Protesters demonstrate outside the Columbia University campus in New York City. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider
 
For decades, five powerful actors—the United States, the Arab states, the European Union, AIPAC, and Israel’s own opposition—have all claimed to seek Israeli-Palestinian peace while enabling permanent occupation, together burying the two-state solution.

By Alon Ben-Meir
NEW YORK, Apr 15 2026 (IPS)

Every powerful actor in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict professes to seek peace. The US and EU repeat the two-state mantra, the Arab states invoke Palestinian rights, AIPAC proclaims its defense of Israel’s security, and Israeli opposition parties promise “responsible” leadership and stability.

Yet each, in its own way, has enabled and entrenched a destructive status quo—shielding Israel from accountability, normalizing permanent ruthless occupation, and rendering Palestinian statehood ever more illusory while fueling radicalization on both sides.

The US as the Prime Enabler

Successive US administrations have long recited support for a two-state solution, yet in practice, Washington has done more to bury that prospect than to realize it. For decades, the United States has shielded Israel from real international accountability while refusing to use its vast leverage to compel any meaningful movement toward Palestinian statehood.

By turning the “peace process” into an empty ritual, the US has provided cover for a status quo that is neither peaceful nor temporary.

At the same time, unconditional US military, financial, and diplomatic backing has enabled Israel’s relentless settlement expansion and creeping annexation of Palestinian land. American officials issue ritual complaints about settlements, but the financial and military aid kept flowing and the vetoes at the UN kept coming, signaling that no red line would ever be enforced.

This toxic mix of lofty rhetoric and impunity has locked both peoples into an ever more entrenched, zero-sum conflict and foreclosed the only viable formula—two states—for ending it.

The Gaza war has stripped away any remaining illusions. Even amid mass devastation and accusations of genocidal conduct, Washington has continued to arm and protect Israel diplomatically, becoming complicit in Israel’s war crimes. To be sure, in the name of protecting Israel, the United States has gravely imperiled Israel’s viability as a democratic state and its long-term security while setting the stage for the next violent conflagration, to Israel’s detriment.

The Arab States’ Shortcomings

The Arab states, though never tiring of affirming the justice of the Palestinian cause and the necessity of a two-state solution, have consistently fallen short of their words. Although they possess enormous strategic weight—withholding or granting diplomatic recognition, and opening markets, energy, airspace, and security cooperation—they have rarely used these tools to force Israel to choose between occupation and peace with the Palestinians.

This failure has signaled to Israel that it can normalize relations with some Arab states, à la the Abraham Accords, while maintaining its grip on Palestinian land without risking any backlash.

Even in the face of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, most Arab governments limited themselves to statements, summits, and carefully choreographed outrage that stopped well short of meaningful pressure.

The Arab states that normalized relations with Israel continued to protect key political and economic ties, while the front-line states—Egypt and Jordan—maintained security coordination that shielded Israel from real strategic isolation.

By doing so little when so much was at stake, Arab states have become, in effect, accomplices to the perpetuation of the conflict they denounce. Their inaction has left Palestinians without a credible Arab shield, allowed Israel to entrench settlement and annexation, and pushed the two-state solution—the only realistic path to a just peace and security for both Israel and the Palestinians—to the wayside.

The EU’s Shortsightedness

The European Union is Israel’s largest trading partner and a major source of investment, technology, and diplomatic legitimacy. Yet, it has systematically refused to wield this considerable leverage to force a choice between occupation and peace with the Palestinians.

Instead of linking market access, research cooperation, or association agreements to clear benchmarks on settlements and Palestinian rights, Brussels has largely confined itself to criticism and symbolic measures that Israel has comfortably ignored.

The EU’s posture has effectively insulated Israel from serious economic or diplomatic consequences for entrenching an apartheid one-state reality of perpetual domination.

At the same time, although individual EU states, including France, the United Kingdom, and Spain, have recognized the Palestinian state, they have done virtually nothing to turn that recognition into hard power; arms exports and trade preferences continue with Israel as usual. Recognition becomes a cheap, cost-free declaration rather than a meaningful constraint on Israeli policy.

Thus, EU passivity has helped normalize occupation and settlement expansion while leaving Palestinians without an effective European counterweight, making a genuine two-state solution ever more remote, to the detriment of both Israel and the Palestinians.

AIPAC’s Culpability

AIPAC presents itself as a friend of Israel. Still, by relentlessly reinforcing the country’s most hardline positions, it has turned “pro-Israel” into a rigid orthodoxy that equates any pressure on Israeli governments with betrayal, thereby narrowing the range of policies American lawmakers feel politically safe to support.

For decades, AIPAC has backed Israeli governments without qualification—endorsing military campaigns, providing political cover for settlement expansion, and supporting a maximalist posture toward the Palestinians.

It rallies Congress behind unconditional aid, arms transfers, and diplomatic protection. This has helped Israeli leaders believe they can permanently deepen occupation and de facto annexation while still counting on automatic American support.

AIPAC has refused to use its considerable leverage to press for peace-oriented concessions and territorial compromise. Instead, it has rendered the two state solution an empty slogan while supporting the Israeli policies that make it impossible. In doing so, AIPAC has directly contributed to the ever worsening conflict and put Israel’s security under constant threat.

Still, AIPAC has not awakened from its blind support that jeopardizes Israel’s very existence and, with that, scuttles any prospect for an Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Israeli Opposition Parties’ Dismal Failure

Israel’s opposition parties have failed to offer a credible, sustained alternative to the right’s permanent conflict paradigm, and in doing so have gravely weakened Israel’s chances for peace. Instead of forcefully championing a two-state solution, most opposition leaders tiptoe around the very words “Palestinian state,” intimidated by electoral backlash and the charge of being “soft” on security. Their political inaptitude has allowed the right to define what is “realistic,” narrowing the political options to endless occupation and recurrent war.

Thus, they have directly contributed to the current impasse, making the conflict ever more intractable. Without a major party willing to argue that Israel’s long-term security depends on a two-state solution, the public hears only variations of the same message: manage, contain, punish, but never resolve. This abdication cedes the strategic debate to the extremist Netanyahu and his messianic lunatics, who are creepingly implementing their scheme of greater Israel, which would bury any prospect for peace.

It is a dire reality for the country that the opposing parties failed to coalesce and present a united front to push for a two-state solution, even following the Gaza war, which has unequivocally demonstrated that after nearly 80 years of conflict, only peace would provide Israel with ultimate security.

Every leader from these parties feels they are the most qualified to be the prime minister, but has failed miserably to offer realistic plans to end the conflict.

By failing to unite, organize, educate, and mobilize Israelis around a clear two state vision, these parties are undermining Israel’s security, eroding its international standing, and endangering its very future as a Jewish, democratic state.

The record of these five enablers is devastating. They made a just peace ever more remote, pushing Israel precariously toward an apartheid one state reality it cannot sustain morally, demographically, or strategically, while abandoning the Palestinians to the cruelest, inhumane occupation.

They must change course now—or condemn Israelis and Palestinians to generations of bloodshed that will erase Israel’s reason for being and extinguish Palestinian nationhood.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations, most recently at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.

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The Leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser Arafat, arrived at UN Headquarters by helicopter. A view of the helicopter, as it approached the North Lawn of the UN campus, on 13 November 1974. But Arafat was denied a US visa for a second visit to the UN in 1988, to address the General Assembly. Credit: UN Photo/Michos Tzovaras

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 15 2026 (IPS)

The United Nations faces two crucial elections later this year: the election of a new Secretary General, with no confirmed date for polling, and the election of a new President (PGA), scheduled for June 2, for the upcoming 81st session of the General Assembly.

In accordance with established geographical rotation, the president for the next session will be elected from the Asia-Pacific Group with two candidates in the running: Dr. Khalilur Rahman of Bangladesh, currently serving as Foreign Minister, and Andreas S. Kakouris, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cyprus. A third declared candidate, Riyad Mansour (Palestine), withdrew from the race.

The dual candidacy breaks a longstanding tradition of a single candidate running for the office of PGA from each geographical group.

According to one of the established rules, speeches before the General Assembly were limited to 15 minutes– but rarely enforced.

The longest speech –269 minutes–was credited to Fidel Castro of Cuba at a meeting of the General Assembly on 26 September 1960. But the longest speech ever made at the UN was by V.K. Krishna Menon of India. His statement to the Security Council was given during three meetings on 23 and 24 January 1957 and lasted more than 8 hours.

In a bygone era, the General Assembly was also the center of several politically memorable events in the history of the world body.

When Yasser Arafat was denied a US visa to visit New York to address the United Nations back in 1988, the General Assembly defied the United States by temporarily moving the UN’s highest policy making body to Geneva– perhaps for the first time in UN history– providing a less-hostile political environment and a platform, for the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Arafat, who first addressed the UN in 1974, took a swipe at Washington when he prefaced his statement in Geneva by remarking: “it never occurred to me that my second meeting with this honorable Assembly, since 1974, would take place in the hospitable city of Geneva”.

On his 1974 visit to address the General Assembly, he avoided the hundreds of pro and anti-Arafat demonstrators outside the UN building by arriving in a helicopter which landed on the North Lawn of the UN campus adjoining the East River.

When he addressed the General Assembly, there were confusing reports whether or not Arafat carried a gun in his holster—“in a house of peace” — which was apparently not visible to delegates.

One news story said Arafat was seen “wearing his gun belt and holster and reluctantly removing his pistol before mounting the rostrum.” “Today, I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom-fighter’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand,” he told the Assembly.

Setting the record straight, Samir Sanbar, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General and head of the former Department of Public Information told Inter Press Service (IPS) it was discreetly agreed that Arafat would keep the holster while the gun was to be handed over to Abdelaziz Bouteflika, then Foreign Minister and later President of Algeria (1999-2019).

Incidentally, when anti-Arafat New York protesters on First Avenue shouted: “Arafat Go Home”, his supporters responded that was precisely what he wanted—a home for the Palestinians to go to.

Although Arafat made it to the UN, some of the world’s most controversial leaders, including Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Syria’s Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar al-Assad, and North Korea’s Kim il Sung and his grandson Kim Jong-un never made it to the UN to address the General Assembly.

Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Minister of Industries of Cuba, addresses the General Assembly on Dec. 11, 1964. Credit: UN Photo/TC

Meanwhile, when the politically-charismatic Ernesto Che Guevara, once second-in-command to Cuban leader Fidel Castro, was at the UN to address the General Assembly sessions, back in 1964, the U.N. headquarters came under attack – literally. The speech by the Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary was momentarily drowned by the sound of an explosion.

The anti-Castro forces in the United States, reportedly backed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), had mounted an insidious campaign to stop Che Guevara from speaking. A 3.5-inch bazooka was fired at the 39-storeyed Secretariat building by the East River while a vociferous CIA-inspired anti-Castro, anti-Che Guevara demonstration was taking place outside the U.N. building on New York’s First Avenue and 42nd street.

But the rocket launcher – which was apparently not as sophisticated as today’s shoulder-fired missiles and rocket-propelled grenades – missed its target, rattled windows, and fell into the river about 200 yards from the building. One newspaper report described it as “one of the wildest episodes since the United Nations moved into its East River headquarters in 1952.”

As longtime U.N. staffers would recall, the failed 1964 bombing of the U.N. building took place when Che Guevara launched a blistering attack on U.S. foreign policy and denounced a proposed de-nuclearization pact for the Western hemisphere. It was one of the first known politically motivated terrorist attacks on the United Nations.

After his Assembly speech, Che Guevara was asked about the attack aimed at him. “The explosion has given the whole thing more flavor,” he joked, as he chomped on his Cuban cigar.

When he was told by a reporter that the New York City police had nabbed a woman, described as an anti-Castro Cuban exile, who had pulled out a hunting knife and jumped over the UN wall, intending to kill him, Che Guevara said: “It is better to be killed by a woman with a knife than by a man with a gun.”

Meanwhile, in 2004, when the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the predecessor to the present African Union (AU), barred coup leaders from participating in African summits, Secretary-General Kofi Annan singled out the OAU decision as a future model to punish military dictators worldwide.

Annan went one step further and said he was hopeful that one day the General Assembly would follow in the footsteps of the OAU and bar leaders of military governments from addressing the General Assembly.

Annan’s proposal was a historic first. But it never came to pass in an institution where member states, not the Secretary-General, reign supreme.

The outspoken Annan, a national of Ghana, also said that “billions of dollars of public funds continue to be stashed away by some African leaders — even while roads are crumbling, health systems are failing, school children have neither books nor desks nor teachers, and phones do not work.” He also lashed out at African leaders who overthrow democratic regimes to grab power by military means.

Meanwhile, some of the military leaders who addressed the UN included Fidel Castro of Cuba, Col Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya, Amadou Toure of Mali (who assumed power following a coup in 1991 but later served as a democratically elected President), and Jerry Rawlings of Ghana (who seized power in 1979, executed former heads of state but later served as a civilian president voted into power in democratic elections). As the International Herald Tribune reported, Rawlings was “Africa’s first former military leader to allow the voters to choose his successor in a multi-party election”.

In October 2020, the New York Times reported that at least 10 African civilian leaders refused to step down from power and instead changed their constitutions to serve a third or fourth term – or serve for life.

These leaders included Presidents of Guinea (running for a third term), Cote d’Ivoire, Uganda, Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Ghana and Seychelles, among others. The only country where the incumbent was stepping down was Niger.

Condemning all military coups, the Times quoted Umaro Sissoco Embalo, the president of Guinea-Bissau, as saying: “Third terms also count as coups”

Back in 1977, a separatist activist/lawyer from London, Krishna Vaikunthavsan, who was campaigning for a separate Tamil state in Sri Lanka, surreptitiously gate-crashed into the UN, and virtually hijacked the General Assembly when he walked to the GA podium ahead of Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister ACS Hameed, the listed speaker, and lashed out at his government for human rights violations and war crimes.

When the President of the Assembly realized he had an interloper, he cut off the mike within minutes and summoned security guards to bodily eject the intruder from the hall. And as he walked up to the podium, there was pin drop silence and the unflappable Hameed, unprompted by any of his delegates, produced a riveting punchline.

“I want to thank the previous speaker for keeping his speech short,” he said, as the Assembly, known to tolerate longwinded and boring speeches, broke into peals of laughter.

Meanwhile, a security officer once recalled an incident where the prime minister from an African country, addressing the General Assembly, was heckled by a group of African students. As is usual with hecklers, the boisterous group was taken off the visitor’s gallery, grilled, photographer and banned from entering the UN premises.

But about five years later, one of the hecklers returned to the UN —this time, as foreign minister of his country, and addressed the world body.

This article contains excerpts from a book on the United Nations titled “No Comment – and Don’t Quote Me on That” authored by Thalif Deen, Senior Editor at Inter Press Service news agency. A former member of the Sri Lanka delegation to the UN General Assembly sessions, he is a Fulbright scholar with a Master’s Degree in Journalism from Columbia University, New York, and twice (2012-2013) shared the gold medal for excellence in UN reporting awarded annually by the UN Correspondents Association (UNCA). The book is available on Amazon. The link to Amazon via the author’s website follows: https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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UN lobby with images of former UN secretaries-generals. Credit: United Nations
 
With the deadline for candidates’ nominations now passed, four names are officially in the frame. Prof. Felix Dodds and Chris Spence size up the candidates.

By Felix Dodds and Chris Spence
APEX, North Carolina / SAN FRANCISCO, California, Apr 8 2026 (IPS)

Let the race begin!
April 1st was the deadline for candidates to be nominated for Secretary-General. Was it a coincidence that the deadline was April Fool’s Day? Judging by the quality of the official candidates, we suspect so.

Before looking at the four official finalists, however, it’s worth examining the state of global politics, since this will certainly have an impact on the likely outcome.

We are currently living in one of the most unstable times since the Second World War. Multilateralism is under threat and the UN is facing significant political and financial turbulence. To its credit, the UN is attempting to address these challenges through the UN80 process, which is trying to repurpose it for the years ahead. However, as the world becoming increasingly multipolar.

As the previous global order, shaped largely by the U.S. and its western allies, recedes into the rear-view mirror, there will still be plenty for a new Secretary General to do. In short, she or he will inherit an institution and a staff that is unclear about exactly what their future role should be.

One critical issue when looking at the candidates is to understand that any of the Permanent Five members of the powerful UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, the UK, and the USA) can veto a candidate. Will any of them exercise that power? Recent history suggests they may. Russia in particular has recently increased its use of the veto, and the US and China have also done so on occasion, although the UK and France have not exercised their “rights” in several decades.

Do the P5 share the same outlook in terms of a future Secretary General? For better or worse, it looks increasingly like the “big five” are looking for more of a “Secretary” than a “General”. On that basis, finding common ground may be possible.

What’s more, there is a general expectation that the successful candidate will probably be from Latin America and the Caribbean. This is based on a general sense among UN member states that leadership rotates through the various regional groups and that it is Latin America and the Caribbean’s ‘turn’.

So far, there has been no public disagreement with this approach, although the regional rotations are considered more of a guideline than a hard rule, and there have been exceptions in the past. For instance, present UN Secretary General, António Guterres of Portugal, was appointed at a time when it was generally expected that the successful candidate would come from Eastern Europe.

Another consideration is gender. The last time a Secretary General was appointed, there was a strong push to appoint a woman. This did not happen, even though seven qualified women were nominated.

In the straw polls held prior to this hiring process, António Guterres was the only candidate who did not attract a veto. In part, this was because he was the most experienced candidate and the first former head of state to stand. However, calls for a woman leader are perhaps even stronger this time around, backed by a sense that such an appointment is long overdue.

So, who are the four official candidates, and what happens next?

The four candidates that have been nominated will each have a three-hour “hustings” on the 21st or 22nd of April, which will be available to view live on UN web TV.

The candidates are:

MICHELLE BACHELET
Nominated by Brazil and Mexico (although her own country, Chile, has withdrawn its support). Bachelet is a former President of Chile. Her party was the Socialist Party of Chile, which is a member of the Progressive Alliance. Her hustings appearance will be on April 21st 10am to 1pm Eastern time.

Advantages
Seniority: Bachelet has held the top job in Chile not once, but twice. Not only that, but she has also held two senior roles within the UN. Her experience has been at the highest level, and her networks are impressive. It is hard to imagine someone with a more appropriate mix of expertise.

UN Credentials: As a former head of both UN Women and the UN High Commission for Human Rights, Bachelet’s insider knowledge is considerable. She would know how to navigate the organization effectively from her first day in the job.

A Female Leader: Michelle Bachelet would be a strong candidate to break the glass ceiling and become the first female leader of the UN.

A Latina Leader: With the tradition that the UN Secretary-General is chosen by rotating through the various UN regions, Bachelet would likely satisfy those who believe it is Latin America and the Caribbean’s “turn” to nominate Guterres’ successor.

Proven Impact: There are few potential candidates who could point to such broad impact both as a national leader and during two separate stints in high-level UN roles, especially in the fields of human rights and supporting vulnerable populations. Given the unprecedented uncertainty swirling around international diplomacy these days, a figure with a reputation as a “doer” may be welcomed.

Disadvantages

Objections from the Big Five? Bachelet has made comments in the past, particularly during her time as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, that may not have been welcomed by specific UN member states. With her own country withdrawing its support for her, it may make difficulties for her candidacy.

In spite of Bachelet’s obvious credentials, if even one of the “Big Five” members of the Security Council shows sensitivity to her past human rights comments, Bachelet may have her work cut out to change their views. Still, her credentials are impressive and even opponents might have a hard time making a case against her.

RAFAEL GROSSI
Nominated by Argentina, Italy, and Paraguay, Grossi is the present Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency. He is an Argentine career diplomat. His hustings are on April 21st from 3pm to 6pm.

Advantages

Seniority: He has held the post of Argentina Ambassador to Austria, Belgium, Slovenia, Slovakia, and International Organizations in Vienna, and the permanent representative of the United Nations Office at Geneva. While not as politically senior as some of the competition, his track record in diplomacy is certainly strong.

UN Credentials: He is the current Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) since December 3, 2019.

Proven Impact: Grossi has dealt with nuclear safety in conflict zones, doing shuttle diplomacy to maintain communications between warring parties. His work includes preventing nuclear accidents, particularly at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. He has also, through his “Atoms for Peace and Development”, modernized the IAEA, addressing issues of climate change, poverty, and fostering nuclear technology for development.

Latin Leader: Grossi also ticks the regional box, since he is from the Latin American and Caribbean Group.

Disadvantages

Objections from the Big Five? It’s hard to say. In spite of an exemplary record as a diplomat, in recent years Iranian officials accused him of aligning too closely with U.S. and Israeli interests. This is something Grossi’s supporters deny, and it is unclear how other in the P5, particularly China and Russia, might view the situation.

Not A Female Leader: Clearly not a woman, although it is unclear if this would be a deciding factor or deal breaker for the P5 under its current political leadership.

REBECCA GRYNSPAN
Grynspan was nominated by Costa Rica. She is the current Secretary-General of UNCTAD and a former Vice President of Costa Rica. She was a member of the National Liberation Party, which is a member of Socialist International. Hustings April 22nd, 10 am to 1 pm.

Advantages

Seniority: Grynspan may not have been a president or prime minister, but as Vice President of Costa Rica she climbed close to the summit of her country’s political mountain.

UN Experience: As the first female Secretary-General of UNCTAD, Grynspan has already broken one glass ceiling within the United Nations. She would also bring more than twenty years’ experience within the UN system, something that would surely be viewed as an asset during these uncertain times.

Additionally, she is familiar with the internal workings of the UN in Geneva, New York and across Latin America, giving her insights into decision making at both headquarters and regionally. This breadth of experience within the UN could be useful to any future UN leader.

Proven Impact: Grynspan is viewed as someone who can have an impact, a perception recognized by Forbes magazine, which named her among the 100 most powerful women in Central America four years running. She was also instrumental in the UN-brokered Black Sea Initiative, agreed by Russia, Türkiye, and Ukraine, that has allowed millions of tons of grain and other foodstuffs to leave Ukraine’s ports, playing an important role in global food security.

Connections: Grynspan has had many years of experience operating at the regional and global levels. Her networks may arguably not be as wide as some other candidates’, but would still provide a good platform for her to succeed.

A Female Leader: Grynspan offers the chance to break the glass ceiling and become the first female leader of the UN.

Climate and the Environment: Although Grynspan has strong credentials on trade, finance and development, it is only in recent years that she has taken a higher profile on climate change and some of the other big environmental issues of our time. Interestingly, this may be an advantage at this moment in time, since more some P5 members are now either lukewarm or hostile to candidates with a progressive track record on climate change.

Disadvantages

Peace and Security: Peace, security, and conflict resolution have not featured prominently in her background. If the UN Security Council members are looking for expertise in this area, might Grynspan’s relative lack of experience be considered a possible weakness?

Name Recognition: Although she is widely respected in her fields and across the UN, Grynspan may not have the same sort of name recognition among the public as some of the other candidates.

Objections from the Big Five? How might Grynspan’s political background play out in the current politically-charged atmosphere? Will her center-left credentials find a sympathetic audience among the current P5, or might some in the current conservative US administration object?

MACKY SALL
Nominated by Burundi, Sall is the former President of Senegal and Chairman of the African Union. Politically, his party (Alliance for the Republic) is a member of Liberal International. Hustings April 22nd, from 3pm to 6pm.

Advantages

Seniority: As the former President of Senegal (2012-2024) and former Prime Minister (2004-2007), he has the seniority that a UN Secretary General might well need these days.

Proven Impact: As Chairperson of the African Union, he succeeded in lobbying for the AU to join the G20. He has mediated in regional crises.

Objections from the Big Five? Sall is a center-right politician known to have forged positive ties with France’s Emmanual Macron. Will a right-wing administration in the US be drawn to a candidate also on the conservative side of the political spectrum?

Disadvantages

UN Credentials: Sall cannot claim strong UN credentials, but has been the chairperson of the African Union and a Special Envoy for the Paris Pact for the People and the Planet.

Not A Female Leader: While he would disappoint the many voices calling for the next UN head to be a woman, it’s unclear that would be a reason for any of the P5 to veto.

Not from Latin America: How important is it that the next Secretary-General be from the Latin American and Caribbean Group? At this point, it is hard to say if rotating around the regions “fairly” will be a big issue for members states. As noted earlier, it was not a deal breaker last time around.

A Late Entrant?

What if all four official candidates fail to win over the P5? We have seen in the past that new candidates appear after the nomination deadline. In fact, the process was only truly formalized as recently as 2015. Before that, the selection of a new UN leader was known for being opaque and characterized by back-room discussions and P5 deal making.

If consensus among the P5 cannot be reached, other candidates must emerge. Possibilities from the Latin American and Caribbean Group might include Ivonne Baki (Ecuador), Alicia Bárcena (Mexico), David Choquehuanca (Bolivia), María Fernanda Espinosa (Ecuador), Mia Mottley (Barbados), and Achim Steiner (Brazil).

There may also be interest from beyond the region, such as Amina Mohammed (Nigeria), who is the UN’s current Deputy Secretary-General. Additionally, Kristalina Georgieva (Bulgaria) and Vuk Jeremić (Serbia)—both former center-right European politicians with strong international credentials—have also been mentioned.

However, if the four official candidates all fail to find favor, then appointing a successor that all the P5 can agree on may take some deft diplomatic manoeuvring. At this point, the outcome of such haggling is pretty much anyone’s guess.

Prof. Felix Dodds and Chris Spence have been involved with UN policy making since the 1990s. They recently wrote Environmental Lobbying at the United Nations: A Guide to Protecting Our Planet (Routledge, 2025) and co-edited Heroes of Environmental Diplomacy: Profiles in Courage (Routledge, 2022).

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Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elías

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 6 2026 (IPS)

The US has spelled out in detail its own concept of what a restructured United Nations should look like: after drastic reductions in staff, cutting down its budget, avoiding duplication in mandates, slashing peacekeeping operations worldwide and deploying artificial intelligence (AI) for translations and interpretations in six languages.

As the biggest single contributor to the UN budget—and despite nearly $4.0 billion in unpaid dues—it is using its perceived financial clout to help radically change the world body.

The US says it wants to “make UN great again (MUNGA)”—a variation of President Trump’s oft-repeated slogan “Make America Great Again (MAGA).” ”.

But will it work? And is it feasible?

Ambassador Mike Waltz, U.S. Representative to the United Nations, addressing a Congressional Field Hearing on UN Reform, said last week, “As I stated in my confirmation hearing, the UN truly does need to get what we’re calling back to basics and back to its original mission, from its founding, back to maintaining international peace and security.

“As I’ve mentioned in my hearing then, the UN’s budget in the last 25 years has quadrupled. We have not seen, arguably, a quadrupling of peace and security around the world commensurate with those hard-earned dollars, he said.

“So, we are pressing it. We’re pressing it to streamline its bureaucracy, to eliminate duplication. We’ve made it clear that we will cease participation in some UN agencies that undermine our sovereignty and cannot be reformed.”

Earlier this year, he pointed out, President Trump announced “our withdrawal from 66 international organizations. That review is ongoing. And from my perspective, let me be clear, the U.S. will not fund organizations that act contrary to our interests.”

“On UN compensation and personnel,” he said, “We’re leading reforms to what are often exorbitant compensation and benefit standards that the over 100,000 UN staff receive. The UN pays 17% more than US equivalent civil servants, even though many of them are right here in New York.

“They also have additional generous benefits packages far exceeding what our great civil servants, both here and abroad, receive. And staff costs alone are 70% of their regular budget for these things we’re trying to bring back in line.

“So, we need to, and we are working to bring those compensation and benefits packages back in line with common-sense standards. Part of that will be the pension. There’s over $100 billion in management in the UN pension with 16%—I don’t know of an employer or a government out there that contributes 16% to their pension.”

And there are other reforms, he said.

For example, the number of interpreters and translators—times six for the six UN languages here—technology can be used, AI can be used, and remote translation can be used that will save a lot of the travel and the conference costs, said Waltz.

Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and director of Middle Eastern Studies, who has written extensively on the politics of the United Nations, told Inter Press Service (IPS) this is not about cost-cutting or fiscal responsibility.

“Like cutbacks to important U.S. government agencies and domestic programs, the Trump administration appears determined to dismantle the system itself.”

This should be understood in the context of pulling out of international organizations and treaties, the establishment of the so-called “Board of Peace,” the Iran War, and the recently announced dramatic increases in military spending—it is about undermining international legal institutions and replacing them with an imperial order backed by raw military force, said Zunes.

Richard Gowan, Program Director, Global Issues and Institutions, at the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, told IPS in the first half of 2025, U.S. policy towards the UN was pretty chaotic, and diplomats from other countries really had no idea what Washington wanted from the world organization.

Like it or not, he said, Mike Waltz and his team have brought some message discipline and are clarifying their goals for the UN pretty sharply.

“Most diplomats say that Waltz can be reasonable in private and that ultimately, he and his team want to reshape the UN rather than just wreck it. There are times when Waltz goes out of his way to bash the UN and individual UN officials on social media, but I think that is partly him playing to the Republican base.”

Waltz is clear that he wants a slimmed-down UN, Gowan pointed out, and it is worth admitting that this is a popular message among many UN member states. The U.S. is not alone in thinking that the organization’s bureaucracy has grown too big and needs a tough financial diet.

“Trump, Rubio and Waltz are pretty consistent in arguing that the UN should focus on peace and security issues. But I think the administration has not really convinced most other UN members that it has a plan to make the UN deliver on conflict prevention and diplomacy again.”

Instead, he said, the U.S. appears to have a very selective and instrumentalist approach to when and how it uses the UN as a security partner. It wants the UN to help in Haiti but to get out of the way in Lebanon. I do not think there is really a coherent vision at work here. It is a very ad hoc, case-by-case approach.

“Trump’s boosting of the Board of Peace as a potential alternative to the UN has complicated Waltz’s position too. The fact that Trump is willing to flirt with the Board, even if it is not a very serious institution, makes it harder to believe that Washington really wants the UN to regain credibility on peace and security,” declared Gowan.

Meanwhile, excerpts from Ambassador Waltz’s testimony include the following:

• “On budget and staffing cuts, the UN should be doing less and doing it better. Let’s get it more focused and actually achieve more results. The 2026 UN regular budget was estimated at $3.45 billion. The U.S. funds roughly a fifth of that at $820 million in 2025 alone.
• Again, I think we need to reduce the UN’s size and assure every taxpayer dollar is spent responsibly, and thanks to the strong efforts by the United States, led by Ambassador Bartos here and his team in what we call the UN’s Fifth Committee, which approves its budget, we are working towards a leaner and better prioritized 2026 budget going forward.
• In December, we led Member States to adopt a historic 15% cut. $570 million out of the UN’s regular budget. That will eliminate nearly 3000 headquarters positions. And for our contribution, it will reduce our assessment by $126 million. So just in the six months that we’ve been here, we will see going forward, $126 million savings to the U.S. taxpayer.
• We’ve also pushed for a 25% reduction in peacekeeping troops, and I’ll talk a bit about other peacekeeping reforms in a moment that will also save us tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars while enabling what we call here the repatriation, the sending home of poorly performing peacekeeping troops.
• From an oversight perspective, beyond the salaries and benefits, oversight is essential. We’re leading efforts to empower oversight bodies to root out waste, fraud, abuse, and misconduct.
• On peacekeeping reform, he said, the administration has been clear about focusing on the core mandate of peace and security, and we’re leading efforts to wind down some of these ineffective and costly peacekeeping missions.

“Some of them have been around for 30, 50, even 80 years. So, it’s one thing to stop a conflict, to insert an international force, to part ways with warring with the two sides, or to separate them to create the space for a political resolution.

“But it can’t then become an excuse to not have a political resolution. When you have a peacekeeping force, for example, in the DRC and Congo, at the cost of a billion dollars a year, that’s been there for 30 years—you can do the math and see how we have mission creep.

“So, what we’re looking to do is, as these peacekeeping forces come up for renewal, usually on an annual basis, tie them to a political process and use that as an opportunity to drive efficiencies along those lines, again, led by our reform team here that we have an ambassador, someone of an ambassador rank, dedicated to.

“This is just as a quick aside, the reimbursement for the equipment that these peacekeeping forces bring, sometimes to the tune of 10,000 18,000 soldiers. It’s quite significant. These countries were being reimbursed whether they used the equipment or not.

“All they had to do was bring it. So, there was an obvious incentive in place—and we received this feedback from the field—to not use the equipment very much, not have a lot of wear and tear, and countries would still receive the same level of reimbursement.

“We just negotiated new rules, the first time ever that put standards in place that the equipment actually has to be used for the peacekeeping force before you receive reimbursement. These are the kind of common-sense reforms that I think are pretty hard to argue with, although we received a lot of pushback, because for a lot of these countries, it’s a moneymaker for their ministries of defense. We were able to just get those reforms.

“Just a few examples: as we look to streamline these mandates, we’re also looking to draw some of them down. UNIFIL and Lebanon, we’ve made it clear, haven’t achieved their goals, haven’t lived up to its mandate and should be drawn down in the next year.

“We’re looking at a strategic review of the peacekeeping force in Western Sahara that has been there for 50 years. We are putting benchmarks in place for the peacekeeping force that’s in Southern Sudan. We just oversaw the orderly closure of UNAMI in Iraq, which will reduce costs by $87 million annually.

“We just pressed for closure of the special political mission in Yemen that will save $25 million annually. We streamlined missions in Colombia and Haiti, saving approximately $20 million annually. So again, these peacekeeping missions that solve problems do not exist indefinitely.

“On the humanitarian system, just as a personal aside, as someone who has served across Africa and the Middle East, I can’t tell you how many times I would pull up to this tiny ministry in a small country in Africa or in South Asia, and you have more UN vehicles in the parking lot than they have in their entire ministry from 16, 17, 18, different agencies, often with overlapping missions—all meaning well, all trying to help.

“But we’ve now pulled a lot of our funding that will force these agencies to use the same warehouses, use the same aviation, use the same vehicle fleets, and eliminate a lot of that duplication of waste in their back offices.

“So, moving forward, these reforms have made some significant steps. We have a long way to go—as I’m sure we’ll hear about today—to create a more focused, leaner and effective UN. We are just getting started.

“We’re building on this momentum heading into the next year with both long-overdue changes, the UN’s compensation system and pension plan, streamlining these peacekeeping missions, and halting waste that undermines effectiveness. And we’ll work with the UN leadership to align our reform agenda with the Secretary-General’s—what he calls his UN 80 mandate.

“We will have a new Secretary-General elected this year, and we’re having those conversations now with the candidates about what they seek to keep and continue or what new things they seek to put in place, but reform is at the top of our list as we meet with some of these candidates.

“So, this is a critical moment with senior leadership transitions approaching here over this next year. We need to have a clear message. We will prioritize qualified Americans. Representative DeLauro, along the lines of what you sought to do so many years ago, of having qualified Americans in UN leadership positions, not just here, but across the ecosystem in Geneva, in Vienna, and Nairobi and other places where you have UN agencies.

“And I’ll just conclude with echoing President Trump’s own words.

“As he said most recently at the General Assembly, the UN has tremendous potential. My charge from him is to help it realize that potential. We are dedicated to making the UN live up to that promise, to making the UN great again—if I can say so, our new acronym is MUNGA.

The UN is the one place where everyone can talk. If we walked away tomorrow—which neither I nor the president is advocating—it would be reinvented somewhere else. I will push hard and continuously to have it right here in the United States where it belongs.

And I look forward to keeping open dialogue with your committee. I thank you for the legislation, Chairman, that you pushed through. It adds additional arrows in our quiver to help make the UN great again,” declared Waltz.

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Credit: Michaela Stache/AFP

By Samuel King
BRUSSELS, Belgium, Mar 20 2026 (IPS)

When German Chancellor Friedrich Merz opened the 62nd Munich Security Conference by declaring that the post-war rules-based order ‘no longer exists’, there was plenty of evidence to back his claim. Israel is committing genocide in Gaza in defiance of international law, Russia is four years into its illegal invasion of Ukraine, the last nuclear arms control treaty between Russia and the USA has just expired and the USA has withdrawn from 66 international bodies and commitments. Since the conference, Israel and the USA have launched another war on Iran, threatening to spark a broader regional conflict. Meanwhile the UN is undergoing a funding crisis, cutting staff and programmes, and civil society organisations that relied on US Agency for International Development funding are facing closure.

Inaugurated in 1963 as a transatlantic defence meeting, the Munich Security Conference has grown into the most significant annual global security meeting, with heads of state, foreign ministers, civil society, think tanks and the media taking part. The 2026 edition focused on the theme ‘Under Destruction’ and convened over 1,000 participants from more than 115 countries, including over 60 national leaders, alongside China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the directors of multiple UN agencies.

The conference’s Munich Security Report 2026 provided the analytical backdrop. It argued that the world has entered a period of ‘wrecking-ball politics’, with the post-1945 order being demolished by political forces that prefer disruption to reform. The report’s Munich Security Index showed the scale of the crisis. In France, Germany and the UK, absolute majorities of respondents said their government’s policies would leave future generations worse off. Across most BRICS and G7 countries, the USA is now rated as a growing risk.

In the build-up the conference, the world had been bracing for Rubio’s keynote address. Last year, US Vice President JD Vance’s aggressive speech accused European governments of suppressing free speech and aligning with political extremism, with no apparent acknowledgement of irony. Rubio took a more conciliatory tone, calling Europe America’s ‘cherished allies and oldest friends’. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she was ‘very much reassured’. Half the hall rose to applaud.

The substance of the speech, however, followed every position Vance advanced the year before. Rubio defined the transatlantic relationship not around shared democratic institutions or international law, but around ‘Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, and ancestry’. This framing drew anger from global south delegates, who understood its explicit claim of global north cultural and racial superiority, excluding the majority of humanity.

The Trump administration was making a strategic calculation, having evidently concluded that Vance’s confrontational tone had backfired, bringing Europe closer to China and making it more reluctant to endorse US-led initiatives. So it switched to a softer messenger without changing the message.

Rubio’s post-conference itinerary made the USA’s current priorities clear. He flew directly from Munich to Budapest and Bratislava to meet two nationalist leaders, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico. Both are pro-Trump and friendly towards Vladimir Putin. These are the European politicians the Trump administration considers its true allies. Now the USA is planning to fund right-wing think tanks and charities across Europe in a blatant attempt to influence the continent’s politics.

Friedrich Merz’s diagnosis led to a historic and disturbing move: he and French President Emmanuel Macron announced they’d begun talks on extending France’s nuclear umbrella to cover other European countries. This is a development it would have been hard to imagine just a year ago. For decades European countries have based their security policies on NATO and its article 5, the collective defence commitment. But the Trump administration has threatened not to respect article 5, driving European states to embark on the long and expensive process of detaching themselves from relying on NATO. Now this evidently includes the exploration of nuclear alternatives.

Von der Leyen described the move as a ‘European awakening’ and called for a ‘mutual defence clause’ to be brought to life. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer called for ‘hard power’ and readiness to fight if necessary. Poland’s nationalist President Karol Nawrocki said his country should get nuclear weapons. By responding in this way to the unravelling of the multilateral order, European states are further weakening the norms of non-proliferation and arms control that the post-war order sought to sustain. Responding to crisis with a second nuclear arms race could bring still further instability. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was the only European leader at the conference to warn against this.

The conference’s conclusion was that those who care about the international order must build new institutions, coalitions and frameworks that are fit for purpose and accountable to the people they are supposed to serve. This reasonable framing sidesteps crucial questions: whose interests institutions will serve, and who’s excluded as the blueprints are drawn.

Instead of a new nuclear arms race, European states’ reaction to the fraying of their old alliances with the USA must be anchored in human rights, genuine multilateralism and a commitment to international law. This will only happen if civil society is present as a partner at the table.

It’s clear the old order is broken, and those committed to human rights and opposed to militarisation and naked power politics can’t afford to be bystanders. Their responses need to be more assertive and inclusive. A new international architecture that continues to exclude civil society and sideline the global south will simply reproduce the structures that have failed to address today’s crises.

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

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

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Muslim History Month poster- artist Siddhesh Gautam

By Mariya Salim
DELHI, India, Mar 18 2026 (IPS)

In public discourse today, Muslims often appear as subjects of debate rather than authors of their own histories. Discussions about Muslim societies tend to revolve around geopolitics, security or conflict, leaving little space for the cultural, artistic and intellectual traditions that have shaped Muslim communities across centuries.

Reclaiming these narratives is therefore about reclaiming narrative authority. As a Muslim woman, I have often seen how Muslim voices are sidelined even when conversations centre on our own communities and pasts. It was within this context that I started Muslim History Month, together with my friend and colleague Ashwini KP, currently UN Special Rapporteur on Racism, in 2020, choosing to mark it during the month of Ramadan. Hosted on www.zariya.online, the initiative emerged from a simple conviction: communities must have the space to document and narrate their own histories.

Mariya Salim

They remind us that history is not only about remembering the past but also about challenging exclusion and reshaping how societies understand themselves. Muslim History Month builds on this legacy by creating a platform where Muslims, and others who are allies, themselves reflect on the diversity, complexity and richness of their historical and cultural experiences.

What began as a modest collaborative project has since developed into a global platform bringing together writers, scholars, artists and activists to explore overlooked dimensions of Muslim histories. Contributors have written from Egypt, the United States, Palestine, Nepal and Russia, among others, representing a range of communities including Pasmanda, Tsakhurs, Roma and Uyghur Muslims. This year alone there are contributors from over 6 countries, from Lebanon and Palestine to India, Egypt and Indonesia.

The urgency of documenting these histories is reflected in the commitment of the contributors themselves. Rima Barakat, an academic in Islamic Art History from the Lebanese American University (LAU), wrote her contribution this year from Beirut. Explaining why she chose to participate in our endeavour despite living amid ongoing conflict, she observed:

“War always incites me to act culturally and to contribute amidst political turmoil. Historically, during World War I and World War II, artists and writers produced prolifically and contributed to sustaining a cultural economy. That is what I do today and how survival is measured by cultural and artistic endurance.”

Mihrab at the Jami Masjid, 17th century, Bijapur, India. Photo- Author Rajarshi Sengupta

Her words capture something fundamental about the role of culture in difficult times. Artistic expression is often treated as secondary to more immediate political realities. Yet history repeatedly shows that culture can become one of the most powerful ways communities endure, remember and rebuild.

The first edition of Muslim History Month brought together writers from different parts of the world to document overlooked aspects of Muslim communities. Contributors wrote about subjects ranging from Sheedi Muslims in Pakistan to what Ramadan/Ramzaan means. The second edition shifted the focus toward Muslim women from across the world who are no longer with us, many of whose contributions have faded from historical memory, from architect Zaha Hadid to Indian Spy Noor Inayat Khan. By revisiting their lives and work, the edition sought to address the erasures that often shape how Muslim women’s life and experiences are recorded.

The third edition, launched this year, turns its attention to Muslim art and architecture. Rather than limiting the discussion to monumental structures or gallery-based art alone, the edition explores a wider spectrum of creative practices. Art and architecture here include performance traditions, Calligraphy and mosque architecture, craft practices like Rogan Art, cultural rituals like wearing Amulets and everyday acts of creativity through which communities’ express faith, identity and belonging.

One of the contributions by Kawther Alkholy Ramadan in Canada for instance reflects on the aftermath of the Afzaal family murders in London, Ontario. In 2021, the Afzaal family was deliberately targeted and killed in an act of anti-Muslim violence that deeply affected the local community. Rather than focusing solely on the violence of the attack, Ramadan’s piece examines how Muslim women responded through creative and cultural expression.

Stories such as these challenge conventional assumptions about what counts as art. They show how creativity often emerges most powerfully in moments of crisis, when communities search for ways to process trauma and reaffirm their presence.

Another contribution from Indonesia by Adzka Haniina Albarri, for instance explores the performative art known as Shalawat Musawa. Shalawat refers to devotional invocations offered by Muslims in honour of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) The article examines how Shalawat Musawa has become a space where discussions around gender equality can be articulated. By encouraging women’s participation in a devotional practice historically dominated by men, performers are using art to engage with evolving debates about gender and social justice.

Across the edition, similar stories emerge from different parts of the world. Some pieces engage with contemporary artists, including an interview with world renowned Tunisian calligrapher Karim Jabbari, articles by Palestinian jewellery designer Mai Zarkawi and Egyptian academic Balsam Abdul Rahman Saleh. Others explore artistic traditions shaped by migration, diaspora and local cultural histories.

Muslim History Month III highlights how artistic expression remains embedded in everyday life. From neighbourhood cultural initiatives, architectural marvels, discussions on the Bihari Script Quran in Dallas Museum, to devotional performances, these practices reveal how creativity continues to shape the social and spiritual landscapes of Muslim communities.

They also illustrate the diversity within Muslim cultural production. Muslim societies are far from monolithic, and neither are their artistic traditions.

At a time when public discourse frequently reduces Muslims to political headlines or security narratives, these stories offer an important counterpoint. They remind us that Muslim histories are also histories of creativity, scholarship, craftsperson-ship and cultural exchange.

Documenting these histories is itself an act of preservation. History, and for that matter the present that remains unwritten, are easily forgotten or misrepresented. When communities claim authority to narrate their own pasts and present, they challenge the structures that have historically excluded them from broader cultural narratives. Therefore, Muslim History Month, then, is not only about looking back. It is also about shaping how Muslim histories will be understood in the future.

As Rima Barakat’s reflection from Beirut reminds us, even in times marked by war and uncertainty, cultural production persists. For many communities, it is precisely through artistic endurance that survival itself is measured.

Beyond the stereotypes and headlines that dominate public discourse lies a far richer narrative, one shaped by art, architecture, memory and the collective imagination of communities determined to tell their own stories.

Mariya Salim is co-founder of Zariya. She is a Human Rights activist and an international SGBV expert based in Delhi India.
https://zariya.online/category/muslim-history-month-iii/

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A gathering organised for the families of victims of Duterte's war on drugs in Quezon City ahead of the opening of the ICC confirmation hearing. The signs which are held up in a few of the pictures read: 'Justice! Jail everyone involved in the war on drugs.' Credit: IDEFEND

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Mar 17 2026 (IPS)

Gito* had just arrived at his father’s house in Caloocan City in the Philippines on December 7, 2016, when three armed policemen burst into the home, grabbed his father, took him outside and shot him multiple times. Gito told IPS his father had put his hands up when the officers told him they had come to arrest him, but they opened fire anyway.

Then they turned on Gito, who was 15 at the time and had come to see his father to get his lunch money for school. He says they told him his father was a drug dealer and that he would be facing charges because he was with him. He was taken away and tortured – beaten and forced to drink urine – and later jailed for three years. He and his four siblings were all forcibly separated; his mother’s mental health deteriorated, and even after release, Gito needed years of mental health help.

Andrea*, from the same city, told IPS a similar story. One day in October 2017, she and her husband and father-in-law were watching television at their home when two men wearing masks and black jackets and carrying guns burst in, shouting the name of a person none of them knew. Despite their protestations, the two men executed her husband and father-in-law, shooting them many times while they knelt in front of them. Andrea, who was five months pregnant at the time, was also injured in the shooting – a bullet hit her leg.

A priest prays at a gathering organised for the families of victims of Duterte’s war on drugs in Quezon City, ahead of the opening of the ICC confirmation hearing. Credit: IDEFEND

Left without any means of income with both the family’s breadwinners dead, she had to drop out of the vocational course she was on and spiralled into a deep depression. She eventually recovered. “When I looked at my baby, I saw my husband in her, so I picked myself up and faced life bravely,” she explained. She said, though, it is still hard financially, as she also supports her mother-in-law.

Gito’s father, and Andrea’s husband and father-in-law, were just a few of the estimated tens of thousands of victims of the brutally repressive anti-drugs policy implemented by former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte.

For years, people like Gito and Andrea have fought an often seemingly futile battle for justice for their loved ones even as local and international rights groups have detailed the horrific crimes committed under Duterte’s “war on drugs”.

But a recent hearing at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands, has given them, and others, hope that they could see justice.

Both Gito and Andrea, along with other relatives of people who were killed under Duterte’s violent crackdown on drug use, were at the Hague during confirmation hearings between February 23 and 27 to decide whether Duterte should stand trial on charges of crimes against humanity linked to his deadly anti-drug crackdown.

Launched in 2016, it remains one of the deadliest anti-narcotics campaigns in modern history, activists say. While official police figures show 6,252 people killed by May 2022, human rights groups estimate there could have been as many as 30,000 deaths, including vigilante-style executions.

The case against Duterte covers 49 incidents of alleged murder and attempted murder, involving 78 victims, including children. But prosecutors at the hearing said these incidents are only a fraction of the thousands of killings attributed to police and hired hitmen during Duterte’s anti-drug campaign.

At the trial the prosecution said that Duterte played a “pivotal” role in a campaign of extrajudicial killings that saw thousands murdered, alleging he personally drew up death lists, incited murders and then boasted about them afterwards.

The court was shown videos of Duterte threatening to murder alleged drug users and boasting of his own skills in extrajudicial killing.

Statements from victims’ relatives submitted at the trial also highlighted the devastating toll the repressive policy had taken on not just individual families but also wider communities which were already impoverished and marginalised.

Illegal drug use in impoverished communities was often a mechanism, the prosecution said when submitting witness testimony, to cope with terrible living conditions. They said victims’ marginalised and vulnerable conditions were exacerbated exponentially when targeted by police and that the campaign against them targeted their humanity.

The prosecution pointed out that victims were often killed in front of their families, usually in their homes and local neighbourhoods, which subsequently became crime scenes. Following the killings, the families were left with not just lasting personal trauma but stigma within their close-knit communities.

Meanwhile, by targeting marginalised groups, law enforcement authorities were specifically going after those who would be least likely to be able to file complaints in the domestic justice system, human rights lawyers at the hearing argued. They said this was calculated to ensure no one was held accountable ultimately for what happened.

Duterte’s defence claimed the 80-year-old did not issue specific orders to kill drug suspects as part of his policy to take down the illegal drug trade in the country. They said that what actions he took were within the law. Duterte himself waived his right to attend the hearing and said he does not recognise the court’s authority.

The ICC has 60 days in which to issue a decision on whether to proceed with the case against Duterte, ask for more evidence, or stop the process against him.

Activists who were at the trial have expressed hope that the case against him will go ahead.

“It was very clear that the prosecution had enough [evidence] to convince the judges that the case should proceed to trial.

“The truth of the matter is that the evidence presented by the prosecution was backed up by true narratives by witnesses and by families themselves who saw how their loved ones were killed,” Rowena Legaspi, spokesperson for the Philippine group In Defense of Rights and Dignity Movement (IDEFEND), told IPS.

Both Gito and Andrea said they were convinced of the strength of the evidence presented, although Gito admitted he feared Duterte might still somehow not be tried.

“This is a grave concern for me. There are fears around political interference or procedural issues that Duterte’s defence may raise in an attempt to stop the proceedings. But I also trust the ICC process and the sufficient documents they have,” he said.

Activists also see the fact that the confirmation hearings have taken place at all as a step towards justice for the victims of Duterte’s drug crackdown.

“For the families of the victims in the court and those watching back in the Philippines, this was like seeing light at the end of the dark day when Duterte was the president. Reaching this stage of confirmation charges continues to at least gradually break the pain that is embedded in them,” Legaspi added.

“This case moving to trial is a step towards healing for all of us,” said Andrea.

Campaigners also see it as essential to ongoing campaigning for justice in the Philippines.

For years, domestic institutions failed to deliver justice, local rights groups say, with findings by rights institutions stonewalled, courts offering no meaningful accountability, and families of victims silenced by fear.

And while Duterte’s arrest and transfer to The Hague was a breakthrough in itself, activists say. They also point out that at the same time, his allies at home continue to push immunity bills and resolutions questioning ICC jurisdiction.

IDEFEND said the hearings are a political and moral test of whether international law can pierce impunity and whether Filipino society will stand with victims against state-sanctioned violence and a litmus test of the Filipino people’s pursuit of accountability.

“Duterte’s arrest and the ICC process prove persistence matters. Leaders cannot forever hide behind power, sovereignty, or dynasties. The law may be slow, but history bends toward accountability when people insist on truth.

“This case is not just about putting Duterte on trial. It affirms that the lives lost — mostly the poor and voiceless — mattered. It restores dignity to families. It exposes the machinery of state violence. And it warns future leaders that mass killings will not be tolerated,” Legaspi said.

“It also challenges the culture of impunity shielding not just Duterte but also his enablers and successors. Senate resolutions, immunity bills, and denial campaigns show the fight is far from over. But every manoeuvre is proof of accountability’s power: they are afraid because truth is catching up,” she added.

Meanwhile, other drug policy reform campaigners say it serves as an example of the massive damage that can be caused by repressive drug policies and sends a strong signal to other leaders implementing similarly brutal, hardline anti-drug campaigns.

“The large-scale human rights violations committed under Duterte’s war on drugs – which have resulted in tens of thousands of extrajudicial killings – are one of the starkest examples of the devastating impacts of punitive drug policies. And the Philippines is not an isolated case. Around the world, lethal force continues to be justified in the name of drug control – mostly in contexts of entrenched impunity,” Marie Nougier, Head of Research and Communications at the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), told IPS.

“The decision by the International Criminal Court to pursue the case of Duterte sends an important signal: drug control cannot be used as a pretext for unlawful killings and the erosion of fundamental rights, and that political leaders are not beyond the reach of international law,” she added.

Back in the Philippines, the drug policies Duterte implemented remain in place and there continue to be drug-related killings, although not at the levels seen under Duterte.

And nearly a decade on from when Duterte’s hardline policies were introduced, only nine police officers have been convicted. Rights groups such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) say the vast majority of those responsible, including senior officials, have not faced any repercussions.

Legaspi said there have been some bills introduced by lawmakers on possible investigations of extrajudicial killings and discussion of treating drug use as a health issue rather than criminal and looking at harm-reduction measures to combat it.

She added, though, that Duterte’s drug policies had “an impact so huge that it continues to be felt to this day”.

Both Gito and Andrea said they were hopeful the hearings may bring about some change in the country’s drug policy.

In the meantime, though, both are waiting to see what the ICC decides and hoping for justice.

“For me, justice will be fully served when Duterte has been convicted and his co-perpetrators of the drug war have also been arrested, detained, and convicted. That is justice for me,” said Gito.

*Identity protected for their safety.
IPS UN Bureau Report

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Unsplash Fort of Goree Island, Senegal, was the site of one of the earliest European settlements in Western Africa. Source UN News
The calls for reparatory justice can no longer be ignored, speakers at the fourth session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on African Descent said last April.
They urged greater collaboration between governments, civil society and regional organizations to create a system that would compensate Africa and the African diaspora for the enduring legacies of colonialism, enslavement, apartheid and genocide between the 16th and 19th centuries. “Africa was under siege,” said Hilary Brown, speaking on behalf of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) about the 300 years of enslavement and exploitation on the continent. “Her political, economic and social systems thrown into chaotic instability as Europe plundered the continent for her most valuable asset, her people.”

By Kester Kenn Klomegah
MOSCOW, Mar 13 2026 (IPS)

Professor Jude Osakwe—a Nigerian scholar at the Namibian University of Science and Technology (NUST) and Continental Chairman of the Nigerians in Diaspora Organisation Africa (NIDOAF)—has reiterated the absolute truth over Reparations for Africa, noting that African governments have consistently expressed only ’emotional solidarity’ over Reparations instead of tackling and addressing, with seriousness, this pertinent issue within the context of diplomacy.

He strongly believes that despite sharp political and cultural diversity influencing developments, African leaders can still adopt a collective strategy in pursuit of advantageous aspirations for sustaining continental sovereignty. The concept of Pan-Africanism is noticeably fragmented while grassroot movements lack strategic coordination.

Here are excerpts from the interview:

How well do African people represent the continent on Reparations and Pan-Africanism?

Professor Jude Osakwe: Honestly, inadequately, but not without effort. Representation is fragmented. The loudest voices on reparations often come from the Caribbean and African-American communities, while continental Africans, remain largely sidelined in that global conversation.

Pan-Africanism as an ideology is more spoken about than practiced. There is emotional solidarity, but very little structural unity. The honest reality is that African governments have not made reparations a serious diplomatic priority, and grassroots movements lack the coordination to pressure them to do so.

Does the diaspora media landscape affect how these topics are viewed in a Western light?

Professor Osakwe: Absolutely.

Western media frames Pan-Africanism as either nostalgic romanticism or a political threat, and frames reparations as a Black American issue, effectively erasing the continental African dimension entirely. As an African in the diaspora, you are constantly navigating between your own lived framework and a media environment that either misrepresents or ignores your perspective.

This creates a psychological burden, you must actively resist the dominant narrative just to maintain an accurate self-understanding. African diaspora media exists, but it remains underfunded and underreached compared to mainstream outlets, which means the Western framing dominates public discourse by default.

What are the measures for upholding African identity in the diaspora, and diaspora contributions amid geopolitical shifts?

Professor Osakwe: Key measures:

• Intentional cultural transmission, language, history, and values must be actively taught, not assumed
• Building diaspora institutions that are African-led, not just African-themed
• Political engagement both in host countries and in countries of origin
• Economic networking through platforms like NIDO that connect diaspora professionals to continental development

On geopolitical contributions: The current moment, with Africa renegotiating relationships with Western powers, China, Russia, and Gulf states, is actually an opportunity for the diaspora. Diaspora Africans sitting inside Western governments, universities, and financial institutions carry real leverage.

The question is whether that leverage gets used collectively or dissipates individually. Remittances already outpace foreign aid to many African countries. What’s needed now is moving beyond remittances to strategic investment, policy advocacy, and knowledge transfer, turning the diaspora from a financial lifeline into a genuine development partner.

Kester Kenn Klomegah focuses on current geopolitical changes, foreign relations and economic development-related questions in Africa with external countries. Most of his well-resourced articles are reprinted in several reputable foreign media.

IPS UN Bureau

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And young people are ready to lead them.

Edited by Dr Hanna Yoon

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Excerpt:

Credit: Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)

By Azza Karam
NEW YORK, Mar 6 2026 (IPS)

In recent months, the language surrounding the escalating confrontation between the United States, Israel, and Iran has taken on a tone that should trouble anyone concerned with global peace.

Across television studios, online sermons, and political commentary, some American preachers and commentators have begun describing the conflict not merely as geopolitics or national security, but as a “holy war.”

Reporting in outlets such as The Guardian, along with coverage in other international media, has noted the growing number of Christian nationalist and Evangelical voices framing the Middle Eastern conflict in explicitly theological terms.

Certain Evangelical preachers in the United States have long interpreted tensions involving Israel through apocalyptic or biblical narratives. In these interpretations, the confrontation with Iran is sometimes presented as part of a divinely ordained struggle between good and evil.

In sermons broadcast online and amplified through social media, the war is described as a moment in which believers must stand with Israel in a battle perceived as spiritually consequential – even leading to ‘the rapture’.

The rhetoric is not limited to pulpits. Some former military figures and commentators have echoed similar themes, invoking civilizational language that portrays the confrontation with Iran as part of a broader clash between Judeo-Christian civilization and an Islamic adversary.

When such language enters strategic discourse, it transforms political conflict into something far more dangerous: a war imbued with sacred meaning.

History shows that once wars are framed as sacred struggles, compromise becomes nearly impossible. Political conflicts can, at least in theory, be negotiated. Holy wars, by contrast, are perceived as battles for divine truth. In that framing, negotiation is betrayal.

This phenomenon is not unique to the current Middle Eastern crisis. Religious legitimization of war has surfaced repeatedly in contemporary conflicts. At the outbreak of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, for example, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, framed the war in spiritual terms.

In sermons and public statements, he suggested the conflict represented a metaphysical struggle over the moral future of the Russian world. The language of spiritual warfare, cultural purification, and civilizational defence became intertwined with political justification for military action.

Such rhetoric matters. When religious authority sanctifies violence, it grants moral legitimacy to warfare and discourages dissent among believers. Faith communities that might otherwise advocate peace can become mobilized behind nationalistic or militaristic agendas.

We are therefore witnessing something deeply unsettling: the return of explicitly religious language to modern warfare. For decades after the Second World War, global diplomacy attempted—imperfectly but deliberately—to frame conflicts primarily in political and legal terms.

International institutions, treaties, and multilateral frameworks were designed to prevent precisely the kind of civilizational framing that once fueled centuries of bloodshed.

Yet the present moment suggests that these restraints are weakening. Wars are again being narrated as existential struggles between belief systems. Political leaders, clergy, and media personalities increasingly draw upon religious symbolism to rally support.

The danger is not simply rhetorical. When wars are sacralized, they risk becoming limitless conflicts, unconstrained by borders or diplomacy.

The Collapse of Multilateralism and the Silence of Faith Institutions

For years, I have written and spoken about the uneasy relationship between religion, global governance, and peacebuilding. In articles as well as in interviews and public lectures, I have repeatedly warned that governments and intergovernmental entities have failed to develop a coherent framework for engaging religions constructively in international affairs.

Faith-based organizations today are everywhere. They participate in humanitarian work, development programs, diplomacy initiatives, and interfaith dialogues. International institutions increasingly acknowledge the importance of religious actors in peacebuilding and development. Conferences, seminars, department programmes, global initiatives on “religion and …” or “faith and …” are not only commonplace, but proliferating.

Yet despite this apparent proliferation of engagement, the deeper structural problem remains unresolved: religious actors themselves remain profoundly fragmented, as are the political protagonists dealing with them.

Rather than forming robust alliances capable of confronting violence carried out in the name of religion, many faith organizations continue to operate within narrow institutional or theological boundaries. Interfaith initiatives exist, but they often remain symbolic—highly visible yet limited in their capacity to challenge political power or mobilize believers at scale.

I have argued that religious organizations too often underestimate their responsibility in shaping public narratives around conflict, and doing so together. When religion is invoked to legitimize violence, silence from religious leaders becomes complicity.

At the same time, the broader international system that might once have moderated such dynamics is itself under strain. The erosion of multilateralism has been one of the defining features of the past decade. International institutions that once served as mediators of global crises increasingly appear weakened or sidelined.

The United Nations Security Council remains gridlocked. International law is invoked selectively – if at all. Great-power competition has returned with renewed intensity. In such an environment, appeals to universal norms carry less weight.

Alongside this institutional weakening has come a worrying rise in authoritarianism worldwide. Governments across regions have adopted increasingly illiberal practices—restricting civil liberties, marginalizing minorities, and suppressing dissent. In many cases, religion is instrumentalized to reinforce nationalist narratives or legitimize political authority.

This combination—the decline of multilateral governance and the rise of politicized religion—creates a volatile global environment. Without strong international frameworks to mediate disputes, imperialist narratives and actions gain traction – as in Trump’s and Netanyahu’s war against Iran. Religion, ethnicity, and culture become tools through which political conflicts are interpreted and mobilized.

Faith-based organizations, despite their potential influence, have struggled to counter this trend effectively. Some remain focused on humanitarian services rather than confronting the ideological narratives that legitimize violence. Most hesitate to challenge political authorities with whom they maintain close relationships, and seek financial and/or political backing.

As a result, the global religious landscape today is marked by a paradox: religion is increasingly present in global discourse, yet its potential as a force for peace remains under-realized.

Islamophobia and the Seeds of a Wider Religious Conflict

Perhaps the most troubling dimension of the present moment is the resurgence of Islamophobia as a powerful political force in international discourse.

For more than two decades following the attacks of September 11, 2001, narratives portraying Islam as inherently linked to extremism became deeply embedded in political rhetoric and media representation across many Western societies.

Despite sustained efforts by scholars, religious leaders, and civil society actors to challenge these narratives, they continue to shape public perceptions.

In the context of the current confrontation with Iran, such narratives risk reinforcing the perception that the conflict is not merely geopolitical but civilizational. When Iran is framed not simply as a state actor but as a representative of a threatening Islamic force, the conflict becomes symbolically larger than any single nation.

The danger is clear: political wars are becoming interpreted as religious wars.

If such framing takes hold, the implications extend far beyond the Middle East. Conflicts that are perceived as religious struggles can mobilize believers across borders. They can radicalize communities, fuel sectarian polarization, and undermine the fragile coexistence of diverse religious populations.

History provides sobering examples. The European wars of religion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries devastated entire regions, entangling political power struggles with theological disputes. Once religious identity became intertwined with warfare, violence spread across kingdoms and empires.

Today’s globalized world is even more interconnected. Diaspora communities, digital media, and transnational networks allow narratives of conflict to circulate instantly across continents. A war perceived as targeting Islam could ignite tensions in communities thousands of miles away from the battlefield.

Similarly, religious nationalism in multiple regions—whether Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim—has been gaining strength in recent years. When one religiously framed conflict emerges, it can reinforce others. Narratives of civilizational struggle feed upon each other.

As the confrontation between the United States, Israel, and Iran becomes widely interpreted through a religious lens, the consequences may be profound. Christian–Muslim tensions, already strained in many contexts, could escalate dramatically. Such conflicts would not respect national borders. They would unfold within societies, across communities, and through global networks of believers.

Ironically, this escalation occurs at a time when religious leaders frequently emphasize the peace-promoting teachings of their traditions. Interfaith initiatives celebrate dialogue, coexistence, and shared values. Religious texts across traditions contain powerful injunctions toward compassion, justice, and reconciliation.

Yet these ideals remain fragile when confronted with political realities.

If religious institutions fail to challenge narratives that sanctify violence, they risk becoming spectators to a new era of religious conflict. Worse still, they may be drawn into it.

Are “Religions” Truly for Peace?

We may therefore be standing at the threshold of a profoundly dangerous historical moment.

Religious language is once again being used to justify war. Political conflicts are increasingly framed as civilizational struggles. Multilateral institutions that once mediated global disputes appear weakened. And faith communities—despite their moral authority—have yet to mount a unified challenge to the narratives that sacralize violence.

None of this means that religion inevitably leads to war. On the contrary, religious traditions contain some of humanity’s most powerful ethical teachings about peace, justice, and compassion. Faith communities have played vital roles in reconciliation processes, humanitarian action, and social movements for justice.

But these possibilities are not automatic. They depend on conscious choices by religious leaders, institutions, and believers.

If religious actors allow their traditions to be mobilized in support of political violence, then religion will become part of the problem rather than the solution.

The question confronting us today is therefore both urgent and uncomfortable.

At a moment when wars are increasingly described as sacred struggles, when geopolitical conflicts are interpreted through religious narratives, and when Islamophobia and other forms of religious prejudice continue to spread, we must ask ourselves: How are religions truly forces for peace?

Prof. Azza Karam, PhD. is President, Lead Integrity

IPS UN Bureau

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Credit: Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 3 2026 (IPS)

As the build-up for a proposed “new world order” continues, a lingering question remains: will the country with the most powerful military reign supreme?

The United Nations remains politically impotent. The UN charter is in tatters. The sovereignty of nation states and their territorial integrity have been reduced to political mockery. And the law of the jungle prevails—be it Palestine, Ukraine, Venezuela or Iran.

What’s next: Colombia? Cuba? Greenland? North Korea?

The widespread condemnation of the ongoing conflicts – including charges of war crimes and genocide— has continue to fall on deaf ears.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council that under Article 2 of the UN Charter, all member states shall “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”

But is anybody out there listening?

Norman Solomon, executive director, Institute for Public Accuracy and national director, RootsAction.org, told IPS killing from the sky has long offered the sort of detachment that warfare on the ground can’t match. Far from its victims, air power remains the height of modernity

Reliance on overwhelming air power is key to what the U.S. is doing in tandem with Israel. Bombing from the skies while not attacking with ground forces is the ultimate way of killing without suffering many casualties.

This reduces political blowback at home in a political and media culture that values American lives but sees the lives of “others” as readily expendable, he pointed out.

“This flagrant war of shameless aggression, launched by the United States and Israel, cannot be contained — much less rolled back — by the typical diplomatic euphemisms and caution.”

The U.S. and Israeli governments, said Solomon, are too completely run by psychopathic leaders who adhere only to the “principle” that might makes right. If ever there were a time that the vaunted “international community” should step up and confront an alliance of reckless outlaw governments, this is it.

The European allies of the United States, he said, should stop their cowardly vagueness and finally step up to demand a halt to this aggression that is setting the Middle East tinderbox on fire. The EU should be threatening huge countermeasures against the United States and Israel unless that pair of sociopathic governments immediately halts their assault on Iran.

“Playing evasive games with Washington makes the leaders in London, Paris, Berlin and elsewhere accomplices to methodical ongoing war crimes”, declared Solomon, author of “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine”

According to the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, the US-Israeli act of aggression against Iran was undertaken in violation of international law and the UN Charter, as they exercised use of force without authorization from the UN Security Council (UNSC) or without a demonstrated threat to their security that would trigger the right to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter.

“The attack came amid ongoing nuclear talks between the US and Iran and just hours after Oman’s Foreign Minister – a key mediator in the negotiations – shared details on progress achieved and announced that a breakthrough was near. The attack also mirrors the recent unlawful actions undertaken by the US in Venezuela on 3 January, culminating in the kidnapping of the head of state and setting in motion profound uncertainty for the region and the global order.”

Meanwhile, the Geneva-based UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, said it is deeply concerned about the escalation of conflict in the Middle East and its impact on civilians and further displacement in the region.

“Many affected countries already host millions of refugees and internally displaced people. Further violence risks overwhelming humanitarian capacities and placing additional pressure on host communities”.

“We echo the UN Secretary-General’s urgent call for dialogue and de-escalation, respect for human rights, the protection of civilians and full adherence to international law”.

James Jennings, President of Conscience International, told IPS the joint US-Israeli attack on Iran was misguided, illegal, and based on lies. It will retard, not advance, any future nuclear agreement, perhaps for decades.

It was illegal, he pointed out, because it violates both the US constitution and international law as enshrined in the UN Charter. It was based on lies because the nuclear watchdog groups have clearly indicated in essence that “There’s nothing to see here.”

“Trump regularly claims that June’s joint “Operation Midnight Hammer” obliterated Iran’s nuclear capability, yet his weak case for the current “Operation Epic Fury” war rests on the idea that perhaps someday in the future Iran might get a bomb. Several US administrations have worked diplomatically to prevent that, yet Trump tore the agreement up”.

Trump claims to be limited by no law, constitution, or the UN Charter. Guided only by his own morality, as he said recently, he followed Israel obediently in launching a massive war against a sleeping country of 92 million people, said Jennings.

“All the while, his amateur diplomats were negotiating deceptively for a compromise like Imperial Japan did in the run-up to the WW II Pearl Harbor attack. Ask the parents of the more than l00 schoolgirls killed on the first horrifying day of joint US-Israel bomb attacks at Minaj, Iran, and they will probably not see Mr. Trump as particularly moral”.

George W. Bush called himself “The Decider, so he foolishly decided to take the US into two unwinnable wars that most politicians in Washington, and even Trump himself, now consider monumental mistakes. Trump campaigned vigorously on keeping the US out of mistaken Middle East wars that became “Forever Wars,” said Jennings.

“Yet here he is being pulled around by the nose by Mr. Netanyahu. According to a classic rule when launching a war, one must recognize that two things cannot be changed: one is history and the other is geography. It is stunning that the leader of the United States is cavalier about going to war without understanding that or clearly stating the mission’s purpose or end game.”

Pundits and TV reporters are calling the attack on Iran “a war of choice,” said Jennings.

“Why not call it what it really is–a war of naked aggression? Nobody knows when will it end. Trump’s claim that the war will be over in a few days is a cruel joke. The other side gets a vote. Iran celebrated its 2,500th anniversary in 1971. Maybe people who have been around so long know a few things about survival,” declared Jennings.

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Secretary-General António Guterres attends the Security Council meeting on the situation in the Middle East. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe.

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 2 2026 (IPS)

The United States and Israel launched a joint military strike on Iran on February 28. Iran followed with military strikes on Israeli bases and on Arab Gulf states, including Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. The realized threat of a new war has caused alarm for the security situation in the Middle East and its impact on civilian populations.

While the latest outbreak of fighting unfolded in the Middle East, the UN Security Council in New York convened an emergency meeting to deliberate over the military attacks in Iran. The session was convened at the request of Iran and members of the Security Council.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres briefed the Council on the situation up to that point and condemned the escalating hostilities. “We are witnessing a grave threat to international peace and security. Military action carries the risk of igniting a chain of events that no one can control in the most volatile region of the world,” he warned.

Under Article 2 of the UN Charter, all member states shall “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state,” Guterres reminded the Council. He reiterated that there would be no “viable alternative to the peaceful settlement of international disputes” and that “lasting peace” could only be accomplished through diplomatic negotiations.

Guterres also noted that the U.S.-Israeli strikes took place following the latest round of indirect negotiations between the U.S. and Iran mediated by Oman, which were expected to lead into further political talks. “I deeply regret that this opportunity of diplomacy has been squandered.”

According to Iran, the U.S.-Israeli strikes constituted a clear violation of the UN Charter and a threat to international peace and security. Sayed Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s Foreign Minister, said in a letter addressed to Guterres that in response to the aggression, Iran was invoking its right to self-defense under Article 51 of the Charter. This outlines that the Charter shall not “impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense,” and that any actions taken by member states to exercise their right to self-defense must be “immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and the responsibility” of the Council to take actions as it “deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.”

“The United States and the Israeli regime shall bear full and direct responsibility for all ensuing consequences, including any escalation arising from their unlawful actions,” Aragchi said. Noting the “grave and far-reaching consequences” of a regional conflict, Aragchi wrote of the collective responsibility of the UN and the Security Council to take immediate action and to “discharge their duties without delay.”

Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani of Iran reiterated the point before the Security Council, remarking on the threat to the country’s sovereignty and that actions taken by the U.S. and Israel were in violation of the UN Charter. There is also the added context that the first round of U.S.-Israeli strikes killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Some members of the Council spoke against Iran’s military actions on Saturday and against the regime under Khanmenei as it related to its nuclear program and its “appalling violence and repression against its own people.” The U.K., France and Germany jointly condemned the regime and its attacks on countries in the region.

Acting Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom James Kariuki remarked that the present was a “fragile moment for the Middle East.” As the president of the Security Council for the month of February, Kariuki noted that Iran “repeatedly ignored calls” for a solution to its nuclear program and the seeming lack of cooperation with the IAEA. He stated that Iran “must refrain from further strikes, and its appalling behavior, to allow a path back to diplomacy. ”

“My country, which is a champion of peace and coexistence, never expected to be targeted by wanton aggressions without any justification,” said Bahrain Ambassador Jamal Al Rowaiei. Bahrain was one of the Gulf states targeted by Iranian military forces and currently sits on the Security Council as an elected member. Al Rowaiei condemned Iran for its attacks on residential areas and vital facilities—including a U.S. Navy base—and called for all in “containing this crisis” to protect the stability of the region.

Other member states remarked on the threats to international peace and security. In condemning the military attacks on Iran and the Arab Gulf states, Pakistan Ambassador Asim Ahmad regretted that “diplomacy has once again been derailed,” referring to the negotiations between the U.S. and Iran. “These military actions undermine dialogue and further erode trust that was already in short supply,” said Ahmad.

Echoing Guterres’ sentiments, other UN entities and leaders reiterated calls to continue negotiations and to respect international law. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), said that he was “deeply troubled” by the situation in the Middle East and expressed that world leaders should choose the “challenging path of dialogue” over the “senseless route of destruction.”

“My heart goes out to the civilians trapped in the crossfire. Regardless of borders, everyone deserves to live without the threat of violence around them,” he said.

Across Iran, civilian infrastructures have been destroyed, leading to scores of casualties. Of note, schools have been bombed by Israeli airstrikes, including a girls’ elementary school in Minab in Hormozgan province in southern Iran. As of March 1, the death toll from this strike has risen to 165, according to state sources.

UNICEF issued a statement shortly after the school bombings, warning that the “weekend’s military escalation in the Middle East marks a dangerous moment for millions of children in the region.” They called for an immediate end to the hostilities and for all parties to uphold their obligations to international humanitarian and human rights law, including the protection of children. “Targeting civilians and civilian objects, including schools, is a violation of international law.”

“Bombs and missiles are not the way to resolve differences but only result in death, destruction and human misery,” said Volker Türk, the UN Human Rights Chief. He added that all parties must de-escalate and return to the negotiating table and warned that failing to do so would only lead to further “senseless civilian deaths” and “destruction on a potentially unimaginable scale.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said that they were “closely monitoring” developments, urging restraint to “avoid any nuclear safety risks.”

The U.S. will take over as president of the Security Council in March. It will be a matter of waiting to see the role that this institution will play in protecting the principles of international law and preventing further loss of civilian lives.

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The General Assembly adopted a resolution in 2012 granting Palestine the status of non-member observer State in the United Nations. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 26 2026 (IPS)

The 193-member General Assembly, the highest-ranking policy-making body at the United Nations, is most likely to elect Palestine as its next President in an unprecedented move voting for a “non-member observer state”—a state deprived of a country to represent.

The Secretariat has received three nominations for the position of President of the General Assembly beginning mid-September. In accordance with the established regional rotation, the President of the 81st session will be elected from the Asia-Pacific Group.

The election will be held on June 2, with three nominations so far: Md. Touhid Hossain (Bangladesh), Andreas S. Kakouris (Cyprus) and Riyad Mansour (Palestine).

According to geographical rotation, it will be the turn of the Asia-Pacific Group to nominate a candidate– with the final election by the General Assembly.

The current front-runner, according to diplomatic sources, is Palestine. In virtually all UN resolutions relating to Palestine, it has continued to receive an overwhelming majority of votes in the General Assembly.

The political support for Palestine among member states has always remained constantly strong. And the election of Palestine will also defy a hostile White House.

In November 2012, the General Assembly voted to upgrade Palestine to a “non-member observer state” with a majority of 138 votes in favor, 9 against, and 41 abstentions.

• Votes in Favor (138): Supported by a majority of UN member states.
• Votes Against (9): Canada, Czech Republic, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia (Federated States of), Nauru, Palau, Panama, and the United States.
• Abstentions (41): Countries that did not vote for or against.

Last December the General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a draft resolution reaffirming the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, including the right to an independent State of Palestine.

The draft resolution was approved by a majority of 164 member states (out of 193), with eight countries voting against it, namely Israel, the US, Micronesia, Argentina, Paraguay, Papua New Guinea, Palau, and Nauru.

Nine countries abstained: Ecuador, Togo, Tonga, Panama, Fiji, Cameroon, the Marshall Islands, Samoa, and South Sudan.

Dr Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and director of Middle Eastern Studies, told IPS a broad international consensus in support for the establishment of a viable independent Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and naming a Palestinian as the next president of the UN General Assembly would send a strong message to the Israeli government and its supporters in Washington that the State of Palestine, now recognized by 164 of the UN’s 193 states, should be treated like any other nation.

It would also underscore that Palestine is represented by the Fatah-led Palestine Authority, not by Hamas, which forcibly seized power in Gaza in 2007, he said.

“If Palestine is elected to the General Assembly presidency, the position would likely go to Riyad Mansour, a U.S.-educated diplomat who currently serves as the country’s UN ambassador”.

Mansour, he pointed out, has spent most of his life in the United States, has worked with Youth4Peace and other groups promoting peacebuilding, has no association with terrorism, and is generally considered a moderate.

“Nevertheless, his selection will likely result in an angry backlash from Washington, which opposes any formal role by anyone representing Palestine”.

In 2017, during his first term, the Trump administration blocked the appointment of former prime minister Salam Fayyad, also a well-respected moderate and reformer, from leading the U.N. political mission in Libya to try to end that country’s civil war simply because he was Palestinian, declared Dr Zunes.

Dr Ramzy Baroud, a Palestinian-American author and editor of The Palestine Chronicle, told IPS
two international campaigns are unfolding simultaneously: a US-led effort aimed at legitimizing Israel while it is still actively attempting to exterminate the Palestinian people, and a General Assembly–championed track aimed at legitimizing Palestine, Palestinian rights, and the Palestinian struggle.

The push to elect Palestine as the next UN General Assembly president — though the State of Palestine remains an observing member and lacks actual sovereignty on the ground — is taking place against this stark backdrop: one campaign normalizing and shielding a genocidal state, the other seeking to affirm the rights and political standing of a dispossessed nation, he pointed out.

“Nothing could be more immoral than Washington’s attempt to rehabilitate Israel diplomatically amid genocide. And nothing could be more just than the effort by Palestine’s allies to anchor Palestinian rights within international legitimacy” he said..

Yet a difficult question remains: while the US is gradually chipping away at Israel’s isolation, is much of the international community offering Palestinians little more than symbolic victories?, he noted.

“If the legitimization of Palestine at the General Assembly is to move beyond symbolism, it must translate into concrete recognition of Palestinian territorial rights, sovereignty, and freedom. Legitimacy must not remain rhetorical; it must become political and material,” Dr Baroud argued.

“This requires that the UN General Assembly states that support Palestine in international forums carry that support onto the ground — by isolating Israel diplomatically, severing ties, imposing sanctions, and adopting meaningful accountability measures. While some states have taken such steps, others continue to pursue a precarious “balance,” appeasing Washington and Tel Aviv while paying lip service to Palestine.”

Palestinians are winning what Richard Falk, the former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, has called the legitimacy war. But legitimacy as an intellectual or moral category is not enough. At this historical juncture, it must be transformed into enforceable political reality — into sovereignty, protection, and freedom on the ground, said Dr Baroud.

“We hope that the continued centering of Palestine at the UN and across global institutions strengthens the growing current of solidarity worldwide. More importantly, we hope that symbolic recognition will soon give way to decisive and tangible action,” he declared.

Samir Sanbar, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General and head of the Department of Public Information, told IPS the Inalianble rights of the Palestinian people, confirmed repeatedly by the General Assembly, would offer an opportunity for the Permanent Observer Mission to offer a candidate for the President of the General asembly.

Ambassador Riyad Mansour has served at the United Nations post longer than many current “Permanent Representatives” and would most likely attract wide support, particularly at these challenging times with the tragic humanitarian situation in Gaza, he said.

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UN Secretary-General António Guterres speaks at the opening of the 61st session of the Human Rights Council at the Palais des Nations, in Geneva. Meanwhile, Volker Turk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, addresses (below) at the opening of the High-level segment of the Human Rights Council. Credit: UN Photo/Violaine Martin

By Volker Turk
GENEVA, Feb 24 2026 (IPS)

A fierce competition for power, control and resources is playing out on the world stage at a rate and intensity unseen for the past 80 years.

People are feeling unmoored, anxious and insecure. The gears of global power are shifting; the consequences are not clear. Some are signalling the end of the world order as we know it.

But today, I want to talk about another world order. One that is organised from the ground up, and that is unshakeable. A foundational system of how people relate to each other, based on our inherent worth, our hopes, and our common values.

I am referring to people’s pursuit of dignity, equality, and justice. This quest is innate to what makes us human: to be free, to be heard, and to have our basic needs met.

And it is a strong counterbalance to the top-down, autocratic trends we see today. The use of force to resolve disputes between and within countries is becoming normalized.

Inflammatory threats against sovereign nations are thrown about, with no regard to the fire they could ignite. The laws of war are being brutally violated.

Mass civilian suffering – from Sudan, to Gaza, to Ukraine, to Myanmar – is unfolding before our eyes. In Sudan, there needs to be accountability for all violations by all parties – notably, the war crimes and possible crimes against humanity committed by the Rapid Support Forces in El Fasher. Such atrocities must not be repeated in Kordofan or elsewhere. All those with influence need to act urgently to put an end to this senseless war.

The situation in Gaza remains catastrophic. Palestinians are still dying from Israeli fire, cold, hunger, and treatable diseases. The aid allowed in is not enough to meet the massive needs. There are concerns over ethnic cleansing in both Gaza and the West Bank, where Israel is accelerating efforts to consolidate unlawful annexation. Any sustainable solution must be based on two states living side by side in equal dignity and rights, in line with UN resolutions and international law.

Tomorrow marks four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Four interminable and agonizing years. Civilian casualties have soared, and Russia’s systematic attacks on Ukraine’s energy and water infrastructure could amount to international crimes. The fighting needs to end, and I urge a focus on human rights and justice in any ceasefire or peace agreement.

In Myanmar, five years after the military coup, the awful conflict is claiming even more civilian lives, and the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate. The recent elections staged by the military have only deepened people’s despair.

Across most violent conflicts today, journalists, health and aid workers are targeted, in blatant violation of international law. These actions must not be allowed to harden into the new normal.

States need to be persistent objectors to violations of the law – by pursuing accountability, and by clearly denouncing these egregious crimes with consistency, and without exception.

Meanwhile, violence and tensions are resurging in some countries, including South Sudan and Ethiopia. And authorities in Iran have violently repressed mass protests with lethal force, killing thousands.

I will provide more detail on these and other country situations in my global update later this week. Developments around the world point to a deeply worrying trend: domination and supremacy are making a comeback.

If we listen to the rhetoric of some leaders, what lurks behind it is a belief that they are above the law, and above the UN Charter. They claim exceptional status, exceptional danger or exceptional moral judgement to pursue their own agenda at any cost. And why wouldn’t they try, when they are unlikely to face consequences?

They build and sustain systems that perpetuate inequalities within and between countries. Some weaponise their economic leverage. They spread disinformation to distract, silence and marginalize.

A tight clique of tech tycoons controls an outsize proportion of global information flows, distorting public debate, markets, and even governance systems. Corporate and state interests ravage our environment, robbing the riches of the earth for their own gain.

But at the same time, people are not watching all this from the sidelines. They are activating their power, from the ground up. Women and young people especially are leading these movements.

They are claiming their right to basic living conditions, to fair pay, to bodily autonomy, to self-determination, to be heard, to vote freely, and many other rights. From Nepal to Madagascar, from Serbia to Peru and beyond, people are demanding equality and denouncing corruption.

Neighbours and communities are standing up for each other – sometimes even risking their lives. People are protesting war and injustice in places far from home, expressing solidarity and pressuring their governments to act.

They see human rights as a practical force for good – and they are right. Human rights are anathema to supremacy: they are a direct challenge to those who seek and cling to power. That is what makes human rights radical, and that is what gives them force.

They are universal, timeless, and indestructible.

Human rights didn’t magically appear with the Universal Declaration on 10 December 1948.
People have been seeking freedom and equality long before these principles were codified in national or international agreements.

In the late 1700s, enslaved people in modern-day Haiti rose up against colonial rule, in the name of racial equality. The American and French revolutions challenged unaccountable authority. The Abolitionist movement was a rejection of the Transatlantic slave trade – the most brutal system of subjugation.

In the early 1900s, women joined together to demand the right to vote. The fight for gender equality continues. After the bloodshed of two World Wars and the Holocaust, the UN Charter reasserted faith in fundamental human rights, and in the dignity and worth of the human person.

The 20th century then ushered in a period of decolonization, which reaffirmed the right to self-determination. People mobilized to end racial segregation, for labour rights, and to protect the rights of LGBT people.

Mothers marched together to seek justice for their disappeared children, from Argentina to Sri Lanka to Syria. And young people raised their voices for climate justice.

Human rights are the thread that runs through all these movements. And we do not take their achievements for granted. Tyranny will seize any chance and exploit any opening. We must keep standing up for human rights, in solidarity with each other.

When we come together, we wield more power than any autocrat or tech billionaire. The struggle for human rights can never be derailed by the whims of a handful of leaders with reactionary, supremacist agendas.

While some States are weakening the multilateral system, we need bolder and more joined-up responses.

First, this means calling out violations of international law, regardless of the perpetrators. Too often, denouncing violations by one party is labelled as siding with the enemy. In reality, it is upholding universality, and the pursuit of justice for all.

The alternative – selective, fragmented responses – weakens international law and hurts us all.
The entire human rights ecosystem is designed to promote universality and ensure consistency. This includes the tools mandated by this Council. I condemn all attacks against them.

Second, we need stronger commitment to accountability. This includes strengthening the International Criminal Court and encouraging national prosecutions under the principle of universal jurisdiction. We need to increase the cost of breaking international law.

Third, let’s forge coalitions to champion what unites us, and uphold equality, dignity, and justice for all. We must protect the diversity of the human family and demonstrate what we gain by standing together.

In the coming weeks, we will set in motion a Global Alliance for Human Rights to capture the energy and commitment that is palpable everywhere.

This will be a cross-regional, multi-stakeholder coalition of States, businesses, cities, philanthropists, scientists, artists, philosophers, young people and civil society.

It will confront top-down domination with grassroots solidarity and support. It will represent the quiet majority, who want a different world. Human rights are not political currency, and they are not up for grabs.

Our future depends on our joint commitment to defend every person’s rights, every time, everywhere.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/02/1167015

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Ukrainian Red Cross teams have delivered over 3,300 hot meals to Kyiv residents at support points around the city. Credit: Red Cross

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Feb 24 2026 (IPS)

“We have a saying here in Ukraine now – ‘young people meet at their friends’ funerals rather than at weddings.’ It’s sad, but very true.”

As Russia’s full-scale invasion of her country moves into its fifth year, Iryna Yakova, 29, is looking back at how her life has changed over the past four years.

Speaking from Lviv, the western Ukrainian city where she lives, she tells IPS that her “values and attitude towards life” have changed. “Material things become unimportant when your loved ones or friends are in danger,” she says. She has also developed a keen sense of her national identity and an empathy for the suffering of her fellow Ukrainians.

“During the full-scale invasion, I realised that all of Ukraine is my home. I cry for people who were killed by a missile in Kyiv while they were sleeping at night. Even though I didn’t know them, it hurts me because they are Ukrainians. It also pains me to see children growing up without their parents because their parents are at the front. The war has intensified my sense of empathy and belonging.”

Her mental health has suffered. She says anxiety is ever-present in her life.

But what she returns to often as she answers questions about how her life is today compared to before the war is the loss she, and others, have experienced.

“What I miss most [from my life before the full-scale invasion] are the people who have been killed in the war. I have lost friends, acquaintances, and relatives. Nothing compares to human loss. The hardest thing I have had to deal with during this war is going to the funerals of friends — people you used to go to parties with, travel with, study with,” she says.

The human cost of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been enormous – Ukraine’s government does not officially give figures for military casualties, but it has been estimated they could be up to 600,000 (Russian military casualties are thought to be more than twice that amount).

But the scale of civilian casualties has been huge, too. According to UN bodies, more than 15,000 civilians have been killed and over 41,000 injured in Ukraine since the start of the invasion on February 24, 2022.

Worryingly, as Ukraine marks the fourth anniversary of the start of the war, research suggests there has been a sharp increase in civilian casualties over the last year.

Data from Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), released earlier this month, showed civilian casualties in Ukraine increased by 26 percent in 2025 compared with 2024, despite there being a 6 percent drop in the number of injurious explosive weapon incidents recorded nationwide.

In Kyiv, response efforts continue amid attacks on energy infrastructure and severe cold. The Ukrainian Red Cross is supporting warming centres around the clock, providing people with a safe place to warm up, receive assistance, and feel cared for during difficult conditions. Credit: Red Cross

The group said its data showed a worrying shift in the character of the conflict – the average number of civilians killed or injured per incident in Ukraine rose 33 percent over the year, with a total of 2,248 civilians reported killed (an 11 percent rise) and 12,493 injured (a 28 percent rise) by explosive violence.

This suggests that explosive weapons are being used by Russia in Ukraine in ways that generate greater civilian impact, whether through more drone strikes, heavier munitions, specific targeting choices of populated areas, or repeated strikes on urban infrastructure, the group said.

Nearly seven in ten civilian casualties recorded in AOAV data occurred in residential neighbourhoods, up from just over four in ten in 2024.

Niamh Gillen, a researcher at AOAV, told IPS it was impossible to definitively say that Russian forces were deliberately targeting Ukrainian civilians, but that “the data speaks for itself.”

“It shows that civilian areas are being attacked, that the attacks are occurring within civilian areas like hospitals, schools, cities, towns. In general, in areas where civilians are heavily concentrated, like cities and towns, villages, anywhere like that, if you’re using an explosive weapon with wide area impacts, then you’re likely to harm more civilians,” she said.

On top of the deaths and destruction Russian attacks have caused, they have also led to massive displacement. It is thought that at least 3.4 million people are internally displaced in the country. This has put massive pressure not just on the displaced themselves, but also on host communities and services.

People’s physical health has deteriorated in such conditions – the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that more than two-thirds of the population have reported a worsening of their health since the start of the invasion.

But the harm caused by these attacks is far from just physical. Mental health professionals in the country, as well as international bodies including the WHO, have warned of a mental health crisis in Ukraine, with possibly up to 10 million people suffering with mental health problems.

IPS spoke to scores of people in cities and towns across Ukraine about how the war had affected their mental health. Many spoke of experiencing anxiety, sometimes permanently to some level, which could be intensified at any moment by the frequent sound of air raid sirens warning of an attack, or for those closer to frontlines, the sounds of explosions and bombings.

“What affects my mental health on a daily basis are the constant nighttime drone and missile attacks. Because of them, it is impossible to relax or get proper rest, as reaching a shelter for safety is essential, even at night,” Mihail*, a teenager who lives in the Kyiv region, told IPS.

The situation for many Ukrainians has acutely worsened this winter. In what has been one of the coldest winters the country has seen for many years, Russian forces have repeatedly attacked Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, resulting in massive, widespread power outages. Thermal heating facilities have also been destroyed in targeted attacks.

As temperatures have plunged to as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius on some occasions, millions of people have been left freezing in their homes.

Jaime Wah, Deputy Head of Delegation with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Ukraine, said people were suffering desperately in the cold.

“Some nights have been very unbearable. There is no escape from the cold. When you leave your apartment, it’s cold. Sometimes people have been joking that it’s warmer inside a fridge than inside their apartment. I’ve been here for over four years now, and it’s been the worst winter,” she told IPS.

Humanitarian organisations, including the Ukrainian Red Cross, and state emergency services have set up emergency heating points in cities and towns where people can keep warm, recharge devices and get food.

But Wah said while this has become a humanitarian crisis, it is one of just many crises Ukrainians are battling.

“In frontline regions, there are communities that are under evacuation orders, and some communities have essentially had most of their resources cut off. Family ties are quite strained – mental health needs are also immense, not only in the frontline regions but across Ukraine,” she said.

“There are lots of repairs to homes that are needed, not to mention the energy crisis, which is a humanitarian crisis… with no heating and no electricity, just the day-to-day things – just even heating your food becomes a problem. A lot of families are having to spend more time outside their homes, having to spend more money. On top of that, the cost of living has increased. These are some of the real, tangible situations that people in Ukraine are facing now,” she added.

Amid these problems, many Ukrainians admit that they are exhausted after four years of war.

But among the many people IPS spoke to on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the war, there was a widespread, although certainly not universal, determination to not give up.

“I feel a sense of responsibility. I do not have the right to give up, because many people have died so that I could have the chance to live. Of course, there is exhaustion, but, unlike those in the military, a civilian like me has time to rest and reset,” said Iryna.

For many, such resilience is born out of a desire not just for them and their country to survive what they see as Russia’s attempt to destroy them as an independent state and nation, but also a hope that, ultimately, there will be some justice served for what has been done to them.

The Russian military and authorities have repeatedly been accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity, breaches of international humanitarian law, as well as genocide, during the invasion of Ukraine.

The sheer volume of alleged crimes – at least 180,000 war crimes have been registered by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General – and the constraints of documenting, investigating and prosecuting during an ongoing conflict mean that bringing those behind them to justice was never expected to be easy. Only over 100 people have been prosecuted in Ukraine so far for crimes during the invasion.

But there are fears that international bodies such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has issued an arrest warrant for, among others, Russian President Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes, could be rendered increasingly toothless in their ability to ever prosecute major figures who ordered such crimes because world leaders, such as US President Donald Trump, are no longer interested in upholding international justice for war crimes.

“I truly hope that the war will end very soon and that all war criminals will be brought to justice. However, what I see happening right now is the opposite: while institutions like the UN are unable to punish Russia, people are starting to forget about its war crimes. Countries are gradually lifting sanctions,” said Mihail.

“For example, Russian athletes are going to be able to take part in the Paralympics this year. As a result, people who committed war crimes just months or years ago can now take part in one of the world’s biggest sporting events. So we need to act – by refusing to normalise aggression, keeping sanctions firm and, most importantly, remembering about war.”

Others, though, are more hopeful.

“There is no doubt among Ukrainians that war criminals can be brought to justice,” Oleh Martynenko, an expert at the Ukrainian NGO Center for Civil Liberties, which documents war crimes, told IPS.

“This is evidenced by the participation of Ukrainians in international missions and courts where war criminals have been convicted. Also, thanks to the European Union, Ukrainians are building their own criminal prosecution systems, which provide for the arrest and imprisonment of Russian war criminals in accordance with UN international standards,” he said.

Regardless of these concerns and the other problems Ukrainians are facing as the full-scale invasion goes into its fifth year, some are looking to the future with a degree of hope.

“I feel a mix of determination, resilience, anger, and hope of victory,” Tetiana, a nurse in the Dnipropetrovsk region, who asked not to be identified for security reasons, told IPS. “Glory to Ukraine!” she added.

*Name changed to protect identity.

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By Alon Ben-Meir
NEW YORK, Feb 23 2026 (IPS)

Trump’s immigration policy is destroying America’s greatness Immigrants are the backbone of America’s greatness— powering its economy, enriching its culture, and advancing its global leadership. Yet under the guise of making America great again, Trump’s exclusionary, racist policies are dismantling that very foundation, stifling innovation and tarnishing the nation’s moral standing.

To understand the magnitude and importance of immigrants in the US, and the need for continued immigration, the following clearly shows how deeply they sustain our workforce, drive innovation, and secure America’s competitive edge on the global stage.

The Current State of Immigration

Over 1 million farmworkers in the United States are undocumented, including approximately 40 percent of crop farmworkers. Immigrants account for roughly 70 percent of all US farmworkers, making them indispensable to the agricultural labor force and underscoring how dependent American food production is on this workforce.

We are already witnessing the impacts of immigration crackdowns on the US farm industry. In California’s Central Valley, a majority of farmworkers stopped showing up after intensive ICE raids in July 2025, leaving crops rotting in the fields due to a lack of available workers. This has resulted in substantial financial losses, food waste, reduced farm revenues, and rising food prices.

Beyond agriculture, immigrants from Latin America and other regions are heavily represented in construction, hospitality, and food processing; they account for approximately 33 percent of meat processing and over 80 percent of food manufacturing workers.

In the leisure and hospitality sector, immigrants account for roughly 18 percent of workers; in traveler accommodations (i.e., hotels) alone, over 30 percent of workers are immigrants.

STEM Workforce

According to the National Science Foundation, foreign-born workers account for approximately 22 percent of the US’ STEM workforce. Among science and engineering occupations with doctorates, about 43 percent are foreign-born; in the doctorate-level fields of computer and mathematical sciences, this share exceeds 55 percent.

Roughly 30 percent of full-time science and engineering faculty at US universities are foreign-born, disproportionately present at research-intensive institutions.

Denying admission of scientists from countries such as India and China, Mexico and Argentina would result in serious talent shortages in key STEM fields. Moreover, inventors and entrepreneurs account for a disproportionately large share of US patents, high-growth startups, and advanced-degree STEM workers.

Thus, losing foreign-born scholars would undermine research, reduce innovation, slow scientific progress, and erode US technological and economic competitiveness.

Research on immigrant entrepreneurship indicates that immigrants are heavily overrepresented among founders of new firms, including high-tech firms and “unicorn” startups, which amplifies the long-term damage that restrictive policies toward non-European scientists would inflict.

Immigrants in the US military

In 2017, about 190,000 foreign-born individuals were on active duty, representing roughly 4.5 percent of all active-duty service members. As of 2024, approximately 8,000 non-citizens enlist each year. As of 2022, there were about 731,000 foreign-born veterans—around 4.5 percent of the total veteran population.

Historically and today, foreign-born soldiers have played key roles in every major US conflict, dating back to the Revolutionary War, and mmigrants have received more than 20 percent of all Medals of Honor, underscoring the depth of their contribution to national defense.

Reagan’s Honoring of Immigrants

Perhaps no one could express the vital importance of immigrants to the US, and how they made America the land of opportunity that embodied the very promise that has made America exceptional, like President Reagan in his final speech to the nation:

“Since this is the last speech that I will give as president, I think it’s fitting to leave one final thought, an observation about a country which I love. It was best stated in a letter I received recently. A man wrote me and said: ‘You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany, Turkey, or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.’

“Yes, the torch of Lady Liberty symbolizes our freedom and represents our heritage, the compact with our parents, our grandparents, and our ancestors. It is that lady who gives us our great and special place in the world. For it’s the great life force of each generation of new Americans that guarantee that America’s triumph shall continue unsurpassed into the next century and beyond. Other countries may seek to compete with us, but in one vital area, as a beacon of freedom and opportunity that draws the people of the world, no country on Earth comes close.

“This, I believe, is one of the most important sources of America’s greatness. We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people—our strength—from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so, we continuously renew and enrich our nation. While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America, we breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow.

“Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.”

How did we fall from President Reagan’s recognition of immigrants’ nobility to Trump’s dehumanizing claim that “they are eating the dogs…they are eating the cats…They’re eating—they are eating the pets…” In that stark descent, we see the horrific moral cost of abandoning truth for political expediency.

Immigrants have been the lifeblood of the American experiment. To close our door to immigrants is to close the door to the very engine of American vitality. If we open our borders, welcoming all regardless of ethnicity, race or faith, we unleash our greatest strength—a nation reborn, limitless in its capacity to dream and achieve the impossible.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations, most recently at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.

IPS UN Bureau

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Five former UN Secretaries-Generals
 
United Nations Faces Crisis Amid Global Retreat on Rights and Democracy

By Widad Franco
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 13 2026 (IPS)

United Nations member countries will select a new UN secretary-general this year to succeed António Guterres in January 2027. The change in leadership comes at a time when human rights and democracy, as well as the international organizations created to uphold those principles and provide lifesaving assistance, are under unprecedented attack.

So far member countries have formally nominated only two candidates: former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi from Argentina.

The threats to the global human rights system demand a courageous leader at the UN who will put human rights at the heart of its agenda. Yet the selection process gives veto power over any candidate to the five permanent members of the UN Security Council: Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States.

But human rights are clearly not a priority for China, Russia, or the United States.

Human Rights Watch and others have long documented attempts by China and Russia to defund and undermine the UN’s human rights pillar. More recently, the United States, which played a key role in creating the UN and its human rights architecture in 1945, has rejected and defunded dozens of UN programs promoting rights and humanitarian assistance.

The Trump administration has also withheld billions of dollars in UN dues, which has been a major factor in the organization’s crippling financial crisis. While Washington recently announced an initial payment toward its arrears, its actions have nonetheless seriously affected the UN’s ability to do its work.

US President Donald Trump has also been trying to sideline the UN by establishing a “Board of Peace,” modeled after the Security Council, with himself as chairman for life. Invited leaders include serial rights abusers from China, Belarus, Hungary, and Saudi Arabia, along with two men—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin—facing International Criminal Court warrants.

The UN needs a leader willing to stand up to major powers and abusive governments to defend victims of abuses and marginalized communities, and aggressively support accountability for serious crimes.

As member states nominate additional candidates, they should put forward a diverse pool, especially women and others with proven track records on human rights, and ensure a competitive and transparent process that places an exceptional individual committed to human rights atop the UN.

Widad Franco is UN Advocate, Human Rights Watch

IPS UN Bureau

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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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SEE ALSO
Venezuela: the democratic transition that wasn’t CIVICUS Lens 30.Jan.2025
Venezuela: ‘Each failed attempt at democratic transition reinforces the power of the authoritarian government’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Carlos Torrealba 25.Jan.2025
Venezuela struggles to hold on to hope CIVICUS Lens 15.Aug.2024

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Prosthetics marketed by I-Walk at an event marking resistance to Myanmar’s military coup of five years ago. The enterprise has a waiting list of over 3,000 people. Credit: Guy Dinmore/IPS

By Guy Dinmore
MYANMAR & THAILAND, Feb 4 2026 (IPS)

Five years of conflict since the military seized power have reduced Myanmar to a failed state and taken a huge toll of lives lost and destroyed. But with all sides seeking total victory, there is no end in sight.

Levels of medieval brutality enhanced by modern technology have enabled the military junta, with help from China, to swing the fortunes of war back in its favour, often through air strikes and drone attacks on civilian targets. Torched villages are deserted.

Kyaw Thurein Win, on the anniversary of the military’s February 1, 2021, coup against the elected civilian government, watched his village of Shut Pon burning in the southern region of Tanintharyi – through satellite imagery.

“Today my village is witnessing the cruelty of the military. They set the fires and ordered that they not be stopped. This is beyond inhuman and beyond cruel. Watching this happen from afar is unbearable,” he wrote on Facebook.

While the strength of anti-regime defiance and determination is undeniable among many in Myanmar, there is also a growing realisation – especially among former combatants — that the resistance will not win this war so soon, if at all.

“It is a stalemate. Nobody can win,” said one military defector, saying that cries of total victory by both the regime and the resistance ring hollow.

A young woman who runs a safe house for former child soldiers as young as 13 says she joined the People’s Defence Forces of the resistance that sprang up against military rule in 2021. But she soon came to realise that, for her at least, war was not the answer and started taking in children forced by poverty and displacement to become fighters against the regime.

She rails against the “whatever it takes” mentality and the toll it takes.

“The civilian suffering is ignored or exploited,” she says, attending a coup anniversary event – a mix of politics and culture and foodstalls –  organised by anti-regime civilian activists in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand. She shares a picture of ‘Commando’ in uniform, armed to the teeth. He was 12 at the time.

Sayarma Suzanna, fundraising for her school in Kayin State, the Dr Thanbyah Christian Institute for displaced and local children, said she and her 97 students spent all of November hiding in the nearby forest because of air strikes.

“You have to understand that when the students don’t listen to you during lessons, it is because of their trauma,” she said, recounting how one student lost seven family members in air strikes on their village.

At a nearby stall, the manager of I-Walk displayed an array of quality prosthetic limbs made by his enterprise as affordable as possible. He has a waiting list of over 3,000 people.

Myanmar is the most landmined country in the world with the highest rate of casualties. It also ranks as the biggest producer of illicit opium and a major source of synthetic drugs. Networks of online scam centres run by criminal gangs and militia groups close to the regime have trafficked tens of thousands of people from multiple countries, scamming billions of dollars.

The UN says 5.2 million people have been displaced by conflict inside the country and across borders. Cuts by rich countries to aid budgets have had a crippling impact. Some clinics are reduced to dispensing just paracetamol.

This year’s coup anniversary coincided with the conclusion of parliamentary and regional elections tightly orchestrated by the regime over the scattered and sometimes totally isolated areas of territory it controls, which include all major cities.

The three-phase polls – endorsed by China and Russia but slammed by the UN and most democracies except notably the US – excluded the National League for Democracy, which won landslide election victories in 2015 and 2020.

NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been held in prison since the coup. There is speculation that Senior General Min Aung Hlaing might move her to better conditions of house arrest after the military’s Union Solidarity and Development Party, led by former senior officers, forms a nominally civilian government in April.

The USDP is cruising towards its managed landslide victory, according to almost complete results released last week.

The UN said it had reliable reports of at least 170 civilians killed in regime attacks during the month-long election period. Other estimates put the figure considerably higher.

One airstrike in Kachin State in northern Myanmar reportedly killed 50 civilians on January 22. Long-running attempts by the Kachin Independence Army and resistance forces to capture the nearby and heavily defended Bhamo town from the military have been costly. Some analysts ask, for what gain?’

Kachin State’s second biggest town is strategically located on a trade route to China but most of its 55,000 or so inhabitants have long since fled. The military would surely respond with heavy air strikes to any occupation by the resistance.

Data gathered by ACLED, a nonprofit organisation that analyses data on political violence, indicates over 90,000 total conflict-related deaths since the coup. The military, reliant on forced conscription, has borne the brunt of casualties, but civilian deaths are estimated at over 16,000.

“The military has carried out air strikes, indiscriminately or deliberately attacking civilians in their homes, hospitals, and schools,” said Nicholas Koumjian, head of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, adding that there is evidence that civilians have endured atrocities amounting to crimes against humanity and war crimes since the military takeover.

The IIMM is also investigating a growing number of allegations of atrocities committed by opposition armed groups, over which the parallel National Unity Government set up by lawmakers ousted in the coup has little or no control.

Former combatants say rogue People’s Defence Forces are also extorting money from local populations and holding people to ransom.

“Myanmar remains mired in an existential crisis – measured both in human security and the state’s shrinking sovereignty as rival centres of power harden on the ground,” the Institute for Strategy and Policy – Myanmar, a think-tank, stated in its recent annual review.

“The regime is meanwhile trying to break the current stalemate by accelerating counter-offensives on three fronts: military, diplomatic and political,” it said. The military-staged elections of 2010 led to a process of political and economic reforms but this time the regime intended to impose its own terms, the think tank said.

It warned of the risk that ethnic armed groups controlling swathes of border territories with Bangladesh, India, China and Thailand would end up – not for the first time – negotiating bilateral ceasefires and “rent sharing arrangements” with the regime. These would “consolidate the power of armed elites and reinforce central control rather than advance democracy, human rights or the rule of law.”

On Sunday, a panel discussion featuring anti-regime politicians and activists hosted by Chiang Mai University reinforced the sense of an opposition fragmented along ethnic and geographical lines, even if speakers upheld the principles behind their shared goal of a democratic federal union.

There was the customary rhetoric of “taking down this junta” and “whatever it takes”, but barely a mention of the National Unity Government that is struggling to knit together these diverse forces under the umbrella of a “Federal Supreme Council”.

On the panel, Debbie Stothard, a Malaysian democracy and women’s rights activist long involved with Myanmar, said the resistance needed two more years for victory, as the generals had “bought” one more year with their sham elections.

“Hang in there. We have to keep on going for at least two more years,” she said.

But in the big cities where the regime is starting to try and foster a sense of normality against a dire economic backdrop, the mood on the street appears more of resignation than defiance.

“When we started protesting against the regime in the streets in 2021, I told my husband we would defeat the military in three months,” an elderly Chin activist told IPS in Yangon, the former capital. “He replied it would take five years. Now I am afraid it will take another five years,” she said.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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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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President Donald Trump Joins Faith Leaders in Prayer – Credit: The White House
 
According to the UN, Sunday marked the start of World Interfaith Harmony Week, a time to emphasize that mutual understanding and interreligious dialogue are essential to building a culture of peace. The week was established to promote harmony among all people, regardless of their faith.

By Azza Karam
NEW YORK, Feb 2 2026 (IPS)

Several events, meetings, consultations, initiatives, etc. taking place among faith-inspired, ‘faith-based’ and a variety of other similar efforts, over the past year, in the United States especially, concern me.

Coming from a background of human rights, international development, and humanitarian service, I have witnessed the arc of ‘none’ to increasing interest by Western governments in ‘religion’ – religious engagement, religion and development, religion and foreign policy, religious freedom, religious peacebuilding, or religion and peace, and more, including even religion and agriculture. Basically, religion and everything.

Non-Western governments within Africa and Asia, including areas overlapping with what we call (variably) “the Middle East”, have long been interested, and indeed actively engaging religious leaders and religious institutions.

As many scholars, observers, and foreign policy pundits have noted, the interest of such governments has often transcended any genuine fascination with faith, towards rather obvious instrumentalization of religious leaders, religious organisations and religious groups, in support of specific political agendas (e.g., making peace with Israel, legitimacy of corrupt – and violent – politically repressive leaders and regimes, etc.).

In fact, the marriage between select religious leaders/institutions/groups and some political actors goes back to the empires we have inherited pre-Westphalian states).

I recall some stories from my time serving as a staff member at the United Nations, and in other international fora. The first story revolves around one Arab and one Indian diplomat speaking with a European counterpart, during one of several UN Strategic Learning Exchanges on Religion, Development and Diplomacy, which I coordinated and facilitated, this one in 2014.

The discussion concerned how best to “benefit” from working with religious leaders to affirm a message of certain political parties, especially, albeit not only, around elections. The Arab patted the European on the back and said, with a smile and a wink: “you are finally catching up on how to use these religious leaders – congratulations my friend”. The Indian one, looking bemused, added “Yes. And be careful”.

Another story concerns another meeting I organised – in one of the basement meeting rooms of the UN – between UN officials and a diverse array of religious actors, around peace and mediation efforts, in select African and Asian conflict settings, early 2015.

A European Christian religious leader of a renowned multi-religious organisation made an intervention to address the concerns about “instrumentalization” of religious actors, which some faith-based NGO leaders were articulating.

While some faith representatives cautioned against religious actors being used to “rubber stamp decisions already made by governments and some intergovernmental organisations” (in the room were both UN and EU officials), this particular Western Christian religious leader spoke up and said, “I am not worried about that at all, in fact, I would like to say to my secular colleagues in this room, please use us… we can certainly benefit you… we are not common civil society actors, our mission makes us exceptional”.

My last story, is from my time serving as the secretary general of an international multireligious organisation which convenes religious leaders from diverse religious institutions around “deeply held and widely shared values”.

As soon as I became a member of the UN Secretary-General’s High Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism, I arranged a meeting between some of my multi-religious Board members (religious leaders), and some members of this high Level UN SG’s Advisory Board.

The idea was to nurture a quiet but candid dialogue between pollical and religious leaders, around why and how multilateralism can be significantly strengthened by multireligious engagement.

I hasten to note that multireligious engagement, if served well, can be – as I have written and persistently argued – resistant to instrumentalization of select religious actors to serve any one particular governmental agenda. The latter is a feature I warn against, and small wonder, given developments from India to the United States, from Russia to Israel, and beyond.

Once again, I heard a religious leader invite the members of the SG’s Board to “use” their (religious) wisdom because of their “exceptional” mission (presumably the godly one). This time, later reflection among members of the UN SG Board led to noting that such multireligious engagement would be inadvisable, due to a concern about “Muslims” involved in such multireligious spaces.

Fast forward to 2026, one year after an increasingly belligerent US Presidential Administration’s record, which includes relatively ‘minor’ policy decisions such as transforming the name of the Ministry of Defence to the “Ministry of War”. And not so minor human rights abuses of citizens and immigrants, and some pointing to manipulation and outright disregard of the rule of law, both at home and abroad (I hope this is polite enough wording). Of course one dares not mention support to certain genocidal regimes killing thousands in the name of self-protection.

In this environment, I listen to conversations among some of the United States’ most esteemed faith-based organisations, all with a remarkable track record of serving humanity in all corners of the world. Who, apparently, are seeking to engage this Administration “constructively”, with some praising the “unprecedented” outreach of members of this Administration in engaging, largely (some would say exclusively), with certain Christian NGOs, certain Christian religious leaders, and certain Christian faith protagonists – no doubt to further noble objectives. Apparently, this is a form of strategic engagement of/with religion.

Even though there were likely some who felt uncomfortable with aspects of this rhetoric, the studiously diplomatic silences – including my own – about challenging anything said, was noteworthy. The bottom line is, “we need access to the White House… we need more resources to do our (good) work”.

Why was I silent? Because I am the quintessential ‘other’ whose outspokenness has already earned me the loss of a sense of ‘home’ and security, many times over. This is neither excuse nor justification, rather, an acknowledgement of cowardice.

Into this Kafkaesque reality, let me ask a few questions I am battling with: what will it take to speak truth to power publicly – the way Minnesotans and Palestinians are having to do with their own regimes? Is it strategic to be silent, or such consummate diplomats, especially when we work in the name of the ‘godly’ – being such “exceptional” actors?

Conversely, is this Administration which we endeavour to be so tactful with, being silent about it’s “divine mission”? Is being “nice and essentially a kind person with their heart in the right place”, and doing godly work, a good reason to work with those who are serving regimes which ignore the rule of law in their own nation and abroad? Does faith-based diplomacy mean we either collude, remain silent, or take the struggle to the streets?

If so, what difference is faith-based diplomacy and engagement actually making to civic engagement, to honoring human rights and the rule of law, or to serving principled leadership? Or do these simply not matter since it is the self-interests of the ruling and rich few, are what matters to determine the integrity of life, planet and leadership?

Perhaps we should ponder the advice of the Indian Diplomat, given to his Western counterpart 22 years ago: how can we “be careful”?

Professor Azza Karam serves as President of Lead Integrity; and Director of the Kahane UN Program, for Occidental College’s Diplomacy and World Affairs.

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

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Jan 29 2026 (IPS)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Things did not improve when she got to the hospital.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Excerpt:

Binalakshmi Nepram. Credit: Nobel Women Initiative

By Kumkum Chadha
NEW DELHI, Jan 27 2026 (IPS)

It was Christmas eve: some two decades ago. Binalakshmi Nepram was a witness to the killing of a 27-year-old.

In utter disbelief, she saw a group of three men dragging the victim from his workshop. Within minutes, he was shot dead.

“Every day three or four people are shot dead in Manipur’s ongoing conflict. Thousands have died and many women widowed and children orphaned. And those who survive look into a scarred future. This must end,” she said.

When Nepram contributed 4,500 Indian rupees to buy a sewing machine for the victim’s wife, Rebika, the intervention was just the beginning. Since then, there has been no looking back. The date is etched in Nepram’s mind and psyche: December 24, 2004.

Now, two decades later, when she was unanimously elected Vice President of the International Peace Bureau, it was a befitting tribute to her crusade for peace: a recognition of the work her organization, the Manipur Gun Survivors Network, has done to rescue and uplift women from the trauma and agony that they face because of armed conflict.

Nepram has been at the forefront of providing the necessary healing touch to those affected by the violence perpetrated by mindless individuals.

She has also co-founded the Control Arms Foundation of India to focus on gender-based violence and end racial discrimination in India.

Currently, Nepram is chair of the Rotary Satellite Club of International Peace, an initiative that led to the establishment of the International House of Peace in Japan. She is also an associate at Harvard University and she is researching and leading work on Indigenous approaches to peacebuilding to help resolve some of the entrenched global conflicts.

“Good research should be the foundation of good policies and social action,” she says.

A globally recognized Indigenous scholar and a peace builder, Nepram is the first Indigenous person from the Indian state of Manipur to be appointed to this prestigious post. In the past, she has served on the IPB Board for two terms. As Vice President, she will hold this position until 2028.

With 400-member organizations spanning 100 countries, the International Peace Bureau or IPB is a Nobel Peace Laureate; 14 of its officers have been recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. Founded in 1891, the IPB is one of the oldest Peace Organizations. It was awarded the Nobel in 1910.

Hammering a vision of a world without war, the IPB focus is on reducing funding for the military sector and disseminating those funds for social projects.

In her role as Vice President, Nepram would focus on strengthening global coalitions for peace and disarmament.

Peace, for Nepram, is not a project but a lifetime commitment. Her firm belief: “If wars can be engineered, we can also engineer peace.”

In an exclusive interview with IPS, Nepram spelled out the various dimensions of her work and what she plans to in her new role at the International Peace Bureau.

Excerpts from the interview:

IPS: What does this election mean?

Nepram: My election as Vice President of the International Peace Bureau is a historic one because it is the first time that anyone from India or my home state, Manipur, has been elected to this post. It means the growing recognition of our role, especially women-led peacebuilding—whether at home in Manipur, Northeast India or around the world—that we have been honored by the international community.

IPS: What would be your focus areas?

Nepram: My focus areas will include building a more peaceful world where people treat each other with love, respect and dignity; reducing wars and conflicts in biodiversity hotspots where Indigenous Peoples live; and the inclusion of women and Indigenous Peoples in peace talks, peace mediation and negotiations, as this is, as of now, missing.

IPS: What needs to change and has remained neglected?

Nepram: What needs to change are the mindsets of  people, policymakers and nations who believe in “war profits.” As of now, many “wars” in our homes, regions and nations are “engineered” for profit and power. Pitch this against the hundreds and thousands of innocent civilians who pay the price by way of their homes being burnt and many of them being displaced. In this context my own hometown, Manipur, stands as an example, particularly since 2023. But change will come; it must come and it will come once realization dawns.

IPS: How will your election help your people and the cause you are fighting for?

Nepram: Manipur has been in a state of violent conflict since the 1970s. Nobody has been able to work genuinely to bring peace in my state for decades. I, for one, will work for bringing the peace that has been denied but that every citizen in the state deserves. This is the need of the hour.

IPS: What are the first steps you will take?

Nepram: The first steps for peace in Manipur had been taken even before my election. This is by way of the formation of the Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network, the Northeast India Women Initiative for Peace and the Northeast India Women Peace Congregations. I have also conceptualized the Global Summit on Indigenous Peacebuilding in April 2026 and will help in the forthcoming World Peace Congress.  We will also continue peace meetings, dialogue, negotiations, and mediation this year. These are the first few steps I will take this year.

IPS: What does this election mean for women and India and Manipur? How excited are you?

Nepram: This election puts India and Manipur back on the world map of peacemaking, and this, to me, is crucial and critical. India and the women of Manipur in particular have shown the world the power of peace and non-violent action in ending the colonization of British rule. At a time of rising wars and conflicts, this news will come as a balm to many wounded lives.

IPS: What is the big picture that needs to be addressed? What is the way forward?

Nepram: The big picture we are considering is that there are currently 132 conflicts and wars in the world, which have displaced 200 million people. Eighty percent of these conflicts and wars are happening in biodiversity areas where Indigenous Peoples live. Greed and power are what are driving the world towards wars and if humans don’t stop this, we will be heading towards doom. War is the greatest polluter in this world; every year our climate is changing. There are floods, droughts etc. so we need solutions now to protect the planet and to achieve this peace is the answer, as is Indigenous peacebuilding the way forward.  We must include Indigenous people and women in every process of decision-making from now on.

Peace for us is not a project; it is a commitment of a lifetime. If wars can be “engineered,” we can also “engineer” peace.

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A global survey across 101 countries finds global majority support for a citizen-elected world parliament to handle global issues, reflecting widespread concern over an outdated and undemocratic international order. Credit: Democracy Without Borders

By Democracy Without Borders
BERLIN, Germany, Jan 20 2026 (IPS)

As democracy faces pressure around the world and confidence in international law drops, a new global survey reveals that citizens in a vast majority of countries support the idea of creating a citizen-elected world parliament to deal with global issues.

The survey, commissioned by Democracy Without Borders and conducted across 101 countries representing 90% of the world’s population, finds that 40% of respondents support the proposal, while only 27% are opposed. It is the largest poll ever carried out thus far on this subject.

Support is strongest in countries of the Global South, especially Sub-Saharan Africa, and among groups often underrepresented in national political systems—young people, ethnic minorities, and those with lower income or education levels. In 85 out of 101 countries surveyed, more respondents support the idea than oppose it.

“The message is clear: people around the world are ready to expand democratic representation to the global scale,” said Andreas Bummel, Executive Director of Democracy Without Borders. “This survey shows there is a growing global constituency that wants a voice in decisions affecting humanity as a whole,” he added.

The findings come at a time when the international system is under increasing strain from climate change, war, geopolitical conflicts, authoritarian resurgence, and stalled global cooperation. The results suggest that many citizens—especially in less powerful countries—see a world parliament as a pathway to fairer and more effective global governance.

In countries with limited political freedoms, support for a world parliament is particularly high. According to Democracy Without Borders, this points to a public perception that global democratic institutions could help advance democracy at home as well.

A notable 33% of respondents globally selected a neutral stance, suggesting unfamiliarity with the concept. An analysis of the survey results argues that this indicates a wide-open space for public engagement. If the idea gains visibility, support could grow substantially, it says.

“The international system created in the last century to prevent war and mass violence is built on the United Nations. But many UN member states do not represent their people. They represent oppressive authoritarian elites who have seized power.

The proposed vision of a citizen-elected world parliament could be a vital step in the discussion about building a more democratic global order,” said Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Centre for Civil Liberties in Ukraine awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize.

According to the survey, net opposition found in individual countries is most concentrated in high-income democracies. “This is not a rejection of democracy. It is a reminder that privilege may breed complacency, and that those who benefit from existing arrangements may underestimate how urgently they need renewal,” commented George Papandreou, Greek Member of Parliament and former Prime Minister.

Democracy Without Borders, an international civil society organization, advocates for the establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly as a step toward a democratic world parliament. The organization says the survey results reinforce the urgency for democratic governments to consider this long-standing proposal.

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By Mikiko Otani
TOKYO, Japan, Jan 19 2026 (IPS)

Thirty years ago, the groundbreaking report by Graça Machel, renowned and widely respected global advocate for women’s and children’s rights, to the United Nations General Assembly laid bare the devastating impact of armed conflict on children and shook the conscience of the world. It led to the historic decision of the General Assembly to create the mandate of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict (SRSG-CAAC).

Special Representatives of the Secretary-General are high-level envoys entrusted with carrying out specific responsibilities on behalf of the Secretary-General. Appointed at the rank of Under-Secretary-General, the SRSG-CAAC has since served as the global advocate for raising the awareness about the condition of children affected by armed conflict as well as their comprehensive protection and reintegration in the society.

Children and armed conflict as a peace and security agenda

The children and armed conflict (CAAC) agenda has evolved significantly over the past three decades. As appropriately affirmed in Security Council resolution 1261 (1999), the impact of armed conflict on children constitutes a matter affecting international peace and security. Subsequent resolutions firmly anchored the CAAC agenda within the work of the Security Council and established critical protection mechanisms.

Among the most significant of these is the Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism (MRM), created by Security Council resolution 1612 (2005). The MRM provides verified, credible, and timely information on grave violations committed against children in situations of armed conflict. It has become the backbone of the United Nations’ engagement with parties to conflict to halt such violations.

Credit: UN News

Through this mechanism, parties to conflict are encouraged to commit to ending and preventing grave violations through the development and implementation of time-bound action plans. To date, forty action plans have been concluded with parties to conflict, including non-State armed groups, in eighteen countries, resulting in full compliance by twelve parties.

UNICEF has played a pivotal role on the ground as the United Nations’ lead agency for children, supporting the operation of the MRM and monitoring the implementation of action plans.

Children and armed conflict as a fundamental child rights issue

Beyond peace and security, children and armed conflict is fundamentally a child rights issue. It was the first thematic area addressed as early as 1992 by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, the treaty body monitoring implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1989.

That initiative paved the way for the Graça Machel report and the subsequent establishment of the SRSG-CAAC mandate in 1996. It also led to the adoption, in 2000, of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict.

In March of this year, the Human Rights Council will dedicate its annual day on the rights of the child to children and armed conflict and is expected to adopt a related resolution, underscoring the continued relevance of this agenda.

Thirty years after the inception of the CAAC mandate

Despite these advances, grave violations against children in armed conflict reached an unprecedented 41,370 cases in 2024 alone. Calls for accountability have understandably grown louder.

The impact of armed conflict on children extends far beyond the six grave violations identified by the Security Council. Today, one in five children worldwide lives in a conflict-affected area, where the full spectrum of their rights is compromised, directly or indirectly.

This stark reality demands renewed urgency, enhanced political will, and more focused action.

Toward child rights-based and child-centred accountability

Children who are victims of armed conflict have too often been excluded from accountability processes.

Some positive developments deserve recognition. In 2023, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court adopted a revised Policy on Children that explicitly embraces a child rights approach. In the same year, the Secretary-General’s Guidance Note on Child Rights Mainstreaming called for the systematic integration of child rights into the mandates of United Nations investigative and accountability mechanisms, including commissions of inquiry and fact-finding missions.

Accountability must be both child rights-based and child-centred. Meaningful child participation is essential. Listening to children and taking their views seriously is fundamental to justice, remedies, and healing. Accountability processes must address children’s immediate and long-term needs, including education, psychosocial support, and family reunification.

Children as peacebuilders

Children want peace. Sustainable peace is the indispensable foundation for the full realization of child rights.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child guarantees the right of children to be heard and to have their views respected in all matters affecting them. Children also have the right to reintegration and to participate in efforts aimed at restoring social cohesion within fractured and traumatized communities.

In many conflict-affected societies, children constitute more than half of the population. Their role as peacebuilders is therefore not optional—it is essential. Recognizing and empowering children as agents of peace will also reinforce both the women, peace and security agenda and the youth, peace and security agenda.

Time for renewed mobilization, in partnership with civil society and children

Graça Machel reminded us that “universal concern for children presents new opportunities to confront the problems that cause their suffering.”

Children and armed conflict goes to the very core of our shared humanity. It demands broader public awareness, stronger political commitment, and sustained global mobilization.

Civil society organizations, working alongside children themselves, have a crucial role to play in advocacy, awareness-raising, and mobilizing support for the CAAC agenda.

The Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, created by the General Assembly, carries a unique responsibility as the Secretary-General’s envoy to strengthen cooperation and partnerships among United Nations entities, Member States, civil society, and children themselves.

Children and armed conflict must remain at the forefront of the global agenda and be treated as a central priority by the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Dr. Mikiko Otani, widely recognized as an international human rights lawyer, is currently the President of the Child Rights Connect, a Geneva-based global NGO network promoting child rights. She was the Chair of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (2021-2023) during her eight-year membership for two terms.

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Aung San Suu Kyi, Union Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, attends the opening of Myanmar's first round of oral observations at the International Court of Justice in 2019. She has since been jailed by the generals she defended at the ICJ. UN Photo/ICJ-CIJ/Frank van Beek

By Guy Dinmore
YANGON, Myanmar, and CHIANGMAI, Thailand , Jan 16 2026 (IPS)

Held incommunicado in grim prison conditions for nearly five years, Aung San Suu Kyi quite possibly does not even know that this week the International Court of Justice (ICJ) opened a landmark case charging Myanmar with committing genocide against its Rohingya minority a decade ago.

If news did filter through from the world outside her cell, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and ousted leader of Myanmar’s elected government would surely be reflecting on how it was that the generals she steadfastly defended in The Hague in preliminary hearings in 2019 are now her jailers.

The case before the ICJ, brought by Gambia, levels charges of genocide against Myanmar dating to the offensive in 2016-17 by military forces and Buddhist militia against the mostly Moslem Rohingya minority. Thousands were killed, villages torched and women raped, culminating in over 700,000 refugees forced across the border into Bangladesh.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s reputation was already badly tarnished in the west even before she went to The Hague. In 2017 Oxford University’s St Hugh’s College, her alma mater, had removed her portrait from public view, and in 2018 Amnesty International joined numerous institutions and cities revoking awards they had bestowed, dismayed that she had not even used her moral authority as head of government to condemn the violence. Her 1991 Nobel prize remained intact—there were no rules to revoke it.

Separately, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court last November requested an arrest warrant for Min Aung Hlaing for alleged crimes against humanity committed against the Rohingya.

To add salt to those wounds, her leading of Myanmar’s legal team to the ICJ may in fact have sealed her fate with the generals rather than preserve their difficult power-sharing arrangement.

“At that point her credibility was shattered and she lost the West,” commented a veteran analyst in Yangon. “It was at that point that the military decided to move against her and started plotting their coup,” he said, explaining how Senior General Min Aung Hlaing calculated that the international community would not rally behind her.

Aung San Suu Kyi turned 80 in prison last June and this week marks a total of some 20 years she has spent behind bars or under house arrest since her return to Myanmar from Britain in 1988. She has not seen her lawyers for two years and is serving sentences amounting to 27 years following an array of charges, including corruption, that her followers dismiss as fabricated.

Largely forgotten or deemed as irrelevant outside her country, in Myanmar “Mother Suu” remains widely popular, even revered—at least among the Buddhist Bamar majority—and her fate still has a bearing on the course of the country’s future.

Although the junta’s staging of phased elections, now underway in areas it controls, is dismissed by many in Myanmar as a total sham, people dare to hope that General Min Aung Hlaing, possibly the next president, might release Aung San Suu Kyi and the deposed president Win Myint, among other political prisoners. The expectation is that the military’s proxy party might make some form of gesture after the nominally civilian government takes office in April.

Very few signs remain of Aung San Suu Kyi in junta-controlled areas. This poster hung in a Yangon cafe in 2024 but is no longer there. Credit: Guy Dinmore/IPS

But resistance fighters and members of the parallel National Unity Government (NUG) operating in areas beyond junta control remain skeptical.

“The release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi remains tightly constrained by the current balance of power. For Min Aung Hlaing, her freedom would fundamentally undermine the regime’s authority, giving him strong incentives to keep her isolated as long as the military remains ‘in control,’” David Gum Awng, NUG deputy foreign minister, told IPS outside Myanmar.

The “credible pathway forward,” he said, is to seize the capital Nay Pyi Taw, where Aung San Suu Kyi is believed to be incarcerated, and dismantle the military regime while reaching a broad political agreement or coalition among resistance forces.

“This would demand tremendous collective effort, large-scale coordination, and a much stronger political and military alliance and pact,” he added, referring to the NUG’s struggle to forge agreements among disparate ethnic armed groups that have been resisting successive military regimes and sometimes fighting between themselves for decades.

A former military captain, who defected to join civilian resistance groups outside Myanmar, told IPS that he liked “Mother Suu” and that his whole family had voted for her National League for Democracy in the 2020 elections when her government was re-elected by a landslide only for the generals to annul the results in their 2021 coup.

“But now it’s very hard for her to be a leader. We don’t see any changes happening. Ming Aung Hlaing will detain her for as long as possible. I worked with him and know his personality and based on that, he won’t release her. He is a vindictive man,” the former soldier said.

For the younger generation who paid a heavy price in mass street protests crushed by the military in early 2021 and then fled to join resistance forces springing up across the country, it seems time to move on from the era of Aung San Suu Kyi.

“It is time for a new leader. She is old. Gen Z will not listen to her,” was the comment of one hotel worker who also praised her legacy.

The NUG and the new generation are starting to acknowledge the historic abuses and wrongs committed by successive Myanmar leaders against the mostly stateless Rohingya community.

Some are following news of the ICJ hearings this week and openly say Aung San Suu Kyi’s role in 2019 in defending the military against charges of genocide was morally wrong and that she had ended up weakening her own position.

“She’s not there to defend them now,” commented one young man who was forced to flee Myanmar as the military hunted down his father, a prominent activist.

People who have known her for years seem to disagree over what really motivated Aung San Suu Kyi in taking that fateful step in The Hague.

Was it pride in defending her country as the daughter of Aung San, independence hero and founder of the modern military? Or did she wrongly calculate it was her only way forward while trying to introduce political and economic reforms that would curb the power of the generals?  Or was she simply like one of them—a Buddhist nationalist of the Bamar majority who remained skeptical about real federalism and saw the Rohingya as migrants who did not “belong” in Myanmar and were a threat to its dominant religion?

In a country where one powerful force remains committed to a past that is rejected by a large majority of its people, such questions over the shape of Myanmar’s future remain highly relevant, as does the fate of one woman.

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The International Court of Justice holds public hearings on the merits of the case concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (The Gambia v. Myanmar: 11 States intervening) at the Peace Palace in The Hague. Credit: UN Web TV

By Oritro Karim
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 15 2026 (IPS)

On January 12, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), opened landmark hearings in a case brought by the Republic of The Gambia, alleging that Myanmar’s military committed acts of brutal genocide against the Rohingya minority during its 2017 crackdown. Described by the United Nations (UN) as a case “years in the making,” the ICJ will spend the next three weeks reviewing evidence and testimony from both sides to determine whether the Myanmar military violated the Genocide Convention.

This case marks the first genocide case fully undertaken by the ICJ in over a decade, filed by The Gambia in 2019, two years after the Myanmar military’s 2017 crackdown —which resulted in thousands of deaths and mass displacement. UN experts note that the outcome of this case could have implications far beyond Myanmar, potentially shaping other international legal proceedings such as South Africa’s petition accusing Israel of genocide in the Gaza Strip, and helping to define standards of evidence for genocide in contexts like Darfur in Sudan and Tigray in Ethiopia.

“The case is likely to set critical precedents for how genocide is defined and how it can be proven, and how violations can be remedied,” Nicholas Koumjian, head of the UN’s Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, told reporters.

Since 2017, Rohingya survivors have described the brutality of the Myanmar military’s attacks and their enduring impacts, recounting widespread instances of rape, arson, and mass killings. The violence displaced more than 750,000 people to neighboring Bangladesh, where resources are scarce and refugees continue to face discrimination and long-term psychological trauma.

Shortly after the 2017 crackdown, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, described the Myanmar military’s operations as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”. A 2018 UN fact-finding mission concluded that the military’s operations included “genocidal acts”. Myanmar authorities rejected these characterizations, claiming the crackdown was a response to Rohingya armed groups.

On January 12, The Gambia’s Justice Minister Dawda Jallow told the ICJ that after reviewing “credible reports of the most brutal and vicious violations imaginably inflicted upon a vulnerable group”, Gambia officials concluded that the Myanmar military deliberately targeted the Rohingya minority in an attempt to “destroy the community”.

“It is not about esoteric issues of international law. It is about real people, real stories, and a real group of human beings—the Rohingya of Myanmar,” Jallow told ICJ judges. He added that the Rohingya have endured decades of “appalling persecution and years of dehumanizing propaganda,” aimed at effectively erasing their existence in Myanmar.

On January 14, Myanmar’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement rejecting The Gambia’s allegations of genocide as “flawed and unfounded in fact and law,” claiming they rely on biased reports and “unreliable evidence.” The statement notably avoided the term Rohingya, referring instead to the community as “persons from Rakhine State.” It also asserted that Myanmar is cooperating with the ICJ proceedings in “good faith”, framing this as a demonstration of its respect for international law.

Lawyers for Myanmar are expected to begin presenting their arguments to the ICJ on January 16. UN officials note that after three weeks of testimony, a final ICJ ruling could take months or even years, and would be legally binding. If Myanmar were to be found guilty of genocide, such a ruling would place state responsibility on Myanmar, designating it as a “pariah state” and severely damaging its international standing.

Such a ruling could compel the UN Security Council to take more forceful peacekeeping measures and could trigger obligations under the Genocide Convention (of which Myanmar is a state party), to prevent further atrocities, punish perpetrators, and provide reparations to victims, which may include enabling conditions for a safe, dignified, and voluntary return. Even as the case proceeds, the ICJ’s existing provisional measures already require Myanmar to protect the Rohingya community and preserve evidence, though enforcement depends on Myanmar’s compliance.

“Seeing Gambia’s landmark case against Myanmar finally enter the merits phase delivers renewed hope to Rohingya that our decades-long suffering may finally end,” said Wai Wai Nu, founder and executive director of the Women’s Peace Network, a human rights group advocating for marginalized communities in Myanmar. “Amid ongoing violations against the Rohingya, the world must stand firm in the pursuit of justice and a path toward ending impunity in Myanmar and restoring our rights.”

As legal proceedings continue, Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and displaced communities in Myanmar’s Rakhine State are confronting an escalating humanitarian crisis in 2026, marked by severe shortages of essential services and heightened protection risks. According to figures from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), over one million Rohingya refugees who fled violence in Myanmar are now living in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar settlement, one of the largest refugee camps in the world.

Recent humanitarian updates from UNHCR show that Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh continue to live in severely overcrowded shelters with limited access to food, healthcare, education, clean water, and sanitation. Livelihood opportunities remain sharply restricted, as Rohingya refugees are considered stateless. Shelter for newly arrived refugees is increasingly scarce and conditions continue to deteriorate as funding cuts hinder UNHCR’s ability to adequately support affected communities.

Meanwhile, Rohingya civilians who remain in Myanmar’s Rakhine State continue to endure entrenched discrimination, severe movement restrictions, persistent insecurity, and shrinking humanitarian access as clashes between armed groups and the military intensify. Humanitarian experts and civil society leaders underscored the significance of the ICJ case, noting that a ruling in favor of The Gambia could mark a critical step toward justice and long-term recovery for the Rohingya community.

“I hope the ICJ will bring some solace to the deep wounds we are still carrying,” said Mohammad Sayed Ullah, a member of the United Council of Rohingya (UCR), a civil society organization formed in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, that advocates for the rights of Rohingya refugees. “The perpetrators must be held accountable and punished. The sooner and fairer the trial is, the better the outcome will be. Only then can the repatriation process truly begin.”

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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, “shocked by reports of violence and excessive use of force by Iranian authorities against protesters”, is urging restraint and immediate restoration of communications, as unrest enters its third week. 11 January 2026. Credit: United Nations

By Alon Ben-Meir
NEW YORK, Jan 15 2026 (IPS)

Unlike ever before, Iran’s Islamic regime is facing a revolt led by a generation that has lost its fear. Young and old, men and women, students and workers, are flooding the streets across the country.

Iran’s future may well hinge on whether its military chooses to act and save the country, driven by economic collapse, corruption, and decades of repression. Women and girls are at the forefront, protesting without headscarves, defying the clergy that once controlled every aspect of their lives. They don’t want reform; they are demanding freedom, economic relief, and the end of authoritarianism.

Shutting down the internet, arresting nearly 17,000 protesters, killing at least 3,000, including children, and Trump’s threat to use force to stop the Iranian regime have not prevented the mullahs from continuing their onslaught. The regime’s ruthless crackdown has been a calamitous wave of repression, taking thousands of lives in a brutal attempt to crush dissent. Yet even in the face of such peril, the public remains undeterred, determined to continue their fight.

Now, however, they need the support of the most powerful domestic—not foreign—power to come to their aid. The Iranian military is the most pivotal institution in the country, capable of catalyzing the downfall of the regime. The military is the key player, with significant internal influence and the capability to drive the necessary change from within, ultimately leading to regime change.

Every officer in the military should stop and think, how do I want to serve my country.

Do I want to continue to prop up a bunch of reactionaries, self-obsessed old men who have long since lost their relevance, wearing the false robe of piety to appear sanctimonious while subjugating the people to hardship and hopelessness?

Should I not support the younger generation who are yearning for a better life, for opportunity, for a future that gives meaning to their existence?

Should I not participate in sparking the revival of this magnificent nation from the doldrums of the past 47 years that have consumed it from within?

Should I continue to prepare for war against Israel, or extend a peaceful hand and invest in building my country with such immense natural and human riches and be in the forefront of all other modern democratic and progressive nations, and restore the glory of ancient Persia?

Do I truly want to continue to wear blinders and let my country be destroyed from within, or should I become part of a newly reborn nation and take personal pride in helping to revive it?

The answer to these questions should be clear to every officer. The military should establish a transitional government and pave the way for a legitimate, freely elected government, and restore the Iranian people’s dignity and their right to be free.

The idea that the Shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, could return and restore a monarchy is just the opposite of what the Iranian people need. Instead of another form of corruption or an old kingdom, they deserve a democracy and genuine freedom.

In the final analysis, Iran’s destiny may rest on a single profound choice—whether its military steps forward to reshape the nation’s destiny.

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a retired professor of international relations, most recently at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He taught courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies.

Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 13 2026 (IPS)

Judging by the mass US withdrawal from 66 UN entities, including UN conventions and international treaties, is it remotely possible that the unpredictable Trump administration may one day decide to pull out of the UN, and force the Secretariat out of New York– despite the 1947 UN-US headquarters agreement?

Besides the 66, the withdrawals also include the pullouts from the Human Rights Council, the WHO, UNRWA and UNESCO– while imposing drastic reductions in funding for the remaining UN entities the US has not yet formally exited.

So, will the United Nations, which has come under heavy fire, be far behind?

That possibility is strengthened by the critical views of the UN both by President Trump and senior US officials.

Dr Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics, University of San Francisco, who has written extensively on issues relating to the United Nations, told IPS even the U.S. presidents most hostile to the United Nations– like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush– recognized the importance of the world body in terms of advancing U.S. interests, including understanding the importance of maintaining the UN system as a whole, even while violating certain legal principles in particular cases.

Similarly, he pointed out, the United States was willing to participate in various UN bodies in an effort to wield influence, even while disagreeing with some of their policies or even their overall mandates.

“The Trump administration, however, appears to be rejecting the post-WWII international legal system as a whole. His statements, particularly since the attack on Venezuela, appear to be a throwback to the 19th-century imperial prerogatives and a rejection of modern international law.”

“As a result, it is possible that Trump could indeed pull the United States out of the United Nations and force the UN out of New York”, declared Dr Zunes.

Addressing the General Assembly last September, Trump remarked, “What is the purpose of the United Nations? It’s not even coming close to living up to [its] potential.”

Dismissing the U.N. as an outdated, ineffective organization, he boasted, “I ended seven wars, dealt with the leaders of each and every one of these countries, and never a phone call from the United Nations offering to help in finalizing the deal.”

Martin S. Edwards, Associate Dean of Academic and Student Affairs, School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, told IPS “this is dubious language about cutting inefficiency and fighting diversity wrapped up in red meat to feed President Trump’s base”.

It’s a ploy to use foreign affairs to distract voters for whom he has yet to deliver. The fact that the actual follow-up documents haven’t been received by the Secretary General tells you everything here. It fits a pattern of the President carving out maximalist positions and then getting very little in the end, he pointed out.

But it’s a bigger challenge, he said, on two fronts:

1. This is going to continue to REDUCE US influence at the UN rather than increase it. Stable foreign relations are based on credibility. The US continues to squander its reserves, and other countries will step into the vacuum.

2. This policy might have been a good social media post for voters, but makes little sense in practice. What the White House wants is a line-item veto over every single aspect of UN operations. But assessed contributions are not an ala carte menu, declared Edwards.

Mandeep S. Tiwana, Secretary General, CIVICUS, a global alliance of civil society organizations, told IPS retreat from international institutions by the Trump Administration is an attack on the legacy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt who gave the people of the United States the New Deal and envisioned a bold framework for the establishment of the UN to overcome the horrors of the Second World War.

“Many of the impacted international institutions were built through the blood, sweat and tears of Americans. Pulling out of these institutions is an affront to their sacrifices and reverses decades of multilateral cooperation on peace, human rights, climate change and sustainable development,” he said.

Meanwhile, the attacks on the UN have continued unabated.

In an interview with Breitbart News, U.S. Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Mike Waltz said, “A quarter of everything the UN does, the United States pays for”.

“Is there money being well spent? I’d say right now, no, because it’s being spent on all of these other woke projects, rather than what it was originally intended to do, what President Trump wants it to do, and what I want it to do, which is focus on peace.”

Historically, the United States has been the largest financial contributor, typically covering around 22% of the UN’s regular budget and up to 28% of the peacekeeping budget.

Still, ironically, the US is also the biggest defaulter. According to the UN’s Administrative and Budgetary Committee, member states currently owe $1.87 billion of the $3.5 billion in mandatory contributions for the current budget cycle.

The former US House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik of New York, a one-time nominee for the post of US Ambassador to the UN, was quoted as saying, “In the UN, Americans see a corrupt, defunct, and paralyzed institution more beholden to bureaucracy, process, and diplomatic niceties than the founding principles of peace, security, and international cooperation laid out in its charter.”

Meanwhile, in a veiled attack on the UN, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “What we term the “international system” is now overrun with hundreds of opaque international organizations, many with overlapping mandates, duplicative actions, ineffective outputs, and poor financial and ethical governance.”

Even those that once performed useful functions, he pointed out, have increasingly become inefficient bureaucracies, platforms for politicized activism or instruments contrary to our nation’s best interests, he said.

“Not only do these institutions not deliver results, they obstruct action by those who wish to address these problems. The era of writing blank checks to international bureaucracies is over,” declared Rubio

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UN’s ‘responsibility to deliver’ will not waver, after US announces withdrawal from dozens of international organizations. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe
 
“Take up the White Man’s burden — Send forth the best ye breed… By all ye cry or whisper, by all ye leave or do, [T]he silent, sullen peoples shall weigh your gods - and you…” -- Rudyard Kipling, The White Man’s Burden: The United States and the Philippine Islands (1899)

By Azza Karam
NEW YORK, Jan 12 2026 (IPS)

We’re living in an age where the world is loudly proclaiming the death of empire, yet reproducing its structures. This is not nostalgia for colonial postcards — it’s a reinvention of foreign policy, international governance and global economic power that resembles colonial logic far more than it does meaningful cooperation.

The term “New Colonialism” feels extreme until you look not at poetry, but at power in motion — from military takeovers and genocides, to diplomatic withdrawal, to institutions that still perpetuate inequality and human rights’ abuses under the guise of neutrality.

I – Where Are We Today

“Imperialism after all is an act of geographical violence through which virtually every space in the world is explored, charted, and finally brought under control.”
— Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993)

In January 2026, the United States executed what amounts to the most dramatic foreign intervention in Latin America in decades: a military incursion into Venezuela resulting in the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro. President Donald Trump openly declared that the U.S. would “run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition.” This is not coded language — it is overt control.

Critics and allies alike see the move not as a limited counternarcotics or law enforcement operation (as the Administration frames it), but as a return to the old playbook of hemispheric domination. Latin American governments from Mexico to Brazil condemned it as a violation of sovereignty — a modern mirror to the regime-change interventions of the 20th century.

Analysts at Foreign Policy have highlighted precisely how this intervention fits into a larger pattern of U.S. foreign policy ambition. Rishi Iyengar and John Haltiwanger note that under the banner of battling “narcoterrorism,” the United States has expanded the role of its military into actions that blur the distinction between security and political control — “adding bombing alleged drug traffickers to its ever-growing list of duties.”

Such actions reflect a foreign policy that is increasingly militarized and deeply unilateral in its execution.

This intervention was not an isolated blip. It fits into a broader dynamic which suggests Washington’s moves in Venezuela are less about drug interdiction and more about strategic positioning and resource control — especially Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.

In the context of a “World-Minus-One” global order where U.S. power is contested by China and Russia, interventionist impulses have resurfaced not as humanitarian projects but as geopolitical gambits.

Viewed through the lens of colonial critique, the language of “rescuing” Venezuelans from an accused dictator echoes Kipling’s exhortation to take up the supposed moral burden. But those centuries-old justifications masked violence and labour exploitation; today’s rhetoric masks geopolitical self-interest.

The U.S. claims to be liberating Venezuelans from authoritarianism, yet asserts control over governance and economic infrastructure — a 21st-century version of telling another nation it cannot govern itself without direction from Washington. The result is not liberation, but dependency — a hallmark of colonial relationships.

II. The U.S. Withdrawal from Multilateral Institutions

“The White Man’s Burden, which puts the blame of the new subjects upon themselves without acknowledging the real burden — the systematic, structural and often violent exploitation — is the oldest myth of empire.”

Kumari Jayawardena, The White Woman’s Other Burden: Western Women and South Asia During British Colonial Rule, (1995)

If the takeover of Venezuela reads like old-fashioned empire building, the withdrawal from multilateral institutions is a disengagement from the very forums meant to prevent that kind of unilateralism.

In early 2026, the United States signed a presidential memorandum seeking to withdraw support and participation from 66 international organizations — including numerous United Nations agencies and treaty frameworks seen as “contrary to U.S. interests.” This list contains both U.N. bodies and other treaty mechanisms, extending a pattern of U.S. disengagement from global governance structures.

Among the organizations targeted are the U.N.’s population agency and the framework treaty for international climate negotiations. Already, U.S. participation in historic climate agreements like the Paris Agreement has been rolled back, and the World Health Organization was officially exited — marking a return to a transactional, bilateral focus rather than deep multilateral cooperation.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres responded to the announcement with regret and a reminder of legal obligations: assessed contributions to the regular and peacekeeping budgets are binding under the U.N. Charter for all member states, including the United States. He also underscored that despite U.S. withdrawal, the agencies will continue their work for the communities that depend on them.

This move comes against a backdrop in which the U.N. and other institutions are already grappling with serious internal challenges — problems that critics argue undermine their legitimacy and point to deeper governance failures. For instance, allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse by U.N. peacekeepers and staff have repeatedly surfaced, with hundreds of cases documented and concerns raised about the trustworthiness of leadership responses.

In 2024 alone, peacekeeping and political missions reported over 100 allegations, and internal surveys showed troubling attitudes among staff toward misconduct.

Such abuses are not random flukes; scholars and advocates have documented persistent organizational cultures where power imbalances enable exploitation and harassment, and where transparency and accountability often lag.

These structural issues do not delegitimize the idea of multilateral cooperation — but they certainly challenge claims that these institutions function as equitable and effective global governance mechanisms.

International non-governmental organizations (INGOs) are likewise under scrutiny. Critics point to cases where aid workers have perpetrated sexual abuse and exploitation or where organizational priorities have at times aligned more with donor interests than with local needs.

A 2024 study on sexual exploitation and harassment in humanitarian work highlights how power imbalances and weak enforcement mechanisms within the sector contribute to ongoing abuses that remain under-reported and inadequately addressed.

These issues — within the U.N. and the humanitarian sector — fuel frustration that multilateralism too often protects institutional reputation at the expense of victims and local communities. That frustration helps explain why some U.S. policymakers see these organizations as outdated or corrupt.

But the response of walking away rather than strengthening accountability mechanisms plays directly into the hands of those who would hollow out global governance altogether.

III. It Takes Two to Tango

So, is the United States the villain in this unfolding story of fractured cooperation and revived colonial impulses? Yes — but only partially.

There is no denying that recent U.S. foreign policy has made unilateral moves that harm global norms: military intervention in sovereign states, withdrawal from key treaties and organizations, and politicized rejection of multinational cooperation reflect a retreat from shared leadership. Yet, the belief that multilateral institutions are inherently effective, just and beyond reproach is equally misplaced.

Structural weaknesses in international governance — from slow, opaque accountability mechanisms to insufficient representation of Global South voices — have long been recognized by scholars and practitioners. These deficiencies leave global organizations vulnerable to political capture, ineffectiveness in crisis response and the perpetuation of inequalities they are meant to dismantle.

The failures inside the U.N. and the aid sector are not the sole fault of the United States, but of a global system that institutionalized power hierarchies sustained by western donors, from the beginning.

The New Colonialism era does not show up as 19th-century conquest; it’s woven into the language of “interest,” “security,” and “institutional reform.” Whether it is a powerful state flexing military might under humanitarian pretences or “self defence”, or powerful states walking away from agreements that protect smaller nations’ interests, the pattern is the same: power asserts itself where it can, and multilateral norms are treated as optional.

If this moment teaches us anything, it’s that saving multilateralism requires both accountability and renewal — not abandonment. Countries that champion global cooperation must address colonial legacies in governance, ensure institutions are transparent and accountable, and democratize decision-making.

Likewise, powerful states must recognize that withdrawing from shared systems or using them to further their own limited interests, does not reset power imbalances — it entrenches them.

In the end, meaningful global cooperation cannot be the project of a single nation or a network of powerful elites. It must be rooted in shared accountability and genuine equity — a coalition of efforts for the common good, prepared not only to compromise, but to sacrifice.

Azza Karam is President of Lead Integrity and Director of Occidental College’s Kahane UN Program.

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Human rights are positive, essential and attainable.
 
Photo: from left to right: UN/Harandane Dicko, © NurPhoto, © Betul Simsek, OHCHR Moldova Credit: United Nations

By Volker Türk
GENEVA, Dec 11 2025 (IPS)

Human rights are underfunded, undermined and under attack. And yet. Powerful. Undeterred. Mobilizing.

This year no doubt has been a difficult one. And one full of dangerous contradictions. Funding for human rights has been slashed, while anti-rights movements are increasingly well-funded.

Profits for the arms industry are soaring, while funding for humanitarian aid and grassroots civil society plummets. Those defending rights and justice are attacked, sanctioned and hauled before courts, even as those ordering the commission of atrocity crimes continue to enjoy impunity.

Diversity, equity and inclusion policies that were adopted to address historical and structural injustices are being vilified as unjust. The prognosis would be incredibly dire if these were the only trends. But the pushback on human rights is facing pushback from a groundswell of human rights activism.

In Nepal, Serbia, Madagascar, Kenya, Bangladesh, Ecuador, Paraguay, the Philippines, Indonesia, Tanzania, Morocco, Peru and beyond, mostly young people have taken to the streets and to social media against inequalities, against corruption or repression, in favour of freedom of expression, and for their everyday essential rights.

People across the world have also been protesting against war and injustice, and demanding climate action, in places far from home, expressing solidarity and pressuring their governments to take action.

I urge governments around the world to harness the energy of these social movements into opportunities for broader transformational reforms rather than rushing to suppress them or label them as extremist threats to national security. They are, in fact, the exact opposite of threats to national security.

On the challenges I had set out earlier, here is some data:

Funding: Our resources have been slashed, along with funding for human rights organisations – including at the grassroots level – around the world. We are in survival mode.

My Office has had about USD 90 million less than we needed this year, which means around 300 jobs have been lost, and essential work has had to be cut, including on Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, Tunisia and other countries at a time when the needs are rising.

Special Rapporteur country visits and investigative missions by fact-finding bodies have also been reduced, sometimes drastically. Crucial dialogues with States on their compliance with UN human rights treaties have had to be postponed – last year there were 145 State party reviews, we are down to 103 this year.

We see that all this has extensive ripple effects on international and national efforts to protect human rights.

Meanwhile, anti-rights and anti-gender movements are increasingly coordinated and well-funded, operating across borders. According to the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, for example, almost USD 1.2 billion was mobilized by anti-rights groups in Europe between 2019 and 2023.

There is significant money flowing into the anti-rights agenda from funders based in Europe, Russia and the United States of America. Such massive funding, coupled with media capture and disinformation strategies have made the anti-rights agenda a powerful cross-regional force.

Another distressing dataset is that from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). It says that arms and military services revenues for the 100 largest arms companies reached a record USD 679 billion in 2024. SIPRI has said demand was boosted by wars in Ukraine and Gaza, by global and regional geopolitical tensions, and ever-higher military expenditure.

There have been efforts this year to secure ceasefires and peace deals, which are certainly welcome. However, for peace to be sustainable, human rights must play a central role. There From prevention to negotiating to monitoring to accountability, recovery and peacebuilding.

And we need to do a reality check.

As we have seen in Gaza and in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, agreements have yet to translate into effective protection of civilians on the ground.

Gaza remains a place of unimaginable suffering, loss and fear. While the bloodshed has reduced, it has not stopped. Attacks by Israel continue, including on individuals approaching the so-called “yellow line”, residential buildings, and IDP tents and shelters as well as other civilian objects.

Access to essential services and goods remain severely inadequate. In the West Bank, we are seeing unprecedent levels of attacks by Israeli forces and settlers against Palestinians, forcing them from their land. This is a time to intensify pressure and advocacy – not to sink into complacency – for Palestinians across the occupied territory.

Clashes between the DRC armed forces and the Rwandan-backed M23 armed group continue, alongside serious human rights violations and abuses. Civilians, again, are bearing the brunt. Overnight, you’ll have seen, there have been reports of thousands fleeing the densely populated South Kivu city of Uvira amid escalating clashes between the M23 and DRC armed forces, backed by Wazalendo militia.

This comes just days after the DRC and Rwanda reaffirmed their commitment to implement the June 2025 Washington Peace Agreement. Over the years, we have documented outrageous violations against civilians in Uvira, including rape and sexual and gender-based violence. The risk of a broader regional confrontation appears to be increasing.

In Sudan, the brutal conflict between the army and the Rapid Support Forces continues unabated. From Darfur and the Kordofans to Khartoum and Omdurman and beyond, no Sudanese civilian has been left untouched by the cruel and senseless violence. I am extremely that we might see a repeat of the atrocities committed in El Fasher in Kordofan.

In Ukraine, civilian harm has risen sharply. Civilian casualties so far this year are 24 per cent higher than the same period last year, largely due to Russia’s increased use of powerful long-range weapons in large numbers and its continuing efforts across broad front to capture further Ukrainian territory by armed force.

Large-scale attacks on Ukraine’s energy system have caused emergency outages and prolonged daily electricity cuts, disruptions to water and heating services in many areas. Urgent steps need to be taken to alleviate suffering, including the return of transferred children, the exchange of all prisoners of war, and the unconditional release of civilian detainees held by Russian authorities.

For any sustainable peace to be negotiated, it is important that confidence-building measures are taken, grounded in human rights, including steps to alleviate civilian suffering, promote accountability and preserve a basis for future dialogue. And, importantly, women need to be a part of this process.

It is imperative that peace deals and ceasefires are secured and implemented in good faith. And with full respect for international law, which can never be set aside for political convenience.

It is also critical to counter the demonization of and hatemongering rhetoric against migrants and refugees. In various countries, worryingly, we are seeing violent pushbacks, large-scale raids, arrest and returns without due process, criminalization of migrants and refugees and those who support them, as well as the outsourcing of responsibilities under international law.

I urge States to embark on an evidence-based policy debate on migration and refugee issues, anchored in international human rights and refugee law.

In the course of many electoral campaigns this year, we have also seen a pattern of democratic backsliding, restrictive civic space and electoral violence.

Myanmar’s upcoming military-imposed “election”, is accompanied by new waves of acute insecurity and violence, continued arrests and detentions of opponents, voter coercion, the use of extensive electronic surveillance tools and systemic discrimination. I fear this process will only further deepen insecurity, fear and polarization throughout the country.

There is, unfortunately, never a shortage of human rights challenges to face, issues to resolve, and values to defend. What is heartening is that there are so many of us, around the world, attached to the same universal human rights values – no matter the noise, the gaslighting, and the persistent injustices.

I am energized by the social movements – particularly those led by young people. They are writing the latest chapters in the time-honoured struggle for our collective humanity and dignity. Journalists, activists, and human rights defenders have been at the forefront of the global movement for freedom, equality and justice.

Such perseverance has achieved landmark victories for the rights of women, migrants, people discriminated against on the basis of descent, minorities, our environment, and so much more.

And we will continue to persevere.

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Excerpt:

The UN General Assembly in session. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

By Anwarul Chowdhury
NEW YORK, Dec 5 2025 (IPS)

From its inception, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) has been engaged in improving its working methods, mindful of, as early as in 1949, “… the increasing length of General Assembly sessions, and of the growing tendency towards protracted debates.”

Since the leadership of legendary Ambassador Samir Shihabi of Saudi Arabia as President of the General Assembly (PGA) during the 46th session in 1991 and thereafter, the Assembly’s agenda has included a dedicated item on the revitalization of the work of the Assembly and its Main Committees.

Since the 60th session in 2005, under the guidance of its articulate and forward-looking President, Ambassador Jan Eliasson of Sweden, the Assembly has established the Ad Hoc Working Group on the revitalization of the work of the General Assembly. Its mandate was “to identify ways to further enhance the role, authority, effectiveness and efficiency of the General Assembly.”

Until now, more than 200 outcomes have been recorded in 30 different areas. The incumbent President of the landmark 80th session, Annalena Baerbock of Germany, has now taken the initiative to move forward substantively on this perennial exercise of the world’s most universal multilateral body.

Election of a Woman as the Next Secretary-General

I would strongly suggest that her forward-looking leadership would restore the operational credibility of the United Nations by including in its revitalization exercise the role of the Secretary-General, facilitating the election of a woman as the next Secretary-General, transparency of the UN’s budgetary processes, addressing the current and future liquidity crises, and meaningful inclusivity of civil society in the Assembly’s work.

The role, functions and leadership of the Secretary-General need special attention from the Assembly as the appointing authority. The 75th PGA in 2020 Volkan Bozkir rightly identified that “the Secretary-General is the engine and the transmission system.”

It is unfortunate that questions have been raised about the reticence of the Secretary-General in getting his hands dirty and in getting more proactively involved in and in mobilizing his senior management team towards ending the ongoing global conflicts and wars and promoting peace and reconciliation.

In a recent op-ed, a former UNICEF Deputy Executive Director and a longtime UN watcher, Kul Chandra Gautam, even exhorted the SG “not to hide behind the glasshouse at Turtle Bay and go beyond invisible subtle diplomacy to more visible shuttle diplomacy.”

After choosing nine men successively to be the world’s topmost diplomat, I strongly believe that the United Nations should have the sanity and sagacity of electing a woman as its next Secretary-General.

In its resolution A/79/372 adopted as recently as on 5 September this year, the Assembly, in its paragraph 42(c), says that “ Noting with regret that no woman has ever held the position of Secretary-General, [it] encourages Member States to strongly consider nominating women as candidates,” and it also asserted in its paragraph 42(k) that “The Secretary-General shall be appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council, in accordance with Article 97 of the Charter.”

The same resolution (79/327) committed the UNGA “ … to the continued implementation of … its resolution 76/262 of 26 April 2022 on the veto initiative, to enhance the work of the General Assembly, taking into account its role on matters related to the maintenance of international peace and security ….” In the current exercise, this area, of course, needs further attention and elaboration.

Transparency and accountability are essential in the budget processes of the UN.

Two other areas that need more scrutiny are extra budgetary resources received from Member States and consultancy practices, including budgetary allocations for that by the Organization. Special attention in these areas is needed to restore the UN’s credibility and thereby effectiveness and efficiency for the benefit of humanity as a whole.

Future financial and Liquidity crises

Tough decisions needed to avoid future financial and liquidity crises needed genuine engagement by all sides, yes, ALL sides, in particular the major “assessed” contributors.

Peacekeeping operations also face increasing liquidity pressure as the outstanding contributions for that area are reported to be $3.16 billion. These accumulations have been building up for some years. Why was no extra effort made by all sides well ahead of time to avoid the recurrent panic about the Organization’s liquidity crises?

Today’s financial and liquidity crisis is not caused by the recent withholding of payments by a few major contributors for political reasons. Outstanding contributions for the UN’s regular budget reached $2.27 billion last month.

At the UN, though the “process is an intergovernmental one and thereby Member States-driven,” the absence of civil society involvement would seriously undermine the role and contribution of “We the Peoples ….” PGA Bozkir asserted that “civil society is the pillar of democracy, and we must, after some time, find a way that civil society is (re)presented here.”

Enhancing the UN’s credibility

Also, I am of the opinion that a formalized and mandated involvement of and genuine consultation with the civil society would enhance the UN’s credibility. The UN leadership and Member States should work diligently on that without fail for a decision by the ongoing 80th session of the General Assembly.

Under the bold, upbeat and clear-sighted leadership of the incumbent PGA Annalena Baerbock whose proactive and forward-looking role has already drawn wide appreciative attention, the international community needs to wish her the best of luck in this very important endeavor to revitalize the apex body of the most universal multilateral entity – the UN General Assembly – in a positive way.

For that, now is the time to discuss and to decide on the urgent, focused and meaningful areas of action. The UN’s long-drawn revitalization efforts, in reality, should not end again in the repetitive regularity of an omnibus of redundancy.

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury is former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the United Nations, Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UN, Initiator of the UNSCR 1325 as the President of the UN Security Council in March 2000, Chairman of the UN General Assembly’s Main Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Matters and Founder of the Global Movement for The Cultural of Peace (GMCoP).

IPS UN Bureau

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