Exiled: Myanmar’s Resistance to Junta Rule Flourishes Abroad

From construction and hotel workers to kitchen and restaurant staff—estimates of the numbers of Myanmar migrants living in Thailand range up to six million, with a surge of new arrivals since the 2021 military coup.

‘Since the Coup, Factory Employers Have Increasingly Worked with the Military to Restrict Organising and Silence Workers’

 
CIVICUS speaks to the Business and Human Rights Centre (BHRC) about labour rights abuses in Myanmar’s garment industry since the 2021 military coup.

Haiti at a Crossroads: Political Uncertainty and Gang Control Push Nation Toward Collapse

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

Cuts Stall Clinical Trials, Scientists Warn US Risks Losing Its Research Edge

Scientists across the U.S., including me, are stressed after a year marked by several changes and challenges, including cuts to science funding that have stalled clinical trials and studies that could improve and save lives. Without funding, scientists worry about how they will support ongoing research and train America’s future workforce, including the next generation of innovators.

Binalakshmi Nepram: Engineering Peace, Creating History

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.

A Not So Happy United States

The United States is not so happy. Its population has received a lower happiness ranking compared to previous years. The factors contributing to this decline have significant implications for the United States, both domestically and internationally. As Dostoevsky noted, “The greatest happiness is to know the source of unhappiness”.

As Korea Ages, Fiscal Reforms Can Help Safeguard Government Finances

Korea’s population is aging faster than almost any other country. That’s because people live longer than in most other countries, while the birth rate is one of the lowest in the world.

Systemic Infrastructure Attacks Push Ukraine Into Its Deepest Humanitarian Emergency Yet

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

Moving Towards Agroecological Food Systems in Southern Africa

In a quiet village known as Nkhondola, in Chongwe District, Eastern Zambia, Royd Michelo and his wife, Adasila Kanyanga, have transformed their five-acre piece of land into a self-sustaining agroecological landscape. With healthy soils built over time, the farm teems with diverse food crops, fruit trees, livestock and birds, nourishing their family and the surrounding community.

Beyond Shifting Power: Rethinking Localisation Across the Humanitarian Sector

For the last decade, many in the foreign aid sector have emphasised the need for localisation, and in the last 5 years, the calls have been louder than ever. I am one of such voices.

Big Nature-Based Finance Turnaround Needed to Restore, Protect Ecosystems

The world is pouring trillions of dollars each year into activities that destroy nature while investing only a fraction of that amount in protecting and restoring the ecosystems on which economies depend, according to a new United Nations report released on January 22.

Steering Nepal’s Economy Amid Global Challenges

Nepal has a unique opportunity for transformation. The recent youth-led protests underscored aspirations for greater transparency, governance and a more equal distribution of economic opportunities and resources. This yearning resonated in Nepal and beyond.

Thousands of Kenya’s Smallholder Coffee Farmers Risk Losing EU Market as Deforestation Law Takes Effect

For the last twenty years, Sarah Nyaga, a smallholder farmer from Embu County in central Kenya, has farmed coffee. Like most across Kenya, she relies on the export market. A greater percentage of Kenya’s coffee ends up within the European Union market, but a new law threatens to disrupt what has been a source of income for thousands of farmers like Nyaga.

World Enters ‘Era of Global Water Bankruptcy’

The world is already in the state of “water bankruptcy”. In many basins and aquifers, long-term overuse and degradation mean that past hydrological and ecological baselines cannot realistically be restored.

World Living Beyond Its Means: Warns UN’s Global Water Bankruptcy Report

The world has entered what United Nations researchers now describe as an era of Global Water Bankruptcy, a condition where humanity has irreversibly overspent the planet’s water resources, leaving ecosystems, economies, and communities unable to recover to previous levels.

Global Survey Finds Citizens back a World Parliament as Trust in International System Erodes

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.

Karatoya

Once a lifeline of northern Bengal, Bangladesh’s Karatoya River now drifts through Bogura as a fragmented, polluted channel, where climate change and human neglect quietly reshape livelihoods, memory, and everyday life.

The UN’s Withering Vine: A US Retreat from Global Governance

 
The Trump administration’s recent announcement of its withdrawal from 66 international organisations has been met with a mixture of alarm and applause. While the headline number suggests a dramatic retreat from the world stage, a closer look reveals a more nuanced, and perhaps more insidious, strategy. The move is less a wholesale abandonment of the United Nations system and more a targeted pruning of the multilateral vine, aimed at withering specific branches of global cooperation that the administration deems contrary to its interests. While the immediate financial impact may be less than feared, the long-term consequences for the UN and the rules-based international order are profound.

One Carries a Broom, the Other a Schoolbag

While other children her age prepared for school, eight-year-old Tania once began her workday. Each morning, she picked up a jharu—the household broom—and cleaned floors inside a private home. At the same time, another child of her age in that household lifted a schoolbag and left for class. One carried a broom. The other carried books.

How Extreme Weather is Testing Tanzania’s $2 Billion Electric Railway Dream

On a rainy Wednesday morning, in Dodoma, the capital of Tanzania, the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) terminal bustled with a steady flow of passengers. Women ushered toddlers along. Snack bags dangling on their hands. Tourists dragged wheeled suitcases across the floor. Students scrolled through smartphones as they returned to campus. Each had been attracted by the speed, reliability and comfort of the electric train.

Economic Dogma Blocks Pragmatic Policies

After condemning pragmatic responses to the 1997-98 Asian financial crises, the West pursued similar policies in response to the 2008 global financial crisis without acknowledging its own mistakes.