(L-R) Horacio (Luis) Carvalho, CEO of Climate Change Ventures, and Faraz Khan, MBE, at London Climate Action Week. Carvalho's firm advises on carbon mitigation and green investment projects. They signed an MOU to develop markets with Brazilian CPR Verde (green rural product certificate), a Brazilian financial credit instrument used to fund environmental preservation, forestry conservation, and carbon sequestration. The markets they are eyeing will be Saudi Arabia, Africa and Pakistan. Credit: Faraz Khan

By Zofeen Ebrahim
LONDON & KARACHI, Pakistan, Jun 26 2026 (IPS)

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

As the world faced its biggest energy shock in a decade, the case for investing in clean energy suddenly became far more compelling.

As an intense heatwave grips Europe, with London’s Met Office issuing a “risk to life” warning and the closure of shops, offices and schools alongside disruptions to transport during the London Climate Action Week (LCAW), calls for this shift are gaining even greater momentum.

New Sense of Urgency

“The sentiment is palpable among policymakers, investors and business leaders,” conceded Faraz Khan, MBE.

A Pakistani entrepreneur and co-founder and partner of Pakistan-based Sustainadility, a technology, data and advisory firm, with over 25 years of experience in multi-stakeholder investments and in drafting environmental, sustainability and governance frameworks, is among those gathered to discuss the future of climate finance and the energy transition.

Speaking to IPS by phone on the sidelines of LCAW which closes on June 28, Khan stressed the urgency of transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy, saying the shift would not be possible without investors and businesses.

Khan described the mood at LCAW, as “optimistic” tempered by caution. He also welcomed the attention Pakistan was getting. “Our country was lauded for its efforts in brokering the peace deal,” referring to the Islamabad Memorandum between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

From Rule-Making to Seeking Investment

Comparing the two events, he said the annual Bonn climate talks, held from June 8 to 18, focused on diplomatic negotiations and climate rule-making, while LCAW, also an annual event held since 2019, centres on mobilising private investment in sustainability and ESG and scaling these initiatives commercially.

“LCAW is more business- and private sector-orientated,” said Khan, who is also the founder and director of  SeedVentures, a Pakistan-based social impact organisation and impact investor.

Still, he said: “There are two sides to the coin. On the one hand, the US-Iran peace deal and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz have shown the world that oil remains crucial for the world to exist; but, on the other, many countries recognise that dependence on fossil fuels is not in their national interest and even poses a national security risk.”

Geopolitical conflicts have exposed the vulnerabilities associated with oil production, trade and transportation, which is why investment in alternative energy is expected to accelerate.

At a COP31 presidential meeting with the private sector at LCAW, which Khan attended, the conversation revolved around the circular economy, electrification and climate finance with some of the biggest names in the global climate community, including BlackRock, the World Bank, UNIDO, the IFC and several trade organisations.

“It was a gathering of the who’s who of the climate world,” Khan said with a laugh. “Even we made the cut.”

What was missing, however, Khan said, were women in decision-making roles. He was, however, impressed by those in the Turkish COP team, praising their intellectual rigour and commanding presence in the room, which he found to be “truly impressive”.

Beyond the composition of the meetings, Khan said the discussions themselves reflected a growing determination to move beyond rhetoric.

There was a strong sense in the room that a new precedent was about to be set by shifting the focus from negotiations to implementation, investment and action.

“Governments can create an enabling environment and UN frameworks can provide the rules, but ultimately it is investors, bankable projects and big businesses that will drive change,” he said.

While the Bonn climate talks focused on regulatory frameworks, LCAW’s focus is on climate finance and transactions, he noted. “And at Antalya, where the COP31 will be held this November, it will be about putting money where our mouths are—deploying capital into bankable projects and creating collaborative investment vehicles to scale climate action,” said Khan.

Private Sector Takes Centre Stage

He also observed that China was frequently cited as a global leader in clean energy investment.

“Across the various meetings, I sensed a strong and growing appetite for investment in renewable energy, and I believe this momentum will only accelerate,” he said.

Large businesses and institutions, he added, would be critical to delivering a just transition because their extensive operations and community links give them the reach needed to drive meaningful change.

The emphasis on electrification and reducing dependence on fossil fuels was echoed by Türkiye’s COP31 leadership.

Earlier this month, speaking to The Guardian on the sidelines of the climate talks in Bonn, Murat Kurum, Türkiye’s environment minister, said the 35% target would be “one of the defining priorities” of the COP31 presidency.

“By electrifying daily life, from transport to buildings and industry, we can protect families and businesses from volatile energy markets,” he told the media outlet.

Khan believed Pakistan has an opportunity to position itself at the forefront of this transition.

While Pakistan is frequently showcased as a victim of climate disasters, despite contributing less than 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, Khan said the global focus on solar should also shine a light on the country’s “silent solar revolution”, which has transformed its investment landscape.

“Pakistan has become a global example of how solar adoption can evolve rapidly, opening up substantial investment opportunities in solar manufacturing and battery production,” he said, adding that modernising the grid and scaling up utility-scale energy storage have become increasingly urgent.

Investing in Nature

Beyond renewable energy, Khan saw significant opportunities in nature-based investments.

Khan said Pakistan’s rich biodiversity—from mangroves and forests to wetlands, rangelands and mountain ecosystems—offers enormous investment potential, with private capital capable of both restoring and protecting these natural assets.

Agriculture accounts for a large share of Pakistan’s economy and is a major driver of biodiversity loss. He said private businesses could invest in regenerative agriculture, agroforestry and sustainable rice and cotton production, either to meet sustainability goals or as part of emerging biodiversity credit markets.

“Just as there are carbon credits, there are biodiversity credits, and these are directly linked to food security and agriculture,” Khan said. Given agriculture’s central role in Pakistan’s economy, he argued that the country holds enormous potential for biodiversity credits. “I think this is going to be truly phenomenal because it presents enormous investment opportunities,” he said.

But realising this potential will depend on Pakistan’s ability to attract sustained private investment.

Investment Challenges

Sadly, there are few takers.

Khan said Pakistan’s high sovereign risk remains the biggest obstacle to attracting international climate investment at scale, although recent policy reforms, including the Pakistan Green Taxonomy, green banking guidelines and ESG standards, have improved investor confidence.

He also pointed to a shortage of bankable projects, with many failing to attract global investors despite their strong fundamentals. Still, he said, the investment potential remains enormous.

Yet time may be of the essence.

If the recent turmoil in the Middle East exposed the world’s vulnerability to fossil fuels, Khan believes it also underscored the urgency of accelerating the clean energy transition. For Pakistan, he said, the opportunity is immense—but only if the country can create the conditions needed to attract the investment required to realise it.

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Smallholder farmers in Africa and Asia are likely to still be reeling from the fuel and fertilizer crisis caused by conflict in the Middle East when what forecasters expect to be a “super” El Niño arrives later this year.

Appolinaire Djikeng

Consensus is increasingly clear that tackling climate change to avert such crises is a legal duty under international law. Bringing down emissions requires both short-term and long-term action. And yet one of the most effective levers available — sustainable livestock farming — receives just 1 to 2 per cent of climate finance dedicated to agriculture. That is a vanishingly small share for a sector that, in many low- and middle-income countries, accounts for as much as 80 per cent of agricultural GDP.

This funding gap matters because livestock offer something relatively rare in climate policy: the chance to cut emissions fast while also building resilience. Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over the short term, which means reducing it delivers quicker climate benefits.

Cattle and other livestock are among the primary sources of methane emissions. But crucially, both direct and indirect methane emissions from livestock production are often higher than necessary because of the same factors that hold back productivity. Poor animal health, low quality feed and nutrition, and climate stress all undermine production and increase both direct emissions and emission intensity. Tackling these fundamental factors solves both challenges.

In Ethiopia, for example, poor animal health has been found to increase livestock emissions by 50 per cent while also resulting in lower meat, milk and egg yields. Parasites and other vector-borne diseases increase the methane produced in animals’ guts while stunting growth and development.

Simply by applying existing tools to improve animal health, such as vaccines, drugs that kill parasites and good nutrition, research suggests that emissions could be conservatively reduced by at least 15 per cent per unit of output. The same interventions also increase productivity and improve livelihoods.

New research is also uncovering new opportunities to reduce methane from livestock while also boosting productivity and resilience.

Scientists from CGIAR research centres and partners have analysed nearly 300 forage samples and found that varieties of African clover, cowpea and lablab could reduce methane emissions by up to 90 per cent. These plants contain compounds that alter the microbes in cows’ stomachs and block the process that generates methane.

Testing is now under way to identify varieties that could be grown as low-methane feed, which not only helps reduce emissions but also supports local seed systems.

Restoring rangelands adds another layer: it helps improve forage availability to support better animal nutrition, lower methane emissions and build stronger ecosystems. Last year, for example, participatory rangeland management (PRM) was strengthened across 340,000 hectares in Ethiopia and 50,000 hectares in Tanzania, improving rangeland health and supporting livestock production.

Many more solutions exist to improve livestock sustainability for short-term and long-term gains, including those developed by the Livestock and Climate Solutions Hub. But despite growing evidence of impact from livestock interventions, climate finance continues to flow elsewhere, away from the agricultural systems that hundreds of millions of people depend on most directly.

In a post-aid world, directing more climate finance towards sustainable livestock farming in low- and middle-income countries is an investment in global stability.

Investing in more sustainable livestock production has a ripple effect that improves food security, livelihoods, and economic growth and contributes to greater stability and resilience in the face of shocks like the “super” El Niño.

Climate vulnerability is costly. Building resilience through the primary sectors of low- and middle-income countries is an insurance against future crises.

Prof. Appolinaire Djikeng is Director General of the International Livestock Research Institute

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As of now, geopolitics overtook trade policy uncertainty as the primary concern for countries. Credit: Unsplash / Sajimon Sahadevan

By Maximilian Malawista
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 25 2026 (IPS)

Amidst increased geopolitical tensions, the risk of volatile energy markets, trade corridors, and regional stability in the Middle East has garnered more attention than trade policy in terms of its power to alter the global economy, according to new findings from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

In their report on trade and development, “Global Economy Faces a Geopolitical Challenge”, UNCTAD says that a protracted escalation “raises the likelihood of deeper disruptions in global trade and finance, potentially, foreshadowing a cascading crisis”.

Credit: UN Conference on Trade and Development (Trade and Development Foresights 2026)

Daily crude oil prices in the Middle East since the beginning of the conflict have risen from around USD 60-70, to a fluctuating rate between a high of over USD 110-. With oil prices surging more than 60 percent, and gas doubling in price, many markets have been left in an inflating scenario as higher energy prices increase macroeconomic pressure and overall slow and contract the economy.

The increase per barrel is largely due to a constriction of supply, where most Gulf economies can barely output oil due to a lack of transport ability through the strait of Hormuz. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) records a spike in the price of Brent crude rising over USD 100 per barrel and remaining at elevated levels, with European gas also jumping roughly “60 percent amid disruptions to LNG exports”.

The numbers are impacted by an estimated loss of capacity of 10 million barrels per day of oil and “about 500 million cubic meters per day of natural gas”. This is roughly 10 percent of global oil production, and roughly 5 percent of global natural gas production for every single day.

The IMF records the following:

Daily Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz (in number of vessels) between 26 February and 6 April 2026. Credit: IMF

Oil being an inelastic good means that consumers won’t be able to curb their spending. Rather, they have to pay more for as long as the conflict lasts as fuels are needed for many essential routine tasks, from driving your car, to taking your vitamins, to growing your food, and having your Amazon packages shipped.

In their April 2026 Regional Economic Outlook Update for the Middle East and Central Asia, the IMF details that a continued conflict will likely for every 10 percent rise in the average oil price lead to a loss of about 0.5 percent of GDP and an inflation increase of around 1 percent in Gulf economies, ultimately affecting global markets heavily.

As the report notes, “Longer trade disruptions or greater damage to oil production capacity raises the possibility of higher and more sustained oil prices and a larger risk premium than is currently embedded in oil futures prices”.

However, for developing countries higher energy prices hit a lot harder to consumers in developing countries, which in this case don’t have the same money to spare. The IMF warns that “Low-income countries and other fragile and conflict-affected states in the MENAP region are especially vulnerable to higher energy, fertilizer, and food prices”.

Due to the conflict, estimates stand that vulnerable economies, mostly least developed countries (16.1 billion) and small island developing states (4.3 billion), could incur a USD 20 billion a year increase in spending, representing a huge composition of their GDP expenditure.

Among least-developed nations, Mauritania is recorded to have their bill increase by 7.3 percent, The Gambia 6.3 percent, Burkina Faso 5.0 percent, Liberia and Zambia 4.3 percent, with 17 other least developed countries also estimating to increase their spending by at least 0.5 percent in terms of GDP points.

Similarly for small-island developing states, Vanuatu is recorded to have an increase of 5.8 percent, Maldives 5.2 percent, Tonga 4.4 percent, Mauritius 4.2 percent, and Fiji 3.2 percent, with 18 other small developing states recording an increase of at least 0.6%.

UNCTAD also expects this conflict to take away capital investment into developing nations, as these assets are perceived as riskier. The UNCTAD report states that “the start of the Middle East conflict triggered a sell-off of developing countries’ assets, with equity markets of emerging markets sliding by more than 12 per cent between 28 February and 29 March.” Likely such effects will trigger a compacting of issues, contributing to an economic downturn that could take years to recover from depending on the length of the conflict.

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Shifra Ainomugisha from Uganda receives the 2026 Commonwealth Young Person of the Year award from the Commonwealth Secretary-General, Shirley Botchwey. Credit: Commonwealth

By Kizito Makoye
LONDON & DAR ES SALAAM, Jun 25 2026 (IPS)

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

At dawn, she would grab a bucket and walk into rows of tomato plants on her family’s farm in Western Uganda to collect what had already been lost.

The tomatoes looked healthy from a distance. But many had softened, burst, or spoilt before reaching the market – the true meaning of food loss.

“I used to wake up every morning to collect rotten tomatoes and throw them away while trying to save whatever remained,” she recalled.

Almost half the family’s harvest disappeared this way.

Yet the labour never stopped.

Her parents worked relentlessly. Seasons came and went. Fields produced food. But income remained painfully uncertain.

“Meanwhile, we struggled to pay school fees,” she said. “Some children dropped out of school even though we worked very hard during holidays on the farm. We were producing food but could not earn enough money to support our education.”

Shifra Ainomugisha poses beside a solar-powered irrigation system in Uganda. She was named the 2026 Commonwealth Young Person of the Year. Her contribution includes combining renewable energy and AI-enabled agricultural support to help smallholder farmers increase productivity and reduce post-harvest losses. Credit: Solafam, Uganda

Mission Accomplished

Those childhood memories – of abundance turning into loss and hard work failing to translate into opportunity – would eventually shape a mission that has now earned Ainomugisha recognition as the regional winner for Africa under SDG 2: Zero Hunger in the 2026 Commonwealth Youth Awards.

Selected from almost 1,000 applicants across the Commonwealth’s 56 member states after a two-stage adjudication process involving 57 judges, Ainomugisha joined 19 finalists recognised for advancing the Sustainable Development Goals through innovation and community impact.

But the award was not her only accolade.

Today, the Ugandan farmer and innovator earned the prestigious title of 2026 Commonwealth Young Person of the Year at the 2026 Commonwealth Youth Awards ceremony in London.

The Commonwealth Secretary-General, Shirley Botchwey, presented the award to Ainomugisha.

In her remarks Botchwey congratulated all the finalists.

“You are already winners. To be selected from across 56 nations is a testament to your courage and your creativity. You embody the very best of our family. You have shown resilience in the face of challenge and innovation in the face of constraint.”

She continued, “Today is not about recognition alone – it is about momentum. It is not about isolated excellence — it is about collective advancement. Together, we will continue to strengthen the Commonwealth Youth Programme as a flagship vehicle for youth development in the Commonwealth.”

A Journey That Began With a Big Question

For the young Ugandan entrepreneur, however, the journey did not begin with awards.

It began with a question she carried since childhood:

How can people who grow food still remain hungry?

“Nobody should die of hunger,” she tells IPS.

“Because we are here to help. Farmers are doing agriculture, and we are solving food waste, which means we are fighting hunger. That is one of the SDGs we are working on.”

Today, Ainomugisha serves as co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of  Solafam, Uganda Ltd, a social enterprise using solar-powered technologies and artificial intelligence to help smallholder farmers reduce food losses, improve yields and increase incomes.

Her work combines three interconnected interventions: solar-powered cold storage, solar irrigation systems and an AI-enabled advisory platform known as Lean AI – a WhatsApp chatbot designed to guide farmers on planting decisions, irrigation timing, pest management, post-harvest handling and market access.

Together, the technologies aim to solve one of Africa’s challenging agricultural paradoxes: producing food but losing too much of it before it reaches consumers.

According to regional agricultural estimates, post-harvest losses continue to absorb a huge share of food production across sub-Saharan Africa, undermining incomes, nutrition and rural resilience. Smallholder farmers – who form the backbone of food systems – are particularly vulnerable because many lack access to storage, irrigation and agricultural extension services.

For Ainomugisha, those statistics have faces.

Her mother’s face.

Her father’s.

Her neighbours’.

And her own.

“I come from a tomato-growing family,” she said.

“Growing up, we experienced food wastage and low returns despite all the hard labour we invested in farming.”

Her father became one of her earliest inspirations.

Although he never had the opportunity to pursue formal education, he constantly experimented with solutions.

“He tried solving it by buying a diesel irrigation pump to increase yields because we only have one major farming season,” she explained.

“If you don’t make enough money during that season, the whole year becomes difficult.”

He attempted to preserve produce in improvised storage spaces.

But tomatoes continued spoiling.

Years later, after gaining access to education and exposure to technology, Ainomugisha began thinking differently.

“First of all, it wasn’t simply my decision alone,” she reflected.

“It began with my father. My father did not get the opportunity to go to school, but I did. I felt I had a better chance to solve the problem than he did.”

That conviction followed her into university.

Shifra Ainomugisha (centre, in reflective vest), co-founder and CEO of Solafam, Uganda Ltd, stands with farmers and community members beside a solar panel installation that supports climate-smart agriculture initiatives. Through renewable energy and farmer-centred innovation, the project seeks to reduce food loss and improve rural incomes. Credit: Solafam, Uganda

Solar to AI to Filling Knowledge Gaps

Together with colleagues, she founded Solar Farm while still studying.

Initially, the concept was straightforward: cold-chain storage.

Support from entrepreneurship initiatives – including LEAP Africa – helped transform the idea into a functioning enterprise.

But customers quickly changed the direction.

People arriving at the cold rooms often revealed a deeper challenge.

Some had little produce to preserve.

Storage alone was not enough.

The team expanded.

Solar irrigation came next.

The goal was to help farmers reduce dependence on expensive diesel fuel and enable year-round production.

Farmers could access irrigation systems through a flexible financing model – paying 20 percent upfront and then making weekly payments of approximately USD 1.60 until ownership.

“We wanted to create a solution that farmers could actually afford,” she said.

Then came the next leap: artificial intelligence.

Ainomugisha says the AI component emerged from another observation.

Many farmers lacked access to agricultural training.

Knowledge gaps were driving losses.

“Many people are farming, but they are not always doing it the right way,” she explained.

“You might find a tomato farmer irrigating in the morning, yet tomatoes are better irrigated in the afternoon or evening.”

The team launched Lean AI – a chatbot accessible through WhatsApp that provides real-time agricultural guidance.

Farmers can ask questions and receive recommendations on farming practices, pest control, irrigation and post-harvest management.

The system is now being adapted to work via real-time messaging protocol known as USSD to reach users with basic mobile phones.

“We use AI to continue training farmers even when we are not physically present,” she said.

“We believe this will improve yields, increase incomes and eventually change the narrative that farming is only for the poor.”

Shifra Ainomugisha poses beside a solar-powered irrigation system in Uganda. She is combining renewable energy and AI-enabled agricultural support to help smallholder farmers increase productivity and reduce post-harvest losses. Credit: Solafam, Uganda

Changing the Narrative

That narrative matters deeply to her.

“In Uganda, there is a narrative that agriculture is for poor people,” she said.

“That is sad.”

She pauses.

“People believe that because despite hard work, they cannot escape poverty.”

One of the defining moments came in 2023.

After struggling to convince local markets to host their first cold room, the team installed it at her family home.

Her mother became the first customer.

Then came neighbours.

Then more farmers.

Initially, usage was free.

People needed proof.

One woman – a friend of Ainomugisha’s mother who traded fruits and vegetables – became an unexpected validation.

She stored produce for a month.

Fresh vegetables that once spoilt within days remained viable for nearly two weeks.

That extra time allowed her to wait for better prices instead of selling under pressure.

“She later realised how much it was helping her,” Ainomugisha said.

“Now she earns more from farming than she did before.”

Solafam eventually introduced a pay-per-use model.

The impact, Ainomugisha says, became measurable.

“What makes us proud is that we have increased farmers’ incomes by 28 percent.”

“We have also reduced post-harvest losses by about 30 percent.”

Commonwealth Deputy Secretary-General (Programmes), Tanmaya Lal, Commonwealth Secretary-General, Shirley Botchwey, and Commonwealth Deputy Secretary-General (Corporate), Tania Baumann, pose with the 2026 Commonwealth Young Person of the Year and Africa Regional Winner, Shifra Ainomugisha, at the Commonwealth Youth Awards ceremony in London. Credit: Commonwealth Secretariat

Winning Reaction

Those outcomes helped propel Solafam onto the Commonwealth stage. The Commonwealth Youth Awards are an initiative of the Commonwealth Youth Programme, which has supported youth development work in member countries for over 50 years.

“I am honoured to be named the 2026 Commonwealth Young Person of the Year.  This recognition is not only personal but also represents the farmers and communities in Uganda whom we serve.  It also affirms that solutions built from lived experience can create real impact. I cannot wait to continue this journey with the support of the Commonwealth and its remarkable network of partners.”

The Awards recognise young leaders advancing development solutions across member states.

For more than a decade, the programme has provided visibility, networks and funding opportunities to support youth-led initiatives.

This year’s finalists span sectors ranging from climate action and health innovation to entrepreneurship and communications.

For Ainomugisha, being selected is an honour.

“I’m glad to be a finalist for the Commonwealth Youth Award and a regional winner for Africa,” she said.

She believes three things contributed most to the selection.

Sustainability.

Impact.

Accessibility.

“First of all, our project is sustainable. We have maintained it from 2022 until now.”

“Secondly, we are creating meaningful impact.”

“Also, our technology is affordable for smallholder farmers.”

But perhaps what distinguishes her work most is who it centres.

Women.

“Because this problem is personal to me,” she said.

“I did not hear someone else’s story and decide to solve it.”

“I am a woman, and I saw how my mother worked every day on the farm, yet our lives were not improving.”

Across much of Africa, women form a large share of the agricultural workforce while often facing unequal access to land, financing, technologies and extension services.

Ainomugisha says designing with women in mind is not a strategy.

It is lived experience.

“Of course, we also work with men, but the majority of our beneficiaries are women.”

As global conversations increasingly focus on artificial intelligence, her message is clear.

Technology alone is not enough.

It must be accessible.

Affordable.

And designed around people’s realities.

Her next ambition is expansion—making agricultural intelligence available even to farmers without smartphones.

The larger vision is not simply digitising agriculture.

It is restoring dignity to farming.

The memory of rotten tomatoes remains.

So does the memory of school fees that almost went unpaid.

But today, those memories no longer represent failure.

They represent the beginning of a different harvest.

One where innovation is measured not only in algorithms or solar panels but also in whether families who grow food can finally afford to eat, learn and dream.

And for Ainomugisha, that future has already started.

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Excerpt:

Data cables connected on network switches in a computer server room. Scott Rodgerson on Unsplash Credit: Africa Renewal

By United Nations Economic Commission for Africa
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 12 2026 (IPS)

African leaders are sharpening their focus on digital sovereignty, warning that the continent’s economic future will depend not just on connectivity, but on who controls its data—and where it is stored.

At a high-level roundtable during the 58th session of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa Conference of Ministers, held in Tangiers, Morocco, in April 2026, policymakers and technology leaders signaled a decisive shift in Africa’s digital ambitions: from being consumers of technology to becoming architects of their own digital infrastructure and data ecosystems.

Central to this shift is the idea of “sovereign data”—ensuring that African data is stored, processed and governed within the continent.

Participants emphasized that digital independence is no longer optional; it is a prerequisite for economic security and national resilience.

“Digital public infrastructure is as vital today as electricity,” said Américo Muchanga, Mozambique’s Minister of Communications and Digital Transformation. But, he added, infrastructure alone is not enough. Governments must now decide how to classify and manage their data—what remains within national borders, and what can be shared—so that its value benefits African economies.

Beyond infrastructure: entering the “age of intelligence”

For years, Africa’s digital agenda has focused on expanding connectivity—laying fiber, increasing mobile access, and building platforms for public services. While that remains essential, leaders say the conversation must evolve.

Digital public infrastructure (DPI), often described as the “rails” of the digital economy, must now carry something more valuable: intelligence.

As artificial intelligence reshapes economies globally, Africa faces a critical question—will it simply adopt external systems, or build its own?

“Africa must prioritize local data processing and systems that reflect its realities,” said Ambassador Philip Thigo, Kenya’s Special Envoy on Technology. He warned that relying on imported models risks entrenching systems that do not capture African languages, contexts or economic needs.

The solution, participants argued, lies in investing in local talent and capabilities—from data science to AI model training—so that innovation is grounded in African realities.

Building the backbone: data centres and “AI factories”

A recurring theme was the urgent need for infrastructure that can support this transition. Data centres—described as the backbone of the digital economy—remain in short supply.

“Africa needs to increase its data centre capacity tenfold,” said Adil El Youssefi, CEO of Africa Data Centres at Cassava Technologies.

Currently, the continent generates less than 1% of global data despite accounting for nearly 20% of the world’s population.

To bridge this gap, participants called for the development of “AI factories”—facilities capable of storing and processing large volumes of data locally. These would not only support AI development but also ensure that the economic value derived from data remains within Africa.

However, such investments require reliable and affordable energy, as well as long-term financing—two persistent challenges across the continent.

A new model: data embassies and regional cooperation

Among the more innovative ideas discussed was the concept of “data embassies”—shared infrastructure that allows countries to store data securely across borders while maintaining sovereignty.

This model, participants said, could help smaller economies overcome the high costs of building standalone data infrastructure, while strengthening regional integration.

It also reflects a broader push toward collaboration.

Pius Chaya, Tanzania’s Deputy Minister for Planning and Investment, stressed the need for strong public-private partnerships, underpinned by robust cybersecurity and data protection frameworks.

Without trust, he noted, digital systems cannot scale.

From policy to execution

While Africa has made strides in developing digital strategies, leaders acknowledged a familiar challenge: implementation.

Ndaba Gaolathe, Vice President and Finance Minister of Botswana, pointed to a gap between policy ambition and real-world impact. Botswana, he said, is addressing this by using a universal service fund—financed through a levy on mobile operators—to expand connectivity to underserved communities.

“The time for planning alone is over,” he said. “We must now focus on execution.”

This call for “mega execution” reflects a growing urgency to translate strategies into tangible benefits—jobs, services, and economic growth.

Inclusion and measurement

Despite progress, nearly one billion Africans remain offline, even in areas with mobile coverage. Industry representatives, including the GSMA, urged governments to remove taxes on mobile devices to make digital access more affordable.

At the same time, measuring the economic impact of digital transformation remains a challenge.

“If we cannot measure the contribution of technology to GDP, we cannot monetize it,” said Claver Gatete, UNECA’s Executive Secretary. Strengthening national statistical systems, he added, is essential for evidence-based policymaking and accountability.

A defining moment

As Africa accelerates its digital transformation, the stakes are becoming clearer. Data is no longer just a byproduct of the digital economy—it is its most valuable asset.

The discussions in Tangier point to a continent at a crossroads: one that must decide whether to remain a consumer in the global digital order, or to assert control over its data, technologies and economic destiny.

The message from leaders was unmistakable—Africa’s digital future must be built in Africa, and for Africa.

Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations

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Excerpt:

The World Bank considers corruption a major obstacle to eradicating global poverty. The Bank officially has a zero-tolerance policy against fraud and corruption in its projects. Concerned with widespread corruption in Bangladesh, the Bank and the Government agreed on the Governance-oriented Country Assistance Strategy (GCAS) in 2006 and the Bank’s subsequent Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) ostensibly has been more selective on governance and anti-corruption (GAC) issues. Ironically, however, the Bank’s funding enables corruption. The Bank’s recent decision to advance a US$350 million loan allegedly for enhancing energy security is a glaring example.

Anis Chowdhury

The Interim Government’s White Paper on the state of the economy documented the extent of collusion and corruption in the energy sector. It noted the authoritarian kleptocratic government’s inflated demand forecast, disregarding professional projections. Thus, the installed capacity hugely exceeds actual demand. Against the peak summer demand of approximately 17,000 MW, the installed capacity is nearly 32,000 MW (or 30,000 MW considering aging infrastructure). According to the White paper, this artificially “increased capacity was driven by unscrupulous motivations” to benefit the regime’s cronies who formed a monopoly cartel in the power sector.

A series of dodgy moves facilitated unprecedented misappropriation of public money in the sector. The first was the awarding of contracts to 17 private rental plants through ‘negotiation’ in 2010, circumventing the Public Procurement Rules. The second was the Quick Enhancement of Electricity and Energy Supply (Special Provision) Act 2010, which protected energy contracts from competitive bidding and legal challenges. Such indemnity is a license for corruption, facilitating unchecked project approvals and non-transparent often dollar-denominated Power Purchase Agreements.

These agreements enabled the purchase of electricity from furnace-oil-based plants at prices 40-50% above market rates and from gas-fired plants at prices 45% above market rates, according to the Interim Government’s review committee. Initially established for a four-year period to address an emergency supply situation, the arrangement has been extended multiple times, allowing the cronies to be paid an exorbitant excess capacity charge.

The estimated total excess capacity/rental payment to the private sector from 2010-11 to 2023-24 was approximately US$2.93 billion. In the 2024-25 fiscal year alone the capacity charge was approximately US$3.42 billion, while nearly 63% of installed electricity generation capacity remained idle. According to the review committee, an estimated excess generation capacity of roughly 7,700 to 9,500 MW is causing an additional annual expenditure of US$900 million to US$1.5 billion in capacity payments.

The White Paper estimated that the rental power plants made as high as 35% profit against a standard 15%! The private sector power companies received payments from the government as rent for power plants under the guise of power purchase agreements, where corruption, rather than electricity supply, was the main objective.

Most of the operational private power plants in Bangladesh are owned/controlled by a group of five cronies. They control country’s power sector to loot vast amounts of money. While the kleptocratic regime beat the drum of “self-sufficiency” in electricity, its cronies were pillaging the state coffer.

While the cronies enjoyed excess profits through extraordinary corrupt practices, consumers paid the price. Electricity prices were increased 12 times at the wholesale level and 14 times at the retail level over 15 years during the kleptocratic regime, ostensibly to reduce losses and subsidy requirements. But neither losses nor subsidies declined.

The review committee recommended that contracts containing evidence of corruption should be cancelled immediately. It also recommended renegotiation of high-cost and unequal power purchase agreements to revise and convert them to a “take-and-pay” model following Pakistan’s example.

Instead of taking these recommended measures, the current government has chosen the path of the kleptocratic regime’s looting model. The decision to hike the electricity price will protect the fatty pockets of cronies at the expense of the common people.

The World Bank’s role

The Bank has been a prime advocate of privatisation of Bangladesh’s energy sector, citing widespread corruption and inefficiency of the publicly-owned power sector. It pushed for “unbundling” vertically integrated state monopolies, facilitating Independent Power Producers (IPPs), and mobilising private capital through financial guarantees – a strategy that supposedly should improve energy security and at the same time ease public fiscal burden.

The Bank has been providing loans ostensibly to help Bangladesh improve its energy security. But that has made the country heavily reliant on imported Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and fossil fuels and has locked Bangladesh into steep capacity payments, draining foreign exchange reserves. Thus, the Bank’s loans allegedly for ensuring energy sector security have created a vicious circle of debt burden and plunder of public coffer through hefty capacity payments.

Instead of further advancing loans of US$350 million, the Bank should have told the government to implement the recommendations of the Interim Government’s review committee; i.e., cancel the unscrupulous agreements with IPPs and stop fiscal bleeding through unfair capacity payments. The savings from the capacity charges would have been more than enough to pay for the imports of LNG without incurring additional debt burden.

The Bank’s anti-corruption record

Why does the Bank advance loans to the sector riddled with widespread corruption? The Bank’s anti-corruption record is at best disappointing globally. The Bank once took a firm anti-corruption stance in Bangladesh when it pulled out of the Padma Bridge project alleging corruption. But it scrambled to recover its lost ground when other lenders with strategic interests came forward to fill the gap.

Evaluating the Bank’s engagement in Bangladesh during 2011-2020, the World Bank’s own Independent Evaluation Group concluded, “Despite a trend of deterioration in the country’s institutional quality and economic management, the Bank Group significantly increased financing to Bangladesh over the review period, making Bangladesh one of the largest borrowers”.

As a lending agency, the Bank’s existence depends on debtor countries’ borrowings, regardless of its lofty ideals, such as poverty reduction. A fundamental flaw in the international aid system: “the donors are more desperate to give than the recipients are to receive”. Therefore, the Bank takes a “pragmatic” approach, and tolerates corruption.

Then why did the Bank declare zero-tolerance policy against corruption? Perhaps this is because it has to satisfy the public anti-corruption sentiment in creditor nations; their citizens do not want to see their tax dollars being misappropriated.

Renowned political economist, Robert Wade conceptualises this as gesturing to appease creditor governments while acting to the contrary to appease borrower governments. Thus, the Bank’s “organised hypocrisy” enables corruption in poor borrower countries.

Anis Chowdhury, Emeritus Professor, Western Sydney University (Australia). He held senior UN positions in Bangkok and New York and served as Special Assistant to the Chief Advisor for Finance (with the status and rank of State Minister) in the Professor Yunus-led Interim Government. Anis has written extensively on macroeconomic issues, sustainable development, international financial architecture and political economy. E-mail: anis.z.chowdhury@gmail.com; a.chowdhury@westernsydney.edu.au

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Credit: UN News

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Jun 5 2026 (IPS)

Ahead of World Environment Day, the UN General Assembly made a vital commitment to protect people from climate impacts, adopting a resolution on the climate change obligations of states. The resolution follows up on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion issued last year, which found that states have a legal duty to prevent activities that cause environmental harm. Most states voted for the resolution despite a concerted campaign by the Trump administration to block it.

From ruling to resolution

The ICJ ruling was a landmark moment. It made clear that climate change is a human rights issue, because the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is essential for human rights as a whole. Its ruling means that if states breach their climate obligations, it’s an intentionally wrongful act, opening them up to legal challenges.

The ICJ case was brought by the government of Vanuatu, but it was a victory for civil society, because the campaign to seek a ruling was started by law students who formed an organisation, Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change, to pressure their governments to go to the court.

ICJ advisory opinions aren’t legally binding, but their reasoning often plays a part in litigation efforts, strengthening the climate lawsuits civil society is increasingly bringing against states and corporations. It’s already being referenced in court hearings. Last year, a Brazilian judge cited it when he ordered a coalmine and thermoelectric plant to cease operations, although his ruling is currently on hold pending an appeal.

However, at the latest global climate summit, COP30, the Saudi Arabian government vetoed any reference to the ICJ ruling. Vanuatu therefore pushed for the General Assembly resolution to recognise the international legal standing of the judgment and encourage greater implementation.

Approval was far from unanimous. The Trump administration urged its allies to pressure Vanuatu to withdraw the resolution, part of its extensive campaign to defend the interests of fossil fuel corporations. It has also renounced the Paris Agreement and UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, withdrawn from an array of international climate and environmental bodies and blocked an agreement on global shipping emissions. It was one of eight states that voted against, alongside Belarus, Iran, Israel, Liberia, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, a roll call of petrostates, countries that routinely ignore international rules and their close allies. The Trump administration continues to dispute the resolution, having issued a statement questioning its legality.

Momentum and resistance

States that backed the resolution have made clear that action on the climate crisis isn’t a question of political convenience, but a matter of respecting international law.

The resolution further contributes to the growing momentum behind climate action, despite attempts by a handful of powerful states to drag the world backwards. Renewables now provide around 30 per cent of global electricity, and renewable energy investments in 2025 were more than double those in fossil fuels. The First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels, held in April, brought together 57 states to commit to developing national roadmaps to phase out fossil fuel production and consumption. The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil supplies flow, has brought further recognition of the reality that fossil fuel dependence benefits only a handful of petrostates and leaves everyone else vulnerable.

These shifts are having an impact. In May, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change dropped its worst-case scenario for the possible effects of climate change, under which global temperatures could have risen to 4.5 degrees above preindustrial levels, because emissions cuts are making a difference.

Activists in the crosshairs

The ICJ case offers just one example of how civil society is making a crucial difference in pushing for climate action. Activists are urging ambition and resisting new fossil fuel projects. But they’re paying a heavy price. The Business and Human Rights Centre found that in 2025, three quarters of almost 800 attacks it documented against people who spoke out against businesses targeted those who mobilised on climate, environmental and land rights issues.

Ten activists from the Mother Nature Cambodia environmental group remain in jail, having been handed heavy sentences in 2024 in retaliation for their work to raise public awareness about the impacts of extractive and infrastructure projects. In Mexico, Kenia Hernandez, leader of the Zapata Vive peasant movement that protects land rights, is serving a ten-and-a-half year sentence on fabricated charges.

In Uganda, last year authorities arrested 11 activists for protesting against the construction of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline. In January, police raided the home of Harjeet Singh, one of India’s most prominent environmental activists and a vocal campaigner for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty. In Chile, where the government has weakened environmental laws, Indigenous women activists are experiencing intimidation, judicial harassment and violent attacks for opposing large-scale projects.

Last year the German government launched an inquiry into public funding of environmental groups, the Dutch parliament adopted a motion declaring Extinction Rebellion an ‘unlawful, society-disrupting and vandalistic organisation’ and the Portuguese government listed environmental groups in a section on terrorism of its annual security report. Authorities in Australia and New Zealand have arrested numerous people at climate and environmental protests, including in opposition to coal mining.

The UN resolution makes clear that criminalisation and violence are incompatible with states’ obligations, and everyone has a part to play in climate action. It calls on states to ‘ensure the full, meaningful and equal participation of Indigenous Peoples, local communities, people of African descent, women and girls, children and youth, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations in decision-making on climate action’.

States that backed the resolution are attacking the people it demands they work with. They can’t meet their climate obligations unless they stop repressing civil society. The resolution should give fresh impetus to civil society’s calls to replace repression with partnership.

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

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

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A street in Beirut, Lebanon, where civilian infrastructure has sustained significant damage. Credit: Pexels/Jo Kassis

By Maximilian Malawista
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 2 2026 (IPS)

Last week on May 28, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) issued an evacuation order to Lebanese civilians ordering them to move north of the Zahrani River, approximately 25 miles from the Israeli border, and roughly 20 percent of the Lebanese territory. These new escalations bring the displaced population to more than 1.3 million people, including more than 300,000 of those people being children. 1.3 million people represents approximately 1/4th of the nation’s population of 5.3 million.

On Friday May 29th, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the following regarding the current situation of displacement: “Just in the past 48 hours, renewed displacement orders by the Israeli Defence Forces have affected hundreds of thousands of people south of the Zahrani River, including in the cities of Tyre and Nabatieh. Collective shelters in Tyre and Saida in the South Governorate are reportedly full and can’t take in more people.”

On Friday May 22nd, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) observed a continuation of Israeli military aggression along with Hezbollah attacks on Israeli force mission areas. In the following week, on Monday May 25th, the largest number of airspace violations at 91 occurrences, along with 399 firing incidents by the IDF were recorded. Additionally, on May 27th, 670 trajectories of projectiles were reported, making this the highest since the cessation of hostilities on April 17th. The IDF has also been attributed to separate incidents of firings on Saturday May 23rd and Sunday May 24th, at approximately 160 per day, with about 16 launches of projectiles by Hezbollah; along with large-scale engineering works, logistical traffic, and armored vehicle convoys through this escalation by the IDF.

Between May 21 and May 24, the World Health Organization (WHO) recorded 8 health workers killed and 45 injured, with 25 medical staff just on May 23rd being injured at the Hiram Hospital in the South governorate following airstrikes.

“We reiterate that attacks on health workers and health facilities are unacceptable. All parties to conflicts must immediately stop them and ensure protection for healthcare,” said Deputy Spokesperson for the Secretary-General, Farhan Haq.

As of March 2026, a flash appeal has been submitted by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), acting as a funding instrument to garner USD 308.3 million to provide life-saving assistance and protection targeting up to 1 million people. Within this appeal, USD 61 million is planned to be allocated to Multi-purpose Cash Assistance (MPCA), $56 million to Food Security & Agriculture, $42.5 million to Shelter, and $40 million and $37 million to WASH and Health, along with other allocations to much needed life-saving sectors. Prior to these latest advancements, an estimated 3 million people were already requiring assistance, with 961,000 people facing acute food insecurity.

Although conditions are worsening, all ports remain operational and accessible, according to the latest report from Logistics Cluster. Airspace is open as well, however humanitarian and commercial access remains limited. Also, according to the same report from Logistics Cluster, many roads and bridges in southern Lebanon remain not passable or closed, limiting crucial movements of goods into the most affected areas of hostilities.

OCHA told Inter Press Service that these constraints have been “complicating planning and limiting sustained operations, even as partners continue to reach people where access permits.”

As of May 2026, fuel prices are higher in Lebanon than any other state in the region, besides Pakistan. Since February 28th 2026, the following increases have been recorded:

The estimated fuel increase by country since February 28th, 2026. Credit: Maximilian Malawista

OCHA added that “Rising costs are adding further pressure on an already fragile humanitarian response. Fuel prices have surged significantly, driving up transport and production costs, while the cost of basic food items has also increased.” OCHA warned that these trends are “undermining people’s ability to afford essentials”, and are “further complicating the delivery of humanitarian assistance.”

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LED street lights have been installed in the area around Hyderabad's famous Necklace Road, a scenic boulevard in the heart of the city that curves around the Hussain Sagar Lake. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
HYDERABAD, India, May 28 2026 (IPS)

Ahead of the Eighth Global Environment Facility (GEF) Assembly in Samarkand, governments and development institutions are grappling with a familiar challenge: How to finance environmental action at the scale required to meet rapidly growing needs.

As public budgets tighten and biodiversity and climate risks intensify, attention is increasingly turning to blended finance – an approach that combines concessional public funding with commercial investment to mobilise large-scale capital.

Supporters say this model can reduce investment risks and unlock private capital for projects that might otherwise struggle to secure funding. Critics caution that such approaches still depend heavily on public support and may not be easily replicable everywhere.

In Hyderabad, India, one of the world’s largest municipal LED streetlighting programs has emerged as a prominent example of how blended finance can work in practice.

Turning Streetlights into Climate Finance

Hyderabad, a rapidly expanding and climate-vulnerable metropolis, has sought to address rising temperatures and growing energy demand by retrofitting its street lighting system with energy-efficient LEDs under India’s Street Lighting National Programme (SLNP). The initiative was part of a broader programme – Creating and Sustaining Markets for Energy Efficiency – implemented by Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), with support from the GEF.

The program combined GEF grant funding with more than USD 434 million in co-financing to deploy energy-efficient technologies at scale.

“The environmental financing gap runs into hundreds of billions of dollars annually. This is a scale that grants and ODA alone cannot close,” said Fred Boltz, Head of Programming at the GEF.

“Mobilising private capital is essential to sustaining a healthy planet.”

Blended finance works by reducing risks for private investors – through concessional loans, guarantees, or grant support – making projects viable in markets where returns are uncertain. By absorbing part of the risk, public or philanthropic funding enables commercial investors to participate in sectors such as renewable energy, biodiversity, and sustainable infrastructure, which are often perceived as too risky.

In Hyderabad, EESL financed the installation of LED streetlights and recovered costs through future energy savings, eliminating the need for large upfront spending by the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC).

More than 450,000 streetlights were replaced during the initial phases, with further expansion extending coverage across the city. Electricity consumption linked to public lighting dropped by roughly half, generating annual savings of more than ₹1 billion (about USD 12 million) while significantly reducing carbon emissions.

How Savings Became an Asset

The financing structure relied on a “deemed savings” model. Instead of paying upfront, municipal authorities repaid investments over time using verified reductions in electricity and maintenance costs.

Supporters say such arrangements help cities modernise infrastructure, despite budget constraints. But analysts warn that they depend on accurate projections, reliable maintenance, and strong institutional capacity.

Experts agree that blended finance works best when public institutions remain actively involved in implementation and oversight.

In Hyderabad, the programme incorporated a Centralised Monitoring and Control System (CCMS), allowing authorities to track electricity use, detect faults, and monitor performance in real time.

The system improved operational oversight while generating the data needed for performance-linked financing – where payments are tied to independently verified outcomes.

Newly retrofitted LED street lights on the eastern edge of Hyderabad, in India. LED lights are a cost- and energy-efficient alternative to other lighting and bring a sense of security to the areas where they are installed. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Beyond Carbon: From Climate Finance to Everyday Life

For residents, the effects of the LED transition are often experienced less in financial or technical terms than in everyday routines and perceptions of safety.

Kavitha Ramavath (27) and her husband, Ravi Ramavath (35), recently moved with their two young children to Uppal Bhagath, a fast-growing neighbourhood on the eastern edge of Hyderabad. They previously lived in Uppal Kalan, about four kilometres away, where housing was cheaper, but the infrastructure was poor. Kavitha works as a domestic worker, while Ravi drives an auto-rickshaw.

Although their rent has nearly doubled, improved lighting has changed their daily lives.

“This area is more lively, with wider and better-lit roads,” Kavitha said, pointing toward an LED streetlight outside her lane. “Earlier, I used to feel scared walking alone to drop or pick up my children from tuition classes.”

Now, she says, her children can play outside longer in the evenings and nearby shops keep their shutters open later. Ravi adds that he can park his auto-rickshaw outside their home without worrying about theft or damage.

Urban planners say improved public lighting can influence mobility, informal economic activity, and perceptions of public safety – especially for women and children.

Last week, Kavitha started a small fruit cart outside her home. The brighter street allows her to continue working after dusk, when customer footfall increases.

For her family, the benefits are not measured in emissions reductions or financing structures but in the possibility of earning a little more income while feeling safer in public spaces.

From Local Streets to Global Finance Models

While Hyderabad’s experience highlights blended finance in climate mitigation, the model increasingly extends far beyond energy efficiency.

Across the world, GEF-backed blended finance initiatives are channelling investments into biodiversity conservation, ocean protection, and sustainable supply chains. These projects demonstrate how public funding can unlock private capital in sectors that have traditionally struggled to attract investment.

In Brazil, for instance, the Living Amazon Mechanism combines capital market instruments with philanthropic funding to support sustainable supply chains in the Amazon. It links cooperatives and local producers with financing while reducing risk through the participation of a corporate buyer, Natura, which acts as an investor and off-taker.

Similarly, global platforms such as the IFC–GEF Green Global Supply Chain Decarbonisation Initiative aim to provide long-term, green-linked loans to manufacturers and suppliers in emerging markets, helping address a critical barrier – access to affordable capital for decarbonisation.

At the sovereign level, blended finance is also enabling innovative debt and bond instruments. The Seychelles blue bond, supported by a World Bank guarantee and GEF concessional financing, has demonstrated how countries can raise private capital for marine conservation while reducing borrowing costs

In Latin America and the Caribbean, a new facility backed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and GEF is using blended finance to expand debt-for-nature conversions, which allow countries to refinance debt at lower costs and redirect savings toward biodiversity conservation and climate resilience.

These models share a common principle: public or concessional capital absorbs risks, enabling private investors to enter sectors where financial returns alone might not justify investment.

Building Markets Beyond Cities

The Hyderabad programme did not stop with municipal infrastructure. Through India’s UJALA initiative, EESL also expanded access to LED lighting in households by aggregating demand and procuring bulbs in bulk.

This approach helped reduce LED bulb prices dramatically, making energy-efficient lighting affordable for millions of households and introducing on-bill financing systems that allowed payments in small instalments.

By addressing both public infrastructure and household demand, the programme aimed not only to deploy energy-efficient technologies but also to create long-term, self-sustaining markets.

“The path to scalable environmental outcomes runs through blended finance. Public capital does what private capital won’t – it absorbs excess risk and funds the rigorous monitoring that turns lessons into lasting change. Crowd out the public, and you crowd out the results,” said Boltz.

A Test Case for Blended Finance

As global discussions on climate and biodiversity financing intensify, Hyderabad is increasingly being viewed as a test case for how blended finance can operate at the city level.

Srinivas Kona, a clean energy expert from the Hyderabad-based consultancy Proventure, says, “The LED programme demonstrated how concessional funding, public-sector implementation, and savings-based repayment structures can work together to expand urban infrastructure without large upfront municipal expenditure.”

At the same time, he cautions that challenges remain. “It’s not clear how easily such models can be replicated elsewhere, especially in smaller cities with weaker revenue systems and lower administrative capacity,” he said, noting reports of maintenance issues affecting some installations.

Still, Hyderabad’s experience offers a glimpse into how global finance debates translate into visible changes in everyday urban life.

Last week, Kavitha Ramavath stood beside her new fruit cart under a bright LED streetlight, arranging guavas and bananas as evening customers passed by.

Fruit vending comes with risks, she says, but the extra income could help her family manage rising rent and school expenses.

For Kavitha, the impact of blended finance is not measured in investment flows or policy frameworks. It is reflected in the ability to work longer hours safely, earn a little more money, and imagine a more stable future for her children.

Note: The Eighth Global Environment Facility Assembly will be held from May 30 to June 6, 2026, in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

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.

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

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

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

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

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

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

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

Nurina Malek

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kisho Kurokawa

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

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

Akorda

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

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

Middle Corridor. Photo credit: TITR

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

Semipalatinsk Former Nuclear Weapon Test site. Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Akorda.kz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

References
1. Farge, E. Iran war may push 45 million people into acute hunger by June, WFP says. Reuters https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-war-may-push-45-million-people-into-acute-hunger-by-june-wfp-says-2026-03-17/ (2026).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Khaled Khiari, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Middle East, Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations, addresses the Security Council meeting on maintenance of peace and security of Ukraine. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, May 18 2026 (IPS)

Four years after the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War, 2026 has marked a significant escalation in hostilities, with intensified bombardments from both sides causing immense destruction across the region, complicating humanitarian operations, and deepening an already severe humanitarian crisis. As exchanges of attacks have intensified in recent days, the United Nations (UN) warns that women and girls will be disproportionately impacted as violence disrupts access to basic, lifesaving services.

Last week on May 13, Russian forces launched a massive barrage of approximately 800 drones, targeting western regions of Ukraine, including areas that surround the Hungarian border. Local authorities informed the UN’s country office in Ukraine that the attacks resulted in multiple civilian casualties and extensive damage to critical infrastructure, including energy facilities and railway hubs. Significant destruction was reported in the Rivne, Volyn, and Ivano-Frankivsk regions, where several sites came under fire.

This attack triggered what UN Ukraine described as “one of the most intense and prolonged attacks of the war to date,” with continuous hostilities from Russian forces reported across the country for nearly 24 hours. Violence intensified the following day in Kyiv, where drone and missile strikes targeted major residential neighborhoods and key civilian infrastructure.

Ukrainian authorities reported that at least 140 Ukrainians were killed, including six children, with figures expected to rise as rescue operations continue. Officials also stated that a high-rise residential building in Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district sustained significant damage following a direct strike, leaving numerous residents trapped beneath the rubble.

Approximately 24 civilians were killed and 48 others were injured in the strike, including three children who were found dead. UN Ukraine reported that emergency teams carried out search-and-rescue operations and extinguished fires despite immense risks, as strikes continued to land. That same day, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that a “clearly marked” UN vehicle was struck twice in Kherson City while delivering aid to vulnerable communities.

“Families should always feel safe,” said Bernadette Castel-Hollingsworth, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees’ (UNHCR) Representative in Ukraine. “Mothers should not be waiting to know if their children are alive under the rubble after these missile attacks,” she continued, stressing that attacks that target civilians are a violation of humanitarian law.

According to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) , civilian casualties in Ukraine over the first four months of 2026 were higher than any four-month period recorded in any of the last three years. The Mission found that this is primarily due to a massive rise in the use of long-range weapons, which carry a far greater capacity for destruction and civilian harm, especially when used in densely populated urban areas.

HRMMU found that in April of this year, at least 84 civilians were killed and 628 others were injured as a direct result of long-range weapons use, accounting for approximately 43 percent of the total civilian casualties recorded during that period.

“I deplore the resumption of these large-scale attacks which have resulted in civilian casualties across the country,” said the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on May 14. “Attacks by long-range weapons are one of the leading causes of civilian casualties in Ukraine. Their expanded use in populated areas will only increase the already mounting toll on civilians,” Turk added, urging for an immediate de-escalation of hostilities.

Ukrainian women and girls have been severely and disproportionately impacted by the war, with the first three months of 2026 marking the deadliest winter for women and girls since the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. According to figures from UN Women, approximately 199 women and girls were killed between January and March of this year. This follows a 27 percent increase in casualties among women between 2025 and 2024.

More than four years into the Russian invasion, women and girls in Ukraine are facing immense stress under the threats of war and subsequent attacks on energy infrastructure. Credit: UN Women/Aurel Obreja

During a press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva on May 12, UN Women’s Representative in Ukraine Sabine Friezer Gunes informed reporters that attacks on energy infrastructure have devastated mental and physical wellbeing for women across Ukraine, particularly those in caregiving roles. Gunes noted that many of these women are struggling to manage increasing household responsibilities, growing financial pressures, and shrinking access to essential resources, such as reliable electricity.

“Women are significantly more likely than men to report having no backup energy supply during disruptions – 73 per cent of women say that they have no alternative energy sources,” said Gunes. “Nearly eight in ten women’s organisations in Ukraine told UN Women that funding reductions are seriously affecting their work, including some organisations reporting having to reduce the number of women and girls supported by their services. Official donor assistance to support women has reduced, and inequalities in Ukraine are increasing.”

Over the weekend, on May 17, Ukraine launched one of its largest long-range drone offensives against Russia in over a year, mainly targeting Moscow. This attack, described by reporters as retaliation for the missile and drone strikes in Kyiv, killed at least three people and injured 12 others, while local authorities reported damage to several unspecified infrastructure and numerous high-rise buildings.

“Our responses to Russia’s prolongation of the war and attacks on our cities and communities are entirely justified,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a statement shared to X (formerly Twitter). “This time, Ukrainian long-distance sanctions have reached the Moscow region, and we are clearly telling the Russians: their state must end its war.”

Nigel Gould Davies, a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, warned that Ukraine’s retaliatory strikes against Russia will only work to exacerbate regional tensions going forward.

“There is no ongoing peace process to disrupt. What (the attack) is more likely to do is add to the darkening cloud of anxiety over Russia, which has developed palpably over the last three or four months,” said Davies. “The fact that Ukraine is reminding the Moscow population that it is vulnerable to these attacks is likely to intensify the mix of concerns now. I see no prospect, though, in the shorter term, that even these factors together will induce Russia to consider the compromises that will be necessary for peace negotiations.”

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UNICEF and partners established the first Primary Health Care (PHC) Centre and Child-Friendly Space/Learning Space in Jabalia, North Gaza on 12 January, 2026. Credit: UNICEF/Rawan Eleyan

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, May 8 2026 (IPS)

Despite the implementation of a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel last October, Israeli forces continue to launch airstrikes into the Occupied Palestinian Territory. This has resulted in extensive destruction of infrastructure, loss of human life and exacerbating immense health needs amid an increasingly strained health system in Gaza.

Recent months have marked a significant escalation in hostilities, with routine bombardment pushing communities that have been displaced multiple times to the brink, while continued blockages of humanitarian aid hinder relief efforts and deprive thousands of life-saving services.

“Gaza’s crisis is far from over. For millions of civilians, the emergency is ongoing, relentless, and life-threatening. Food insecurity remains widespread and severe,” said Faten, the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) Senior Protection Manager in Gaza. “Gaza’s healthcare system has all but collapsed with 94% of Gaza’s hospitals destroyed or damaged.”

Findings from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) underscore the urgent state of crisis in the Gaza Strip. OCHA experts leading a safety report recorded a significant number of security incidents over the past week, noting that the figures are among the highest reported since the declaration of the ceasefire last year. Experts from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) note that Israeli forces continue to maintain a high level of activity across the Gaza Strip, most notably in the northern region, where the scale of needs is most pronounced.

According to figures from OCHA, between October 7, 2023, and April 29, 2026, a total of 72,599 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip and another 172,411 injured. UNRWA has also reported that over 391 UN personnel have been killed since the start of the war through May 7. Hostilities from Israeli forces remain a routine part of daily life for Palestinians across Gaza, with UN experts recording airstrikes, shelling, and gunfire across all areas, particularly densely populated ones.

In May, a UNRWA school in Jabalia was struck by gunfire, injuring two displaced civilians residing within the school for shelter. OCHA also recorded two separate incidents in which humanitarian facilities came under fire in May, alongside an airstrike landing near a UN warehouse and a stone-throwing incident that damaged humanitarian relief vehicles. The UN continues to underscore the urgency of all actors complying with international humanitarian law, including all parties’ obligations to facilitate humanitarian operations and protect civilians and civilian infrastructure in all contexts.

Displacement also remains widespread, with over 90 percent of the population having been internally displaced. Many communities have been displaced multiple times, with more than half of the displaced population being children. Thousands of families currently reside in poor-quality makeshift shelters, such as damaged residential buildings and schools, where they face increasingly limited access to basic essential services, such as food, water, fuel and sanitation.

It is estimated that UNRWA currently hosts over 65,000 displaced Palestinians across 82 collective emergency shelters throughout the enclave. Approximately 126 UNRWA displacement sites are located with the Yellow Line, as well as areas within the Orange Line, where humanitarian aid remains subject to Israeli monitoring and intervention.

Many of these displacement sites face severe security concerns, overcrowding, and unsanitary conditions, while health responses fail to keep pace and mitigate the rapid spread of infectious disease and illnesses.

Gaza’s health system has borne the brunt of the crisis, being on the brink of collapse as the immense scale of needs continues to grow every day. Compounded by Israeli blockades on humanitarian aid deliveries, relief efforts have been severely hindered by a lack of supplies, such as batteries, lubricants, and spare parts.

“51 percent of essential medicines are currently at zero stock in Gaza, which is severely limiting the ability to treat patients with life-threatening conditions, including those requiring intensive care and cancer treatment,” said Faten. “Hospitals are overwhelmed, under-resourced, and increasingly unable to provide adequate care.”

Additionally, humanitarian movement remains severely constricted as armored vehicles break down, posing significant security risks to aid personnel as they attempt to assist vulnerable populations. Furthermore, continued restrictions on generators, engine oil, and other key supplies hinder sanitation efforts, debris clearance, food distribution, water trucking, ambulance services, and the delivery of educational and medical supplies.

Over the past several months, UNRWA teams on the frontlines have recorded a significant uptick in rodent infestations across multiple overcrowded displacement shelters across the enclave, being most pronounced in Khan Younis, as well as areas with large amounts of rubble, including northern Gaza.

Heath facilities have also reported a significant increase in the frequency of rat bites, which are linked to the transmission of rodent-borne diseases such as leptospirosis. Efforts to contain the spread of infection are hindered by a severe shortage of pesticides, anti-lice shampoos, and scabicidal medications. As a result, UNRWA has recorded a significant increase in cases of chickenpox, as well as ectoparasitic skin diseases, such as scabies, over the past few months.

“With designated landfills becoming inaccessible during hostilities, the market has been used as a major solid waste dump, with trash now covering an entire city block and exceeding four flights in height,” said Stéphane Dujarric, UN Spokesperson for the Secretary-General during a press briefing on May 7.

“Our sanitation partners report that Gaza’s two sanitary landfills are near the perimeter fence surrounding the Strip, where access needs to be enabled by Israeli authorities. They also stress the need for permissions to bring into Gaza the machinery to remove the waste, the rubble and explosive ordnance, as well as the spare parts required to operate that equipment. These permissions are also critical to address health risks linked to pests and rodents,” Dujarric continued.

Despite immense challenges, UNRWA remains on the frontlines of this crisis, providing lifesaving services to vulnerable, displaced communities. Since October 2023, the agency has conducted over 17.2 million health consultations, including over 71,800 consultations between April 20 and 26 of this year alone. UNRWA continues to support six health centers, four temporary centers, and 28 medical points across the enclave, and have provided psychosocial support services to over 730,000 displaced Palestinians, including 520,000 children. The agency also continues to provide protection services, which have proved to be instrumental as security concerns reach new highs, particularly around displacement sites.

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Protests ahead of the 1st Conference Transitioning away from Fossil Fuels. Credit: Kefas Matos

By Umar Manzoor Shah
SRINAGAR, Apr 24 2026 (IPS)

A high-stakes international summit in Colombia starting today (April 24) is expected to sharpen global efforts to phase out fossil fuels, as governments, scientists and Indigenous leaders warn that the world is running out of time to avert irreversible climate damage.

During a virtual press briefing on April 16, Colombia’s Environment Ministry and a diverse panel of experts outlined expectations from the upcoming Fossil Fuel Phase-Out Summit in Santa Marta. The event is being positioned as a critical platform to accelerate energy transition and address mounting pressure from Indigenous communities living on the frontlines of extraction.

It was at the Belém Climate Conference in 2025, wherein a coalition of over 80 countries unanimously decided to act decisively to phase out fossil fuels that have been driving three quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions.

On the sidelines, 24 countries went further: they issued the Belém Declaration, pledging to work collectively toward a just, orderly, and equitable transition aligned with 1.5°C pathways. To this end, Colombia and the Netherlands volunteered to co-host the First International Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels.

The Conference is taking place from 24 to 29 April 2026 in Santa Marta, Colombia. The organisers invited 97 national governments and 30 subnational governments. The high-level segment convenes on April 28–29, 2026.

“We are in a moment of no return. It is clear that there is climate change and that there is no denialism. This is the moment… to accelerate the transition and the progressive elimination of fossil fuels,” said Luz Dary Carmona Moreno, Colombia’s Vice Minister for Environmental Land Use Planning.

The summit comes at a time of growing geopolitical tension and continued global dependence on fossil fuels. Carmona noted that conflicts and economic instability continue to be shaped by oil, gas, and coal and stressed that there is an urgent need for structural change.

“The economy continues depending on fossil fuels,” she said, pointing to global crises that reflect the entrenched role of hydrocarbons.

Colombia has framed the Santa Marta conference around three strategic pillars. The first focuses on overcoming global dependence on fossil fuels. The second addresses transformation of supply and demand systems. The third seeks to rethink multilateral cooperation frameworks.

Carmona emphasised that the conference aims to produce a concrete roadmap, backed by science, public participation, and political will.

“This conference seeks common points to accelerate the transition, concrete actions and enablers that allow that acceleration,” she said.

The event has already drawn strong international participation. According to Colombian officials, 45 countries have confirmed attendance, along with 13 ministers and a broad coalition of civil society groups, indigenous organisations, academics, and private sector actors.

More than 2,800 participants, including grassroots organisations, Indigenous communities, youth groups, and labour unions, have registered to take part.

Indigenous Leaders Warn of “Unjust Transition”

For Indigenous leaders, however, the urgency of the climate crisis is matched by frustration over what they describe as a gap between rhetoric and reality.

Oswaldo Muca, General Coordinator of the Organisation of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon (OPIAC), said communities continue to bear the brunt of extraction despite promises of a “just transition”.

“We are very concerned. We talk about a just transition, but in practice it is not true,” Muca said.

He described ongoing environmental degradation in Indigenous territories, including illegal mining, deforestation and mercury contamination.

“Mining continues. Extraction continues. Deforestation continues. The territories and Indigenous peoples continue suffering this problem, and it is becoming more serious every day,” he said.

Muca also criticised the lack of direct benefits for local communities, noting that profits from extraction often leave the country while environmental damage remains.

“The resources do not reach Indigenous territories but they destroy the territory and leave the damage,” he said.

He called for Indigenous participation at every stage of policymaking, from design to implementation, across technical, political, legal and financial dimensions.

Science Points to Sharp Cuts

Scientific findings presented during the briefing reinforced the scale of transformation required.

Dr Marcel Llavero Pasquina, a researcher at the University of Barcelona, said limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius would require drastic reductions in fossil fuel production.

“Eighty-six percent of oil and gas reserves currently under production should be prematurely decommissioned,” he said.

Even under a less ambitious 2-degree scenario, at least 12% of producing reserves would need to be phased out.

Pasquina also warned that no new fossil fuel exploration is compatible with global climate targets. “At least 10,000 of the existing oil and gas extraction contracts should be cancelled,” he said.

He highlighted the economic tensions shaping climate negotiations, noting that fossil fuel companies stand to lose trillions of dollars under transition scenarios.

“Fossil fuel companies… have a material and quantifiable conflict of interest,” he said, arguing they should be excluded from climate policymaking.

At the same time, governments face significant fiscal challenges, with potential revenue losses estimated at US$117 trillion globally under a 1.5-degree pathway. Still, Pasquina stressed that these costs are outweighed by the human and environmental toll of inaction.

“These transition costs are dwarfed by the climate costs communities would otherwise suffer,” he said.

Policy Momentum Builds

Despite the scale of the challenge, policy experts pointed to growing momentum worldwide.

Paola Yanguas Parra, a policy advisor at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, said governments have already begun implementing measures to restrict fossil fuel expansion.

“We found… 58 active restrictions, which go from bans and moratoria to exploration and licensing,” she said.

These measures include protections for ecologically and culturally significant areas such as the Amazon, as well as restrictions on extraction methods like fracking.

Yanguas Parra noted that such policies often make economic sense in addition to environmental benefits.

“You would take a huge environmental, social and climate cost… for something that would not even make you enough profit,” she said, referring to unviable extraction projects in remote regions.

She added that the summit offers an opportunity to shift global discussions from whether to transition away from fossil fuels to how to implement that transition effectively.

“This coalition will focus on implementation, on learning from each other,” she said.

Amazon at a Crossroads

Speakers from across the Amazon basin warned that the region is increasingly being treated as a new frontier for fossil fuel expansion.

Alana Manchineri, an Indigenous leader from Brazil, described the climate crisis as an immediate reality rather than a distant threat.

“There is no more space for delays,” she said.

She warned that oil and gas projects are already causing widespread damage, including water contamination, biodiversity loss and rising conflict.

“It is not just environmental damage but violations of rights and ways of life,” she said.

According to Indigenous organisations, more than 320,000 square kilometres of Indigenous land in the Amazon basin are already affected by oil and gas blocks.

Manchineri stressed that any transition must fully incorporate Indigenous knowledge and leadership.

“This path will only be legitimate and effective with the full participation of Indigenous peoples,” she said.

Beyond COP: Complement, Not Replacement

Panellists repeatedly emphasised that the Santa Marta summit is not intended to replace existing UN climate processes but to complement them.

“There are groups of countries… that have gathered to discuss more focused issues,” Yanguas Parra said, describing the summit as part of a broader ecosystem of climate cooperation.

Pasquina offered a more critical view, arguing that while UN climate negotiations have produced frameworks like the Paris Agreement, they have failed to curb rising emissions.

“The COP  has been a great success on paper. In reality, emissions have only been increasing,” he said.

He suggested that initiatives like Santa Marta could increase pressure on countries that have resisted stronger action.

A Test of Political Will

As preparations intensify, expectations for the summit remain high. Colombian officials say the final outcome will be a report outlining actionable steps and mechanisms to accelerate transition.

“We want the report not to remain just another document. We expect people to turn it into action,” Carmona said.

For many participants, the success of the summit will depend on whether it delivers concrete commitments rather than broad declarations.

Indigenous leaders, in particular, say the credibility of the process hinges on real inclusion and tangible change on the ground.

“If we do not take real and effective actions. We can talk about a just transition, but in reality, other mechanisms will continue destroying the territory,” Muca warned.

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The global economy, is at the precipice of “stagflation” – growth slowdown and higher inflation – due to the energy price shock following the illegal US-Israel war on Iran. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recently termed this as a “textbook negative supply shock”. For the first time since the 1970s, the prospect of stagflation seems real.

Anis Chowdhury

Prospects of global stagflation

The IMF simulated three possible macroeconomic scenarios depending on the duration of this conflict and the extent of damages to energy infrastructure in the region. These range from a marginal drop in this year’s forecast global growth rate – from 3.4% to 3.1% – to a moderate decline to 2.5% and a sharp decline to 2%. The projected spikes in “headline inflation” – covering all goods and services, including volatile items, e.g., energy and food – range from 4.4% to 5.8% in 2026.

The IMF rightly doubts whether inflation can be checked with monetary tightening without causing substantial increase in unemployment. But it does not offer any solutions; instead advises the central banks to remain ready “to act decisively to maintain price stability”.

The IMF’s overall policy advice is conservative. However, it acknowledges the need for monetary and fiscal policy to support economic activities if the if financial conditions tighten sharply and global activity deteriorates markedly.

Inflation phobia and policy over-reaction

Ben Bernanke and his co-researchers found that the recession in the 1970s did not result from the oil-price shocks “per se, but from the resulting tightening of monetary policy”. Bob Barsky and Lutz Kilian found “that the oil price increases were not nearly as essential a part of the causal mechanism generating the stagflation of the 1970s as is often thought”. Ed Nelson blamed central banks’ “faulty doctrine” for the 1970s stagflation.

So, it was not inflation that caused output to decline, but rather, inappropriate and draconian efforts to curb inflation that inevitably repressed growth, and produced world’s first stagflation. This may happen again if central bankers overreact and tighten the financial conditions to kill the current “textbook supply shock” inflation.

The problem is the central bankers’ dogmatic group-thinking despite contrary empirical evidence. For example, the fear of unhinged inflation expectations and wage-price spirals do not have any empirical basis as reported in IMF research and the Australia’s Reserve Bank.

Yet, the central bankers and the IMF favour monetary tightening fearing the risk of “unhinged” inflation expectations and wage-price spirals.

Revisiting the inflation target

The central bankers’ group-thinking bias insists on an inflation target of 2% – a figure “plucked out of the air”, yet became “global economic gospel”. Don Brash, the acclaimed former Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, who was the first central bank governor to adopt a 2% inflation target admitted that it was based on a chance remark by then New Zealand Finance Minister Roger Douglas “during the course of a television interview”. It became “the mantra, repeated endlessly” as Brash and his colleagues “devoted a huge amount of effort” to preaching his new gospel “to everybody who would listen – and some who were reluctant to listen”.

Olivier Blanchard, the IMF’s former Chief Economist, questioned the wisdom behind the 2% inflation target and argued for a higher, e.g., 4% target following the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. IMF research also advocated for a long-run inflation target of 4%. Such a moderately higher inflation should widen policy space.

Joe Gagnon and Chris Collins argued that “the case for raising the inflation target is stronger” than it is usually thought. Their research revealed that “the benefits [of a higher inflation target] clearly exceed the costs”.

Thus, one should not be surprised when The Financial Times says, “It is time to revisit the 2% inflation target”.

Rethinking inflation

Almost all central bankers see inflation as an outcome of excess demand, caused by either an increase in aggregate demand or a decrease in aggregate supply at a given price. Prices rise to eliminate the excess demand.

A common view is that higher prices lead to demand for higher wages which in turn cause higher prices, thus generating wage-price spirals. Therefore, central bankers focus on containing demand by raising interest rate regardless of the sources of inflation.

On the other hand, optimal policy-mix differ when inflation is seen as the result of a distributional conflict or disagreement. Guido Lorenzoni and Iv´an Werning analysed the impacts of supply shocks arising from “non-labour” inputs, such as energy under the different relative bargaining powers of labour and firms where the non-labour input price is perfectly flexible, and goods prices are more flexible than wages.

They found that the optimal policy response to a supply shock coming from the scarce non-labour input is to “run the economy hot”, i.e., to allow demand to exceed supply capacity and higher inflation. Their findings imply that it would be more efficient to reach the adjustment with the help of higher price inflation than through lower price inflation and deeper wage deflation by causing higher unemployment.

David Ratner and Jae Sim analysed the trade-off of anti-inflationary measures considering inflation as an outcome of distributional conflict. They found that restrictive anti-inflationary measures are more costly in terms of unemployment.

Interestingly, their finding corroborates the IMF’s observation that the aggregate supply curve has become flatter making restrictive anti-inflationary measures more costly in terms of higher unemployment. Unfortunately, the central bankers’ anti-inflation group bias dismisses the higher unemployment or growth declines due to restrictive policies as “short-term pains for long-term gains”.

Recent IMF research revealed permanent scars of recessions, including those arising from external shocks and macroeconomic policy mistakes; they all “lead to permanent losses in output and welfare”. The Lancet reported “substantial effects on suicide rates”. The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills, investigated the human cost of austerity policies during economic crises to emphasise that health indicators can significantly deteriorate.

Optimal policy response

In light of the above, the central bankers should reconsider their hawkish anti-inflationary policy-setting.

The governments around the world are trying to ease fuel-price impacts by fiscal measures such as a temporary reduction of fuel excise duty, subsidies and price caps. The mainstream commentators, including the IMF, argue that these measures may have significant fiscal costs if the crisis lingers on, and would put extra-burden on central banks, which are focused on controlling inflation.

Significantly, the optimal policy-mix should include tax revenue raising measures. Governments should consider enhancing tax progressivity. In particular, an excess profit tax should be imposed on the beneficiaries of higher interest rates and fuel prices, such as banks and fuel companies to fund cost of living support measures.

Dr. Ken Henry, Australia’s former Treasury Secretary has recently argued that a 100% tax on windfall profits from gas would be “socially optimal”. Tony Wood held “A windfall profit tax may be the least-worst solution to the gas crisis”.

Research based on US data reveals that an excess profit tax reduces existing racial and ethnic inequalities and inequalities between groups with different educational attainments. It can also accelerate renewable energy transition when increasing geopolitical tensions and climate impacts threaten continued volatility in fossil fuel and gas markets.

Anis Chowdhury, Emeritus Professor, Western Sydney University (Australia). He held senior UN positions in Bangkok and New York and served as Special Assistant to the Chief Advisor for Finance (with the status and rank of State Minister) in the Professor Yunus-led Interim Government. E-mail: anis.z.chowdhury@gmail.com

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From the left, Rev. Tolbert Thomas Jallah Jn with Mariann Bassey Olsson during the launch of the campaign in Cartagena, Colombia. Credit: AFSA.

By Isaiah Esipisu
NAIROBI, Apr 14 2026 (IPS)

Over 800 households in Ikolomani Constituency in Kakamega County, Western Kenya, fear eviction to pave the way for a British firm, Shanta Gold Limited, to begin extracting gold valued at Sh683 billion ($5.29 billion) on an estimated 337 acres of residential and agricultural land.

Efforts by residents to protest against the looming displacement during an attempt for a public participation session on the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) by the government on 4 December 2025 were met with police brutality, leading to four deaths due to bullet wounds, arbitrary arrests and scores of injuries.

According to the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), the incident is part of a disturbing and escalating pattern in Kenya’s extractive sector, where communities seeking accountability are met with brutal force, political threats, and procedural manipulation.

“Mining zones are increasingly becoming death traps rather than engines of community development,” reads part of a statement issued by the commission following the incident.

This trend mirrors what is happening in many other countries across Africa, where communities living in mineral-rich areas face forceful displacements, abuse of basic human rights, and environmental degradation linked to industrial mineral extraction, often perpetrated by foreign firms with full support of the political class.

According to Appolinaire Zagabe, a Congolese human rights activist and the Director for the DRC Climate Change Network (Reseau Sur le Changement Climatique RDC) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), often, people he terms ‘greedy government officials’ sign contracts with extractive firms to legalise their activities, then use police machinery to forcefully and brutally evict communities without informed consent and proper compensation.

It is based on such injustices that civil society organisations, social movements, faith-based actors, Indigenous Peoples, pastoralist and peasant organisations from Africa under the umbrella of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) launched a campaign calling for land policies that protect African smallholder farmers and communities against punitive extractive practices and land grabbing, which are currently a threat to human rights, livelihoods and sustainable food systems.

“Land is more than a resource; it is our heritage, our identity, and our future,” said Rev. Tolbert Thomas Jallah Jr, the Executive Director at the Faith and Justice Network, during the launch of the campaign on the sidelines of the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20) in Cartagena, Colombia.

“Across Africa, our soils feed our families, sustain our economies, and connect generations, yet today, land degradation, industrial extractive practices by foreign enterprises, climate change, and land grabbing threaten the very foundation of our food systems,” he added.

In a joint declaration at the conference, the organisations observed that rural communities across the world continue to face dispossession, land concentration, and ecological destruction.

“Despite global commitments to end hunger and poverty, land and food systems are increasingly controlled by corporate and financial interests, while communities that produce food remain marginalised and insecure,” reads part of the declaration statement.

It was further observed that carbon offset projects, extractive industries, agribusiness expansions, and speculative land markets are accelerating dispossession, soil degradation, and social inequality, often excluding communities from territories they have governed collectively for generations.

The campaign, dubbed “Protect Our Land, Restore Our Soil”, is now calling on governments to strengthen land rights and protect smallholder farmers; communities to embrace sustainable farming practices that rebuild soil fertility; and youthful farmers to view agriculture not as a last resort but as a powerful pathway to innovation and resilience.

“When soil is degraded, food becomes scarce, and when land is taken or misused, communities lose dignity and security,” said Rev. Tolbert, who is also the sitting Chairperson at the AFSA’s Board of Directors.

Just like the looming evictions of residents of Ikolomani in Kenya, Amnesty International has also observed that people of the DRC also pay a high price to supply the world with copper and cobalt: forced evictions, illegal destruction of their homes, and physical violence – sometimes leading to deaths.

The DRC supplies 70 to 74 percent of the copper and cobalt used in lithium-ion batteries. These batteries power our smartphones, laptops, electric cars, and bicycles, and they play a major role in the energy transition away from fossil fuels. This transition is urgent and necessary.

However, according to Amnesty International, mineral-rich regions of the DRC are sacrificed to mining development, leading to a shocking series of abuses in the region. Thousands of people have lost their homes, schools, hospitals, and communities due to the expansion of copper and cobalt mines in the country, especially in Kolwezi, which sits above rich copper and cobalt deposits.

The AFSA-led campaign calls on governments and corporate organisations to guarantee meaningful participation of affected communities and free prior and informed consent of Indigenous Peoples in land, agriculture and climate decision-making to avoid conflicts and abuse of basic human rights.

“The future lies not in further commodifying land and food systems, but in restoring community control over territories, securing pastoralist mobility and commons, and supporting agroecological transitions rooted in justice and ecological integrity,” observed Mariann Bassey Olsson, a Lawyer, and Director at Action (Friends of the Earth Nigeria).

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Amir Saeid Iravani, Permanent Representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations, addresses the Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías

By Oritro Karim
NEW YORK, Apr 10 2026 (IPS)

The past several weeks have marked a significant escalation in hostilities across the Middle East, with tensions rising among Israel, Lebanon, Iran, and the United States following large-scale exchanges of bombardment. Recent statements from U.S. President Donald Trump, including threats of extensive destruction in Iran, have further inflamed regional tensions and complicated ongoing diplomatic efforts. Humanitarian experts warn that these developments risk further destabilizing cross-border relations and could trigger a broader regional conflict.

“Every day this war continues, human suffering grows. The scale of devastation grows. Indiscriminate attacks grow,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “The spiral of death and destruction must stop. To the United States and Israel, it is high time to stop the war that is inflicting immense human suffering and already triggering devastating economic consequences. Conflicts do not end on their own. They end when leaders choose dialogue over destruction. That choice still exists. And it must be made – now.”

In late February, Israel coordinated a series of airstrikes targeting Iranian military infrastructure, triggering retaliatory drone and missile strikes from Iran. According to figures from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), over 3.8 million Iranians have been impacted by the war in Iran as of early April. Iran’s Ministry of Health and Medical Education (MoHME) reports that over 2,100 civilians have been killed as of April 3, including 216 children, 251 women and 24 health workers. Over 1,880 children, 4,610 women, and 116 health workers have been injured in that same period.

The scale of destruction to civilian infrastructure across Iran has been particularly severe. The Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) estimates that roughly 115,193 civilian structures have sustained significant damage, including at least 763 schools. Israeli airstrikes have targeted numerous densely populated areas and critical civilian infrastructures, including airports, residential areas, hospitals, schools, industrial facilities, cultural heritage sites, water infrastructure, and a power plant in Khorramshahr, as well as nuclear facilities in Khonab, Yazd, and Bushehr.

Iran’s healthcare system has borne a massive toll, with damage to over 442 health facilities across the nation, disrupting access to lifesaving care for over 10 million people, including 2.2 million children. The Pasteur Institute of Iran—one of the oldest research and public health centers in the Middle East, and a critical source of vaccines for infectious diseases—has been severely damaged, leaving thousands of children increasingly vulnerable. Tofigh Darou, a key producer of pharmaceutical products for chronic conditions such as cancer, has been destroyed, raising broader concerns of a severe, nationwide health crisis.

These challenges are especially pronounced for Iran’s growing population of internally displaced persons (IDPs), which has swelled to approximately 3.2 million since the escalation of hostilities. Iran also currently hosts over 1.65 million refugees. These vulnerable communities are in dire need of access to basic services, many of which have been severely disrupted. IDPs and refugee communities face significant protection risks, alongside critical shortages of healthcare, food, clean water, and financial support for basic needs and relocation assistance.

“Unprovoked attacks by the US and Israel — launched amid diplomatic negotiations and without authorisation from the Security Council — violate the fundamental prohibition on the use of force, sovereign equality, territorial integrity, and the duty to peacefully settle disputes under Article 2 of the UN Charter. They also violate the right to life,” said a coalition of UN experts on April 4. “The targeting of civilians, educational facilities, and medical institutions constitutes a grave violation of international humanitarian law and human rights law….Calls by the US and Israel for Iranians to seize control of their own government are reckless and put countless civilian lives at risk.”

On April 8, the U.S. brokered a two-week ceasefire with Iran, mediated by Pakistan, in an effort to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway and one of the world’s most prominent oil and gas passes, and to de-escalate tensions in the 2026 Iran War. Immediately following the implementation of the ceasefire, Israel launched a series of large-scale airstrikes in Lebanon targeting Hezbollah sites, resulting in widespread damage to civilian infrastructure and a significant loss of human life.

Attacks across Lebanon have been widespread, with Israeli authorities reporting that they had carried out approximately 100 strikes across the country within 10 minutes. Southern Lebanon has experienced immense destruction, along with the southern suburbs of Beirut and the eastern Bekaa Valley, all reporting significant damage to civilian infrastructures. Attacks have been reported in the vicinity of the Hiram Hospital in Al-Aabbassiye near Tyre, as well as on an ambulance on the Islamic Health Authority in Qlaileh, causing three civilian deaths.

Figures from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) show that more than 1,500 people had been killed by Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon between early March and April 8, including over 200 women and children. Additional figures from the UN reveal that the attacks on April 8 alone resulted in more than 200 deaths and over 1,000 injuries across Lebanon. Many victims are believed to be still trapped beneath the rubble of destroyed infrastructure, as hospitals and rescue teams struggle to respond amid the overwhelming scale of casualties and urgent humanitarian needs.

“The scale of the killing and destruction in Lebanon today is nothing short of horrific,” said UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk. “Such carnage, within hours of agreeing to a ceasefire with Iran, defies belief. It places enormous pressure on a fragile peace, which is so desperately needed by civilians. The scale of such actions, coupled with statements by Israeli officials indicating an intention to occupy or even annex parts of southern Lebanon, is deeply troubling. Efforts to bring peace to the wider region will remain incomplete as long as the Lebanese people are living under continuing fire, forcibly displaced, and in fear of further attacks.”

On April 7, U.S. President Donald Trump issued a series of posts on social media in which he warned of potential large-scale destruction in Iran, which elicited significant concern and outrage from regional and international actors. His subsequent partial withdrawal of these comments did little to ease concerns and only further underscored the volatility of the U.S.’s role in foreign affairs.

“Today, the President of the United States again resorted to language that is not only deeply irresponsible but profoundly alarming, declaring that ‘the whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back’,” Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran’s ambassador to the UN, told the Security Council on April 7. He added that Trump’ s comments only acted as an open declaration of “intent to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity”, underscoring the troubling precents that the U.S. is setting for international conflicts.

“The announcement of a two-week ceasefire is a welcome step but it is partial, fragile, and incomplete. Most urgently, it does not include Lebanon, where I visited IRC programs last week and where airstrikes, evacuation orders and active hostilities not only continue to threaten civilians but intensify. A ceasefire that leaves one front of the conflict burning risks prolonging the crisis, not resolving it,” said David Miliband, President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee.

“The war in Iran has already triggered a dangerous domino effect, spreading humanitarian need, economic shock, and instability across the region and beyond. This moment must be used to expand the ceasefire, ensure the Strait of Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb and other critical routes remain open to allow scaled-up humanitarian aid and essential supplies to reach those in need, and to stabilize economies under strain. Without that, the gap between rising needs and shrinking resources will only deepen. Civilians must be given the space to begin rebuilding their lives with dignity which can only happen if there is a permanent cessation in hostilities,” he continued.

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By Katsuhiro Asagiri
TOKYO, Japan, Apr 7 2026 (IPS)

As tensions surrounding Iran deepen and uncertainty spreads across global energy markets, Japan is once again confronting a structural weakness: its heavy dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

For decades, Japan has relied on crude imports from a region repeatedly shaken by war, confrontation and instability. With the stability of the Strait of Hormuz and surrounding waters once again under threat, Tokyo is accelerating efforts to diversify both supply sources and transport routes. In that process, Kazakhstan has emerged as an increasingly important partner.

Yet the strengthening relationship between Japan and Kazakhstan is not limited to oil, uranium or logistics. It also has a deeper historical and ethical dimension. Both countries carry the memory of nuclear suffering and have sought to transform that memory into a foundation for dialogue, cooperation and advocacy for peace.

Central Asia plus Japan Dialogue” (CA+JAD) Credit: Primi Minister’s Office of Japan

That framework has since taken on even greater urgency.

One important element is the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, the so-called Middle Corridor. Connecting Central Asia and Europe without passing through Russia, this route has drawn attention as a new transport channel for energy and strategic goods. In an era shaped by war, sanctions, shipping disruptions and intensifying rivalry among major powers, such corridors have become increasingly important for Japan.

Kazakhstan stands at the center of this calculation.

Middle Corridor. Credit: TITR

Japanese energy interests are already present in the Caspian region. INPEX, a Japanese company, holds stakes in major oil projects including Kazakhstan’s Kashagan field and Azerbaijan’s ACG field. Crude from these fields could serve as an alternative supply source to Middle Eastern oil for Japan. In addition, routes through the Caspian and Mediterranean can avoid the Strait of Hormuz, although that means longer transport times and higher shipping costs.

Karipbek Kuyukov(2nd from left) and Dmitriy Vesselov(2nd from right). Credit: Katsuhiro Asagiri

Even so, energy alone cannot fully explain the distinctiveness of Japan-Kazakhstan ties.

What gives this relationship unusual depth is their shared historical experience of nuclear suffering. Kazakhstan endured the grave consequences of 456 nuclear tests conducted at the Semipalatinsk test site during the Soviet era. Japan remains the only country ever attacked with atomic bombs in wartime, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki continue to stand as enduring symbols of the catastrophic human cost of nuclear weapons.

The two histories are different. But the ethical language that emerged from them has much in common.

The remains of the Prefectural Industry Promotion Building, after the dropping of the atomic bomb, in Hiroshima, Japan. This site was later preserved as a monument. Credit: UN Photo/DB

What matters here is the “dialogue” dimension of Kazakhstan’s diplomacy.

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

Through the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, held in Astana since 2003, Kazakhstan has sought to position itself not merely as a supplier of resources or a transit country, but as a hub for dialogue across political, religious and civilizational divides. This initiative has become part of the country’s diplomatic identity, grounded in denuclearization, mediation and coexistence.

For Japan, this adds another layer to Kazakhstan’s significance. Kazakhstan is not only a country with oil, uranium and transport routes. It is also a state that has sought to transform its own history of suffering into diplomacy centered on peace, trust and human security.

7th Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions Group Photo by Secretariate of the 7th Congress

This approach resonates with the realities of today’s world, where multiple crises overlap.

Credit: akorda.kz

In this context, the relationship between Japan and Kazakhstan carries a broader lesson.

Cooperation between states does not have to be shaped only by economic and strategic interests. It can also incorporate shared memory, moral purpose and a commitment to dialogue. In practical terms, that means cooperation on energy and transport. Politically, it means contributing to a more stable and diversified regional order. Humanitarianly, it means sustaining the argument that security must not be separated from its human consequences.

Of course, this relationship is not free from limits or contradictions. Alternative routes are costly. State behavior is still heavily shaped by strategic calculation. Dialogue alone cannot neutralize the pressures of war.

Even so, in an international environment marked by fragmentation, coercion and renewed nuclear anxiety, the growing closeness between Japan and Kazakhstan means more than a tactical adjustment. It is also an attempt to connect realism with responsibility.

That is why this relationship deserves attention.

At a time when many countries are retreating into narrower and more inward-looking definitions of national interest, Japan and Kazakhstan are seeking to build a partnership that links resource security and diplomacy, memory and strategy, and national resilience with the search for peace.

Credit: UN photo

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

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Excerpt:

Credit: US Department of Defense / Wiki Commons

By Herbert Wulf
Apr 6 2026 (IPS)

 
Donald Trump ran on a platform of ending wars. After his success in Venezuela, he is intoxicated by his military achievements and is banking on regime change in several countries.

In a swift and decisive move, US forces abducted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife to the United States. The current government in Caracas has little choice but to largely submit to Washington’s dictates. Trump’s motives for the war against Iran remain unclear, partly because the US president has cited various reasons: to finally destroy the Iranian nuclear program, to end the Iranian threat to the Middle East, to support the Iranian people, and to overthrow the terrible regime in Tehran. He remains vague about his reasoning and seems to make off the cuff suggestions for regime change. Trump had a lofty idea at how he envisions the end of this war. He has suggested “unconditional surrender,” followed by his personal involvement in the selection of a successor: I must be involved in picking Iran’s next leader.

The swift victory against Iran failed to materialize, an end to the war is not in sight, and a new leader has been chosen without Trump’s involvement. The structures of the mullah regime appear so entrenched that the anticipated regime change following the rapid decapitation of the leadership did not occur. Yet Donald Trump had proclaimed: “What we did in Venezuela is, in my opinion, the perfect, the perfect scenario.” The Atlantic calls this attitude a “hostile corporate takeover of an entire country”. Now the US government expects Cuba to surrender. “I think I could do anything I want” with Cuba, Trump declared, now that the island is virtually cut off from energy supplies and its economy is in ruins. He is demanding the removal of Cuban President Diaz-Canel.

In the business world hostile corporate takeovers sometimes work, sometimes they fail. Similarly with Trump’s idea of swift government surrenders. In the case of Iran, he was misguided by the Wall Street playbook. Irresponsibly, he called on Iranians to overthrow the government before the bombing campaign started. Regime change in Iran has now been forgotten and Trump is agnostic about democracy. He is interested to get the oil price down and the stock market up.

Lessons from the past

The concept of regime change—replacing the top of the government to install one more agreeable to the US—is not new to US foreign policy. Proponents of regime change usually point to Japan and Germany as positive examples of successful democratization. Often, however, the goal is not, or at least not primarily, democratization, but rather the installation of a government that is ideologically close to the US or amenable to them. But the “Trump Corollary”, as explicitly stated in the National Security Strategy to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, is not new either. In reality, it was already the Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush doctrine.

Both Trump’s idea of regime change and his rigorously pursued territorial ambitions (Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal) are reminiscent of the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, particularly the version of this doctrine expanded by President Roosevelt in 1904. This doctrine legitimized American interventions in Latin America. At the beginning of the 20th century, the US intervened in numerous Latin American countries in ‘its backyard’, using military and intelligence means: in Colombia, to support Panamanian separatists in controlling the Panama Canal; repeatedly in the Dominican Republic; they occupied Cuba from 1906 to 1909 and intervened there repeatedly afterward; in Nicaragua during the so-called ‘Banana War’, to protect the interests of the US company United Fruit; in Mexico, as well as in Haiti and Honduras.

The New York Times recently suggested that Trump’s current enthusiasm for regime change is most comparable to that of Dwight D. Eisenhower. During his two terms in office from 1953 to 1961, the once coldly calculating general allowed himself to be seduced into a downward spiral from one coup to the next. In 1953, the US succeeded in overthrowing the elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh with Operation Ajax. Mossadegh wanted to nationalize the British-owned oil industry. The coup succeeded with CIA support. The US installed the Shah as its puppet. He ruled with absolute power until the so-called Iranian Revolution and the dictatorship of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. After the successful overthrow of the government in Iran, Eisenhower decided to intervene in Guatemala. The elected president, Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, who initiated far-reaching land reform laws, was overthrown in a coup d’état in 1954 and replaced by the pro-American colonel, Castillo Armas.

During this period, the US government also formulated the so-called domino theory, which aimed to prevent governments, particularly in Asia, from aligning themselves with the Soviet Union. The assumption was that if one domino fell, others would follow. It was during this time that the costly war in Korea ended in an armistice. Therefore, countries like Vietnam, Laos, Burma, Indonesia, and others were on Eisenhower’s domino list. However, the destabilization campaigns carried out by the CIA sometimes had the opposite effect. Governments in Indonesia and Syria emerged strengthened from the interventions. Eisenhower left Kennedy with the loss of American influence in Cuba. The failed Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961, intended to overthrow Fidel Castro, was the starting point for the decades-long blockade of Cuba, which Trump is determined to end now through regime change.

The most dramatic example of failed regime change in recent history is undoubtedly the Iraq War, which began in 2003 under President George W. Bush. The stated goal was to remove Saddam Hussein from power and destroy his weapons of mass destruction. The war led to the overthrow of the regime. The United Nations and US teams found no weapons of mass destruction despite intensive on-site investigations. Attempts to establish an orderly state in Iraq failed. These experiences, and especially the disastrous outcome of two decades of military intervention in Afghanistan, discredited the concept of regime change.

What are the implications?

The most important lesson taught by efforts to affect externally forced regime change is that interventions often lead to crises that were ostensibly meant to be prevented or solved. The temptation was too great for Trump to miss the opportunity to depose the despised Maduro government.

Scholarly studies of the numerous attempted regime changes and democratization efforts reveal three key findings. First, simply removing the government from power (whether through assassination, as in the case of Saddam Hussein in Iraq or now in Iran, or through kidnapping as in Venezuela) is insufficient, as such actions often lead to chaos, state collapse, or even civil war. Thus, it will be interesting to watch further developments in Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran.

A second lesson from empirical studies of regime change is that democratization is more likely to succeed if democratic experience already existed in the country. However, this is often not the case.

Finally, if the real goal is democratization (and not just to secure spheres of influence or oil supplies etc.), it is far more promising not only to hold elections (as in Afghanistan, for example), but to renounce violence and initiate a long-term program with development aid and support for civil society.

Whether the US government will be impressed by these findings, or even acknowledge them, is doubtful. Currently, the American president is euphoric, despite the strong reaction from the Iranian government which he, surprisingly, did not expect. His promises to end the senseless wars and not start any new ones, however, seem to have been forgotten.

Related articles:
The US: Good at Starting but Bad at Ending Wars
Failure of US–Iran Talks Was All Too Predictable — But Turning to Military Strikes Creates Dangerous Unknowns
The ‘Donroe Doctrine’
The Return of the Ugly American

Herbert Wulf is a Professor of International Relations and former Director of the Bonn International Center for Conflict Studies (BICC). He is presently a Senior Fellow at BICC, an Adjunct Senior Researcher at the Institute for Development and Peace, University of Duisburg/Essen, Germany, and a Research Affiliate at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Otago, New Zealand. He serves on the Scientific Council of SIPRI.

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

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While media coverage of Iran’s restrictions on passage through the Hormuz Straits focuses on fuel prices, partial closure is also disrupting crucial fertiliser and other supplies, risking catastrophe for billions worldwide.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Hormuz is not just a chokepoint on a shipping lane for oil and gas; it has strategic implications for fertiliser, helium, and other energy-intensive exports as well as for food and other imports to the region.

Higher energy costs affect most transportation and farming requirements, such as tilling and harvesting, as well as fertiliser supplies.

Wars, especially protracted ones, have lasting effects, including for agrifood systems. Without earlier investments, output elsewhere cannot be easily increased.

Alternative fertiliser supply sources are not readily available, especially as agro-ecological options have rarely been seriously pursued despite their proven viability.

As with renewable energy generation to reduce the need for petroleum imports, it is unclear whether the looming food crisis will accelerate the needed and feasible agro-ecological transition for enhanced food security.

Disrupted food supplies
Shipping delays and port congestion disrupt food supplies, trade and availability.

K Kuhaneetha Bai

Many states have recently tried to improve their food security, expanding strategic reserves, investing in food agriculture and alternative supply routes.

Such measures have improved resilience but cannot address a prolonged blockade of the Persian Gulf. About 70% of the food for Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Gulf emirates passes through Hormuz.

Replacing disrupted food imports for about 100 million people would require moving almost 100 million kilograms (kg) of food into the region daily by other means.

Supplying food to the Gulf region under blockade would require an unprecedented operation, possibly through contested airspace.

In 2024, the UN World Food Programme delivered about 7 million kg of food daily to 81 million people in 71 countries.

Weather-driven food shortages and price spikes triggered political instability in 2008 and 2010-11. With food systems worldwide increasingly vulnerable to climate shocks, food insecurity threatens regimes everywhere.

Fertilisers
Farmers worldwide need stable supplies of fertilisers and fuel.

The Iran war threatens to disrupt these supplies, so crucial to agricultural production. Staple crops like wheat, rice and maize rely heavily on fertilisers.

Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Bahrain all ship petroleum products through Hormuz, including a fifth of the world’s liquefied natural gas (LNG).

As LNG is key to producing many fertilisers, Gulf exports have become more significant, especially after the war cut Ukraine’s exports, and China and Russia reduced theirs as well.

In 2024, the Middle East accounted for almost 30% of major fertiliser exports, including nitrogen, phosphate and potash.

The Gulf alone exported 23% of the world’s ammonia and 34% of its urea, while 30-40% of the world’s nitrogen fertiliser exports pass through Hormuz!

In mid-2025, Kpler estimated that a Hormuz closure could reduce fertiliser supplies by 33%, with sulphur-based ones falling by 44% and urea by 30%.

Reduced nitrogen-based fertiliser exports would hurt major food exporters such as Brazil, the US, Thailand, and India, all heavily reliant on fertiliser imports. However, the impact of shortages may be delayed until imported stocks run out.

As the war drags on, farmers may cut fertiliser use by planting less or switching to crops requiring less. Poorer harvests would, in turn, adversely affect later investment, planting and fertiliser use.

Who suffers most?
The economic consequences of the unprovoked US-Israeli assault on Iran and Tehran’s responses are spreading fast and catastrophically, especially for the most vulnerable.

Iran’s new leadership mistrusts Washington and will keep Hormuz closed – choking fuel, food, and fertiliser flows through it – to secure the guarantees it needs to reduce its vulnerability.

As attacks on Iran continued, Tehran stepped up targeted attacks on infrastructure in the Gulf kingdoms hosting US military facilities. US-led efforts have provided little relief to its allies.

The worldwide impact is uneven, with the poorest taking the brunt. Asia and Africa have been hard hit by heavy reliance on oil, gas, and fertiliser imports.

Rich nations’ aid cuts to increase military spending have worsened poverty and hunger for millions, many of whom are also victims of war and aggression.

Unlike the rich, many migrant workers in the Gulf who cannot leave will struggle to make ends meet and send money home to their families.

And as the world’s attention has turned to the Gulf, Israel has worsened conditions in Gaza while taking over southern Lebanon and increasing Yemen’s pain.

Concerned about retribution in November’s mid-term elections, the White House is keen on a ceasefire.

But it has not offered terms acceptable to Iran, which remains suspicious of the US commitment to its own promises, let alone the rule of law.

Hence, the Iranian leadership is unlikely to agree to a ceasefire without credible guarantees for its future security from renewed Israeli and US aggression.

The Iran war has highlighted, yet again, the collateral damage of war and the food system’s vulnerability. Meanwhile, the suffering of the more vulnerable is ignored by the greater powers, who pay little heed to their plight.

IPS UN Bureau

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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.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Who benefits from a war of choice against Iran?

The immediate political winners may include President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But if the war continues for a longer period, the political consequences for both Trump and Netanyahu could be uncertain. However, the most consistent beneficiaries are defense contractors, defense manufacturers and military lobbyists, who profit regardless of the outcome.

A. K. Abdul Momen

Despite vast reserves of oil and gas, the very engines of global prosperity—many nations across the region continue to face instability, poverty, and insecurity. From Palestine to Yemen, and from Iraq to Afghanistan, millions lack basic necessities, including food, safety, and economic opportunity.

In fact, millions of people in Muslims countries like Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Oman, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Algeria, Tunisia, Nigeria, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, etc have been suffering from war and terror, from food deficiency and safety and security of life and liberty.

No wonder, their wealth often flows outward, with elites investing in more stable, non-Muslim countries rather than building productive industries, infrastructure, or research capacity at home. Their investment, if any, in their home countries or Muslim communities are mostly concentrated in building a mosque, a prayer house or a madrassa for poor students.

They are reluctant to build a hospital, a road, a manufacturing or industrial plant, a bridge, a technical school or a research center. This imbalance contributes to long-term structural weakness.

A critical question emerges: what ensures national security?

Increasingly, it appears that states possessing nuclear weapons and long-range missile capabilities enjoy greater deterrence and stability. The case of North Korea illustrates this paradox.

Despite isolation and adversaries, it maintains regime security through nuclear capability. This raises a troubling implication: does survival in today’s world require nuclear armament? Should their leadership acquire nuclear capability to safeguard their national security and stability?

The consequences of a U.S.-Israel conflict with Iran would extend far beyond the battlefield. Even after hostilities end, the region would likely face prolonged economic damage, weakened infrastructure, and fractured political trust.

Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, Oman, Lebanon and Iran could suffer severe economic disruption and internal instability.

Moreover, the strategic dynamics of such a conflict risk deepening divisions within the Muslim world itself. Military actions and retaliations particularly involving foreign bases in regional states could lead to intra-regional damage, further destabilizing already fragile alliances.

Another question, should leadership allow foreign bases in its home turf to guarantee national security? Or will it welcome more insecurity and conflict? Should leadership deny foreign bases in its own territory? Can they avoid such bases?

In case of Bangladesh, the ousted popular Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina refused her territory to be used as a military base for a foreign government and it cost her job, her government was overthrown. Can they afford to deny a powerful foreign government?

From a geopolitical perspective, wars of this nature often reshape control over resources and influence. Economic motivations particularly access to energy and mineral resources cannot be overlooked in understanding strategic decision-making.

This leads to a deeper ethical question: do power and victory ultimately outweigh principles such as justice, human rights, and moral leadership? Ethics, human rights, fairness and morality are these the sermons of the weak and priests only? Does Machiavelli sounds right— survival of the fittest?

In fact, the logic often resembles the political realism associated with Niccolò Machiavelli—where success is measured by survival and dominance rather than ethical conduct. Machiavelli describes a sneaky, cunning, and manipulative personality that uses deceit, duplicity, and unethical methods to achieve goals often in politics and business as a success story.

And history tends to remember the victors only. Yet the long-term cost—human suffering, instability, and moral compromise—raises the question of whether victory alone defines true leadership.

Professor Dr. A. K. Abdul Momen is Former Foreign Minister of Bangladesh

IPS UN Bureau

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In mid-1971, US President Nixon ended the dollar’s gold peg at $35 per ounce, triggering de-dollarisation. The 2025 gold and silver rush followed private speculators trying to profit from central banks hedging against perceived new risks.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Many believe OPEC was allowed to raise oil prices from 1972, on condition petroleum purchases would be settled in dollars. ‘Petrodollars’ were thus believed to be the ‘black gold’ underlying the dollar system’s survival after 1971.

Although still the dominant world reserve currency, the dollar’s role has gradually declined over the decades. Trump 2.0’s rhetoric and actions appear to have accelerated de-dollarisation.

Trump’s 2 April 2025 ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs announcement triggered even greater uncertainty and volatility in foreign exchange and other markets worldwide.

Greater policy unpredictability has caused governments and investors to explore new options. Authorities worldwide are considering and developing alternatives to the dollar system.

Besides higher inflation, Trump’s threats and actions, particularly his tariffs, sanctions and wars, have pushed investors to sell dollar assets and seek alternatives.

Various factors have significantly accelerated de-dollarisation. In the first half of 2025, the dollar fell by over 10%, its sharpest fall since the 1973 oil crisis.

K Kuhaneetha Bai

Geopolitical economy commentator Ben Norton highlighted an April 2025 note by the Deutsche Bank foreign exchange research head, noting:

“We are witnessing a simultaneous collapse in the price of all US assets [including stocks, foreign exchange, and bonds] … we are entering uncharted territory in the global financial system…

“The market is rapidly de-dollarising. In a typical crisis environment, the market would be hoarding dollar liquidity…The market has lost faith in US assets. They are actively selling down their US assets.

“US administration policy is encouraging a trend toward de-dollarisation to safeguard international investors from a weaponisation of dollar liquidity.”

Western confiscations
The weaponisation of central banks by the US, Europe, and their allies has caused other central banks to seek ‘safety’ by switching from dollar assets to gold.

Increased weaponisation of the dollar and Western confiscation of others’ assets under various pretexts have accelerated this trend.

Billions of dollars’ worth of Venezuelan central bank gold, held at the Bank of England, was confiscated by the UK government during the 2019 Washington-instigated Caracas coup attempt.

After the coup failed, the Bank of England refused to return the gold to Venezuela. Trust in Western governments and central banks thus continued to erode.

Similarly, the US Fed and European Central Bank confiscated over $300 billion worth of Russian dollar-, euro- and sterling-denominated assets after it invaded Ukraine.

European authorities have since pledged to transfer these Russian assets to Ukraine rather than return them to their owners.

Western confiscations of the central bank reserves of Iran, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Russia and others have alarmed authorities and publics worldwide.

Central banks’ reserve managers have increasingly viewed gold as safe despite greater volatility. Besides serving as a hedge, the precious metal also offered lucrative speculative gains.

Mitigating risk
Many monetary authorities have reversed their earlier accumulation of dollar-denominated US Treasury bills and bonds in their official reserves.

While US government debt has continued growing, inflationary pressures have mounted, albeit episodically. Gold and silver holdings are believed to help hedge against inflation and fiat currency debasement.

Gold holdings in central bank reserves increased significantly after the 2008-09 global, actually Western, financial crisis, followed by the Western turn to ‘quantitative easing’.

For the first time in three decades, central banks’ total gold holdings in their international reserves exceeded their US Treasury bond holdings in 2025.

About 36,200 tons, or a fifth of all gold holdings, is now held by central banks, rising rapidly over two years from 15% at the end of 2023!

Meanwhile, rising gold prices drew more speculative investments for profit. But such price spikes are not sustainable indefinitely.

Once gold was seen as overpriced, investors turned to other precious metals, notably silver, and other financial assets.

BRICS’ golden hedge?
After Lord Jim O’Neill identified Brazil, Russia, India and China as significant new financial powers outside the Western sphere of influence, BRICS was formed in 2009 by adding South Africa.

BRICS now has ten members and ten partners. Together, they account for 44% of world income, measured by purchasing power parity, and 56% of its people.

Russia, China, and India have been among the largest recent buyers of gold. Other major purchasers include Uzbekistan and Thailand, both BRICS partners.

Trump 2.0 has generated significant apprehension internationally. Without BRICS’ help, his weaponisation of economic policies and agreements has accelerated de-dollarisation.

Although Trump accuses the BRICS of conspiring to accelerate de-dollarisation, their precious metal purchases make sense as a hedge for their reserves.

IPS UN Bureau

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Credit: Marcelo Del Pozo/Reuters via Gallo Images

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Mar 16 2026 (IPS)

Once again, global oil prices are spiking, driven by the Israeli-US war against Iran. With Iran retaliating by attacking infrastructure and transport hubs and blocking the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil passes, oil supplies from the region are being choked, pushing up prices. The cost of a barrel of Brent crude – the international benchmark for oil prices – stood at US$73 before the conflict but has surged beyond US$100 since. It could go higher still as war continues.

The impacts are already being felt when drivers fill up their petrol- and diesel-powered vehicles. But they go much wider. Bigger household energy bills will likely result, while businesses will pass on their increased costs in the form of higher prices. Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine sent oil prices soaring and sparked a global cost-of-living crisis, and now, as many economies seemed to be recovering, the war in the Gulf has brought another shock. Impacts could be political as well as financial: in numerous countries, the cost-of-living crisis helped drive voters towards right-wing populist and nationalist politicians. Recent years have seen Gen Z-led protests erupt in countries around the world, fuelled in part by young people’s anger at failing economies.

In a world increasingly characterised by conflict and with powerful states tearing up the international rulebook in pursuit of material interests, more oil shocks and big economic and political impacts seem inevitable. Governments typically react with economic policies that fail to protect those with the least, and by meeting political unrest with repression. They should consider another way.

The world will remain vulnerable to oil price shocks only for as long as it stays dependent on oil. The climate crisis compels a rapid move away from fossil fuel dependency to abate the worst impacts of global heating. Increasingly, this should also be seen as a matter of economic and political security.

Some steps have been taken in the right direction. Renewables now provide over 30 per cent of global electricity. Investments in renewables more than double those in fossil fuels. But fossil fuel companies have immense power and are determined not to give it up. That was reflected in the fact that 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists attended the latest global climate summit, COP30 in Brazil, and succeeded in preventing any new commitment to end fossil fuel extraction. Their power is shown in the lawsuit an oil company brought against Greenpeace, leading to a widely criticised trial in North Dakota, USA, with the campaigning organisation facing a punitive US$345 million damages bill. Their influence was reaffirmed by Donald Trump’s election win, after a campaign in which fossil fuel companies gave US$450 million in donations to Trump and his allies – and they were rewarded by US intervention in Venezuela.

Fossil fuel companies are determined to hold back the tide of renewables for as long as possible, because every day of delay is another day of profit, even though every fraction of a degree of temperature rise means avoidable suffering for millions of people. Delay is the new climate denial.

As the latest State of Civil Society Report points out, civil society’s working to make the difference, urging governments to hasten the transition and calling on global north states to make funding available for global south states to decarbonise and adapt to climate impacts. Civil society is exposing the environmental devastation caused by extraction and the complicity of fossil fuel companies in human rights abuses. Its strategies include advocacy, public campaigning, protests, direct action and, increasingly, litigation.

In 2025, climate litigation scored some big successes. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an unprecedented advisory opinion, ruling that states have a legal duty to prevent environmental harm, which requires them to mitigate emissions and adapt to climate change. This victory originated in civil society: in 2019, student groups from eight countries formed the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change network to persuade their governments to seek an ICJ ruling.

Following extensive civil society engagement, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued a similar ruling. The African Court for Human and Peoples’ Rights is set to issue its advisory opinion following a petition brought by the African Climate Platform, a civil society coalition.

These rulings can seem symbolic, but they strengthen national-level efforts to hold states and corporations accountable. These have paid off recently too. In 2025, two South African groups stopped an offshore oil project after a court found its environmental assessments were deeply flawed. More litigation is coming, including in New Zealand, where civil society has filed a lawsuit after the government weakened its emissions reduction plan.

But civil society faces a backlash. Around the world, climate and environmental activists and their allies, Indigenous and land rights defenders, experience severe state and corporate repression.

Last year in Uganda, authorities arrested 11 activists for protesting against the construction of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline. In Peru, police used teargas and non-lethal weapons against people blocking a road to protest against a mine. In Cambodia, five young activists from the Mother Nature environmental group have been in jail since July 2024.

The French government has repeatedly vilified environmental campaigners and deployed police violence against protests, while last year the German government launched an inquiry into public funding of environmental groups and the Dutch parliament adopted a motion condemning Extinction Rebellion and urging the removal of its tax-exempt status.

As the latest oil price shocks reverberate around the global economy, governments should learn the lessons. As economies deteriorate, the temptation will be to say that transition is a luxury, something that can be put off even further. This is the wrong lesson: recent research in the UK suggests that the cost of achieving net zero will be about the same as the cost of another oil price crisis. Economic and political security lies in ending fossil fuel dependency as quickly as possible. To learn the right lessons, governments should stop repressing climate activism and instead listen to and work with civil society.

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

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

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The dead Ali Khamenei hands over the Iranian flag to a mirror image of his son, Mojtaba Khamenei. From the web site https://english.khamenei.ir/

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Mar 12 2026 (IPS)

The US/Israeli war on Iran might be like messing with a hornets’ nest, spreading fear and chaos all around. The Israeli government claimed that the war was a “preventive” measure to address an immediate threat of Iran constructing a nuclear bomb. However, this war has obviously been meticulously planned over a long period of time and it now seemed to be the right time to put this plan into action. The Iranian air defences had been weakened through earlier attacks, while recent Israeli strikes decapitated Hezbollah’s Lebanese leadership, Iran’s allies north of Israel. With Gaza destroyed and Syria’s unreliable Assad gone, Netanyahu had succeeded in securing his party’s coalition with the far-right and could continue to count upon the support of the Trump Administration, providing Israel with a free hand vis-à-vis the Palestinians and turning a blind eye to the massacre of civilians. The U.S. is continuously supporting Isreal with missile-defence systems, coordination, cooperation, and intelligence sharing.

It appears as if the U.S./Israeli forces now intend to bomb everything in Iran – from its highest leaders, down to police stations and thus hope that Iran will exhaust its defence capacities. The aggressors furthermore claim they intend to achieve an Iranian regime change. However, even if Iran’s ninety-two million people now are trapped between a bloody war and a repressive regime it is highly unlikely that a tolerant government will emerge from a battered rump version of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It is more probable that such a state will be governed by leaders even more determined to cling to their power after gaining more confidence after overcoming a terrible crisis. U.S. actions seem to be more improvised than Israel’s and it seems that they have not learned from the Afghanistan failure, i.e. the difficulties in achieving and maintaining a regime change through military means.

The U.S. government rejoiced from the killing of Ali Khamenei – a mid-ranking cleric who did not meet the constitutional requirements of being a marja, i.e. a cleric enabled to make legal decisions for followers and clerics below him in rank. Instead, Khamenei was during his 36 years and six months in power forced to rely on his close ties with the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Now, in spite of the fact that the Iranian revolution’s father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, had declared that “hereditary succession is sinister, evil, and invalid,” Khamenei’s son has been elected as Supreme Leader. So far Mojtaba Khamenei has acted in the shadow of his father and few Iranians have heard him speak. He has not made any public appearances, never given a sermon, or made any declarations; just working in close relation with the leaders of IRGC.

Whereas the Iranian Army acts as protector of the nation’s sovereignty, the IRGC “safeguards” the Islamic Republic. With more than 125,000 members it serves as Iran’s coast guard, operates a media outlet called Sepah News, and controls the nuclear program. From its origins as an ideological militia, the IRGC now controls nearly every aspect of Iranian politics, economy (including energy and food industries), as well as the nation’s social life. It counts upon a paramilitary volunteer militia with 90,000 active personnel. One of IRGC’s branches is the Qods Force, which specialises in unconventional warfare and military intelligence operations.

The presence, terror and fear created by IRGC have made it difficult for any internal opposition to get organised. In Iran there is nothing akin to the African National Congress with leaders like Nelson Mandela. If a leader would arise from the mess created by the U.S. and Israel it would more likely be a man like Alia Ardashir Larijani, a former commander of the IRGC who holds a B.Sc. in computer science and mathematics, as well as a PhD in Western philosophy.

Larijani has served as deputy minister in various cabinets, been head of the Republic’s broadcasting service, and Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council. Larijani also served as Iran’s top nuclear envoy. However, in late March 2025 he stated that if Iran would be attacked by the United States and Israel, the nation would have no other choice than to develop nuclear weapons. Larijani is accused of having played a key role in the deadly crackdown against opposition protests that gripped the country in January this year. Since the end of December 2025, he is regarded to be the de facto leader of Iran and after originally opposing the election of Mojtaba Khamenei, Larijani has now rallied his supporters behind the newly elected Supreme Leader.

Apart from the fear of an internal collapse of the Islamic Republic of Iran, there are concerns about the economic effects of the current war. Beyond the physical damage, Epic Fury has been quite costly for the Trump Administration that so far has deployed nearly half of the United States’ air power and roughly a third of its naval assets. So far, the Pentagon has not released an official estimate of the cost of the war, but it is currently believed to be USD 2 billion per day. Meanwhile, stocks have plunged all over the world and the price of crude oil spiked from USD 65 per barrel to USD 120 after the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquified gas passes, had been effectively closed.

89 percent of Saudi Arabia’s oil shipments used to pass through the Strait, while Kuwait and Qatar shipped 100 percent, Iraq 97 percent and the United Arab Emirates 66 percent. Qatar has so far been worst hit, particularly since it took the place of Russia for liquified gas exports to Europe. Kuwait has now been forced to suspended its production and export of crude oil and liquefied natural gas (of which it is second to the U.S. as the world’s largest provider).

Winners of this situation are large net energy exporters outside the Gulf whose ability to sell abroad remains unaffected, such as Norway, Russia and Canada, and to a lesser degree Nigeria and Angola. Not the least the U.S. is a winner thanks to its expanding fracking industry. At the other end of the spectrum sit economies where energy imports account for a large share of their GDP. This group includes countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, India and China, as well as most European economies including France, Germany and the UK.

It has even been speculated that the war on Iran is a means of USA to hurt China’s economy. In 2025, China bought more than 80 percent of Iran’s shipped oil, around 12 percent of China’s crude oil imports, while approximately 3 percent came from Venezuela (now subjugated by the U.S.).

In 2021, China and Iran signed a 25-year strategic partnership, meaning that China promised to invest USD 400 billion in exchange for keeping Iranian oil flowing. China does not view its “alliances” in the same way the West does, meaning that its government does not sign mutual defence treaties and will not come rushing to its allies’ aid. However, an unpredictable and dysfunctional actor as the U.S. has become under the Trump administration is a great source of unease for Beijing. Worries worsened by the fact that China’s annual economic growth target has reached its lowest level since 1991. Even as Beijing continues its rapid development of high-tech and renewables industries the country is currently battling with low consumption levels, a prolonged property crisis, and a huge local debt.

A big economy like China’s, as well as other wealthy nations, might find means to mitigate rising oil prices, but it’s much worse for smaller, poorer nations. Disruptions to energy supply as a result of a prolonged conflict will have far greater ramifications economically in the Global South than in the West. As an example, a country like Bangladesh, which is particularly dependent on Middle Eastern oil, not least for its garment industry, has already imposed daily limits on fuel sales after panic buying and stockpiling raised concerns about supply. Furthermore, approximately 13 million Bangladeshi expatriates are currently supporting the country’s economic stability through their remittances, of them 8 million live and work within the Middle East.

The same is true of Pakistan, with over 11 million Pakistanis living and working abroad, mainly in the Gulf states. In January 2025 alone, the country received USD 3 billion in remittances, reflecting a 25 percent year-on-year surge. Furthermore, Pakistan shares a 900-kilometre border with Iran and a collapse of Iran into civil war is a constant worry for Pakistan, which also maintains a military relationship with Saudi Arabia with an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 Pakistani troops stationed in the kingdom. If the situation worsens, as Saudi infrastructure is hit any further, it is only a matter of time that Saudi Arabia will ask Pakistan to contribute towards its defence. Pakistan’s border areas with Iran and its huge Shia population (generally well-disposed towards their fellow believers on the other side of the frontier) are already highly volatile and if internal strife within Iran spills over the border, the fallout for Pakistan would be severe. Pakistan is furthermore recently engaged in a war with Afghanistan. On 6 March, Pakistan carried out air strikes in more than twenty locations across Afghanistan, while the Taliban targeted dozens of Pakistani border posts.

Other neighbouring nations to Iran are equally nervous. In Turkmenistan prices have almost doubled compared with pre-war levels. With an average salary of around USD 714 a large portion of the population is hard hit, since Turkmenistan is importing a considerable amount of industrial goods from Iran – like steel, construction materials, and petrochemicals, as well as food and household items that constitute a critical lifeline for many of its residents.

Turkey is also alarmed by the present situation and worries what will happen if Iran collapses into warring factions. If the U.S./Israel confrontation with Iran deepens, particularly in ways that involve regime change with a spillover effect on Turkey, or security implications as a result of expanded U.S./Israeli cooperation with hostile Kurdish militants, this war could quickly evolve into another fault line in U.S.-Turkish relations.

To sum up – the U.S./Israel attack on Iran is very unlikely to result in a regime change, but might instead result in a chaotic and bloody collapse of the entire country. The war is a high-risk game that might have dangerous effects not only on Iran and its immediate neighbours, but the entire world as well.

IPS UN Bureau

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CIVICUS discusses the situation in Venezuela following US intervention and the ousting of President Nicolás Maduro with Verónica Zubillaga, a Venezuelan sociologist who specialises in urban violence, state repression and community responses to armed violence.

Verónica Zubillaga

Is the recently announced amnesty a real opening or a strategic manoeuvre?

We are at an unprecedented crossroads. Venezuela and its Chavista regime, under US tutelage and despite two decades of anti-imperialist rhetoric, are reconfiguring themselves in such a way that some opening could result. However, there is still a risk that an authoritarian model will be consolidated, with economic and humanitarian concessions, but without real democratisation.

The release of political prisoners — a constant demand in all negotiations with international support, and a low-cost form of early opening for the interim government that has taken over from Maduro — could function as a stepping stone towards democratisation. The restoration of civil, political and social rights will be a difficult and lengthy struggle in this context of such deprivation, in which our rights have been violated for so long.

In the first half of February, there were partial and gradual releases, but hundreds of people remained in detention. The enactment of the Amnesty Law on 19 February has accelerated the releases.

The announcement was presented as a political concession, not as a recognition of the extensive human rights violations committed by Maduro’s government. There has been no mention yet of initiating processes to seek the truth, hold those responsible accountable, provide reparations or dismantle the repressive apparatus, which are urgent.

We therefore need to react with caution. The release of people deprived of their liberty for political reasons is essential, but it cannot replace a broader agenda of justice, reparation and institutional transformation.

How has civil society worked to keep this issue at the centre of the debate?

The cause of political prisoners is cross-cutting. There are detained people of different ages, social classes and political backgrounds. In a society as polarised as ours, this is one of the few causes around which there is broad consensus.

After the results of the presidential election of 28 July 2024, which the opposition clearly won, were disregarded, it was mainly people from the working classes who took to the streets to protest. Many young people, including teenagers, were arrested and imprisoned. This situation significantly deepened the social dimension of the problem, highlighted the break between the ruling party and its traditional base and consolidated the brutally authoritarian nature and illegitimacy of Maduro’s government.

There is also an important gender dimension. While many young men are in prison, it is women – mothers, sisters and other relatives – who have organised committees, vigils and public actions demanding their release. Symbolically, the figure of the grieving mother demanding the release of her children is particularly powerful. It is a symbol that appeals to the Latin American imagination about women and their cries for democratisation, justice and reparation in the context of crumbling authoritarian regimes.

Recently, the demand for the release of political prisoners has also been raised by the student movement in its call for a rally at the Central University of Venezuela. After a year and a half of brutal repression following the 2024 election, which emptied the streets and created a climate of widespread fear, any public demonstration is a significant sign that could trigger a chain of progressive demands and the vindication of civil, political and social rights.

What has been the impact of the USA’s renewed interest in Venezuelan oil?

It is clear that the Trump administration is fixated on oil and investment opportunities and completely disregards democracy and human rights. The part of the opposition represented by María Corina Machado has been stunned by its exclusion from key decision-making despite its efforts to gain Donald Trump’s attention. This exclusion has altered the internal political balance.

Historically, there has been tension within the Venezuelan opposition between those who favour resorting to external pressure and those who prioritise internal negotiation strategies. Since 2014, two main strategies have coexisted: one that is more confrontational, demanding the immediate end of the government, and another favouring negotiation or elections. Civil society mirrors these same divisions. One of the difficulties of the Venezuelan process is this constant fragmentation and internal disagreements within the opposition. As the government has become more authoritarian, these divisions have prevented more powerful coordinated political action. It is important for the opposition to coordinate strategies and, instead of wearing itself down in these disagreements, coordinate efforts to move strategically between confrontation and negotiation.

Whenever the opposition has managed to coordinate, as in the 2015 legislative and 2024 presidential elections, it made significant gains. During the 2024 campaign led by Machado, the opposition achieved an unprecedented level of coordination, generating enormous collective hope, particularly with regard to the prospect of family reunification in a country with over eight million migrants. This situation affects people of all social classes and political ideologies. But in response, the government redoubled its repression and consolidated the dictatorship. This led to frustration, demobilisation and further fragmentation. The opposition lacked a long-term strategy to sustain its gains and withstand setbacks. This is still one of the biggest challenges today.

What should the international community do to contribute to real democratisation?

The international community, and Latin American states in particular, could have taken a firmer stance after the 2024 electoral fraud. Silence and a lukewarm approach weakened the defence of democracy. Now it should not repeat that mistake. Beyond Maduro’s profound delegitimisation, the US military operation in Venezuela is a sign of what could happen to any Latin American country under the US government’s new national security strategy.

With the USA as an imperial power primarily concerned with its geostrategic interests and oil resources, demands for democratisation may take a back seat. An authoritarian model that is economically stable but without real democratisation could become entrenched.

In this context, the USA’s prioritisation of energy interests is worrying. It is an unprecedented scenario in which external intervention and the permanence of the ruling party in power coexist. The situation is highly volatile, and this has only just begun. A period of instability and political violence could follow if the civil-military coalition in power breaks down, which may happen given the tradition of anti-imperialist discourse rooted in the armed forces during the two and a half decades of Chavista rule.

Ironically, the USA’s focus on energy interests could result in the defence of sovereignty becoming a new unifying cause for the Venezuelan opposition, potentially leading to basic agreements between the ruling party post-Maduro and the opposition to defend Venezuelan oil interests. What’s at stake is recovering politics as an exercise involving conflict and struggle, as well as recognition and exchange for democratic coexistence — something we have lost, particularly over the past decade.

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

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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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Bula Central School in Bula, Camarines Sur, Philippines, remain flooded a week after Tropical Storm Trami brought heavy rains and strong winds to much of the country in 2024. Extreme weather patterns such as this illustrate the type of intensified climate risks associated with warming oceans and shifting climate patterns. Credit: UNICEF/Martin San Diego.

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

Earlier this week World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced that the weakening conditions of La Niña conditions are beginning to fade, with climate conditions transitioning toward ENSO-neutral —a phase in which neither El Niño nor La Niña is present and oceanic and atmospheric conditions in the tropical Pacific remain near average. The agency noted that this shift could lead to the development of El Niño later in the year, a pattern typically associated with rising global temperatures and an increased risk of extreme weather events worldwide.

Although these forecasts carry a degree of uncertainty— particularly during the boreal spring, when the well-known “spring predictability barrier” temporarily reduces the accuracy of ENSO predictions — they remain crucial for global climate preparedness measures. Early warnings of shifts between El Niño, La Niña, and neutral conditions give governments, industries, and humanitarian organizations essential time to prepare for disasters.

By informing disaster planning, protecting critical infrastructure, and guiding responses for climate-sensitive communities, these forecasts can help reduce damage, strengthen resilience, and potentially save millions of dollars in economic losses from extreme weather patterns.

“The WMO community will be carefully monitoring conditions in the coming months to inform decision-making,” said WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo, noting that the most recent El Niño event in 2023-2024 was one of the five strongest on record, contributing to the record-breaking global temperatures observed in 2024.

“Seasonal forecasts for El Niño and La Niña help us avert millions of dollars in economic losses and are essential planning tools for climate-sensitive sectors like agriculture, health, energy, and water management,” Saulo added. “They are also a key part of the climate intelligence provided by WMO to support humanitarian operations and disaster risk management, and thus save lives.”

According to forecasts from the WMO Global Producing Centres, there is a 60 percent chance that ENSO-neutral conditions will persist from March through May. From April to June, the likelihood of El Niño developing increases to approximately 70 percent. By May through July, the likelihood of ENSO-neutral conditions drops to around 60 percent, while the chance of El Niño rises to roughly 40 percent.

These projections suggest that global ocean temperatures will likely continue to rise as the year progresses, signaling a need for resilient climate-monitoring and preparatory efforts, particularly for the highly vulnerable populations in coastal regions in the Asia-Pacific.

“When El Niño develops, we’re likely to set a new global temperature record,” said climate scientist Jennifer Francis of the Woodwell Climate Research Center. “‘Normal” was left in the dust decades ago. And with this much heat in the system, everyone should buckle up for the extreme weather it will fuel.”

El Niño and La Niña are primarily driven by fluctuations in ocean and surrounding atmospheric conditions in the tropical Pacific region, with their impacts being exacerbated by human-induced climate change. Rising global temperatures have been found to amplify the frequency and severity of extreme weather events associated with these oscillations, including extensive droughts, prolonged monsoons, devastating floods, stronger tropical cyclones, heatwaves, and wildfires.

These shifts disrupt seasonal rainfall and temperature patterns, leading to biodiversity loss and widespread ecosystem degradation. Immediate consequences include growing food insecurity driven by declining crop yields and collapsing fisheries, along with heightened risks to human health, livelihoods, water security, and broader economic stability.

“El Niño is typically associated with increased rainfall triggering flooding in the Horn of Africa and the southern United States of America, and unusually dry and warm conditions in South East Asia, Australia and southern Africa,” explained José Álvaro Silva, a climate expert for WMO.

“In the past, it has exacerbated drought in northern South America and has also contributed to drier and warmer conditions in parts of southern Africa. Each El Niño event is unique in terms of magnitude, spatial pattern, temporal evolution and impacts,” Silvo told an IPS correspondent. “The impacts of the 2023-2024 El Nino combined with human-induced climate change, have largely contributed to the extreme heat across the planet…Sea surface temperatures and ocean heat were at record levels – even in areas not typically affected by El Niño. There were widespread marine heatwaves and coral bleaching.”

A joint study led by Professor Benjamin Horton, Dean of the School of Energy and Environment at City University of Hong Kong, in collaboration with researchers from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, published in January, examined the long-term impacts of El Niño on human health. Titled Enduring Impacts of El Niño on Life Expectancy in Past and Future Climates, the study drew upon roughly six decades of findings from ten Pacific Rim countries, including the United States, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia.

The study found that intensifying El Niño periods are having increasingly detrimental effects on human mortality rates and life expectancy, having notably increased over the past several years. Researchers found a strong correlation between gradually hotter El Niño events and infectious diseases, cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses, with children and the elderly facing heightened risks. The study also found a direct correlation between hotter El Niño periods and disruptions to healthcare systems as a result of infrastructure damage, which greatly compounds public health challenges.

Historically, the two strongest El Niño events on record — 1982-1983 and 1997-1998 — were linked with lowered life expectancy of approximately a year and one-third of a year, respectively, equivalent to economic losses of roughly USD 2.6 trillion and USD 4.7 trillion. In Hong Kong alone, the 1982-83 event resulted in an estimated 0.6 year decline in life expectancy and economic losses of nearly USD 15 billion, while the 1997-98 event resulted in a 0.4 year reduction and losses exceeding USD 5.8 billion.

Horton warned that intensifying El Niño events could reduce life expectancy across these regions by up to 2.8 years and generate cumulative losses of approximately $35 trillion by 2100. While the study does not provide region-level projections, current trends suggest that Hong Kong alone could face economic losses between USD 250 billion and USD 300 billion over the course of the century.

“El Niño is predictable,” Professor Horton said. “So, with the right planning, we can reduce its impacts. To mitigate El Niño events, countries and regions need strong early-warning systems, heat-health action plans, better water management, and protection for workers exposed to extreme heat. They also need resilient infrastructure, smarter agriculture that can cope with heatwaves, droughts, and heavy rainfall, and public health systems that are prepared for spikes in disease and pollution.”

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CIVICUS discusses the situation following the US intervention in Venezuela with Guillermo Miguelena Palacios, director of the Venezuelan Progressive Institute, a think tank that promotes spaces for dialogue and democratic leadership.

Guillermo Miguelena Palacios

What led Donald Trump to intervene militarily in Venezuela?

The US intervention responds to a mix of economic pragmatism and the reaffirmation of a vision of absolute supremacy in the hemisphere.

First, it seeks to secure nearby stable energy sources in a context of global instability. In his statements, Trump mentioned oil and rare earth metals dozens of times. For him, Venezuela isn’t a human rights issue but a strategic asset that was under the influence of China, Iran and Russia, something unacceptable for US national security.

Second, it represents the financial elite’s interest in recovering investments lost due to expropriations carried out by the government of former president Hugo Chávez. Trump has been explicit: the USA believes Venezuela’s subsoil owes them compensation. By intervening and overseeing the transition, he’s ensuring the new administration signs agreements that give priority to US companies in the exploitation of oil fields. It’s an intervention designed to ‘bring order’ and turn Venezuela into a reliable energy partner, even if that means coexisting with a regime that has only changed its facade.

How much continuity and change is there following Maduro’s fall?

For most Venezuelans, the early hours of 3 January represented a symbolic break with historical impunity. The image of Maduro under arrest shattered the myth that the regime’s highest leaders would never pay for their actions. However, beyond the joy experienced in Venezuelan homes and in countries with a big Venezuelan diaspora, what happened was a manoeuvre to ensure the system’s survival

Chavismo is not a monolithic bloc, but a coalition of factions organised around economic interests and power networks. Broadly speaking, there are two main groups: a civilian faction and a military faction. Both manage and compete for strategic businesses, but the military is present, directly or indirectly, in most of them as coercive guarantors of the system.

The civilian faction controls areas linked to financial and political management, while the military faction secures and protects logistics chains, ports, routes and territories. Within this architecture there are various conglomerates of interests. There’s oil, an opaque business managed through parallel markets, irregular intermediation and non-transparent financial schemes. There’s drug trafficking, sustained by territorial control and institutional permissiveness. There’s the food system, which historically profited from exchange controls and the administration of hunger. And there’s illegal mining, where the military presence alongside Colombian guerrilla groups such as the National Liberation Army (ELN) is dominant and structural.

Maduro’s downfall appears to have been part of an agreement among these factions to preserve their respective businesses: they handed over the figure who could no longer guarantee them money laundering or social peace in order to regroup under a new technocratic facade that ensures they can enjoy their wealth without the pressure of international sanctions.

A revealing detail is that, while Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were captured, their children remain in Caracas with their businesses intact. Their son, Nicolás Maduro Guerra, continues to operate in the fishing sector and in the export of industrial waste such as aluminium and iron. This suggests the existence of a family protection pact.

We are seeing an economic transition, but by no means a democratic transition. Rodríguez has the reputation of being much more efficient and has had greater international exposure than the rest of Chavismo. She’s backed by a new business elite, young people under 45 who need to launder their capital and gain legitimacy in the global market. Their goal is to improve purchasing power and reduce hunger in order to confer respectability on the regime, while maintaining social control.

What caused the recent resurgence of the territorial conflict with Guyana?

The conflict over the territory of Essequibo is neither new nor improvised: it’s a historical dispute and Venezuela has legal and political arguments to support its claims over the territory. For decades, the two states agreed on a mechanism to contain the dispute, which involved a temporary cessation of active claims and a ban on exploiting the area’s natural resources while a negotiated solution was sought.

In this context, Chávez chose to de-escalate the conflict as part of his international strategy. To gain diplomatic support, particularly in the Caribbean, he reduced pressure on the Essequibo, and as a result several Caribbean Community countries supported Venezuela in multilateral forums such as the Organization of American States. Guyana interpreted this not as a tactical pause but as an abandonment of the claim, and decided to move forward unilaterally and grant concessions to ExxonMobil to conduct oil exploration. These operations revealed the existence of large reserves of high-quality crude oil.

The reactivation of the conflict is, therefore, a combination of legitimate historical claims and political expediency. This wasn’t simply Maduro’s nationalist outburst but an attempt to capture new revenue amid the collapse of Venezuela’s traditional oil industry.

Oil remains the linchpin of the regime’s geopolitics. Although Venezuela has the largest reserves in the world, most of it is extra-heavy crude, which is expensive to extract and process and profitable only when international prices are high. In contrast, the oil discovered off the Atlantic coast of the Essequibo is light, comparable to Saudi oil, and therefore much cheaper to produce and refine. This economic differential explains much of the regime’s renewed aggressiveness in a dispute that had been contained for years.

What’s the mining arc and what role does it play?

In addition to oil and gas, there’s another source of strategic wealth that sustains the regime. The Orinoco Mining Arc is a vast exploitation zone in southern Venezuela, rich in coltan, diamonds, gold and rare earths. The ELN operates there under the protection of the army. It’s a brutal extraction system that generates a flow of wealth in cash and precious metals that directly finances the high military hierarchy, maintaining its loyalty to the system regardless of what happens to oil revenues or the formal economy.

It is noteworthy that, despite the US intervention and the rhetoric about strategic resources, the mining arc has hardly been mentioned. We presume it was part of the negotiation so the military would not resist Maduro’s arrest. The USA appears to have chosen to secure oil in other areas of Venezuela and let the military maintain its mining revenues in the south, since intervening there would mean getting involved in guerrilla warfare in the jungle.

What’s your analysis of the announcement of the release of political prisoners?

The announcement was presented as a gesture of openness, but the so-called releases are actually simple discharges from prison. This means political prisoners are released and go home, but still have pending charges and are therefore banned from leaving Venezuela and must appear in court periodically, usually every few days. In addition, they are absolutely prohibited from speaking to the media and participating in political activities.

This reduces the political cost of keeping prisoners in cells, but maintains legal control over them. Released prisoners live under constant threat. The state reminds them and their families that their freedom is conditional and any gesture of dissent can return them to prison immediately. This is a mechanism of institutional whitewashing: it projects an image of clemency while maintaining repression through administrative means that are much more difficult to denounce before the international community.

What’s the state of social movements?

Social and trade union movements are in a state of exhaustion and deep demobilisation. After years of mass protests between 2014 and 2017 that resulted in fierce repression, people have lost faith in mobilisation as a tool for change. Increasingly, the priority has been daily survival, particularly food and security, with political struggles taking a back seat.

Authorities have been surgical in their repression of the trade union movement: they imprisoned key leaders to terrorise the rank and file and paralyse any attempt at strike action. While organisations like ours have continued to provide technical support and training in cybersecurity, activism is now a highly risky activity.

What are the prospects for a democratic transition?

I see no signs of a genuine democratic transition. The regime’s strategy seems to be to maintain for the next two years the fiction that Maduro has not definitively ceased to hold office and could return, in order to circumvent the constitutional obligation to call immediate elections, which the opposition would surely win. During those two years, which coincide with the final two years of Trump’s term, they will flood the market with imported goods and try to stabilise the currency to create some sense of wellbeing. They will surely use the Supreme Court to interpret some article of the constitution to justify that there’s no definitive presidential vacancy.

Halfway through the term, they would no longer need to call elections. Instead, they could declare Maduro’s ‘absolute vacancy’ so that Rodríguez could finish the 2025-2031 presidential term. Thus, they would try to reach the 2030 election with a renewed image and a recovered economy, on the calculation that a sense of economic wellbeing would prevail over the memory of decades of abuse. They could even enable opposition figures to simulate a fair contest, but would maintain total control of the electoral system and media.

We are concerned the international community will accept the idea of an ‘efficient authoritarianism’ that reduces hunger but maintains censorship and persecution of dissent.

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Venezuela struggles to hold on to hope CIVICUS Lens 15.Aug.2024

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Close-up-of-a-yellowfin-tuna-swimming-in-the-sea. Credit: Freepik---EyeEm

By James Alix Michel and Dona Bertarelli
VICTORIA, Seychelles, Feb 3 2026 (IPS)

The world is entering a decisive period for the future of the ocean. With the High Seas Treaty coming into force and meaningful progress being made on the World Trade Organization Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, global momentum for stronger marine governance is building. Yet, new pressures linked to the push for deep-sea mining — the extraction of minerals from seabed thousands of meters below the ocean surface — threaten to undermine these gains. To safeguard progress, global decision-making will have to keep pace with such emerging risks. In this context, Africa will host several global discussions in 2026, including those that will shape the ocean’s future, with a series of opportunities for leadership starting with the African Union Summit in February to the Our Ocean Conference in Mombasa, Kenya in June.

Dona-Bertarelli-and-James-Alix-Michel-meeting-at-Our-Ocean-Bali-in-2018. Credit: Dona-Bertarelli-Philanthropy

These concerns are particularly relevant to the Western Indian Ocean (WIO), one of the most biodiverse marine regions in the world, with endemism as high as 22 per cent yet at the convergence of multiple environmental stresses. Coral reefs and mangrove forests are deteriorating, while illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, and sand mining put additional pressure on already fragile ecosystems. The lasting impacts of the 2020 Wakashio oil spill in Mauritius show how quickly harm to the ocean can ripple across communities. In such a fragile setting, the introduction of a new extractive industry demands the highest level of scrutiny.

In the face of these emerging challenges, Seychelles has an important role to play. For decades, it has demonstrated leadership in championing the blue economy and protecting marine ecosystems. Early ratification of the BBNJ Treaty, along with advocacy for High Seas marine protected areas such as the Saya de Malha Bank, has positioned the country as a respected voice for responsible ocean governance. If deep-sea mining begins in the Pacific, the Indian Ocean is likely to follow, including on the mid-Indian Ridge east of Seychelles’ EEZ and within the Southern Indian Ocean Fisheries agreement region. Catalyzing a new wave of continental leadership on deep-sea protection would advance a vision of ocean stewardship grounded in equity and sustainability. A precautionary pause on deep-sea mining would give concrete expression to that vision.

Polymetallic nodules on the deep seabed. Credit: Deep-Rising

Scientific research continues to underline this need for caution. Deep-sea mining would have an irreversible impact on seabed ecosystems and species. And recent studies of the midwater zone, where waste plumes from deep-sea mining would spread, show that mining particles could reduce the nutritional quality of the natural food supply for zooplankton by up to ten times. This would decrease food quality and trigger effects that move through the food web, ultimately affecting larger species and the overall health of the ocean millions of people rely on. In an environment where more than 99.99 percent of the deep ocean floor has yet to be explored or directly observed, introducing large scale industrial activity could cause damage that cannot be undone.

The economic risks for the region are equally significant. The Western Indian Ocean’s natural assets have been conservatively valued at 333.8 billion dollars, making the ocean one of the region’s most important sources of long-term wealth. Within this, fisheries represent the single largest asset and a cornerstone of economic resilience. The region generates about 4.8 percent of the global fish catch, roughly 4.5 million tonnes each year, underscoring how many economies and communities depend on healthy stocks. In Seychelles and across the region, tuna fisheries in particular underpin national revenue, employment and food security. Undermining the sustainability of fisheries could therefore not only threaten livelihoods but also diminish long-term economic opportunity.

Deep-sea-creature. Credit: Schmidt-Ocean-Institute

The accelerating push for deep-sea mining activities also raises concerns about repeating historic patterns seen in other extractive sectors across Africa. The uneven distribution of benefits from land-based resource exploitation has shown how easily local communities can be left with environmental impacts while external actors capture most of the value. Without strong governance frameworks that ensure fair participation and transparent decision-making, current deep-sea mining models risk following a similar trajectory, privileging short-term economic gain for multinational corporations over regional priorities.

Finally, the argument that deep-sea mining is necessary for the renewable energy transition is also increasingly at odds with current evidence. Rapid advances in recycling technologies, circular economy approaches, and alternative materials are already reducing the projected demand for minerals from new extractions. These pathways can support the global transition without the need to industrialize one of the least understood parts of the planet. The United Nations Environment Programme has also made clear in their 2022 report that “there is currently no foreseeable way in which investment into deep-sea mining activities can be viewed as consistent with the Sustainable Blue Economy Finance Principles”.

White-sand-and-clear-turquoise-water-on-a-Seychelles-beach. Credit: Unsplash—Alin-Mecean

In parallel, African-led nature-positive initiatives are demonstrating how ocean resources can be managed in ways that support both people and the environment. Initiatives such as the Great Blue Wall aim to create connected networks of protected and restored marine areas that strengthen biodiversity, climate resilience and community wellbeing across the WIO region. These efforts demonstrate what a regenerative blue economy can look like in practice. Preserving these gains requires ensuring that new activities do not compromise the progress already made.

Across the continent, young leaders, civil society and scientific institutions are calling for greater accountability in decisions that shape our collective future. Their message is clear: long-term wellbeing for everyone must come before short-term gains for a select few. This call also echoes a growing movement worldwide, with more than 40 countries now supporting a pause on deep-sea mining, including France, Fiji, Chile and Mexico. A precautionary pause on deep-sea mining is not a rejection of economic progress, but a commitment to sound science, inclusive dialogue and responsible stewardship. We are hopeful that countries in Africa and elsewhere in the world will hear this call and secure the future of the ocean for generations to come.

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

Dona Bertarelli is a Swiss philanthropist, IUCN Patron of Nature and biodiversity champion, deeply committed to a healthy balance between people and nature.

IPS UN Bureau

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Evelis Cano, mother of political prisoner Jack Tantak Cano, pleads with the police for her son’s release outside a detention centre in Caracas, Venezuela, 20 January 2026. Credit: Gaby Oraa/Reuters via Gallo Images

By Inés M. Pousadela
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Feb 2 2026 (IPS)

When US special forces seized Nicolás Maduro and his wife from the presidential residence in Caracas on 3 January, killing at least 24 Venezuelan security officers and 32 Cuban intelligence operatives in the process, many in the Venezuelan opposition briefly dared hope.

They speculated that intervention might finally bring the democratic transition thwarted when Maduro entrenched himself in power after losing the July 2024 election. But within hours, those hopes were crushed. Trump announced the USA would now ‘run’ Venezuela and Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in to replace Maduro. Venezuela’s sovereignty had been violated twice: first by an authoritarian regime that usurped the popular will, and then by an external power that deliberately violated international law.

A cynical intervention

Under Trump, the USA has abandoned any pretence of promoting democracy. Trump wrapped the intervention in the rhetoric of anti-narcotics operations while openly salivating over Venezuela’s oil reserves, rare earth deposits and investment opportunities. He repeatedly made clear that US regional hegemony is the number one priority. His contempt for Venezuelans’ right to self-determination was explicit: when asked about opposition leader María Corina Machado, Trump dismissed her as lacking ‘respect’ and ‘capacity to lead’. The message to Venezuela’s democratic movement was clear: your struggle doesn’t matter, only our interests do.

Ironically, the US intervention achieved what years of Maduro’s propaganda failed to do, giving anti-imperialist rhetoric a shot in the arm. For decades, Latin American authoritarian regimes have justified repression by pointing to the threat of US intervention, even though this was a largely historical grievance. Not anymore: Trump has handed every Latin American dictator the perfect justification for continuing authoritarian rule.

The global response has been equally revealing. The loudest defenders of national sovereignty are authoritarian powers such as China, Iran and Russia: states that routinely violate their citizens’ rights expressed their ‘solidarity with the people of Venezuela’ and positioned themselves as champions of international law. By blatantly violating a foundational principle of the post-1945 international order, Trump made the leaders of some of the world’s most repressive regimes look like the adults in the room. And across Latin America, the political conversation has now shifted dramatically: the question is no longer how to restore democracy in Venezuela, but how to prevent the next US military adventure in Latin America.

Authoritarianism continues

Meanwhile, Venezuela’s authoritarian regime remains intact. Maduro may be in a New York courtroom, but the structures that kept him in power—the corrupt military, embedded Cuban intelligence, patronage networks and the repressive apparatus – continue unchanged. Rodríguez will likely try to run down the clock, claiming Maduro could return at any moment to avoid calling elections while quietly negotiating oil deals with US companies and reasserting authoritarian control. For both Rodríguez and Trump, democracy seems like an inconvenient obstacle to resource extraction.

For Venezuelan civil society, this creates real dilemmas. As she was sworn in, Rodríguez denounced the operation that put her in charge and vowed that Venezuela would ‘never again be a colony of any empire’. She has wrapped herself in the flag, framing regime continuity as a patriotic stand against western imperialism, and can now easily paint opposition activists who have long demanded international pressure for democracy as treasonous collaborators with foreign powers. This is despite being an insider of a regime that welcomed Cuban intelligence, Iranian oil traders and Russian military advisers, and is now negotiating oil deals with the USA and crossing its own red line by promising legal changes to enable private investment.

A Venezuelan solution for Venezuela

But there may be some cracks in the regime. With Maduro gone, frictions inside the ruling party have become apparent. For instance, there have been obvious disagreements on how to handle the pressure to free Venezuela’s over 800 political prisoners. These may yield opportunities the democracy movement can exploit.

This is the time for the democratic opposition to reclaim the narrative. In the immediate aftermath of the intervention, families of political prisoners mounted vigils outside detention centres, demanding releases the government has only partially delivered. Civil society must amplify these voices, making clear that any transitional arrangement requires the dismantling of the repressive apparatus, not merely a change of faces at the top.

A broad coalition of civil society organisations has issued 10 demands that chart a path to democratic transition. They call for the immediate and unconditional release of political prisoners, the dismantling of irregular armed groups, unfettered access for human rights monitors and humanitarian aid and, crucially, a free and fair presidential election with international observers. These demands deserve international backing, not as conditions for oil contracts, but as non-negotiable requirements for any government that can claim to represent Venezuela.

Venezuela’s democratic forces can either accept marginalisation as Trump and Rodríguez carve up their country’s resources, or use this chaotic moment to advance a genuinely Venezuelan democratic agenda. That means rejecting both Maduro’s authoritarianism and Trump’s intervention, and insisting that any legitimacy Rodríguez’s government claims must come from Venezuelan voters, not US armed forces or oil contracts. Any window of opportunity may however be closing fast. The question is whether Venezuela’s democratic movement can seize it to build the country they have strived for, or whether they will remain spectators while others decide their fate.

Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Head of Research and Analysis, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report. She is also a Professor of Comparative Politics at Universidad ORT Uruguay.

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

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Two children in Nepal carry water buckets for the cracked fields due to a lack of rainfall in Sakhuwa Parsauni Rural Municipality, Parsa District, Madhesh Province. Parts of Madhesh Province experienced drought in July due to climate change, causing water shortages that affected children and families. Credit: UNICEF/Laxmi Prasad Ngakhusi

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 30 2026 (IPS)

On January 27, the United States officially withdrew from the Paris Agreement, an international treaty adopted in 2015 aiming to reduce global warming and strengthen countries’ resilience to climate impacts. Following a year of regulatory rollbacks and sustained efforts by the Trump administration to dismantle federal climate policy, this move is expected to trigger wide ranging ripple effects—undermining international efforts to curb climate change, accelerating environmental degradation and biodiversity loss, and increasing risks to human health, safety, and long-term development.

Since its adoption, the Paris Agreement has been instrumental to global climate action initiatives—mobilizing countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions, expand renewable energy, strengthen climate adaptation, and protect vulnerable communities. The agreement requires member states to regularly update their emissions-reduction targets and submit plans for achieving them, serving as a vital framework for sustaining collective progress and maintaining transparent communication among nations.

Amnesty International warns that these actions by the Trump administration risk defunding “key multilateral and bilateral climate institutions and programming,” a shift that would have significant repercussions for not only the United States but for the broader international community. The organization warns that U.S. funding for United Nations (UN) agencies is expected to cease imminently, which would halt lifesaving support for climate-sensitive communities and disrupt critical climate monitoring and mitigation efforts.

Specifically, the U.S. withdrawal is expected to undermine global efforts to address climate-induced displacement, disaster recovery, and infrastructure rebuilding. Communities in developing countries are projected to bear the heaviest burdens, as reduced support will leave them more vulnerable to escalating climate-driven losses.

Before the withdrawal, the UN was already grappling with a severe funding crisis – one made worse by the U.S.’s refusal to pay its assessed contributions to the regular budget and its sharp cuts to foreign assistance. The U.S. has also withdrawn from the board of the UN Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), a crucial mechanism supporting vulnerable communities facing climate-driven disasters. Its previously pledged USD 17.5 million remains uncertain, raising further concerns about the fund’s ability to operate effectively.

With this move, the United States becomes the only nation to exit the agreement in history, joining Iran, Libya, and Yemen as the few states not party to it. With the U.S. being a major global actor in climate change negotiations, the withdrawal risks reducing diplomatic pressure on other wealthy nations to scale up contributions.

“The US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement sets a disturbing precedent that seeks to instigate a race to the bottom, and, along with its withdrawal from other major global climate pacts, aims to dismantle the global system of cooperation on climate action,” said Marta Schaaf, Amnesty International’s Programme Director for Climate, ESJ and Corporate Accountability.

“The US is one of several powerful anti-climate actors but as an influential superpower, this decision, along with acts of coercion and bullying of other countries and powerful actors to double down on fossil fuels, causes particular harm and threatens to reverse more than a decade of global climate progress under the agreement,” she added.

“For us, the fight against climate change continues. The fight for a just transition continues. The fight to get more resources for climate mitigation and adaptation, especially for those most vulnerable countries continues and our efforts will not waver in that part,” said UN Spokesperson to the Secretary-General Stéphane Dujarric.

On January 22, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released its annual State of Finance for Nature report, which monitors global finance flows toward nature-based solutions. The report found that investments in activities that harm the climate are roughly 30 times the investments for ecosystem conservation and restoration.

According to figures from UNEP, the private sector makes up approximately 70 percent of global financing that harms the environment, only giving back 10 percent of funding that works to protect it. In 2023, roughly USD 7.3 trillion was invested into global activities that harmed the environment, with USD 4.9 trillion coming from private sectors and USD 2.4 trillion coming from the public sectors, which aim to maximize support for fossil fuel usage, agriculture, water, transport, and construction.

This, compounded with President Donald Trump’s renewed “drill, baby, drill” policy, is expected to further destabilize global climate efforts by accelerating fossil fuel dependence, undermining emissions-reduction targets, and widening the financial gap for urgent climate adaptation and ecosystem restoration.

Jeremy Wallace, a professor of China studies at John Hopkins University, told reporters that the U.S.’s expanding reliance on fossil fuels sends a signal to the international community that scaling back climate ambition is acceptable. This risks encouraging other major emitters to pursue weaker energy transitions and less lofty emissions-targets.

China, for instance, recently pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by only 7-10 percent over the next decade, a target that has been widely criticized by climate experts as unambitious and insufficient to meet global emissions-targets.

“If the domestic market in the US continues to be dominated by fossil fuels through the fiat of an authoritarian government, that will continue to have an impact on the rest of the world,” said Basav Sen, climate justice project director at Institute for Policy Studies. “It will be that much harder for low-income countries, who are very dependent on fossil fuel production and exports, to be able to make their transitions with the US saying that we won’t fund any of it.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Andrii Melnyk, Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the UN, briefs the United Nations Security Council meeting on the maintenance of peace and security of Ukraine. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 23 2026 (IPS)

Nearly four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine faces another winter marked by widespread humanitarian suffering and continued indiscriminate attacks. The final months of 2025 were particularly volatile, characterized by routine bombardment of densely populated areas and repeated strikes on residential neighborhoods, critical civilian infrastructure, and humanitarian facilities. As hostilities expanded into new territories over the past year, humanitarian needs grew sharply, with many war-torn communities residing in uninhabitable areas.

According to figures from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), at least 55,600 civilians have been killed or injured since the wake of the full-scale invasion, with 157 civilians killed and 888 injured across Ukraine and Russian Federation-occupied areas in the final months of 2025 alone. Additionally, The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that over 3.7 million people have been internally displaced since the invasion.

Additional figures from OHCHR indicate that 2025 marked the deadliest year for civilians since the start of the full-scale invasion, with the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) reporting that 2,514 civilians were killed and 12,142 were injured as a direct result of conflict-related violence. This marks a 31 percent increase from 2024.

“The 31 per cent increase in civilian casualties compared with 2024 represents a marked deterioration in the protection of civilians,” said Danielle Bell, head of HRMMU. “Our monitoring shows that this rise was driven not only by intensified hostilities along the frontline, but also by the expanded use of long-range weapons, which exposed civilians across the country to heightened risk.”

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that roughly 10.8 million people across Ukraine are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, with 3.6 million identified as particularly vulnerable and prioritized in relief operations. OCHA underscores the exacerbation of humanitarian conditions over the past few months, noting that front-line areas and northern border regions face higher rates of military shelling, destruction of civilian infrastructure, mass civilian displacement, and repeated disruptions to essential services.

Civilians residing in Russian Federation-occupied zones remain largely cut off from essential services and protection measures, facing heightened risks of serious human rights violations.

According to Matthias Schmale, The UN Human Coordinator for Ukraine, the nation is currently in the midst of a severe protection crisis, marked by rapid shrinking of humanitarian resources, consistent escalations of insecurity, and no signs that 2026 will be safer for civilians or humanitarian aid personnel. “The nature of warfare is evolving: more drone attacks and long-range strikes increase risks for civilians and humanitarians, while causing systematic damage to energy, water and other essential services,” said Schmale.

The first few weeks of 2026 saw a sharp escalation in targeted attacks on civilian infrastructure, particularly water and energy systems. According to figures from the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, between January 8 and 9, Russian authorities launched 242 drones and 36 missiles toward Ukraine. These attacks struck the port city of Odesa, disrupting electricity and water supplies there and in the cities of Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia. The strikes also crippled mobile communications and public transport, prompting the mayor of Dnipro to declare a state of emergency.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reported that Russia had launched roughly 1,300 drones between January 11 and 18 alone. For the following two days, more than 300 drones struck the Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, Dnipro, Odesa, and Khmelnytskyi regions, killing two civilians and injuring dozens.

On January 19, the Russian Federation launched a series of attacks on energy facilities in Ukraine, shutting down heating and electricity in numerous major urban areas, including Odesa and Kyiv. The mayor of Kyiv informed reporters that approximately 5,635 multi-story residential buildings were left without heating the following morning, 80 percent of which had only gained back access to heating after prolonged outages caused by a similar attack on January 9.

“Civilians are bearing the brunt of these attacks. They can only be described as cruel. They must stop. Targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure is a clear breach of the rules of warfare,” said UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk. According to figures from OHCHR, hundreds of thousands of families across Ukraine lack access to heating—an especially dire development as freezing temperatures persist. Numerous communities in Kyiv also lack access to water, which has disastrous consequences for the most vulnerable, including children, the elderly, and persons with disabilities.

“For people in Druzhkivka and in many communities along the front line, daily life is overshadowed by violence and attempts to survive. A strict curfew means they can only go outside for a few hours a day, timing their lives around shelling patterns and the increased risk of drone attacks. They face hard choices: to flee for safety, leaving their homes and lives behind, or remain under constant shelling,” Schmale added.

The UN’s Ukraine office underscored that the consequences for civilians will be long-lasting, even when they reach a definitive end to hostilities. They noted that the war’s impact will “long outlive the current emergency and humanitarian phase.” Psycho-social harm is widespread, with severe mental health needs reported among adults, children, former combatants, and their families- many of whom have endured displacement, the damaging or destruction of their homes, and repeated exposure to explosions and shelling.

The strain on Ukraine’s health and education systems compounds these effects, with UN Ukraine warning that “fractures in social cohesion” will shape the country for years to come.

In response, the UN and its partners launched the 2026 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan to provide life-saving support to affected communities, aiming to reach 4.1 million people in 2026. The plan includes operations to deliver food, healthcare, protection services, cash assistance, and other essential needs to besieged communities, calling for USD $2.3 billion.

“I urge all humanitarian, development and governmental partners to work together around our shared values and key identified strategic priorities, respecting the distinct role of principled humanitarian action and recognizing where others must lead,” said Schmale.

He added: “We ask our donors to sustain flexible, predictable funding so that we can respond rapidly to new shocks while maintaining essential services for those who cannot yet stand on their own feet. Only together we can ensure that the most vulnerable, like the family I met in Druzhkivka, receive timely assistance.”

IPS UN Bureau Report

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