supplies, including baby formula, has created an environment in which the fundamental biological processes of reproduction and survival have been systematically destroyed, resulting in known and foreseeable harm, pain, suffering, and death,” Sam Zarifi, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) Executive Director, said.

“Israel must immediately allow food and essential medical material to enter Gaza with a proper medical plan for helping the besieged population,” he added.

Israeli military operations following Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, have left massive destruction across Gaza, including to healthcare facilities. According to UNICEF, 94 percent of hospitals have been damaged or destroyed.

Destroyed incubators and equipment at the Kamal Adwan Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in north Gaza, following the targeting and raid of the facility by the Israeli forces in December 2024. Credit: PHR/GHRC

Maternal and reproductive healthcare has suffered. Before the war, Gaza had eight neonatal intensive care units with 178 incubators. Today, the number of incubators has dropped by 70 percent. In the north, there were 105 incubators across three NICUs, now there are barely any functional units remaining, UNICEF told IPS.

It says that the numbers of low birth weight babies have nearly tripled compared to pre-war levels and the number of first-day deaths of babies increased by 75 percent.

The PHR and PHR-I reports paint a similar picture.

The PHR report, which focuses on the period between January 2025 and October 2025 when a ceasefire was agreed, details how between May and June last year, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported a 41 percent decrease in the birth rate in Gaza compared to the same time period in 2022; there was a significant increase in miscarriages that affected more than 2,600 women, and 220 pregnancy-related deaths that occurred before delivery.

The ministry also reported a sharp increase in premature births and low birth weight cases; over 1,460 babies were reported to be born prematurely, while more than 2,500 were admitted to neonatal intensive care. Newborn deaths also increased, with at least 21 babies reported to have died on their first day of life.

Meanwhile, the PHR-I report includes personal testimonies illustrating the severe problems pregnant women and women with newborns have faced in Gaza during the war, from lacking safe routes to care and being forced to give birth in unsanitary, dangerous conditions to battling hunger and severe food shortages as they try to breastfeed their children.

One woman, Samah Muhammad Abu Mustafa, a 30-year-old mother of two from Khuza’a, Khan Youni, described how when her contractions began in the middle of the night, because there were no vehicles and very few ambulances, which are reserved for shelling or other critical emergencies, she had to walk a long distance through rain. When she eventually reached the hospital, she said it was “horrifying.”

“I swear, one woman gave birth in the corridor, and her baby died. It was very crowded, and the doctors worked nonstop. I felt as though I could give birth at any moment. After giving birth to my eldest daughter, I was told I should not deliver naturally again because my pelvis was too narrow. Despite this, the doctors said I would have to deliver naturally because a cesarean section required anesthesia, and there was not enough available. I stood for three hours until it was finally my turn, without sitting even for a moment,” she said.

But despite the October 2025 ceasefire, massive problems remain with women’s access to and the provision of, maternal and reproductive healthcare in Gaza.

“Maternal health units in Gaza are largely non-functional and face critical shortages of essential medicines, consumables, and equipment,” Lama Bakri, project coordinator in the Occupied Territories Department at PHR-I, told IPS.

“Neonatal and diagnostic equipment remains scarce or blocked, including portable incubators for premature and low-birth-weight newborns. Although some aid has entered since the ceasefire, these gaps are not being addressed at the scale required, and meaningful improvement in the immediate future remains unlikely.”

Malnutrition also remains a serious problem.

“The ceasefire has allowed us to significantly scale up our nutrition response, but we are still treating pregnant and breastfeeding women for acute malnutrition in alarmingly high numbers,” Ricardo Pires, Communication Manager, Division of Global Communications & Advocacy at UNICEF, told IPS.

He said that between July and September 2025 about 38 percent of pregnant women screened were diagnosed with acute malnutrition.

“In October alone, we admitted 8,300 pregnant and breastfeeding women for treatment, about 270 a day, in a place where there was no discernible malnutrition among this group before October 2023,” he added.

UNICEF has documented almost 6,800 children admitted for acute malnutrition treatment in November 2025 compared to 4,700 cases in November 2024. So far, the number of admitted cases more than doubled in 2025 compared to 2024: almost 89,000 admissions of children to date in 2025, compared to 40,000 cases in 2024, and almost none before 2023.

“What we’re seeing is that no child meets minimum dietary diversity standards, and two-thirds of children are surviving on just two food groups or less. Around 90 percent of caregivers reported their children had been sick in the previous two weeks, which compounds the malnutrition crisis,” Pires said.

And there are fears for the longer-term demographic future of Gaza given the damage to maternal and reproductive healthcare.

“For Gaza’s demographic future, the implications are serious. Even with reconstruction, we will be dealing with a generation of children who were scarred before they took their first breath, children who may face lifelong health complications, developmental challenges, and the effects of stunting. The rebuilding must start now, but we should be clear-eyed: the damage to maternal and newborn health will echo for years, potentially decades,” said Pires.

But others say that with cooperation between international actors and the right political will, the situation need not remain so dire.

“To rehabilitate the population after everything that has happened is going to be a real issue, [but] now there is a Board of Peace, the needs of pregnant women and maternal and reproductive healthcare can be prioritized,” Zarifi told IPS.

“The capacity and the will exist among Gazans and Gazan healthcare workers to rebuild the healthcare system, including maternal and reproductive health services,” added Bakri. “The primary obstacle is not technical or professional but political: Israel’s control over Gaza’s borders and the restrictions on the entry of essential equipment, medical supplies, and reconstruction materials. With unrestricted access to what is needed to rehabilitate hospitals, rebuild destroyed units, and restock essential medicines, recovery is entirely feasible. Whether maternal and reproductive healthcare can return to pre-war levels depends on sustained international pressure to allow that access.”

However, while both NGOs like PHR and PHR-I and others, alongside international bodies like the UN, stress that any recovery and reconstruction in Gaza requires the ceasefire to hold and consolidate, repeated violations underline its fragility, and the effect that has on women.

Meanwhile, PHR and PHR-I point out that extreme weather and ongoing Israeli restrictions on medicine and food getting to Gaza to this day continue to severely affect pregnant women, new mothers, and babies. On top of this, Israel has also announced it will bar 37 international aid groups from working in Gaza, potentially compounding the problems.

Bakri said such measures were jeopardizing what small gains had been made since the ceasefire and “raise serious concerns about whether the situation can improve.”

“Even after the ceasefire, while bombardment has decreased, the reality these women face remains catastrophic – not only for their bodies and well-being but for the survival of the entire society,” said Bakri.

Zarifi added, “We are worried that the restrictions placed by Israel on some of the major actors in the humanitarian response will hamper access to assistance for those that need it. We have raised questions with the Israeli government as to why specific medicines are not allowed to be brought into Gaza and they say that they are not stopping them from being brought in but they can be brought in by commercial means. That is hard for people who can barely put any money together. These medicines should definitely be coming in through humanitarian channels.”

He also highlighted how important the issue of accountability is in ensuring any progress is made in rebuilding healthcare in Gaza and also limiting the probability of similar devastation in the future.

Both reports concluded that the harms caused by Israeli attacks are not isolated incidents but part of an ongoing pattern of systematic damage to the health of women and their children in Gaza, amounting to reproductive violence.

Israel has denied this and said that attacks on hospitals in Gaza have been because the medical facilities are being used by Hamas, and it has maintained that its forces adhere to international law.

While under international law healthcare facilities have special protection even in war, and attacks on them are prohibited, that protection is lost if they are deemed to fulfill criteria to be considered military objectives, such as housing militaries and arms.

However, any attack on them must still comply with the fundamental principles of distinction, proportionality and precautions in attack and failure to respect any of these principles constitutes a breach of international humanitarian law, according to the UN.

“These attacks are part of a deliberate policy designed to create a domino effect of suffering. From starvation and militarized aid distribution by the GHF, to lack of access to clean water, repeated displacement orders, living in shelters under continuous bombardment, and exposure to infections, disease, and harsh weather, the attacks on maternal and reproductive healthcare are another piece of this puzzle. Together, these conditions were created to systematically destroy the fabric of life in Gaza and reduce the population’s ability to survive,” said Bakri.

“The Israeli government has justified attacks on healthcare facilities by saying this was a problem caused by Hamas. We haven’t had an indication of this but it might be true. But in any case there has to be an investigation of these incidents and we hope the Israeli government will carry out such an investigation,” said Zarifi.

“But what is really alarming to us is that the norms prohibiting attacks on healthcare have been repeatedly violated, and there are also laws governing the protection of women and children that appear to have been violated. The only thing that makes these norms work is accountability. There has to be accountability for what happened, as it is the only way we can ensure that what has happened won’t happen in other conflicts. Impunity is watched by other actors around the world,” he added.

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United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres addresses the high-level pledging event on the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) 2026. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 16 2025 (IPS)

2025 has been an especially turbulent year for humanitarian aid operations as global aid budgets have experienced record declines in funding. As conflicts, environmental disasters, and economic crises intensify and disproportionately impact the world’s most vulnerable communities, the resources available in global emergency funds are falling far short of rapidly growing needs.

For 2026, humanitarian agencies project that even more people may be left without critical support if funding gaps continue to widen. In response, the United Nations (UN) and its partners are urgently calling on the international community to mobilize increased support for its Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) at an annual pledging event to commemorate the fund’s 20th anniversary on December 12.

“The humanitarian system’s tank is running on empty – with millions of lives hanging in the balance,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “This is a moment when we are asked to do more and more, with less and less. This is simply unsustainable.”

According to figures from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA ), the UN aims to save 87 million lives next year, which will require approximately USD 23 billion in funding. In addition, the agency seeks to raise about USD 33 billion to support 135 million people across 50 countries through 23 national aid operations, along with six additional operations dedicated to refugees and migrants.

Despite the urgent global need for increased support, funding for humanitarian appeals has faltered more steeply than ever before, with contributions for budgets at the lowest levels recorded in decades. The appeal for 2025, which called for USD 12 billion, reached roughly 25 million less people than the previous year.

OCHA recorded a multitude of immediate consequences around the world– including an exacerbation of the global hunger crisis, increasingly strained health systems to the point of near collapse, the erosion of critical education programs, and a considerable blow to protection services for vulnerable displaced communities facing protracted armed conflicts. In some contexts, it has been increasingly dangerous for aid workers, with more than 320 killed this year amid what officials describe as an “utter disregard for the laws of war”.

“So when we’re needed at full strength, the warning lights are flashing,” said Tom Fletcher, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. “It’s not just a funding gap – it’s an operational emergency. And if the CERF falters, then the world’s emergency service will falter. And the people who rely on us will suffer.”

With resources in desperately short supply, the UN and its partners have been forced to scale back certain lifesaving services to prioritize others, leaving urgent humanitarian crises critically underfunded. Due to these strategic allocations, the UN has been largely unable to assist numerous displaced communities fleeing from conflict in Darfur, Sudan– which has been described as “the epicenter of human suffering.”

“As you’ve heard and as you know, the brutal cuts that we’re experiencing have forced us to make brutal choices, a ruthless triage of human survival,” Fletcher added. “This is what it means when we put power before solidarity and compassion.”

UN officials also underscored the extreme importance of CERF, as the fund has acted as a lifeline for vulnerable communities around the world for decades, delivering over USD 10 billion worth of aid in more than 110 countries since 2006. Through these efforts, CERF has acted as a “rapid and strategic” source of financing that reached struggling civilians before other sources, saving countless lives.

According to Guterres, “in many places, CERF has made the difference between life-saving help and no help at all.” Earlier this year, when humanitarian operations were allowed to resume in the Gaza Strip, CERF helped deliver vital fuel supplies to hospitals, restore water and sanitation systems, and reinforce other essential lifesaving services.

In 2025, CERF invested nearly USD 212 million to sustain relief efforts across underfunded crises. The UN also announced an additional allocation of USD 100 million to meet critical needs—including those of women and girls—in severe crises in Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Haiti, Myanmar, Mozambique, Syria, among others.

To date, CERF has supported millions of people across 30 countries and territories through a total allocation of USD 435 million. These funds have ensured the scale-up of humanitarian efforts in Gaza following the implementation of the ceasefire, and provided critical assistance to those fleeing armed conflict in Darfur.

These efforts by CERF solidify the center of the “humanitarian reset” that the UN foresees for 2026. “And that’s why the Humanitarian Reset matters: not a slogan, but a challenge to us all,” added Fletcher. “A mission, but also a survival strategy for the work we do and for so many people. It’s about being smarter, faster, closer to the communities we serve, more honest about the difficult trade-offs that we face. Making every dollar count for those we serve.”

The UN’s largest individual humanitarian response plan in 2026 will focus on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which requires roughly USD 4.1 billion to assist roughly 3 million people who have experienced catastrophic levels of violence and destruction. Other response efforts will target Sudan—the world’s largest displacement crisis—which requires USD 2.9 billion to assist 20 million people, and Syria, which requires USD 2.8 billion to help 8.6 million people.

With funding for CERF at its lowest projected levels in over a decade, the UN seeks a funding target of USD 1 billion, and will begin appealing to its member states for support. Countries are also being urged to use their influence to bolster protection measures for civilians and humanitarian workers, as well as to reinforce accountability mechanisms for perpetrators of armed violence.

“We have to imagine, even now, in this tough moment for humanitarian funding, what the next 20 years could look like with a fully funded CERF,” said Fletcher. “A fund that makes the UN faster, smarter, more cost-effective, greener, more anticipatory, more inclusive. A fund that amplifies the voices of communities and proves that solidarity still works. Backed by a movement of citizens who believe in that solidarity.”

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Drone view from Combu Island, with the city of Belém, where COP30 took place, in the background. Credit: Alex Ferro/COP30

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, Dec 4 2025 (IPS)

“I see more philanthropic support aligning with systems thinking, linking climate stability, biodiversity protection, Indigenous leadership, and community resilience,” says Michael Northrop, Program Director at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

In an interview with Inter Press Service (IPS), he says funding is increasingly moving beyond isolated interventions and siloed approaches. The intersection between climate, nature, and Indigenous rights can be considered together. He sees philanthropy moving in that direction, and the momentum is growing.

Northrop is particularly excited about the recent COP30 Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) announcement. Over the past two years, the Fund has backed the facility while in its development stages. TFFF targets the protection of 1.2 billion hectares of tropical rainforests across more than 70 low- and middle-income countries.

The TFFF was launched during COP 30 with USD 5.5 billion in commitments from sponsor countries, strong endorsements from 53 countries, and plans for delivery. It has a long-term goal of raising about USD 125 billion.

All-in-one Solution

He calls it a nature solution, a climate solution, an Indigenous peoples and local communities solution, and an economic development solution, all in one.

“The Brazilian government raised almost USD 7 billion in early contributions. They aim to secure another USD 15 billion from governments over the next 12 to 18 months, then attract USD 100 billion in private investment. This structure focuses on investment instead of grants or loans. Countries will get paid per hectare of standing forest they conserve,” Northrop told IPS.

Northrop sees this initiative as a major departure from traditional models. It rewards protection instead of exploitation and avoids burdening countries with increased debt.

He appreciates Brazil’s leadership in promoting this initiative, stating that the RBF has been working with Brazilians and other nations for nearly two years. “The current challenge is moving from concept to a mature investment mechanism that can finance forest protection at scale.”

Indigenous peoples and local communities already protect nature more effectively than any other model, he says.

“Half of the world’s remaining intact forests are within Indigenous territories. Almost 45 percent of global biodiversity exists within those lands, although formal recognition of land rights often lags. In regions such as the Amazon, the Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia, granting tenure to indigenous communities has helped protect forests, marine resources, and ways of life.”

Michael Northrop, Program Director at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, in a remote Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest. Photo: Supplied

He emphasizes that when giving sovereignty and governance responsibilities to Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs), they do not require extensive external resources.

“They need safety, legal recognition, and the freedom to live on and defend their lands. This is a powerful message that is now understood more widely.”

Single Lens Needed to Tackle Multiple Issues

One of the greatest obstacles, according to Northrop, lies in the way global systems compartmentalize climate, nature, and indigenous issues. Climate change, he says, is treated through one lens, biodiversity through another, and Indigenous rights through yet another.

These areas are interdependent but managed separately. Negotiators at UN climate summits differ from those at biodiversity forums. They often belong to different ministries, speak different scientific languages, and focus on different priorities. As a result, policy responses malfunction.”

Northrop believes the disconnect reflects human cognitive limits.

“Most people cannot think deeply about these big systems all at once. Yet he notes progress in recognizing connections, supported through the powerful visual mapping of these connections that Earth Insight did before COP30. He believes accessible visuals help experts see the interdependencies more effectively.

The fund uses field visits to identify partners. Northrop says the institution does not have a big staff, so it relies on travel and direct engagement. The Fund looks for people who think on a large scale and design strategies to solve complex problems. Reviewing paper proposals alone is insufficient. He says real understanding comes from meeting people, seeing their environments, and learning what drives them.

There are enormous numbers of positive examples of effective philanthropy, but even with these, the overall volume of the work is insufficient. He notes a generational shift in the sector that contributes to current impact.

“Earlier, philanthropic institutions often hired academics without social change and policy change experience. Today, staff are increasingly drawn from social movements, campaign organizations, and policy implementation roles.”

He finds this shift encouraging.

Michael Northrop, Program Director at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF), inspects oil pipelines in the Ecuadorian Amazon. RBF stresses that Indigenous peoples and local communities already protect nature more effectively than any other model. Photo: Supplied

Still, philanthropy cannot substitute for strong governance and policy. He points to worrying trends in the United States, where decisions that protected social and environmental systems are being reversed. He insists progress depends on government action alongside philanthropic support. Both are needed.

At COP30, Northrop notes a split in approaches among countries. “A large number wanted to phase out fossil fuels and halt deforestation. Others, including major oil-producing nations, continue to push for extraction. The world has already crossed the threshold for burning new fossil fuel reserves if it hopes to protect the planet.”

Unfortunately there is also continued pressure to industrialize forest landscapes through oil, mining, logging, and agriculture.

Fossil Fuel Phase-Out Efforts

Northrop expects philanthropy will support the 80 countries that have committed to a fossil fuel phase-out. This approach may need adoption outside the formal COP mechanisms, given the split in Belém. He also expects strong philanthropic engagement to support efforts to end deforestation.

He would like to see immediate action on phasing out fossil fuels and ending deforestation. He says the world cannot wait.

The link between forest protection and fossil fuel restraint is direct. Extraction becomes more difficult if forest areas are left intact. Keeping reserves in the ground helps safeguard forests. Northrop believes strategies must be aligned.

He sees growing collaboration among philanthropic groups focused on nature and climate—a new and expanding trend—which must continue because neither philanthropy nor policy can solve these issues alone. Both must work together with civil society and indigenous communities.

Northrop is clear about the biggest challenge for climate philanthropy—achieving scale. Philanthropy alone cannot deliver transformation at the necessary magnitude. Only policy can. Philanthropy must help develop and support strong policy and governance to scale systemic change.

His personal motivation, which developed early in life, continues to drive him. He says he’s fortunate to have met so many mission-driven people throughout his four decades of work on nature, climate, and development. He has deep respect for how social change agents’ minds work. What keeps him going, he says, is listening. He tries to understand what people are doing and what inspires them. He credits individuals who have driven major changes in the environmental, health, and education systems for inspiring his work.

Northrop believes there is more philanthropy today and that more players think globally. He welcomes new actors with practical experience in change-making. He warns that philanthropic support must be backed by stable national and international policy.

“The coming months will test whether the Tropical Forest Forever Facility advances beyond the pilot stage. If it succeeds, it could become one of the most significant efforts yet devised to reward protection instead of destruction.”

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Excerpt:

UNAIDS campaigns have dominated the global effort to end HIV/Aids as a public threat since 1999. Credit: UNAIDS

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Dec 1 2025 (IPS)

“It’s like adding fuel to an already burning fire,” says Aditia Taslim.

“We have not recovered from the impact of the US funding cuts earlier this year, and closing down UNAIDS prematurely will only make things worse, especially for key populations and other criminalized groups, including people who use drugs,” Taslim, who is Advocacy Lead at the International Network of People Who Use Drugs (INPUD), tells IPS.

Her view is shared widely by HIV activists around the world who were stunned by a proposal from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in September, included in a report on progress on UN reforms, to shut down the UN’s main agency to fight HIV/AIDS next year.

UNAIDS, the civil society groups that sit on its board, experts, and national governments across the globe had already been working on a transformation plan for the agency, which would see it end in its present form around 2030 when current HIV targets expire.

And many still do not understand exactly why closure next year is now being planned.

“There is a lot of confusion around this right now. We’re not sure why 2026 was chosen. Perhaps it was because we were in fact already in a process of transformation,” Angeli Achrekar, Deputy Executive Director of the Programme Branch at UNAIDS, told IPS.

But the proposal has been met with vociferous pushback—a call from the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board (PCB) NGO Delegation to the Secretary General urging him to reconsider was endorsed by more than 1 000 NGOs.

World Aids Day has been commemorated since 1988 and is a significant platform for people to unite against the disease. Credit: UNAIDS

Many of those same groups have warned that if the early closure does go ahead, gains in fighting the disease will be at risk, and, some are certain, lives will be lost unnecessarily.

“If this happens, the world will be much less effective in preventing and treating HIV, which means more people dying from a disease that is completely preventable and treatable. There’s no doubt in my mind that closing UNAIDS will lead to more HIV infections and deaths,” Julia Lukomnik, Strategic Advisor at Dutch organization Aidsfonds, told IPS.

UNAIDS, which started operations in 1996, is unique among UN structures in that its governing board actually includes civil society groups. This, experts say, has meant that in all its work, those on the ground working directly with the communities affected by the disease – not just people living with HIV (PLHIV), but also key populations most at risk, including drug users, sex workers, members of the LGBT+ community, and others—have had a crucial say in developing its policy and implementing its work.

Indeed, while the agency’s activities include treatment projects, in many countries it is seen as a vital bridge, directly and through partnerships with local NGOs, between communities and local, regional, and national authorities.

“If UNAIDS were to close in 2026, the impact would be significant, particularly in countries like Vietnam where community-led organizations depend on UNAIDS for data, technical guidance, coordination, and engagement space. UNAIDS has played a critical bridging role, connecting governments, donors, and civil society in Vietnam,” Doan Thanh Tung, Executive Director at Lighthouse Vietnam, one of the largest LGBTQ+ organizations in Vietnam, told IPS.

This is of particular concern at a time when marginalization and criminalization of key populations and PLHIV in many countries is worsening.

UNAIDS has played a crucial role in advocating for the rights of key populations and PLHIV, including helping bring in landmark legislation enshrining some rights and access to services.

UNAIDS workers provide support to communities in need of their services. The organization and its workers have been badly affected by the impact of a sudden acceleration of cuts to international HIV financing. Credit: UNAIDS

Campaigners fear that without UNAIDS presence, some communities would very quickly face increased marginalization or criminalization, without anyone to speak up for them.

“We’re in a context of increasing criminalization of key populations for the HIV epidemic. We know—in part because of UNAIDS— that violating the rights of key populations leads to increased HIV cases. When you criminalize gay and trans people, you increase HIV cases. When you criminalize sex workers, you increase HIV cases. When you criminalize safe injection sites, you increase HIV cases,” said Lukomnik.

“Closing the UN body that most strongly advocates for the human rights of these groups at the very time when these rights are increasingly threatened will almost certainly increase both rights violations and HIV cases,” she added.

Within UNAIDS, officials are aware this could be a problem.

“The question is where can advocacy for key populations be maintained [without UNAIDS] in countries. UNAIDS can raise issues to do with key populations with governments. Will other organizations be able to do that?” Eammon Murphy, UNAIDS Director, Regional Support Teams for the Asia Pacific and Eastern Europe and Central Asia regions, told IPS.

“One of the critical functions we perform is being the voice of communities. The voice of the community must be safeguarded at the local, regional and global levels,” Achrekar said.

As well as allowing it to advocate for communities, the trust that communities have with the agency means it can have a better view of an epidemic in a given country than state authorities might have, say experts.

They highlight UNAIDS’ vital role in collecting and evaluating data on the disease in specific communities and using data to develop effective interventions and national policies and set HIV targets. If that monitoring and evaluation capacity is lost suddenly with no time to replace it properly, the impact on authorities’ efforts to fight an HIV epidemic could be devastating, they argue.

“UNAIDS set the targets for the global AIDS response that has given countries the ability to shape their strategic plans to respond to HIV and AIDS. Those targets and strategic plans ensured high-impact interventions that led to a reduction of new HIV infections, addressing inequalities, gender-based violence and stigma and discrimination against people with HIV or AIDS,” Tendayi Westerhof, National Director, Pan African Positive Women’s Coalition-Zimbabwe, told IPS.

“It was responsible for the Global AIDS  Programme report that monitored progress of the AIDS response by countries. If UNAIDS is closed, this will have a huge impact on the monitoring of progress by countries in fighting AIDS,” she added.

The proposed closure of the agency also comes at a time when HIV groups are still reeling from recent upheavals in global aid funding.

The withdrawal of US aid at the start of this year, which had previously accounted for 73 percent of international HIV/AIDS financing, has already had a devastating effect on the fight against the disease, forcing many organizations on the frontline of the HIV response to close.

UNAIDS modeling forecasts the funding cuts could lead to an additional 6.6 million new HIV infections and 4.2 million AIDS-related deaths by 2029.

Closing UNAIDS against this backdrop could further imperil the sustainability of the HIV response in some places, especially in those where services for key populations are already underfunded.

“We have seen the impact of the abrupt funding cuts from the US, which have crippled a lot of harm reduction services and forced many drug user-led networks and organizations to close their operations. Harm reduction has also been severely underfunded. Closing down UNAIDS will only create reasons for governments to close down services and programmes, as well as funding for people who use drugs,” said Taslim.

“In most low- and middle-income countries, services and programmes for people who use drugs… are still heavily dependent on international donors. Closing UNAIDS prematurely means that services and programmes for our community will be the first to be removed from national priorities. There is no sustainability strategy in place for services and programmes for people who use drugs and other key populations, as well as other criminalized and marginalized communities,” he added.

Tung warned that dismantling UNAIDS at a time when global funding for HIV is shrinking “would likely erode global-to-local solidarity, reduce community engagement in the HIV response, and weaken independent data systems, which could further exacerbate the epidemic and undo decades of progress in HIV prevention and control that would be extremely difficult to recover.”

But while activists warn of the potential for a 2026 closure of UNAIDS to profoundly impact the world’s HIV response, they also point out that so far it is only a proposal and that there is some hope it may not come to pass.

“The proposal to end UNAIDS in 2026 was made by the UN Secretary General, but it’s really up to the UNAIDS PCB to make this call,” said Lukomnik.

UNAIDS officials point out that the agency had already begun a process of transforming itself.

Earlier this year, the PCB set out its plan to restructure between 2025 – 2027, and then review its structure and mandate again in 2027. It had been expected that after that, a transition period would see key UNAIDS functions shifted to other parts of the UN system or other actors involved in the HIV response by 2030.

The first phase of this restructuring involved the agency this year beginning a huge reduction in the number of its staff and offices around the world—both are to be cut by more than 50 percent.

Achrekar said the transformation was in part a response to global funding changes but also to reflect moves towards greater sustainability in the global HIV response.

“Our transformation is partly because of the current funding volatility, but it was already underway before that. We are focused on ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 and even before the General Secretary’s proposal, we at UNAIDS knew that we had to transform for where the HIV response was shifting to in the future—that as countries start to approach 2030 HIV targets, the HIV response would need to be sustainable after 2030. Our transformation means we can be fit for when the HIV response needs to become sustainably supported by countries,” said Achrekar.

“We are not certain if this SG proposal can be turned back. But we believe there could be a way to bring some coherence to what the SG has proposed and the transition we had already planned. UNAIDS is not afraid of transforming,” she added.

However, if the proposal does come to pass and UNAIDS closes next year, the organization is hoping others involved in the global HIV response will be able to step up, to some extent, to help maintain the response.

“We are just one player in the HIV response and all the others have critical roles too. The global solidarity in the HIV response must be maintained in future and we have to be able to safeguard what is critical in the HIV response and the people affected by HIV,” Achrekar said.

Note: 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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Nigerians at a newspaper stand with headlines reflecting the Trump versus Nigeria saga. Credit: Promise Eze/IPS

By Promise Eze
ABUJA, Nigeria, Nov 26 2025 (IPS)

Diplomatic relations between Nigeria and the US have continued to sour after US President Donald Trump threatened ‘military’ intervention over what some American lawmakers have called  “Christian genocide” in Africa’s most populous country.

In a series of posts on his social media platform on October 31, Trump accused the Nigerian government of ignoring the killing of Christians by “radical Islamists.” He warned that Washington would suspend all aid to Nigeria and would go into the “disgraced” country “guns-a-blazing” if Abuja failed to respond.

“Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter,” Trump wrote.

He went on to declare Nigeria a “country of particular concern” for alleged violations of religious freedom, instructing the US Department of War to prepare for “possible action” and warning that any strike would be “fast, vicious, and sweet.”

Trump’s remarks follow years of lobbying by American evangelical groups and conservative lawmakers who accuse the Nigerian government of complicity in attacks on Christians in the country.

This is not the first time Trump has accused an African country of genocide. Earlier this year, he claimed that South Africa was committing genocide against white farmers.

Recently, the US stayed away from the G20 summit in South Africa, apparently because of these widely disputed claims that white people are being targeted in the country.

Disputed Narratives

According to an organization that claims to track persecuted Christians, Open Doors International, Nigeria remains one of the world’s most dangerous places to be a Christian, ranking seventh on its 2025 World Watch List of nations where believers face the most persecution.

A report by the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law estimated that jihadist groups killed more than 7,000 Christians and abducted 7,800 others in 2025 alone. The organization asserts that since 2009, they have killed over 125,000 Christians, destroyed 19,000 churches, and displaced more than 1,100 communities.

Open Doors’ data suggests that Christians in northern Nigeria are 6.5 times more likely to be killed and five times more likely to be abducted than Muslims.

However, the Nigerian authorities have rejected claims of a state-sponsored Christian genocide, insisting that both Christians and Muslims suffer from extremist violence.

Analysts caution that portraying Nigeria’s insecurity as purely religious oversimplifies a crisis rooted in political and economic failure.

With its 230 million citizens divided almost evenly between Christians and Muslims, the country faces multiple overlapping threats, from Boko Haram’s Islamist insurgency and farmer-herder conflicts to ethnic rivalries and separatist agitations in the southeast.

While Christians are among those targeted, researchers note that many victims of armed groups are Muslims living in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north, where most attacks are not driven solely by religion.

Data from the US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) show that between January 2020 and September 2025, 20,409 civilians were killed in 11,862 attacks across Nigeria. Of these, only 385 incidents were explicitly linked to victims’ Christian identity, resulting in 317 deaths, while 196 attacks targeted Muslims, leaving 417 dead.

“Trump’s comment has certainly drawn global attention to the problem of insecurity in Nigeria, but it also raises questions about foreign influence and national sovereignty,” said Oludare Ogunlana, Professor of National Security at Collin College in Texas. “What I’ve observed is that many who present themselves as experts on African or global security often lack a nuanced understanding of Nigeria’s realities.”

He described Trump’s claims as misguided, stressing that Nigeria’s insecurity is multifaceted and should not be given a religious coloring.

“If you examine the situation closely, it is not a religious war. It reflects systemic governance failures, economic inequality, and weak law enforcement,” he said. “Citizens of all faiths—Christians, Muslims, atheists, and traditional believers—have suffered from kidnapping, organized crime, and other forms of violence. These criminal activities emerge from disparities in wealth and control over resources, resulting in loss of life across communities.”

Religious Tensions

Trump’s remarks have already inflamed tensions at home and analysts have cautioned that framing Nigeria’s insecurity as a religious conflict risks deepening divisions.

Several Muslim groups have condemned Trump’s comments as an attack on Islam and an attempt to demonize Nigeria’s Muslim population. They argue that Trump, who has long enjoyed support from evangelical Christians, is ill-suited to address the complexities of Nigeria’s Muslim-majority north.

Days after Trump’s comments, members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria marched through Kano to protest the threat of US military action. Chanting “Death to America” and burning the US flag, demonstrators carried placards reading “There is no Christian genocide in Nigeria” and “America wants to control our resources.”

Northern states like Kano have a long history of bloody religious riots, and observers warn that renewed rhetoric could deepen sectarian divides in a region where relations between the two faiths remain fragile.

Christian and non-Muslim groups, on the other hand, maintain that persecution is real. They cite reports noting that more than 300 Nigerians have been killed over alleged blasphemy since 1999, with few perpetrators prosecuted. They call out government officials who support religious extremism and enforce shariah law on non-Muslims.

“It is an honor to be called an Islamic extremist,” wrote Bashir Ahmad, a former aide to ex-President Muhammadu Buhari, in a since-deleted post on X. Ahmad has previously called for the death penalty for blasphemy.

Deborah Eli Yusuf, a peace advocate with Jugaad Foundation for Peace and Nation Building, expressed concern that ongoing arguments could spill into real-world violence, making tensions difficult to contain.

She told IPS that the government should collaborate with stakeholders to maintain peace.

“This is an opportunity for the government to take the lead in facilitating honest interfaith conversations and dialogues that can lead to mutually agreeable resolutions. The government is best positioned to organize discussions that bring together critical stakeholders, including both religious and traditional leaders.

“Many of these conflicts also intersect with ethnic divisions, which further complicate the situation. The conversations happening now present a chance to address these divides. If left unchecked, rising tensions could deepen fragmentation in a country already divided along tribal, ethnic, and class lines,” she said.

Abba Yakubu Yusuf, Coordinator of the Reves Africa Foundation, believes that while Nigeria faces various forms of violent conflict orchestrated by multiple armed groups, it is misleading for the government to deny that Christians are being specifically targeted by some for their faith. He argues that acknowledging this reality is the first step toward finding solutions.

“Since as far back as 2009, the killings in southern Kaduna, Plateau, Benue, and parts of Kano states have been largely religiously motivated,” he claimed. “There was a massacre in Plateau state that saw an entire village wiped out with no survivors. In the northeast, while attacks target Muslims, there are exceptions. In southern Borno, for example, a largely Christian population has suffered the most. Overall, I would say there is a genocide occurring in Nigeria, and we should not lie to ourselves.”

Yusuf warned that continued denial by the government of systematic attacks on Christians, without addressing the root causes, could have serious consequences for the country’s economy.

“We need investors to come to our country, but they are hesitant. This creates a climate of fear and threatens economic growth,” he said.

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Ibrahim Olabi, Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the United Nations, addresses the Security Council meeting on the situation in Syria. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 12 2025 (IPS)

Eleven months after the fall of the Assad regime, Syria continues to grapple with severe instability as the country navigates a turbulent political transition. Rates of displacement have surged, and humanitarian organizations are struggling to support large numbers of refugees returning home. In recent weeks, the United Nations (UN) has documented numerous cases of enforced disappearances and abductions, calling for stronger accountability measures as the transition continues to unfold.

The ongoing displacement crisis at the Syrian borders was detailed in the latest regional flash update from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). According to the update, roughly seven million civilians remain displaced within Syria, while more than 1.9 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) have returned home, with roughly half of them departing from IDP sites in northern Syria.

As of November 6, UNHCR has recorded approximately 1,208,802 Syrians having crossed back into Syria from bordering nations since December 8, 2024. The majority of these returnees are projected to have departed from Türkiye, with UNHCR recording roughly 550,000 Syrian returnees in the past year.

Additionally, roughly 362,027 have been recorded returning to Syria from Lebanon. Smaller numbers of returnees have been recorded returning from Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, and afar. Currently, it is estimated that at least 1,476 Syrians have participated in the repatriation programme organized by UNHCR, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the General Security Office (GSO).

Both internally displaced Syrians and those returning home continue to endure harsh living conditions, compounded by severe shortages of humanitarian supplies. UNHCR notes that additional funding is urgently required to facilitate an effective political transition for civilians, with the agency recording widespread destruction to homes, an overwhelming lack of employment opportunities, and shrinking availability of access to basic services.

Aid operations are increasingly strained, struggling to keep pace with the growing scale of needs across the country. Winterization efforts are underway as harsh temperatures are projected to exacerbate already dire living conditions. UNHCR estimates that reduced funding threatens to leave roughly 750,000 Syrian refugees without winter assistance.

“Humanitarian budgets are stretched to breaking point and the winter support that we offer will be much less this year,” said Dominique Hyde, UNHCR’s Director of External Relations. “Families will have to endure freezing temperatures without things many of us take for granted: a proper roof, insulation, heating, blankets, warm clothes or medicine.”

UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi has urged the international community, the private sector, and Syrian communities to “come together and intensify their efforts to support recovery”, to ensure that returns are dignified and sustainable. “With renewed commitment, the international community can help preserve hope and support stability and durable solutions for one of the largest refugee situations of our time,” said Grandi.

To support displaced Syrian families ahead of the harsh winter season, UNHCR has scaled up its winterization response across Syria, supplying over 17,000 displaced and returnee families with essential non-food items. The agency delivered winter kits with essential winter supplies such as blankets, heaters, mattresses, and warm clothing in Aleppo, Hama, Dar’a, Quneitra, Homs, Qamishli, Sweida, and rural Damascus.

“Our teams are on the ground, determined to protect refugees from the cold, but we are running out of time and resources,” added Hyde. “We need more funding to help make many lives slightly more tolerable.” UNHCR aims to raise at least $35 million to repair damaged homes, insulate shelters, and provide warmth, blankets, and other essentials for children and the elderly, along with funding for medicines and hot meals.

To help meet the most urgent needs, UNHCR has continued distributing support through its Return and Reintegration Financial Assistance programme, providing critical financial aid to more than 45,000 returnees. Additionally, over 24,500 returnees have been supported at key border crossings with Türkiye and Lebanon over the course of this year, with UNHCR and its partners continuing to monitor civilian movement and welfare through home visits and referrals to lifesaving services.

Despite these efforts, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has underscored growing insecurity in Syria, marked by “worrying reports” of continued enforced disappearances and abductions. On November 7, OHCHR spokesperson Thameen Al-Keetan informed reporters in Geneva that at least 97 people have been abducted since the beginning of the year, adding to the more than 100,000 individuals who went missing during the five decade rule of the Assad regime.

Karla Quintana, the Head of the Independent Institution on Missing Persons in the Syrian Arab Republic (IIMP), added that “everyone in Syria knows someone who has gone missing”. OHCHR also highlights the disappearance of Hamza Al-Amarin, a volunteer with the Syria Civil Defense, who went missing in July of this year while assisting with a humanitarian evacuation mission in Sweida. OHCHR and its partners continue to urge for strengthened accountability measures and the protection of all humanitarian personnel.

“We stress that all armed actors – both exercising State power and otherwise – must respect and protect humanitarian workers at all times, everywhere, as required by international human rights law and applicable humanitarian law,” said Al-Keetan. “Accountability and justice for all human rights violations and abuses, past and present, are essential for Syria to build a durable, peaceful and secure future for all its people.”

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Parliamentarians from the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) and the Forum of Arab Parliamentarians on Population and Development (FAPPD) met in Cairo. Credit: APDA

By Hisham Allam
CAIRO, Nov 3 2025 (IPS)

Inclusive legislation, empowered youth, and anti-violence policies are inseparable aspects of sustainable development and were the key messages at a conference of the Inter-Regional Meeting of Asian and Arab Parliamentarians on Population and Development held in Cairo on October 24, 2025.

The forum spotlighted urgent regional collaboration on sexual and reproductive health, youth inclusion, gender-based violence, and sustainable development. The gathering underlined the pressing need for legislative reform and multi-sector engagement to tackle complex social challenges amid shifting demographics and development imperatives.

The meeting, jointly organized by the Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) and the Forum of Arab Parliamentarians on Population and Development (FAPPD), with close collaboration from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), with the support of the Japan Trust Fund (JTF) and International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), convened a high-profile roster of leaders and experts.

Key figures included Dr. Abdel Hadi al-Qasby, member of the Egyptian Senate and chair of the meeting; Dr. Mohamed Al-Samadi, Secretary General of the FAPPD; Professor Takemi Keizo, former Japanese Health Minister and Chair of APDA; and Dominic Allen, Deputy Regional Director for UNFPA Arab States Office.

Sessions homed in on strengthening sexual and reproductive health (SRH) as a cornerstone of social and economic progress, with UNFPA’s Dr. Hala Youssef highlighting SRH’s role in boosting productivity and well-being.

“Healthy individuals contribute to a more productive economy,” she said. The forum candidly addressed the region’s demographic challenges, barriers in access to care, and declining donor funding that threaten gains in maternal health and family planning.

Youth empowerment emerged as a strategic priority throughout the forum, with policymakers acknowledging that the region’s overwhelming majority under 30 must be engaged as active partners in shaping their future, rather than passive recipients of policy decisions.

Dr. Rida Shibli, former member of the Jordanian Senate, underscored this shift in mindset, stating, “Youth are partners, not just beneficiaries,” and advocating for structured, inclusive platforms that effectively empower young people to influence policy.

Tunisia’s progressive reforms—featuring the establishment of youth councils and vocational training programs—were highlighted as leading examples of meaningful youth engagement fostering both opportunity and participation.

The forum’s candid discussion on gender-based violence (GBV) underscored its pressing public health implications.

Mohamed Abou Nar, Chief Programs and Impact Officer at Pathfinder International, warned that despite the existence of comprehensive legal protections, enforcement remains inconsistent and inadequate.

He declared, “GBV is a public health emergency,” emphasizing the need to implement survivor-centered health services and legal reforms grounded in robust community involvement and multisectoral collaboration.

Hibo Ali Houssein, MP from Djibouti, reflected on the tension between progressive laws and enduring cultural norms that limit justice access for GBV survivors, while Bahrain’s Dr. Mohammed Ali called for legislative alignment to optimize private sector contributions, stating, “The private sector must provide capital, spark innovation, and create jobs within frameworks mandating sustainability.”

Country-specific achievements illustrated the forum’s depth. Cambodia is swiftly moving towards graduating from Least Developed Country status by 2027, with economic and regional partnerships propelling its long path to upper-middle-income status.

MP Chandara Khut stated plainly, “Peace has brought stability, which in turn nurtures development and growth.”

Sarah Elago, the representative from the Philippines, made a clear call on funding for adolescent pregnancy and maternal health, stating that “development is measured by dignity, equality, well-being, and everyday experiences of women, youth, and the people—not merely by numbers.”

The delegates called on parliamentarians, governments, and partners to convert dialogue into concrete action, emphasizing transparency, accountability, and regional solidarity as key drivers toward shared goals.

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Merlyn Sandoval next to the rainwater collection tank built on the small plot where she lives, in the village of San Jose Las Pilas, in eastern Guatemala. She and her family participate in a program to alleviate the effects of the drought in the Central American Dry Corridor. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN LUIS JILOTEPEQUE, Guatemala, Oct 30 2025 (IPS)

Water scarcity that relentlessly hits the rural communities in eastern Guatemala, located in the so-called Central American Dry Corridor, is a constant threat due to the challenges in producing food, year after year. But it is also an incentive to strive to overcome adversities.

The peasant families living in this region struggle to counter hopelessness and, with the help of international cooperation, manage to confront water scarcity. With great effort, they produce food, aware of the importance of caring for and protecting the area’s micro-watersheds."Unfortunately, last year the rainy season also ended in September and we harvested almost nothing, there was no rainy season, there was no water. So it's difficult for us here, that's why they call it the Dry Corridor, because we don't have water" –Ricardo Ramirez.

“We are in the Dry Corridor, and it’s hard to produce the plants here, even if you’ve tried to produce them, because due to the lack of water (the fruits) don’t reach their proper weight,” Merlyn Sandoval, head of one of the families benefiting from a project that seeks to provide the necessary tools and knowledge for people to overcome water insecurity and produce their own food, told IPS.

Sandoval is a native of the village of San Jose Las Pilas, in the municipality of San Luis Jilotepeque, in the department of Jalapa, in eastern Guatemala. Her community has been included in the program, funded by Sweden and implemented by several organizations, such as the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), together with the Guatemalan government.

The initiative, which began in 2022 and ends this December, reaches 7,000 families living around the micro-watersheds of seven municipalities in the departments of Chiquimula and Jalapa, in eastern Guatemala. These towns are Jocotan, Camotan, Olopa, San Juan Ermita, Chiquimula, San Luis Jilotepeque, and San Pedro Pinula.

The project focuses on creating the conditions to promote food and nutritional security and the resilience of the population, prioritizing water security that allows for food production.

“The strength of the (project’s) goals lies in the training and the action of the micro-watershed concept… people were trained depending on whether they were upstream, downstream, or in the middle of the watershed,” Rafael Zavala, FAO representative in Guatemala, told IPS.

He added: “The area is highly expulsive of labor due to migration, and this causes women to be the heads of households.”

The San Jose River basin is one of the watersheds being targeted for protection and preservation due to its importance for the water security of the towns in San Luis Jilotepeque, in eastern Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Drought and poverty

A report from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) indicates that the area included in the program shows a significant deterioration of livelihoods and a scarcity of economic opportunities.

It adds that in the department of Chiquimula, 70.6% of the population lives in poverty, while in Jalapa, the figure reaches 67.2%.

The Central American Dry Corridor, which is 1,600 kilometers long, covers 35% of Central America and is home to more than 10.5 million people.

In this belt, over 73% of the rural population lives in poverty and 7.1 million people suffer from severe food insecurity, according to FAO data.

Central America is a region of seven nations, with 50 million inhabitants, of which 18.5 million live in Guatemala, the most populous country, with high inequality and where a large part of poor families are indigenous.

In the home of Merlyn Sandoval’s family in San Jose Las Pilas, the granary for storing the corn and beans, which are so difficult to produce due to the lack of water in the area of eastern Guatemala, is never missing. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Learning to Harvest Rainwater

As part of the project, the young Sandoval has learned the key points about micro-watershed management and has developed actions to harvest rainwater on her plot, in the backyard of her house. There, she has set up a circular tank, whose base is lined with an impermeable polyethylene geo-membrane, with a capacity of 16 cubic meters.

When it rains, water runs down from the roof and, through a PVC pipe, reaches the tank they call a “harvester,” which collects the resource to water the small garden and the fruit trees, and to provide water during the dry season, from November to May.

In the garden, Sandoval and her family of 10, harvest celery, cucumber, cilantro, chives, tomatoes, and green chili. In fruits, they harvest bananas, mangoes, and jocotes, among others.

Next to the rainwater harvester is the fish pond where 500 tilapia fingerlings are growing. The structure, also with a polyethylene geo-membrane at its base, is eight meters long, six meters wide, and one meter deep.

When the fish reach a weight of half a kilo, they can be sold in the community.

“The harvesters fill up with what is collected from the rains, and that helps to give a water change for the tilapia and also to give water to the fruit trees,” said Sandoval, 27.

The young woman also produces corn and beans, on another nearby plot, of approximately half a hectare. These plantings, more extensive than the garden and fruit trees in the backyard, cannot be covered by irrigation from the tank.

Ricardo Ramirez shows the inside of the macro-tunnel (a small greenhouse) where he has managed to harvest cucumbers, tomatoes, and green chilies, and where the plants of the new tomato planting can already be seen, on his small farm in eastern Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

As a result, these crops, in this region of the Dry Corridor, are always vulnerable to climatic fluctuations: they can be ruined both by lack of rain and by excess rain during the same rainy season, from May to November.

Sandoval has already lost 50% of her harvest due to excess rain, she stated, with a hint of sadness.

This has also happened to Ricardo Ramirez, another resident of San Jose Las Pilas, who has experienced these fluctuations of lack and excess of water in his crop of corn and beans, staples in the Central American diet.

“Unfortunately, last year the rainy season also ended in September and we harvested almost nothing, there was no rainy season, there was no water. So it’s difficult for us here, that’s why they call it the Dry Corridor, because we don’t have water,” said Ramirez, 59, referring to his bean crop, planted on two plots totaling half a hectare, of which he has lost roughly half.

From the rainwater collection tank, Ricardo Ramirez manages to drip-irrigate the crops in the macro-tunnel, as this type of greenhouse is called. The system has allowed him to harvest produce despite water insecurity in eastern Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Green Hope

However, the support from the program driven with Swedish cooperation funds has been vital for Ramirez, not only to stay afloat economically as a farmer, but also to bet, with hope and enthusiasm, on the land where he was born.

Through this international initiative, Ramirez was also able to set up a rainwater collection tank with a capacity of 16 cubic meters, as well as an agricultural macro-tunnel: a kind of small greenhouse, with a modular structure covered by a mesh that protects the crops from pests and other bugs.

Inside the macro-tunnel, he planted cucumbers, tomatoes, and green chili, among others, and watered them by drip irrigation through a hose that carried water from the tank, just three meters away.

“From one row I got 950 cucumbers, and 450 pounds (204 kilos) of tomatoes, and the chili, it just keeps producing. But it was because there was water in the harvester and I just opened the little valve, gave it just half an hour, by drip, and the soil got wet,” Ramirez told IPS, while checking a bunch of bananas or guineos, as they are known in Central America.

All of that generated sufficient income for him to save 2,000 quetzales (about 160 dollars), with which he was able to install electricity on his plot and also buy an electric generator to pump water from a spring within the property, for when the collection tank runs out in about two months.

In this way, Ramirez will be able to maintain irrigation and production.

San José Las Pilas has a community water system, supplied by a spring located nearby. The tank is installed in the high area of the village so that water flows down by gravity, but the resource is rationed to just a few hours a day, given the scarcity.

Nicolas Gomez still has to walk two hours, like many others, to get water from a river when his collection tank runs out during the dry season in eastern Guatemala. Credit: Edgardo Ayala / IPS

Long Walks to Obtain Water

However, not everyone is as lucky as Ramirez, to have a water spring on their property and to irrigate gardens when the collection tank runs out.

When that happens, Nicolas Gomez has to walk almost two hours to reach the San Jose River, the closest one, and carry water from there, loading it on his shoulder in containers, to meet basic hygiene and cooking needs.

“So now, in the rainy season, we have water stored in this tank. But for the dry season we have nothing, we go to the river to fetch water, to a spring that is quite far, about a two-hour walk, that’s how hard it is for us to obtain it,” said Gomez, a 66-year-old farmer who has also suffered the climate onslaughts of drought and excess water on his corn crops.

Gomez lives in Los Magueyes, a rural settlement, also within San Luis Jilotepeque. Poverty here is more acute and visible than in San Jose Las Pilas. There is no community water system or electricity, and families have to light themselves with candles at night.

“Life here is hard,” stated Gomez, amidst the smoke produced by the wood-fired stove he was using to cook a meal when IPS visited on October 21.